00:06
Okay. First thing, super quick. So have you guys heard of this Twitter account. It's called New York Times first said. You heard of it? No.
00:16
Okay. So
00:17
it's kind of just like this fun little Twitter account where
00:20
they track all of the articles being published by the New York Times, and then they find words that are published for first time. And it's just kind of like a fun thing because I'll send you guys this
00:31
or I'll post it in the doc. This is a link to a couple of the ones, that they published. So like dead ass, for example, was a word, like first found in the New York Times March twenty nineteen, doom scrolling, May twenty twenty,
00:45
tech bro. Apparently, it was January twenty twenty two. Like, that surprises me. So this is just kind of like a fun thing, but I was thinking that this should exist for jobs. So on Indeed or Glassdoor or something,
00:59
there's a really, really quick transition period these days between just completely new jobs coming to market.
01:05
And I think there should be an account that tracks these. Like, oh, this is the first time I've seen, like, I don't know where I saw this, but there's, like, professional falconer, like, what? Who does that? How much do they get paid? I don't know, but I'm surprised to know it exists, and I'm sure there's many more practical jobs out there that are coming to market that people should know about. And so someone should just create the equivalent of this instead of the New York Times, it should be for indeed. How do they do this? It's great. Yeah. Attack this how do they track every word and check if it's ever been said before?
01:33
I think it's just a scraper. I mean, I don't know exactly how they set it up, but think it would actually be that way. This has two hundred thousand followers. So for that person out there who's just been grinding, trying to put out great content. It has, like, three thousand followers. Just know, you could have been tweeting out, like, single word things from the New York Times and gotten two hundred thousand followers.
01:51
I actually think that's a great idea. Have you guys seen remember how we talked about this kid that was tracking Elon Musk's private jet on Twitter?
02:00
Now he's tracked talking all the private jets and private yachts of all the Russian oligarchs. Yes. Great pivot. And
02:06
Shout out.
02:10
Also, Elon offered him five thousand dollars and he turned it down. He's like, no, I'm gonna keep doing my thing, but both of his accounts have a lot of followers. Y'all from five grand for what? Elon Jet. Stop tracking him? Yeah. To stop. Yeah. Because Yon was like, I don't want people to know where I am. What a stupid thing. If you're gonna if you're gonna come and offer someone money,
02:27
Do it right. Five thousand dollars. You best not miss you, love it. That's how you should've replied. Five grand.
02:37
I think this is cool stuff. I actually think this is a wonderful idea.
02:40
I also think that companies would pay for this, right, as in, like,
02:45
companies that have competitors want to know what their competitors are doing. And so, like, we're launching something at HubSpot soon, and I've already gotten in an email from someone who works at Techron choose like, hey, saw this on your site or, like, they basically dug something up that we published.
02:59
And they're like, what's going on here? And imagine you're at the same thing where you're oh, I saw like Salesforce is, you know, hiring for these roles, or I didn't know that was a role at Netflix. I think companies would pay for that intel. That's actually a crazy fascinating. If you could aggregate,
03:13
like, let's say that you're in the when when I was at the hustle, I cared about what, like, There's like thirty companies that I cared about what they were doing. It would be kind of interesting to act if I would have paid a monthly fee and I would have gotten a daily email with like the movement and people's job
03:28
job listings. Yeah. That's that's what I was gonna say. I don't think it's so interesting. Like, the the falconer or whatever as I go, whatever someone made up a random job, but
03:36
Oh, like, oh, we see this a lot where it's like, oh, Netflix is hiring a web three engineer. That means they're probably trying to explore something in that space and so you can kinda get a sense of direction somebody's going? Oh, they're hiring enterprise sales. Okay. They're trying to go up market. Right? So there's a competitive intelligence that comes from these. But I think that I do think that exists. I've seen people tracking these. I don't know if they're just doing it for their own fun or if there's, like, a service that tracks that. But it is kinda interesting. I like that. Alright. What else you got, Steph? By the way, I should say one more thing.
04:05
I love what I think about this. A hilarious story. I went into work one day, and my buddy Neil, who's like a programmer at our company, He was sitting at the coffee machine, making a coffee. It was, like, ten AM.
04:15
And, I hadn't even said anything to him yet. We were just standing next to each other, and he just goes,
04:20
These are my first words. And I go, what? I guess he's like, he did he realized he hadn't spoke that day yet. Like, he'd, like, got it to work and gone to the coffee machine, And, like, he had started programming, like, his commute. He didn't talk to anybody. He was at his desk. He didn't talk he just started, but these are my first words.
04:38
And I thought that shit was so funny.
04:41
And, it actually is is great. When he said that, I realized how funny Neil is. And so we've replaced our marketing person with Neil. He's our iPhone iPhone programmer, and he wrote all of the release notes for our apps because he was just hilarious. And he was, like, low key hilarious, but these are my first words. I'll I'll never forget that.
04:58
How does that relate relate to it? Because it's like a word tracker. You know, first time the New York's time set this word. Oh. So that's how I love that.
05:06
First time, Neil. It's just like yeah. It's interesting. Think about what are your first words every day?
05:12
Right. Like, what what's good match about for the first time? Every day.
05:17
I touch it. Mine's usually like like a grump. It's like a, fuck when I say enough. You know what I mean?
05:24
To everyone. Stop.
05:27
I always
05:28
say sup. Yep. Or I just, like, am sore from exercise or something. And I'm, and I'm, like,
05:34
It's usually my first word.
05:36
Well, that explains a lot.
05:40
Alright. And then I forgot to tell you this, but this is the most important thing. I can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier, to be honest with you. Because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now, and you haven't gone and subscribed to the my first million cast wherever you get your podcasts,
05:54
then that's the thing you've gotta do. There's nothing more important than doing that right now. And don't do it because I said to
06:00
Do it because you wanna do it, but do it because that's who you are.
06:04
Alright. What else are you gonna start?
06:07
I guess related to companies hiring. So you guys are no mischief. Right? It's this like company that does these crazy stunts. They're on, I think, stunt number seventy, and I
06:18
their latest stunt I thought was really interesting and relate to this idea of just like creative
06:23
hiring. So if you scroll down Tell me about what mischief is. I don't entirely get it because they raised funding, but when you what they are. I'm like, who? What grown adult would trust this child of the party? It's like Southbarger Saturday Live. It's a weekly show.
06:38
It's like a weekly sketch.
06:40
But it's just done through code. They make a website instead of like a video making a joke. They make a website that's a joke. Yeah. But is it Exactly. Does it make money?
06:49
I think it does. I don't know how much they've made. They've raised three and a half million dollars. So I don't know, like you're saying, I don't know who those investors are, what they're looking from mischief, but just to give, like, two examples. So one of them recently was, I think it's, like, called
07:04
Tunteen. I don't know why it's called that, but basically, it's called
07:08
the game of death online, which you sign up, you get an account, and you pay ten dollars to join the game. And all you have to do is log in daily to stay alive. And the last person who stays alive gets all the money. So it's just kind of like these silly quirky games, but the last one they did was they also do like commentary through their game. So it was a commentary on,
07:30
in this case, the Msat. So they got people to pay fifty dollars.
07:34
To take the msot and the highest score when it's basically like a a their version of the SATs.
07:41
And the person who got the highest score won the entire pot. So they didn't actually have that many people did it. They had five hundred people who did it, but it reminded me of something you guys talk about on the pod or have talked about on the pod, which is, you know, the power of, like, crowd sourcing
07:56
things, like SpaceX. If they want to develop some new technology, they put out some competition,
08:02
and that tends to attract more interesting people than, you know, if they hire a bunch of recruiters to go, you know, find the people in theory they're looking for. And the example the example I think you're thinking about is they were trying to figure out some, like, were they trying to, like, decode some protein or something that helped with this aids,
08:21
medication, and they, like, turned it into a video game, and they'd spent ten years trying to solve it, and then, like, a bunch of video gamers got it done in, like, three weeks.
08:29
Yeah.
08:30
Well, there's the SpaceX. What's what's the SpaceX challenge? The one that everyone knows.
08:34
Are you talking about Xprize? It's just like their That's not from space. Yeah. But there's also Yeah. That's like a a version of that where they basically just put out the bounty and then let people let anybody sort of enter to try to win.
08:46
Okay. There's a I feel like there's another one that SpaceX does. But in any case, like, what I'm getting at is
08:53
all of I mean, we work for HubSpot. There's all these companies that trying to attract, like, quote unquote, top talent, and they're doing it in a way that in most cases, like, true top talent, like, are you gonna want to be, like, DM done LinkedIn and go through like a traditional in interview process. Like, in most cases, no. And so my question is, why isn't there like a really,
09:15
like, mischief style
09:17
recruiting agency that puts out these challenges
09:20
that the smartest people on the internet are, like, stoked to solve
09:24
just out of the sheer pride that,
09:27
they then can funnel potentially into these companies. Maybe it's the case that these people just like would never wanna work for these larger companies, but I just wonder why there isn't a more creative route to I have something. Recruiting. I have something for you. So this is one of the very first articles the hustle ever wrote. I don't even know if you can Google it anymore. It was literally like we wrote it like two weeks after starting. And it was about my friend named Max. And if you go, Google, Ben, the hustle, Google interview.
09:53
Or the hustle secret Google interview. So my friend Max was teaching himself some I I I gotta remember all the details. This was, like, six years ago. He he was,
10:02
learning some type of coding, some type of language. It was, and it was like a rare language.
10:07
And he was typing in all these things on Google, like, what does blank mean? How do you do blank? And after a while, his his Chrome browser, like, went, like, looked like the matrix, and it said, you look like you might belong to one of us. And it and it says, we've noticed that you've been googling a lot about this type of language, and we are hiring for that. Would you be interested in applying here? That's amazing. And very few people ever saw this, but we wrote an article about this. This article got seen by millions of people. What's it say, Ben? What was the language?
10:37
Google has a secret interview process, and it landed me a job. That's the headline. And and he ended up working there, and it worked. It worked.
10:45
And, it was wild. That's dope. And, you know, only Google could do that because they own the browser and the search engine, but, but what if you were just, like, what if there was just like an app that just sat on your computer
10:55
that basically distracted everything you did, I know. Sounds great. But, like, gave you job opportunities based on what do on your computer. Right? Like, if it knows that Steph is in all these different, like, subreddits and it's, like, and she's, like, looking at Google trends and all this stuff, that's like a signal for what type of person you are. Right? Like, it's actually, like, a much higher quality signal in theory
11:16
than any job interview you could do where you're just trying to, like, present yourself a certain way versus what what you actually do on the internet. Right? Like, oh, you spend a lot of time in Excel or what you what you actually do on your computer. It's like, you spend a lot of time in Excel, you know, so
11:30
we've seen we've seen what your capabilities are. Okay. If you're doing macros in Excel, you could probably qualify for certain types of jobs. And so I wonder if there's, like, a thing you could do, like, for college students. It's like, hey, put this on your computer. And, like, do you want your first job out of college? Like, we'll help figure out what that job should be. We'll help get you, like, a job opportunity,
11:49
just by putting this, like, tracker on your computer.
11:53
Quick interruption, do me a favor.
11:55
Scroll down, and you're gonna see a link to the hustle. So if you wanna stay up to date on the tech and business news you need to know, check out the hustle. It's a daily email, I used to help write it. I love it. So check it out. Scroll down below.
12:07
Sounds very naughty. Yeah. I mean, the yeah. I mean, I know. It's always like a old track everything on your computer thing. But the reason I thought of this is because I watched the QAnon documentary and in it, they have have you guys heard of like Cicada three three zero one? No. No. No. It it's they covered it in the documentary, but basically
12:25
it was like the epitome of these like crazy online puzzles. I think there's been three of them. The first two were solved. The third one still has not been solved. And they are like, you know, there's there's like a picture online and there's like a message and encrypted in that message. There's bunch of numbers, and then you have to know to, like, go to another website and put it in. The point is
12:43
a lot of people thought that this was actually a recruitment tool for, like, either the NSA or the CIA. And so I was like, man, there should be something maybe not that crazy, but something like that online for a company. Did you guys ever do one of those? I did in college, we found this website.
12:59
And it was like, you know, it said some, like, vague thing. It was like, the game has only begun.
13:03
Have you realized it? Like, have you realized that it's begun yet? And it's like, you have to, like, right click view source. And then in the source code, there's a URL. You go to that URL. And then it downloads an audio file. You listen to the audio file. It sounds like nothing. You listen to it backwards. All of a sudden, it gives you coordinates. You go to those coordinates on a map. The map deletion, and it was like a fifty part game, like, mister game, and me and all my friends got totally obsessed with this. We spent, like, hours and hours and hours. I was just calls. I don't remember what the name this is back in college. This was, like, fifteen years ago, but, like,
13:34
the,
13:35
I remember at the end, the the last puzzle,
13:39
we could never solve. And I think the guy just made an unsolvable puzzle. Like, I just think there was no solution.
13:44
And his name was mister Wiggles or mister squiggles or some shit like that. And he,
13:50
he had this puzzle that was, like, the unsolvable thing at the end. But it was so much fun. And, actually, now that I think about it, that is actually a great, like, filter and barometer for who might be good at certain types of types of work. Like, time person that would do that for fun and solve that problem, I would love to hire that person. Right? Because I know what that took. Could you
14:10
Could you be, like, there's this, like, if you're that game maker, mister Wiggles, or whatever, like, could you, like, do that as a service for a variety of companies?
14:19
And, like, make these games, like, hey, we're gonna try and find you, but I bet it's like, hey, I bet we're gonna do this thing, this and this thing, and I bet you we're gonna get you twenty new applicants every month.
14:29
To be silly games, but they're gonna be high high quality.
14:32
Steph, what's what's newly?
14:36
So Newley, have either of you guys heard of Newley, n u u l y. I think what this is is just a quick one, but basically, so it's this company that is part of the urban outfitters
14:47
subsidiary. So urban owns urban outfitters, anthropology, free people, and newly. And newly is a different take. So all those other businesses
14:56
sell clothes in a very traditional way. What newly is is a rental business. So every month, they send you six items. You choose those six items
15:05
on your own. They send them to you. You get to rent them for a month. And then at the end of the month, you have the option to keep them at honestly a pretty discounted rate somewhere between, like, fifteen to sometimes up to sixty percent. And they've a ton of brands in there including their own brands, And the reason I thought this was interesting is,
15:22
you know, there's other rental clothing services out there. But this is tacked on to existing businesses that weren't renting clothes. And it spoke to me because it
15:32
was kind of similar to what Amazon's done turning a cost center into something that maybe in this case isn't a profit center, but is
15:39
way more profitable, I think, than the traditional clothing business that they have. So if you guys remember, I think, was it Mark Law or,
15:47
one of your guests talked about just how many returns there are for clothing. It's let me just pull up a stat right here. So It's like twenty percent. Right?
15:55
Yeah. Exactly. And a return
15:58
with clothing can cost up to sixty six percent
16:01
of the a cost of an item. So actually a lot of these closing stores were just saying like, look, you can you can just keep the stuff. You don't even have to send back the item. In this case, newly not only,
16:13
doesn't have to, like, send items to people and and not have them return because it's so expensive. I'm paying newly to rent these clothes. So they're not losing money on the rental. They're now making money on the rental, and they've structured it in a way where it's actually really compelling. And so I think Noli's I don't know the exact size of it now, but at least where I live, I've run into, like, at my co working space, all of the girls there,
16:37
are wearing newly. And I just, like, I wonder how this can be applied to other businesses. So, like, what are those cost centers that could actually be turned into a profit center? Sean, what's the return rate on the things that you're involved in through investments or whatever? This is way lower.
16:52
Way lower than the twenty percent. So, like, you know, more like
16:56
and I don't know if that's I don't know if that number is,
16:59
like, what percent of your orders get returned? Or what percent of your revenue, what what what what percent of revenue is your cost of returns. So I'm not sure exactly what that what that's meant to quote But, you know, of course, any return is like a drain on the business. And so, you, you know, any way that you could turn returns into,
17:16
to either a neutral or profitable thing would be would be kind of amazing.
17:21
What do brands do with returned clothing or returned items? They kind of like typically, you sort of, like, there's like a it's like an, right? So the patient comes in, and it's like, okay. It's it's it's it's a lost cause. You just gotta dump it. Alright? Right? Or it's, like, Oh, this could be patched up. Okay. So you just need to, like, retag it. It's in good condition. Retag it. Put it back in a back in packaging. It's all good to go. Sometimes you have to, like, clean it, steam it, whatever. Like and in fact, there's a guy, Sonny, who follows us on Twitter and listens to the pod, and he has this thing called rock returns. I think he had a e commerce brand. He had like a suit brand, like a nice men's suit brand,
17:57
and returns were kinda like killing him because it's like a very kinda like heavy thing to ship And it's an expensive product. And,
18:03
he's like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? And his 3PL or, like, his warehouse was not, like, they weren't willing to,
18:10
like, reprocess the the suit, and he couldn't he couldn't send out a questionable suit. So he had to know that this is, like, If it did get if it is gonna be set back out, it's in good condition. And so he actually created his own returns warehouse. And he's doing it for himself and now a bunch of other brands. Same as the AWS model. So he turned his cost center, Angel profit center. And I think this business is better than his e commerce business overall. And he's just becoming an expert of, like, Oh, yeah. Like, here's the efficient way to handle returns. And now he's doing it for himself and a whole bunch of other e commerce brands. And,
18:41
and he's, like, nerding out about it hardcore. He's, like, dude, I found this new way of, like, steaming the thing that, like, makes it, you know, where we get extra ten percent of them back into circulation because they're, you know, they're better now. Or, like, we could turn it around at this cost And they they just charge, like, a cost per return processed, basically, for,
18:57
for, for the brands.
19:00
Damn. That's bad. Because usually what makes you good at processing returns is not the same thing as what gets you good at, like, warehouse, a general warehouse with a bunch of pallets and boxes and shipping orders out. It's like, takes like a skill set in a way.
19:12
Can we talk about,
19:13
one other idea? Yeah. So what you talked about, Sean, reminded me of. So
19:18
there's all this real estate, and I'm sure this is like a overdone idea, but there's all this real estate that people have access to. And not everyone knows what it can be used for. So maybe it could be used for a fulfillment center. Maybe your garage could be rented out. And there's a couple examples that I they came upon I thought were interesting. And I wonder if someone could aggregate all of these different ways that real estate or parts of real estate can be used to to gain some income. So let me give you a couple A lot of people have heard of solar panels. So companies will pay you so that you can install solar panels on your roof. You'll get into the licensing agreement and they'll make money off of that. That's why they'll often install it for free. Another example is churches. So apparently due to the height of churches and specifically the steeples on churches.
20:03
Different telecom companies will pay these churches for access to their steeples. So an example is the national cathedral in Washington is paid. Guess how much, actually. Guess how much they're paid by Motorola every single year. I would've thought, like, a thousand a month.
20:19
So a hundred thousand a year just for access to their two hundred and thirty four foot tower.
20:24
And some churches are even building steeples. They don't even have a steeple, but they're like, look, I heard this other church is getting a hundred k a year. We want that. So that's another example. One final example I'll share is surf line.
20:36
My partner, he serves all the time. He uses these surf cams to check, you know, how the waves are every day. Well, where are these surf cams? Apparently they're actually in people's backyards.
20:47
So if you have a backyard that is in a strategic area to see the surf,
20:52
you can either sign up yourself or you can recommend or refer people to be like a surf cam house. They'll come, they'll install it. And then I believe you get I'm not actually sure in this case how much, but you get paid a certain amount to have that surf cam in your backyard. So those are three examples. I'm sure there's many more, but I feel like there should be a site that says oh, you've got a house in this area. You have a roof that gets this much sunlight or it's this tall or it's this much square footage. Would would you go as far as to put this into cars too. One time years ago, Sean and I listened to this pitch of this guy who created,
21:24
you know how cab Cabbies have, like, advertising on top of their car? He was doing that for Uber drivers.
21:30
And,
21:31
I don't actually know. I I see him everywhere, but I don't know how the business what happened with the business. But It raised a huge valuation. So so they definitely got some traction. I think it's like a multi hundred million dollar company now. It's called Firefly.
21:42
Wow. Wow.
21:44
Yeah. And there's another one that has, like, the screens. Have you guys been in Ubers where it's like On the back of the screen and it's just playing ads? Those ones are I feel like the execution on that has been terrible, but like that's another example where it's like, oh, you actually have valuable real estate, which is the back of this car seat because you have people's attention.
22:02
New side project for you. It's called the side hustle generator.
22:06
I will put it on the my first million podcast website, and it's a side hustle generator. All it's just a giant quiz
22:12
that leads you into a list of potential side hustles you could be applicable for. So you're like, you you know, in your thing, it's like, do you do you own a church? You know, do you do you live by the surf? Do you,
22:23
do you have a car that you don't use all the time? Right? Like, there's all of these different
22:27
ways, because I think, you know, people,
22:30
people don't realize the number of opportunities that are, like, literally at their fingertips. It's like, do you own a phone? Do you know, get paid to test websites for companies. All you gotta do is just go to their website and just talk out loud as you try to use their website, user testing dot com. Right? Like, my mom didn't know that, and then she knows that. And that, like, kinda, like, changed her life a little bit. Right? She, like, all of a sudden, had this thing she could do every day that kept her busy, that made her some money, and she enjoyed it.
22:54
Then, you know, Airbnb. I remember telling my parents about Airbnb. It's like,
22:58
you know, took some, you know, somebody had to educate them about it, but now they make six figures a year, Airbnb being their home. And so there's, like, how many of these Your parents do? Yeah.
23:08
Where do they go? There's go, like, you know, a hotel. They'll go on vacation. They'll just leave the city. They'll come to my house. They'll go anywhere. Like, they they don't care because because they can get, like, you know, seven hundred to eight hundred dollars a night for their home. And they'll go rent a hotel you know, if forty minutes away or, you know, our way, they'll go to wine country or whatever, and rent a hotel for two hundred dollars. And they, you know, they pocket the difference.
23:29
Did you guys remember the company? I bet stuff you do. The penny hoarder? Yep. So the penny hoarder started as a blog. It started by this guy named Kyle. He spoke at one of He's a cool dude, and then his
23:39
business partner, is a friend of mine. And anyway, he started it in two thousand twelve, and he started it where he would just talk about all the side hustles he was doing. So for example, he would go and task grab it and, like, get people's groceries and he would talk about how much money he was making. He would become an instacart driver. He would talk about money he's making. He would do an Uber driver and how much money he was making. And he got really good at getting traffic. And eventually, he go, Uber goes, Hey, for every new driver, you refer to us, we'll give you two thousand dollars. Instacart did the same thing, taskrabbit did the same thing.
24:08
User testing did the same thing, and then, like, a person who, like, you need to answer surveys, so that's what he did. And he built this business, this digital ad business.
24:17
He when he came to the event, he brought his dog and I was like, oh, how'd you dog on the plane. He goes, oh, I fly private. And I was like, what? Are you crushing it that hard? He goes, yeah, we bootstrapped it, and we'll do about seventy million in revenue this year. And he owned one hundred percent of the company and he recently sold it for I forget the exact number, but it was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And the whole premise was just on, like, talking about ways that you can make it was mostly lower income people, like, people, like, maybe a mom who's just trying to, like, make ends meet with just like ten hours that she has available instead of taking care of the kids. And,
24:48
he killed it. This business crushed it.
24:52
You never heard of the penny hoarder, Sean? I heard I've heard it from you, but I never went to it. So I never, like, used it. It's just a WordPress blog. That's all it is.
25:01
Sorry. I was looking at stuff stock and realizing how many interesting ideas there are in here, Steph. We have to do a two parter. So,
25:08
Yeah. Well, let her bang out a couple more. Let's give us one more. I'll come back anytime.
25:12
I mean This was the worst ideas in the middle of the list the best ideas. So that's my feedback to you. Well, why don't you tell me? What what's an interesting one that you you have for your eye on? Oh, I'm looking at some of these like trend success stories those are pretty interesting.
25:24
That's when I was kinda looking at just at the moment. Which one of those is your favorite?
25:29
Well, I feel like, okay. So let's call out a couple of them real So last time I was on, I talked about, like, this idea of, like, your listicle is my opportunities.
25:36
Couple people have actually taken action on that. They've created these sites that identify the healthiest versions of not very healthy things. So one guy started a TikTok. It got hundreds of thousands of views in the first few days.
25:48
And then someone else tweeted about this. Actually, just just last night.
25:53
Let me see what they did. They're called fast food cravings where basically the headline says eat what you want, not what you can, and it lets you, like, put in a specific restaurant and find the healthiest version of the food at that restaurant.
26:07
We talked about insider trading at on one of the very first episodes I was on, and this after that episode. I think this actually existed before the episode, but Connor dmed me and he was like, so there are these sites that track insider trades.
26:21
But there are specific types of insider trades that are more interesting than others. And specifically, it's stock grants to executives.
26:28
It's not obviously a sure thing, but he said he was like, typically what that signals is
26:34
the company trying to you know, invest in a particular thing. If the executives hit certain targets, it's it's generally a good sign. Obviously, not investment advice, but he created this community called spring loading.
26:46
And what he does is he
26:48
stirs a scraper that looks for
26:50
all the insider trades, but then specifically vets them for this particular aspect, like, is the company granting a buttload of stock to a group of executives? And he just he's he basically shares these. And then he
26:59
I
27:02
shared an example in the chat, but he basically he sends the,
27:07
financial report.
27:08
He sends the grant details. Then he summarizes it. He says, look, these people are getting this grant. This is what I have, you know, what additional information I have. And then he gives a conviction rating. So some of his conviction ratings are like, one, like, guys, this is probably nothing, maybe something. If you wanna take a bet, go for it. Some of them, he's like, this is a five. So I I shared one again, not investment shared one, for example, for cloudflare a little bit ago. Obviously, cloudflare with all the other tech companies has tanked recently, but he was like, this is one of the biggest performance grants I've ever seen. With pretty massive price targets. I don't think there's any news in the near future, but I do believe that cloudflare has massive potential and the stock is down thirty five over the last month. And then he shares again the exact grant values what targets they need to hit. So for example, these execs have different price targets similar to you know, you guys discuss like Elon Musk's like crazy price targets. If they hit, I think,
28:00
Cloudflare today is at ninety five dollars or something like that. Their first price target is one hundred and fifty six dollars and it goes all the way up to nine hundred and seventy nine dollars. So this is what these execs
28:12
internally are tracking to So I don't know. I thought that was, like, another interesting example. I think he's I think this community is pretty successful. He's charging people a monthly fee. By this idea. Did you bet on this?
28:23
I haven't,
28:24
Cal, my partner. He's been in the community. He did actually I mean, again, not financial advice, but he bet on one. And I can't remember what company it was. But it did one one day, like, go up to That's all I need. But this was also in the I mean, don't don't even tell me more, actually. Just lose fear and I'm gonna don't even I don't I don't need anything else.
28:44
Well, I was gonna say, I definitely, like, don't want people to be go going and gambling their money on on that one and though. But it is interesting to even just like be in there and and what I've found, because I'll just like dabble in the community. I haven't placed any bets, but to see
28:58
what, like, I'm learning about a bunch of different companies that I've never heard of. I'm seeing, like, how these different companies are structuring stock grants and, like, why someone commenting on it. And then of course there's just like a bunch of,
29:10
a bunch of people commenting like, are you betting like, oh shit, like, I'm fifty percent down. Like, how are you doing in So it's kind of like a fun community as well. Guys have this is awesome. Have a, like, a,
29:20
like, a degenerate
29:22
budget or, like, a learner budget, where it's, like, okay. This is my fuck around with money that I can I can try different things, or do you guys not do that? Sam, you're shaking your head? No. I don't. But but do you? Sounds like you do. I do. Yeah.
29:35
How much?
29:37
Well, let's talk about, like, in percentage terms. So it's, like, you know, what would that be? It's, like,
29:43
close. No. Don't do percentage terms. Like, literally how much? Like, are you, like, fifth fifty thousand dollars? No. More than that.
29:50
Wow. Yeah. For sure. What will you do with that? What's an example of your of of a dumb of a risky thing that you've done? Like,
29:57
I think I've told this story before, but I remember watching
30:00
So the the idea with these is,
30:04
I'll just tell the story first. I watched a YouTube video of this guy No idea who this guy is.
30:10
Some Wall Street, some some hedge fund guy. Basically, he's a prolific short trader. It's kinda like the vibe I got from the video. Couldn't tell you How tall was it? Tell you his name, couldn't tell you what to do this track record was.
30:20
White guy looked reasonable enough. And, he basically was, like, He's like, yeah. I'm, he's like, my short pick of the year is tootsie roll.
30:30
And,
30:31
you know, he's, I was, like, well, I was listening as a white, white tootsie roll. I didn't even realize it's a public stock. He's like, tootsie roll. He's like, first of all, who the hell eats tootsie rolls? He's like, do you think tootsie rolls growing? He's like, no. Though people who eat tootsie rolls are, like, you know, fifty and up. They're they're dying market. Kids don't want tootsie rolls nowadays. They want, like, all these other candies. He's like, titular has zero innovation.
30:52
They refuse to change their product,
30:54
and, they don't come out with anything new. He's like, and then it's also
30:59
poorly run and not gonna be sold. It was, like, owned by some woman who was, like I think it's owned by, like, a ninety two year old lady. She passed away now, but at the time, this was or something like that. Like, that that this happened. I don't know where this was. This is a while back. And, I remember watching that video when like, oh, this guy's totally right. Titsyreal's fucking debt. I went that day, and I bet he gets Titsyroll.
31:19
I made a bunch of money each and is, like, zero thought process, zero diligence,
31:24
like, just like, take take a punt and,
31:27
you know, do something on a whim. And so that was the first time I realized, like, actually, I want a designated budget. And with crypto, this has become, like, you know, kind of a necessity crypto, you basically have, like
31:39
you have so many new things that are all interesting, and you can't get to high conviction because they're new evolving, like, the opportunities in front of you today. And so you don't have time to diligence all these. You don't have time to get to high conviction, but you do know, like,
31:53
where, you know, you can sort of sense certain signals. Like, if a bunch of smart people are looking at it,
31:58
if you see, you know, developer activity in that space. If the premise is, like, you know, interesting, it might hit, might not hit, whatever. You you can basically take punts on things in crypto and you get paid off
32:07
unlike the stock market. Right? I think on two real thing I made, like, I don't know, twenty, thirty five percent, something like that. In crypto, you could make, like, twenty x when you're right on these things. And so with crypto, though, the odds just shifted
32:19
your favor where, yeah, it's super fast moving and things can go to zero. But the
32:24
the upside when you hit is so high. It pays for all of your other bad bets. And so I basically created a budget because I was like, I can't,
32:32
I can't overthink this. I need to I need to intentionally underthink this. So what does that mean? It's like there's been is the last five years. There's been so many examples of things that I've I've come across my radar in crypto
32:43
that I don't take action on because I feel like I don't have enough information to make an educated decision. And, actually, if I had just made uneducated decisions, I would have done far better than my, like, educated decisions turned out to be because
32:54
the space is just, where there's a lot progress being made, and you you can't keep up with all the different projects, all the different tokens. So I basically set out a budget where I said, if somebody tells me something that's interesting,
33:05
I have money that I could just, like, dump into that. It's a small amount of money. I don't care if that money that money goes to zero, and I'm not putting it all into one. So I'm taking, like, a portfolio of these, and let's just see what happens. And in doing so, I get to actually learn how these things work. And so, you know, like, I did one the other day and I put it in the milk road. I explained
33:25
mean, literally step by step what this what this project was and why I'm why I'm going into it and how I have no idea if this is, like, a great idea about it. I didn't audit this security of the project, like, I don't have time for all that. I'm just, like, trying to learn how these things work, and I'm putting small bets in a bunch of different areas money that I'm I can afford to lose. Do you do that stuff? So I don't. Cal does. I think it's smart though because, like, Sean Singh, the
33:48
the type of investments where, like, if you don't have
33:52
money sequestered for this, it's gonna it's gonna capture your psychology. Actually why I don't dabble in these things, but,
33:59
he's done that a lot for NFTs. Right? So at first he was like, Steph, I'm just gonna buy one. Obviously, he's bought but more since then, but he
34:06
he has a certain amount and like that's all he's willing to invest. If it goes to zero, he's happy with it. But he's also
34:13
probably sold a lot too early because he has a concentrated amount. So he's like, oh, I gotta sell this to buy another thing.
34:20
Sean, did you get into proof? I feel like that was a big I didn't do production. That's a that's a great example of one where I'm like, oh, interesting. Kevin Rose is doing this NFT thing. I should,
34:31
I should, you know, I should just take a punt. Right? Like, I I'm seeing this before most people.
34:36
I should go in and, like, again, like, with these things, it's not gonna it's not gonna go to zero, quote, unquote. It's, like, you know, so trade out of that thing if I want to in, you know, three months from now. But, like, to weigh each to I don't want every decision to be heavy. And,
34:51
And I you you guys seen this meme that's, like, the it's, like, the curve. I think it's called, like, the Midwit meme. It's
34:57
based basically, like, there's an idiot on one side. There's a genius, like, so the on one side is the idiot. He looks like a troll. It looks like, you know, it's, like, whatever, Shrek
35:06
and on the other side, there's like a Jedi master.
35:09
And then the middle, which is, like, the top of the curve, is, like, the average person. And it's, like, you know, like, for example,
35:15
like, oh, like, the idiot would be like, oh, that monkey looks, like, that's a cool looking monkey. I'll buy. Alright? The the genius is, like, oh, this, you know, this has a chance be an iconic, you know, like, like, whatever, iconic NFT. Bye. Like, didn't think about it more than that. And then they're, like, middle guy is, like, you know, but why would anybody buy this picture of a monkey and, like, how do that at tokenomics work? Are they, like, try to, like, analyze the whole fucking thing? And they're, a, they're just paralyzed. There's some sort of analysis where they don't they don't take action on anything. And then they overthink things so they miss the, like, the big simple opportunities that are in front of them a lot of times. And, I heard the guy from YC, who Michael Cybel talking about this. He goes, he goes, this is often in this case with startup ideas. He goes,
35:56
a beginner, like, you know, you out of college when you don't know anything about anything, you just think it's all, like, you don't you don't know how hard it's gonna be. You don't know what a you don't know how to vet opportunities. You'll just be like, oh, that sounds cool. Like, Let me try that. And then same thing with the Jedi master. The Jedi master's like, oh, like, you know, would it be cool if we could take a rocket to Mars? Let's try that. You
36:14
know,
36:15
that's also the, like, you don't need to analyze it beyond that at the beginning. It's, like, the this fundamental decision is is very simple. And then, like, the person he's, like, the person I hate talking to is, like, the second time founder who's trying to, like, over optimize their cap table and, like, try to get, like, really complicated about the, like, the valuation and
36:32
this that, and then they're trying to do, like, this lean start validation about every single thing. And it's, like, that's the hardest person to deal with because they're they know too much, but not enough to know how to keep it simple. And, he was talking about, like, the best ideas, the best startup ideas.
36:47
They go to, like, that, that idiot genius category where it's like, you know, like, should make cars that are electric, you know, like, we should make We should sell books online. Yeah. It's like,
36:58
Yeah. What if you could buy a book online?
37:00
And it's like, that's it. Right? You don't need to go too much further than that. What's, what's that video called? It's a it's of the Y Combinator. It's it's Michael Cybel and this guy Dalton called, well, they do, like, a split screen side by side, and they just talk about something for thirty minutes. And this was one of them. I don't remember the name of the game. Do you know what the name of the title? I wanna look. I can find it. Real quick while while you guys talking, but I don't know. What would you do? By the way, Steph? Believe in that, like, this idea of the like idiot genius, like, don't overthink it thing?
37:27
Well, I just did the ID. I I just did the ID. Well, go ahead, Steph. I'll let you go first. Well, I was just gonna say quickly, like,
37:33
Yes. I believe in it. And yes, I think it it applies to like different things. So I would say I'm the like, would you call it like mid twit or something?
37:40
Somewhere in the middle for like mid wit in in finance. That's why I don't dabble because I'm like, I over analyze things. I hear one piece of news. I'm out. Kinda kinda deal, but, I think it applies to, like, with startups, I think I'm
37:53
maybe not that. With other things, I certainly am, like, just just terrible. And so I think it I think our our our friend Jack is a great example of this. Right? Like, he saw NFTs and was like, oh, that looks cool. Like, I'm gonna buy one. I'm gonna make one. What should I make it of? I don't know. Like,
38:07
this What about this diagram I already have?
38:09
Like, you know, that's like the simplest shit. And the guy's worth billions of dollars this year.
38:15
How much how much do you think he's made off those?
38:18
How much do you think he's made on the is he do you think he's, like, wildly wealthy from those?
38:22
I don't know. You know, he he's done well for sure. I think, you know, he he bought apes. He bought, you know, he bought a punk. I think he's bought some of the, like, the projects that went up from, like For sure. You know, and floral. Like you said, like apes, not not like one ape. He's he's bought multiple of all of these. Yeah. I think those were, like, priced at, like, you know, what about a thousand dollars, like, you know, eighteen months ago. And now each one is worth, like, you know, two hundred fifty, five hundred thousand dollars. So I don't know if he held. I don't know what what it was, but even just the the stuff he made. Right? Like, know a lot of people, they're like, oh, web three, the metaverse. I need to create an empty project. It needs to have this and that and utility blah blah blah. And he's like, Hey. I mentioned a picture of, like, a, you know, a thing that says not, like, not, like, right click save as. You know, it's kinda like just making fun of the space. Sold it for, like, fifty thousand dollars. Right? Like, did that in an afternoon.
39:10
And, that's, like, the the mid, you know, instead of being the Midwood over analyzer, logical
39:16
you know, processor of all all things. You know, he went to the kind of the idiot genius zone and, just took a punt. And it it because he's in the idiot genius zone, it's not heavy. It doesn't take a lot of time or energy or money to, like, try it. And so I specifically carved out a portion of my investing
39:33
budget to say, look, this is my my gamble. Like, you know, I'll get rid of my gambling energy,
39:38
learn by doing this because I'll get do things that I wouldn't otherwise do And, I'll have skin in the game, so I'll actually pay attention to it.
39:45
And, like, who knows? You know, maybe I'll maybe I'll have some hit have some hits out of this. And I bet I honestly think that that part of my portfolio is gonna be better than the the the well thought through quote unquote part of my portfolio. By the way, Sam, I think you do this really well when people, like, I people come to you. They're like, Sam, I'm thinking of like starting this business and like, I wanna cover this topic and I wanna blog and and all this stuff and you're like, alright, like, what's your first step? Or like you, you'll be like,
40:09
just right or something like that, which just like simplifies to the like idiot Jedi, like, just do the thing, not like, over analyzing the, like, fifty start up articles per person's online. Dog, you just needed to he goes, Randy
40:23
Jack, sit on them.
40:25
Well, I get I just get frustrated. I think because I think that, like, I think that it's good. So if, like, building a business is zero to ten and ten is like you're this billionaire or like your vision has been achieved. You know, you you you own all this property, whatever it is. It's good to have number ten and then
40:42
a lot of people are like, alright. That's step number ten. And then, like, steps three four five six seven eight nine. I gotta figure those out. In my mind, I'm like, No, but the only thing that's important is ten and one.
40:52
And after you get done with one, you'll figure out number two. Just but until you get to number two, even think about worrying about number three. It it's not important. Dude, I have I have the same exact thing. I I call it a b z. Literally, like, word for word, thing, and I I I went on Jack's to to Jack's community. He asked me to give a talk and to his, like, visualize value community. And I this was the one thing I told them. I go,
41:12
you you have you're at a. That's where you are. Z is the vision. That's the dream. It's good to have that. It's good to know what that is. Right? That's like the north star. And, like, without that, you know, you don't really have the motivation or I don't really understand, like, what the hell you're trying to do. But where everyone gets paralyzed is they think they need to know a step, b, c, d, e, f, g h I j. And it's like and then they get paralyzed or they start thinking about step d when they haven't even done,
41:34
you know, a to b yet. And so I go, ABC. It's all you ever need. It's like, where you are, you gotta know that accurately.
41:40
The next thing you need to do, you need to know that. And then you need to know the Envision. And everything else is irrelevant. Like, just do that. And so you just literally said the same thing with your own, like, with numbers, basically, instead. It's it's awesome. Great. Great minds think alike, I mean, that's exactly how I feel. Because every time I've ever had any bit of success or even when I've, like, done something and it didn't work out, I just think that, like, if you just start and you're gonna see so many things that you didn't even expect or realize were an opportunity
42:08
and or that weren't an opportunity. Like, oh, I thought this. It's actually way different, but that's cool or that's not cool. We gotta quit.
42:15
You know what I mean? And, you just that's why you just have to do something.
42:19
I I have this. And I get really frustrated with inaction. I've been saying this lately.
42:24
I love thin books and quick silence.
42:27
And so what does that mean? Like,
42:29
I love a thin book. Did you make that up? Yeah. I love a thin book because a thin book is like a simple idea presented without the fluff And that's it. That's the value. You know, don't don't try to you don't need a thick book, for everything. So I'm a big fan of thin books now. And then the other is a quick silence, which is I call my buddy, Suilio, about every business question I have, basically. It's like, oh, we're starting the milk road. Hey. What do you think about this? And then
42:52
There's a quick silence. Like, he says his thing.
42:55
It's obvious. That's the answer.
42:58
And I was, like, building up in my head, I need to, I mean, I really wanna sit down with him and talk. It's like within three minutes,
43:04
we've reached a good pause where it's like, well, I guess nothing else really matters till we go do that. Right? Yep.
43:09
Alright. Well, I guess I'll just call you back. Obviously, get a calculator.
43:13
And, like and so that quick silence to me is, like, now what I want where is I used to wanna fill that silence with more detail, more analysis, more planning, more,
43:23
nuance, more, like, if then statements, and, like, you don't really need any of that. Like, we talk. By the end of my sentence, he says his sentence.
43:33
Sorry. I guess we didn't really need a call. I guess we could've just done a text and, you know, like, guess I kinda knew this to begin with, like, maybe I didn't need to call you. Right? But that quick silence is really
43:41
showing me, like,
43:43
that's when I'm on the right track is when I get either a thin book or quick silence is like when I'm on the right track and when I need more answers, typically I'm just I'm I'm actually going in the wrong direction altogether.
43:54
To that's Yeah. That reminds me, from coding. If you, if you run into an error and you're on, like, stack overflow or something, and you're just, like, you're you can't find your answer. It's probably because you're googling the wrong thing. Like, you've completely messed it up. You're in the complete wrong direction. And I feel like that applies in in most cases. If you find yourself asking like ten questions, it's like, hold up. Like, you are you're just like going in the complete opposite direction that you should be pull back and revisit.
44:21
How many people reach out to you after each one of these episodes goes live stuff and said that they, like, wanna pitch you on something or they wanna recruit you to come join something?
44:30
Well, it grows. And some of your buddies reach out, which is always fun, but I feel like What are we talking about? What what what are we talking about here? I don't wanna drop anything. Really?
44:40
That sounds like a story. What's this why I bet.
44:44
No. No. I just mean, like, it's it's cool because
44:47
well, also, I I should say, like, some people that I've really looked up to, I don't wanna call out their names because I don't obviously, these are like private messages, but people that I've looked up to that I was like, oh, I used to read your stuff or like, I've literally read your book or, like,
44:59
We're from the same country. Andrew Wifics had reached us. Definitely.
45:04
I'm not naming Eddie James, but
45:07
it's been cool, and it's grown, obviously, because you guys have grown the pod a lot.
45:11
So yeah.
45:12
That's nice. Well, there's few people I'll get a fist fight over are one of them stuff. So
45:18
let me know who,
45:20
who You haven't broken your contract, Sam's. You're good. You're good.
45:25
Well, good. I'm happy you came. You have so much more to cover. I think we should wrap up here, though. Yeah. Sorry.
45:31
Apologize ever to listen to this because Steph had a bunch of gold, and I feel like I took it in these really random directions. So to make up for it, we're gonna do a a second part of Steph and feel come back. And we'll do more of these ideas in rapid fire, and I'll shut up. Yeah. I'm done. Let's do it.
00:00 45:54