00:00
This is an example of a business that is,
00:03
what I call one chart businesses.
00:05
I'm full of catchy shit today. One chart businesses. So what's a one chart business? There are times you can look at one chart,
00:13
and one chart alone can be your business.
00:24
Alright. We're live. What's going on? I haven't seen you in a week. I know. What's going on? Fifth forever.
00:30
Nice jacket, by the way. That's it's fresh.
00:33
Where in White is appreciated. Where in white is just a it's a choice. It's a summer move. It's a choice. It's a summer move. Yeah. You're going you're going to Rubin's party or what?
00:44
No. I I don't think I'm I'm not on that list. Was it last year that you were in the Hamptons when Rick Rubin was having his party and you were, like, What's this? And you didn't wasn't there some story like you hung out with all the limo drivers, the Uber drivers? Yeah. The parking lot instead of going
00:58
the beat the beat that I went to was five doors down from his house. It's a public beach, and there's a parking lot there. And my me and my family were just there hanging out. We drove by. We saw, like,
01:09
you know, Henry Henry Kravis, the founder of KKR, you know, like, fifty billion dollar guy, like, pull up at his two billion dollar or two million dollar bugatti,
01:17
We park in the parking lot, and I see all these huge escalates, all black escalates. And I see, like, these it's mostly, like, these you could tell their drivers. They're in suits. They're playing soccer and eating sandwiches and drinking soda, and I walk over. I'm like, what the hell is this? And they're like, oh, this guy named Michael Rubin throws his party. I go, well, who are you driving? And they actually tell me who they're driving.
01:37
And I'm like, I'm seeing how as I am. I I go like, alright. Like, what's the what's the shit on them? Like, are they good tipper? What's their deal? Are they like, spilled the beans on, like, what's, like, he's like, oh, this person's actually broke. You know, like, he always haggles with us over five hundred dollars or yeah. So I hung up the parking lot in Michael Rubin's party.
01:54
Most,
01:57
relatable
01:57
blue collar thing to do is just to go and be like, Hey, pass the sunflower seeds and just start kicking it with these guys in the parking lot.
02:06
I saw it. It was like a movie a little bit. It was like they're just like playing soccer and drinking coke. Yeah. By the way, the way you described that was definitely, like, straight out of, like, a favela in Brazil. You're like, yeah. They were just, drinking Coca Cola and and eating sandwiches while playing soccer in the part and the gravel
02:21
That's really what they were doing. I mean, it was it was it was like, but it was fun. And, you know, it was all like these long island guys, like, Hey, what are you doing? You know, like, that type of thing.
02:29
I saw a video of that party.
02:31
And
02:33
I think the reaction when they post that video for most people is like, oh my god. Like, cool. I I, you know, I hope one day I can attend this the white party at Michael Rubin's house. I gotta say I saw that thing, and I was like, this would be my worst nightmare. It'd be very uncomfortable. Right? Having to look cool.
02:50
I just that alone is already I have a halfway to hell. Having to look cool dressed up for You're wearing a mic you're Sean's wearing a Mickey Mouse t shirt right now. Just fly.
03:02
By the way, I bought this recent week. This is new. This isn't, like, some old thing in the closet. This was I bought this during my trip just now.
03:10
So having to look cool and then going to a place with a bunch of people who are super famous
03:15
and then having to, like,
03:18
be in Call historians.
03:20
And, like, try to get into conversations and then be in those conversations.
03:24
I just wanna go home. I've I've even I I just I already wanna go home, and I wasn't even invited. So Michael rubin, you could lose my invite is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. It's like you'd rather play their their characters in Madon than actually hang out with me. Yeah. I would just start cleaning. I'd be like, I'm just gonna make myself useful here because the the the rest socializing
03:41
is not gonna I'm just gonna have I'm gonna have Marie condo this bitch right now and, like, start taking out trash. I'm like, I'll just join the serving the crew, like, serving appetizers because I'd be like, I know
03:52
the I will have more fun
03:54
doing anything besides this. Where do you wanna go from here? I was looking at a company called after.
03:59
After dot com. Have you ever heard of this? After dot com?
04:03
A very good, domain. So an amazing domain. So after dot com is cremation as a service, basically. And you could pre plan it, or you can do it after somebody passes away.
04:13
The the reason I actually wanna talk about this, it's interesting business on its own. This is an example of a business that is,
04:19
what I call one chart businesses.
04:22
I'm full of catchy shit today. One chart businesses. So what's a one chart business? There are times you can look at one chart,
04:29
and one chart alone can be your business plan. So, for example, have you seen the rise in the popularity of cremation?
04:37
No. Popping off nowadays. Cremation is like,
04:41
it's gonna be tide pods.
04:43
It's in right now. So I saw this chart. I thought Did did not everyone get,
04:49
cremation? Basically cremation,
04:53
in the United States,
04:54
in, like, the last, I don't know, twenty years or something like that, has gone from, like, ten percent of the population chooses cremation to over fifty percent. I think it's actually it's almost sixty or seventy percent now, which is, like, kind of insane. I had no idea this was true.
05:11
So burial rates, are going down and cremation rates are going way up.
05:17
And you just see that one chart alone. You're like, okay. In twenty years, the the the thing has shifted where it went from the super minority to the majority.
05:25
Alright. That alone tells me there's room for building interesting business in this space. It's a one chart business. And there's actually been several of these that I've, like, encountered over the years. Like, one chart,
05:37
one chart can tell you tell you a full story.
05:40
And so this is this is one of them.
05:42
And, these guys have built a really good business on top of this. I I don't wanna go into too much detail about their actual thing, but I just thought that was crazy. And this is, like, where, like, what you guys had with trends was, like, kind of a cool business because you guys would identify trends like this. You would say, okay. Yeah. In the nineteen,
05:58
in the nineteen sixties, cremation was three percent. In the in nineteen nineties, it grew to seventeen percent. And right now in twenty twenty, it's over fifty percent.
06:07
If that's true, then what? What are all the second order consequences of that? Who are the providers for this? Who does the b to b e commerce of this? Who has the highest SEO ranking for this, and that website's actually getting way more popular than than they realize because,
06:22
this is growing over time. And so you take that one chart and you can actually
06:27
run a whole business plan off. Wow. So do they,
06:31
I'm, a, yes. You're right. And, b, I'm looking at after dot com.
06:35
They I don't think they raised money. They're they're they're Mormons. They're based out of provost,
06:40
Provo Utah.
06:43
This is this is wild. How did you find this? They reached out because I was I told people I was buying, buying Nordy steaks and business and investing in businesses. And I think these guys were raising money or wanted to well, I think they're raising money, but they're not trying to sell,
06:57
at least they're they're I think they're trying to go big fundraise. So
07:01
they reach out. This definitely could be big. It's twenty five hundred dollars.
07:05
Their TAM is everyone on Earth we're all getting there eventually. Do but in our own, like,
07:12
an oven, do they? Like, they just, like It's the logistics. So basically what they do is they get the lead, they then book the kind of like the they either take the prepayment if you're gonna do it ahead of time or,
07:23
afterwards. They they say, okay. We will be your provider.
07:26
They can do, like, kind of, like, the full logistics. So, basically,
07:30
you know, it's like the Domino's pizza tracker. Right? Pickup. Drop off. Delivery. They do the whole thing.
07:38
You know, and you could see kinda step by step where you're at in the process.
07:42
This is wild. So to to your first point, our good buddy, Jack Smith, you know, he started Vungel, sold it for seven hundred fifty million dollars. It was making a million dollars today in revenue. He told me I I was like, Jack, why'd you start Vungal? He's like, well, I just saw that, mobile, like, like, games on your phone were gonna be really popular. I just saw, like, a chart. I think he said from Forrester research report. He's like, I just saw this chart that says, like, oh, mobile games are, like, ticking over the world. And he was, like, what can we make on top of that?
08:10
Like, and that's why he came up with Vungal, which was ads in a game. And so he built an ad network. And it was the same thing where he's like, oh, that's a thing. Let's just get on that tidal wave and, like, just they don't matter which cert board we pick. Let's just pick a board, and, hopefully, it will catch. And, and that was, like, the same thing. Jeff Bezos says this is how he decided to quit his job in, I think he worked at some private equity firm, that's famous. And he quit his high paying job and was like, I'm gonna go start I'm gonna go start a, internet company. Why internet company? He goes, I've read a stat doing my research for at the firm that the internet is growing
08:44
two thousand three hundred percent per year. And that blew my mind. And if that's true, then I'm gonna go build an inter internet company. That line is a beautiful line. So we actually use that quote on the from page of trends where he goes. I started to he goes, he goes, I saw a report that said the internet was going by twenty three hundred percent per year. Nothing grows that fast unless it's in a petri dish.
09:04
And he's like, that's what I knew. I had to start something. And so I wrote a list of ideas of things that we could possibly sell on the internet, and we just so happen to choose books. Yeah. Exactly. They chose books because he was like, oh, I what is the advantage of the internet? You could have infinite selection because there's there's no shelf space limit. Right? There's no physical shelf. So he's like, what has wide selection? Okay. What also won't go bad. It can't be perishable. It has to be durable.
09:28
And then what all what is easy to ship? And so he's like, you know, those three, and he's like, there's market demand for it. Cool. Books. Books will be the place where we start.
09:36
By the way, I just found that, Steph Smith, so former, you know, writer of of Trans had a great,
09:42
tweet about this, actually. So I just pulled this up all while you were talking while I was looking the quote. And she said, famously, Jeff Bezos had this stat that made him quit his job. What are the generation defining stats of today? Here's number one. Here's what she had. The cost of mapping a genome has fallen by a hundred thousand percent over the last fifteen years. So it went from like a hundred million dollars to less than a thousand dollars. So mapping genomes. If that's true, if the cost is dropping, like, like a rock, what what what could be done off that? The second.
10:08
College tuition has outpaced how much people earn by ten x. Here's this one chart that,
10:14
that shows, you know, people's earnings over time and the cost of college over time. It's like cost of college going way up. That's a one chart business right there. Cyber insurance loss ratios have increased for years despite exponentially growing rates. Your loss ratio is basically how many, claims you have. So cybersecurity is becoming an exponential issue. The percentage of men under thirty not having sex has tripled.
10:33
In the last decade. So before,
10:36
men not having sex was like, you know, fifteen percent. Now it's thirty percent of men are are not having sex under the age of thirty. Before the age under the age of thirty. So you just made it. Nice.
10:47
So yeah.
10:50
Ali?
10:52
Couple other ones you had it here. It used to be that eight hours of sleep was a norm on average. Now people get six point eight.
10:59
So the sleep industry and the, like, effects of of not sleeping are gonna go gonna go up.
11:05
The electronic system in a car was five percent of car cost. Now it's fifty percent of car costs.
11:10
It's not just self driving cars. There's cars are basically rolling computers. Dude, those are brilliant. Yeah. You you, like, I've I've definitely have started stuff because I've seen things like that. I remember sitting with one of the founders of calm. This guy Alex too, and we were at lunch.
11:24
And he just burst out laughing out of nowhere.
11:28
And we were like, what? And he goes,
11:30
I just realized
11:31
that
11:33
there must be, like,
11:36
ten million people a day dying on Facebook.
11:39
I go, what? I guess, like, Facebook must have so much churn just due to death? He's like, they probably have millions of users churn because they died every day.
11:49
That's insane. And he he just starts he starts laughing. And you're like, Hey, Alex. Like, you freaking autistic weirdo. Like He's just laughing can it be normal? Like, can you imagine
12:00
millions of people churning because they died every day from your product? Like, he's like, what do they do with those profiles? How does that work? And he's like, what what there's a team of people just like the morgue at Facebook just cleaning up these dead profiles.
12:14
Let's get sign up for after dot com. More people died during lunch today than use our product. You know, like, more people on Facebook died than have ever our product. He was just laughing uncontrollably.
12:24
Yeah.
12:25
You're like, yeah. That's hilarious, Alex.
12:27
That's
12:29
that's so funny.
12:31
So this is my first time recording back in Austin. So, basically, most summers between, like, May and October, I go to New York because I have family there and we like to stay there. This time, we only did it for, like, six weeks, and I'm back. And every time I come back, I get this immense amount of stress because typically when I go, I'll go for three months, and I only bring a carry on. So I basically bring,
12:52
a pair of crocs, a pair of workout shoes, and one nice dress shoes. And then I bring, like, two workout shorts, two workout shirts, and I just cleaned them regularly. Cracks,
13:01
workout shorts, a box of Captain Crunch and a switch blade. Mhmm.
13:06
That's called summer ready
13:09
with the yoyo, like, those little are the little pager things on my belt.
13:14
Yeah. I got my yomega,
13:16
my crocs,
13:17
and some bubble gum, and I'm good.
13:20
Okay. So you so why why did you say you're stressed out? What do you mean you're stressed Just about what? Because alright. So I I bring nothing, basically. I bring very little stuff, and I rent a furnished place. And then I in my bookbag, I bring two lights for the podcast, an extra cell phone that I hang up, and that's my camera in this microphone.
13:35
And
13:36
I come back to my house, and I realize I've got a closet full of stuff I've got two cars that I gotta go and, like, alright, I gotta make sure that, like, the battery didn't die. I have a motorcycle. I gotta make sure the battery didn't die. The tires are full. I've got this cold plunge where I gotta go, like, make sure I filled it with water and I gotta clean it. I just have, like, shit. Like, there's just stuff. There's stuff to, like, maintain.
13:56
And I saw a picture of our friend Sahil, and he had his baby,
14:00
a Roman, a beautiful baby, but in the back, he had literally
14:04
Three barrels. They were barrels. They were dock buckets. They were barrels of toys.
14:10
And I see all this stuff that I have now, and I'm stressed out about the stuff. I've gotta go ranch an hour and a half away. I gotta go check-in on I have all this stuff, and I'm freaking out about having kids, about all this other stuff I'm gonna get. Sarah's making like a a baby shower registry, and I see all this stuff, and it's so much stuff.
14:29
It's freaking me out, man. I don't want any of it. And I'm wondering, I don't think you freak out over this because I think you you probably have a lot of stuff. I got all the time, but I for one freaking about it. Have you did you you don't live lightly at all?
14:42
Bro,
14:44
living heavy might be the title of my autobiography. That's I mean,
14:48
you're tired of living lightly.
14:51
Yeah, I indulge.
14:53
Our kids have tons of crap. That's what kids do. They they bring a bunch of crap into your house. I got a dog. Dog's not so crap. I got some crap. There's just stuff everywhere. I literally have a ball pit and a tent and a fort
15:05
And, like, you know, I I have so much stuff in every single room. If you saw this room I'm in right now, you would wanna, like, pass out. But I gotta say I'm no I'm no therapist,
15:15
but I kinda feel like what you're having is actually, like,
15:20
fatherhood, fear, and you're just redirecting it, misguiding it, and pretending that you're worried about the stuff. I think this is some underlying
15:28
life's about to change. I'm about to become a parent. I'm about to lose my freedom. And I think it's expressing itself in some weird ways, like, when you get hives because you're worried about your math test. Well, I get a little nervous, and you might be right, but also I get a little bit nervous, just about all the stuff I have in general. So I was talking to my buddy, Dennis, and he's got he's a single guy. He's got three cars. And he's like, I have all these cars. I'm like, I gotta go, like, run them to make sure. Like, because I've been driven this thing in a month. I gotta go, like, drive it around. I'm like, dude, it's, like, we all wanted this shit, and then we all got it. And now we realize we to go take care of it. And, like, if I see someone with a Ferrari, I'm like, man, if you get a flat tire, that's like a ten thousand dollar, like, repair to, like, get that to where you need to go, where you gotta repair, and you gotta fix it and everything. Right. It just takes so much mental space. And so what are you gonna do? You're gonna give it all away. You just to cry about it? What's the situation now? The situation is you have to be a conscious consumer, I think, which is like my woo woo phrase of the week. But, basically, I have to be really, really careful. And so I'm going to the baby registry, and I'm, like, if it doesn't, like, if it's not a book, we we shouldn't ask for it. And we should actually, like, basically, say to people don't buy us anything,
16:30
but, like, I'm just I'm trying to say, or if you want something and they sell it at Target, you have to walk there and get it because I don't want all these boxes around the house. We gotta, like, it's isn't it crazy that we buy stuff? It comes from Amazon, then we have to pay one eight hundred got junk to come and we had given them three hundred dollars to go throw away all the stuff. You know what I mean? Like, the boxes. It's it's it's weird. So I'm just gonna buy less stuff. It's basically what I'm gonna do. I think. Is that not the answer? I think you're on the right side of history.
16:56
Although
16:57
I think with kids is a different game, like, for example, one of the reasons I got a lot of stuff, saying you're on the right side of history is such like a woo woo way of saying, I agree. Like, it's, like, the the right side of history is what, like,
17:10
political people use, you know, in the right set of history. You know why it works? Because you're talking about the most minor
17:16
personal pet peeve. So I gotta elevate it
17:19
by saying you're on the right side of history, making it feel a little more grand. Okay. That's a little trick. You know, I I think it's weird that you don't experience this. I think a lot of people are experiencing this right now, and they're and, like, when you go to some people's homes, they they have a basement full of stuff. And I'm like, dude, a cluttered a cluttered room is a cluttered brain in my mind. I threw away. I I hired a guy to come over, cleared my calendar, I hired a guy to come over, and he just took so much crap out of our house. Like, we just removed everything out of the garage, He took a whole dining table, chairs, a rug that I didn't like. Just took
17:51
loads of stuff away, and it felt like, you know, the satisfaction when you popposite or something like that. It it felt like that. I popped my house as it. It does feel great when you get rid of stuff and you lighten the load. But
18:03
I would say is one of the reasons I had a lot of stuff. I have a lot of stuff as a as a parent is because
18:08
you end up I don't know. Not everybody does this to better parents than us, but we bribe our kids a ton.
18:13
And it turns out that, like, the thing you want more than, like, a neat tidy home and foot light footprint
18:21
is, like,
18:22
Thirteen minutes of relaxation. And you know how you get thirteen minutes of relaxation?
18:25
You stop at freaking dollar general or whatever, and you buy some crap. That your kid's gonna be excited about playing for, like,
18:33
thirty minutes. And, like, that's all you need. And you if you have that, alright, it's worth it. We'll get rid of that later. And so having stuff that your kids can play with
18:42
is how you get to be on the internet. And if you don't wanna be on the internet, cool. Keep your minimal house. And you can go and entertain your kids with your bare hands. But if you don't wanna do that, you better buy the ball pit and the slide and the nugget and, like, all these little things so that they have stuff to do. And the target you you've got the target
19:01
grocery cart, the target checkout standard. Because then I can say Oh, let's play grocery store. You go shopping and buy everything, and I'll be sitting over here at my laptop. And then they do it in another nine minutes passes. And I'm just nine minutes closer to freedom till the day that they are old enough to go to school. And so, you know, that this is,
19:19
it's a really It's it's a tool for survival is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. And the last thing on this is the reason I love going to New York is when I go is because
19:28
I say, like, San Francisco and New York, where I I lived in San Francisco for ten years. You're you're outside of San Francisco now, New York as well. It's a land of ones and tens. Meaning, Everything about that place is either a one out of ten or it's a ten out of ten. The beauty,
19:43
the energy, the excitement ten out of ten. The crime, like, seeing the homeless people do stuff, like, like, like, feeling like it's a third world country sometimes. That's a one out of ten. Austin is a land of six and sevens. Everything's
19:56
mostly pretty good, mostly all the time. It's never gonna blow you away with inspiration, but it's always gonna be like, Oh, this is nice. I feel nice. Whereas, you know, you walk around the city of New York and, like, some of the time, you're like, this makes me feel alive. You know? Like, this is, like, I just, like, inject this shit in my veins. The other time through there, you're like, I need space. I need quiet. Like, I'm freaking out. You know what I'm saying? And so what I'm trying to figure out is what's a good life? Is it surrounding yourself with ones and tens or is it surrounding yourself? Is it seven all the time? And that's something that I that we're debating at the moment. I mean, this that's a big life question. What do you think the answer is? I don't know yet. I'm I don't have to make my decision yet, but I was wondering if you've ever thought about that.
20:35
I've never thought about it as as well as you just put it. What I would say is that anytime,
20:40
I learned this thing a long time ago, which is one choice is no choice. Right? Because if you have if you only have one choice, that means you really actually have no choice. Yeah. Just inertia.
20:49
Two bad choices just tells you you need a third choice. And so I think what you're actually saying is you need a third choice.
20:55
Like,
20:57
you know, the thing that worked for me was live in California, but live in the Burbs so you don't have the crime and and stuff like that. You do lose a little bit on the energy and the, like, kind of ambition around you, but you can kinda hack around that a little bit.
21:11
So you get kind of the weather, the beauty, the the the sort of the this California sunshine, all that good stuff,
21:18
without the the scent the downtown San Francisco go crime and,
21:22
you know, recklessness, lawlessness. I think what I'm gonna do, and we could wrap up here, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna we're gonna rent a place for one year in Westport, Connecticut.
21:30
Never in a million years. Did I ever thought I'd say I'd live in Connecticut, but I met this woman who I'm gonna talk about Defina Smith. And she goes,
21:38
I, like, I met her through Hampton, and she was, like, I know what you're going through. I I went to the same thing. We found this place called Westport, Connecticut, sixty minutes outside of New York City, It sounds crazy, but come and visit me. I went out there, and I was like, this is nice.
21:52
So I might do Westport Connecticut, but I can't believe I'm be a Connecticut person, but I think that's what we might do. Speaking of what, do you want me to talk about her? Yeah. Tell me the story.
22:00
I met this woman at a haunted dinner set next door basically, her name is Divina Smith, and her her store or or company is called Covet and Maine. So you could check it out. It's COVID, like, you want something. So c o v e t, and then main, like hair, m a n e. Are you on the website? Yeah. There's just,
22:19
Like, you know, I don't wanna go Rick Rubin's party, but this party that I'm looking at right here looks amazing. This is just, like, beautiful women running through the, like, just holding hands and running through the sand, which is just hilarious.
22:30
Dude, so check this out. So she started out, in real state just doing normal stuff, but her parents own a beauty supply,
22:37
like store, like a brick like a small store. And so she starts helping them out, and so she starts saying, like, oh, let's create a website, and we'll sell hair extensions online.
22:45
So you I I don't know if your wife uses hair extensions. My wife does sometimes hair extensions basically, it costs a sometimes two or three thousand dollars for really fancy ones, sometimes cheaper five hundred to a thousand dollars. And they basically, like, weave this They basically, like, sew extra hair into your hair, and it makes it look really nice for a woman. And she starts selling this online. She's like, this doesn't really work that well the way I the way that I thought it was gonna work. So instead, what she does is she invests around a hundred to a hundred fifty thousand dollars into starting this business And what she does is she starts hollering at different,
23:19
beauty source. And she creates like an invite system where
23:22
like, look, we don't have that much inventory and we wanna, like, onboard people effectively.
23:26
So you just apply. And then if we can, like, make this happen, we'll start setting you our product, and our products is really high quality. And then also, we could start sending you some customers because we're gonna do really good with the marketing. We're gonna send people who want our particular type of hair. And, hopefully, when you go and get hair, you'll tell your friends, oh, I got this brand of hair You can go to their website and see who deals their stuff. Well, anyway,
23:47
she only has six employees.
23:48
In her first year of business, they did four million dollars in revenue, And they're in year four or five, and they're doing tens of millions in revenue. By year two, she was already in the tens of millions.
23:58
Year four, she's doing many tens of millions. They have, like, two or three agents, agencies who work for her, but only about six full time people.
24:06
And if you go to their website, they're killing it, and I was how what are you doing so well? She's like, man, we host these, like, meetups,
24:12
where it'll be, like, tons of, women who own these beauty supply companies. So her
24:19
like, you know, like literally a brick and mortar, like beauty store. And we do, like, these parties where we, like, teach them a little bit about how they run their business. We'll have speakers who, like, have best practices. And then also, like, if they happen to want to apply to sell our product, we'll do that. And that's, like, basically, how they're getting most of their customers. And it's a super fascinating company
24:37
because a, it's just a simple
24:40
ish website. I mean, it's nothing like crazy, fascinating.
24:43
Her the, the hair is of high quality, which, by the way, do you know how they get hair from this? No. Is it donations? It's real hair. It's usually no. It's from it's from India. So, like, there's, I guess, in certain parts of India, it's like
24:56
holy or something to shave your head, or they go to China where you can pay people and they'll cut their hair and you buy their hair from them. And so it's real hair. And so it's like a process to get, like, a high quality hair extension.
25:07
But she built this company on on on this on this idea of, like, going after these hair salons, and it's super fascinating because, a, this is an industry that I knew nothing about. And, b, I actually think things like this could be pretty huge because it cost two or three thousand dollars to get this done in some cases. So I forgot I actually went down this rabbit hole a long time ago because a guy I did dinner with once
25:26
you know, when I used to host these mastermind dinners,
25:30
worked at this company called Maven. Did you ever hear about this company? Yeah. They they they raised too much money, I
25:35
think. They raised, like, thirty million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz and Serena Williams and Jimmy Williams and Jimmy Ivy, like, you know, every cool person you can imagine.
25:43
And,
25:45
So they raised all this money, and this guy Taylor came to dinner. And he was, I think, like, the COO or something like that. They're based in Oakland.
25:53
And he was telling us about this. And he was, like,
25:56
is, you know, basically one guy explaining to, like, five other guys who've never, like, done hair extensions,
26:02
about how crazy this business is. And he's like, yeah. Like, you have these stylists. The stylists are basically, like, you know, these kind of, like, independent contractors
26:10
people follow them from, like, salon to salon. Like, wherever they're working, they're trying to book them. And then the stylus has to go and procure the actual hair And so they go to, like, these warehouses or these wholesalers to go buy the actual hair. And then they get the hair from India. And I remember going on a YouTube rabbit hole of, like,
26:28
how they get the hair from villages in, like, India or China or places like this because that's where the bulk of the hair gets imported from. And how they get paid, you know, whatever dollars for for their hair. And it's, like, kind of a controversial thing about, like, you know, is this
26:44
Like, is it exploitive? There's, like, rumors of, like, people being forced to do it, which is not great.
26:50
And so there's all all kinds of stuff in the supply chain about ethically sourcing the hair.
26:55
And there's some great videos on YouTube about this. If you're ever curious, I I, you know, I recommend this is like a fun fun rabbit hole to go down.
27:01
I don't know what happened with Maven because I think they raised a lot of money,
27:06
and I haven't heard about them in a long time.
27:09
And,
27:11
it looks like they
27:13
raised forty million more to go into Walmart.
27:16
I mean, it looks like there's still one. Six million in total.
27:19
They've raised seventy six million dollars a lot. I don't know why, and I no no offense to, to Taylor. No offense to Taylor. Hope they hope they succeed. But something about companies with this pattern
27:30
of, like,
27:33
cool idea,
27:34
usually underrepresented founder going after space that that, you know, white tech startups ignore,
27:40
then, like, raises Meg around from celebrity
27:43
investors.
27:46
Then you kinda don't hear about the fur like, maybe they raised too much money. Like, too much money can break companies. This happened with,
27:52
like, but that Tristan Walker's company, like Walker and whatever. Yeah.
27:57
The Walker brands, they made, like, a razor for Blackmen to shave their head, I think. Yeah, their beard or whatever. And I I think that was a great idea.
28:05
I was a great, like, model, but when you raise that much money, it puts much growth pressure on the business. It can sometimes break it. And so I hope that this didn't break it, but,
28:14
I've just seen this happen several times now. Start to start to notice a little bit of a pattern. Yeah. It says in a press release that they have they've done it says they did a hundred twenty million in revenue, but they phrase it in a way where I think that means the company's lifespan. They've done a hundred and twenty million in revenue. But, yeah, it stupid. I think that your cap table is, like, one of the very few things in business that is an irreversible decision. It's very challenging to make up for that mistake. And so this is why this woman, Divina, she like, when I met her, I was, like, I started talking to her. I'm, like, are you on social media? She's, like, a little bit, but I haven't decided if I actually wanna go all in on it. And I was, like,
28:49
You're if you Google this lady, you'll see her name's Daphina Smith. I'm like, you you could be you know, you could be, like, a huge deal if you wanted to. Like, you you what what do the kids say? You got the riz. She's got the riz. She's like this, like,
29:01
very
29:02
charismatic,
29:02
very
29:03
pretty tall, like,
29:05
compose, like, when I see your talk, I'm like, oh, man. You're, like, a proper CEO. Like, you've got the if factor.
29:11
And
29:13
She's like, she's like, I don't know if I actually wanna be famous, or I don't know if I actually wanna go hard that way. Where I'm like, well, whenever you want to, I I think you'll kill it. And so I saw when she started telling me story, I had no idea that this stuff could be this big. And she told me some of the numbers behind it, and I was like flabbergasted,
29:27
at this type of business.
29:29
Yeah. That's crazy.
29:31
So
29:31
so her model is this kinda like direct to stylus model. There's a few other businesses that are like this. Have you heard of style seat? Yeah. I like style c. My wife used it for a little while. What what exactly is it, though? There was a period of time where, like, oh, this happens a lot business where there's a period of time where one idea,
29:47
like, When an idea works, it can work across, like, a couple of verticals, not all verticals, but a couple of verticals. And if you figure it out, it makes sense. So There was a time when, like, Mind Body Online was getting, popular. It's basically, like, this idea of sort of, like, directly booking
30:02
online booking of yoga classes, online booking of Pilates classes. And then the fact that the there was like this rise of the instructor, like the celebrity instructor. This happens with Peloton, happened with yoga, happened with Pilates. There's, like, people started there people realized that you you're not coming for the venue. You're coming for the specific instructor. And the same thing is true. And by the way, that that mind body company so mind body was software for yoga classes originally. I think they went public. I think it's like a wildly -- Yeah. It's like a billion dollar company.
30:30
And with very, like, old school software. Like, it wasn't, like, slick, new, fresh blah blah blah.
30:36
But people started to realize that, like, same thing it was true for stylus. Like, you don't go to the hair so some people go to the local, you know, like me,
30:44
My selection of where I'm getting my haircut is, like, what is the closest place to me in that moment that I have thirty minutes? Right? Like, I'm going there. Yeah. Yeah. Which which great clips is available at the moment. I just Who's got a big enough bowl to put on there? Dude, I just gotta head to LA. I went to this fancy LA place because I was I would this is the nearest place. I went in And I sat down, and then I was like, I don't know. Can you cut my hair? Like, the
31:08
standard dude cut.
31:10
I don't even know what it's called. And then he's like, okay. I think I know what you're talking about. He starts and I go, you think?
31:17
I go
31:18
I was like, I was like, oh, shoot. Because he was going so slow. He was like cutting every individual hair with his scissors to, like, make it awesome.
31:24
And I go, Actually,
31:27
different instructions. Could you give me the best haircut you can in fifteen minutes?
31:31
And he's like, what? And I was like, Yeah. I only wanna be here for, like, fifteen minutes. Could you just do your best inside a fifteen minute time slot?
31:40
And he was like, I don't know if I should be offended or
31:43
like, this is exciting. And he was just like, alright.
31:46
Fifteen minutes. He's like, can you put a timer on? I go, yeah. I put a timer on. And then this guy, like, cut the shit out of my hair for fifteen minutes. And I was like, wherever you're at when you're done, let's just call it. He's like, you can come back later. He's like, you can come back later today, man. And, you know, I'll finish. And I was like, it's hair. It'll it'll be it'll be it'll be black when it is in ten days. It's alright.
32:06
He's he's like, I won't charge you. I was like, you couldn't pay me to come back. You know, I'm done. I don't wanna stick with them over here. Dude, I go to these orthodox church guys in Brooklyn.
32:16
Go to these Jewish guys in Brooklyn, and I love them because it's all about efficiency, and then I'll end up just sitting down at the chair anyway. Just be like, tell me about Uzbekistan.
32:24
I wanna hear some stories, but, like, I wanna place where there's gonna call me Bob, and there's gonna be a a handwritten sign that's hopefully misspelled that says haircut twenty eight dollars. Beard trim, eight dollars. Like, that's what I want.
32:37
Like, you you better have scotch tape in that drawer of yours. Like, otherwise, I'm out. If you take credit cards, I'm out.
32:43
Yeah. So,
32:45
anyways, I don't know how I got out of that. Anyway, style seat made it easy to book a stylist, and
32:50
I think they got valued at one point, like, at a nearly a billion dollars. And Melody, the the woman who's been running it. She's been doing this for, like, a decade now. I'm really curious to see how that one that would plays out because she also raised a bunch of money and and kind of was going for it. But this this hair salon, barber
33:05
thing It's kinda big. Like, I don't know if you've seen Squire. That's another billion dollar company in this space. What's Squire? Squire is the same thing for Barber shops. So it's basically, like, Barbershop Booking software.
33:18
So, you know, it's a it's an app that lets you book, you know, book your barber mobile barbers were always like, you know, pick up the phone. They're cutting someone's hair. They pick up the cordless phone. They're like, yeah, come on in. What's your name? And they're like, can't even write it down because you're cutting someone's hair at the same time. So Squire just kinda like streamline that process. And I think they might do payments as well.
33:37
So, like, p people providing software
33:40
to these brick and mortar,
33:42
like, small businesses
33:44
is really it's a really, really hard niche. But when you if you can do it, if you can get the product product market fit, the scale is really big because there is a lot of these small, like, it's a giant fragmented market, and there's so many of them that if you can actually figure out a product that works in a sales model that works, which is the two hard things.
34:04
These things can be a lot bigger than they sound because it sounds like, oh, software for hairstylist, who cares? Well, it turns out it's actually, like, there's a lot of them. Yeah. And I would never wanna work in that industry because I think it's it does seem impossibly hard, but
34:17
if you're into it, it it it can work. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See
34:20
most
34:26
RMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot
34:35
grow better.
34:37
Let me give you a blue collar side hustle. So, we haven't had one of these blue collar side hustles in a while. So,
34:44
bringing it back. But do you, like, you, like, took one flight and you were around blue collar people and you got inspired. I left my house and I, you know, I was around somebody and who listens to the podcast.
34:53
Shout out to Prisha. She,
34:56
owns this amazing restaurant in LA. She I don't know if you know this. So she listens to the pod, and she's like, every time you guys shout out, you're like, four female listeners. I'm like, yeah. That's me. Woo. Like, you know, I feel so good. And then Dude, a lot of women are offended by that. I don't say that anymore. I still say it because I say it with with endearment,
35:14
you know, lead lead into the joke.
35:17
The problem is the joke's not that funny. So, you know, may not be the right thing to lean into, but but I'm I'm committed.
35:23
So anyways, I go to her she has this restaurant in LA. How'd you meet her? She had taken my power writing course and,
35:30
she had volunteered to, like, I do this thing where I'm, like, okay. Show me your website and we do, like, a live teardown of it. And so we had done one of her website
35:37
because she sells these, like, meets a lot of, like,
35:41
drink things, like, this kinda, like, mobile or this, or this little, like, She has, like, a restaurant, but then she has, like, this e commerce side of her business too. So anyways, okay. I done a tear down of it. Didn't pay much attention to it after the fact. But Ben,
35:54
business partner, Ben keeps in touch with anybody that I meet. He's just like, somehow has tabs on everybody. He's like, yo, blowing up in LA. I'm like, what what do you mean? He's like, she got this restaurant.
36:04
She's blowing up. Like, the restaurant's getting really popular. Her brand is getting really popular. She's got a podcast that's getting kinda popular.
36:11
And he's like, yes. What's her full name? Let's get we'll give her a proper shout out. What's her full name? Pricia Lopez. Okay. So,
36:17
she and she's got a cookbook Like, she's kinda, like, doing her thing. She's got a lot of lot of stuff going, which I think is pretty fun. She got a book called Asada, the art of Mexican style grilling by Brisa Lopez.
36:28
I met her and her brother. So anyway, so she invites us. She's like, hey, you're you're in LA. You're having meetings anyways. Come to our restaurant and, like, you know, or whatever. We we come to her restaurant. She serves us this amazing meal. You know, we talk about restaurant owner owner energy. She had it? She literally has restaurant owner energy. Like, we walked in We're in her place. She's like, sit down. Food just starts appearing. We're not ordering anything.
36:49
She's literally, like, making my plate by hand. She's like, She's like feeding me. Like, I'm a baby. She's like, try this. Was it free? Did you have to pay? I wish I could have paid. She's like, your money's no good here. And,
37:00
and so the restaurant owner energy was flowing. I loved it. I literally when we walked out, our buddy was, like, Wow. Is that what it's like to own a restaurant? I I I and then our other friend was like, this is how every entrepreneur makes the mistake of owning a restaurant because they experience the one percent amazing feeling when you host people at your restaurant,
37:18
and not the ninety nine percent of actually, you know, running a hard restaurant.
37:21
So she,
37:23
anyways, we're we're hanging out. She's like, I love the pod. She's like, I love the blue collar side hustles. And I was like, oh, yeah. I haven't done that a while. She goes, I got one for you. I go, what is She goes,
37:32
the lice lady.
37:34
The lice lady. What are you what are you talking about? It's just she goes she goes, dude. She's like, I have kids that are in school,
37:41
And,
37:43
if you ever if anybody in class gets lice, everybody has to get checked for lice. And not just ever not just all the kids, like, your whole family basically has to get checked for Lice. And she's like I'm thinking of, like, the pigeon lady in the park who has pigeons all over the place. Is this got I was thinking, like, it's a woman that just has lice all over, like, hanging on her shoulders that she feeds some crackers. Like, go to,
38:03
go to, like, one of these. I don't know. Like, lice treatment l a dot com. It's a mobile
38:08
lice testing service. So what she's what she said about, she goes, yeah. Basically, somebody inevitably
38:14
gets licensed school, Everybody then has to get tested before you you can't come back until everybody gets tested clean, certified clean. So then you can either go and do it, like, or if you want them to come to you because it's time consuming to, like, go and book an appointment somewhere, you can basically there's a nice lady you could just text in LA. You text her, and she's like, cool. I'll come out there. Hundred bucks for me to come out. I'll test you and your whole family plus, like, I don't know, fifty bucks a pop or something like that. A hundred dollars for, like, your certificates.
38:39
And it's basically, like, she makes, you know, like, whatever, five hundred, six hundred dollars for doing this, like, test for the whole family to get it all cleared.
38:47
And she serves, like, these, like, eight districts in LA. And it's, like, that's her territory. And there's, like, another lady out on the East side, and she serves her territory. And they don't cross paths. Otherwise, there's a bit of a showdown. And so,
38:58
she's like, yeah, this lady's making tens of thousands of dollars a month.
39:02
Just booked she's booked out. With these life inspections and life treatments. I was like, wow. This is awesome. This is, I mean, who would have ever who would have ever thought? You know, like, this is a amazing. Because, you know, you she comes over. She gotta check four or five people in your house, and it's a whole it's a whole deal.
39:19
Dude, and a lot of them have, like,
39:21
pretty cute branding. This one's called the lice lifters dot com. And then there's, like, hair helpers dot com, the hair angels dot com. And they're all just made on, like, pretty simple word presses. If you go to simpler web, they get great. They're getting traffic and then they've, like, just crush it on the Google review and the Yelp review.
39:40
And some of them have, like, I'm at lyslifters dot com. They have locations that Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania,
39:47
New Jersey.
39:48
It's almost like a like a franchise. This is super fascinating. This is really fascinating. Very cool. Right? Like, it's you know, lice busters. Here we go. You know? We will come get you.
39:57
It's crazy. Yeah. They they this is like a little model that I think works locally.
40:02
If it works locally, you could do it in a bunch of locations. If you do it in a bunch of locations, you could even franchise it out or or go nationwide if you if you really got aggressive with it. So I kinda love this this little, this little blue collar side hustle. And it's one of these, like, hidden in plain sight niches. Right? Doesn't take a genius.
40:18
To, to pull this thing off. Dude, if you go to licebusters USA dot com, the one you're on, I mean, I made that up, by the way. Is there actually a license? Yeah. I just googled lice bussers. Lice buss USA dot com, they have a couple dozen locations.
40:32
No. This is a real, a super fascinating thing.
40:36
Yeah. This is cool. How much does it cost to have a life buster come to your school? I bet you it's like a thousand dollars for the day or something.
40:43
None of yeah. Exactly. None of them do, like, clear pricing on their website, which is how you know. It's kind of a rip.
40:49
But, like, you know, they got you in a hard spot too. Right? It's like a locksmith. Right? They come over. They're like, well,
40:55
this is a nineteen eighty eight. It's gonna be an extra five hundred dollars. You're like, well,
41:00
am I really gonna tell you to go home, call another locksmith price compare, like, impossible. Right? Like, no one no one has more power on earth than a locksmith
41:10
when they're at your house. Like, it is over at that point.
41:13
You know, that's like a huge scam. Right? Have you ever read about locksmith? So I knew, this guy from Israel who ran one of these things, and he was like, if you Google locksmith Nashville,
41:23
He's, like, there's, like, eight of the ten listings on Google. They're all different branding. I own all of them. And I basically, like, I have, like, indentured servants. So I got, like, my friends who come in from Israel. I say you have to work for me for two years, and he basically sends them leads. And the name of the game is you go to the person's house, you tell them hundred dollars on the phone. You actually charge up four hundred dollars, and it's, like, known for being one of the most shady things there is is the locksmith industry. Have have you not really ever heard of a number? Never heard never been an honest locksmith,
41:50
guy comes to my house.
41:52
He's like,
41:53
you know, first he takes it forever.
41:55
And it's like, basically takes so long that you're like, by the time this gets there, you're already worn out. It's like a negotiation without him even being there. And then it's too late to call somebody else. You just wanna get into your damn car or your house.
42:08
And then they show up and they're like,
42:10
this is gonna be trickier because the,
42:13
the
42:14
this is a house. I'm like, yeah, of course, it's a house. It's like, yeah, it's got studs. So we're just gonna be I'm a stud feet. And I'm like, stud feet. What are you talking about, bro? He's like, oh, like, this oxygen in the air? I'm gonna have to charge you for that. And Oh, it's made out of wood. And literally, what happened the last locksmith, the guy came and he tried to charge us six hundred dollars. And then we were, like, no way. Just out of principle,
42:37
No way.
42:38
You stand here. I'm gonna break this door down with my shoulder and get it repaired for double. Lozy, like, alright. Fine. A hundred bucks. No. He stood there, and he watched us break the door down with our shoulder. And then we paid twelve hundred dollars to get the door repaired.
42:53
I gotta tell you. Never felt more satisfied paying the twelve hundred dollars because that
42:57
sheet didn't get my money. What did he say? What do you smash the door down? Very alpha of you. Much like grass. Well, dude, imagine
43:05
the intent the imagine
43:07
the moment of anticipation when I'm about to charge, and I've only ever seen the shit in movies. I have no idea how much force this is gonna take. And if this fails, if I get slam into this game, does it shoulder? I hurt my shoulder and fall down.
43:21
The absolute worst case scenario. Now we gotta pay this guy and I gotta go to Kaiser.
43:25
Instead, I was like, I must get through this wall.
43:29
And, like, you know, like, moms can lift cars when their children are in need. Like, my ego was trapped. And I had to break this door down. There was no other option, and, of course, I came through in the clutch.
43:40
So, you know, it it ended up working out after two or three solid banks. The the key was I didn't fully commit to the first one. I gave it, like, a tester. Just kinda like, let me do it with yeah. I'm gonna do it over here on the side. Like, if we get to the edge, it's not a middle. Middle's the way to go. Right? Like, where's the point of weakness?
43:57
I can see you standing there. Like, look at your figure to see which way which way the wind's blowing or, like, it's just like calculating.
44:04
Like, you got a piece of chalk and you, like, do a little math to figure out, like, where the best, like, point of entry is. Yeah. Just doing things to stall. I just, like, shoes off. Like, I don't know why. Like, I was just like, let me just hold on. I was just thinking, like, okay, what am I gonna do to get this door down? And you, like, warm up your hands? I don't know why. Perform for this guy. Like, I could've just told him to leave and done it in my privacy, but I had told him, like, that's a rip off. I'm gonna break this door down. Alright. So let me tell you,
44:30
this is actually a good segue to a topic I wanted to talk to you about. I didn't know how we would work this in, but it it worked out perfectly.
44:36
Got it. So there's this phrase that I love, which was,
44:39
I'm looking for that. I'm looking for a triple a locksmith.
44:43
Triple a locksmith. What's a triple a locksmith? So back in the day when they had the phone pages, people would
44:48
the yellow pages, people would go to, like, find a service, like locksmith.
44:51
And,
44:52
it's like doing four four minute abs instead of seven minute abs. You know, you gotta Yeah. Exactly. You could differentiate on many things. You could say We're a locksmith,
45:00
company. We're honest. We have we have good pricing. We are a lot nobody knows that. They're just looking at the LOP. They don't know how to find you find out anything more about you. They're just gonna go based on which locksmith stands out. Guess who stands out the most, the one at the top. And so
45:16
I call it the trip triple a locksmith idea because
45:19
people started to game the system. They're like, oh, instead of calling themselves Smiths locksmiths,
45:24
Like, then they're far down the list, they would call themselves a locksmith. And then some other guy was like, no. No. No. We're double a locksmith. So AA locksmith. They would show up first in the, like, the list. Some other guy comes in and he's like, no, no, I'm a a a locksmith, triple a locksmith, because they're gonna be first on the list. Because, actually, that's all that matters. First on the list is gonna get eighty percent of the the dials.
45:42
And so I love this ex this story because it showed me, like,
45:47
you want somebody who like, I always said when we were hiring engineers, I wanna hire AAA locks is somebody who could do the job on the engineering side, but they have just enough of their mind. Just ten, fifteen percent of their mind is gonna think about, hey, how do we get more customers?
46:00
Oh, if I just put two a's in front of my name. I'll be at the top of the list. Dope. I'll do that. That that that immigrant, it it's like that immigrant house. Yeah. Exactly. So I want the engineer that's got just enough of that that that little that moment of micro hustle where they just figure out, oh, this little thing is gonna help me, you know, help me get a little bit further in life. So I was thinking about these micro hustles, because again, I left the house, start to observe things, start to notice
46:24
how broken some industries are. So I'm at a dinner.
46:28
How long were you gone for? Five days? An eternity.
46:31
Okay.
46:32
I go to dinner and,
46:35
sitting with some friends, and,
46:37
this happened five times. So we went to dinner every single night while we were out while I was in delay. Every single night, the same thing happened at Durham.
46:44
We eat.
46:45
At the end, waiter comes up. And he says,
46:50
can I get you guys a dessert menu? Desert? Anybody want dessert?
46:54
Is that it? And then, you know, his voice is going up like a hot air balloon. And then everyone at the table awkwardly looks around.
47:03
You want did you want any did you want dessert?
47:06
I'm good. I'm good. That's a that's a that's a rookie waiter move. You you set the you just set it down. Even if you just set it down. Same sort of thing. Said, okay. What's the micro
47:15
and and so I was thinking about, I was like, what's the micro hustle move here? If I'm a wave so I'm looking for these moments where you because I meet a lot of people that are like,
47:23
love the pod.
47:24
Yeah, I wanna do my own thing someday,
47:27
but curt currently, I just have this job. And the, like, the gap between the current job
47:33
and
47:34
running their own successful company feels large in their mind. And here's the way to shrink that gap. The real way to share with the app is just do it. But let's say you're you're not just doing it yet. Yeah. Teach me about some teach me about some shrinkage. Let's go. Yeah. You're an expert. Maybe you to explain this. Yeah.
47:50
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my preaching to the choir here. So,
47:56
so I'm like, how do you start to
47:58
Think like a business owner, think like a little bit of an of a hustler
48:03
when you're in your job. Find the moments where you could hustle inside inside your job. And I'm not talking about pitching your boss an idea. I'm talking about just going rogue and making some shit happen, learning, how to be a triple a locks with how to use human psychology to your advantage. So
48:17
The last dinner, I see this guy, and this guy's a little more clever.
48:22
One guy, he goes, he takes instead of instead of saying, dessert menus? Anybody want dessert? Should I bring a dessert menu?
48:29
And instead of just putting down dessert menu and then hoping for the best.
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This guy comes to me at the side of the table. He goes,
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he goes, he goes, I'll he goes, I'll leave this with you to order dessert for the table.
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Nice. Shit.
48:43
That was smooth as a mother. And I was like, wow, like,
48:46
I guess I am the the head of the table, both the man of the house. I do need to abide for my my my my friends here. You know, I do need to to give them an experience, and he just whispered it to me, like, this is our our little secret. You just tell me what you tell me what you want. We'll we'll surprise them. So I was like, that was a smooth move. I said, and I started thinking, we could go even further. And so I started everywhere I was going, I started brainstorming this little micro hustle moment. So then even with this dessert thing, I would make it more fun. I said, what if what if they actually set down a thing? Because most people,
49:14
when it comes to dessert, they
49:17
It looks like there's two answers. Yes or no.
49:20
But there's actually a third answer. Do you know the third answer when it comes to dessert? No. What? I'll have some if you want some. That's actually where everybody lands. It's like yeah. I'll I'll do one if you're doing one. Right? Like, this is how people feel with things. And so I I thought Somebody should actually just set down a little thing in front of everybody. Say, alright. Here's a restaurant. At the end of the meal, there's three little buttons I can put in front of you. Button number one. No. Thanks. I'm fine. Button number two. Hell yeah. But number three, I'll have one if everyone else wants one.
49:49
And,
49:50
On three, we do all reveal. We make it fun. We do the reveal. If anybody says yes and anybody says, I'll have it if everyone else is having it. Say no more. Would you guys like the brownies or the truffles? Oh, okay. Truffles. Yeah. Let's go. And you could get I think you could add on, like, forty dollars to every ticket. If you just did it this way. Dude, I love I love those games like that. It's like it's like in and out secret menu. Yes. You know what I mean? Like, I love these games at restaurants. That's my favorite thing. A lot of life is just played in your head. And if you're just sitting somewhere, the challenge I give everybody is, How do you
50:26
play a little game in your head today where you say, alright. Let me add a little showmanship. Let me add a little
50:31
restaurant owner energy what I'm doing right now. Let me add a little psychology to what I'm doing right now. And if you do that every day, you become a different person. Like, I I fully believe this. You literally become a different person.
50:42
And you have more fun versus just going through the motions as you were performing. So this is my little rant on
50:48
finding that little micro hustle
50:51
being the guy who figures out how to do the dessert menu in a way that makes everybody feel good and actually gets everyone gets everyone gets everyone eating dessert. Because there's a version of that for your job, whatever your job is. The mini riz. A little mini riz. You did this at the hustle. We talked about when you did the everybody gets a hundred dollars. Let's go to Costco and let's see who gets the best thing. Right? Like Yeah. It was it was the best. Yeah. That was our team building activity. Was we had I think we had twelve employees. We give everyone fifty bucks. We said, you can team up. You can do it on your own. But at the end, we're gonna vote. We're gonna have three character three awards, which is most useful gift. Your favorite gift and the most tasty gift.
51:27
And you have to try to win one of those awards. Yeah. And and I love these stories of people who just take the ordinary and,
51:33
and sort of, like, add a little extra to make it extraordinary. Alright. Anyways, that's my rant. Who who who who are you at dinner with or who'd you go to LA with? And did you did anything amazing happen? A lot so many amazing things happen. I wanted to actually write my notes and send them to you so that then we could do an episode just breaking the whole thing down because there was so much,
51:50
so much that. Were you recognized a lot? Do you get recognized a lot? Not at all, actually.
51:54
Really? LA's got real actual famous people. So,
51:59
maybe people don't know that you're, like, six one. I think because a lot of people, I think would be surprised how tall you are. When I go to LA, I mean, I I get stopped a dozen times a day. I think I maybe I just stick out more than you do maybe. But, I'm shocked by that. Or you're just super unapproachable, which I could see that as well. Yeah. I think that's actually more of it.
52:18
I must have just, like, you know, whatever resting bitch face or something because, yeah, nobody's really coming up to me that much. It happens actually here at the Bay Area, but when I was in LA, I don't think it happened one time. So that was good,
52:29
You know, it's so stupid about your roots, as I say.
52:32
You're not from LA. No. I mean, like, a humble,
52:36
not a famous troops.
52:39
Where, who'd you go? You went with Ben, probably Sully, anyone else?
52:43
No. It should mean Ben went and then Sully lives down there, so he joined us for half the trip. Well, I wanna hear all about it. So I guess we'll have to wait.
52:52
I got some other quick I wanna I wanna hit hit you with some some quick hitters. So this is I'm gonna call this my weird AI tool of the week. I don't know if this is gonna be recurring segment. It might be because it's a lot of weird AI tools. So click this link. There's a company right now in YC
53:08
that is called roundtable, roundtable dot ai.
53:11
And I saw this post on Hackard News.
53:14
It wasn't the most popular post, but I found it. And I, thought it was fascinating. So this guy goes, because that's what you do. That's what you do. You gotta find you find the good shit. Exactly. I was I was I was deep at the bag and I found something. So,
53:26
they've posted this loop video that says, hey, check this out. We are roundtable. We use AI to simulate surveys. And they go,
53:34
they go, you know, research, user research and market research is really important. Fun it's expensive, takes time to design and analyze and run the run the research. So here's what we do. We use AI to simulate a survey.
53:47
And I was like, what?
53:49
And they go, yeah. Basically,
53:51
l l like LLMs, the new tech that's behind, like, chat g p t is great at,
53:57
simulating what some something like a human would say.
54:00
And these guys just took it to the nth degree so they go,
54:03
you write a survey with a bunch of questions. You define your audience. Like, I want people who are,
54:08
forty five years old or older. Right?
54:11
And, so you could say,
54:13
for example,
54:15
are you interested in buying an ebike?
54:18
And it would say yes is answered twenty eight percent of the time. But if you narrow it down, you say, let me filter only people who own a Tesla. Now yes is fifty two percent of the time.
54:27
And, you know, for example, if you say,
54:30
where do where did you learn to code?
54:33
Okay. You could ask that question. People will say one thing. But if you say how older, if you say only forty five years old or older, then everybody will say books. If you say younger than forty five, seventy, seventy six percent of people say online.
54:45
And so, you know, it's kinda crazy that basically, like, and you can say, what? What's the most important factor for you choosing an airline to fly? And and, like, five percent of people would say leg room. But if you filter it, say, people who are six feet or taller, it jumps to twenty percent of people saying leg room.
54:59
And so I saw this, and I was, like, What the hell? Like, it doesn't this
55:04
defeat the purpose of the survey? Like, you're literally just gonna make up the answer and give it to me?
55:08
Then I guess humans are actually a lot more predictable than we think that this thing is trained on, like, the entire internet's
55:14
data set.
55:15
I just thought this was remarkable, and I couldn't believe. Like, is this actually gonna be the case that you can actually just
55:21
AI could just fake answer your surveys and tell you do your user research for you. Doesn't that sound
55:26
absolutely bizarre?
55:29
So it's not there yet because
55:31
One person, he goes, hey, look, I had I I ran a survey. I said, was the moon landing fake? Option a? Yes. Option b. Moon.
55:41
Ninety four percent of people voted moon.
55:45
And
55:46
but that said,
55:49
I actually do think the same results would actually come if you actually asked people that exact same question. Like, most people would be like, oh, it's still a plant.
55:57
You know what I mean? Like, oh, I think I know what you're saying. You you're saying you meant to put yes there.
56:02
So it but but this is like a really
56:05
thought provoking idea. Yeah. And honestly, I haven't even spent enough time, like, actually
56:10
figuring out, like,
56:12
Is this literally a joke? Or is this, like, the next big thing? If that's kind of interesting, anytime you get something that's, like, either it's satire, this was actually started by the onion.
56:22
Or
56:23
it's genius. It's like you driving around being like, fuck it. I'll be a taxi. Did I ever tell you about the time that I ran,
56:30
the disco. Whether that's not how Uber started. Just in case you didn't know.
56:35
One
56:35
man just deciding I'll be a tag.
56:39
But did I tell you that I used to do that? No.
56:42
So
56:43
one for two two new years in a row, My buddy, Joe and I, we rented a Zip car minivan,
56:51
and we wore if if you Google this, you'll see photos of me doing this. We wore fake afros and disco clothes. I'll try to find it. But we had the it was called the disco Frisco taxi.
57:03
And we would drive around,
57:05
if you look up disco Frisco taxi, you'll my name, you'll see disco taxi and we would drive around being like, hey, guys. Where are you going? You wanna go to this place? Alright. Cool. How about, thirty bucks? And they would say, alright. Cool. They would get in. And be like, alright. You entered in the disco Frisco taxi. Spend the wheel. You can rent win a juice box. Brought to you by the makers of the touchy feely wheelie, which is the thing I do Monday through Friday.
57:32
Yeah. It's like
57:33
a Alright. Your destination is my house. My home. Alright.
57:37
Yeah. Let's go.
57:41
So you basically made your own, like, cash cab and you would just want to charge them, like, two dollars because it's New Year's, and they're, like, desperate. And we would be, like, how about fifty bucks? And they would say, Alright. Cool.
57:50
And so we would make, like, a thousand dollars a night on New Year's. I was it was a disco Frisco taxi. So That's hilarious.
57:56
I don't remember where I'll be even going with this. But,
57:59
yeah, round table, cool, into it.
58:05
Really good. Really good. I like that. Where do you wanna go from here? Are we wrapping up? Yeah. Let's wrap it up. Alright. That's the pod. We don't.
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