Encarta | Solana Billionaires, MFM Goes Viral on TikTok, Right to Be Forgotten, and More

00:00

It's almost a self fulfilling prophecy. There's so much talent being sucked into this thing. These guys are gonna build things that actually have use cases. And actually, it's actually gonna make it all

00:09

You can't have this much talent,

00:12

spend all day thinking about this and building in this and have nothing come from it.

00:28

Alright. We're live. What's going on? I'm self conscious now because we're blowing up on TikTok. I just look at myself. I'm like, gosh, should have shaved. And,

00:36

now now that I have to see myself, and I see people. And also the TikTok comments are brutal.

00:41

They're they're good, but they, you know, they're like, just wanna argue with every point that gets made. Let's talk let's talk about Now when I see myself, I'm like, shit. This is going on TikTok. I better I I need to shave for the next one. So, basically,

00:55

ten days ago or fifteen days ago, something like that. Like not long ago, we told everyone that we're gonna do this contest. We're gonna get five thousand dollars to, like, three people who

01:04

take our clips and turn them into videos. The best people are on TikTok. So I actually posted the tags down there for you. So I must have made a mistake. I told people to say to to to use the hashtag MFM clips,

01:17

but then I also I must have said clip as well. Without the s. And so people are using two hashtag clips and clip, m f n clip and m f n clips, and some aren't using both.

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But if you use those links, I I I showed you, we have,

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in the ballpark of around fifteen ish million impressions from these videos, and it's mostly young folks who created these TikTok handles from scratch took our

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our content,

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and

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some videos have over a million. Some of them have hundreds of thousands of likes.

01:51

They're great. And, do you read the comments? No. What do they say? Did they make fun of us? I hope not. So any content creator, you go through the cycle of, like, you get excited, then you read the comment, and the early comments are good. And then the more popular you get, the comments start to turn mean, and then you just you everybody reaches a point where they

02:08

oh, no. Then the third phase is you say you don't read the comments, but you secretly do. And then finally,

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you know, whatever. These are the seven stages of of grief or something, social media grief. You finally stop reading the comments because you're like, this is just too toxic. So, yeah, they they basically just shed on us for whatever we say. Like, if we say,

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you put down twenty percent to buy a house, then all the comments are about ways that you can you can also not put down twenty percent if you do this, this is this. It's like, alright. Okay. Tik dot com, enter. You got me. You are smarter than us. You are gonna constantly find some, like, edge case loophole

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or, you know, mistake in what was said. Do they make fun of, how we look or talk or anything? Like, they insult us?

02:50

No. They don't really they're either, like, these guys are annoying. Like, they'll be like, let's say somebody cuts a clip of

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one of us breaking down, you know, our monthly expenses or something like that. And then the comment would just but they don't know, like, the the five of the pot. They don't know why would someone would just say that of the blue. Right? It's not something people normally talk about. So they're just like, why did he feel the need to tell us how much he's spending on x or, like, why is he telling us his body fat percentage, whatever? They're just, like, there's that kind, which is

03:17

dude,

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what a douche? Nobody asked, you know, why are you doing that?

03:21

Then

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there's

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the comments that are like, you know,

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actually,

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actually, it's this other thing. And then there's some comments which are like, bro, I don't want I don't want that future. No. I don't, no thanks, you know, because we'll be like, here's how things are changing in a bit. Do companies just only think about money? And, like, you know, comments like that. So those are the three flavors of hater we get so far. Luckily so far, nobody's just shitting on our, like, face and body. Oh, that's good. That's a that's a surprise. That's a win as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. I and in general.

03:53

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words about my appearance do hurt me. Just, like, don't make fun of my teeth or, like, hair.

04:00

You can make fun of my brain. They

04:03

this promotion has been home run. Like, I I thought it was gonna be pretty good. I didn't think it was gonna be this good. And so what we'll have to do is there's, like, a couple people who I'm recognizing because I I watch them. That are killing it, we're gonna have to have them on the pot and explain how they got so many views. It's pretty amazing. Right. And let let's talk about this for a second because, I think there's something interesting to learn here. So

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You have said many times. I've grown a lot of things. I've grown an email newsletter to multi millions. I've grown a subscription business to multi millions. I've

04:33

you know, grown, whatever.

04:36

You're, like, a podcast is the hardest thing I've ever had to grow. And you say that. I think it's just kind of a cool thing to say in general.

04:43

I I agree with it in the sense of it there's no, like, easy growth hacks to growing a podcast.

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There's no just like button you can push. Paid ads don't really work. Nothing really works like that. The good news is once somebody actually subscribed to your podcast, they become like a really loyal fan and they're like, like they know you, so it's got got a lot of value, but it's hard to get that easy growth.

05:04

This is the first, and we've tried a bunch of shit. We've tried we did nothing initially. Then we tried placing it in our email newsletters. We tried,

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bringing on big name guests. We tried,

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paid ads. We tried,

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a bunch of different things. None of which really, like, kind of felt like it was really working, but the pod kept growing organically.

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This is the first thing by the way, we also tried making our own clips, paying an agency tens of thousands of dollars a month to be making really awesome animated clips of our content. And they were great. And there were high quality clips, but it didn't lead to this. This was different. This was,

05:40

hey, anybody, open playing field,

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just go for it and we'll give out prizes to the people who are actually good at it, merit based. Right? And what they're good at is they understood TikTok whereas, like, we suck at TikTok. We don't know how to create content there.

05:55

They pull clip they pull the right clips because they're actually listeners and fans of the show. So they know which clip is actually gonna be interesting versus, like, you know, some random employee at our company being like, you know, at the forty two minute mark, let's use that one for the clip. These guys will put, like, ten that they think are interesting and put about there. And,

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and they're motivated because they're like, shit. If I do this good, I can get a million views on this, and I could go, give me, you know, I can five grand from these guys. Like, that's a pretty sweet deal for for doing something, you know, pretty fun. So this has actually worked. Yeah. It's pretty wild. And

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like, some there's one guy who basically took our Rob Dierdick episode,

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and I looked at his feed, and he I'm not I don't think I'm exaggerating. It's fifty clip in a row

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of, like, he basically just took it and just divided it up. And, like, three of the fifty. All he did was he just took our talking out and just finally then Rob he he grabs a clip, which is smart. Yeah. And in his whole feed, I looked at his feed. It was all that one episode.

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And, like, three of them had, like, five hundred thousand views. Yeah. So go go follow them. I think MFM Cuts is one on on TikTok and Twitter. There's MLM clips, then there's a bunch of other variations of that name. Alright. I wanna tell you about something interesting. I I got a few interesting things to talk to you about. Okay?

07:11

Let me tell you about something that I was thinking about this weekend. So I've got a buddy.

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You kind of know them, and we I'm not gonna name them. But a few years ago, he did something. He was accused of doing a crime that was a horrible crime. One of the worst crimes you could commit.

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And he was the he was an executive at a company,

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and it made the news.

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So same months later, after he went to court, he went to trial, the government dropped the case because it was a horrible misunderstanding. He didn't do what he was accused of doing. And they exonerated him and they go, we're sorry. We were wrong. We we we called this one wrong. And

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the first time the story went out it made all the headlines. And if you Google this person's name, it came up on top. But what didn't come up on top was like six months later, it said charges dropped

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the the misunderstanding came about for this reason.

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This person lost their job because of that and lost obviously a lot of money.

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And I was I've always thought about this, and I listened to a podcast this weekend, and it was called, the right to be forgotten, and it was by RadioLab.

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And so this is this idea of the right to be forgotten and it's in Europe. It's actually a law.

08:24

I don't know exactly what the law says, but it says like If something isn't particularly newsworthy,

08:30

but you're writing about it anyway and it really hurts that person more than that provides value to the common or to the a reader, you have to take it down.

08:38

And there's a couple newspapers, like the Boston Globe as well as, in this particular podcast, they looked at this company, this newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, and there's stories of, like, a cop emailing them. And he's like, look, you wrote about this time that I lied about some paperwork ended up getting fired. I didn't hurt anyone. And now I can't get a job at another as a police officer anywhere else. Can I fill in the gap on the right to be forgotten for you here? Yeah. So so basically,

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it's a law that says search engines should have to remove links about your past if under certain circumstances, and it came about because there was a woman, an actress

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who had who was in a movie, and then it got dubbed

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So there was that the film was called the innocence of Muslims. And then her her original line,

09:24

her original line got dubbed over, and then they made it made it so that it looked like she was saying, is your is your Muhammad a child molester? Right? So that was the clip.

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And she starts getting death threats and, like, people would go crazy about this. And she's like, what is this? Like, why,

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like, Okay. This thing got dubbed. Now this clip got on to into the search engine,

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and it comes up if you search my name or certain things,

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And, it's causing, you know, like, harm to me in my personal life. And so she sued Google in two thousand fourteen. And ultimately, they they upheld it, which was,

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you know,

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like, she would like to have it have the film forgotten intro from YouTube. Unfortunately, the right to be forgotten, which is recognizing the EU is not recognized in the US. And so it's a the EU does respect this as they're they're tied around privacy with GDPR and things like that, and the US does not

10:15

So, yeah. And so in the US, we don't have that. But it's kind of interesting because I personally have seen this hurt people But you think, like, right now, like, let's say that you're at a bar and you're drunk and you call someone, like, a really bad word and it's on,

10:30

Reddit and they find your name, you're screwed, like, to the point of, like, your life is gonna be hurt meaningfully, like, the next decade. And, like, you should suffer some consequences for someone calling something something rude, but not like that serious, you know. And so I've been thinking a lot about this business about this reputation management business. Have you ever researched it?

10:51

Yeah. My former co founder used to work there, so he used to tell me stories all the time. Great. I wanna hear all about it. And I know a little bit about this because listen to this. So of the companies is called reputation dot com. So there's this porn star named Sasha Gray. So do me a favor. Type in Sasha Gray on your Google and click images. This Sasha Gray. Doesn't she's not an actress anymore, not a porn actress anymore, but she was, like, a very prolific porn actress. When you click the images, what do you see? Here we go. I'm here. Okay. So I see a bunch of head shots of her. I see no real porn. Well, I guess, I guess, some scandalous stuff, but but mostly porn. Yeah. Mostly just pictures of her,

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fully clothed or, like, in a bikini.

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So one time at the hustle, right when we first launched. I helped write this article about Sasha Gray, and she hired this firm called reputation dot com,

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and she basically wanted to retire from pornography and become like an actor and whatever else. Something different.

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And

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she hired reputation dot com to hide or, like, basically blog a bunch and write a bunch in order to get the porn images to go down. And I remember when we wrote this article, reputation dot com did something kind of funny and if I would go on my Google analytics at night, I would look at real time and there would be thousands of people reading this article and I'd saw that they searched

12:10

Sasha Gray. And so reputation dot com manipulated it so the article that we wrote about reputation dot com and Sasha Gray came up number one if you googled Sasha Gray. And at night, when people were gonna look at porn, they googled Sasha Gray, and they landed on our article. It was pretty I would see it at night. Every week or every night, it would go up. And so I got crazy fascinated about reputation dot com. And so for this segment, I wanted to talk about

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reputation dot com. I think there's Yext and there's sprinkler. And these are businesses that do, like, four or five hundred million dollars a year. And all they do is reputation management. What what do you know about reputation come.

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So he used to tell me stories, like, you know, he I asked him. I was like, oh, would you do, you know, before this, what was your job before that? And eventually he said reputation dot com, and I got fascinated like you. I was like, what is that? So he told me he's like, you know, here's a scenario.

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You're a a senator and your son has the same, you know, John Chambers junior. Sorry. Sorry to any John Chambers out there. Let's it's a hypothetical.

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So your son who has the same name as you basically

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gets a DUI or gets arrested for battery or something like that. So now anytime somebody searches John Chambers,

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this mugshot's gonna come up or this bad news story is gonna come And he they basically, they go to reputation dot com and they say, I would like this to disappear off the front page of I would like this to disappear. A reputation dot com says I can't make it disappear. The internet sort of is a is uncontrollable, but I can get you off the front page at Google. And they're like, That would be amazing. And they say, for the low low price of a hundred twenty thousand dollars, seventy five thousand dollars. Whatever. It's expensive. Six expensive significant because they know people are the time you're at reputations dot com, you're bent over the barrel. You they can charge pretty much whatever they can get away with. So, like, you know, a NASCAR driver,

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politician, whoever people of interest, people who wanted their their names or their kids' names to get out of the bad news. And so they had a team of engineers

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that we're just it's a constant cat and mouse game to figure out how to beat Google. So, like, my my co founder told me, he's like, One of the big the biggest days of the company was when we figured out, you know, Google has to auto complete. Right? So you go Yeah. You type Sampar. It's gonna be Sampa, the hustle of Sampar Networth, Sampar wife, Sampar is gay. It'll be, like, all these, like, the same ten

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queries for everybody. Right? And what he figured out was that when you type, you know, Sampar,

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if it used to say felony, like, f would now say friend instead of felony. Like, it would they would figure out how to even finish the auto complete because

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Even when they were good at getting you off the front page by blogging, by promoting other articles, whatever, getting them higher ranked, If the auto complete was still always suggesting felony, then people would click it and they would search for felony, it would be reinforcing, then Google would search for it more. So they needed to clear that. So there was just constant cat and mouse game to understand how is Google doing? How is Google deciding what goes where? And then how do we content farm or manipulate this in some way that will change what the first page results are because ninety eight percent of people don't go past the first page or something like that.

15:11

Yeah. And so it's amazing to hear about that. And then there's a company called Yext,

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y e x t. They're publicly traded.

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And they do I think that they are just a direct competitor reputation dot com. They're publicly traded. They did three hundred and ninety million dollars, I think. Last year in revenue. Their market cap is not very good. It's like four or five times revenue.

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Are you looking at it? I'm I'm on repute I went to reputation dot com. I just wanted to see the latest. Like, you wouldn't even know when you go to this,

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what they do because it says, this is their headline.

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First, it looks like a hospital website, like a nice health tech website or something like that, then it says, a world of interactions demands a platform of action.

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It's like, we're a fixer.

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Is what it should say. So but here's the problem. By the way, maybe they change what they do. I don't know. I think they still do it. I think they offer, like, a a a smaller package.

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Like, like, when we wrote the Sasha Grey articles, that was in two thousand sixteen, they have, like, a thirteen thousand dollar package.

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But the problem is there there's there's kind of two problems with this. The first is that the results aren't guaranteed. Like you can't guarantee that it's gonna work, which is I guess that's not a problem, but that's just how it works. You know, when someone calls you, I get these calls all the time because I own domain names and I forgot to hide my name. It's like, hey, we'll put you on the first page of Google. That's a scam. You can't just promise that. But the second thing is that if you're an individual,

16:34

if you're just someone who, like, said some stupid drunken thing to someone one day and now your name's all over the place, you you if really, really hard to to, like, unless you want to pay a hundred thousand dollars, which is what a lot of the stuff costs. It's incredibly challenged to manage your reputation. If you're just like a person, And so I was thinking about like, is there anything interesting in that space? I actually think that there could be something. I like this company called, do not pay. You know what do not pay is? Yeah. I love do not pay. The guy is the guy behind it's awesome, and it's a great idea.

17:04

So do not pay. It started by this guy, and I actually didn't research this. So this is all top of my head. It started as getting Josh Broder, I think, Brouder.

17:12

And he's young. Like, I've when he started it, I think it was, like, twenty one. Maybe. Yeah. Oh, twenty five. Okay. Well, no. No. Now I think he's, like, twenty five. When he was started, he was even younger. Yeah. He was obviously. And, he was like, like, it was like a prodigy type of thing. And originally, the business existed to help you fight parking tickets automatically.

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But now they have a bunch of features like it's basically all basically all sticking it to the man. So the another feature is like we will, sue

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we will sue

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cold collars on your behalf or something like that. Right? They'll also do, like,

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you know, we will unsubscribe you from stuff that you're not using that you pay for. You know, just ways to save you ways that you do not pay. Which is why it's a great aim and a great idea. And I think there's a world where, like, a do not you could use a do not pay service like this to help manage your reputation online And this is a a need that I think we're actually gonna see more and more and more of it. It's like a very like exponential thing where it's like more and more people are gonna be written about and more and more people are gonna need this I don't know. It's just something I've been thinking about. What do you have any do you have an opinion on? I don't know where the new opportunity is in this one because I think it really depends on It's kinda like, you need Google to exist for reputational com to exist. And so, really, it's about thinking, okay. There was a version of this on social networks that people were doing, like,

18:24

remember this one guy came to me and he was a great entrepreneur. He he ended up not doing this idea, but, like, I always thought it was a great idea. Others have done it, which is,

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when you everybody has social media where they post stupid stuff,

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when you're younger or when you're just drunk or whatever. And so what they do is they go to companies And they say, hey, we ran a check on all your employees,

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and we found these red flags. And,

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you know, you should be aware of how your of what, you know, who you're hiring as well as what they're saying and representing your company, how how they represent your company elsewhere. So they end up getting contracts with companies.

18:59

To monitor and clean up,

19:01

and then they're not like tattletaling. They're sort of like an, hey, like, an insider helping you out saying, hey, this employee who's saying this. You may wanna take action, but the action might just be to letting the employee know that we we flag this as potentially controversial, and maybe they wanna delete it.

19:16

And so it's a monitoring service for social media reputations and a social media controversy, which I think is a great great idea. It just sucks that you gotta do that.

19:25

Well, it sucks that the world is the way it is. It sucks the world. Well, some people think, oh, it's good to hold you accountable, but in reality, it's just a bunch of, like,

19:32

you know, don't say don't say what you really feel is really the result of most of this because people just get afraid to say anything because they're worried about getting canceled.

19:40

So you and your buddy liked working at reputation dot com, but they, like, they were by the book? He was, like, technically, it was super interesting to figure out how we do all this stuff.

19:49

You know, he's like, he always says this thing, like, at one point, we had indexed every person on the web. And,

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we had to, like, them in their cluster and their reputation.

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And so, you know, I think it was technically very interesting, but obviously, like, sort of soul sucking and boring as well. So he, you know, bounced. Yeah. I think I could see that. But it it is an interesting problem. I've been it about. Alright. Let me tell you about one more thing.

20:10

Alright. So I was reading the information,

20:13

the information dot com, and

20:15

they had an article about Salano.

20:17

So I told you about this on Slack. So there's just Salano. Sorry. I don't know anything about

20:22

it really other than Don't don't out yourself here as a as a crypto

20:26

nobody. Yeah. I don't wanna act like I'm an expert here. I'm not I just I I I I I've read a lot about it, though, but news articles.

20:34

So Chris McCann, I knew this guy named Chris McCann because he had this thing called startup digest, and that's one of the reasons why Hussicon became popular is because I would email Chris and I would say, hey, can you please put this in the email? And he had this email called startup digest. Started in San Francisco and he would email email each week different

20:53

events happening in San Francisco different startup events. This was when the startup community was much smaller and everyone wanted to go to events, and it was just here's a round up of cool events happening. He eventually expanded it to cities. He sold it, not for a lot of money, probably a hundred probably six figures, I bet. But he kinda worked his way into benchmark where he, like, was just an employee there

21:13

And somehow or another invested two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into,

21:18

what's it called? Is it Salano or Salano?

21:20

Selana. I'm a fucking new. He invested two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into Salana.

21:25

And the information wrote an article about how that two fifty turned into a billion dollars. Is that crazy? In probably, I think, three three years, maybe four years, Max.

21:35

Yeah, it's insane. I sent you,

21:37

I sent you somebody else who also has made multiple billions of dollars,

21:42

from their solana investment. I sent that last week to you, but but basically,

21:46

Selana has gone Oh, like, the fun?

21:49

Yeah. So Salana has gone from let's see.

21:53

I mean, it was, like, sub a dollar.

21:55

Not long ago.

21:57

And now it's two hundred dollars,

21:59

per coin. And it's basically, it's a what is Salon? Salon is it competitive to Ethereum. If you know what Ethereum is, if you don't to Ethereum is just fast forward in this segment. You probably don't care. So,

22:09

Solana's like a competitor to Ethereum. And as recently as okay. So this time last year, Solana was a dollar fifty four.

22:15

And,

22:16

when it launched, when it did its ICO, it was just under a dollar, I think it was.

22:20

And so,

22:22

and that was only

22:24

that was, you know, a couple of years ago, two years ago or something like that. So, basically, if even just take last year, a dollar fifty four, you put a hundred thousand dollars into that, and now you have, I think, twenty million dollars, something like that.

22:37

I'll I'll I'm actually gonna do some public math for, but, yeah, twenty million dollars. So,

22:43

Salanas had this insane run up. And it sounds like he, I think, through he's in this fun called red something, red circle or something like that? Oh, race. Yeah. Right. Race something.

22:56

They were, like, the seed investors in Solana. And,

23:00

you know, that's the right project to be a seed investor. And it is a crypto project that becomes a you know, multi billion dollar crypto asset. And sure enough, you could turn turning two fifty k into a billion dollars. That's kind of insane. I don't think it was a personal two fifty k necessarily, but Even it was fun. The the article made it sound like it was, but even if it's not, that doesn't change much by insanity.

23:22

Yeah. It doesn't change much. Because he's still gonna walk away with nine fig over a hundred million, some figure like there. But this article, I was reading about it, and they're basically, like, saying there's, like, a lot of

23:33

really high profile tech folks at traditional tech companies giving up amazing things in order to, like, flee to this crypto thing

23:42

And I'll get and I wanna ask you a question about that. But example, like, this woman Sandy Carter VP of,

23:48

Amazon's cloud computing, she left

23:51

to join unstoppable domains. Brian Roberts, who is the CFO of Lyft. He left to join Open C, and he said, I've seen enough cycles and paradigm shifts to be cognizant when something this big is just emerging and that we're only at the beginning, and it's just gonna get bigger. We had David Marcus. He basically led,

24:07

Facebook's cryptocurrency thing he bounced to start his own thing.

24:11

The, this one dude left,

24:14

Google in order to become coinbase's chief product officer. And when it public. His stake was worth six hundred million dollars. And then, of course, Jack Dorothy bounced from Twitter in order to work at Square, and it's, like, definitely involves crypto.

24:26

They renamed they renamed to block because they're a focus on blockchain.

24:30

But

24:31

it's crazy. And my question to you is this.

24:34

Have you ever seen

24:38

someone create that much wealth that fast? And do you have any stories of people who you know or know of that are doing this and, like, what their stories are? Because this is crazy.

24:47

Well, I'll say the first thing is that you're right that there's basically a giant black hole that's sucking up all the talent in the world, and it's called crypto.

24:55

And it's almost a self there's a lot of people who don't believe that crypto is a thing or they think it's massively overhyped and they say, you know, give me one example of a real use case of this thing. Nobody's actually using it for payments or web three. There's no real web three products.

25:09

And it's sort then there there's some truth to what they're saying. I I wouldn't say that they're completely off base. It's like a valid critique.

25:17

I don't think it's true, but it's a valid criticism.

25:19

But the

25:20

25:30

You can't have this much talent

25:33

spend all day thinking about this and building in this and have nothing come from it. That's like the biggest, like, takeaway for me, if, like, even if you're the biggest cryptoskeptic,

25:42

there's a self fulfilling prophecy here, which is that it sucked up all the dev talent, sucked up all the smartest people. It sucked it sucked up, like, twenty billion dollars of venture capital every year now. And, all that funding, all that talent is gonna is gonna create things that actually do work and do hit beyond what's already there today. So

25:59

there's that. Now to your question, have I seen somebody get Rich this quick? I wanna have my buddy on. I have a friend.

26:05

Who used to work work with me, and

26:09

I caught up with him. And his story,

26:11

he basically went from, like,

26:14

average, like, a average job, like, you wouldn't look at this person and say, oh, that's a star career.

26:20

And,

26:21

They're good. They were doing well, obviously, but they were doing, like, normal person well.

26:25

And they went from normal person well to

26:29

making, like,

26:30

to personally making, like, fifteen million dollars in the last year,

26:34

just by

26:36

they they basically quit their job, and they went down a a crypto rabbit hole and started betting on things in defy, and they started playing with all the defy projects, investing their money in defy,

26:45

and that they didn't have a huge base of capital to head, you know, call it half a million dollars that they put in. And to turn a half million dollars. If and if you have no path in your career to being, like,

26:57

a, you know, a deca millionaire. Right? Like, if you

27:00

don't have a path where you're like, yeah, I'm gonna have fuck you money to go from no path, no no, like, reasonable

27:07

storyline that makes sense there. You have a job at a company that pays you a good salary, and that's that.

27:12

To that is amazing to me and awesome. And, like,

27:16

you know, just like, blew my mind more so than these guys who become multi billionaires who were, like, prodigies

27:22

and, like, invented the protocol or invested two hundred fifty k in a random token. It's like, this is somebody who just took their own money out of the stock market and was like, instead of investing in Apple, Google and Facebook, I'm gonna invest in Crazy. Crypto. And turned a normal amount, a normal, like, life savings amount of money into a life changing amount of money. And I wanna have him on to tell his full story because it actually has, like, a bunch of twists and turns

27:43

that are, like, kind of amazing. So I'm gonna ask him if he'll come on and share it. Do I know that? Willing to. Yeah. You know them.

27:50

Don't know if they're willing to share, but if they are, it's gonna make for an amazing episode.

27:54

I'll ask them if you'll do it next week. Did they,

27:57

Did they earn the or did they, sell do they have USD or, like, some type of stable

28:02

currency?

28:04

No.

28:05

They're they're still in crypto, like, a hundred or a hundred plus percent because they, you know But but but is it stable like a big, like, a a popular thing?

28:15

It's a mix of popular things and, like, something they could sell more stuff. Everything's liquid. If they wanted to cash out and say, I'm

28:22

done. I'm going to Malibu, and I'm gonna chill. I'm gonna pretend that this year never existed. And I basically won a lottery. They could do that. Because we have buddy in our chat group who said he made all this money in some crazy coin, but he's like, I can't sell it. So it's like That's different. That that's like,

28:37

Those are, like, either illiquid, like, oh, there's this coin, but it's not listed yet. Or it's liquid, but there's, like, no trading volume whatsoever on this coin, like, yeah, if you have ten million dollars and you go to sell even a hundred thousand, it'll crash the price of the coin. That's not what this is. That's that's a different thing.

28:53

That's a what that is is

28:55

I I I make a million coins. I keep nine hundred ninety nine thousand for myself.

29:00

And then I sell one of them for a dollar.

29:03

And oh, now the total value of my thing is a million dollars. And it's like, no. It's not really. You there's such a lit such a small amount of the supply out there being sold. It's not indicative of the true price. This is what I'm talking about is not that situation. Is there any other person? Alright. So you have a story of someone who did five hundred thousand to fifteen million.

29:21

I just told you about this guy who in, like, two or three years This person, nontechnical,

29:26

never was a trader or financial person. Like, they would own, like, a index fund or mutual fund before that. Didn't know how to spell blockchain.

29:34

You know, like, this person is that's why this blows my mind. It's not just this like, I know that amount is not the craziest amount of money. It's an awesome amount of money for anybody, but

29:43

And what's crazy is the

29:45

the point a to point b, it makes no sense. It's like how could those two points connect in that amount of time? It's mind blowing to me. So I told you a story about this dude, Chris, who did two hundred and fifty thousand up to a billion. You just said five hundred thousand to fifteen million. Do we know anyone else that has this like crazy, crazy journey?

30:06

Personally, you've talked about this You talked about somebody, right, that your friend Yeah. The friend that that they they did one million to a hundred million.

30:15

Yeah. So At its peak, when Bitcoin was, sixty thousand. So I don't I don't whatever is that discount it. Okay. I have another one. There is a kid who I call him a kid because he was actually a kid. He I built this a product called Blab back in the day. It was like kind of like Clubhousey.

30:29

You could basically go hang out and chat with people. And this kid used to come home every day He used to get on and chat, and he didn't chat in the other rooms that had thirteen year olds. He came to our rooms because he loved technology startups. He wanted to be on the startup scene.

30:40

And,

30:42

I think it was maybe thirteen at the time. Okay. So fast forward, it's been, like, six years since then. So now he's, like, let's say, twenty one or something like that.

30:50

It's been a it's been a while. And,

30:54

he created some but he but he was a he's a technical guy, but he created a a

30:57

protocol Like, I was like, oh, what you been up to? Like, how is your startup going? And he's like, it's yeah. Startups? Okay. We haven't been focusing on it for the last few months. I was like, oh, I know it, man. It's tough. Just hang in there, buddy. You know, just pivot finds me. He's like, actually, like, we ended up creating this thing anonymously on one of these random, like, side chains And it was like, what up? Blah blah blah. Some bunch of terms, I don't even understand. It's a, you know, it's a it's a derivatives perpetual contract for, you know, adding liquidity to this blah blah blah. I'm like, okay. I don't even understand what you're saying. And he's like, yeah. The market cap of it, like, you know, basically, like, the market cap of it is, like, nine hundred million right now. And, you know, I I think he cashed out ten million dollars in this. He's like, he's like, dude, it's been insane. The market cap went up like crazy. Now it's at two hundred million.

31:43

And he's like, I was able to, like, take out, like, a life changing amount of money. He I took out ten million. He was, he was, like, he was asking me because he goes,

31:50

heard you guys talking about charities and charity water. You told the charity water stores really moved, like, I've set aside seven figures to, donate.

31:57

You're like, what? I was like, you've set aside seven figures. Like, do you like, are you seven years old? What how did this happen? Where? What if what has happened in this amount of time? Like, I used to talk to you when you would come home from eighth grade and get online,

32:09

like, you're donating millions of dollars to charity now. Like, what is, again,

32:13

a and b, it broke my brain. And I don't mean this as an insult to them. Like, if they're if they were only fifteen minutes, are there still only, like, nineteen?

32:22

Yeah. I think they're twenty now, twenty one, something like that. It's been, like, seven years since we've made that thing. So,

32:28

you know, it's not it's not mind blowing to me that this person is successful. In both cases, I I really like this person. That's why I used to hang out with them. That's why we I used to work with one of them. I think they're really smart and we're gonna be normal person successful.

32:40

It's like when, you know, oh, I went, like, my sister went to high school with this girl, Lily Galicci, who's like this super famous Instagram star now. She's like, has her own TV show on bravo.

32:50

And it's like, wait, that's the Lily girl who used to come to our house after school. Like, she was just like a normal girl. Like, Wait. That's her. Like, that doesn't even look like her anymore. I was like, yeah. She's had some work done. Right? It's like just mind blowing to know a normal person who's like, yeah, that's a cool normal don't don't do well in life. Be, like, no. Actually, they're, like, one of those crazy outlier stories. And in a way that you wouldn't have otherwise predicted, you know, it didn't make any sense. Like,

33:14

Yeah. It's not it's not that that was their skill set and they tried tried tried that thing for ten years and finally hit.

33:20

It's like, just I don't know where they just did this thing at a and crypto is this amazing thing like that. So, anyway, I'm gonna say something.

33:27

When I first talked to my friend, I caught up with my friend, I felt insanely jealous. I was, like, I was happy for him, and I like him and all that. But I was also, like,

33:36

I was, like, in my head, I was just, like, what the fuck have I been doing with my life? Wait. With the the friend that you sort for you? Both of them. Both in the same reaction. Yeah. Because it feels weird because you're like, oh, wait. You kinda looked up to me, and I was the ambassador. Now now I'm like, you know, way less successful than you. So, like, what just happened? You just, like, catapulted really crazy. We're, like, between the last time we caught up and now. There there's jealousy there. It's easy. And I just wanna say, like, you know, a interesting thing to observe is what is your reaction to hearing stories like this?

34:06

A part of me that I'm not proud of which gets jealous of it, but that used to be, like,

34:11

it used to be I would feel that. I wouldn't really acknowledge that that's what I was feeling. And I would kinda find reasons why it was like, that's just luck or,

34:19

like, you know, well, well, they probably are taking of risk and they might lose it all. And I'm kinda secretly rooting for it to not not all workouts just so perfectly as it has.

34:28

That's gone. I still got a little bit of that, like, jealousy paying left. And I'd say the interesting thing is

34:34

my my coach said this to me, he goes,

34:37

you'll you'll encounter people in your life where your success just reminds them of their failure.

34:42

And, they're not focused on your success. They're focused on their your success has reminded of their failure, or your abundance has reminded their them of their lack.

34:49

And, if you notice that in yourself, you wanna

34:53

be aware of that and change that. And if you find other people and you're like, oh, these people are haters. Like, you know, just understand what's coming on. They don't actually hate you. It's,

35:02

your successes reminded them of some failing that they have in themselves and that's where their attention has gone. And so, yeah, I wanted to share that because I'd I definitely felt this like crazy feeling that I hadn't felt it a long time, but these stories were so mind blowing. That I could I was like, wow.

35:15

This I I don't even know what to say.

35:18

I feel lucky

35:20

to know who I know which we have the same group, basically,

35:24

that I've, like,

35:26

these stories that sound unbelievably true

35:29

I'm a big yeah. I know that person.

35:31

I saw it. It it was wild. So, like, an example is

35:35

Moi Zali selling native deodorant for a hundred million dollars two years after starting it. I was in we shared an office when he was starting it, and I saw him try to learn Facebook ads. Like, I saw the thing come to fruition. I saw it right in front of my eyes every single day for, like, six or ten months,

35:50

and that was almost half the journey. It's actually pretty amazing, you know, and I think about, like,

35:55

This isn't like a one to one correlation because there's other components here. But, like, I was thinking about this. I'm like, Jamaica is a very small country. There's not a lot of people there, but they just dominate the hundred meter dash. And, like, obviously, there's some genetic there's a lot of genetic factors going there, but it can't be significantly different than America. And,

36:12

And I was thinking, like, man, one of the reasons being is they just are just surrounded by, like, it's just normal to be great at something. And and and that makes it normal to work hard. And you're like, Well, I should be running these these times in practice and you don't like freak out. You just get it done because you that's what's expected. And I kind of feel that way in terms of making money because of our friends are who they are. It's like, well, you just wanna spin something up and as if yeah, if you're willing to dedicate three years, like, you definitely can add eight figures of net worth to your like it's for sure. Like it's easy. It's not easy, but it's simple. And it's kind of cool to like be around people where you start seeing like, yeah, like, it's really simple. Just do this, this, and this. Of course, you gotta dedicate

36:51

every Right. You have to dedicate tens of our, you know, fifty, sixty hours a week for, like, many years. But, yeah, it's very simple. It's straightforward.

36:58

Well, The first example you gave with Moises was starting it literally at the table. I think he sat at the table next to you. Right? Like, in the in in founder's dojo or whatever those heck founder, dojo? Founder's dojo. Like, I think he was interested at first. If I remember correctly, he was like, what should I sell? Should I do mattresses? And who's, like, ordering mattresses and, like, measuring them and, like, seeing, like, oh, that's too much work. Metris are too big. What else is there? By the way, the public story is, like, My sister was pregnant and she couldn't find a, deodorant that had didn't have chemicals which might harm her baby. So I wanted to create that product. It's like, dude, I know you. You were like, alright. How do I build? I wanna make a business. I wanna sell some shit. What do people want? Oh, people like kleenexes mattresses? Too big to ship. Okay. Yeah. Scratch that off the list, deodorant. Small, under one pound ships easily. People will use it every month. It's a renewable,

37:45

and there's a niche and there is a genuine problem for it, but, like, I know what you do. There's a st there's a real story and then there's the narrative.

37:52

And, like, I like stories, not narratives. It's not bad. He was just, like, seeking problems to solve. He was like, boom. He phoned it.

37:59

And I respect that. I I like that. And that's how I think. So, you know, it's normal to me. The there's something to when you see it being built day by day, brick by brick,

38:09

you're like, there's a just a respect and and for me, like, total joy. I never feel the jealousy in that case. Like, for example, I remember when you started the hustle, I remember when you were doing just the event, and then you were like, I'm gonna do this thing, and then I came to your office with you and John. And it was like, Like, it was, like, we went into a room that was, like, a conference room that was, like, the size of a bathroom.

38:28

And, like, you had a presentation, and, like, I listened to it, and I was, like, okay, this cool, but, like, what about this, this and this? Some of you guys were like, I don't know. We'll figure it out. And then you, like, you started with these, like, long form your your original thing was long form stories, and then you're, like, kind of was working, but not really. You're like, I am thinking about switching to this, like, newsletter thing, just daily news. SCIM is doing it. It's working. These guys are doing it. I think we could do it in our niche. I think it'll be even better.

38:51

And so seeing that, then it's like, cool. Seven years later, Sam, whatever. I don't know how long it's been. Seven years, was it seven? We sold it about five. Okay. Five years in Sam sells the thing and is successful.

39:04

Nothing but props respect and and joy of, like, wow, this was so cool. I got to sit there on the journey with you.

39:11

There's a difference of that watching somebody build it brick by brick. And a difference of, actually, this happened in twelve months.

39:19

You didn't get to see the hard work that was obviously going in and the risks that were being taken. So you'd all you hear is, like, I tried this thing and it just hit. A hundred x, two hundred x. Like, what?

39:29

You know, it's it feels more like a lottery, and it feels less like the hard work thing. And I think that happens a lot in crypto. That's a little difference there. The second part is

39:37

I remember

39:38

when,

39:39

I moved so I moved from Australia to Silicon Valley,

39:42

without having a a game plan. I think you were kind of the same way. Didn't you just, like, come to Silicon Valley? Like, just showed up.

39:48

I did the same thing. I I was sitting in Australia. I went I remember specifically. I I went to a meetup, and they asked me to speak about the about lean startups, about start And I went and I spoke, and everybody at the end was like, yay. You know, great talk. People after it was like, wow, that was a really great talk. And in my head, My buddy was, like, what's wrong? Because he could see I was just, like, kind of upset. He's, like, what's wrong? He didn't like it. And I was, like, I

40:11

don't know anything about startups, and I'm, like, the thought leader here. This is, like, I'm doing something wrong. Like, this is, like, I feel like not imposter syndrome. I feel like idiot syndrome. It's a blind leading to blind. Like, these guys know zero about startups. I know point one about startups,

40:27

but if I'm the smart guy here, then that where are the actual smart guys? They're not here. And I asked, I was like, yo, what are the success stories in Brisbane about, like, startups? Is this you guys have the startup scene? They're like, yeah, these guys did it. Great. Oh, where are they? They don't come to these events? No. They moved to San Francisco. These guys moved. These guys moved. And I was like, oh, all the smart people move. Okay. Maybe I should move. So I changed my phone number first just to mentally be like, alright. I have a Silicon Valley area code. I don't know why. For me, that was just like I I think I could just do it, like, over like, I did it in one night before I could move. It was, like, faster than moving was just to change my phone numbers, make a statement.

41:02

And then I remember being like, alright, I'm gonna move there. I'll figure it out. And I quit my job,

41:08

you know, on the spot. And I was like, I'm just gonna move there. I played poker for three months to hold myself over while I applied for a a job, r literally one job. And,

41:17

they didn't me. They were like, kept stringing me along. And I was like, this was the one I ended up working at monkey ferno. There was like a slow process, two month process. So finally, I was just like, alright. Fuck it. I'm just gonna move there. And if this doesn't I think I'll get this job, but if it doesn't work, I'll get some I'll do something else. What was the title?

41:32

Just product manager.

41:33

Like, I was this first PM there. So I I I finally came. And when I came, they were like, alright, why'd you move, like, why'd you why'd you come here? And I was like, well,

41:43

you know, I wanted to see what's in the water here. Right? Like, if this is where smart people are. This is what the little startups are. Like, what do you guys know that I don't I don't know? And I was thinking it's about tactics,

41:52

it's about operations,

41:54

maybe people are just like, literally, this is the cream of the crop. These are just the smartest people. And there's certainly some of that. But I'll tell you what, to me, was the actual

42:02

This was the actual difference.

42:04

The thing that made coming to Silicon Valley work.

42:08

I went to this coffee shop. You remember the creamery or this, like, like this, like Yeah. That's where everyone would be now. It was at a it was at a

42:15

second in Brandon, I think. Yeah. Exactly. So this place called the creamery. It's kinda famous for where people take meetings. And I went there, and I just sat there for, like, half a day. I was just eating. I didn't I didn't have anywhere to go. I didn't have an office. I didn't have an apartment. So I was like, well, we'll sit here and then I'll go search for apartments later. And I remember just seeing table after table next to me. Somebody would come in and they'd be like, just pitching their idea to either an investor or a buddy. Trying to make a co trying to, like, a co founder or two friends catching up or an investment pitch. And it was always like these, like, hair brained ideas. It's like, oh, you know, LinkedIn, but for, you know, cat doctors or whatever. This is these stupid ideas. And I remember just sitting there thinking, oh, that's a stupid idea. That's a stupid idea. And then I was sort of realizing, like, that's actually kinda cool. Like, the normal conversation here, the coffee shop conversation here

43:00

is I get the I got this idea. I'm gonna change the world. Like, I got this idea. It's gonna be huge. And I was like, everybody kind of has bought into this. And that, like, if you go to Hollywood, that's what happens. Like, the waiters and waitresses, I'm gonna be a star. And and New York is a different thing. And it's it's Silicon Valley. It's basically

43:17

I get this I get this idea. It's gonna be big. And that's normal. Whereas before, everywhere I lived, if you were the guy who's got an idea and you're gonna quit your job to go do it, you're crazy. You're the crazy guy. Here, you're the normal guy. Here, if in Silicon Valley, if you're, like, I work at JP Morgan, you basically have to, like, bow your head in shame You have to, like, come up with some excuse. It's like, you know, because my wife is pregnant with twins, and I've really gotta pay the mortgage. But as soon as that's over, you know, like, I'm back in the game. I'm gonna go back into the startup game. Like, If you're a cons if you work for McKinsey anywhere else, that's great. If you work for, you know, McKinsey or Deloitte in San Francisco,

43:51

you're like the low class person. You're not the high class person because the high class person is the founder with the idea or the angel investors betting on ideas.

44:00

So the just that culture where that's

44:03

normal and possible to just constantly quit your job, have an idea, throw everything into it, maybe get rich.

44:09

That's what makes it look about, like, so awesome or at least that's what it did. And what you're talking about where, like, if your friends group has these types of success stories and is doing this type of shit,

44:19

your brain will just automatically change into thinking that's possible.

44:23

That's normal. That's super doable for me too. And that, you can't underestimate that. I think for some people, that's what the show is. It's like, if you hear us three times a week,

44:33

At least that's, like, part of your friend group that talks that way, thinks that way, and will make it feel normal to have ideas to bet on ideas, to make a bunch of money, to make huge investments,

44:44

whereas in your your geography may not be people around you and your neighbors, and so that may not think that way. Yeah. It and it basically changed my perspective from, like this only happens to other people to, obviously, this is

44:59

obviously, I'm going back. Ahead of time. Yeah. I'm going to achieve the desired outcome. It's just,

45:04

a, like, for on which swing am I gonna get my hit? And, b,

45:08

which thing do I wanna dedicate five or ten years on? Right. Because if you, like, work eight years on something and you're around the right people and you've been, like, going to like, I felt like living there as, like, I was in school. So it's like, well, I'm in school. I know, like, I know it when I see it. And I can just keep working on something and then I'll see right away that it's working. And then I just spend time on it and just give it time and it works. It will always work. That's kind of like the attitude.

45:32

There's

45:34

I I think I've told the story. I've been told, like, why did the e commerce thing and why I think it worked?

45:39

No. So I was sitting with our mutual friend.

45:43

I can say his name. Maybe we'll beat this out later, but,

45:45

I'll sit with him and his backyard. He had this, you know, he has that awesome area. And when he lived in California, he had this awesome backyard with the basketball court and, like, a putting green and pool and chickens,

45:54

stuff like that. And we were just chilling for the day and his dogs are running around.

45:58

And, we were talking, and while we were talking,

46:02

the Shopify

46:03

ching kept going off on his phone. And he would have that thing all the time. I used to yell at him. I go to that shit off. Yeah. So it was like ching then, like, two minutes later, be like, to ching. And then I was, like, I was, like, what is that? He's like, oh, oh, my bad. My he's like, I'm so

46:18

Like, I'm so numb like, I didn't even realize I was happening. Like, that's obnoxious. My bad. I go, no. No. Leave that on. What is that? He goes, that's a Shopify. Like, every time we get a sale, it does that. Said, I'll leave that on. He goes, if you share it, I was like, yeah, leave it on. So we It went on the whole time. It goes off the whole time. By the end of the I we're about some other shit completely. We're talking about dogs, family, and kids, and like whatever. By the end of the hour, I was like, alright, man. I gotta, you know, whatever. I gotta go.

46:42

But I'm definitely starting at a Shopify thing. I want my phone to do that. And he's like, he's like, he's like, yeah, you should. I was like, just literally that experience. If I did not have that and the jealousy worked to my favor, right, the jealousy was a signal of if I want that more than what I have, maybe I need to make a change. Right? Cause I was like, I'm gonna go back to the office where I earn a fixed

47:03

salary. It's a great I was making great money, but, like, it is capped. I will make the same amount whether I do a good job or a bad job. Whereas for him, it was, like, he got to chill. It was making money passively.

47:14

And, and if he did a better job, he was gonna make more money. So that was the first thing It made me maybe decide I'm gonna do this. And then I started like Mooys. I was like, what can I sell? What can I sell? Alright. Alright. What can I sell? Okay. What were the other options?

47:27

Of other ideas I had to sell? Yeah.

47:30

I remember going through candles.

47:33

Candles are kind of an amazing business, but very competitive.

47:36

Candles are

47:37

same thing as deodorant. You you use them and they burn out. They they literally melt away, and you have to buy another one. So expensive. I just bought a hundred dollar can't handle. Yeah. They're they're high AAV. They're super high margin, so they're not expensive to make. They're just really you could charge a lot for them. You can have a whole bunch of skews very easily that are all the same. They're all just different flint sense.

47:56

There are the high end, middle end, low end. There's candles that are like, you know,

48:03

Oh, this smells like your hometown of Missouri. There's like a bunch of gimmicks you can do. There's whatever. So candles was definitely one that was on my mind. I told you about the Crystal story. I was basically like, because I I asked my buddy, so I asked that friend. I asked others, how do you think about this? Hey. They gave me some frameworks of how to think about it. Right? Like, Look, you're gonna the reason this whole thing works is Facebook ads.

48:22

So that means you're gonna acquire customers. So something like this dollar amount. Alright? So you need to How much was that dollar amount? So, like, twenty bucks? At the time, it was, like, twenty to twenty five bucks, something like that. But now it'd be higher. Now it's higher. Now it's, like, forty to forty five bucks, something like that. But it's, like, alright. Just say in a best case scenario, you're gonna break even on the first purchase. So you want a product that's gonna have sixty five to seventy percent gross margins. So that means the actual, let's say, I don't forget public math, but, like, let's just round numbers here. A candle, let's say the cost of goods is five dollars. You wanna make sure that you could sell that thing for thirty dollars or whatever to have that type of gross margin.

48:57

So,

48:58

and then you're gonna have, you know, let's call it fifteen percent, twenty percent is your

49:03

cost of fulfillment. So that's like packaging it.

49:08

You know, picking it in your warehouse and then shipping it to the custom and customer.

49:12

And, okay. Cool. So then you take all that out. So, basically, you end up with a break a break even. The question is, If you can break even on the first purchase, meaning it costs you twenty five dollars, let's say, in Facebook to get a customer,

49:23

then you want that to be your net profit on a single order.

49:27

Then you're basically

49:28

that's like the that's like a a great position to be in because you're breaking even on day one. And then every week you purchase customer base. Yeah. You build up a customer

49:37

by recycling that cash flow in this, you know, every month, you're not going you're not going deeper and deeper in debt. And then as you build your customer base, when they come back and repeat purchase and you want that repeat purchase, rate to be high. So, like, you know, one of our friends has a thing that doesn't have high pre repurchase rate. The other one has, like, deodorant has amazing repurchase rate. So

49:54

If they repeat purchase, that means your lifetime value will be higher for your customer and all that extra every next purchase will be much more profitable. Alright. And the business business would be more valuable. And then the little things, like, hey, do you the way that the shipping works in the country is, like, you know, things that are under one pound,

50:08

they ship at this low rate. Once it's over a pound, shipping is, like, much more expensive, like, there's like a normal USPS,

50:14

USPS, like, whatever

50:16

priority mail that if it's under a pound, it's like whatever five bucks or four bucks or whatever. So there's like certain little things that help. And so, like, if you've talked to Moi's Moi's used to, like, change his packaging

50:27

so that he would be at point nine nine pounds he was like, I wanna be just under one pound, and that was, like, his his, like, Keith one of the key things that helped control cost.

50:38

So anyways, there's a whole bunch of frameworks. I went through a bunch of product ideas to figure it out. And the more videos, you're gonna, like, you know, the easiest thing to sell on Facebook is stuff that appeals to, like, white woman and middle So like, how do you sell to a thirty five to sixty five year old woman that lives in Texas? And, like, that's

50:55

the That's the persona that's, like, the most easy

50:59

to to fish for on Facebook. You can obviously sell anything to anybody. Facebook's huge. But, like, if you can get one for white women in middle America, like, you're gold, like, because Yeah. That's the majority of your customers are.

51:10

Yeah. Ours are a little younger than that, but, like,

51:14

yeah, that's, like, the For white ladies. White women in middle America is, like, a a great market to sell to. And most of Silicon Valley makes a mistake. They go for What is LA, New York, and San Francisco? Yeah. No. Single millennials like me. And that's such a expensive customer.

51:27

It's an expensive customer. Their then their lifestyle changes very quickly. And they don't need your shit anymore.

51:33

And it's just limiting, which like Uber and Lyft and shit, like the ad spent. It's just too hard. Yeah. Everything is very competitive. It's just like guess the the way to think about it is not necessarily that one is that much better than the other. I wouldn't actually say that. It's just more like,

51:46

don't narrow your scope to euro single lifestyle as like a twenty five year old dude in San Francisco who, like, orders, you know, every meal on postmates. It's like you're not representative of the world. So

51:57

you know, like, don't limit yourself to just that.

52:02

Because, like, you know, it might be truckers in Middle America that love, you know, that buy y z or whatever. There might be just like a different market that that's really lucrative that you're not really paying attention to right now. So pay attention to other groups.

52:14

So anyways, the the second thing that happened was I asked them I asked so there's we had two buddies that were doing the same thing. Two was enough where I was like, oh, if he can do it, he can do it. I could do it. No problem. And,

52:24

and so I was like, I asked them. I was like, what are your sales? And then, you know, it shocked me. Right? It was like, oh, you know, the business we did at seven million our first year. Twenty one million our second year and forty one million our third year. I was like, what the fuck is going on? I was like, and they're like, oh, yeah. We didn't raise any money. It's just profitable.

52:41

You know, I just take a dividend out. I'm like, what, like, what are these words profit? You know, like, where I come from in Silicon Valley, we don't we don't say that word. That's done with that What's that p word? Yeah.

52:53

Like, like, you know, the prophet, like, Jesus, like, the mohammed, who are you

52:57

talking about? So when I heard that, I was like, alright. And then that became my normal. Like, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do seven million my first year. I'm gonna do twenty million my at your number before. Like, that became my what I thought was achievable and normal. If I hadn't heard that from them, I would have never scaled as fast. And sure enough, we did, you know, seven million in the first year. Now in our second year, hopefully, we'll get to twenty. Like,

53:20

I hit this exact I hit the exact thing to the point where I'm, like, Maybe I should have shot higher. Maybe maybe just hearing their number created like an artificial ceiling, but I definitely created, but are you happy with Are you how many people work there full time at yours?

53:36

Let's call it. Yeah.

53:38

Like, four or five.

53:40

Are you happy with e commerce? I've asked you this, like, every quarter. Are you happy to say the same thing. It's it's a great business in one way, and it's a terrible pain in the ass in the other way. You know, like,

53:51

you know, whatever. Like, right right now, everything is it's a lot of headwinds are going against e commerce. So Facebook's getting more expensive. Shipping anything around the world is getting super expensive and slower.

54:04

So those are the two core costs. Right? Getting a customer and then fulfilling your product. All the you're you're doing physical products. And guess what? With inflation, everything gets more expensive.

54:13

So, like,

54:14

There's a lot of headwinds against e commerce right now,

54:17

and it's very competitive. So, you know, there's a bunch of reasons why it's bad. Then again, it's working. And, like, you know, I'm happy with our business. So, you know, it's good. But what I recommend is to the next person, not necessarily. I think if if you can do software, do software,

54:30

If you,

54:32

if you don't really wanna, like,

54:34

do real work,

54:35

don't do don't do e commerce, because e commerce has real work. Like, we have a warehouse, you know, it's annoying. Let me tell you something really quick before we wrap up. I just invested in, I don't ever do DTC companies, like these consumer shipping companies But this guy listening to our podcast, I bet you he reached out to you too. It's called the good crisp company.

54:52

Yeah.

54:54

So he sent me Like, I guess on the podcast, I mentioned that I love snacks or something. I don't know. Well, we, you know, we were talking about better for you snacks. Right? So so junk food that's like keto, keto cookies, whatever. That he's got Pringles

55:07

that are, like, better for you than Pringles, but they taste like Pingles.

55:10

Yeah. They're awesome. I ate this entire box

55:14

of, like, and it was, like, a lot of chips. Like, it was, it was kind of messed up. It's it's kind of sprinkles. Yeah. And I was, like, dude, this is awesome. The valuation was, like, two times sales. I ended up investing in it. I really wanted to invest. I'm just too I told the guy I was like, you have been amazing. You have a great business. I I would totally invest in this. I'm just completely obsessed with crypto and, like, every dollar, every extra dollar that I could put into something speculative, I just wanna put into crypto. I don't wanna put into anything What's your crypto stuff that you're that you're doing now then?

55:43

Do you know about Luna? Luna's just been like on fire. I don't know if you follow Luna. How much did it go up by?

55:49

Well, it depends on which time horizon, but mine is basically, I don't know, up forty percent in, like, two months or something.

55:56

Right? It's like amazing, but

55:58

and and I think it has, like, a long way to go still. Not again, not financial advice. I'm just, like, gambling. So you're imagine me saying, here's what number I'm betting on in roulette. Just take it as that. Don't take it as, like, you know, my word.

56:10

But,

56:12

I think there's a lot of interesting things about it. I'd heard I'd heard about it from a few interesting people. And then I was like, alright.

56:19

What is this thing actually? And,

56:23

I could explain it if you want, but basically, I'll I'll I'll refrain for now. That's the thing I've been interested in. Good. And you did do good, Chris? That is a cool company, man.

56:32

The problem with all e commerce so our our mutual friend has this great phrase, which is e commerce businesses are great to own, horrible to invest in.

56:40

Now I wouldn't say not horrible, but it's, like, it's great for the owner of the business. It's not great for the investors, and that's only because

56:47

the upside is somewhat limited. So even native, which sold for a hundred million dollars. It's like these almost never set go for multiple billions.

56:56

But they're on and valued at the same valuations

56:59

as, like, a software company, which can become a multibillion dollar company.

57:04

And so, like, you know, you invested. I think, you know, I don't know about that one, but I was looking at other, another good deal that was in e commerce that I liked. It's like, oh, we have you know, we're doing ten or twenty million dollars in revenue.

57:16

You know, twenty percent of that is is is profits or EBITDA.

57:19

You know, we're valued at fifty billion or sixty million. It's like, it was a good company. It was definitely gonna work. Like, the business was working and was gonna probably keep working.

57:27

And,

57:28

you know, the reality is that that it's unlikely that that will ever even sell for six hundred million, let alone six billion. Right? So it's like, you get these, like, two x, three x, four x of revenue, like, sales,

57:40

or, sorry, evaluation sales.

57:42

And that's just not super compelling when you have better options. Like, if you can invest in software, do it. You know? And in a couple weeks, we're gonna have this guy on. I landed up AJ Patel. From high key cookie

57:53

and

57:54

zesty pause.

57:56

That guy's amazing. He's one of the most impressive people I've ever read about.

58:00

And he he was an owner of one of those businesses. And by the way, I should say two other things.

58:03

There's all there's obviously exceptions to every rule. So, you know, I'm, like, there are definitely some e commerce investments that are gonna do awesome.

58:11

Like Native did awesome because it sold for a hundred million, but they had only raised, I think, two million bucks or something like that, a million dollars. So, you know, he was super capital efficient. Whereas most of these are not, they burn a fuck ton of money on marketing and and inventory.

58:23

Second thing, the only other bad thing about e commerce is, like, even when say, oh, we did seven million, ten million, whatever

58:29

this year. That doesn't mean, a, that's revenue, not profits. And, b,

58:33

almost whatever you do have for profits gets reinvested back into the business because you're buying inventory for the next four months. So if you're buying ads for the next month and, like, So you're always cash poor until you finally turn the corner. And there is a corner that you turn when you're a good business, but early on, you don't want that. Have you turned it?

58:51

We have not turned that. No.

58:53

Because

58:54

we're re like, we are like, oh, great. We need to buy double or triple the inventory for the next season. And for the next season, and after that, and so, you know, it's gonna Stress's fuck.

59:04

Yeah. Like, you know, but it's cool. It's like it works, but it works if you don't need a bunch of cash to pull out,

59:09

and you're okay being cash poor for a while, real estate's like this often too. You you could be cash poor in real estate, but be, like, you know, have a lot of value. Yeah. But it's not gonna go to zero.

59:18

Yes.

59:19

Real state is slow way slow, but

59:23

it's more liquid

59:25

and

59:26

it's not gonna grow fast, but it won't go away. So it's a little different, whereas your thing

59:32

Well, you can go away in the sense that If the valuation drops, then, you know, you're more, you know, you don't make a profit. It's not that it goes to zero, but your

59:42

your your what you owe the bank is the now the value of the company. And so your equity can go down. Right? Like Yes. But a a a ecom business can double or triple in a year. Real state likely, we'll never do that. But that ecomm business, let's say that, like, something's made illegal or there's an embargo. Who knows? Like, there's a world where it can go out of business. Yeah.

01:00:02

For sure.

01:00:04

I have a couple more. I don't know if you wanna just stay on. We could just split these into, you know, we talked about just, like, releasing these as, like, segments instead of Alright. Hour long episodes.

01:00:12

Do you have time or no? Yeah. I have time. Alright. Have you seen this thing that happened, called SOS SOS token? No. What is it? I gotta tell you about this. This is genius. Okay. So

01:00:23

there's a there's a there's an app called OpenC, or a website called OpenC. You've heard of OpenC? It's basically like Well, not that big of a It's eBay for NFTs.

01:00:33

So it's a place where you go and buy buy and sell NFTs. And OpenC is,

01:00:38

It's in crypto, but it doesn't do some of the things that crypto people like. So it's, like, it's not fully open source. You know, all the code is not open source. Like, they Like, the website, the way the website works, I think it's, you know, proprietary. It's,

01:00:51

that you can't just fork that code and just put your own name on it. The second thing is that they don't have a token involved with it.

01:00:58

And the third is that, you know, they raised a bunch of money from private from from traditional venture capitalists. And in the crypto world, that's like

01:01:05

you sell out type of boat. Yeah.

01:01:08

So Andresen Horowitz, I think, put money in. It's a multi billion dollar marketplace. And I think it's gonna be, like,

01:01:14

gonna be huge. I think they did, like,

01:01:17

Ben, you can look this up, but they did, like, I don't know, eight billion dollars of transaction volume in, like, one month this year. So it's been it's been growing like, and it's, like, crazy. It is one of the best startups you can invest in right now would be open sea.

01:01:29

Now what happens? So they their CFO, they hire this hotshot CFO. CFO goes on some show and some some either podcast or some top show and he says, You know, we're looking at potentially going public.

01:01:41

And he's saying it because that's a good thing for the company.

01:01:44

And immediately, the users are like Oh, you're using the old route of, like, getting liquidity that's gonna make you guys rich, but all of us users

01:01:52

who have built this into the most popular NFT marketplace.

01:01:55

We're gonna get nothing from that. Like, we don't own stock in your company. So you go public, we don't get anything. We built this thing. And again, that's against the,

01:02:04

that's against the core, the ethos of,

01:02:07

of your everything. Yeah. Ben just found it ten billion in ten billion in trading volume in in August alone.

01:02:12

So that's in same same same same numbers.

01:02:16

So,

01:02:17

or sorry. I think it's yeah. I don't know. Whatever. So, basically,

01:02:22

So what happens? So this group of people got together. I think the guy, the guy who is behind it, his handle is, like,

01:02:28

nine x, nine x, nine x, or something like that. Right? So this guy comes they create something called the Open Dow. If you go to the Open Dow dot com, And they say, they created a token called SOS. So OpenC is the name of the platform. So this is like SOS, like save our ship.

01:02:44

He creates this token called SOS.

01:02:46

It creates a hundred trillion tokens, and he gives them out. And what they did was kinda genius. So

01:02:52

on, like, two days ago, anybody who was in crypto Twitter, anybody who buys NFTs,

01:02:56

started saying, oh, there was an air drop, which means if I look in my wallet, I'm gonna have tokens. It's like finding twenty bucks in your wallet.

01:03:05

And so they did an airdrop to all the users of OpenC

01:03:09

based on how much you use OpenC. So how did they get that information?

01:03:13

It's it's the block. It's on that's the beauty. It's like, and this can only happen in crypto. So because I know, but I would have thought that, like, I guess you could just the website and just get a list of everyone's wallet on No. No. No. No. It's not not the website. All OpenC is just like a a website that accesses the Ethereum chain. So all the transaction happened on the Ethereum blockchain. Got it. The buying and selling of the NFT, the minting of the NFTs on the blockchain, the buying and selling is out there in lock chain. Again, again, it's just open source public public record, basically, that you can go access. You can go I can go type in your wallet address, like your public wall address, and see how much money's in your account right now if I just go into etherscan.

01:03:47

And so now you might have multiple wallets, but, like, that's one thing you can do. What they did was they went they looked at every every transaction on open sea, all the wallets, and they said, okay.

01:03:56

Sean's wallet has spent ten ETH

01:03:59

He's done five transactions.

01:04:02

So he should get x percentage of it. So they took of the hundred trillion. They said half of it, we're just gonna drop to all the users of OpenC.

01:04:08

So I woke up and I had fifty eight billion of these tokens are there at a point. Oh, whatever price. My total was whatever, like, three hundred dollars, whatever. It was like five hundred dollars. I don't use OpenC a ton. I didn't do too many transactions.

01:04:20

But if you're one of these people who's like an NFT collector or flipper,

01:04:23

who,

01:04:24

is very active on the platform who buys and sells, you know, you know, board apes and things like that.

01:04:30

People made, like, three thousand dollars, five thousand

01:04:32

dollars fifteen thousand dollars. So it's like finding five thousand dollars in your wallet. And you're like, what is this? I got this for free money.

01:04:40

And it's money that they minted, and they basically it was almost like

01:04:44

it's a marketing step, but it's almost like a hostile takeover. So they basically went out there. What they were saying was,

01:04:50

Here's what OpenC should have done. They should have given all the users some tokens

01:04:54

proportionate to their usage, based, you know, so based on how much you've been using the platform, you get some of the open c token, and that and then the open c token will be publicly tradable. So you get to benefit, and the core team will keep some of the open c token, like the company will keep twenty percent of this. That's how that's like the normal way in crypto.

01:05:11

So the the genius part of this is that some third party just did this on their behalf, and it's like, And now what and they so now there's a liquid market of, like, hundreds of millions of dollars.

01:05:22

I think it was, like, three hundred million dollars. The the group okay. So here's how they did it. They said fifty percent goes to the users.

01:05:29

Ten percent goes to the stakers and the liquidity thirty percent goes to Lake, the Lakers and the liquidity pool, and twenty percent will stay with the treasury of our of our foundation. And we are gonna build an open source version of OpenC. We're gonna build a competitor to OpenC.

01:05:43

And all you users who are power users of OpenC, you now have a stake in our new open seat that's to come, that's gonna do things the right way. But they've gotta build I mean, building out They don't have to build. It's fucking hard. So I mean, how how many people work there? Five hundred people? No. No. No. No. No. Dude, these things can be built by, like, you know, four motivated developers if you needed to. Then why the hell does airplane be deep five thousand people?

01:06:07

It'll take a lot to maintain it and do customer support and all those things. Yes. That that will take time. But just building the actual product that will start to get people to shift off of open to do this, a team of five to ten contributors can actually do this if they're great developers that are focused. Now that's

01:06:22

TBD. It's like a Kickstarter. It's like, hey.

01:06:25

Give your money in a Kickstarter. Are they ever gonna build a thing? Well, it kinda depends. Are they honest and are they gonna work hard? I don't know. We'll see. But these guys, basically, they they essentially raised

01:06:34

It's like they hijacked open sea and they raise their share was twenty trillion out of the hundred, twenty percent. They have a hundred thirty million dollars now in their

01:06:42

treasury. That they can pay their development team to build the open source competitor to this. Who's who's the guy behind it, the people behind it? This nine x nine x nine x and then someone else who's x dot x dot x y z. That's his that's his handle. I I think that's who's behind it. And so they,

01:06:58

I think it's a look, I don't know if this is gonna work. I think it's something that's only possible in the crypto world because, again, this is one of this is one of the reasons why people are like,

01:07:09

You know,

01:07:10

decentralization is cool. It's cool because the users can always pick up their ball and leave. They can go to another court.

01:07:17

And so OpenC does not own their their wallets. It does not own their NFTs. They have no lock in to keep the users there.

01:07:25

Except for behaving well and treating them well. And if somebody else says I'm gonna treat you better over here, it is very easy for me to take my wallet, take my NFTs, and go over here, and an even better, that other group can incentivize me to come over here and try it out by saying, hey, here's some free tokens that we've been dead out of thin air. So I think this is a useless take over.

01:07:42

It's like a hostile takeover. It reminds me of I had a buddy who was gonna do this to a company called Rippel. Have you ever heard of Rippel?

01:07:50

Yeah. But they they're shady. Right?

01:07:53

Okay. So ripple was this thing kinda, like, started pretty early on.

01:07:58

And they had this, like, you know, honestly, not a bad idea. They were like, look, you know, the way the international banking system works today is off this thing called the Swift standard. Ripple was like, we are gonna be a bank to bank communication layer that uses blockchain. Right? So they're like, we're gonna use blockchain technology

01:08:12

with a real use case, which is banks sending money back forth to each other. So that was their idea. They got a bunch of funding from founders fund and others, and they released this thing called XRP. That's the name of their token. Alright. So whatever.

01:08:23

Nobody cares about that, how it works. Nobody cares. But the interesting part is XRP has, like, was worth a lot. The founders of ripple became billionaires overnight before

01:08:31

Like, that's the thing with crypto. You can get rich before, like, this Open Dow has a hundred thirty million dollars before they have a product. In ripple, those guys became billionaires before banks ever used their product, which is like a really fucked up incentive, and which is why

01:08:43

sometimes shit doesn't actually get built in crypto because, hey, I already got the millions. I could just run away. I could just do a half ass job. It doesn't really matter at this point. I went public on day one.

01:08:52

So ripple, has a market cap right now of

01:09:00

Ninety four is this right? Ninety four billion dollars? I think I'm reading this right? Ninety four billion dollars, something like that. No. No. I'm sorry. Forty four billion dollars. Forty four billion dollars. Right? That's, like, that's, like, the market cap of, like, you know, Bank of America or some shit like that. So,

01:09:13

obviously, Ripples not actually valued at The ripple had believers and they had early momentum, but they were very early in the cryptic games. They had a lot of PR. And the CEO would go on CNBC and talk about how this is gonna change the game. So what happened?

01:09:26

In the crypto community, people were kinda like poo pooing rippled. They're, like, this is, like, centralized.

01:09:31

They they took way too much share for themselves. They didn't give enough to users. That's why these guys are billionaires.

01:09:37

Their product kinda sucks, and they're kinda shady, whatever That's what the reputation was. Ripples. Anybody who was in the known crypto, crypto, pretty much the general consensus was. Ripples full of shit.

01:09:47

And, so my buddy had this idea. He was, like, he was, like, I'm gonna do first

01:09:51

hostile takeover

01:09:53

of a crypto network. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, look, I can see every single person's wallet who owns ripple.

01:09:59

I was like, okay. That's kinda interesting. He go, I go, but you don't know their name in LA. He goes, I don't need their name. I was like, you don't have their email address. He goes, I don't need their email address. I could just put something in their wallet. And they'll wake up and they'll open their wallet, and they'll see that they have something in it. I was like, okay. He goes, so I'm gonna go out there. I'm gonna say x P is stupid for these five reasons. Number one, the founders took wait. Can you message these people anything?

01:10:20

You can include include a message in transaction of Like, the memo. The thing, like, in the memo of the of the thing. But, like, the way you do it is you first drop the token, you tell people, hey, if you held ripple, you got this token today, and then you write your manifesto on your Twitter or your website about what this is all about. So you it's kinda like

01:10:37

somebody put a fifty dollar check-in your wallet, you're like, what's this all about? It says go to this website to explain why you just got this fifty dollars. So that's, say, how this, that's how this marketing mechanism works.

01:10:47

He was like, I'm gonna put some money in there. I'm gonna put my currency and all the repo holders wallet, and then I'm gonna tell them ripple is stupid for these five reasons. The founders took too much, this other problem, this other problem, the, you know, their the Right. The token is inflationary blah blah blah. So I'm gonna change all that. We only take ten percent We are not inflationary. We do not do this sketchy shit, blah blah blah. For my five point plan of how to make ripple better.

01:11:10

And it we're we're calling it our own thing. And here's the deal. If you own ripple,

01:11:15

if you send your ripple to my wallet, I will send you back five times your

01:11:20

value. Of this. If you're in the first for the first thousand people that do this, then for the next ten thousand people that do this, you're gonna get four times your your ripple back. And for the next ten thousand people, you're gonna get three times ripple back. Because, obviously, there's this urgency of, like,

01:11:34

okay. If these if this is gonna become the next ripple, If I send my money in now, I'm gonna get five I'm gonna get a five x multiplier of my money. And what he was gonna do was just he goes, when you send it to this wallet, we're gonna just dump it. Just gonna sell it, and we're gonna put so much sell pressure. We're gonna crash the price of ripple. So if you do it early Do they do this? Or

01:11:53

he goes, if you do this early, you're gonna get five times your amount,

01:11:57

and you're not gonna sit there holding the bag while we dump this thing. It's like a prisoner dilemma game three. It was so genius. He's like, he's like, here's the math if you're if you're holding this thing. You have to assess. Are other people gonna take them up on this offer? If they do, then the ripple I'm holding is gonna go down like crazy.

01:12:14

I'm gonna go down like five to ten x. Golly. If I jump if I jump ship

01:12:19

I get a five x multiplier on my money, and I don't sit there holding the sinking ship.

01:12:24

And the game theory of this, I think, was gonna work. So he has his plan. He starts, and he starts, he and so he's like, okay. Well, he needs to be credible. So he went to some very, very wealthy people. And he got about fifty million dollars lined up. To do this hostile takeover. And he was like, he needed it to be like two hundred million. And so he's like, I need to create this huge war chest. So I can tell people, look, we have this much money. So this it's backed by something. Come on board. And he's like, dude, I I he's like, basically, I'm going to this investor. I'm saying, if you give me two hundred million dollars, I'm gonna take down this project. I'm gonna absorb all the value of this project that's currently worth forty billion. Right? So he's like, it's a huge return for those investors, and they and they also don't even believe in ripple. So what was this high stakes fucking James Bond shit and what the problem was, one of the investors that he had went to for this. Leaked the plan to a journalist.

01:13:14

This guy, Dan Primac or whatever. He's, like, pretty famous journalist. Yeah. From Axios. Axios.

01:13:19

ACCios writes the story ahead of time. He says, hey, there's somebody planning a hostile takeover XRP, and here's how it's gonna work.

01:13:26

And

01:13:27

xrp, obviously, the ripple team obviously sees this. And they're like, okay. Just in case, they so they sold

01:13:34

some amount of their ripple

01:13:36

to create a, like, few hundred million dollar buffer so that if somebody tried to do this and tried to tank the price, they had enough liquidity to buy back the buy back the tokens and keep the price high. So it kind of foiled his plan where they the only the only way it would have worked is if he had caught them by surprise,

01:13:53

And he could have done it in, like, a two day period. He could have tanked the price of ripple and created this competitor and had all the momentum on his side. But because they had heads up, they they could create enough liquidity.

01:14:03

And they could be able to, like, support their price before somebody could do this to them. But how crazy is that dude? This is like some barbarians

01:14:10

at the gate shit. Like, this is like nineteen eighties, like, Drexel,

01:14:15

like hassle takeover where they, like, were were, like, what what's it called? Like Green Mailing? Have you ever read, like, these, like, nineteen eighties finance? I have I have the book, Barbara. I haven't read it yet. Yeah. That's basically what they did. Like, it was, like, It was like warfare. And I was like, this is some George Sohra shit. You know, George Sohra broke the Bank of England. I was like, this is the way Sohra shit. And that's what he was actually what he was telling me. He goes, this is some George Saurus shit. And I was like, what do you mean? He goes, George Saurus broke the Bank of England by doing something very similar to this. And as he was explaining, I was like, there's no way this works. He's like, well, you know, it's risky, but, like, if it works Who who did it? In So he he didn't he didn't end up doing it. But I mean, who who's the it's an artist? It's is it public?

01:14:57

I don't know if it's public, but I'll tell you.

01:15:00

It's it's our friend who remember we went to dinner after a live show in Miami. It's our friend. We went to go away. Yeah.

01:15:07

That's crazy. I thought,

01:15:09

if if Dan would have wrote about it, he would have named him. Yeah. I I think he didn't know the name or he I don't think he included the name of the thing, but How fucking nuts is that? That's crazy if you get if that person could've pulled it off. That's wild.

01:15:22

This is Bavarians at the gate shit. Hassel take over stuff. Yeah. I love it.

01:15:26

Alright. I have a couple more topics if we wanna do them or or if we wanna go, we can go. Alright. I got I can do fifteen more minutes. Alright. Let's do one more.

01:15:35

Okay, I got two random ideas for you. Okay. Here's the here's the first idea. Alright. This idea is my gift to the chief marketing officer of Gucci. You know, you're welcome courtesy of Shopboarding. Okay. I see this headline.

01:15:50

Alright. So I was thinking the other day. I was, well, I was sitting there,

01:15:54

sitting at the at a restaurant.

01:15:56

As I do, I'm just watching. I'm just people watching. I'm just watching these crazy creatures called humans. What the fuck are they doing? And I saw all these people that had fancy bags, Gucci bags, Louis Vuitton bags, as it's very different from my world. I don't I don't give a shit about that, but they obviously do. I was I was watching this. Then I came home. I'm watching this show selling sunset,

01:16:15

funny show on Netflix about real real estate team. I watched it too, man. You know, I watched all that shit.

01:16:22

Yeah. So so, you know, I I dabble. And, if you notice every day they come to work, they're wearing, like, the craziest, like, what nobody wears to wearing, like, five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars dress with, like, a five thousand dollar bag and they put the bag right on the middle of the desk. It's like, there's no laptop. There's no computer. It's a desk with a chair and their purse on top, and then they just toss-up with each other. Right? That's where the show is at this point. So I'll think about this, like, luxury thing, and the luxury has just caught my eye. I said,

01:16:48

what else?

01:16:49

What else could you do? And and I don't know how this came to mind, but

01:16:53

here's a crazy idea. That's a it's really a marketing stunt. It's not a business idea. It's a marketing stunt for Gucci.

01:16:59

So here's what you're gonna do. Every year, there are over a million joint replacements in America.

01:17:05

So people getting hip replacements, knee replacements,

01:17:08

people getting, you know, they they they fracture their foot. They get a steel rod put in. There are over a million people a year that get this done. I got it done. You gotta know what'd you get done? I've got screw. I broke my leg. I've got screws and a little I got metal on my feet. Now you're not the right person to ask, but is there a version of Sam?

01:17:28

That might have paid an extra five hundred bucks to have that be a Gucci nail. The answer's yeah. Of course. The answer's yeah.

01:17:34

The answer's yeah. So we're talking about I thought you were gonna go with, like, too too prosthetic legs. Yeah. But you're talking about, like, just Brandon,

01:17:43

on the inside. That's actually a cool idea. Like on the inside. And you only see it on the x-ray, like Only see it. You you have the picture before it goes into your body. Right? So you get the Instagram porn of, oh, yeah. Hey, guys. I'm doing well post surgery.

01:17:56

Here's my picks. And as you're swiping It's an awesome flight. It's a fucking Louis v hip that's coming into your body. It's an awesome flight. This is the LV knee.

01:18:05

Dude. You can always see an air force anders. They they do something so that, exactly. In X-ray, you'll always see an emblem on the thing. Now, I don't know how

01:18:14

we'll figure out the science of how this works without fucking research. That's pretty great. That's good. How good is that dude? That that

01:18:20

that is amazing. And this is just a extra little revenue line tons of news because everyone's gonna say this is what's wrong with the world. You're gonna take over and guess what? There's gonna be a bunch of people out there who are going and getting surgeries done that are gonna say, yeah. Okay. It's The average knee replacement

01:18:34

is, like, twenty five, thirty thousand dollars, like, all in. I think that, you know, maybe it can be as low as as twelve to fifteen thousand.

01:18:40

You tell him, and the actual part itself that goes in, I think is a five thousand dollar part that the hospital orders. You're telling me I wouldn't get the seventy five hundred dollar supreme

01:18:50

fucking, you know, need With the Nike logo, like The Nike to just do it hip? Come on. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. That's just licensing revenue for them.

01:18:58

It's marketing. It's it's influencer candy, dude. It if people get grills, if rappers go get diamond grills, if they're if, you know, somebody out there like me. Some guy like me out there was like, yo.

01:19:10

Diamond braces.

01:19:11

What?

01:19:12

Yeah. Diamond braces. Actually, fuck it. Not even for braces. Just diamond teeth.

01:19:17

Diamond teeth worked. If Diamond teeth worked, the Louis v hip can work. Dude, this is a good idea. This is pretty funny. This is brilliant. This is actually a good one. That one was for you for TikTok. That's for your TikTokers out there. That was my TikTok segment. That's actually this is actually a fun idea.

01:19:31

Alright. Now,

01:19:33

wait. Who who

01:19:34

And did you research this? Is that even possible? I I have no idea if it's possible.

01:19:39

I've got like

01:19:40

I don't think you get I don't think you could see stuff like that. I've got x rays of my screws and, like, I you can, like, look at them, but I don't think, I don't know how that would work. It might have to be a striping. It might have to be a dots, polka dots. It might have to be something that will show up there. It might be an emblem that's just on it. A tiny emblem.

01:19:58

But, you know, like, the red bottom shoes,

01:20:01

for what's it called, you know, like,

01:20:07

the the black, or the red bottom shoes. I've they wrap about them. Yeah.

01:20:12

Yeah. Exactly. Whatever. People will find a way to see the shit. You just if that's the only problem with this idea, we got a good problem to have. So,

01:20:19

and also, by the way, tattoos. I think you could also do this with tattoo parlors. I think you could drop

01:20:25

branded official licensed designs

01:20:28

of tattoos for brands

01:20:30

and be like, yeah. If you get this one, it's actually that's, like, actually the brand. Because, like, you people get tattoos of brands, like Yeah. I hear Louis Vuitton tattoo. I think Jake Paul has a Nike swoosh where his, like, sock would be on his on his calf. I'm just looking at that. That's hilarious, actually. And I was like, that's funny. He got a brand tattooed on him. And I think I was also like, you know, why wouldn't

01:20:50

brands actually drop tattoo designs just like they drop bag and shoe designs. Like, I feel like that should happen. That's interesting. That's another interesting idea. Alright. Two for two. Alright. I have one more for you. Okay. This one's less fun, but I think it's still good.

01:21:04

Do you remember glamour shots?

01:21:07

Love them. Did you your mom have glamour shots? Do you know anybody who has glamour shots? I didn't do it, but, like, my sister did. It's hilarious. It's like Napoleon died on my shit where you go to the mall,

01:21:17

and you wear a stupid makeup and a bad haircut, and you take these awesome pictures, of course. So do you know the business behind Diamond shots?

01:21:25

No.

01:21:26

Okay. So Is that the is that the name of a brand, glamour?

01:21:30

Glamour shots was the name of the company. Okay. So here's the here's the quick backstory. I did, like, you know, two seconds of research on this. So I could be wrong.

01:21:38

Started by a frat party photographer who was, like, you know, taking pics at frats. And I was like, alright. What else I got? So it initially starts at calls it party picks.

01:21:47

Then when they were like kinda looking at trends, they were like, oh, people are liking this, like, high glamour style, like big hair, loud, loud clothes,

01:21:56

certain backdrops.

01:21:57

And so they were like, alright.

01:22:00

He's, like, so he renames it to glamour shots, and it's physical locations. And within first year, it already starts working. By year three, seven million in revenue and copycats popping up everywhere. Hollywood head shots, freeze frame. You name it. There's different portrait shops popping up. At one point, it just he expands through the franchising model, expands to three hundred and eighty stores, Taiwan,

01:22:22

Japan, everybody wants a piece of glamour shots. And the trick, the thing that, like, really made it work was most It's a great name. Most professional photographers, you would go. Well, there's a couple of things I made it work. One was the style was iconic.

01:22:33

The second was, so it wasn't just come. I'll take a picture of you. It was come. I'll make you look like a Hollywood star with the hair, the makeup, the clothes, And it was only like, you know, top half up. So you would be wearing your jeans underneath, and then at your top would be like, this denim studded jacket or whatever with the collar popped or whatever. So back drops with the colors. Everybody knows of the look, fan blowing your hair, that whole thing. So that was one one innovation. The other was

01:22:59

instant gratification.

01:23:00

So you would take the photo. And for most photographers, they're like, great. I'll I'll I'll go, you know, get these exposed.

01:23:07

Then I'll,

01:23:09

I'll add you whenever touch them. I'll pick the best ones. I'll get I'll get you, you know, some some options in a few few days, few weeks.

01:23:14

Glammer shots. They used a special, like, kind of camera technique or whatever. So it was actually taking a video, I think, and it will grab an image, and you could see it right there on the screen. In real time, and you could pick and be like, oh, I want that one. That one's so good. They got you in the heat of the moment when you were in peak state, when you were already caught up in the frenzy and people were dropping.

01:23:31

Three hundred, four hundred, five hundred dollars inflation adjusted

01:23:35

on their glamour shots,

01:23:38

average customer spend. So it was like highly lucrative because that's basically like, you know, for like a thirty minute shoot. You're making, you know, huge profits.

01:23:45

And they had these, like, six categories

01:23:48

of styles that you got to pick from. The names are hilarious.

01:23:51

One is can't wait to be touched.

01:23:54

Another spontaneous.

01:23:56

Tailored, elegant, bold, and that's where these, like, classic looks come from. So there was some genius behind the person who really understood what the customer wants behind it. Whatever happened to the company. So it gets to a hundred million in sales by nineteen ninety four.

01:24:09

By two thousand one, it's now dropped back down to ninety three stores. Now there's like forty stores left. It's basically weathered away and dying. It didn't didn't last, didn't keep up with the times.

01:24:20

Here's the idea.

01:24:22

Remooting glamour shots. And We're rebooting glamour shots.

01:24:26

Everything nostalgic from the nineties is crushing Oh, you're rebooting Spider Man, Batman? X

01:24:30

men?

01:24:34

You're rebooting home alone? Home alone's getting rebooted.

01:24:37

We're rebooting glamorous shots. This is what I'm telling you. I'm on board. So there's I'm looking at it now. There's only five there's only five of these locations left. Yeah. They're we're down to the last. So this, you know, remember the alamo. We're down to the last stand. So the question is, How would you actually reboot glamour shots? So I wanted to brainstorm with you for two minutes. How would you reboot glamour shots? I got a couple ideas. I don't know if you have one off top of your head. Otherwise, I'll go.

01:25:01

You gotta do it in person, I think. I think that's a part of it.

01:25:07

Do what do you need to do that's different? I mean, the you just do an ad campaign with really cool celebrities or some celebrities and you'd be like, here's what they would've looked like. Like, you know, a modern a modern person, what they would've looked like lambershop, what would you do? So I'm I'm gonna reboot it. I'm not okay. So nostalgia's one one one angle you could go. You could just say this look would come back. But I think that's that's short side. I think what you gotta do is you gotta work backwards. So my mom had glamour shots on the wall. The end product was a framed picture on the wall of her looking like an eighty soap opera, ninety soap opera person, basically with the hair blown out and crazy lighting and crazy dress.

01:25:42

Well, what is the what's the end product people want today?

01:25:45

Instagram, baby? They want epic Instagram content. So we've talked about Museum of ice cream. We've talked about some of these I think those are secretly glamour shots reboots. I think you gotta go all in on the glamour shots reboot. So you're gonna you're gonna make somebody look fucking amazing.

01:26:01

For social media. I know a lot of people out there throwing up in their mouth. They're like, oh, this is everything that's wrong with, but guess what. People people people care what they look like, how they come across on social media. If you if you hate that fact, cool. Delete Instagram. But if you still got Instagram, you're still in on this idea. Okay. So how are we gonna do it? I one idea was could you get Airbnb's

01:26:21

convert them into, like, basically, like, dope lifestyle looking Airbnb's and just rent them out for shoots

01:26:26

Instead of, you know, renting it out for seven hundred dollars a night, you're renting it out for a hundred dollars an hour and you're doing, or two hundred dollars an hour and you're doing shoots for people.

01:26:35

Where they get to look like they're living a dope lifestyle. They look they look like they're living a But that's that's different than a Lambersha. Glenbersha is, like, supposed to be funny.

01:26:43

It's not supposed to be funny, dude. That it looks funny now when we look back, like, look back at your dad with an afro or whatever. Like, actually, you had an afro in high school. So it looked like it's your own high supposed to be funny. At the time, I don't know if you were trying to be funny, but for glamour shots But they are they're trying to be camera. But that's different with these Instagram things, you're talking about being, like, lying. Trying by looking cool. Yeah. So so that's one one angle to it. I think you You're lying. You don't live in that fancy ass house. Yeah. But you're not saying I live here. You're just posing a picture. Like, people do this So you're gonna have, like, a people rent fancy cars and they take pictures with it, and then they return the car. Anyone who does that?

01:27:19

Personally, thank god. No.

01:27:22

Have I seen people who do that on Instagram? Yes. I've seen people who do that on Instagram. Tons of people do that on Instagram. It's like, what you would need is people. People write dresses for the day. You know? Dude, you would just need, like, a, like, one airline seat and, like, what looks like an airline? Yeah. Did you've seen that right? The private the half private jet? It's like a movie set. It's like a It's like where they film pornos.

01:27:41

Exactly. So so there's that. I think you okay. But that's a little capital intensive to get Airbnbs. Maybe you do it with a green screen. I think one one way you could do this is you could just have someone come take pictures with a green screen, and you just do it where once they take the pictures once and on your locations with a green screen, very cheap to do,

01:27:56

then you CGI them into, like, a whole bunch of different looks that becomes their collection of of, like, they could be power suits, they could be it could be boss mode, they could be party mode, they could be whatever, but you just have green screen props and scenarios, and you show them exactly how to pose, to look good. Most people don't even know how to pose, myself included. When you meet somebody who knows how to pose, you're like, oh, like, that's fucking half of it. That other half is like lighting and fucking props, but, like, and editing. Right? Like, but do you remember when the guy came to take photos of us at the Miami thing? He was like, alright. Stand here.

01:28:30

Half squint your eye. You're like, why? Yeah. I was like, this I was like, dude, like, so stupid. Central. What do you mean? He's like, no. Trust me. Kinda squint your eye. He's like, then

01:28:38

you know, like, protrude your neck forward. I was like, no. This looks like a turtle. He's like, no, look. Watch. I got rid of your double chin. You know, you look like sharper and like more powerful. Okay. Look at this angle, this this gives you confidence. Look from this angle specifically. Whereas for me, I'm like the fucking nutcracker if I take a photo, it's like, stand straight, look straight, hands on my side, smile, cheese. Like, that's how I take all my photos. Right? But there is an art deposing, and most people don't know how to do it. So I think there's There's a version of glamorous shots that somebody could reboot

01:29:07

that just gives you an end product that you want for social media. I don't know exactly what it is. I would just say bring back the classic. I think that you could just you could just do it as is. What what what happened to the company? So did it Did you guys do this with, like, dating profiles and stuff?

01:29:21

Don't know. The company still exists, but I think it's kinda, like, just gunned down the drain. I don't know. I I don't know the ending of that story. I wonder what happened to the founders. Does he have, like, some his name's Bob? Does he have, like, some huge

01:29:31

like, mansion now in LA, like, that glamour shot money?

01:29:35

One thousand percent. He's gonna have a huge mansion in LA. Yeah. And take two seconds to to just Google that. I bet you

01:29:40

I bet you this guy's gotta have a thing in LA. And if he doesn't, we're just gonna edit this part out.

01:29:47

I can't see, but Is it actually Bob? Oh, he lives in Texas in dripping Springs, Texas, which is near Austin,

01:29:56

and it's where, like, it's like where moms who get glamour shots live. It's like a bird the suburbs of Texas. By the way, that's the glamour shots is still thriving in Texas. I think that's the only place where still, like, a thriving business. I think I read that.

01:30:09

Dude, this guy's awesome. His name is Bob. That's all I got. Those are my topics.

01:30:13

This is awesome. We gotta get Bob on here. Alright, that's the pod.

00:00 01:30:33