I just saw if you go to Brett Taylor, the chairman of Twitter. He just tweeted we've agreed to a deal with Elon Musk. Oh, wow.

Wow. So I guess I think I think saying it's done is

fair. Yeah. That's fair. Okay.

So fifty four dollars a share.

Wow.

So let me tell you something really quick. I I I this relates this is gonna sound weird, but it relates to what we're talking about. So do you know how a combustible and combustible engine works?

I do. That's what I look like. I know how combustible engine works. No. So, alright. Here's how combustible engine works. So you've got this huge block. It's called an engine block. It's this big piece of metal. Imagine like a rectangular

cube. That's about two and a half feet long. A foot wide and a foot deep in-depth.

Understand?

Okay. When you hear like a four cylinder, six cylinder, eight cylinders, twelve cylinders, That's how many cylinders they're gonna drill into that block of that that engine block. And so they you know how do you know how big a cylinder is?

Well, I I mean, I've eaten Pringles before so I sort of imagine? You're not far off. So it's around, like, it's, like, a can of coke almost a little bit bigger, but, like, just for the sake, we'll say it's, like, the size of a can of coke, Okay. And in in in in in those cylinders goes a piston, which is basically, like, you've drilled those holes and, like, you got something like it's almost like a size of canoco going back and forth through those holes. And the way it works is you have a a a shaft that connects to the pistons, which turns that up and down motion of the cylinders going up and down into motion that the engine can use. But check this out. In order to make this all work,

you have this thing called a spark plug in each cylinder,

and then you have this other device called a carburetor, and that mixes the perfect amount of fuel

an air into the cylinder, and the spark plug makes a small spark, and there's a miniature explosion

in the cylinder that for that creates so much pressure that that that piston is moving up and down.

Does that all make sense? Okay. I fall. I don't know why you're telling me about this, but I I understand it now. Listen.

So

It gets even crazier.

You know how you're driving and your car will say, like, six thousand RPMs?

Yeah. Sure. That means that those those pistons so these pistons,

they it has to be airtight for that explosion to be in that cylinder. So these pistons they're super tight into that cylinder and they're it's creating a lot of friction.

When it says six thousand RPMs, that's six thousand revolutions per minute. And it's six thousand means you're like driving pretty fast, but not crazy fast. That means those pistons are moving up and down one hundred to a hundred and fifty times

per second.

Wow.

And you have oil

in your car because those pistons are rubbing against metal

and it needs oil. Otherwise, if you leave it without oil, they're moving so fast. It's gonna fuse together and basically weld the piston to the cylinder.

Jeez. Okay. Okay. The reason I'm breaking this up

Listen. I can't wait to hear it. And and Like, because

I just watched a YouTube video about it, and I it's still fresh in my mind. That's why I had to say it. You did? No. It sounds like you just, like, wait on a deep dive. Well, I was thinking about this. And, and basically, and then the output of all this is like, carbon dioxide. So it's like a, it's like a gas and there's fumes and there's oil and there's liquid. There's all types of fluid, and then there's a transmission, which is like totally even crazier sometimes.

The fact that this was invented in the early nineteen

hundreds And it's still the technology that we have exploited and made so good. We've made this so good that these piss can move for a million miles. Basically, they're gonna go up and down, like, trill a trillion plus times.

We have pushed that so far to the edge. It's pretty phenomenal, what we've done. And it's such a shitty technology. It was good for what it was. And then Elon Musk comes along and was like, well, he he wasn't the first one to do it, but he did a really good job of it. He's like, this this electric engine, actually, all we're gonna use is a battery and one motor. That's all it takes. And this motor is like just literally like, three parts. Like, there's very few parts where as with the combustible engine, there's like a thousand parts. And not only is it simpler in terms of maintenance, there's basically no maintenance.

It's far better. So a really fast car. I have a I own a car that's considered incredibly fast, and it's quite expensive. And it goes zero to sixty

Yeah. Well, it's considered faster to go zero to sixty in three seconds. A Tesla that costs forty grand will crush that. It can crush that and go. So it's it's faster in every sense of the word. It doesn't break. And I kinda had one of these moments where I was, like, I wasn't actually high, but it was, like, one of those high moments where you're like, I can't believe. Unfortunately, you just decided to have high thought I had high thoughts. I was like, dude, we've been doing this combustible engine thing for like a hundred and thirty years now. And then along comes a couple people who's like, no, no, we're gonna do this total opposite way. So instead of making an engine that just, like, is it somehow has more cylinders or it's more smooth something, we're gonna do something totally opposite And it's like levels

above in terms of quality. And I find that thought to be absolutely amazing and it just turns out he

just Twitter today. So maybe there's something crazier is gonna happen there. I actually don't think it will, but maybe. But isn't that wild to think that, like, we can literally don't know how many people have existed since nineteen ten, billions of billions of billions of people. We've all been doing it one way. And then along comes a very small group of people, let's say tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who said, no. No. No. This is the way to do it, and it changes everything. And I find that to be amazing. I I agree. That is amazing. A couple thoughts that came up while you were saying this. First of all, thank you for the engine lesson. Does that make sure that that I I'm ten percent more man. Because I I know how to describe this happen. Did I explain to you? Do you understand how the engine works now? A little bit? Oh, a little bit. Yeah. I feel like I feel like I'm at that perfect point where I feel like I know because I don't know what I don't know. Yeah, if you ever seen the Dunning Kruger effect on the perfect peak What you should know, the takeaway here is that it's very, very, very crude. You've got these, like, metal on metals, like, rubbing against each other and creating, it's just messy, it's smelly, it's it's accrued. Well, I just did something today that remind that what you're talking about reminds me of this, which is,

I went to the doctor. I went to the eye doctor, had eye appointment. And,

not because I wanted to. I was like, just give me my goddamn contacts, and they're like, nope. You gotta come in. It's a that's two years old now. You gotta do the whole we're gonna We're gonna do the thing where you blow puff air on your eyeball. It's like, oh, god. What is that even for? I don't know. But I went in. I decided to have a little bit of a different attitude. So I got real curious when I went in this time. I'm talking to the doctor, asking a bunch of questions. She runs this other test on me where she takes a picture of my eye. And then she shows it to me on a screen. And I don't know if you've ever seen, like, the inside of an eye, disgusting.

Fucking wild, dude. This is crazy. She's like, okay. So, like, this is the nerve in the back of your eye. That's what's sending all these signals. Your eyes just getting light from everywhere. And your brain is this nervous, the thing transmitting to your brain, all these eye these these light signals, and your brain is piecing together some -- Amazing. -- construction of the world. Yeah. It's amazing. Shuck, and these are all the blood vessels that's like keeping your eye alive. And when you whenever I see how the body works,

I just sort of marvel in it. I'm like,

I don't have to think, but my liver knows how to, like, detoxify my body. You know, I don't have to think my heart will just keep beating reliably or else I'll die. Like, luckily, it's on autopilot.

And, in fact, it's on so much on autopilot. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to. And so it's like the way that the human body works is just like, a true marvel.

And so so today is my birthday. And seeing that Oh, I'm currently with you on air. Happy birthday. Thank you. I appreciate it. We all we talked earlier on the phone. But The thing that amazes me. The thing it's like the best thing to do on your birthday is to go just, like, get a scan of your body and just be like, wow. You know, the the human body is, like, an absolutely incredible machine that just works in, like, the the same way I don't know how an engine works don't know how my liver works. I don't know how my kidney works. I don't know how my lungs work. I don't know how any of this shit works, but it does work. And just the fact that it is kind of amazing to me. And just seeing my eyeball, my retina, and, like, the nerves of blood vessels in my eye was just a reminder of, like,

it's like a it's like a humble, humbling feeling. Right? It's like the humility of how you don't even have control over your own body. Let alone the world and all these other things that are going on. So I I really appreciated that. That's the first thing. Second thing,

I wrote this down the other day.

For the podcast, but I never knew how By the way, are you wearing a mighty ducks jersey?

Yeah, dude. It's my birthday. I'm feeling like a mighty duck right now. Oh my god. That's awesome.

The older I get, the more I need to behave like a child. Right? Like, that's that's kind of the game plan is get more child like as I grow, not more adult like. So

I wrote this down. I wrote

vocal minority,

mobile minority. And I I didn't I wrote it down like a month ago, and I was like, it might come up at some point in the podcast. And what you just said about Elon, about basically a very small number of people changing the way that things work, is a great example of this. So And it's not like he's the guy, like, that he was, like, you know, we can't say that, like, Elon came up with we could just say that there's probably a lot of people came to the same conclusion. He just was had the strongest will and is the is the is the person who we give a lot of credit to. By the way, have you seen what he's been saying lately about this, like, origin story of Tesla? Have you seen this controversy?

No. So he say that he's the founder? No. No. So he so he so the

what what happened was Tesla started about a year before

Elon

invested in it. And so now he's seen as the he's basically seen as the CEO, the founder. He is the CEO. He's seen as also kinda like the founder. You don't really hear about these other guys. Who started these two guys that were that were starting it, I think. And he and he is kind of the founder when you think about it. Like, it's, like, literally the eighth largest company in the world And at the time, it was worth like ten million dollars. Like, what's the difference?

Exactly. And so but the guys who started it, have, like, basically, it's made it kinda like their mission. So so the the Elon, there's a there's a group of people that are like anti Elon. They're a vocal minority against Elon. And they'll say, like, things like Elon didn't create Tesla. He just, you know, invested in it and, like, takes all the credit for it, basically.

And, and that one of the original guys also really has, like, made it his mission to keep telling people how much he, how he was the founder of Tesla, not not Elon Musk.

And Elon sort of, like, come out recently. He said something the other day in his interview. He goes,

the biggest mistake they go, what's the biggest regret you have? Is biggest regret you have or mistake you've made? Bad decision you made. He goes,

well, certainly the worst business decision I made was,

not deciding to just, like, start Tesla on my own with me and JB, like, I guess the guy he started it with, like, guy he feels like was his co founder in it. And, like, basically buying the existing company

and then building from there versus just doing it on his own. He's, like, certainly that was the worst decision. I think because financially, that guy owns shares of what's now a trillion dollar company. And then the second thing is that that guy basically has made it his crusade to be like,

F Elon Musk. I'm the founder of Tesla and tell them. How much does that guy own?

I don't know the exact percentage. Maybe maybe,

somebody, John, they can look it up while we're while we're talking. But, like,

but that guy basically, Mark, there's like I think his name is. There's two guys.

Yeah, Martin and somebody else, and I think that's his name. So they

one of the things that they say is, like, you know, we created Tesla. And then Elon has come out and been like Tesla was nothing. There was no product. There was basically, it's like it was a shell of a company. There was no, it was like, you know, pre launch, pre everything.

I invested six and a half million dollars. I think he invested in the first round knowing also that I'd have invest way more after that, took a chairman role. And then, like, basically,

he had the guy from who designed SpaceX's logo to design the Tesla branding and, like, you know, he's like, guess he created it. It was a it was a inactive company is what he what he had said.

He I think he had he tweeted something like this out that he was, like, a dormant company or something like that. And so there's, like, some controversy around that actual founding of it. But Yeah. How is that his biggest mistake? That doesn't seem like that big. Like, it worked out fine. And also, one could argue

Maybe it was worth it just for the name. Yeah. Exactly. Just for the exactly. Just for the name. I guess his his take would sort of be like the company was just gonna die if he didn't invest Right. He was he was the only investor at that time.

So anyways,

okay, back to my vocal minority. So there's

We see this a lot on Twitter and other places where there's a vocal minority. This is what people call cancel culture. This is what people will call, like,

sort of the haters or the naysayers online. There's a small group of people that are sort of unhappy about anything that happens. And they'll they'll be unhappy that Twitter's being bought by Elon Musk. They'll be unhappy that he's a billionaire. They'll be unhappy that Tesla. They'll say that Tesla's cars, yes, they're electric, but but what powers the electricity

coal, you know, they just always have something to say. So there's a vocal minority, and I think one of the biggest skills in today for any business person is to correctly identify, like,

a vocal majority versus a vocal vocal minority. If you just constantly let the vocal minority

sway your thinking, you're letting, like, you know, the bottom one or two percent of people

sway your decision making just because they're very loud about it. But then the the other you I think you wanna overlook them, but what you don't wanna overlook is what's called what I call a mobile minority.

So a mobile minority is a group of people who decide to actually, like, take their business and walk elsewhere,

or they take their lifestyle and they just change it. So it's like, you know, if you're

Safeway,

But all of a sudden, there's like a smaller group of, like, sort of hippie people that are, like, buying this, like, all natural produce. Right. And the shopping at this place called Whole Foods Market in Austin And that's only got one one location, two locations, but, like, all of their spend now goes to this, or you see people that are like, you know,

you you know, people on Netflix or whatever, people who are subscribed to Netflix, but all of a sudden they start to instead spend all their time on TikTok and YouTube. And it's like, they've actually voted with their feet. Or Now they're they're actually selling. I'm even,

a different non business example. I was just reading about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks.

And when the whole Rosa Parks thing happened, the black folks were like, no, we're, you know, we're not taking that. And originally, that only makes a certain amount of our population. It's no big deal that it, like, right, goes on for, like, two weeks. You're like, alright. The sup something's happened it's happening in San Francisco right now. Like, a mobile minority of group of people have left San Francisco, taken their business elsewhere. It's a very small group of people Some of them were loud about it saying, I'm leaving because I have this, this, and this beef with San Francisco. Most of them were just frustrated. Like, I'm going awesome. Going to Miami. I'm going elsewhere. I'm going where I will be treated better while I will be taxed less and get more from my government.

And,

and those mobile minorities are actually ones you wanna listen to. If whether you're all Paul session or you're an entrepreneur.

It's, like, we we talk about this a lot. Like, dude, there's just subreddit that's getting really popular. And it's, like, yeah. It's only fifty thousand people, but it's like, wow. Fifty thousand people have chosen this lifestyle of, like, you know, either anti work or over employed or they're tracking their, like, fitness and their sleep at this, like, maniacal way. It's like, yeah. That actually is something you really wanna pay attention to, and it's great place to start a business is when you notice a mobile minority.

And it's also like a really important thing to notice as a leader of a, of a either a city or a company to notice

How can all these developers are, like, you know, going to this weird, like, web three crypto thing? Like, what's that about? So, yeah, it's not everybody,

but, like, wow, what, like,

you know, ten percent of our smartest people all left to go do this thing. They took a pay cut to go do this thing. I think I should probably pay attention to that. And so,

I wanted to point this out, which is ignore the vocal minority

and pay extra attention to the mobile minority that hasn't been there's another side to this. It doesn't mean they're right.

So for example, or that, like, what they're doing, like, I

I agree with you. I would also challenge myself to find examples where there is that's a great what's it what's it called

mobile minority.

Yeah. That's a good that's a good one. Trademark that. We're trademarking that. That's on my first million original. So, like, there's people, like, like, example, day trading amongst young people has gotten incredibly popular. I don't think the majority of people do it, but I think there are a lot of people do it. They're very loud and they're betting a lot. And I think that's horribly stupid.

Yeah. I'm not saying it's always a good thing. Right? It might be people vaping. And it's like, wait a minute.

Like, ten ten percent of teenagers are vaping now. It's like, I'm not saying it's always healthy,

but I'm saying it is almost always worth paying attention to this sort of, like, silent and mobile minority versus,

like, I think it's worth paying attention to, whereas I think the vocal minority is almost always worth ignoring.

You wanna talk a few ex off the top of our head, a few examples of those groups of people?

Well, I gave a couple. I think I can dig a few more. Yeah. Give give me give me your sum. I'm just gonna write off a few. So

things that I'm noticing based off Reddit and my interest.

People who don't wanna buy off Amazon because they don't wanna have to worry about throwing away the packaging.

Yes. Number two, people who wanna use reusable,

packaging.

So like a ziplock bag that you'll pay twenty dollars for one bag, but you can use it over and over and over and over again. Number three, people who don't want to eat out of plastic.

Let's see. Number four. I I have another one that's related to that, but so my wife's vegan. And so we're con anything we do has to be compatible with a vegan lifestyle. And you'd be shocked how much

how much is, not compatible. So, like, okay. You think about food. I think food is where most people go. But, like, leather is the other shoe to it. Right? So, like, we're about to buy a car or, like, she wants to buy, like, a fancy purse or something like that. She's like, she is ready to go to whatever. Louis Vuitton or whatever and drop five grand, six grand, whatever it is. But,

she won't she won't do it because it's all leather. And so she's like, I can't believe these luxury companies don't make one

non, like, non animal based product. Like, they don't make one bag. Like, even if they would get all the v all the vegan people wanna buy luxury would it be, like, go to whichever brand makes it. Like, all of the big ones, Gucci, prada, whatever.

And, and they just don't they don't make it. Or if they do, they, like, to make the bag, but not the not the handle or the the strap. And she's like, well, that's the thing. Like, if you cared about this, you care about this. And so we see that with, like, car too. Like Tesla has all like,

vegan leather, and they're one of the few car makers that, like, just lead with that. And so these little things that, like, again, super easy to overlook. I would, you know, I I would totally understand saying, look, we're not gonna change our product line for this one or two percent. But as that one or two percent gets big enough, like, don't know how how much the sort of vegan population is now in America, but, like, let's say it's two or three percent, that's of a base of three hundred million people. And those are people who, like, they don't just kind of care about it. They really care about it. And so They're in the they're the mobile minority and the vocal minority for sure. Exactly.

They use they they they do action and they talk a lot.

Yeah. Exactly.

So, like, you know, you make a chocolate and make a cheese, make a car leather, whatever. So that's an example where I've seen a lot of, like, wallet share go to the one brand that just cares about it. What else is there? So I think there's also, when I the TikTok comments. There's so many people that when they post videos of people from the early two thousands or when I was in high school two thousand eight, and they say, oh, wow. Look, no one's on a cell phone. They must be so happy.

So I think there's gonna be a mobile minority of people who actually don't want smartphones. The the disconnect slash digital detox population.

Yeah. There's also a group of that that's, like, VR, like, absolute VR nerds.

So, they don't talk much. In fact, most of the dialogue around VR is how it's not here yet or it's not gonna happen.

There's a small number of people that spend an absurd amount of time in VR. They work in their VR. Like, I don't know if I I think I sent you this TikTok of There's a guy who says he's spending twenty four seven in VR.

And, he literally wakes up, puts the headset on, and he spends his whole day like that, and he even goes to sleep in VR, and then he, like, you know, the headset falls off or whenever I sleep. Just like some some nut What does it look like?

I would look close your eyes and imagine this guy. Yeah. Like, Right.

So the the beard touches the chest hair side. The

beard is no line. Yeah.

We strong borders.

He has a rack just for fedoras.

Right. Like, it's fair. It's very limited.

So

so but but basically, like, you know, there's some people that are spending a lot of time there. But, you know, I I don't know if that's, like, a big one yet, but, like, I I'm just sort of, like, brainstorm off the top of my head, you know, people who really, really care about certain things. And I think you'll see this with pet stuff. Think you see this with, like, in, like, house stuff that that's going on. Like, if you're in the gym business right now, you know, the mobile minority through COVID has been, like, home gyms. Like, those people are never coming Once they put, like, thousands of dollars of gym equipment in their garage or their row, the, you know, bedroom in their house, like, they're not coming back into the gym industry So it's a mobile minority. They have voted with their feet, and now they're going down a different path, a different lifestyle.

Yeah. I think that that's a really good term. I'm I'm on board with mobile minority. But what does it have to do with engines?

It well, no. It's about, like, the the few people that go in actually, like, they do something different. Right? So, like, you were saying, like, Elon in the sort of electric car movement. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that that's a small number of people who just, like,

took a sharp left turn and decided, nope. We're gonna, like, gonna get off the oil and gas system. We're gonna, like, not have a combustible as your car. We're not gonna buy from any of these brands. Like, we're just gonna go fully electric. Do you think but here's the thing I've been that I think about when I think about him and people like him is I think, okay. So obviously,

he's right. So this Tesla thing, like, it's right.

But

it didn't seem that way all the time. It seemed like the toll opposite.

And there's moments in my life where I'm like, I firmly believe that this is the future. Like, I firmly believe that many homes are gonna be bought online.

Like that's an example. But along the way, I have so many doubts. So I'm like, screw it. And so what I would like to know is I wonder how he because he doesn't give off that appearance like he ever has doubt. He's like, no, no, no, like, this surely just makes sense. But then he does say all the time he's like, I think we're gonna go bankrupt, but that doesn't mean he thinks that his idea is wrong. He just thinks that maybe, like, they're just gonna run out of money because they didn't have enough runway. And so do you think that someone like him or a lot of these other people like that that there is self doubt or

or what?

He moves straight to the end. Now, if you listen to a talk, he actually says three things. So he says,

They're like, how did you decide to do this? No car company had ever? No American car company had been made since Jeep, like, ninety years ago or something like that. Nobody had ever made an electric car, you know, that was popular, you know, a a a fully electric

car. Nobody had ever, you know, started a rocket company, a private rocket company, all the stuff And he he basically just said, they're like, so how did you decide to do it? And he's like, well, I agreed. Like, the probability of success was low.

But it was worth doing.

So I just did it. You know, like, he's basically like, I thought it was worth doing. We humanity needs this. So it's worth doing, certainly.

Probability of success is low, certainly.

And then, he said one other thing which was, like, you know, did you ever think about giving up? And he's, like, he had said in that, like, experiment interview it is not in my nature. And, like, I think it I think it's so if you take those three things, it's like, He doesn't decide to do it because he thinks it's gonna work. In fact, he he decides to do it because he thinks it's worth doing.