Encarta | How Successful Startups Got Their First 1000 Customers (Uber, Product Hunt & More) (#362)

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And what he was doing was every day, he would wake up at, like, whatever, five or six in the morning, and he would go to Phil's coffee, and he would sit down with his laptop. First, he tweeted out that he was at Phil's every single day. And then he would start

00:11

just literally emailing and tweeting at people that they should be posting their product on product hunt, or, hey, I posted it for you. Would love to hear your comment or Hey, I noticed this product that's a lot like yours. I wonder if, you know, or, like, that's in your industry. You should check this out. And all he was doing was, like, manually being the human notification system for product hunt. He was the he was the human invite system, the notification system, the retention system. He was all of it.

00:37

I have a feeling you're coming with fire or something. You seem fiery today? I got some good stuff.

00:47

Also I just watched do you ever watch Barstools interviews with people? You watched? Are you talking about the Caleb Pressley one?

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If that is. Maybe that's his name. It's the one with Air. They interviewed Aaron Rogers. I watched it today, dude. His name is Caleb.

01:01

Have you and so it's called

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It's called Sunday.

01:04

It's called, like, conversations, and it's, like, Sunday, like, ice cream. Yeah. It's, like, this, like, chubby guy named Glenny Ball, who's sitting in the background, then it's Caleb, who's like a bro, but he's kind of he's actually really funny. He's hilarious. He's quite smart and he interviews these people. He asked the best questions. He's so good. Have you seen the past ones?

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I've seen a few of them. This one is the first one I've watched, like, the whole thing. And,

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god. He's good, man. He that is amazing. So I watched that. And sometimes that's all it takes. You just see someone being great at their thing, and you're like, I'm gonna be great today. That's it. I'm gonna be great today. I saw great. Now I need now I need to be great. He makes me self conscious. Caleb Pressley is is is very, very good at these funny awesome interviews. He's great on the spot. He's very good. Yeah. He delivers.

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Alright. So let's do can I tell you something? This is kind of amazing. Alright. This is gonna be a little hard to share on here. But I put this in to the doc so you can click the links.

01:59

Ben, if you can, let's screen share some of this stuff that's gone that I'm gonna tell you. This is

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I saw this ad on Instagram, and this is the most amazing

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marketing funnel I've ever seen

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Maybe ever, but definitely for a musician. So check this out.

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Stop scrolling. You have twenty four hours. Rick Cara, an independent hip hop group. Last year, we had the honor of being placed on Brock Hampton's official community playlist, and we were also shadowed out by Kenny Bees. Here, a lawn can go off and bet you can do it. This year, we're trying to grow our fan base. So for the first fifteen people who DM us on Instagram and the next twenty four hours, we're gonna send you a special gift. Swipe up the DMS now. So the the the beginning of the the audio didn't play nobody goes. Do you recognize these people, and it's like biggie puck, whoever, like, just like a bunch of famous rappers? It goes, stop scrolling. And then he basically does this little thing. So I was like, So so, Ben Levy, Ben sent this to me. And I was like, what is this amazingness? Let me I I must swipe up. I must know what this free gift is, so I do it. What does that lead you to? It opens up Facebook Messenger

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with,

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direct message already ready for their, like, for the to their team, and it just says send it it automatically sends them a message from you saying send me the free gift.

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Okay. So that happens. And then they they respond. Yo. What's good? Immediately.

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Right? So you're like, okay. I don't know what's happening here, but I'm intrigued. The next thing that happens, I have screenshots of this stuff,

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below your below some of your research. So they go, yo, Sean, what's good? So they use my name in the in the thing. They pull it from Facebook Messenger.

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And then it says, give us a little bit. We'll get back to you ASAP with your gift and some more details. Thanks for your patience. Okay. Cool. One day later, I get a message. It's an audio note from the guys

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who are the the the the rap group. And it's basically, like, introducing themselves. And again, this is kinda mass produced, but it works. They go, yo, Sean. And then it's the audio, which is like, yo, here's our story where these guys blah, blah, blah, blah, here's what we're doing. And then they said,

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You know, for your gift, we wrote you your own custom song. We personalized the lyrics just for you.

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And,

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and so, you know, let me know what you think. It it links to us. Links to their SoundCloud, and it says Sean King of the First Million. That's the name of the song. So then

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yeah.

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The homie

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John, he run it up. Hey. No. Underhand. Got his dogs with him. Yeah. That's the gang. Hope you wanna stay. I saw the homie on Twitter now. He done messaged us. Invest your funds with a fiat at Eiki. Get it done. But I can't afford it to keep a real So they send the song and I'm like, okay. Well, I don't know what's happening right now, but, like, this has never happened before where you go from there's an Instagram and a Instagram ad about a band that you never heard of that you swipe up, then they send you an audio note and personal message, then they send you a song the following day that's like, got your name in it. And then they followed up again, and they're like, yo,

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I don't know if you're in New York. I'm a pretend you are. We're doing a show. Here's the here's the link to a show. Here's the tickets.

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And then they send, like, this automated graphic using Canva of you could see it there. It's like me crowd surfing.

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It cycled down. I don't know what is going on, but this band is kind of genius in the way that they're promoting themselves, and they're still small. They're called Carolanka. They're still small.

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But when I saw this, I was like, I don't know They may not they may or may not be the best musician, but they are probably at the highest overlap of market like, kind of marketing genius for a young band

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and they play music. Right? It's like, there's a lot of marketing genius out there, but they don't make music. There's a lot of musicians, but they don't know anything about marketing. These guys know enough about both to be very dangerous. I just thought this was amazing. Is this,

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effective, you think? I don't understand. So they're basically doing all this to get you to buy tickets to their New York show. Is that right? Well, it's not just that. Like, it's not just if I takes it to that specific show. It's basically the the way I think about it is every business

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you gotta find a way to get, like, your first hundred or first thousand customers who love you. And that's, like, a really specific thing. It's like, I just need a thousand customers who love whether it was for this podcast, like, we needed a thousand people to listen who actually really love the show. And,

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and and every business has this. And so the question is, do you actually do that? And,

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at YC, they have this thing that's they say, do things that don't scale. They talked about the early Airbnb guys,

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how they used to go And the they themselves would go and call all the hosts of their New York Airbnbs. They would go to their houses. They would take professional looking photos so that the listings look better. And people were always laughing like, you know, that's not gonna scale. And they're like, well, first of all, it doesn't even matter if it scales because right now, I don't need scale. I don't have scale. I just need something that's gonna get a thousand people to really love us. And, that's what these guys are doing. I thought this is just an amazing example of, like,

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actually betting on that strategy, which is that you need a small group of people to really love you and go to bat for you, not a bunch of people who just kinda sorta like you or Oh, yeah. I got, you know, we got ten thousand views on this thing. I say, okay. But those those views, do they matter? What are those views worth versus somebody who's got a story to tell like I'm doing right now or somebody who's really impressed by you or feels interested in you or is invested in your story actually goes and clicks and learns more about you and goes deeper down your funnel. So I think that this is amazing because they're show they're brute forcing that thousand thousand fans who who really care about them. Dude, I always hated this thing of, well, it doesn't scale or you gotta build the scale. I've always hated that conversation for a few reasons Number one, most people aren't gonna make it to the point where they ever have to worry about that. Number two, you can brute force it and just manually and by hand do things to a pretty large number. I think the largest number that I've seen, let's see. I think mister Beast is is his a whole operation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That's a pretty brute force. Not I I I don't know what it looks like, but just talking to him. Fairly unsophisticated

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operation. I think when I talked to NerdWallet, you know, NerdWallet, it's a it was a blog that was at the time making, like, thirty in revenue. And I I think, like, fifteen million in profit. Incredibly,

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I like saw a little bit behind the scenes. Super unsophisticated.

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What what are some other thing? And it was basically just them just blogging. What are some other examples of things that you've seen that are look like a tech or internet based company on the outside? But behind the scenes are, like, pretty rudimentary

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and not even, like, they've not even thought, like, oh, we need to automate or scale or whatever.

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So our buddy, Ryan Hoover, built product hunt. And,

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he he listened to pot. So he he he came on the pot as well and and told the story. But

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I was there kinda like front row when he was building that thing, meaning, like, I think I'm user number seventeen in product hunt's history or something like that. Like, very, very early. First dozen people or so that were on the platform. And so and some of us, he was sending, like, updates on, like, literally what he was doing to build it.

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And what he was doing was every day, he would wake up at, like, whatever five or six in the morning, and he would go to Phil's coffee, And he would sit down with his laptop, but first he'd tweet out that he was at Fills every single day. And then he would start

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just literally emailing and tweeting at people that they should be posting their product on product hunt, or, hey, I posted it for you. Would love to hear your comment, or, hey, I noticed this product. That's a lot like yours. I wonder if, you know, or, like, that's in your industry. You should check out. And all he was doing was, like, manually being the human notification system for product time. He was the he was the human invite system, the notification system, the retention system, he was all of it. And

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at the at the time, I was like, this guy is literally

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like sending out, like, hundreds of personal welcome emails a day,

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maybe a hundred

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personalized tweets per day And then he would, like, you know, sure enough, by six or seven PM, he would close-up his laptop. He'd go to the gym. He's a very, like, structured guy. And then he would, like, go home. He He hits the bed early. He's not, like, you know, he's not, like, going out and socializing or doing anything like that. He would wake up again the next day. He would do the same thing. And sure enough, that community that we were part of, I think that first group he sent it to was, like, maybe twenty five people. And it didn't even have his own web He was using this thing called linky Dink at the time. It's like some third party tool to go use. And every day, he would send out the email more email digest in the morning of the cool stuff people posted And then he would tag each person with individualized thing, oh, Sean. I know you guys had once looked at building a product like this. What do you think about this? He'd get you to share your thoughts because he was asking in such a nice, personalized way that, okay, I'll go ahead and reply. But that generated all of the activity for that early community And why did product not work? Why did it sell for twenty million dollars? Well, because at the beginning,

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he got the right people from Silicon Valley to actually participate in the thing. And the way he did that was, like, it's, like, when you watch somebody build a fire, it's, like, first, they're just, like, you know, they're just hitting the the the flint or they're rubbing the two sticks together just to get the spark, And then when it's there, they're sort of covering it. They're just blowing on it gently. And then they're adding just the next little few pieces of sticks. And they know it could go out at any moment. And that's how it feels to build a community. I saw you do the same thing with trends, basically. Right? Like, for trends, when you wanted to launch that, It was, by no means, gonna be a slam dunk.

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And I think most of us who are in trans would say, the research reports you guys sent out, which was the product.

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They were cool.

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But the real reason anybody liked trends, I think, was the Facebook group. And all it was was a Facebook group. There was nothing. You didn't build that. You just literally went on there and typed a fight typed a, you know, a title in and hit enter.

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And then but what made the Facebook group good was you picked you hand picked who could get in And then every day, I felt like you were sharing, like, some super high quality stuff to get a conversation started in the group chat. Was that intentional when you do one hundred percent that was intentional. And so what I I I did two or three interesting things. So this yeah. So trends right now is making many, many millions of dollars in subscription revenue. And it's pretty simple. And there's, like, I think there's only five people who work on it. So it's like a pretty profitable thing. And

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we added these people to Facebook group, and I would do a few things. The first thing I would do is even people who didn't pay who I thought were impressive, like you or some of our other friends, I'd be like, hey, I'm adding you to this group. I would just tell them. And I would manually add them. And I'd be like, oh, look who just joined. You know, it's Sean. Sean has had all these impressive things. Funny seeing you here. How cool.

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If you have any questions for, Sean, just, like, ask him right here in the comments, and I would do that all the time. So I would add these people who did that. By the way, because I was like, oh, shit. This group has cool people. And it's in reality that you added three hundred paid members that I've never heard of. And then you added one interesting person, but you made that intro post baller. You're like, have you ever seen a plane fly Yeah. That's because of this guy, you know. It's like it was always the most, like, ball or intro. You're like,

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you know, did you know they didn't have hundred dollar bills to this guy came around. It's like, wow. I keep that all the time. And and the other thing I would do is I would just write out all these long posts of, like, interesting things that I was thinking about. And then I would tag certain people who, a, either accomplish something like that and would and would talk about it. Or, b, I would write comments four smart people and rep and message them and say, hey, can you do me a favor, post this on there? Or I would write posts for other people and make them comment one time

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when Hubspot was looking to buy us, I saw that Brian Halligan, the then he's the founder and then CEO of the company. He joined And I messaged, like, eighty people. And I said, hey.

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Reply to Brian.

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Here's the message to say to him. And so many people commented that he checked in, like, eight hours later. He's like, oh my god. I've been overwhelmed with replies in occasions. I can't believe how thriving this community is. And I remember thinking, like, got them. Got them. And that but that, like, interaction is how you make all like, That's that feeling you want all community members to feel. I'm used to do that all the time. But, yeah, Ryan Hoover is a good example of people who have grown without, like, really caring about scaring. Scaling. We should have like a segment another time where we, like, actually think about, like, the most, like,

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thrown together duct tape shit that we've seen that has gotten quite large. And but I'm gonna give you another,

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angle towards this. So there's one which is the brute force do things that don't scale, and they almost do them

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even longer than that. They do it even past the point where you shouldn't be able to keep this up. Like, Airbnb still does that photographer thing. By the way, they turned that unscalable

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thing of them going to people's apartments,

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taking photos for them and saying, hey, we'll we'll improve your listing for you. And now they just have a fleet of photographers around the country that'll just come do this for your listing. It's like it's a that they all turned it into a scalable thing. And that's another thing when people talk about. Well, scalable. It's like, yeah, it is. Like, don't talk about, like, an ad agency. And they're like, that's not scalable. It's like, what do you mean? Of course it's scalable. You just hire five thousand employees. Like, that that's scalable. It may be. That's not what you wanna do, but, like, yeah, everything virtually everything is scalable.

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Like, you just have to add a ton of people probably.

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Most things can scale past what most people think.

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Like, you know, this also happens in engineering all the time. You work with engineers, and they're like, well, gonna need to build it right before we launch, or we're gonna need to build it right because this won't work in production. And so this won't work when it scales. It's like, Did you hear these stories? It's like, yeah, Facebook was written in PHP. Why? I don't know. That's just the language he knew at the time. That's what he did. You know, it's like And, yeah, actually, it still runs, you know, of years later, it was still running in that, like, way past where it was supposed to. And Dude, I I've got friends that are early at Uber and friends that are still at Uber, and a lot of people don't know this, but I they might consider him a founder, but the first or second employee was this Mexican guy. And, you know, he, like, I think he was lived in America for a little while, but at the time, he was living in Mexico. And so the early versions of Uber were written with a ton of Spanish in the code. And and so my friends who were early there told me. Yeah. Like, I forget this guy's name. Do you know who I'm talking about?

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I've I've I remember reading about him, but I don't know his name talking to him. Yeah. He was he was Mexican and so they and he had, you know, his friends Mexico, we're like, yeah, well, well, on my I know a good agency. We're gonna have them do it. And they said it was kind of thrown together and kind of junky. And I've got friends now that's Silverk there and they say, every once in a while, we'll find Spanish

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in the early code base because

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that is, you know, what these guys are writing and we'll find, like, Spanish notes and things like that. And that was the early version of Uber.

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And think about how many rules of Uber got violated of, how many rules of startups that Uber violated. So for example,

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The Uber founders,

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Travis,

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and,

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Garrett,

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they

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didn't work on it full time.

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Uber was not a project they were willing to do. They just literally tweeted out, hey, we need a general manager and Random guy named Ryan Graves was like, I'm a hustler. I'll do it. And they're like, alright. Cool. It's like they literally, like, delegated the CEO job. Then, Did they have a super strong technical team, technical co founder who could write the code and do this in house? Nope. Use the third party dev shop to build the the first version of the app. They outsourced the coding.

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Yeah. Most of the investors who invested in Uber would tell you if you're a a product guy and you go in and you say, yeah. I'm gonna just use an agency to write the code for the app. They'd be like, yeah. This is not yeah. No go. Did okay. Then what's the next thing? Then they literally broke actual laws. It was like, running, and they were they got a cease and desist from San Francisco saying, hey. For every day, you're operational, you owe us five thousand dollars per day, and they just kept going. Then the next, you know, they just violated rule. Another one at the time, I remember at the time when Uber first came out Airbnb was was popular at the time, And I talked to our investor. I was like, should we be doing a product like this? She's like, no, bits, not atoms. That was like a common phrase in Silicon Valley, which is You wanna do startups that are software based because they can they're the ones that can scale and have profit margins.

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All these things with real world cars and homes and t shirts and stuff like that. Like, that stuff super hard to scale ends up being super, super low margin.

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And yeah. Okay. And some people say, oh, they're right. You know, Uber's not that profitable. But The reality is that the founders and investors in Uber did fantastically

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well,

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scaling this thing up, and it was kinda a narrative violation. There was all these narrative violations. All these these general rules that were broken that, like, today, if you said, yeah, I'm the I'm the founder of this thing. No. I'm not working on it full time. I found a guy on Twitter to be the CEO, and then we're using this agency in Mexico to build the app. Yeah. We're the next big thing. That doesn't fly. And guess what? It worked. Dude, we gotta go in a quick story tangent. That that's kinda what this whole first half is gonna be, I guess. But there's this guy named Scott Belski. I'm friends with him or I used to be a little, friends with him. I haven't talked to him in a while, but you do you know Scott

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Yeah. I'm I like him a lot. I like to think of Fred as though. The reality is I've talked to him twice. Yeah. Fre friendly with him. He invested in my company, and and I've hung them once or twice. He doesn't know this, but he's kind of like, I'm his secret admirer. Like, he's like this, like, good look at the hands of dude who dresses nice. This is nice and seems like really wealthy and rich and, like, I, like, if I see him, I'm like, dude, you are the best. And I've talked to him. If you have ten million dollars at a jaw line, that's his all in. Sam is all in.

18:55

Yeah. Definitely. All it. So, like, I love this guy. And, he's great. So, basically, I gotta tell you a quick Scott Belsey story. So right now, he's like, an executive at Adobe, but not just like an executive. I'm pretty sure he's, like, in line to be CEO, and a lot of people don't realize this. Adobe is one of, like, thirtieth largest companies in the world. I think their market cap is like three, four hundred billion dollars. And Scott Belski is he's pretty young. He's in his early forties. And he, I cold emailed him to invest in the hustle, and that's how I became friends with him. And I met with him one time, and he goes, yeah. So, like, I was twenty six years old, I was starting my company called behance. So behance is basically it's behance and dribble are like the two companies where you go online and designers can host their portfolio and kind of talk to one another. And he was like, I was just starting this company. And in my head, I knew he worked at Goldman And I knew that he was from, like, a wealthy, like, Jewish family. I think his fa his grandfather started, like, Kaplan, you know, Kaplan University.

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No way. Yeah. And so I was like stereotyping him. Oh, you guys just you had everything handed to you to him. And, like, you told me a few stories where I was like, oh, you actually, like, It's not exactly how it seems from the outside. And he said, I left Goldman and I was making ninety grand a year there. And when I left, I had like fifty or sixty thousand dollars saved. I started behance It didn't go very well, and we bootstrapped it. And I noticed that with behance, we were getting a lot of traffic

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from two different websites. The first was called stumble upon and people and designers would post school designs and we would get traffic from stumble upon. And the second was a small company called Pinterest, and I emailed both these guys

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and this was I forget what your two thousand eleven, two thousand ten. He goes, I emailed these guys. I go, Hey, you guys are sending us like hundreds of people a day, which for us at the time was a lot of people. What what are these websites? And This guy Ben told me about this website called Pinterest and then this guy named Garrett told me about stumbleupon

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and Ben was like, hey, I'm gonna raise a little bit of money. Do you wanna invest at the three million dollar valuation and Scott was like, dude, I only have like fifty grand and but I don't wanna, like, look like a noob to this guy. Whatever. I'll invest fifteen thousand dollars, and that's a big deal to me. And then Garrett was like, hey, my friend and I are studying this other thing. None of us go to work there because I'm too busy running some upon, but it's basically like a car service. And Scott was like, I don't wanna invest in a limo company. Like, there's no way a limo company's gonna take off. But, like, I don't wanna look like an idiot. This guy's been sending me traffic and I I kinda wanna like appear a little bit like a big shot. And so he gave him fifteen thousand dollars. I think at a three point five million dollar valuation. And he did both of these in the span. I think of about two weeks he's like, I basically had like fifty or sixty grand in my checking account at the time. My startup that I was bootstrapping was only doing okay. It wasn't making much profit and I was doing consulting on the pay the bills, but I did my wife was like angry at me, but I gave them each fifteen thousand dollars fast forward. However, many years, they both went public around the same ish time. And I remember sending him something to his house, and he sent me his address. And I remember the address being this, like, really fancy townhome, and I because I looked it up. And I was like,

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Doing the math, and I'm pretty sure each of these fifteen thousand dollar checks turned into around fifty to a hundred million dollars each inside a span of like, you'll have to look up when they went public, but they almost went public right around the same time, and he gave them money each at the same time. Another thing a lot of people don't know is behance, his company sold. I think for a hundred and seventy five million dollars, and I think he owned. He told me around seventy percent of He owned the majority of it. And so this guy has just knocked it out the park

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over and over and over again. And a lot of it came because of Uber and Pinterest early on. And he was like, I don't think these are that good of ideas, but I just I don't wanna look silly.

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That's a that's an amazing story. I love that story. It reminds me. I,

22:26

I just got a DM from this guy. By the way, this is nowhere near related. I am not trying to compare apples to apples here. It's very hard to have story that compares to Uber and Pinterest. But,

22:36

there's a guy who, I don't know, maybe six months ago or nine months ago or something like that. I was, like, getting kinda interested in the, like, AI stuff,

22:45

about, like, you know, these basically artificial intelligence that can

22:48

create art and things like that. And I'd said something offhand on the pod. So somebody reached out and they were like, hey, you know, hurt your interest in this. I'm trying to make apps that will do this. We just released our first one. You know, I wanna see what you think about it. And, you know, raising a little bit of money. We'd love to see if you wanna wanna invest.

23:06

Never replied.

23:07

I go,

23:08

I get another DM or no. I,

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I see somebody mention this app, and I go

23:15

I go click on the founder, and I click the DM. Oh, this guy DM me a while back saying, I invest I should I should see how it's going so I go Hey. How's the biz going? I'll share a screen shot of this. Hey. How's the biz going? And he goes.

23:25

Good, man. Good. Yeah. That app, I really ended up releasing it's been downloaded a hundred twenty million times.

23:30

And, and then I released another one, and it's also been downloaded, like, a hundred million times.

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And,

23:37

yeah, it's really it's going really well, man. How are you?

23:40

Was like my god. I'm I'm currently walking off of a cliff,

23:44

because I never responded to that initial DM. Yeah. Everybody's like, well, I recently switched trader jokes, the whole foods, a bit to carry with that.

23:56

I just did my four zero one k match.

23:59

Fascinating.

24:00

You're just sure probably not much you.

24:03

That's crazy. I wanna share one other story that's kinda related to the two things that don't scale. This is something

24:09

I actually learned from those guys Dylan and Henry.

24:12

So I'm a big fan of this, like, idea that

24:16

You have to find a way to learn from three groups of people,

24:20

people that have done it before. So people who have done it a bunch of times. So that's, you know, people normally try to go learn from them, mentor type people.

24:29

People that are in the game, their peers just alongside you. That's kinda how we got to know each other. We were in a peer group, a mastermind group. And, no, we haven't made it, but, like, we're all trying to make it at the same time, and so we can learn a lot from each other. And then lastly is, People who are just starting out in the game fresh, they don't know any better. And there is a certain tactic to, like, a, spend time with each of those three groups. And then, b, be humble enough and know how to ask the right question so that you know how to actually get advice from all three of those groups. Because if you ask the same question to all three, you're not gonna get valid information. You're not gonna get the right answers from all three. Right? Like, the question you would ask to somebody who's been through it before and the things you should talk to them about are different than the ones that you should talk to your your buddy who's going through it right now, and the nineteen year old who just graduated from college, you can't ask the same question. So I'll tell you something that the the sort of the nineteen twenty one year old or whatever. I don't know how old they were at the time. Maybe twenty one, twenty two.

25:23

Dylan and Henry. They were fans of the pod.

25:26

Then they flew they offered to come help us with our video setups the time. Well, and previously, they were fans of the pod, and they would chop up clips for us and share it on social media. And a lot of their videos were beautiful. Awesome. And they just brut forth their way to having a relationship with us. They exactly. And that became a a a full on agency that does, you know, pretty well. They they

25:47

did it for us, then they did it for the all in podcast. They did it for a bunch of and so people kinda know them now.

25:52

But at the time, nobody really knew who they were. They were just guys who just graduated from college, They had their own podcast, which was kinda like ours. But no you know, you go you can go look at the views. Nobody nobody watches the thing. That's okay. Like, you know, it's most podcasts. Nobody listens to, especially ones by guys who just graduated from college. But they flew out to our house there, and they were installing the, like, kind of studio set up in my garage at the time.

26:13

And,

26:14

I went out there. I was like, you guys need some water? You guys are, like, you guys are right? You guys have you guys eaten anything? I was, like, kinda, like, parenting them. I was like, you know, what, are you guys okay? Are you doing here? And, and so I went out there and I started shooting the shit with him. I was talking to him, and I was like, so what's your guys? It's like, I was like, give me advice, like, If I was your friend and I and I'm like, you guys got a podcast, that's pretty cool. Like, most people you raised don't have a podcast, like, what do you what's your strategy? What are you trying to do? Why are you trying to do? What are you trying to do? And I was like, explain it to me, like, I was your buddy. And they're like, well,

26:45

you know, we kinda we like podcasting fun. So that's why we do it. The second thing is,

26:51

we just think that, like, making content, like, we don't have money to go advertise.

26:55

We don't have, like, we don't have connections that we could just go knock on a door and get into some get distribution somewhere. So, like, content is our only chance. So we just wanna good at content, the best way to get good is just doing a bunch. I was like, alright, that's another smart thing. And I go, but nobody's watching your shit. Right? So, like, Is it even working? It's kinda like what you're saying about this band thing. Like, does this even work? Like, this is cool. It's interesting. But is this valuable? Like, is this actually gonna work? Yeah. And he goes,

27:20

Oh, I'm just waiting. He goes, nobody watches it today. He goes, but someday, if we start to get people to watch,

27:28

There is now a library. He goes, we call it our binge bank.

27:31

He's a place where you can go and you could binge Dylan and

27:35

Henry.

27:36

And I was like, what? And he's like, yeah. Well, basically, we just wanna have a rabbit hole for you to go go down because if anybody ever gets, like, today, nobody's interested. But if people ever get interested,

27:45

I wanna have this bank of content that they can go binge and sure enough after, like, you know, forty five minutes down this rabbit hole, you're gonna walk out being like, I think I love these guys. I feel like I know these guys, and I wanna hang out or work with these guys.

27:59

And I heard that. I was like, that's really fucking smart. I was like, that's the way to think about content,

28:04

expect because most content doesn't just, like, immediately hit and blow up. You wanna have this. And I thought about it because I was like, there are several people who I've gone down that rabbit hole with, and I've come out with that same exact conclusion after a forty five minute ding. You do this all the time. Like, you discover somebody. You go read everything there is about them. You go read their old blog. You watch their old talks. Then you come out, you'd be like, this guy is awesome. This this girl is amazing.

28:27

And they had to create that, like, library of themselves, that personal library to go and let you binge. And I thought about it because You know, the band, like, the the guy Macklemore, the, like, the famous rapper guy? I remember

28:41

maybe ten years ago now.

28:43

Me and my buddy, Trevor, we started, like, we, like, found his one of his songs. And we were, like, oh, this guy's cool. Who is this guy? And he had a binge bank. He had these vlogs he was doing on YouTube of him, like, trying to make it as a rapper. It'd be like, we're going to doing this show at this small college in Wichita. Oh,

29:00

We, like, we're wake every day right now. We're waking up at this time. We're trying to record in the studio because we suck at, create the creative process. So we're just trying to train ourselves. Right? They were just, like, just kinda sharing along the way, and we watched this stuff. And we were like, I remember these videos had less than a thousand views. There were like seven hundred views on YouTube at the time. I just went back and looked at it. Now those have each, like, millions or, like, close to a million views each on those videos. At the time, less than a thousand.

29:23

And we became super fans of this guy. Why? Because it's fun to be early. We liked what they were all about. And we felt like the quality of content

29:32

was, like, higher than the views. And so that made it for, like, an exciting it's like we found a a treasure. Dude, people say that in our comments on YouTube.

29:41

Like, oh, the I'm, like, I'm I'm surprised this is bigger or, like, I'm happy to be here before They're, like, they're, like, I'm happy we're catching it. Yeah. And and that that definitely gives me encouragement. It makes me happy People say that in r u. Little do they know that, like, our podcast has, like, ten times more downloads? So they're like, oh, this little shitty podcast only has ten thousand videos on this thing. Or ten thousand views on this thing. And I'm like, yeah, we suck. Sure.

30:08

But I'm a big fan of this binge bank concept. I've I'm once I once I said that that clicked with me, I started thinking about our stuff that way. And then also I started remembering. Yeah. There's actually a bunch of people who I've gone down their rabbit hole and, like and actually, there could be, like, a product that's like this. I I know YouTube is kind of structured this way, but I kinda wish You could just have a thing which is, like, your greatest hits. It's like, yo, if you if you're kinda interested in me,

30:32

this is the curated rabbit hole. Like, This is my tweet that went viral. This is this video. This was the first thing I ever made. This was, you know, this blog post I wrote back in the day. It was kinda stupid, but, like, you know, it captured how I was thinking at the time. I have two tools that I use regularly, and I'm paying subscribers up. The first, any do you read a lot of biographies?

30:52

No. None. So I read a ton of biographies. Take over the world. Yeah. I read a ton of biographies. And so any biography that talks about a person who is a little bit pre internet era, I'm a subscriber of newspapers dot com, which has aggregated,

31:06

like, every newspaper ever So, like, for example, I was reading a biography about Dan Gilbert or something about Dan Gilbert, the founder of Rocket Mortgage. I think it's called the guy who owns the Cleveland cavaliers or I forget how he owns everything. Yep. And so, like, his company got pot it was called Rock Financial originally.

31:22

His company got popular in the nineties And so I just Google Rock Financial, Dan Gilbert,

31:27

set newspapers dot com to nineteen eighty five because I knew that's when he started to nineteen ninety and they went public in ninety two. So I was like, I wanna find everything. I read all of these articles,

31:37

about him before he was, like, you know, it was, like, really, like, he was in the making at point. And so that's like my favorite tools, newspapers dot com. The second one for anything that's internet related is web archive. So, like, whenever I talk to anyone who's, like, popular on the internet, I go and look back at right when they started, I like to look at their old websites. And you could, like, see the trend, and you could see the trajectory. And that starts that teaches me a little bit about patterns and, like, alright, it's okay. And it also makes me feel like, alright. It's okay to be shitty even at this size. It's okay to be only okay around this size. You know what I mean?

32:08

Totally totally. Yeah. You go look at early startup landing pages. I'd I have a blog post about this actually. Like, ten throwback,

32:15

landing pages, and it's like, go look at the first version bnb, of Uber, of Snapchat. All these things. And then you'll be like, oh, why are we trying to perfect this before lunch? Like,

32:24

it if you could start there and end up where these guys did, like, I can start wherever the hell I am now and launch and then make it better over time.

32:32

Do you, do you wanna go to I let me let me bring up one. So -- Yeah. -- this this guy DMmed me, and I found his YouTube video, and it was really amazing. So, basically, in two

32:43

this has got me thinking on this whole topic, but in two thousand fourteen, this guy graduated from Stanford, and he got five job offers And he did this video that he goes, here's the offers that I got in two thousand fourteen, and here's what happened. And here's, like, how, like, this story played out. So he in the video, it's really great. So, actually, it looks like someone's highlighting the video. What's his name? How do people find this? His name's Rahul. So if you Google like Rahul

33:07

tech Panda.

33:09

P a n d e y. Yeah. So you Google that or just like rahul and then, like, tech tech jobs. And I bet you it'll come up. So, basically, I I'm gonna summarize it, but here the video is great, but here's basically the offers that he got. So the offers that he got from Twitter with with a combination of stock and salary was a hundred and ninety thousand. With a combination of stock and cash as Facebook offer was two hundred thousand dollars a year. His Microsoft one was around also two hundred thousand dollars a year. Is square one around a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year, and this is both a combination of stock equity and sign up bonus. And his Google one was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Now fast forward,

33:47

eight years. What would that stock plus cash be worth? So, basically, the stock The cash is mostly stagnant. I think he added, like, an eight percent annual growth. The stock, he looks at what each,

33:59

what it grew since then. So his Twitter comp fast forward, it would almost be the same because their stock hasn't grown. His Facebook stock, it actually would have gone a lot higher, but right now Facebook stock is down a ton. And so it's Facebook

34:11

first year comp went from two hundred to two hundred twenty. His Microsoft comp,

34:16

it started at two hundred If you fast forward today, it would be worth around three hundred thousand dollars a year. Now here's where things get interesting. His square stuff, and and he was only twenty two when he graduated or something like that. And he first year's salary, but and comp back then would be a hundred and sixty thousand dollars, fast forward. The stock is now worth a five hundred and eighty thousand dollars. And his Google stuff was worth two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, now worth almost seven hundred thousand dollars a year. And keep in mind, so here's a few takeaways from this. The first takeaway.

34:45

He said this funny thing in the video. He goes Square offered me something,

34:49

that I didn't think was any good because the recruiter said, you know, square one day becomes a seven billion dollar company.

34:56

The stock that we're offering you now, it's only worth a hundred thousand dollars over four years. It could be worth four hundred thousand dollars, but he goes, I'm really doubtful that Square will ever be a seven billion dollar company. Now it's worth fifty billion. And it's down right now. I think at its peak it was seventy billion.

35:12

So the thing that is really hard to understand is that everything at the time, most things seem expensive.

35:19

And the reason why things seem expensive is because exponential growth is incredibly challenging to understand.

35:25

If I tell you that something is gonna grow at seven percent a year, every single year, that's actually kind of hard to understand, but that what that means is it's gonna double every ten years. If it's gonna grow, if it's gonna go at thirty percent a year, which a lot of these tech companies are. That means it's gonna double, I think, every two or three years. And like exponential growth is really hard to understand. The the another thing that is really interesting is,

35:45

leveraging offers

35:47

and negotiating is very possible even if you're a twenty two, twenty three, twenty four year old. And so you always do better when you have another offer in hand and you play them,

35:57

off one another. And finally, the most important thing

36:00

for people listening

36:02

Employees at tech companies

36:04

one hundred percent can get meaningfully

36:07

rich and people don't talk about that enough because it's a fairly safe way. If you are good enough, it's a high bar. If you are good enough to get, but it's still like a million plus jobs if you add together FANG. I I or around there. And they hire tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands a year. So it's not like that coveted. But if you can get a job at one of these tech companies, and I'm talking about company that's growing quickly and has at least a thousand employees relatively safe. It is such a good way to build wealth in a low risk way. And the final most important thing on top of that is now's the time. So we're you're talking about square being worth like, you know, it might be worth seven billion dollars. I I have a very small lens here, but I see what the private company valuations are. They have reset and even better the public companies have reset. So we have Square,

36:56

Facebook, Twilio, maybe Robinhood. I think like a company like HubSpot or something like that, a coin base All these valuations are pretty low if you ask me. And I think now is the time where you can get some of these offers where you're getting paid a hundred, two hundred, three hundred thousand dollars a year in equity. And that could be worth potentially eight figures in ten years.

37:16

That's really interesting and a great,

37:19

add for HubSpot. Very well done. Very native. I enjoyed that

37:24

This data is wrong every freaking time.

37:27

Have you heard of HubSpot?

37:30

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Well, I can see the clients hold history, calls, support tickets, emails. And here's a test from three days ago, I totally missed.

37:42

Hubspot, Brobed Adam.

37:45

The,

37:47

when we were selling Bevo,

37:49

we had a bunch of conversations. And then, you know, you sort of compare offers. You're like, alright. We had I think at the end, we ended up with three offers.

37:57

We had a Facebook offer.

37:59

We had the Twitch offer, and we had a

38:02

not tapered, but, like, only because we turned it down early, but he was interested the the a discord effort.

38:08

And

38:10

and I did an exercise recently where I looked back and I said, what was I thinking then? Cause I wrote it all down. And how did it actually play out?

38:18

And I'll be damned if I wasn't wrong on every single thing I believed.

38:22

Yeah. Let's walk through this. Yeah. Let's go through each one. So example, we'll start with the one that's relevant to what you're talking about, which is the stock. So so basically, discord was like, look,

38:31

we like you guys. We we think it's cool, but it we there's no way we would come up with cash like you're talking about. So it would need to be

38:38

just a tiny bit of cash and then mostly stock. But, like, we think our stock is great. So what would, let's say let's say that you walked away with a million dollars of discord stock back then. And back then, it wasn't that long ago that was four years ago. Less than four years, three years ago, three, four years ago, something like that. So at the time, I went and talked to one of Discord's investors, and I was like, what do you think about this? And they were like, well, it's real simple. Like, today. Let's say discord is valued just around two, you know, one and a half, two billion dollars.

39:05

So let's say two billion.

39:07

Oh, no. I think at the time, discord was valued at a billion. And it was one billion then, and he goes, you're basically just betting that discord could be worth five billion. If it was if it if it gets to five,

39:17

then this is the best offer. And if it's not gonna get to five, then this is the worst offer. And so you just have to, like, you know, make an educated decision about that. And I was like, in my head, I was like, well,

39:28

I do like, I I was a big admirer of Discord. I was like, discord is kind of amazing.

39:33

The CEO at Discord Jason, he's kind of amazing. He of all the meetings that we took, I thought he was the he was actually the most impressive

39:40

in there, and he cut straight to the chase and was like, yep.

39:43

I'll do this.

39:44

No. You know, the cash is gonna be small, maybe one, two, three million dollars.

39:49

And then the rest will be stock. And so, you know, you guys have to, you know, is that interesting to you? And at the time, I was like, No. Because that sounds really speculative

39:59

and, like, illiquid, and, like, I can't go buy anything cool, and I can't, like, I the the total number as valued today sounds way lower. Yeah. And in my head, I was just like, I can't do this. Fast forward, I think, is worth about fifteen billion now. So it would have been by far the best deal.

40:14

So we had to place the first deal. If if they give you a million dollars of stock

40:19

pro and private valuations that be worth fifteen million dollars now in four years. Right?

40:24

Right. And we were getting more than a million dollars of stock if we had done that deal. Okay. So,

40:29

so It was it was the worst deal. It would've fair enough to do that. So now that there was one caveat, which is it's it was gonna be vested. So, you know, I'd also have to spend you know, three years earning that stock or four years earning that stock, which I I didn't Yeah. It probably would have been fired way before that.

40:46

So, you know, one of the odds I was gonna capture all that. I don't know. But, like, it just shows, you know,

40:51

how our brain is not real like, The idea of Discord becoming worth fifteen billion was not really

40:58

like, it didn't seem very likely, but in actuality, the odds were probably in its favor, but it seemed like a very low probability thing because it just sounded big. It sounded like a big jump. It's like, is it am I betting the fifth discourse gonna become fifteen times bigger than it is today? And actually, yeah, it did. Like, the user base grew by two or three x, the monetization

41:15

grew, the the overall market grew. Right? There's, like, all these different ways that you just multiply these things together.

41:20

And you get you arrive at this private market valuation. Now, and also whatever private markets have corrected. Maybe it's not worth as much now, but, like, you know, it's hard to say. It's a liquid. Then the next one is the Facebook offer. And it's like, alright. Well, Facebook's offer is higher in cash, higher in stock.

41:37

But we don't know about this. We we don't know exact which which stocks are gonna perform better. Facebook or Amazon. They both seem like great stocks.

41:43

And so then it came down to intangible factors. And we ended up ruling out Facebook for some intangible factors. We which were in retrospect

41:51

somewhat silly reasons to decide.

41:53

The first was

41:55

Oh, like, Twitch was the leader in game streaming, and Facebook was, like, nobody watches game streaming on Facebook at the time. And I was, like, man. This is just gonna be, like, another startup. Like, they they're at they're called Facebook, but, like, in this niche, they're at zero, and they're hoping that we can help them win. And, like,

42:10

man, and we're gonna be pushing a boulder up a hill. I was like, I just wanna go join the warriors and, like, go play on the winning team. Basically, just hadn't decided they were gonna win yet.

42:19

Yeah. Exactly. And also, like, my mentor was like, that's such a stupid way to think about this. Like, you're gonna walk into Facebook, and they're gonna be like,

42:27

Cool. Gamestreamings over here and you go back. Actually, I'm gonna wander around to this area over here. I'm gonna go play in virtual reality. I'm gonna go to AI. I'm gonna go you know, news. I'm gonna get he's like, you could just walk into any other department you want and just go do that thing. He's like, they'll forget you even exist after they hire you. Like, You're worried about what your day to day life is gonna be like there. And, like, you have no idea what your day to day life is gonna be like there. And he was absolutely right. By the way, have you ever been to the Facebook campus?

42:53

Yeah. It's It's basically It's just like a better college. The way that I describe it, it's like a mall where everything's free. So, like, they have like a food court and they don't have just one pizza place. They've got many pizza places and it's one of my wife work there and I would go and I'm like, oh, this is the best thing ever. And they have restaurants, like a sushi restaurant. Everything's free. They've got a ice cream place. Everything's free. They've got a woodworking shop. Everything's free. Laundry place, a barber, a dentist. The barber. That's what that's the biggest one. I was like, food I expected. But when I just saw you guys walk over to this guy and get a haircut, I was like, damn. That was, like, That was like a big draw for me. I was like, I could just I don't have to go anywhere. It's just free. I just walk in and get a get a haircut. That's kind of amazing.

43:33

Yeah. They're like, it's free. All you have to give us is your life.

43:40

Deal?

43:41

Yes.

43:41

Did

43:42

you

43:43

say there's two pizza shops.

43:46

So how much would the Facebook so a a million in Facebook back, four years ago would be worth what?

43:52

A million in Facebook stock

43:55

would have been it's it's gone, I think, up thirty percent since then. So it's, like, you know, a million would have been one point three. Right? So that's the, like, where the stock landed at it. It's the only other day. Double. So at its peak, it would have been double. Right? So,

44:08

and so in that one, we made the mistake of basically

44:12

optimizing for really intangible things. One one that seemed really tangible was, like, they weren't gonna take our whole team. And I was, like, oh, I don't wanna, like, toast at the celebration party of this acquisition and be like, but not you four. They didn't hire you guys. So, like,

44:26

you know, it's been awesome. The rest of us, we're gonna go And you guys,

44:31

you won't believe the recommendation letter I'm gonna write you. Right? Yeah. That would have been the Here's some cab money. Thanks for last night.

44:38

Yeah. Exactly. So that that wasn't gonna feel good. Of course,

44:44

as soon as we rejected them, and they were like, why? And I was like, well, the team thing, they're like, dude, we would have just hired them a few months later. We just didn't have the head count yet. Like, He's like, he's like, that's why. And I was like, yeah. And the commute was really far down there. He's like, dude, we have an SF Office. We coulda got you in. I was like, oh, you didn't get such? The commute, they have a bus. Like a bus that basically has like a restaurant cafe, like, toilet, internet, TV on the bus. It's not even a real commute anymore.

45:08

Yeah. People on the bus complained. They're like, oh my god. I like, the the line for the pedicure on the bus was so long this morning. It's like, alright. You know, I don't know what you're complaining about. Anyway, so we made a decision. We made it. It was we made a really hard decision. Anyway, it ended up fine. But I I guess, like, my point is

45:24

it's really hard to forecast and predict these things. And especially hard to forecast and predict what stock is gonna be worth down the road. That's awesome.

45:33

Right. So so, I have another topic that I wanna go to. Alright. Quick eye two quick ideas.

45:39

One is around what I just talked about. Predictions. So,

45:43

there's this company that,

45:45

Brandon sent me that's called

45:47

Pressy taste.

45:49

I I don't even know what this is a horrible name. Pressy taste. You go to presy taste dot p r c I taste dot com. And it's some kind of, like, basically, it's a prediction engine. I don't even honestly know exactly how this works, but basically what it's doing is it's using data, like,

46:05

cameras,

46:07

like historical trends, whatever. And what it's trying to do is tell the person in the back Like, how many burgers to put on the stove? Like, how how many how many fries to take out of the freezer?

46:17

Because it's basically, like, how can we help you predict demand?

46:21

And so this idea aside, I actually think that there's, like, a lot of different ways, but this is really valuable. So for example,

46:28

we own a e commerce store. And we're always trying to predict, like, how much inventory should we order? We're ordering, you know, six to nine months in advance sometimes.

46:37

And it's so hard to forecast. What's the world gonna be like? Months from now. It's like, oh, yeah. Turns out there was a pandemic, a war a war,

46:44

like, in, you know, stimmy checks that, like, caused everything to go up and then, like, everything that could go down, and then shipping broke. And, like, it was impossible to predict.

46:53

But

46:54

every bet like, every better prediction

46:56

saves us a lot of money.

46:58

And so I actually think that there's, like, a whole bunch of business problems

47:02

that entrepreneurs

47:03

could go after that basically just help you predict how much demand there will be. There's a couple different ways you could go about this. So, for example,

47:10

for our ecomm store, it'd be nice to know how other ecomm stores are trending.

47:15

Are we all trending up, trending down by how much percent year over year in our category? Because that would kind of tell us like where the overall market demand is.

47:23

Another prediction might be you know, if I'm a if I'm a restaurant, what is the foot traffic or the sort of drive through traffic like this time of year, right, September

47:32

or in this weather pattern How much traffic should I expect today? That might tell me what I need for staffing and for, you know, food today versus any other day. And if you just think about, like, If you can be smarter and cut waste

47:44

by ten to fifteen percent in in these types of businesses and these types of industries,

47:49

that's probably gonna add up into, like, the tens of billions or hundreds of billions of dollars per year of money saved.

47:55

And, so I think this business are very interesting because this whole, like, demand prediction

47:59

industry is very interesting to me. Dude, I have done a ton of research in the trends predict predicting business. Obviously, like, we have this thing called trends. And before launching that, I was like, what what do we do? I think I told you about this years ago, but everything I'm about to say, it's from years ago of research, and I'm doing it mostly off memory. So I I'm gonna be a little bit off, but not totally off. Have you heard of this company called WGSN?

48:20

I think I told you about them. Yeah. They're the ones who, like, they, like, say, like, the color of the year is lab her. And the smell of the year is like, you know,

48:29

too lily or whatever. But listen to this. So they're publicly traded. So these numbers are actually facts. So the two thousand one, just sorry. Two thousand twenty one revenue was ninety one million

48:39

pounds.

48:40

It's a British company. So ninety one million pounds. So I I don't know what that would be. A hundred thirty dollars. Yeah.

48:45

Yeah. Like, I don't know the conversion of monopoly money to real money, but,

48:50

no, ninety one million pounds Listen to their adjusted e or their EBITDA was forty one million. So basically, for every dollar they made, forty five was, like, net income profit. And what they do is

49:03

they tell you which colors are gonna be popular, and I'm pretty sure the product. It they they only have five hundred customers. So they're paying like twenty five grand a year or something like that. And I think the product basically

49:14

is a quarterly PDF.

49:16

That tells you what colors they think might be popular.

49:20

And I'm almost positive. The way that they get this is they put like tablets at fashion schools, and they just ask students, like, what they're feeling, what they're liking, things like that. So it's like they're asking fashion people, I guess, the people who are, like, I guess they, like, like, are you a hipster? Are you a gay guy who lives in Fort Green Brooklyn?

49:38

Like, what, like, whatever you, the qualifications are for, like, you are whatever you think is cool. The normies, you know, like me are gonna, like, start wearing. You know what I'm saying? Like, when Nine months later. Ten months later. Yeah. Oh, do you are you a eighteen year old who has a hundred thousand followers on TikTok? Check. Oh, okay. So, like, whatever they think there's gonna be cool, that's what they, like, what they predict is gonna be cool. And,

49:58

it's just a PDF. And a real life use case of this is, like, Starbucks is gonna, like, make a hundred thousand uniforms.

50:06

Millennials Pink is the new color. So, therefore, let's make sure our name tags are this color. It's a no brainer to spend twenty five thousand dollars to get this like quarterly PDF as well as the ability to like DM someone who works at WGS time and say like which shade of green is like the thing that we should be using. And so that's an interesting business in this trend predicting,

50:26

space.

50:27

50:28

I talked to somebody who does, like, a fashion company or whatever,

50:32

and they were like, a fashion company or whatever.

50:35

Yeah. As you can tell, I wear a blue shirt.

50:40

Yeah. My fashion sense is, you know, frozen in, like, the third grade. Right? Like, I was writing cursive the last time I thought about fashion.

50:49

The,

50:50

and they were like lemons. So in this year. And I was like, what do you like? Like, I didn't I didn't understand their What does that mean? A lemon. Like, I thought their's a fruit fruit. And they were I I thought they were talking about, like, literally, like, what you eat. And they were like, no. As, like, a print or a pattern or a color.

51:05

And I was like, Okay. So I was like, it sounds like you're just making things up, but they just pulled up their dashboard. And they were like,

51:10

no. Like, what look at the difference between, like, lemon and pineapple. And it's, like, lemon this is like hiking. We're we're everywhere recently weren't they? It was. Peddup is a bad example, but it was like, you know, basically, like, you you guys pick Is apple's hot right now? No. Apples apples are fucking out, dude. Apples are like, you know, they're so out right now. Lemmons are so in. Pine up what does that mean in? Lamas are so in. It's like Like a picture of a lemon on a shirt? Yeah. Like a design with a lemon on it or a pattern or whatever. Right? Like Alright.

51:41

Or or, you know, same thing with, like, scents and color palettes and things like that. And so and I was like, there's no way. I was like, this is all just, like, you know, isn't this just you know, ad agency fluff. They're just fluffing each other with these, like, you know, random ass, like, things, and they're like, no. Like, this stuff is like the Bible to us. We we need to know what people are caring about in order to do that. I don't know if it's this exact

52:03

WSN or whatever. I don't know if that's the exact one, but they're like this -- It could be. -- concept of, like, knowing which colors, which sense, which which styles, which, like,

52:13

dude are in. That's so that's so exhausting.

52:16

Yeah. It sounds like a horrible business to be in. Like, if I'm gonna be in the fashion business, I'm gonna be in the men's tuxedo business. That shit has not changed for literally

52:24

a hundred years. Have you seen Jack and Titanic? No. And that's not even bad for you.

52:29

I'm going straight big and tall for men. Because literally, the only criteria is, like, Do you fit?

52:36

I'm like,

52:37

you fit?

52:38

If you fit, you're in. If you don't fit, you're out. Like, that's your only I was like, that's what I like. I like a simple yes or no when it comes to fashion. It's just do you fit or not? Because I just can't find stuff that fit.

52:51

Dude, fashion's exhausting. I I I that's not a business I wanna be in. Although I do think, like, there are some brands. You know what brand freaking crushes it, and I never buy any other stuff though because it's just too expensive. But a Louis Vuitton,

53:04

they're, like, suitcases.

53:06

Louie Buchanan. Yeah. L

53:08

l p.

53:12

Dude, they've crushed it for like a hundred and fifty two hundred years, and it's the same ass logo,

53:18

the same colors, and it's just timeless. I do love those timeless things. They they do like a little arbitrage going around. I don't know if you've seen this, but, like,

53:27

with euros. A few months ago, somebody said this. They're, like, because the dollar, the euro, like, got to parity.

53:32

And

53:33

the luxury stores hadn't changed the prices.

53:36

So, basically, like, things were always typically priced higher in dollars than in euros,

53:42

or whatever. So it might get that backwards. But, like, you the a Louis Vuitton bag, you if you were in Paris, you could buy it in euros for a certain price,

53:51

that same bag was selling for more. That same day, if you just sold it in US dollars to a US customer, and in Paris, you would also get the VAT refund so you'd get You basically net getting something like thirty to thirty five percent

54:03

under market, and that was, like, your spread that you could then go and sell it for in the United States. It was, like, kinda crazy. And so,

54:11

there's, like, a whole businesses that are around these, like, the version of a drug mule. So it's, like, you can just pay someone who's traveling

54:19

to, like, stuff a Louis Vuitton bag in their in their suitcase and bring it over for you across the border. And,

54:26

just because, like, you know, going flying to Europe to do this yourself is kind of inconvenient, but there's already people flying from Europe to the US every day. And so there's whole businesses that are based around this, like, travel arbitrage

54:36

and food like that. I just did research on one of these that I discovered. It's called grabber. So the URL is

54:42

g r a b r

54:45

dot I o. So they went with, like, the misspelling and the dot I o. So, you know, they're really a startup. But it's

54:52

grabber dot I o, and their whole shit is shop anywhere, travel everywhere. I guess that's a really bad tagline. But basically, what it means is It connects you with people who are with these drug mules, these Louis Vuitton mules. It connects you with people who are going to overseas places

55:09

and you they'll buy shit for you and you'll give them the money, and it's like a marketplace for that. This is I've got the stupid example

55:15

of that. There's this thing called a wicked laser because I'm, like, a grown up. I'm, like,

55:21

is the one part just, like, yourself describing a standard laser? Or is it actually callback?

55:27

I'm a twelve year old, but money. Basically, there's these

55:32

I I found this laser online.

55:35

This laser pointer online.

55:37

That's so strong that they made it illegal in America.

55:42

And if you shied something like a piece of paper, it catches it catches fire.

55:47

And you can't have it because it reaches jets in the air. And it's a Chinese company. And, obviously, I saw this laser, and it's a three hundred dollar laser, but you could only ship it to someone in Canada. And I'm like, I want

56:01

a laser that can light shit on fire. Like, why do you not want that? That will go perfect in my collection of, like, tasers,

56:07

This one laser. I have a bb gun. A blazer?

56:14

Yeah. A blazer from Ben's warehouse. It takes her in my laser.

56:19

56:20

I had to find someone who would buy this in China for me and get it from Canada to America for my three hundred dollar laser.

56:30

Wow.

56:31

It's so You should you should go work at grabber dot I o. That's what you should go do.

56:38

Yeah. Yeah. We're just gonna sponsor every incel,

56:42

like,

56:43

subreddit. Like, do you like lasers? Tired of not getting your laser.

56:48

Tired of driving to Canada for your favorite lasers.

56:51

He's grabber.

56:52

So grab it for you, bring it to you.

56:55

You're a twelve year old with money.

56:59

This is so I saw this TikTok,

57:01

speaking of cool lasers, I saw this TikTok of a laser pointer that somebody who's in their bed and they're pointing it up to a light switch, they go watch this. If they just held it on the light switch, they go and and they apply just enough pressure. It's like just turning off. And I'm like, this is not real. I was like, I don't know how this is edited.

57:19

But

57:19

I was like, the comments were like, that, bro, it's not real, but like

57:24

Is this a work? I mean, is it how's it work, though?

57:29

I know this one isn't real, but could it happen?

57:33

Because imagine not having to get out of your bed to turn your light off. I I just grabbing your laser pointer off the bed stand and turning your light off. That's Dude, so just imagine getting an Instagram battery. You gotta go watch this in shine something across the room, and it lights it on fire. That's what I got called with these wicked lasers.

57:50

Wait. So how do the wait. How the light switch go down? I don't know, man. I I never got to the bottom of it.

57:56

I liked and followed to find out if they got me.

58:03

They said if I didn't forward that that TikTok to ten people, my family would die of lasers. So I had to do it.

58:10

Oh, you're so stupid. I wanna tell you about another thing that's kinda interesting. So, you know, like, I think you met up with this guy. I think his name It's like strip mall guy on Twitter or real estate stuff. I know I know it's really dandy.

58:22

I'm one of those few people. Yeah. No. Well,

58:25

stripball guy. Is his fake name supposed to be Trent?

58:29

No. There's another guy who's real straight. Maybe they're two different guys. I think stripball guy Real State Trent and stripball and stripball guy. Yeah. I met up with the stripball guy. And, we became friends, and so I have to make sure I don't accidentally say his name. So one of those guys, I forgot which one now. Sorry.

58:43

Tweeted about private security. It caught my eye because he goes,

58:47

man, private security is booming right now. I know so many or, like, I've I've seen so many cops who've hired

58:53

and,

58:55

are just doing this because it's better money. And I was like, what? Like, okay. Tell me more. And so,

59:01

and so I started looking into this and, basically, very, very, very briefly. But do you know much about this, like, private security,

59:08

like,

59:09

you know, like, trend or industry?

59:11

I know that we used to hire them for our events because the insurance made you have one, and you and I had a buddy who we knew. Who's or a friend of a friend who started a security business. He started like an Uber for bodyguards. Right? Like Did it work? He tried no. That one failed. But he tried to make it, like, sexy. It's like he just needs to do it. Not sexy.

59:30

So, basically okay. So there's some big players in this thing. So private security. So there's companies like security toss, or if you just go to a u s dot com, it's allied universal security, which I think is Those are multi billion dollar companies. Yeah. So one's eleven billion, another one's seven billion. I think they do everything from, like mall cops, to airports,

59:47

to events, to whatever else. But, like, it goes, like, smaller and smaller and more niche, like, down down as you go, like, corporate security. So for example, I remember when I was at at, working at a company, I saw on the CEO's calendar

01:00:01

a a meeting that was, like, with like, the private security detail to go over, like, the latest updates to the private security. I was like, you got private security? It's like, well, yeah. Like, you know, it's

01:00:12

work from Rich. Worth a lot. Like, you know, like, worth a lot to this company so the company literally pays for private security for the executives.

01:00:20

To be able to to, you know, to go out and do their thing and be safe. And so I found this kinda interesting, and it makes It, like, it makes sense to me. And, it makes sense to me that there's, like, a private world out there for kind of, like, retired either army, you know, military or police

01:00:38

that might be

01:00:39

higher paying and potentially, you know, an easier job, than what they're doing today.

01:00:44

Who who were the executives that had security?

01:00:48

I don't wanna say. But Are you but which comp did you say the company? I didn't hear you. No. Because that would be easy to figure out at that point. Yeah. I I,

01:00:56

you know, like

01:00:57

Zuckerberg and Bezos, they release what their security budget is each year. And I think Bezos

01:01:04

was six million, which is, to me, not a lot of money.

01:01:10

Right? For Facebook, they they said last year, twenty six million was spent on Zuckerberg and his family, which was six percent higher than in twenty twenty.

01:01:18

So that's kinda crazy. Right? Twenty six million just on his personal,

01:01:22

security. You know how many people work, work for the Secret Service?

01:01:27

No. Six thousand.

01:01:29

You know how many people they protect? Yeah. You know how many people they protect?

01:01:33

Twenty five. Twenty five people.

01:01:36

Spoken like a man who owns a taser and a laser to know. Dude, I just no. I met a secret service agent at a wedding this weekend, and I just asked them everything. I go tell me everything. And I, you know, they couldn't tell me anything really. I was like, pretty shitty secret service guy. He's like, big fan of the pot. Happy to share. Yeah. They just read out the Wikipedia. That appeared to me, but, like,

01:01:58

it was pretty interesting.

01:02:01

That's cool. No. I don't know anything about security, but I think it's Speaking of

01:02:05

speaking of TikTok, there was a a TikTok of a guy who saw Jeff Bezos on the corner in Seattle just like waiting to cross the street. And he's just like, hey, Jeff, and he, like, had his TikTok recording or whatever. And he's like, you know, how's it going today, whatever? He's like, go on. Fantastic. And he's like, you know, he's ready to, like, walk across the street. And they go and somebody in the comments was, like, the top comment was, like, check out the hand on the security guy.

01:02:26

And you look, and he had basically a false I think it was like a false hand. And his and, basically, his real hand is, like, in his pocket, like, probably holding a gun or a taser of some or some kind of weapon, and he just had, like, a kind of a fake hand out.

01:02:38

And I saw that. I was, like, That's awesome. That's that's awesome. Dude, you know what's even weirder is there was a I I'm a UFC Super fan. There was a fight backstage amongst the UFC fighters and security got involved. And I kept wondering

01:02:52

who the fuck is doing UFC security to keep the UFC

01:02:56

fighters from not finding each other. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, what what, like, what type of job are are they getting into? You know what I mean? Like, they just see, like, something happening and, like, What are you going to do? Well, you saw the the woman that Dana White hired the Best Buy lady. Did you see this? Yeah. She was a football player. She, like, kept the woman or someone was trying to rob the Best Buy, and she, like, got down low in, like, an o line. Like, it was, like, pushing her out of the way. Yeah. The robber was trying to run out the store, and the security guard from Best Buy just starts blocking this person from getting this guy from getting out. And he's, like, he's desperately trying to get out because he can't just be, like, stealing and just get caught inside the store.

01:03:34

And she just ends up tackling him into, like, a bunch of boxes. She gets fired from Best Buy, because Best Buy is, like, hey,

01:03:40

liability. You attack to you know, attack somebody in our store. And she's like, I'm like, I'm doing my job. I'm a security guard at Best Buy. What did you want me to do? And Dana White was like, that's bullshit. Like, He went on Instagram was like, who is this woman? I wanna hire her. And she's like, now he's like, personal security guard or something like that. Like, she works for them. Really? Yeah.

01:03:58

Dude, I always see those guys. And I'm like, who like, you need, like, an Israeli trained, like, secret service agent to, like, I mean, who are you gonna have to protect a UFC fighter from hitting another multi fighter. Jerry Springer,

01:04:11

security guards. You have years of experience breaking this up.

01:04:15

This episode is really good off a tangent, but do you remember how remember Steve, the security guard from Jerry Spanker, who also did

01:04:22

it. Probably like the top earner on cameo right now.

01:04:26

You're actually Kevin from the office or Gilbert Catfreud.

01:04:31

Oh, shoot. I think Gilbert just died actually. RIP, but whatever.

01:04:36

I guess I got you figured it out. Did you know that DMX died?

01:04:39

Yeah, dude.

01:04:41

Yeah. I saw that. I you you tweeted out. I think you tell me.

01:04:45

You knew this information. You withheld it?

01:04:49

That reminds me of when Dave Shappelle was talking about, like,

01:04:55

celebrities and how it's weird. They talked to them during tragedies. And he's like, just imagine, like, nine eleven and and jaw jaw rule was, like, being interviewed actually. And they're, like, where

01:05:04

You know, we we need job right now to make sense of this tragedy. Where's job? Where's job? Someone go give me job. We need job to make sense of this strategy this tragedy, that's what that's like you wondering, like, why didn't anyone fill me in that that DMX had passed?

01:05:19

But, yeah, he's he's dead. By the way, did you see this,

01:05:22

this blog post is we'll we'll close on this little last random thing, but

01:05:26

check out this blog post. So this guy listened to the episode that we did with Rob Dyrdek, which is probably

01:05:33

I don't know. If not the most popular episode we did, one of the most popular episodes we've done,

01:05:38

people love that one. And one of the things that Rob, but the one of the reasons people love it is because it turns out

01:05:43

the kind of fun loving skater guy from MTV. Like, turns out he's, like, an absolute nut when it comes to personal productivity and, like, personal efficiency.

01:05:52

His quote on there was I am human optimization.

01:05:55

And one of the things he had said was that he writes his wife a handwritten note every day. And so this guy wrote this blog post. It was like the top post on Hackard News over the weekend.

01:06:03

And it's called write a note to your spouse every day. A note a note a day keeps the divorce attorney away.

01:06:09

And he goes, you know, I was listening to my first million.

01:06:13

And, Rob Dyrdek was on there. He says that, he writes a note to his wife every day because sometimes Otherwise, she would be the last person to hear from him at the end of the day about what he was working on, how he's feeling. He was usually tired by then and wasn't really giving it, you know, his a plus. He goes, for the last six months, I wrote a note to my wife every single day. He goes, alright, that's a lie. You know, I did it most days, but, like, whatever. Here's how it went.

01:06:36

And he goes, it's amazing. Like, we're on the same page about, like, what's going on in our lives, our kids, our finances, how we're spending our time. We talk more than ever now.

01:06:44

You know, we have more trust. We feel less stressed. We're less aggravated with each other. And, like, we're better parents because we're kind of, like, more in communication with ourselves,

01:06:53

about parenting.

01:06:54

And he goes, you know, here's why writing is thinking. So just writing helped me clear my mind. It wasn't just me dumping my thoughts onto hers. Me, like, getting my own mind clear. And he gives this outline. He goes, here's what I write. First, I write gratitude, like, something about her, you know, for her, for how how hard she works, for her looks, whatever.

01:07:12

Then what I'm working on today, and like my goals or my deadlines, anything I'm excited about, anything that's bothering me,

01:07:19

any ideas I have, just like random ideas on my head about parenting or fixing stuff around the house,

01:07:24

transactional stuff like, oh, we need to remember to do this. We have to do this. Don't forget that.

01:07:30

Questions, like, hey, are we going to that thing? Or, hey, did we ever book that? You know, hey, do we have an event coming up? And lastly, again, gratitude for the life we have the things we have, the time we have, the kids we have, etcetera. I was gonna do all these sections every day, but those are the general categories of things I try to write. Takes me just about thirty minutes if I'm not distracted

01:07:48

and, you know, turn you know, it's been a huge, like, win for me. Is it like a physical no or a email?

01:07:54

I think it's a physical note.

01:07:56

Not hundred percent sure. I guess I should start doing this. That sounds pretty cool. Right? And then he did this YouTube video with his wife, like, they both, like, talked about afterwards because the post blew up on hacker news. It got, like, probably, you know, hundred thousand views or something like that. So then they, like, did an interview together, like, talking about this little have it. It's pretty cool. Right? Yeah. This is awesome. I just jammed him while you're talking and saying this is,

01:08:18

amazing. And this is a really good headline. Right? I noted write a note to your spouse every day. A note a day keeps a door divorce attorney away. This is a really good title. This is a beautiful fine.

01:08:30

I think I guess I'll start doing this. Right? This is pretty sick.

01:08:35

It sounds smart. Maybe I'll start by talking to her. They'd all No. This seems like a no brainer. I'm, like, reading this and I'm, like,

01:08:43

all upside.

01:08:44

Pretty much no downside. Why am I not doing this?

01:08:49

Right? Good for me.

01:08:54

How can I wheeze a lot of doing this? Alright. My brain's not coming up with any valid reason not to do this.

01:08:59

No. Like, the calculations are, like, going in my head. I'm like,

01:09:03

Yeah. I guess I'm you seem like a good husband. Do you you probably already do this? You probably leave a sticky note on our pillow every morning. No. Not at all. I, as I was reading it, same thing. I was like, why would I not do this? It seems really obvious, but, apparently, no one does it.

01:09:16

My first one, eight husbands. One episode at at a time. Feel like we had to we had to leave him with something useful because we've definitely got off on, like, you know, a tangent tangent during this episode. Dude, it worked for Rob. I mean, Rob is, like, successful.

01:09:30

Have you seen his wife? I mean, she's very beautiful. I'm pretty sure she was like a a playmate,

01:09:34

like a like a like a, I don't know what the word is playboy model or something. I mean, she's like,

01:09:39

I just see how that is. Oh, yeah. Well,

01:09:42

I'm definitely doing this now.

01:09:48

I I guess I'll do this. Why did this guy write so many words?

01:09:54

Well, anyhow, it's like, If you Google here's how who here's one of the ways that I knew that Rob was, like, crazy rich. If you Google Rob Deerdick Home, there's, like, thirteen different articles. And it's, like, all about, like, a different buy. Ten million dollar house. Did you mean homes?

01:10:08

Did you mean fanchions?

01:10:10

Yeah. And he buys all these houses.

01:10:13

And, he seems happy. He's got his act together. So, yeah, I'm on board. I guess

01:10:17

I guess I'll do this.

01:10:21

Fine.

01:10:23

Alright.