What’s truly going on inside DOGE?

0:00:05 Dude, this vault, this giant filing cabinet is worth more than Snapchat.
0:00:06 It’s worth more than Pinterest.
0:00:09 It’s worse more than Twitter as a company.
0:00:10 Isn’t that crazy?
0:00:12 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:15 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:17 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:00:19 ♪ On the road, let’s travel ♪
0:00:23 All right, we’re gonna get a little current eventy, which we don’t often, but I love current events.
0:00:24 So I want to talk about a current event.
0:00:33 So last night, Elon did this thing where he was in Trump’s office with his kid sprawling all over him,
0:00:35 climbing up on him, which is kind of funny.
0:00:41 And he told this story about a mine where all the government files were.
0:00:42 Did you hear what he said?
0:00:43 I didn’t hear what he said.
0:00:46 I saw a photo of this place, it’s like underground.
0:00:51 Somebody said, “Oh, it’s the bureaucratic Gringots from Harry Potter.”
0:00:54 It’s like this underground bank vault.
0:00:58 So Elon said something that I feel like it was like an off-handed comet,
0:01:00 but it’s actually led me down this rabbit hole.
0:01:03 Basically, they were asking him about how he was like getting rid of all these jobs.
0:01:06 And he was like, “Yeah, I want to like actually retire more people.”
0:01:11 But I was told that I could only retire 10,000 people a month.
0:01:13 And I was asking, “Well, why is that?”
0:01:16 And he said, “Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual.”
0:01:20 Meaning it’s literally on paper and it’s written down on a piece of paper.
0:01:21 And then it goes down a mine.
0:01:26 There’s literally a limestone mine where all the paperwork for retire,
0:01:28 people who want to retire, is where it’s stored.
0:01:31 And so in order to actually make this work,
0:01:34 the speed that we can move, the limiting factor,
0:01:38 is the speed at which the line shaft elevator can actually move down.
0:01:41 And you hear this story and you’re like,
0:01:43 “What the hell are you talking about, man?”
0:01:47 And so I went down a rabbit hole and I had to figure this out.
0:01:50 So can I tell you a little story about not just this mine,
0:01:54 but this whole company that operates around this.
0:01:59 So basically in the 1920s, there was this guy who grew mushrooms.
0:02:02 And I guess in order to grow mushrooms in the part of America,
0:02:05 where he was growing mushrooms, he had to grow them in a cave.
0:02:08 And so he was the mushroom king of America.
0:02:13 At one point, he was the largest creator or grower of mushrooms in America.
0:02:16 He was this German immigrant and he was kind of like this like funny guy
0:02:20 where like his advertisements, he called himself the mushroom king, whatever.
0:02:23 And he had to rent a cave and grow mushrooms.
0:02:26 And eventually he bought a cave and that’s where he grew mushrooms.
0:02:29 And this cave that he bought was massive. It was a huge cave.
0:02:34 And for some reason, starting in the 1950s, post-World War II,
0:02:36 those damn Europeans started undercutting them
0:02:37 and started selling cheaper mushrooms.
0:02:41 And he was like, “My mushroom business is going to go under.
0:02:43 This is not going to work. I got to figure out what to do.”
0:02:49 And so he bought a bank vault door that was $20,000 in 1950.
0:02:51 And he installed it in his cave.
0:02:54 He took out the mushrooms and he installed this bank vault door.
0:02:58 And he went to a local bank and was like, “Hey, you guys have a lot of paperwork.
0:03:00 You’ve got a lot of files that you have to store.
0:03:05 I have the safest place on earth to store this paperwork.
0:03:07 You want to like make a business deal?”
0:03:11 And so he changed his business and he started this thing called Iron Mountain.
0:03:15 And it was called Iron Mountain because it was literally in like a mine
0:03:17 that was like they would use the…
0:03:21 I don’t know how this all works, but they would use like the rocks to make like iron.
0:03:24 And he grew this thing like crazy.
0:03:26 And so basically this company, it’s called Iron Mountain,
0:03:29 Google Iron Mountain Market Cap.
0:03:32 Iron Mountain Inc. is a $30 billion company. Wow.
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0:04:09 So this company, I looked it up since the year 2000,
0:04:16 they have created a billion dollars at least or roughly per year in free cash flow.
0:04:18 And they now own something like,
0:04:22 I think it was something like 80 million square feet of storage.
0:04:24 And so they have everything.
0:04:27 So it could be like Princess Diana’s will is in there.
0:04:31 But it’s like Sony, the music company Sony, the record label Sony,
0:04:34 has all of their masters recordings,
0:04:37 like literally like the tape stored in Iron Mountain.
0:04:41 But their biggest customers is like an insurance company in Connecticut,
0:04:44 who had been in business for 100 years.
0:04:46 They, for some reason, legal reasons,
0:04:49 they have to keep their paper files.
0:04:52 They have to save them for something like 75 years.
0:04:54 This is nuts, dude.
0:04:59 So they’re just a giant, they’re just like a physical vault for documents.
0:05:02 It says enterprise information management services, founded in 1951.
0:05:04 So it’s just a giant vault.
0:05:08 And they’re like, we will protect your files, will protect your paperwork.
0:05:10 Exactly. But it’s huge.
0:05:12 So literally they have caves.
0:05:15 And he like would joke that it’s an atomic bomb shelter.
0:05:17 But that wasn’t really a joke.
0:05:21 They actually have a whole bunch of decommissioned atomic bomb structures
0:05:23 as their vaults.
0:05:26 And so, and they do this because if you,
0:05:30 if you are like, for example, a WWE is one of their customers
0:05:34 and they have every single time they’ve literally like physically filmed a fight,
0:05:39 like an event, a match, they store it and they have all these tapes,
0:05:42 which is like sounds like, OK, that’s just like a small example.
0:05:45 But they have other examples where like eight year old me would have broke in there.
0:05:49 So excited to just go to the vault of all WWE matches ever.
0:05:52 Yeah, but they also have like billions of dollars worth of art.
0:05:56 So if you’re a museum and you have extra art that you need store,
0:06:00 you’re going to go to Iron Mountain because you know, it’s like real like safe.
0:06:02 So it’s one place or they have a bunch of these.
0:06:04 They have dozens and dozens of places.
0:06:06 So I think they have 80 caves.
0:06:10 Like don’t caves literally a cave in like, why not just a building?
0:06:10 What’s wrong?
0:06:12 Like building with guys with guns.
0:06:13 Why not?
0:06:15 Because it has a low moisture.
0:06:19 So it’s like it’s like it’s good for paper and a bunch of reasons like that.
0:06:21 But it’s also like literally safe.
0:06:24 So like a cave is actually, you know, I don’t know how this works,
0:06:27 but it’s actually safer in terms of like they’re being an earthquake
0:06:28 or they’re being an atomic bomb.
0:06:31 When someone just gives me one scientific fact,
0:06:34 like just like a minor if you were just like, yeah,
0:06:38 though the humidity coefficient is lower, I don’t need to hear more.
0:06:43 Like I’m just like so sad as long as I know there’s any scientific basis for something.
0:06:46 I’ll just accept the argument in full.
0:06:51 It’s the there was a Harvard study that has the same effect on me.
0:06:54 Exactly. It’s and I was reading this and it was by the New Yorker.
0:06:59 And there was like all like it was hard to comprehend how like epic this thing is.
0:07:01 So this is the thing that stores the government stuff or no, a separate business.
0:07:03 Yes. So let’s get to the government stuff.
0:07:07 So he said there’s a limestone mine where this is all stored.
0:07:13 So he kind of like dismissed it because it was a mine, but that’s actually important.
0:07:17 But the federal government is a customer of Iron Mountain.
0:07:20 And so here’s how this works.
0:07:22 This part is absolutely insane.
0:07:25 So starting in the 1950s of the 1960s,
0:07:28 the federal government became a customer of Iron Mountain.
0:07:32 And to this day, it basically operates the exact same way.
0:07:38 And so right now, the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year.
0:07:42 And when let’s say you work for the FBI or some agency, federal agency,
0:07:48 the the Postal Service, whatever, and you need to retire because of 100 plus years of laws,
0:07:50 there’s a lot of complications.
0:07:52 And so when you retire, you’re supposed to get a pension.
0:07:54 Let’s round numbers of $100,000 a year.
0:07:58 But some people might get 98000.
0:07:59 Some people might get 108000.
0:08:03 And the reason they will is because let’s say this federal employee was a
0:08:08 cafeteria worker for a federal agency that requires a different set of rules.
0:08:10 Let’s say this person was a retired vet.
0:08:12 Let’s say this person was an amputee.
0:08:18 There’s like a million rules about what what you are going to be earning after you retire.
0:08:21 However, this is all done on paperwork.
0:08:26 So every single federal employee, they and not just the current ones,
0:08:31 but the past ones, they have a manila envelope in this mine in Pennsylvania,
0:08:32 that Iron Mountain runs.
0:08:36 And so when you want to retire, you had the file, a piece of paperwork,
0:08:38 like you literally write up on a piece of paperwork,
0:08:40 you give it to your boss at your federal agency.
0:08:45 The federal agency has to mail it to the mountain or to the mine and PA.
0:08:50 And it takes roughly 60 days because one of the 600 employees at this mine
0:08:55 needs to physically have the file in hand, needs to walk to your file
0:09:00 in the mountain, which this mountain is 200 football fields or 200 acres.
0:09:04 They had to literally hand, like by hand, go and get that file.
0:09:05 And they got to look at your file.
0:09:08 They got to say, all right, Sean looks like he’s 65.
0:09:11 It looks like he, oh, he actually retired at 59 years old.
0:09:12 Then he came back.
0:09:14 So that gets a different thing.
0:09:15 Turns out he served in the Iraq war.
0:09:17 So he gets this thing, this thing, this thing.
0:09:21 And then they close the file and they put it back and they send the paperwork
0:09:24 back to your agency to let them know here’s what Sean is going to be paid for
0:09:25 his pension fund.
0:09:29 And that process takes something like 90 days to do that whole thing.
0:09:35 And since, uh, since the 1980s, they have spent hundreds of millions.
0:09:37 It’s approaching billions of dollars to digitize this.
0:09:39 It’s failed every time.
0:09:42 And the New Yorker in 2004 wrote this amazing article.
0:09:43 They’re like, we tried it in 1980.
0:09:45 We are trying it now.
0:09:46 We tried it in 1995.
0:09:50 Why can’t they digitize too much or it gets rejected?
0:09:53 It’s a huge, it’s a huge task.
0:09:56 But this mountain, it’s in rural Pennsylvania.
0:10:01 And these Pennsylvania folks, they’re, they were literally mine workers.
0:10:03 Like that, that’s what they were.
0:10:04 This mine, when it was an active mine.
0:10:07 So it’s like generations of miners who are now doing this thing.
0:10:11 So it’s not like these 600 employees aren’t exactly like computer experts.
0:10:12 They’re like physical laborers.
0:10:16 So they don’t exactly have like the labor there to do it, but also just the bureaucracy.
0:10:21 The same thing that happened with when Obama launched, was it healthcare.com or whatever?
0:10:24 Like it’s just really hard within a government, within the four years
0:10:27 that a president is president to make this massive change.
0:10:28 And so this is mine.
0:10:33 And you’re not going to get huge pat on the back for like digitizing this process.
0:10:33 You know what I mean?
0:10:36 And the people who work at the mine, they interviewed a couple of them.
0:10:39 They were like, it’s a pretty miserable, miserable place to work.
0:10:42 In the wintertime when we arrive at work, we’re there when it’s dark.
0:10:47 And then when we come home at night, it’s still dark and you can’t have a flame in the mine.
0:10:50 So all of the food has to be delivered for us every day.
0:10:53 And it’s like fried food or pizza that’s like our two vendors.
0:10:57 But they let you have unlimited overtime if you if you want.
0:11:01 And it’s an eight to five job and no one leaves.
0:11:02 Like the retention is one hundred percent.
0:11:03 They’re like, it’s just a good stable job.
0:11:05 These guys need a podcast.
0:11:08 I need to I want to be listening to Iron Mountain Pod where they’re just
0:11:13 just these miners just talking about about paperwork and eating pizza.
0:11:16 It’s like an ASMR channel of the limestone mine.
0:11:20 And the New Yorker did an article and they like were talking to these people
0:11:22 and they were like, if you guys want to see taxpayer waste,
0:11:27 you should see what happens when a federal worker retires, goes back to work
0:11:28 and then retires again.
0:11:31 He goes, one of the guys I interviewed, they go, I’m working on a case now
0:11:34 that’s taken me one hundred and twenty days to figure out how much
0:11:37 pension this worker is owed.
0:11:40 And it’s just a nightmare.
0:11:45 And so it’s like literally a physical labor job to walk around and find.
0:11:50 This mining company is this this vault, this this giant filing cabinet
0:11:53 is worth more than Snapchat.
0:11:54 It’s worth more than Pinterest.
0:11:57 It’s worse, more than Twitter as a company.
0:11:57 Isn’t that crazy?
0:12:01 The thirty billion dollar company and the retention might be better.
0:12:02 And here’s why it might be better here.
0:12:04 So it is better, I guarantee.
0:12:07 Listen, Workday, Workday is a piece of software.
0:12:10 I’ve never, I don’t think maybe I’ve used it.
0:12:13 But like the thing about work, Workday is considered like a dinosaur software
0:12:16 company, right? It’s like, or let’s say ADP, like these payroll
0:12:18 softwares that a lot of huge companies have.
0:12:20 And they’re regarded as a sticky product.
0:12:24 But the issue with that is that you, a worker, as well as management,
0:12:27 you interact with that product every day.
0:12:28 So you’re like, this fucking sucks.
0:12:31 So eventually you might get pissed off and want to change it with Iron Mountain.
0:12:36 Bank by law has to keep these files on and say, hey, we’re going to
0:12:40 give this to you guys and they’ll never talk to him again for the next 50 years.
0:12:42 Dude, should we open up a drawer?
0:12:45 Like, should we just go have these on a single drawer in Iron Mountain
0:12:48 and just start saving like hateful YouTube comments in there?
0:12:51 Just have one little, one little station.
0:12:53 They told a story about this mine.
0:12:56 They said there was some rich, anonymous person, this old lady,
0:12:58 who had like a hundred million dollars worth of art.
0:13:01 And she wants a year, but go down to the mine and bring a blanket and cheese
0:13:04 and wine and would just sit and look at her art.
0:13:06 I just be like, this is awesome.
0:13:09 And that was in the article that she did that.
0:13:11 Crazy company, right?
0:13:13 This freaking Iron Mountain.
0:13:14 Really, really fun find.
0:13:17 I’m glad you found that also hilarious that you started with.
0:13:18 Let’s start with current events.
0:13:21 And then you started talking about this old file storage system from like
0:13:24 the 1950s, and that’s where you went with this, this information.
0:13:25 Did you see photos of it?
0:13:27 Yeah, I saw the one photo.
0:13:29 Now I’m looking at more and it’s pretty wild, dude.
0:13:32 It’s just like, I mean, it makes sense now that you say it.
0:13:34 Now that you explain it, it makes sense.
0:13:37 It’s just who knew who knew that this is how this is how it all works.
0:13:39 Now there’s like digital versions of this.
0:13:45 I forget what some of the guys in the space are, but like they were like
0:13:48 Iron Mountain was like, hey, are you guys nervous about digital?
0:13:49 And they like dismiss it.
0:13:53 They’re like, dude, you don’t know how much like crap people need to store.
0:13:56 Like we’re going to be fine.
0:13:57 Like it’s going good.
0:14:00 And so if you look at their financials, it’s just like consistently
0:14:03 like a billion dollar plus of free cash flow just every year.
0:14:05 This is how my wife treats my kids art.
0:14:07 She like created her own Iron Mountain in our house.
0:14:08 It’s just disgusting.
0:14:11 All right, so you brought up current events that you said something
0:14:14 that was totally not a current event, but there was other current events
0:14:15 that are actually interesting.
0:14:19 I’m just curious, give me your one to 10 level of interest in these.
0:14:22 You may you may I have a feeling you might not be interested in these.
0:14:26 Elon offering ninety seven billion dollars to buy open AI.
0:14:29 Did that tickle you?
0:14:31 Eight out of ten.
0:14:34 The Elon stuff is like inherently incredibly interesting at the moment.
0:14:36 Right. OK, eight out of ten.
0:14:38 Let’s rank this one.
0:14:42 Elon do it crashing the press conference in Donald Trump’s
0:14:43 Donald Trump’s Oval Office.
0:14:46 That was at a 10 and by the way,
0:14:50 I bet it’s not even for the content just for the social dynamic of him
0:14:53 standing behind Trump and just just overtaking the press conference.
0:14:55 Is that right? That’s my guess.
0:14:56 Is that what you want to talk about?
0:14:58 Well, there’s there’s one other I want to get to read on.
0:15:00 Which is one other doge as a whole.
0:15:03 Nine, nine or ten.
0:15:05 Yeah, let’s go in that order.
0:15:07 OK, OK, so start at ten.
0:15:10 Yeah, so you sent me a text last night
0:15:14 and you said rule number one, never outshine the master.
0:15:20 Elon Musk and you’re referring to the 48 laws of power, how to be powerful.
0:15:21 You never outshine your master.
0:15:24 Elon Musk, 100 percent outshine Donald there.
0:15:28 That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there
0:15:30 and Elon standing up sort of behind him.
0:15:32 Like he was going to come in, put his arm like his hands on his shoulders.
0:15:36 You know what I mean? Yeah.
0:15:38 Yeah, he hijacked the press conference
0:15:41 and just started giving his own speech, a wordy speech
0:15:43 while his kid is there rambling also.
0:15:46 And the Trump is just sitting there like a goon at the table.
0:15:48 And it was just so interesting.
0:15:50 I’d never seen anyone who’s not the president
0:15:54 give their own press conference from the Oval Office
0:15:55 while the president sits there.
0:15:57 Forget what they were even talking about.
0:15:59 Just that was like, whoa, hold on.
0:16:03 This is like, you know, if you watch The Bachelor,
0:16:04 sometimes they do a two on one date.
0:16:06 It’s like, whoa, hold on. It’s not a one on one.
0:16:08 It’s a two on one. Oh, there’s going to be some drama here.
0:16:09 That’s how it felt.
0:16:10 It felt like a Bachelor two on one goes.
0:16:12 When Elon told the story of Iron Mountain,
0:16:16 Trump like looked back at him and he goes, huh, no shit, really?
0:16:18 Like he was like, like he was learning
0:16:21 like he was being entertained at that moment as well.
0:16:24 Do you know what I mean?
0:16:25 I also love how Trump sometimes is like,
0:16:28 we’re going to send Elon in, Elon’s going to go in.
0:16:30 He’s going to he’s going to do great things.
0:16:30 He does great things.
0:16:32 And he’s just like, that’ll be the plan.
0:16:35 But honestly, that’s actually not a bad plan.
0:16:36 It’s like, if I was going to say one thing, it’s like,
0:16:38 we’re going to send Michael Jordan on the court
0:16:39 and he’s going to shoot. He’s a great shooter.
0:16:41 It’s like, that’s kind of what he does with things.
0:16:43 He’s like, we’re going to send Elon in there.
0:16:44 He’s going to take care of things.
0:16:46 That was actually a really good Trump impression.
0:16:48 I mean, I didn’t fully commit.
0:16:50 I do. I do regret that I didn’t fully commit
0:16:52 because it kind of started off pretty hot.
0:16:53 And if I had really gone for it,
0:16:55 maybe I would have surprised myself, but I’ll never know.
0:16:58 And I’ll live with that regret till I die.
0:16:59 I thought it was pretty good.
0:17:01 It was a very, it had a lot of promise there.
0:17:05 What about the doge stuff in general?
0:17:07 I have a very opinionated take.
0:17:08 Do you?
0:17:10 I have a big picture take.
0:17:12 And then I have just like small things that I wish,
0:17:15 wish more stuff would come out from.
0:17:17 So here’s my big picture take.
0:17:20 I cannot believe we’re on this timeline.
0:17:25 So if you just rewind the clock, like a couple of years ago,
0:17:26 here’s what was going on.
0:17:28 I was reading this Ray Dalio book.
0:17:29 Did you ever read the Ray Dalio?
0:17:30 Like I forgot what it’s called,
0:17:32 Rise and Fall of Nations or something like that.
0:17:34 It’s basically how empires like fall, right?
0:17:35 No empire lasts forever.
0:17:38 Honestly, the title scared me and I was like,
0:17:40 I just kind of want to be ignorant.
0:17:42 But I read his first one, Principles.
0:17:46 And I know that he comes off historically is a pessimist, right?
0:17:49 No, no, no, he’s a realist.
0:17:53 I don’t know. He’s just an observer of of how things are.
0:17:54 So if you’re going to watch one thing, by the way, watch.
0:17:56 But it was alarming.
0:17:59 He’s got this thing called the how the economic machine works.
0:18:01 It’s a 20 or 30 minute YouTube video, which sounds long.
0:18:03 But it’s amazing.
0:18:06 It’s an animated video where he just explains
0:18:08 how the economy works in a way that even a, you know,
0:18:10 Bozo like me could understand.
0:18:12 And it’s it’s it’s amazing.
0:18:12 Go watch that.
0:18:14 Like you should just pause this podcast and go watch that kind of thing.
0:18:16 It’s called how the economic machine works.
0:18:18 The Bridgewater office, by the way,
0:18:20 is literally 1.5 miles from my house.
0:18:22 If you want to go and just talk to him.
0:18:24 Yeah, we just walk right in.
0:18:26 Yeah, absolutely.
0:18:28 So he wrote this book about the rise and fall of nations.
0:18:30 And he basically talks about like he studied all the empires,
0:18:33 the Dutch Empire, the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire.
0:18:35 And basically, why do the empires end?
0:18:36 Why don’t they just keep going?
0:18:37 They have all the advantages.
0:18:38 They got the power.
0:18:39 They got the best military.
0:18:40 They got the best economy.
0:18:43 They have the growing population, like, where do things go wrong?
0:18:45 And he saw that over time, things go wrong
0:18:47 in a very predictable, cyclical fashion.
0:18:51 And and then because he studied history, he could see that.
0:18:53 OK, even if it’s not going to be the same, it’s probably going to rhyme.
0:18:55 I should look out for some of these signs.
0:18:57 And, you know, one of the signs that he talks about
0:19:01 is around the big debt cycle.
0:19:02 So there’s like a short term debt cycle.
0:19:05 There’s a long term debt cycle, which is like 80 to 100 year debt cycle.
0:19:09 And what happens is, you know, the countries or empires
0:19:13 will end up going into too much debt, which the US is in right now,
0:19:16 like $35 trillion of debt, like just an absurd number.
0:19:18 And then the interest payments are really high.
0:19:21 Then because people lose faith in their ability to pay off that debt,
0:19:23 you know, they lose some point.
0:19:26 Their status is the global reserve currency, blah, blah, blah.
0:19:29 OK, so Ray Dalio makes this argument.
0:19:31 It’s an interesting book.
0:19:33 You should read it now.
0:19:35 Does he mention a mukbang?
0:19:37 Where on the timeline is?
0:19:40 Do you know what mukbang is?
0:19:41 Listening to people eat, right?
0:19:43 Watching and listening to people eat loudly.
0:19:47 Fat people just stuff their face with ramen.
0:19:50 Yeah, it’s like a governmental mukbang is what he described.
0:19:54 Does he mentioned when the decline is when a mukbang gets popular?
0:19:58 There were signs.
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0:20:49 All right, back to the episode.
0:20:53 So at least talking about this, it’s like, oh, OK, shit.
0:20:54 You look at the kind of the current world.
0:20:58 You’re like, oh, shit, we got inflation, but then, you know,
0:21:01 to fight inflation, they got to raise rates when they raise rates.
0:21:03 That slows down the economy, which slows down spending,
0:21:04 which creates this other problem.
0:21:05 Then you get stagflation.
0:21:08 You get like all these, oh, man, this could go poorly, right?
0:21:10 Oh, they’re printing too much money.
0:21:11 That could hurt the dollars.
0:21:12 You know, they’re debasing the currency.
0:21:14 That’s what he says that they do.
0:21:15 This is what’s going to happen.
0:21:17 And it just seemed inevitable.
0:21:19 The problem was you looked at it, you’re like,
0:21:22 but who’s going to go and fix this, right?
0:21:26 It’s not like a company because a company has to face reality.
0:21:30 So what a company has to do is ultimately the company
0:21:33 needs profits and needs the shareholders are going to demand
0:21:35 that the company stop this excess spending.
0:21:39 But the problem with the government is the government
0:21:41 can sort of go infinitely in debt until it can’t.
0:21:43 It could just print money, right?
0:21:47 Like imagine if you or I just had a little machine in the closet.
0:21:49 It’s like, well, I could solve this problem
0:21:52 with hard work cutting back, tightening the belt, you know,
0:21:55 or I could just go in the closet and push this button.
0:21:56 I’ll just do it this one time, just this one time.
0:21:58 OK, and like that.
0:21:59 So just kept keeps happening.
0:22:01 You go when you push the button, you print the money.
0:22:03 And so so that’s the problem.
0:22:05 OK, and it just seemed like there was no solution to this
0:22:07 because anybody who wanted to get elected, right?
0:22:10 The leader, first, the leaders were not business people, right?
0:22:14 So problem number one, the people who run the country
0:22:16 were lifelong politicians, typically.
0:22:19 And they were not CEOs or executives
0:22:21 who had that as the core skill set.
0:22:23 The second thing is they didn’t have the incentive, right?
0:22:24 Because when you want to get elected,
0:22:27 it’s like middle school all over again.
0:22:30 You’re got to go promise we’re going to have free pizza every Friday.
0:22:31 It’s like, where’s who’s going to pay for that?
0:22:32 I don’t care.
0:22:34 I just kind of say it and promise it.
0:22:36 We’ll deal with the consequences because that’s what gets me elected.
0:22:38 So the presidency is is never about,
0:22:41 hey, I’m going to cut back all your favorite programs.
0:22:43 It was always going to be, we’re going to do more for you.
0:22:45 We’re going to cut your taxes.
0:22:47 OK, so less revenue for the government.
0:22:47 How’s that going to work?
0:22:50 We’re already in debt where we’re going to cut your taxes.
0:22:51 And you know what?
0:22:53 We’re going to we’re going to spend more on this.
0:22:55 We’re going to invest in education.
0:22:55 That sounds great.
0:22:57 We’re going to give you free health care.
0:22:59 We’re going to pay off your student loans.
0:23:01 It’s like, wow, we’re just going to where’s the money coming from?
0:23:04 And the money was coming from that magic money printer in the closet.
0:23:07 OK, so it just seemed like, dude, there’s no way.
0:23:09 There’s no way out.
0:23:13 And somehow this insane situation has occurred.
0:23:15 And I’m not saying that it’s going to work.
0:23:18 And I’m not saying I agree with everything about these people.
0:23:19 I don’t agree with everything Trump says.
0:23:22 I don’t even I didn’t even vote. OK, look, you can’t even hate me.
0:23:24 OK, I didn’t vote for the guy. I didn’t vote for anybody.
0:23:26 So so you can hate me for other reasons.
0:23:29 I don’t agree with everything that Elon does, but he’s an impressive,
0:23:30 ultimately impressive entrepreneur.
0:23:33 I think he’s the greatest entrepreneur of all time. OK, so.
0:23:35 But I also don’t think I agree with.
0:23:37 I don’t agree with everything he says.
0:23:38 Great, my caveats are out of the way.
0:23:42 I cannot believe we ended up on this timeline where Trump gets elected.
0:23:46 Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of all time.
0:23:49 And if even if you disagree, OK, he’s second, right?
0:23:50 Like he’s close.
0:23:53 What? When did Trump was it January 20th?
0:23:57 Is that what? Or was it 20th inauguration?
0:24:00 Yeah. So it’s a month ago, OK, 40 weeks ago.
0:24:05 And he brings Elon Musk in and basically like.
0:24:06 Like he’s still doing onboarding.
0:24:09 If you just said, what’s the only way America can get out of this?
0:24:13 I’d be like, dude, we got to get like someone as smart as Elon Musk in there.
0:24:17 With a mandate and somehow have a free mandate to actually go
0:24:21 and cut all the bloat to get us out of this excess spending, to cut the deficit,
0:24:24 to balance the budget, to get us even into a surplus.
0:24:26 That’s the only way we got to like somehow do that.
0:24:30 That sounded impossible two to three years ago.
0:24:33 Like there was no path where something he’s not even an American citizen.
0:24:36 It can’t be president. He’s not going to run.
0:24:38 The president’s not going to just give him free reign.
0:24:41 Well, somehow we ended up in this point one percent probability
0:24:43 timeline where Trump gets elected.
0:24:47 Elon becomes his bestie by backing him and giving him
0:24:49 much money and put throwing his weight behind him.
0:24:53 Elon’s stipulation was like, I want to create doge, haha, doge.
0:24:56 And he’s like, I’m going to cut spending.
0:24:58 And Trump’s like, OK, great.
0:25:02 And somehow it became cool to cut spending, which was never cool before that.
0:25:08 And now he just took like this army of his smartest, most ruthless people in the army.
0:25:14 It’s 40 or 50 folks who are 24, even more powerful.
0:25:14 He’s 19.
0:25:19 You just go get a bunch of 10X type of people and he’s literally like rating.
0:25:23 He’s like rating buildings and he’s taking over payment systems
0:25:27 and being like, OK, I can’t change the laws, but I could stop the flow of the money.
0:25:30 I can audit everything from this payment record system.
0:25:32 He’s bringing like young hackers and he’s bringing some of his smartest people
0:25:34 and he’s doing this. Now, will this be successful?
0:25:37 I have no idea. I can’t tell you.
0:25:39 Is this fascinating? Absolutely.
0:25:44 Is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spiral of excess spending?
0:25:47 I believe so, and I cannot believe it happened. End of rant.
0:25:49 All right, let me give you let me give the audience a counterpoint.
0:25:51 And I’m going to get flamed for this.
0:25:52 You’re going devil’s avocado on me.
0:25:55 I’m going hardcore devil’s avocado on you.
0:25:59 No, not exactly, because I’m on board with like what a lot of the stuff he’s doing.
0:26:02 But listen to this, let’s just say that you’re 45 years old.
0:26:06 You got two kids in high school, you got a mortgage and you’re thinking like,
0:26:08 you know, life’s pretty good.
0:26:11 And then all of a sudden you get a message that says, look,
0:26:15 we appreciate you, Diane, for working for the government for so long.
0:26:17 But you’re done.
0:26:19 You’re you got to get out and you’re thinking,
0:26:22 how the hell am I going to pay my mortgage?
0:26:24 How am I going to like provide for my kids who want to go to college?
0:26:27 And then you look online to learn about your situation.
0:26:31 And you’re like, wait, the guy who just decided to fire me
0:26:34 changed his Twitter handle to Twitter to Harry Balls.
0:26:39 And he put in his description that he’s offering circumcision for sixty nine cents.
0:26:44 And did he just call a guy a retard on Twitter?
0:26:47 Dude, someone yesterday sent me an advanced search.
0:26:48 He knew you, Twitter advanced search.
0:26:53 It was just like a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word retard.
0:26:55 And, bro, you could scroll for days.
0:26:56 It was it was unbelievable.
0:26:58 It was an unbelievable link.
0:27:03 It’s sort of like like a really successful entrepreneur, CEO,
0:27:09 doing layoffs because money is short from his beautiful
0:27:12 chalet and Aspen with a beautiful view behind him on Zoom.
0:27:16 And for Elon, I’m like, do what you got to do.
0:27:21 But can you not be so smug about it and like have some like fucking grace
0:27:25 when you’re like doing some of these things, even if those things are good.
0:27:25 And I agree with him.
0:27:30 I just wish that like the maturity level would go up because at the end of the day,
0:27:33 it’s cool for like these tech guys to say like, cut them, cut them.
0:27:35 Let’s make the government smaller, whatever.
0:27:39 But at the end of the day, it is real people’s lives and half of these people,
0:27:42 they’re not like hungry power people.
0:27:44 They’re just fucking guys who are working nine to five
0:27:47 and they just want to play softball in the weekends, you know what I mean?
0:27:49 And that that that bumps me out.
0:27:52 I wish that he would show a little grace when he’s flashing.
0:27:52 You know what I mean?
0:27:54 Like, I think you bring up great points.
0:27:55 I think his.
0:27:59 It’s like I’ve been told many times you’re not wrong, but your delivery sucks.
0:28:02 What do they say in the Big Lebowski?
0:28:03 You’re not wrong, man.
0:28:04 You’re just an asshole.
0:28:08 Yeah, that’s like that’s like what’s going on here.
0:28:10 So I think you’re absolutely right on that.
0:28:13 I will say they did offer eight month severance.
0:28:16 I will also say.
0:28:20 This wasn’t like an optional or flimsy thing.
0:28:23 Like it’s not like somebody’s just messing around.
0:28:28 Basically, but that’s what it seems like when you changed it to Harry Balls.
0:28:29 He made it seem like that.
0:28:31 You’re absolutely right that it seems like he’s messing around.
0:28:32 The style is bad.
0:28:33 I think the substance is good.
0:28:38 The reality is the way that the government works is actually like a financial
0:28:41 terror attack on all American citizens.
0:28:43 And so as much as Diane, I don’t like that.
0:28:46 Diane is is going to possibly lose her job.
0:28:50 The reality is she shouldn’t have had that job probably in the first place
0:28:55 or this maybe not her specifically, but the overall system is spending so much.
0:28:58 It is going to tank the entire economy.
0:29:02 Like you look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just
0:29:06 federal jobs, how much of spending is just going to federal employees.
0:29:09 It’s like, you know, a warm the game of snake.
0:29:11 When you start to eat your own tail, it doesn’t even make any sense.
0:29:13 I’ll give you, I’m going to tell you something.
0:29:17 I have a friend who was last year or two years ago.
0:29:19 They had an unlucky break.
0:29:21 They wanted this promotion or this job.
0:29:22 They didn’t get it.
0:29:23 They didn’t really know what to do.
0:29:26 Didn’t look like they had a great, you know, like upside.
0:29:28 I thought that they deserved a little bit better.
0:29:30 So let me just see if I can help this person out.
0:29:36 And around this time, I had met some people that were some fat cats who were
0:29:38 doing well with government contracts.
0:29:41 And I’m talking about, like, you know, one company, for example,
0:29:43 they just throw a web web dev shop.
0:29:45 They made websites now.
0:29:46 They’re a fat cat.
0:29:47 We got to bring that back.
0:29:48 Great usage.
0:29:49 Fat guy. Yeah, exactly.
0:29:53 And what I mean by that is they were making websites, which you can go on
0:29:55 Fiverr and get a website for five bucks.
0:29:57 You can go and up or can get somebody to do it for a couple of hundred bucks.
0:29:59 You can go on Squarespace and do it yourself.
0:30:00 You could, there’s a whole bunch of things you could do.
0:30:04 They’re getting $19, $20 million contracts to build simple websites.
0:30:05 It was unbelievable.
0:30:10 And, and there were multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have
0:30:12 interns that could do them in three, four days.
0:30:18 It was these aren’t like high traffic, not complex apps, not super sensitive data.
0:30:19 Just like a Squarespace.
0:30:20 Informational websites.
0:30:21 Very basic.
0:30:22 Your menu online.
0:30:23 Yeah, exactly.
0:30:25 So started noticing this.
0:30:29 So I go to my friend and I say, let’s get you a government contract.
0:30:32 And I can’t say too much specific stuff.
0:30:35 We have a, we got this friend, a government contract to do something that
0:30:38 probably takes four hours.
0:30:42 Not even high skilled time, you know, not, not, anybody could do it.
0:30:42 My sister could do it.
0:30:43 My cousin could do it.
0:30:46 Anybody could have got this contract.
0:30:47 It’s been going for two years.
0:30:50 And now it’s a hilarious game of hide and seek.
0:30:53 Cause I’m like, yo, Doge is going to find this contract.
0:30:56 And when Doge finds this contract, they’re going to publish this thing.
0:30:59 It’d be like, we paid for, for this.
0:31:06 And I’m glad that my friend got like, you know, a, a great job, lifestyle.
0:31:07 Yeah.
0:31:12 However, it’s the, what is that thing called the free rider problem in society?
0:31:13 It’s like, I forgot.
0:31:17 There’s like some social term for this where it’s like you, you can
0:31:22 abuse public parks and public transport because nobody’s kind of like on
0:31:24 the hook for it and like, well, I’ll get mine.
0:31:25 I’ll get mine.
0:31:28 And when everybody tries to get theirs, we all get screwed.
0:31:31 Where did your head go where your friend doesn’t get the promotion?
0:31:33 And then the default response is.
0:31:36 Let’s get you a government contract, baby.
0:31:39 Let’s go to the government contract store.
0:31:41 Just pick it off the shelf and go and check out.
0:31:45 And there’s these side quests that, um, you know, I’d been through this, but
0:31:46 this podcast is great, right?
0:31:49 You do this podcast and you meet people and you hear stories.
0:31:52 We were talking, but we had done a segment on government contracts, businesses.
0:31:57 I think we had done a business, a thing because somebody I know had pivoted.
0:32:01 They used to have the episode, I remember expulsively was they used to be in
0:32:04 the business of making vodka bottles with LED lights.
0:32:09 So if it was like Sam’s bachelor party, it’d be like Sam, last day of freedom,
0:32:11 like rotating around a vodka bottle.
0:32:12 That was their business.
0:32:17 COVID hit and they pivoted their entire business to selling masks and got
0:32:18 an 80 or 90 million dollar contract.
0:32:19 Yeah.
0:32:21 And this is somebody who lives less than a mile away from it.
0:32:22 It’s a friend who did that.
0:32:24 And I was like, oh my God, can you believe that?
0:32:28 We talked about it on the podcast and I just had some people email me, which is
0:32:29 the flywheel of this podcast.
0:32:31 And they were like, yeah, dude, like, have you ever checked this out?
0:32:31 Check this out.
0:32:33 You can go see what’s up for bid right now.
0:32:35 Hey, have you heard about this company?
0:32:36 Have you heard about this company?
0:32:37 So I started getting curious.
0:32:38 Now I was never going to do it, right?
0:32:42 Because I’m at a phase of my life where I am intentionally trying to not make
0:32:43 any decisions for money.
0:32:46 So even when I saw something that I was like, oh, wow, you could go make money
0:32:48 doing that, I no longer want to be that guy.
0:32:50 I was that guy for like 15 years.
0:32:51 I don’t want to be that guy anymore.
0:32:53 If I make a decision, it can’t be for money as the number one reason.
0:32:58 But I did take note and I was like, somebody could do that.
0:33:01 Maybe somebody who’s maybe top priority right now is money.
0:33:04 And so this little side quest was, let’s go help a friend.
0:33:05 I don’t want to do this for me.
0:33:09 It wouldn’t be worth it for me, but it would totally be worth it to like for
0:33:11 the story and to see if I could help my friend out.
0:33:12 And it’s still going.
0:33:13 It’s still going.
0:33:15 But dude, every month.
0:33:19 And now that doges out, it’s literally like a game of hide and seek.
0:33:21 And I can hear the footsteps coming.
0:33:24 I know, I know it’s coming and it’s going to be hilarious when it hits.
0:33:25 That’s insane.
0:33:26 That is pretty funny.
0:33:30 What about the, um, the third thing, the, the whole thing.
0:33:35 So the reasoning behind it, like he has a reason for doing this,
0:33:39 which is that he’s trying to explain what it is, saying what it is.
0:33:40 So people don’t know.
0:33:44 So Elon, uh, so from my understanding, uh, uh, open AI is a nonprofit that
0:33:47 trying to convert to a for profit in order to do that.
0:33:51 Sam Altman, as well as some of the shareholders have to quote, buy the company.
0:33:56 And what Elon has done is he’s put a competing offer to buy the non-profit
0:34:00 of open AI in order to make Sam Altman, as well as the other shareholders
0:34:02 to have to pay more.
0:34:03 Is that the summary?
0:34:04 Sort of.
0:34:06 He’s not trying to buy the nonprofit.
0:34:07 He’s trying to buy the assets and same thing.
0:34:09 So basically open AI today is a nonprofit.
0:34:11 That’s how it started.
0:34:13 That’s who, you know, has a lot of the IP.
0:34:19 Then they created a for profit where the nonprofit owns, I think 25% of the
0:34:22 for profit or they’re, they’re trying to own 25% of the for profit.
0:34:24 That’ll be like the deal.
0:34:30 And, um, the for profit has been raising billions and billions of dollars.
0:34:33 They just, they were just trying to raise from masa, uh, and soft bank.
0:34:37 I had a $250 billion, $250 billion, $140 billion valuation.
0:34:43 And so that implied that when they do this conversion or they sell,
0:34:46 that they convert the ask, they’d get the assets out of the nonprofit
0:34:47 into the for profit, right?
0:34:52 The IP, the, the, the Intel, the, the, the, the, all the code, all that stuff.
0:34:57 Uh, the assets were valued, I think at $40 billion in that, that transition.
0:34:59 And it was going to be like stock, basically.
0:35:01 It’s like, oh, you’re going to have 25% ownership in the for profit.
0:35:05 And what Elon did was just throw a wrench in that a little bit because he’s
0:35:09 like, actually I’ll, I’ll buy the assets for 90, whatever he said, 97 billion.
0:35:13 So a couple of possibilities here.
0:35:15 Number one, he might actually get it.
0:35:16 It’s possible that he could do it.
0:35:21 And then in that case, he would own the assets of open AI, merger with X AI.
0:35:26 And he would be, he would go from fourth place to first place overnight.
0:35:32 That’s the, I’m uneducated on the topic, but I know a little bit about stories.
0:35:35 That just seems to, that won’t, I watched Game of Thrones.
0:35:37 They’re not, they’re going to die before they do that.
0:35:37 Okay.
0:35:37 Yeah.
0:35:39 That story won’t happen.
0:35:41 So he’s, so it’s possible, possible, not probable.
0:35:42 Yes.
0:35:45 And it’s possible, not probable only because of the egos and personalities involved.
0:35:48 Sam Altman would fight to the death to not have that happen.
0:35:52 That would be him losing and getting checkmated by Elon.
0:35:55 And Elon is doing it because he wants to checkmate Sam because he feels like he
0:36:02 got wronged and betrayed because he funded the first 40 something million dollars into
0:36:05 opening AI when it was a nonprofit and he owns nothing of the for profit today.
0:36:08 Would you put money on either of them?
0:36:14 Or do you think they’re, or just like in terms of just like the battle of the wits,
0:36:17 like a chess match, or do you think that it’s too hard to?
0:36:20 You know, when we watch those UFC paper views and it’s like,
0:36:24 sometimes you get the ones where it’s just like, oh, I just want to see Khabib do his thing.
0:36:25 He’s going to win, but I just want to watch how.
0:36:29 And then there’s other times where you’re like, I have no idea who’s going to win this fight.
0:36:30 I have no idea.
0:36:35 You got the unstoppable wrestler versus the guy who’s amazing at jiu-jitsu and striking.
0:36:37 And like, I could totally see it going either way.
0:36:39 I got to pay $90 pay-per-view.
0:36:39 I got to watch this.
0:36:44 That’s how this one is because I agree for as many people say you never bet against Elon.
0:36:47 There’s a equal number of smart people who say you never bet against Sam Altman, right?
0:36:50 And so you don’t know which way it’s going to fall.
0:36:52 Now, and there’s also, it’s the highest stakes thing.
0:36:58 Like AI is the highest stakes game and this is the crown jewel asset is open AI.
0:36:59 And it’s going to be a fight to the death.
0:36:59 Okay.
0:37:04 So the second possibility is he just wants to make it more expensive for open AI.
0:37:08 Because like I said, the implied valuation they were talking about was about $40 billion
0:37:12 for the assets, non-cash contribution, or maybe it was a cash contribution.
0:37:13 I’m not sure.
0:37:15 And this would up the price.
0:37:19 So if nothing else, you go to your enemy and they have to pay double for their car.
0:37:22 But do you think like maybe that’s satisfying enough?
0:37:22 Maybe that’s a win.
0:37:27 Like in the board meeting, can you just imagine all these suits that like, well, do we,
0:37:32 do we look at this offer and then everyone just like, no, it’s just Elon.
0:37:33 He’s just being a dickhead.
0:37:38 Okay. Like, do you just like, do they just like collectively agree that he’s just being an asshole?
0:37:42 Or are they like, guys, we got to like look into this.
0:37:46 They’re collectively, because I mean, that would be a very low price for the assets of
0:37:46 open AI, right?
0:37:51 Like literally on the open market, they’re raising at a $240 billion valuation.
0:37:56 So to sell the assets at a $97 billion valuation wouldn’t really make a lot of sense, right?
0:38:00 So at the very least, he’s upping the price or just slowing it down,
0:38:02 making life more complicated for his competitors.
0:38:08 So if I, if we’re competing in a race, but I know I can distract 15% of your mind share,
0:38:09 right? It’s like a honeypot.
0:38:14 Like, you know, like people used to do this, like send in a pretty looking girl and it’s like,
0:38:17 this is just a nice little distraction for my competitor that I can send in.
0:38:18 Like they will do that.
0:38:20 And so there’s, there’s multiple levels this might be playing at.
0:38:21 I don’t know which one it is.
0:38:25 This is just like the nerdy Kendrick Lamar versus Drake thing because they’re,
0:38:27 now they’re going after their personalities.
0:38:31 They haven’t gone after family yet, but I honestly would not be surprised if that happens next.
0:38:33 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
0:38:36 So I’m not paying a whole lot of attention to it, but I mean,
0:38:39 it is interesting to watch like a sort of real life, you know,
0:38:42 rap beef or a gamma thrones battle going on.
0:38:47 I, uh, does it bother, does I need this like wear you out?
0:38:49 Cause I feel a little excited at the moment.
0:38:53 But I wonder when, but we’re only a month in and I’m like,
0:38:59 how much longer can I like last with all these like amazing stories?
0:39:01 Yeah. Uh, yeah. I know what you mean.
0:39:06 There’s definitely a part of it where it just feels like I’ve just watched too many episodes
0:39:10 of Jersey Shore and I’m like, I wasted my whole day, you know, like, you know,
0:39:13 there’s, oh, he said this and he did this and they’re going to do this.
0:39:15 Let me look up the Delaware law.
0:39:17 And it’s like, for what is it?
0:39:19 Are you getting anything out of this?
0:39:21 Or are you just gossiping and say, oh, I’m gossiping.
0:39:23 Okay. Cool. Well, there’s only so much of my energy.
0:39:25 I really want to put towards gossiping.
0:39:28 I also just constantly think, and I think a lot of other people think this is,
0:39:30 how does one man have so much energy?
0:39:33 It’s pretty like amazing.
0:39:38 It’s hard for me to imagine like writing a serious email that would require me to make
0:39:41 a decision that has long-term impacts because I’m like, oh,
0:39:44 I just can’t like turn my brain on right now to get into that.
0:39:46 Imagine never feeling that feeling.
0:39:48 I think Jimmy, Mr. B said something.
0:39:53 He said something like, he was like, oh, no, I’m focused like every waking hour.
0:39:55 Or he made like, he was like, I don’t get distracted.
0:39:57 Like I don’t like browse.
0:39:58 Like he said something like that.
0:40:01 He was like, but when I do get in that mood, which is seldom,
0:40:05 I go all in for like 24, 48 hours and I just need like a two day recharge.
0:40:07 And then I’m back in and I don’t get distracted.
0:40:09 Now imagine being like an Elon and having to like,
0:40:13 you don’t have, do you have zone out mode?
0:40:15 Like most people do after seven o’clock at night.
0:40:16 You know what I mean?
0:40:19 I read this story about Bill Gates.
0:40:22 And it was the story about how Bill Gates was building Microsoft.
0:40:28 And people don’t know because Bill Gates is now a philanthropist slash like, you know,
0:40:29 he’s got grandpa energy.
0:40:30 He’s got grandpa energy.
0:40:30 Exactly.
0:40:31 He’s wearing his sweater.
0:40:34 He’s like, well, you know, I read books and I, you know,
0:40:36 I’ve got these nets to catch mosquitoes.
0:40:38 Like, you know, he just sounds like, you know, sort of harmless.
0:40:41 He was putting around Bill.
0:40:41 Yeah.
0:40:42 He’s putting around in the mornings.
0:40:46 He was ruthless when he was building Microsoft and he was insane energy.
0:40:49 If you don’t believe me, play the clip of him jumping over the chair.
0:40:51 All right, we’re back.
0:40:55 So on top of that, they were like, build you.
0:40:58 Somebody was like riding in a car with him to do an interview or something like that.
0:40:59 And they go, Bill, what happened?
0:41:02 And they look at his, in his car, like the tape deck was missing.
0:41:03 It was like pulled out.
0:41:04 Like it almost got stolen.
0:41:07 And they did get stolen.
0:41:08 And he said, no, I took it out.
0:41:09 They go, why don’t you take it out?
0:41:10 You don’t like to listen to music.
0:41:14 He goes, if I’m, you know, the radio, he goes, if I’m listening to the radio,
0:41:15 I’m not thinking about Microsoft.
0:41:16 So I just took it out.
0:41:17 I don’t want to listen to the radio.
0:41:18 I want to think about Microsoft.
0:41:20 It’s wild, right?
0:41:25 And that’s just a little tiny story, but there’s probably like some epic, epic stories.
0:41:26 And these are small things.
0:41:30 Like, for example, let’s say you get like an email saying like, you know,
0:41:33 this partnership that we thought about doing or the sale that we’re thinking about doing from you.
0:41:33 It’s not for us.
0:41:34 Thank you.
0:41:39 There’s people, and this is like kind of small, but like, it’s just an example of this behavior
0:41:42 who they’re like, they’ll just get on a plane and they’ll fly to that person’s office that
0:41:44 next morning and they’ll just make it work.
0:41:47 And you think about doing that with like your young kids.
0:41:48 You got a few kids that have one kid.
0:41:52 And I’m like, there’s not a chance that I’m getting on that plane.
0:41:55 Unless it’s like a pretty amazing thing.
0:42:03 But just to do these like daily, these daily, these daily items that show how intense you are,
0:42:06 it’s really challenging to imagine living that life.
0:42:08 And I think very few people can actually sustain it.
0:42:09 And I’m not one of them.
0:42:12 So back to your question of like, how does he do it?
0:42:13 This is a legitimate question.
0:42:14 How does he do it?
0:42:19 So one of the reasons my interest in Doge is top of mind right now is,
0:42:22 I just had my most viral tweet ever.
0:42:23 You did?
0:42:24 Yeah.
0:42:24 And it was me.
0:42:31 All I said was, I would pay stupid amounts of money for someone to follow around the Doge team
0:42:34 for the next six months, Hard Knock style.
0:42:37 Like if you’ve ever seen Hard Knocks, the show on HBO where they follow like an NFL team through
0:42:42 training camp, I would, and it’s true, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for that.
0:42:43 What was the reach on that?
0:42:47 I mean, the tweet got like 50,000 likes or something crazy.
0:42:48 Oh, that’s so funny.
0:42:49 I didn’t see that.
0:42:51 It has just like, it went like really viral for some reason.
0:42:53 A lot of people felt the same way.
0:42:55 Like there’s a fascination around this.
0:42:59 And part of it is, I would really want to see.
0:43:01 Like I want to know, I want to know what it’s like.
0:43:03 Like, I’ll give you two things.
0:43:09 So one, I want to know what Elon’s like, but not because I’m like, oh, Elon, he’s the best.
0:43:10 I just want to see.
0:43:11 I literally want to understand.
0:43:16 I’m like, so this guy’s running six billion companies at one logistically.
0:43:16 Yeah.
0:43:20 And then there’s shit like where he’s like, he’s also tweeting 10 times more than me.
0:43:23 So it’s not even like, oh, but he just doesn’t waste time on social media like you.
0:43:25 It’s like, no, actually waste more time on social media.
0:43:27 It’s like, yeah, but he doesn’t just waste time playing video games.
0:43:28 Like you, you asshole.
0:43:33 It’s like, dude, he’s bragging about being a top 100 rank Diablo player.
0:43:35 And it’s like, something’s cap.
0:43:37 The Diablo thing, I’m certain is cap.
0:43:39 Like I am certain that dude,
0:43:40 he’s paying people.
0:43:40 How old are you?
0:43:42 Can you, are you allowed to say that?
0:43:43 I thought it was pretty fluid.
0:43:44 Was that not?
0:43:48 It was actually so fluid that I was like, wait, I was like, what did you just say?
0:43:50 I said it in the mirror the other day and I was like, I think that works.
0:43:52 I think that’s, I think I can add that to my bag.
0:43:53 There’s another one.
0:44:00 I can’t believe, dude, you’re downplayed having audacity to do Trump.
0:44:04 To have the audacity to say cap is so fluidly.
0:44:05 Like that was really, are you going to say that?
0:44:06 I’ve been on the internet for way too long.
0:44:12 I thought you meant cap, like a cap to his energy, not cap, like no cap.
0:44:12 That was really good.
0:44:15 Dude, I’m going to start saying cap as in a limit.
0:44:18 That’s cap.
0:44:20 That’s the cap.
0:44:21 That’s the maximum cap.
0:44:24 I’ve reached my threshold is what I’m saying.
0:44:24 What are you saying?
0:44:26 I didn’t say I lied.
0:44:28 What did I say on MFM like earlier this year?
0:44:29 You’re like, let him, let him bake.
0:44:30 Let him bake.
0:44:32 You were like, rip it and I was like, let him bake.
0:44:33 I try to be cool.
0:44:36 They’re like, wait, is it bake or cook or microwave?
0:44:36 What is the phrase?
0:44:41 I, have you met anyone who’s worked with him?
0:44:42 I haven’t.
0:44:43 Yeah, I have actually.
0:44:46 Yeah, I talked to that one guy who recently he said,
0:44:52 he goes, I had a meet with Elon and his assistant gave me the heads up in advance.
0:44:56 And he goes, just so you know, Elon’s companies are making something like
0:45:01 $20 million per hour or something like that or $20 million per half hour.
0:45:03 So if you are going to have a conversation with him,
0:45:06 it better be a $20 million conversation.
0:45:11 And that $20 million number, by the way, that it’s more now.
0:45:13 It’s more now if you think of Doge.
0:45:16 So it’s just like every, can you imagine that?
0:45:18 Actually, that’s kind of an exhausting way to live because
0:45:23 do you ever hear when people say like, well, that’s just not worth my time.
0:45:25 And when I would think about that for a long time, I’m like,
0:45:29 does that mean I should always be doing something that is like of more value?
0:45:32 And I’m like, well, how much am I valuing just laying on this couch?
0:45:34 Or how much am I valuing just like mowing my grass
0:45:36 because I want to actually mow my grass?
0:45:38 And I thought that was kind of an exhausting way to look at life.
0:45:40 It totally is.
0:45:42 By the way, there’s a simple solution to that, which is
0:45:45 you only price things that you don’t want to do.
0:45:48 If you want to do it, you don’t put a price on it.
0:45:52 If you enjoy, if it’s therapeutic to you, or what’s it called?
0:45:53 Like whatever relaxing?
0:45:55 Like it feels good just doing nothing.
0:46:00 If it feels good to do the dishes or to like trim the bushes in your garden or whatever,
0:46:02 like go do it, you have at it.
0:46:05 You don’t need to be like, oh, this is an inefficient use of my time.
0:46:08 You only price the things you don’t want to do to say, you know what,
0:46:10 am I wasting my time on stuff I don’t even enjoy?
0:46:12 Well, when we had Rob Dierdrich on the pod,
0:46:15 he said that he places that number at $1 million per hour.
0:46:20 Yeah, dude, I watched a Cody Sanchez clip and like, I don’t mean to knock on Cody.
0:46:24 She’s always been nice to me, but she was on a panel.
0:46:29 And they go, she goes, I was talking to my mentor, Bill Perkins.
0:46:38 And he always tells me, you are as low as the lowest tasks you do.
0:46:43 And she was like, you know, I was dropping something.
0:46:45 I had to, I was pumping.
0:46:46 He goes, do you still pump your own gas?
0:46:49 And she goes, at first, I thought, how pretentious.
0:46:51 Of course, I still want to be a person who pumps my own gas.
0:46:54 And then he did the math for me about how much I’m wasting,
0:46:56 how much money I’m wasting pumping my own gas.
0:46:58 And he said, are you still buying this?
0:46:59 You should not be buying that.
0:47:01 You should not be going to the store to do that.
0:47:04 And I just thought like, and this video had like,
0:47:06 whatever, tens of thousands of likes.
0:47:10 And I think that’s a totally valid way to think.
0:47:10 She might be right.
0:47:11 That might be the right answer for her.
0:47:12 It’s not the right answer for me.
0:47:15 Dude, I went to Whole Foods last night at 9 p.m. just to walk around.
0:47:19 Totally, totally, totally.
0:47:22 I think there, I think underneath a lot of that, like,
0:47:24 oh, I want to be so efficient with every second of my day,
0:47:26 is just some underlying feeling of lack.
0:47:27 What do you think you lack in your life
0:47:30 that you have to optimize every minute of every hour of every day
0:47:32 and that you are like above doing certain things?
0:47:35 And by the way, also, when you stop doing things,
0:47:36 you lose touch with reality.
0:47:38 So there’s a price to that too.
0:47:40 And so I just think like, there’s a,
0:47:43 my takeaway was not even about Cody or her idea
0:47:45 that if it works for you, more power to you.
0:47:46 I just think, I just thought to myself,
0:47:49 you know what, you know how much bad advice is out there?
0:47:51 Like whether this was bad advice or other, like,
0:47:55 one of the great skills in life is just playing hopscotch
0:47:59 and not stepping on the like landmines
0:48:02 of terrible advice that exist on the internet.
0:48:05 Our podcast included, by the way, we say some dumb shit
0:48:06 and we say some things that don’t make sense.
0:48:08 They don’t make sense for you, maybe it makes sense for us
0:48:09 or maybe it just doesn’t make sense at all.
0:48:14 But there is a skill to how do you block out
0:48:18 the 98% of awful advice that sounds smart?
0:48:24 New York City founders, if you’ve listened to my first million before,
0:48:26 you know, I’ve got this company called Hampton
0:48:29 and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
0:48:32 A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast,
0:48:35 I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton.
0:48:37 We have this big community of 1000 plus people and it’s amazing.
0:48:40 But the main part is this eight person core group
0:48:42 that becomes your board of advisors for your life
0:48:44 and for your business and it’s life changing.
0:48:47 Now, to the folks in New York City,
0:48:51 I’m building a in real life core group in New York City.
0:48:53 And so if you meet one of the following criteria,
0:48:56 your business either does $3 million in revenue
0:48:58 or you’ve raised $3 million in funding
0:49:01 or you’ve started and sold the company for at least $10 million,
0:49:02 then you are eligible to apply.
0:49:05 So go to joinhampton.com and apply.
0:49:08 I’m going to be reviewing all of the applications myself.
0:49:10 So put that you heard about this on MFM,
0:49:12 so I know to give you a little extra love.
0:49:13 Now back to the show.
0:49:17 You want to hear something funny?
0:49:21 So I met this guy who’s a billionaire, a multi-billionaire.
0:49:23 He’s probably 65 and I talked to him
0:49:26 for like an hour online for something.
0:49:28 And at the end of the call, for some reason,
0:49:30 he started talking about his family and his kids
0:49:35 and how he has like, I forget, five kids
0:49:36 and they’re each married with children.
0:49:38 And he’s like, “Oh, I’m always around the grandkids.
0:49:39 I just love this.”
0:49:41 And he was explaining his life philosophy.
0:49:44 And at the end of the call, I go, “Hey, we don’t know each other.
0:49:45 We only know each other for this hour.
0:49:49 But do you think I could come over me and my wife
0:49:51 and stay with you and your family?
0:49:54 And I can just watch how you interact with your family
0:49:57 because you seem really happy, man, and you’re successful.
0:49:58 You’ve won.”
0:49:59 And he goes, “I would love that.”
0:50:03 And so tomorrow at 7 a.m., I am flying to Park City
0:50:06 to go to this guy’s house for three days.
0:50:07 And he was like, “My whole family’s gonna be there
0:50:08 for this weekend.”
0:50:10 And I was like, “Great.
0:50:11 Can I come and just hang out with you guys
0:50:13 and be part of the family for a weekend
0:50:15 just to see how you’re interacting with everyone
0:50:16 because you are awesome.”
0:50:18 And he was like, “Yeah, I would love that.”
0:50:20 So I’m going to his house tomorrow till Sunday
0:50:23 just to learn how to be…
0:50:25 When I met him, I was like, “You are just such a warm person
0:50:27 and you’re rich and successful,
0:50:29 which is one attribute that’s amazing.
0:50:30 You seem happy.
0:50:31 You seem fit.
0:50:34 You have a lovely family and they seem like they love you.
0:50:36 I gotta download what you’re doing
0:50:37 because you are amazing.”
0:50:38 And so he’s letting me come over.
0:50:39 Dude, that’s great.
0:50:41 I’ve always enjoyed doing that.
0:50:42 I have a word for it.
0:50:43 Can I throw some jargon at you?
0:50:45 Stalking? Is that it?
0:50:49 The word for it is in situ.
0:50:50 So like…
0:50:51 What’s that?
0:50:53 Wait, this is made up word?
0:50:54 I’m a biology major.
0:50:56 So at one point I did a biotech company
0:50:58 and one of the things you learn when you do
0:51:02 any biotech company is there’s a huge difference
0:51:04 between the lab environment,
0:51:08 which is a sterile controlled environment.
0:51:09 And you see this data come out and it says,
0:51:11 “Wow, this thing really works.
0:51:12 We produced this many milliliters of this
0:51:15 or this many grams of this substance or whatever, right?
0:51:17 This much energy, this many kilowatts generator,
0:51:19 whatever the thing you’re doing in lab.”
0:51:22 And then you’re like, “Oh my God, this is amazing.
0:51:23 We’re about to change the world.”
0:51:26 And I was trying to high five and nobody else was excited.
0:51:26 I was like, “Why aren’t you guys excited?”
0:51:28 They’re like, “Well, it’s the lab.”
0:51:30 I’m like, “Oh, does the lab mess up?”
0:51:31 They go, “No, the lab’s great.”
0:51:32 So what do you mean?
0:51:33 What’s the problem?
0:51:34 Lab? It’s a test.
0:51:35 It’s a scientific test.
0:51:37 How much more proof do you want?
0:51:39 They go, “Oh, everything changes in situ.”
0:51:41 In what?
0:51:43 And in situ basically was like,
0:51:46 you take the thing, in our case,
0:51:48 we are working on these microbes.
0:51:51 We have this company where microbes would eat coal
0:51:52 and basically fart out natural gas.
0:51:56 So you could get natural gas without burning coal.
0:51:56 Kind of amazing.
0:51:59 Natural microbes, real microbes that just exist on the planet, right?
0:52:03 And so they were working amazing in the lab.
0:52:04 They were producing so much natural gas.
0:52:05 It was amazing.
0:52:08 We’re about to change the energy industry.
0:52:11 What’s that word in situ in a situation?
0:52:14 Yeah, I don’t know exactly what the technical definition is,
0:52:16 but it’s kind of like in the situation or in ground.
0:52:18 And so what we did was you take the bugs,
0:52:20 then you have to actually go to the field
0:52:24 where the coal is bearing 200 meters underground or whatever,
0:52:25 and you’re going to pump the microbes in.
0:52:27 And you got to pump them in with some water
0:52:29 and you got to like see what happens.
0:52:30 And then there’s cracks in the ground.
0:52:31 It’s not perfect.
0:52:33 And then the blah, blah, blah, the weather, everything.
0:52:34 Everything is different.
0:52:35 The temperature is different.
0:52:38 The other microbes that are there interfere, right?
0:52:38 Et cetera.
0:52:42 And always the in situ was, you know, not only worse,
0:52:43 but like just dramatically different.
0:52:45 To the point where it’s like, why are we even doing these lab tests?
0:52:47 And they’re like, well, look, if it fails in the lab,
0:52:49 it’s for sure going to fail in situ.
0:52:49 Right.
0:52:51 But just because it succeeds in the lab
0:52:52 doesn’t mean it works in situ.
0:52:54 And so there’s a really long-winded way of saying,
0:52:56 I have this little word I tell myself,
0:52:58 which is like go in situ.
0:53:00 So for example, it’s like, you might have a theory,
0:53:01 but go test it.
0:53:03 You might have an idea, go test it.
0:53:05 You might think your Donald Trump impression is good.
0:53:07 You got to say that shit on the mic and see what happens.
0:53:10 Another version of it is this person might look
0:53:11 like they’ve got it all together.
0:53:12 They’re happy.
0:53:13 They’re successful.
0:53:15 God, they’re saying all the right things on this podcast.
0:53:17 Go in situ.
0:53:18 Go to their house.
0:53:20 And you’ll know within like 15 minutes.
0:53:22 You said three days, three days massive overkill.
0:53:25 You’ll know within like 90 minutes for sure,
0:53:27 everything you need to know about this guy.
0:53:29 And you’ll pick up all these nuances
0:53:31 just about like the family dynamics and the house
0:53:35 and their schedule, their level of overall like busyness
0:53:36 and rushing through their day versus like, wow,
0:53:39 this person really seems at peace or like, you know what?
0:53:42 They just seem like their baseline mood is really high
0:53:46 or how their kids relate to them shows me
0:53:48 that they have a great bond, an underlying bond
0:53:50 versus what they say.
0:53:51 And so you pick up so much.
0:53:54 And this is why people are like, oh, what happened to,
0:53:56 you and Sam aren’t doing this interview together.
0:53:57 And it’s like, yeah,
0:53:59 ’cause I actually wanted to go to that dude’s house
0:54:02 and he lives near me or he lived where I was traveling
0:54:03 and Sam was traveling somewhere else at the time
0:54:04 or whatever.
0:54:07 But I pick up so much more, not from the interview,
0:54:10 but the like hours we spend before the interview
0:54:12 just hanging out at their house.
0:54:14 I pick up so much more in terms of lifestyle.
0:54:15 And I’ve talked about this before, but like we went to Austin.
0:54:18 Who’s one person who you, sorry, well, go ahead.
0:54:19 I’ll give you the example.
0:54:22 So we go to Austin and we had four interviews scheduled.
0:54:24 It was Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire
0:54:26 who started more billion dollar companies
0:54:27 than anyone else in America.
0:54:31 And like a hard-hitting, get-after-alpha type of dude.
0:54:32 Exactly.
0:54:35 I go to, and so there was him, there was Monish Pabrai,
0:54:36 an investor.
0:54:38 So he was a value investor from the school
0:54:40 of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
0:54:42 There’s Tim Ferriss.
0:54:44 Tim Ferriss, a guy I’ve admired for many years,
0:54:47 author, experimenter, investor, et cetera.
0:54:50 And then the fourth one was somebody else.
0:54:52 I’m forgetting, this was like a year ago.
0:54:54 So we go and we do the four.
0:54:56 Now for each of the four, I hung out with them.
0:54:58 Tim, Les, but the others like Joe Lonsdale,
0:54:59 I went to his house at eight in the morning.
0:55:01 I did a morning workout with him.
0:55:02 We had breakfast together.
0:55:03 We did a cold plunge together.
0:55:04 We talked and then we did the podcast.
0:55:08 I saw his family, met his wife, et cetera.
0:55:10 Toured his house, where does he work?
0:55:11 Where does he play?
0:55:12 He’s got this land center,
0:55:14 like literally like a gaming land center.
0:55:16 For him and his cousins to just come play video games,
0:55:17 like six computers lined up next to him.
0:55:18 Oh, L.A.N.
0:55:19 Okay.
0:55:21 He’s got like a basketball court.
0:55:24 He’s got old artillery gun at the top of his thing.
0:55:26 When we were leaving,
0:55:28 10 senators were coming over for lunch
0:55:30 and Elon Musk showed up while we were leaving the house.
0:55:32 It’s like, whoa, okay, that’s what your day looks like.
0:55:33 Got it.
0:55:34 You know, he had like a, it was amazing.
0:55:35 He was so hospitable, by the way.
0:55:37 He’s got like, he was so nice and generous with his time.
0:55:39 Did he had Monash Parai?
0:55:39 I go over to his house.
0:55:40 He’s like, yeah, come over whenever.
0:55:41 My day is clear.
0:55:43 I go to his house.
0:55:45 He doesn’t have a staff that answers that.
0:55:45 He opens the door.
0:55:46 Was it barefooted?
0:55:48 He’s wearing basketball shorts and his barefoot.
0:55:51 He’s like, yeah, what do you want to, let’s just sit.
0:55:51 Let’s have some tea.
0:55:52 You want tea?
0:55:53 And we have tea.
0:55:55 He’s got no clock, no assistant telling him
0:55:56 you got to move the next thing.
0:55:58 He shows me his nap room.
0:55:58 He’s like, well, I nap every day.
0:55:59 It’s great.
0:56:00 Napping is great.
0:56:02 My whole job is thinking.
0:56:03 You know, I have to make great decisions.
0:56:04 So, napping keeps me fresh.
0:56:05 It’s like having a second day.
0:56:07 So, you know, I was like, whoa.
0:56:09 And then he’s got all these books in his library,
0:56:10 but it was also kind of alone.
0:56:11 I was like, you don’t have a team?
0:56:13 He’s like, no, like investors make their decisions,
0:56:14 not as a committee.
0:56:16 Investors make their decisions, you know,
0:56:17 as an independent thinker.
0:56:18 And so, no, I don’t have a huge team.
0:56:19 I got like a researcher or two,
0:56:22 but like, you know, they don’t come over every day.
0:56:24 So, he has how many billions in his fund?
0:56:26 Two, I think, something like that.
0:56:29 And it was really just him and a researcher?
0:56:30 He was the only guy there.
0:56:32 He didn’t have like a…
0:56:35 But like, ish of five person staff, generously?
0:56:36 Generously, yeah.
0:56:38 Okay, I feel like I could be wrong, right?
0:56:40 Like, yeah, don’t quote me on these.
0:56:40 But that’s what it…
0:56:41 But small.
0:56:42 I’m 90% sure.
0:56:45 Tim Ferriss, I was like, you know, he shows up
0:56:47 and I was like, so like, what’s it been up to?
0:56:49 And he was like, oh, I just came back from Europe.
0:56:52 I was like, oh, cool, like vacation ski.
0:56:52 What are you doing?
0:56:55 He goes, no, I spent three days with the guy
0:56:57 who’s the best in the world at making board games.
0:56:58 And I wanted to understand.
0:56:59 I wanted to learn about board games.
0:57:03 So you pick up like lifestyle flexibility,
0:57:06 ability to indulge in your hobbies.
0:57:08 How lonely are you?
0:57:08 You know, do you have a team?
0:57:09 Are you doing…
0:57:10 You know, somebody tweeted this out there the other day,
0:57:13 they go, the thing that socialists or Karl Marx got wrong
0:57:15 was how much fun it is to make money with your boys.
0:57:18 I was like, I feel that dude, like me, Ben, Diego.
0:57:20 It’s so much fun to just do what we do.
0:57:23 It would be way less fun if it was just me doing it.
0:57:27 Even if I had owned 100%, I got more equity and all that.
0:57:28 I would never take that trade.
0:57:30 Dude, I completely agree, by the way.
0:57:31 That’s why I have co-founders.
0:57:33 And I moved Diego out here.
0:57:34 I was like, dude, I’ll pay you more, just move out here.
0:57:35 Move within 10 minutes of me.
0:57:37 And now we hang out every day.
0:57:38 And I’m like, my life just got better, right?
0:57:39 Like little things.
0:57:42 And so, you know, my kids interrupt me in the middle of the day.
0:57:43 I have a piano right next to my desk
0:57:45 because in between working, I’ll just play piano.
0:57:46 It’s for fun, right?
0:57:48 Like if somebody was here in situ with me,
0:57:50 they would say that I don’t have a perfect life,
0:57:52 but I’ve built a life that I love
0:57:53 and they will know for themselves
0:57:55 if that’s kind of what they want.
0:57:57 And so I think this is massively underrated
0:57:59 is a very long-winded way of saying,
0:58:00 I think more people should do this.
0:58:01 I think you pick up way more
0:58:03 when you go to somebody’s house and see their,
0:58:05 you know, just kind of hang with them for a day
0:58:06 or even a couple hours.
0:58:10 Well, I think we need like a tobacco pipe or something.
0:58:14 Today is like a philosopher hour on our rocking chairs,
0:58:18 just like riffing on what makes a good life and what doesn’t.
0:58:19 Yeah, we started at limestones.
0:58:22 We should go, by the way, check them out.
0:58:23 It sounds sick.
0:58:25 Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:58:28 I would love to go see it.
0:58:29 I think it’d be pretty boring,
0:58:31 but it would be mind-blowing at the same time.
0:58:32 You know what I mean?
0:58:33 I think it would be…
0:58:34 Nothing would be thrilling,
0:58:35 but the whole thing would be mind-blowing
0:58:36 that that’s what it is.
0:58:37 So that’s what it is.
0:58:39 We almost need to do like MFM field trips
0:58:42 because the timing was horrible
0:58:44 when you were doing the Monish Pabrai one
0:58:46 because I was moving that day.
0:58:48 And we couldn’t make it work
0:58:50 because I had like a six-month old
0:58:52 and it was like a huge whatever.
0:58:54 But I am so envious.
0:58:55 I’m like, “Fuck.”
0:58:56 I just wanted to like see…
0:58:58 I just wanted to like get a feel…
0:58:59 I wanted to do a field trip.
0:59:01 I was just sitting in his living room
0:59:02 and watching him interact.
0:59:03 Totally.
0:59:05 That’s like, I get so much joy doing that exact same thing.
0:59:06 You know what I would want to do?
0:59:10 So there’s like your boy Brett who’s doing robotics.
0:59:12 I want to go see that shit.
0:59:15 I want to go see the humanoid robots and the factory
0:59:16 and just be inspired by that.
0:59:19 There’s another one that I think would be really cool.
0:59:21 Have you ever been to a Cisco Foods?
0:59:26 Like Cisco is the company that like makes the food
0:59:27 that goes to all the restaurants.
0:59:28 Like they make sauces and shit.
0:59:29 Yeah, what?
0:59:30 No, I’ve not been…
0:59:30 What is that?
0:59:31 It’s…
0:59:33 I went once because we had a restaurant
0:59:39 and it’s the most wild, like huge scale operation.
0:59:39 You don’t realize it.
0:59:41 You’re like, “Oh, I guess…
0:59:43 Yeah, the company that supplies all of the materials
0:59:46 to all of the restaurants and grocery stores,
0:59:48 I guess they got to be pretty big, right?
0:59:50 The bigger than anything you’ve ever seen.”
0:59:52 And it was like a tour of that facility.
0:59:54 And then you see the automation.
0:59:57 Like there’s these little like hockey pucks.
0:59:59 You know those like scooters or like the little butt scooters
1:00:00 where you just like sit down on this thing,
1:00:02 like an old PE thing where you sit down
1:00:04 on this little four wheel flat thing and it rolls around.
1:00:07 That’s like little robots like that,
1:00:10 that fly around this warehouse picking up pallets
1:00:11 and moving them places.
1:00:14 And so it’s this incredibly sophisticated operation
1:00:15 to move like cans of tuna.
1:00:18 I’m looking at their factors.
1:00:20 It looks so large that you could see the earth curve.
1:00:23 It’s huge.
1:00:26 Another one would be like, probably not allowed,
1:00:28 but like Andrew or like one of these companies
1:00:30 is just making like lasers and like war machines.
1:00:33 Also just like the crypto house
1:00:36 and just go see all these like degenerate 19 year olds.
1:00:37 That’s actually a good idea.
1:00:38 It’s like you don’t know it until you see it,
1:00:39 until you feel it, right?
1:00:41 Like it just leaves an imprint on you in a different way.
1:00:44 Going to hacker houses in San Francisco was amazing
1:00:45 and seemed like their kitchen.
1:00:47 And I’m like, “Who cooks what?
1:00:48 How do you guys know?”
1:00:51 You’ve seen the Barstool like one bite pizza reviews.
1:00:54 We just do the one sniff hacker house reviews, the odor.
1:00:57 And they’re all in San Francisco.
1:00:58 They’re all in like these warehouses.
1:01:00 So they all got Walmart feet.
1:01:01 So everyone’s walking around barefooted
1:01:03 with like dirty ass bottom of their feet.
1:01:04 It’s like disgusting.
1:01:05 And I had so much fun doing it.
1:01:07 I remember, I felt that same way walking around Facebook.
1:01:09 Have you watched around Facebook’s campus?
1:01:11 Yeah, Facebook’s one of those.
1:01:12 I remember walking around like,
1:01:14 “Why does a webpage need so many employees?
1:01:16 What are all these fucking people doing?”
1:01:19 Like there’s so many people walking around.
1:01:20 And you’re like, “I can’t…”
1:01:22 Like I would make fun of Facebook constantly
1:01:24 because I thought it was a soulless job.
1:01:26 But you walk around and you’re like,
1:01:28 “Oh my God, this is like a beehive.”
1:01:29 You know what we should do?
1:01:31 Do you remember TechCrunch Cribs?
1:01:32 Did you ever see this show?
1:01:33 Yeah, it was awesome.
1:01:34 It was awesome.
1:01:36 And they discontinued it just like the discontinued Cribs.
1:01:38 But I think that needs to come back.
1:01:40 And okay, realistically, we’re like,
1:01:41 “We should do this.”
1:01:44 And then both of us are going to like look at our kids
1:01:46 and then like just not travel.
1:01:48 Sorry, I’m going to go to a Cisco factory.
1:01:49 Yeah, I really want to go see the…
1:01:51 I want to go learn how hot fries are made.
1:01:52 Yeah, exactly.
1:01:54 So, realistically, let’s be honest,
1:01:56 absolutely not going to do this idea.
1:01:58 But we need a field correspondent.
1:02:00 Every great show’s got a field correspondent, right?
1:02:02 That’s actually kind of funny.
1:02:04 I’m going to throw down the gauntlet right now.
1:02:05 100K a year.
1:02:08 Be the MFM field trip correspondent.
1:02:11 We’re going to send you to different awesome places.
1:02:14 You got to film it like the old TechCrunch Cribs
1:02:15 or MTV Cribs episodes.
1:02:18 And you just got to go to like funny, epic places,
1:02:22 interesting companies where they got a crazy office life,
1:02:24 crazy factories and shit like this.
1:02:25 And that could be your job.
1:02:27 Travel around, film content.
1:02:28 We’ll put them up on MFM as episodes.
1:02:29 I want to see these…
1:02:31 Dude, these AI…
1:02:32 We got to talk about this next week,
1:02:35 but these AI companies that have like 20 employees,
1:02:37 about 100 million in revenue,
1:02:38 I just want to see what they’re doing all day.
1:02:40 Absolutely.
1:02:41 Absolutely.
1:02:44 To audition, email me, Sean@SeanPirou.com,
1:02:46 and just email a audition tape.
1:02:49 So do an episode of any business near you.
1:02:51 Go to your coffee shop and just film it,
1:02:54 just so that we can get a sense of how you are on camera.
1:02:55 That’s the best.
1:02:56 Nice pod.
1:02:58 I actually enjoy these.
1:02:58 Nice pod.
1:02:59 You never sent that to me.
1:03:00 That was very nice. Thank you.
1:03:03 I enjoy these because I just enjoy hanging out.
1:03:04 Those are my favorite podcasts.
1:03:06 All right. That’s it.
1:03:07 Great pod.
1:03:08 Wonderful pod.
1:03:09 See you out there.
1:03:11 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:03:13 I know I could be what I want to.
1:03:17 I put my all in it like no days off on the road.
1:03:19 Let’s travel, never looking back.
1:03:26 Hey, Sean here.
1:03:27 A quick break to tell you an Ev Williams story.
1:03:29 So he started Twitter,
1:03:31 and before that, he sold a company to Google for $100 million.
1:03:33 And somebody asked him, they said, “Ev, what’s the secret, man?
1:03:36 How do you create these huge businesses,
1:03:37 billion-dollar businesses?”
1:03:38 And he says, “Well, I think the answer is
1:03:40 that you take a human desire,
1:03:42 preferably one that’s been around for thousands of years,
1:03:46 and then you just use modern technology to take out steps.
1:03:48 Just remove the friction that exists
1:03:50 between people getting what they want.
1:03:52 And that is what my partner Mercury does.
1:03:54 They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has,
1:03:55 managing your money,
1:03:57 and being able to do your financial operations.
1:04:00 So they’ve removed all the friction that has existed for decades.
1:04:01 No more clunky interfaces.
1:04:04 No more 10 tabs to get something done.
1:04:05 No more having to drive to a bank,
1:04:07 get out of your car just to send a wire transfer.
1:04:09 They made it fast. They made it easy.
1:04:11 You can actually just get back to running your business.
1:04:12 You don’t have to worry about the rest of it.
1:04:16 I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now.
1:04:18 And it’s used by also 200,000 other ambitious founders.
1:04:20 So if you want to be like me,
1:04:23 head to mercury.com, open them to account in minutes.
1:04:25 And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company,
1:04:28 not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group
1:04:31 and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.
1:04:33 All right, back to the episode.