0:00
So what they're doing is they basically take like a vacant property.
Search this video
0:03
Same thing as a Spirit store.
0:04
They take a vacant property and they say, "Hey, we'll cut you a check for 10 15 grand if we can use your house, right?"
0:08
Or they'll they'll they'll rent a property or they'll find a vacant property and they basically just use it for the month.
0:14
They have this operational thing where they can just spin up the haunted house and then they charge like 40 bucks, you know, to enter and you can sort of do the math and realize, man, they're they're probably making half a million to a million dollars in about a about a month.
0:33
All right, are you going to go with Rahul or you want to go with Rahul? All right. Troll of the year.
0:38
We haven't even done our my our Milli Awards for the end of the year thing that we always do.
0:44
I'm going to call it now. The troll of the year. Give the background.
0:47
So Elon takes over Twitter.
0:47
I guess the purchase went through.
0:50
I feel like there was never like confirmation like he he actually wired the money.
0:53
He just literally showed up at the office and like Yeah, there there there hasn't been like a proper rib- ribbing ribbing ribbon cutting moment.
0:59
Like it's not like It was like a squatter.
1:01
He just like went into the office and they're like, "I guess you own it now. You seem to be here." Yeah, it's mine. Like playground rules.
1:09
Like, "Wow, that's all it took to have Twitter?
1:15
Have you ever heard of like a coup like a coup d'état like with with governments?
1:20
You know, I was I I read a lot of hi- Yeah, they're pretty cool. Yeah, they are. Dead joke.
1:23
I read a lot of history history jokes history jokes.
1:26
I read a lot of history books about whatever and they talk about like a coup and I'm like So you literally just like walked into the White House and you just said like, you know, this is mine and like the general has promised me that he's going to convince these soldiers to attack. You know what I mean?
1:42
It's like an interesting concept.
1:43
You're like, so it's all just made up, I guess.
1:45
Like these rules that we're we we live by it is just this is fiction.
1:48
And that's kind of like what I felt like he did.
1:50
He just walked he's you know, like, "Well, I own this now. Thank you."
1:55
Did Have you seen you know, Derrick Lewis the UFC fighter?
1:57
Have you seen that compilation of his thing where he says just get up? No.
2:03
So they're like Derrick you're big like knockout artist but like you know the the knockout you're so good at like what if you get in a wrestling thing how's your jiu-jitsu or your training?
2:12
Jiu-jitsu ain't real man. And they're like what?
2:14
And he's like man you don't need jiu-jitsu just get up. And they're like what?
2:18
He's like why I don't want to stay on the ground with another man between my legs now I'm I'm not into that like I'm not going to do jiu-jitsu I'm just going to get up.
2:23
And they're like but you you need jiu-jitsu to get up.
2:26
He's like no I'm just going to get up.
2:27
And so then there's just and so they there's a clip of him saying that and then there's a it's like a 6-minute compilation of literally somebody takes him down he doesn't do jiu-jitsu he just stands back up. It's so so powerful.
2:38
That's how I feel that's what Elon Musk did.
2:40
He's like no I'll just walk in.
2:43
Yeah he's like what do you what do you mean?
2:45
He's like well I'm just going to walk in with a sink. And take it.
2:49
So anyway he does this thing where he just he says this is mine and there's all these reporters outside of Twitter's office and something crazy happened.
2:59
a story they're waiting for the story about something going wrong.
3:00
Elon comes here all there's a protest there's a walkout.
3:04
And so what what happens is the first big story that happens is there's a picture of these two guys and kind of like you know kind of like nerdy sort of engineering looking guys and they're holding giant cardboard boxes and it says these two data scientists data engineers data scientists were fired today from Twitter.
3:25
Here they're seen walking out with their possessions in their boxes.
3:29
And and I saw it and immediately something looked a little off.
3:34
Cuz I was like this guy just looks so goofy but I was like man that's pretty believable you know there's a bunch of goofy looking people that work in tech. But okay.
3:39
I'm like yeah he looks wow they man they really found the perfect character.
3:43
He looks he looks pretty goofy.
3:44
And then I read the name and it says But he but he but he had a box in his hand so each had a brown box like which is just foreign because like if you work at a tech company like you you don't even probably own anything.
3:54
You own enough just to put in a book bag.
3:57
put your laptop in your backpack.
3:58
And like if you do get fired, do they even like is that a thing where you like hand people a box anymore? You know what I mean? played it perfectly.
4:04
So then it says Rahul Ligma and something Johnson were fired today.
4:08
Daniel Johnson were fired today. Blah blah blah.
4:10
And then and I saw that and I was like, "Oh my god, this guy executed a Ligma like for those who don't know Ligma is a is a little joke that people play on the internet where it's like lig you say something blah blah Ligma and then someone's like, "Ligma?
4:25
What's lig I'm not familiar." Ligma nuts, all right? So that's the joke.
4:30
And they did this to basically I think CNBC was the first one who like reported it and then it just kept getting the same photo kept getting spread ever cuz everybody wanted the story about And the lady who tweeted she was this CNBC reporter and I I the original tweet said something like we're at the scene of Twitter.
4:46
These two engineers just came out who said they're the first to be laid off and it's just so clear how defeated they are and like there's like an audible or what did she say?
4:57
She's like there's just a visible they're just visibly defeated and totally broken and Rahul Ligma says now he has no idea how he's going to be able to afford his Tesla payments.
5:06
Uh and and then he's sitting there holding a Michelle Obama book.
5:13
And so it's like him with his box just holding this Michelle Obama book.
5:16
I don't know why and he just said And she tweeted out like you know this is just they say the first of many that's going to happen.
5:23
It it was just like a crazy crazy scene.
5:26
So people are um people are are are have heard this part of the story but now we got that My First Million exclusive juice on top of it.
5:34
So somebody in our group chat knows this guy who did this and he shared a text message that the guy sent before he did it.
5:41
So he goes um he goes, "Yo bro."
5:42
And the person says, "Sup?"
5:45
He goes, "Are you doing any anything in the next hour?
5:46
Want to help me pull off a stunt?
5:48
I'm at the gym and I need a box, lol."
5:51
"I'mma walk out in front of the Twitter office with a box in my hand.
5:53
There's hella TV CREWS OUTSIDE."
5:58
AND THEN THIS IS LITERALLY how he pulled this off.
6:01
And he just goes, he gets an empty box and a Michelle Obama book.
6:02
There's nothing else in the box.
6:06
And he walks out and the TV crews go for it.
6:08
And so that So that was I thought amazing.
6:10
And then he So that was like I mean, what kind of genius is this person?
6:13
Then he goes, Uh There's hella TV crews. Let's go get them.
6:18
He goes, "Bro, the media is so dumb.
6:18
I literally put 5 minutes of planning into this.
6:23
Even my uncle in India has seen the picture now."
6:25
And he goes He goes The first thing he says, "Did you just see the cameras and just walk out there?"
6:30
He goes, "Yeah, basically. I got to the gym.
6:31
It's near Twitter's headquarters.
6:32
I saw all these cameras and so I just went and did it." Amazing. Now funny. that Who is this guy?
6:41
He's like a founder of like a tech startup, basically.
6:42
He just did this for fun. Oh my god.
6:45
Yeah, I'm I am ready to invest.
6:45
And his thing says I stealth startup.
6:47
So I'm like, well, I'm ready to invest in whatever he's he's doing. I I Any valuation.
6:53
There's hella TV cameras out.
6:55
Name Name your price, Ligma.
6:59
So So he goes Okay, so that was him.
6:59
Did you see the interview with the other guy, Daniel Johnson? No.
7:04
He also had a little gem.
7:04
So then his was on video.
7:06
So they're like, "You know, um how do you feel about this today?"
7:09
He's like, "I I don't know.
7:09
I just got to like I got to go home.
7:10
I got to talk to my husband and wife and regroup." Wait, what? I I don't know.
7:18
I just I just REALLY WANT TO GO HOME.
7:21
I I really want to go home, talk to my husband and wife and just regroup.
7:25
The most offensive thing ever to have husband and wife.
7:29
Did anyone comment on that?
7:31
The news didn't even like like they just played the clip. And then I saw that.
7:33
I was like, "Wow, that is the funniest thing I've ever heard." Perfect timing, man.
7:38
These guys are like, you you comedic geniuses, basically.
7:40
So Yeah, this is pretty gold. Amazingly well played.
7:45
Um yeah, I don't Do you want to talk about the Elon war room, like what he's actually doing in there?
7:48
Like, do you want to talk about that or not really? Have you followed this? Not really.
7:51
I mean, like I I read that he said like, "Hey guys, you have a week to get this one thing done."
7:54
And I think that that's cool.
7:56
That's that's a good way to run things.
7:57
I'm nervous he's going to screw it all up and cuz I make money from Twitter, so like I don't want it to go away.
8:04
But uh I got calls to shill, bro. Yeah, yeah.
8:06
Like I got consulting calls to take.
8:09
Uh so, um I don't really care though.
8:13
Like, when he talks about this [ __ ] I'm like, it's not going to impact me that much.
8:16
I I don't I don't care what you're going to do.
8:18
Well, I I just want to I don't care.
8:20
It's not going to impact me, but I do find it interesting how he's going about this.
8:22
So, basically, the report is he goes in and and the first report I thought again was another troll, but I guess this is real. Do you see this?
8:28
He used that He told every engineer to print out all the code that they've committed and they've written in the last three or six months and have it ready for review. Did you see this? Why print?
8:40
So, you can just see the the page length?
8:43
And then, they changed their mind.
8:43
Like, I guess they realized how bad of an idea that was and like, you know, an hour later, they're like, "Uh shred the papers, actually.
8:49
We're going to review on the computer.
8:50
Just be prepared to review."
8:53
And so, people are like all these engineers are like, "I printed out like, you know, 300 pages of code.
8:56
So, I guess I'll just shred this.
8:58
I don't know what's going on here."
9:00
Dude, and what's crazy is like, if you go to businessinsider.
9:02
com, the headline is like, you know, I think it says like, "The toil of working at Twitter."
9:07
And it's like painting it like these people Here's their This is what it's Yeah, this like this is what it's like to toil at Elon Musk's Twitter.
9:14
The expectation is literally to work 24/7. And really say that? That's I swear to god.
9:22
That's straight clown behavior.
9:22
I can't believe they're doing that. I can believe it.
9:28
And it says, "This is it."
9:28
one of the people familiar said, describing the feeling of the company under Musk, "Your job is on the line."
9:33
It's like, dude, your job's always on the line.
9:35
Like, it's you like this isn't like it's not your right to work at Twitter, you dumbass.
9:42
But I I I I thought it was funny because like come on, man.
9:45
Like your your coding this Yeah, you're going to have to work 50 hours maybe for a little while.
9:49
But also I think a lot of the employees at Twitter are probably like this is awesome.
9:54
We've been sitting on our ass. Let's let's do it.
9:56
And that side doesn't seem to be getting covered a lot. Yeah.
10:00
And so he created I guess a war room.
10:01
So he basically brought in a bunch of people he trusts.
10:03
So he brought in people from his other companies.
10:04
Like he brought in his chief legal person.
10:06
That guy's now like the general counsel basically.
10:09
He brought in He created a war room.
10:11
And here's who's reported to be in the war room.
10:12
It's uh Elon, his uh his his chief counsel, then it's Jason Calacanis. Oof.
10:21
And then it's I think Jason's Jason's amazing, but like what the hell does he know? Yeah.
10:24
Then it's uh Sriram from A16Z.
10:25
So just venture capitalist who's you know former PM used to work at Twitter as also you know had had a run at Twitter. Um And Clubhouse. And uh Snapchat. Yeah.
10:37
And then And then also um I guess like some other people some engineers or people from uh like Boring Company or Neuralink or whatever.
10:42
Like some people he trusts.
10:43
Like his cousin is there.
10:45
Like And they basically just set up shop and they were like, all right.
10:49
What are we going to do with this thing?
10:50
And they were like, change change the logged out page.
10:51
It forces you to sign up.
10:53
No, you should be able to read tweets before you sign in and you sign up.
10:56
And then which is like an experiment been tried many times before.
10:58
And then it's like um you know, we need to have this verification program.
11:02
You have you have five days to deliver this, I guess.
11:05
So they're they're just like sort of uh trying to figure this out of you know, who stays, who goes, what are we building, how are we going to turn this thing around, and um fascinating.
11:13
I wish I could be a fly on the wall in this uh in this war room.
11:14
I think that would be like probably the most interesting thing to do right now.
11:20
I think it would be awesome.
11:20
Um I hope they don't screw it up though cuz I got some [ __ ] courses I got to sell.
11:24
So don't screw it up for me, Elon.
11:28
My my point of view has always been very simple, which is all the things he complains about are things that like power users would be annoyed at on Twitter, like the bots problem or you know, verification or the algorithm, you know, like not serving me the tweets I want.
11:43
Like the problem is that just only, I don't know, whatever the 300 million people use Twitter.
11:49
And it's like, you know, five times smaller than like the other big social services and it doesn't really grow that much.
11:53
And like it's not like, you know, my mom doesn't use Twitter because she's like, oh, there's too many bots if I tweet about crypto that will tell me to buy crypto.
12:02
Like that's not her problem.
12:02
She just doesn't see value in it.
12:04
And like, you know, you got to She just says, "I don't get it." Yeah, I don't get it.
12:07
I don't know why I would need this.
12:09
Like, you know, I don't I don't need to check this.
12:10
Whereas Instagram and WhatsApp and like Snapchat have all given her a reason that she needs to have it.
12:16
Like she needs to have Snapchat if she wants to see more pictures of her kids.
12:19
She needs to have Instagram if she wants to keep up with what's going on with like Bollywood or whatever, right?
12:24
Like, you know, everybody finds a need in the service and like that's the core problem with Twitter is that the core need it addresses is only for like people like us and like it doesn't address the need for a whole bunch other people on the planet.
12:35
And if they wanted it to be more valuable, then they would need to do that.
12:42
Our software's the worst.
12:44
Have you heard of HubSpot?
12:44
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
12:50
I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot. Grow better. Happy Halloween, dude. Yeah, you too.
12:59
I uh since I'm not 12, I don't dress up.
13:01
I I don't understand like Shots fired at producer Ben.
13:06
Well, I just like don't understand why people like obsess over Halloween.
13:07
To me it just seems like you when your wife was buying a wedding dress, were you like, "This is [ __ ] You're going to spend all this money for something that you're literally going to use for 3 hours in your entire life?"
13:17
And that's how I feel like Halloween is. Wow. Shots fired at wives.
13:23
Shots fired at Halloween. Shots fired at weddings.
13:26
Well, I I mean I don't like you you know what I mean?
13:28
I just find it like to be the most impractical thing there is.
13:29
It just is it's a lot of work for like a few hours.
13:34
Bro, you probably bought like a a giant sled so you can do sled pushes in your backyard. Like, you know, come on.
13:39
I'm sure you have some ridiculous purchase up your sleeve, too. I have a sled. Call it Producer Ben.
13:49
What are you you look more like a figure skater or some like like a figure skater in between rounds.
13:54
Like, I don't I don't know if I was going to put the hood on, but it's a narwhal.
13:59
It's got like a little horn on top. Little horns.
14:00
My wife has a matching costume.
14:02
A narwhal is just a It's a whale that has a yeah, big big horn.
14:07
if you're a parent, then I get it.
14:07
But like for the people who work really hard at this stuff, to me I'm just like that just seems like such a waste of time. My wife loves it. She's this person. Yeah, my wife, too.
14:17
She like we bought a bunch of costumes or whatever.
14:20
I'm Aladdin, which is pretty you know, stereotypical I felt. You know, Lean in, bro.
14:27
Is it Is it racism if it's your wife? Yeah. Lean in. I say lean into it.
14:33
I got the Sheryl Sandberg San- Sandberg book.
14:35
I'm going to lean into this. That's the sheet, Matt. Lean into stereotypes.
14:40
Um but speaking of Halloween, I did a bunch of research about Halloween and I wanted to rant about it to you.
14:43
Um I'm sure you know a bunch of things about Halloween cuz I feel like this is like Like I say that because this is a rabbit hole that's kind of obvious and I feel like you know, I I went into this rabbit hole and I saw some footprints on the way out.
14:57
I was like, I think that's Sam's size lemon right there.
14:58
I don't know what's going on.
15:01
But let me tell you some things I found.
15:02
Okay, so first and foremost, Halloween.
15:04
Okay, what what the heck is this?
15:06
So, this was a It's kind of crazy that today Halloween is this like family neighborhood thing where everybody, you know, young kids are going out and getting candy, older kids are dressing up, you know, with an excuse to dress up like kind of [ __ ] and like, you know, this is like, you know, this is this giant giant occasion where people are spending $10 billion a year now on Halloween is what gets spent, which is kind of crazy.
15:31
That's more than almost any other holiday except for Christmas, which is off the charts at almost a trillion dollars gets spent on Christmas.
15:36
And so, um so I was like, what the heck is this holiday? Who made this up?
15:40
Where did this come from?
15:41
It's First of all, it's like some weird part of the like, you know, the Celtic calendar or the Celtic calendar, I don't even know what it is, but like Celtic calendar, yeah.
15:52
The Boston Celtics, as you know.
15:54
It's this dude they called Yagging.
15:54
It just has a soft J up here.
15:58
So, so there was like, all right, there's like this, uh, you know, festival where they would like they're like, oh, the demons are coming, and so they would like dress up as demons themselves and like go dancing or whatever, and that was like to ward off the demons.
16:09
Like, "Hey, we're already here."
16:11
And like that was the logic, which is pretty pretty weak logic if you ask me.
16:15
And so, uh, you know, then something had the Pope says something.
16:18
He's like, "Oh, this is, you know, November 1st is like the the the day of the saints or whatever." All Saints' Day, baby.
16:23
We in Catholic school, we used to celebrate it every year.
16:26
And so then the 31st became All Hallows' Eve.
16:28
And so, okay, how did it go from that to kids dressing up as Aladdin and going trick-or-treating?
16:33
What was What was the gap?
16:34
And basically it was like for a while it was this kind of like low like, um, nobody really spent money on this.
16:41
It was sort of like this more like adult dark holiday where you would buy like certain things.
16:44
You'd have people for dinner, maybe things like that.
16:46
And then over time it got commercialized.
16:51
And what I was I was trying to figure out where did it get commercialized?
16:52
How did we go from this like obscure pagan holiday to this mainstream $10 billion a year thing?
17:00
And the best explanation I could find was that there was like kind of a society thing, which was like people wanted a holiday, it was a good excuse to celebrate.
17:07
They liked that it was community They could make it community and family oriented over time rather than, uh, like this kind of adult, um, thing.
17:14
And then the last thing was that retailers.
17:16
So, like the biggest winner from all of Halloween is Walmart.
17:21
Walmart makes a killing on Halloween.
17:24
It sells candy, it sells costumes, it sells decorations, and it sells it to like everybody across America.
17:29
And so, what happened was retailers would have this giant spike in like kind of spring, maybe a little bit of summer.
17:36
And then there was this dead time until the the winter holidays.
17:38
And so, they were like, "Okay, sales always dip.
17:43
Let's figure out what we can do to make sales not dip during that time."
17:45
So, they kind of needed to like invent an occasion for you to spend on.
17:47
And so, they started is pretty common, right?
17:50
Like if you think about like, you know, like bit There's like the the Hallmark lobby.
17:56
Man, they've like really been pushing Valentine's Day on us for years.
17:57
I mean, I think that that's like a That's like a pretty common tactic.
18:00
I imagine Amazon is thinking like Prime Day is going to be a holiday of like just random deals.
18:06
You know And it's not like a coordinated attack, but it is like a bunch of people who all have an incentive.
18:10
So, they had an incentive to do um to to to sell more stuff and put something in the store that's going to drive people to to come by.
18:16
And so, I just want to break down couple of the numbers and a couple of the businesses.
18:20
So, like I said, about 10 billion in spending, uh 3 billion of that is costumes, 700 million of that is pet costumes, which is kind of crazy.
18:29
Um there's basically like, you know, 3 million on 3 billion on candy.
18:33
And there's like a huge amount like, I don't know, like basically almost half the country is going to like give out candy during during Halloween, which is kind of an insane level of of adoption that's going on.
18:43
So, Walmart the biggest winner, they they not only make a bunch of money, they spend a bunch of money advertising during this period.
18:48
They'll spend like tens of millions of dollars in the week of Halloween just like blasting ads.
18:52
And so do all the companies that are stocked inside their Skittles, Cheetos, Lunchables.
18:58
Everybody's got like a Halloween themed thing.
18:59
And so, couple of the interesting finds I had when I was doing this.
19:03
So, the first is a lot of people know about Spirit the Spirit store, right?
19:07
And people have heard about this, but like the backstory of Spirit is kind of cool.
19:12
Have you ever heard the backstory of how it how it got started?
19:15
It's owned by a popular company.
19:15
What's Who's it owned by? Oh, your favorite, dude.
19:18
It's your your first Thursday night date night, Spencer's.
19:21
Spencer's, that's what I thought.
19:21
Yeah, like Spencer's like uh you know, like a Hot Topic alternative.
19:25
Spencer's also owns Spirit Halloween, yeah.
19:29
So, they So, the way this started was it's like in California in the '80s, this guy owned a women's clothing store.
19:36
And he was in October again, traditionally a super slow sales month.
19:40
And so, he's just sitting there not really getting much sales.
19:41
He looks around, everybody's struggling except for one store.
19:44
He sees that this one Halloween um store has a line out the door.
19:47
And so, he's like, "Well, I'm not selling [ __ ] anyways."
19:51
And so, he just turned like 3/4 of his store into a Halloween store just for the month of October.
19:55
And so, he has this women's boutique, so there's like women's clothes in like a quarter of the store, and then 3/4 became Halloween stuff. And it it really works.
20:04
And so, he just does that again the next year.
20:06
He's like, "Oh, that's my Halloween playbook."
20:07
But now he's like, "All right, just forget my store.
20:09
I'll just open up another store, and another store just for the month."
20:11
And so, um that's their model.
20:14
These guys basically what they do is they go find vacant property.
20:18
So, you know, an empty box.
20:19
And they say, "Hey, landlord, you don't have a lease?
20:24
Well, I'll lease it for 2 months. How about that?"
20:25
And the landlords initially were like, "Well, no.
20:27
Like, what what about a 2-month lease? Like, no thank you."
20:30
And they're like, "Okay, well, look. Here's my offer.
20:32
If you don't have a tenant by July, might as well take it.
20:36
Some revenue's better than no revenue."
20:38
And like, especially after the 2008 real estate crash, this became like a pretty enticing option for landlords to try to recoup some money.
20:44
And so, they do these 2-month leases, and uh it's a pop-up Halloween store. Same place every time? No, different places.
20:52
They even have a kick-out clause.
20:53
So, they say, "Hey, look.
20:55
You could take the How could I get more real estate?
20:56
Look, if you find a If you do find a good tenant who you want to do a long-term lease, you can just kick us out.
21:01
Like, like anytime, you can just kick us out, basically."
21:04
And so, they found this like no-brainer proposition to landlords.
21:07
And so they do these pop-ups.
21:08
They now have 1,400 stores.
21:11
So like fast rewind back to you know like 2010, they only had you know 700 stores.
21:16
And the whole Halloween spend is on the same trend.
21:21
So like I said, 10 billion this year, well rewind to 2010, that's when I graduated from college, it was 5 billion.
21:27
Rewind to 2005, it was only like 3 billion.
21:30
And so that's like kind of a big like just during our you know lifetime, our adult lifetime, this thing is like you know more than doubled in in size.
21:39
And so um Can you imagine that by the way?
21:40
All that work for a week?
21:42
Like I I know a guy who owns a Christmas tree light show business that I can't reveal how big it is, but whatever number you're thinking of how much revenue it does, times it by times it no, times it by 20.
21:53
We're talking like nine figures.
21:56
And Christmas tree light show means what?
21:58
You pay $20 and you and your family drive through a park and you look at light shows.
22:02
And basically he's got a staff of I don't even know how many staff he has. I think over 100.
22:06
They work all year round for four weeks of work.
22:11
Can you imagine what your company's like?
22:12
Like what happens if there's like a terrorist attack or you know like whatever or COVID.
22:19
I mean something happens where just like all 50 weeks worth of work is ruined for those two weeks. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that is the risk.
22:26
That is the risk with these.
22:28
Like right now like it's Halloween right today, they're the whole company is working on next year's Halloween real estate, how they're going to do the logistics to like cuz they just get an empty shell.
22:36
They got to pop up the whole store, get all the inventory there, do all the decorations there, and then run the staff the store just for this like you know real blitz.
22:44
And 90% of the traffic comes in the two weeks before Halloween because their main proposition is just like for people who were you know who procrastinated.
22:53
It's like hey, it's too late even now to order online.
22:54
So you know, just come into the store and just get what you can get.
22:57
And it's that big of a business.
22:59
They do like a billion dollars a year in revenue the The Spirit stores.
23:01
So that's just kind of crazy for billion dollars in basically like probably a 3-week time period for for the majority of that um of that spend.
23:11
8% of all candy sales of the year happen like on Halloween. It's really crazy. That's wild. What a wild stat.
23:17
Here's some other interesting little businesses that were around this.
23:19
Okay, so have you ever heard of Rubie's? No, what is Rubie's?
23:24
Rubie's is is probably the biggest I think costume maker.
23:26
I don't know if they're still the biggest that they were at a point in time.
23:28
So here's the really kind of interesting story for Rubie's.
23:32
Uh started in New York and they're like, "Oh, we're doing decorations and costumes for Halloween."
23:34
Halloween wasn't as big of a deal.
23:38
It's like in the '70s they were doing this.
23:40
And um at the time Halloween costumes were all the same.
23:42
It was all just ghosts and witches.
23:43
But then in the '70s and '80s it transitioned into basically like Hollywood.
23:49
And it was like, "Oh, movie characters and like TV characters" would became like the big thing.
23:55
And so and Rubie's kind of fell behind because there were these other companies uh Collegeville and Ben Cooper that like got all the licenses.
24:02
So they were winning, they were crushing it and poor Rubie's was just sort of like puttering along.
24:07
Until that fateful thing happened.
24:10
I didn't even know about this, but there was something called the cyanide killer.
24:13
You ever hear about this?
24:15
There was this big scandal where I guess in Tylenol packages is like a whole bunch of Tylenol got laced with cyanide and people died.
24:22
never caught They never caught the person.
24:24
Never caught the guy and it scared a bunch of people.
24:25
It's like, "Holy [ __ ] Tylenol?
24:26
Like this like safe thing?" people died? Like three or four? I'm not sure.
24:30
I think it was more than that.
24:31
Uh but it was a big story.
24:31
It definitely was big news.
24:32
And so people So candy sales plummet.
24:34
Um you know, like people start getting pretty afraid.
24:39
And so these companies got a little over their skis cuz everything was going so great and they start to falter during this uh sort of like this crash when people started to the Halloween sales crash cuz people did not want to go eat candy from strangers during the the sort of like cyanide uh you know, rush I guess.
24:55
And so Rubie's ends up buying up Ben Cooper and Collegeville and basically consolidates all the licenses under one roof during that time.
25:02
And so, now they have Disney, Marvel, whoever.
25:06
They got like And they their job is basically there's like a You would think this is like I don't know, a bunch of theater geeks that run this company, but in actuality, like their big thing they have to do right is is like, you know, operations for the supply chain, but also management. No, no, no. Forecasting.
25:20
They got to predict who is going to be popular next year for Halloween.
25:24
So, they're like, okay, Donald Trump.
25:26
Is Trump a Trump mask going to be here, or here, or here?
25:31
And And then they work with all the studios.
25:32
The studios give them like a little like sketch sheet of like, "Hey, here's the movies coming out next year and the year after.
25:36
And here's who's the good guy, here's the bad guy, and here's what the costumes look like.
25:40
And like, you know, you're under extreme lock and key, but like yeah, we make a lot of money We make The movie industry makes hundreds of millions off of Halloween costume royalties.
25:48
They get like an 8 to 10% royalty.
25:50
And so, they're like, all right, fine, you can get access to these designs in order to start prepping for future costumes.
25:58
I wonder what their research methodology is.
26:00
You know, we've talked about that company WGSN. It always interests me.
26:04
It's a hundred million dollar a year business that does like 30 million in profit.
26:06
And all they do is they help I mean, it's like All they do is simple, but it is like a pretty amazing thing.
26:12
But they like help They help predict which color is going to be popular.
26:14
So, Starbucks makes sure that their labels on [ __ ] is like the right colored pink.
26:20
Or like, apparently, they predicted that pineapples were going to be popular.
26:23
Did you know that pineapple was a popular thing this year?
26:26
Yeah, yeah, I'm all about it.
26:27
And they like somehow knew that.
26:27
And they're saying next year it's going to be the lemon.
26:30
Which I don't I don't know.
26:32
I don't really what they said, or are you just making that one up?
26:34
I think it I Yes, I think it was the lemon.
26:36
Uh like next year lemons are going to be like a new thing instead of pineapple.
26:39
Which I don't even know how you would draw a lemon on like an iPhone case.
26:43
I mean, it just looks like the sun.
26:44
But anyway, they said that like lemons are going to be But I wonder just went to.
26:50
Well, like, have you ever seen you know, like pineapples on iPhone cases?
26:52
It's like but how do you make like a round like yellow thing?
26:55
There's like no density to it. Like I don't know.
26:58
We can workshop that afterwards.
26:59
So, so so so I think you know, these guys probably, you know, you know, like that meme like the hello hello fellow kids or whatever hello fellow children like the guy shows up at the high school. He's like 40 years old.
27:10
He's got a skateboard on his back and he's like, "Hey there, fellow kids.
27:11
Like what is the good you know, what's the good buzz this year?"
27:15
And like you know, they're trying to figure out like what's going to be hot.
27:20
Yeah, I don't I don't know.
27:20
I don't know the research method, but I am I am intrigued.
27:22
But basically they got to be fortune tellers.
27:24
They got to figure out through movies, politics, all that stuff. Is it Pokémon? Is it Wonder Woman? Is it Trump?
27:29
Is it What what are going to be the costumes?
27:31
And so so that's one interesting one.
27:35
Couple other, you know, pretty interesting pretty interesting things.
27:38
I'll give you some like I'll give you some like smaller niche like side hustle things.
27:43
So, um So, first haunted houses.
27:48
So, haunted houses apparently do $300 a year.
27:49
Just kind of a That's crazy.
27:54
kind of a big number for something that's like useful, you know, like for Dude, I hate haunted houses by the way. Do you go? What? Do you go? Uh I've been.
28:02
I'm not like I'm not a big like thrill seeker like roller coaster haunted house kind of guy.
28:07
I'm I'm not like afraid of it. I'm not into it.
28:10
I'm not I don't pay money to be scared.
28:11
That's my that's my rule with movies and haunted houses.
28:13
I don't I pay money to do the opposite.
28:16
Yeah, it's like you know, those guys who pay girls to like, you know, slap them and stuff.
28:19
It's like thanks, you know, uh Pretty sure pretty sure I should be getting paid if I'm going to get scared or slapped.
28:25
That's my rule and I'm sticking to it.
28:27
Um So, so there's like you know, haunted houses kind of interesting.
28:30
There's a guy who somebody tweeted this at me.
28:32
They're like, you know, this local one near our place. And I did the math.
28:34
So, this place it was like small like haunted house.
28:38
What they're doing is uh they basically take like a vacant property.
28:41
Same thing as the Spirit store.
28:43
They take a vacant property.
28:43
They say, "Hey, we'll cut you a check for 10-15 grand if we can use your house, right?
28:47
Or they'll they'll they'll rent a property or they'll find a vacant property and they basically just use it for the month.
28:53
They have this operational thing where they can just spin up the haunted house and then they charge like 40 bucks, you know, to enter and you can sort of do the math and realize, man, they're they're probably making half a million to a million dollars in about a about a month just off these things.
29:05
And they have like it's pretty crazy how like, you know, as a little side hustle you could do a haunted house.
29:11
Let me give you some other ones that I think are kind of interesting.
29:16
There's a guy who created this website called Zombie Pumpkins. Have you ever seen this? No.
29:22
So it's like I think it's zombiepumpkins. com.
29:24
So 2 million people a year go to this site just to print out a stencil that they can use to carve their pumpkin.
29:30
So he was like, you know what?
29:32
Uh if you go try to do pumpkin carving it's going to be a pretty generic face.
29:35
I'm going to make like super accurately drawn things so that you could have like a really dope looking pumpkin.
29:40
Like you can have like a That's a really cool site.
29:43
really like, you know, a Michael Jackson looking pumpkin.
29:44
It'll look like it if you just follow my stencil.
29:46
And so uh you know, 2 million people go to this thing.
29:49
It gets like a million of those hits, you know, like in the last week of October or something.
29:52
And uh you know, he donates a bunch of the money that that comes from this to uh to charity, which I thought was pretty cool. And he charges money.
29:58
So you pay money and you get stencils. Yep.
30:02
And every year he releases new ones.
30:04
Uh okay, here's another one. Pump-kin-steins.
30:06
So how would you like a pumpkin that instead of carving a pumpkin to look like something, what if the pumpkin just grew and only looked like like a Frankenstein head?
30:16
That's what this guy did.
30:16
So this guy's got a crazy story.
30:17
He's like a I don't know, he's like some farmer somewhere and he spent four years trying to solve this problem.
30:24
He's like, what if I could just grow a pumpkin that was already a decoration?
30:28
So you don't have to do any work.
30:28
So he tried like this How do you spell it? Uh Pump-kin-stein. Like Frankenstein, yeah.
30:33
He tries to grow it, doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work.
30:35
Finally, the fourth year he's like, what if I tried this like, I don't know, type of seed or whatever it was And he got it to grow into this mold.
30:45
And the mold basically just looks like a Frankenstein head.
30:46
And so he started selling them and he does like, you know, a few hundred sales and he does a few thousand sales.
30:52
Retailers start coming to him.
30:54
He opts to go with Sam's Club cuz he's like, you know what?
30:57
Like he was selling these for $100 a pumpkin.
31:00
He's like, you know what?
31:00
Sam's Club, we can sell them for $30 and make money doing that with at their volume. These are amazing. These are amazing.
31:07
And so he goes and he's like, all right.
31:10
Uh he's like, this could be kind of a thing.
31:12
He said he got 90,000 orders last year.
31:15
So like that's like four or five million dollars in sales of these pumpkins.
31:17
He started going to other farms and bribing them being like, "Hey, I'll pay you $11 a head. Follow this blueprint. I need more production.
31:24
I cannot possibly keep up with the production at my rate."
31:26
And so he goes and he gives other farms like $11 per pumpkin that they can produce that can be sold this way.
31:32
And then they had they had like a malfunction and like the face still looked right, but the back got all screwed up and it like looks like it like exploded.
31:38
And then that was way more popular.
31:40
People were like, "Oh, that's cool.
31:42
It like exploded in the back."
31:43
And he's like, "Oh [ __ ] now I got to figure out how to do this intentionally."
31:46
It's like this crazy little like, you know, like accidental, you know, side hobby. Wow. These are cool. Um another one. Home Depot.
31:54
Do you Have you heard about the 12-foot skeleton? No.
31:59
So this is like one of these like viral, I think maybe from TikTok.
32:01
I don't know where, but like my wife has been talking about this.
32:05
She's like, "Oh, I really want to get the 12-foot thing. It's always sold out."
32:06
And I was like, "It can't be that.
32:08
I mean like let's just go to Home Depot and get it."
32:09
Like have you seen Home Depot?
32:11
It's just like full of [ __ ] Like there's no way they're just like out at every Home Depot.
32:15
She's like, "You don't understand."
32:17
And she shows me there's like buy-and-sell groups on Facebook where people are just buying these things for $1,000 plus.
32:23
Like they retailed for like 300 or something like that.
32:25
And eBay's they're selling for $1,000. It became such a hit.
32:29
Home Depot figured out this giant lawn uh skeleton uh was like the big hit.
32:35
Then Lowe's came out this year, and Lowe's was like the 12-foot mummy.
32:40
And I was like, "Wow, you know, who's going to come out with the 12-foot 1-in, you know, you know, ghost next year?"
32:44
It's like this crazy little trend, but there's all these things.
32:47
So, all these things that really weren't categories before are becoming categories like the inflatable lawn, you know, decorations are just like surging in popularity.
32:59
Um, different types of candy, different types of costumes.
33:00
Like, it's all sort of surging in popularity because people are just more and more willing to spend. I got to think it.
33:05
I was like, "Why is Halloween so awesome?" I love Halloween.
33:10
Um, you know, you don't have the spirit.
33:11
You're sort of the the the Grinch of Halloween as as as you're known.
33:13
Um, and I realized it's cuz Halloween known.
33:18
Halloween is the anti-holiday.
33:18
It's not the cookie-cutter, warm and fuzzy. It's dark. It's kind of more adult. It's more creative.
33:25
It's one of the few creative holidays.
33:26
And, um, social media is the boom for Halloween because social media, what is social media? It's a hey, look at me.
33:35
And Halloween is the perfect hey, look at me moment.
33:38
It's hey, look at my house. Hey, look at my costume. Hey, look at my body. Hey, look at my candy. Hey, look at my kids.
33:43
Hey, look at everything, right?
33:44
So, it's the hey, look at me thing.
33:46
And also, it's an excuse to act like a kid.
33:48
And I'm bullish on anything that gives people an excuse to act like a kid.
33:51
Uh, I think that's why Burning Man is popular.
33:54
I think that's why Halloween is popular.
33:57
And, um, you know, even things like the ice cream museum and stuff like that, I think is is, you know, really popular for that reason.
34:04
Dude, it feels like you just prepared a debate on why Halloween's great and why I should dig it.
34:08
And you have totally won me over.
34:13
So, you're saying there's a chance? Yeah.
34:15
Like, yeah, you just put together this big speech on why Halloween is cool, and I'm into it. I think it's awesome.
34:22
This 12-foot skeleton thing is awesome.
34:24
This pumpkinstein is awesome. I'm all about it. This is awesome. This is cool.
34:28
me you more ideas or um or little little little niches.
34:33
So, I'll tell you a couple niches and then a couple ideas. Niche thing.
34:36
We had a guy come rig up lights to our house this week because he did every single house in our neighborhood.
34:42
And we just moved into this place and then our neighbor was like, "Oh yeah, you want lights?
34:45
You got to hit the lights guy.
34:47
He's booked, but like if he he can try to squeeze you in, you'll have lights for this season."
34:52
And we were like, "Okay."
34:52
Dude, you're just getting sucked in all the suburban traps.
34:55
By the way, for the listener, I went to Shawn's house uh the other day for dinner and I walked in and I'm like, "Oh, that's a really cool uh kids shopping cart."
35:02
Like he's got like a play like checkout aisle.
35:04
And I was like, "Oh wow, that cart says Target on it." And he goes, "Yeah."
35:10
Uh or maybe it was your wife, but it's one of you guys were like, "Yeah, this has been one of the most in-demand toys.
35:14
We had to like find this cart on eBay for however hundreds of dollars."
35:18
We flipped one and we bought the other.
35:19
Yeah, you're like, "We had to get this cart."
35:21
Like the kids wanted this cart, which they didn't, but you guys did, I think, probably.
35:27
Yeah, the moms want It was like, "We wanted this Target toy cart."
35:29
And I just thought, you know, that's kind of interesting.
35:33
Now I'm hearing this, you are totally becoming a suburban dad. This is awesome.
35:38
I'm I I like this side of you.
35:40
Sir, you know I have a fanny pack.
35:42
You know I was equipped for this life.
35:47
So, this guy comes up comes over and he's like, I'm like, "How much for the lights?"
35:50
And he's like, "I'll do it and I'll do it this day at this morning.
35:52
You get like a 1-hour window.
35:54
And um it's like $600 to put up the lights.
35:57
Uh you know, like 200 bucks for the lights themselves.
36:01
They last you for 10 years.
36:03
And then um it'll be like 60 bucks to take them down in January."
36:07
And I was like, "All right.
36:07
I guess like I'm not going to [ __ ] climb up there. So, yeah, go ahead.
36:11
Like, you know, either we're not going to have lights or like we're going to get in the spirit of things."
36:16
And this guy just cleaned up around the neighborhood. It took him an hour.
36:19
Wait, but why would he do it this way?
36:21
He should do it where I'll come and pick them up on uh like right after Thanksgiving.
36:25
And hey, by the way, while I'm here, do you want Christmas lights?
36:28
Well, these were Christmas lights actually.
36:29
It's like they they start the Christmas stuff now and then you I feel you.
36:32
Okay, I thought it was Halloween lights, whichever that whatever that is.
36:35
Yeah, I don't even know but they he should start being like, you want Halloween and I'll do a bulb change in like November. He should be upselling.
36:40
He was too honest of a guy in general cuz like he was like 60 bucks to take them down.
36:43
I was like, bro, once you put the lights up, you could charge me $6,000 to take them down. What am I going to do?
36:48
Like, like where is the gouging?
36:50
You shouldn't have even told me that price until like Jan 1.
36:53
You should have called me but like, Hey.
36:55
Dude, you need those down.
36:55
Uh it's actually illegal to have those up here right now. Yeah.
37:00
Or it's you look like a you look like a redneck.
37:01
You got to take those things down.
37:02
We we were pretty redneck when I was young and we'd leave them up all year round and we'd call them party lights.
37:09
Well, they're called February lights now.
37:10
And then March lights and April lights.
37:14
Um so this guy I'm pretty sure this guy made like $20,000 this month in my one neighborhood with like essentially zero cost.
37:20
Um all he had to do was know how to string up lights and you know, that's a skill that I think could be learned.
37:27
And so like, you know, there there is a like neighborhood side hustle here that I think is like a 10 to $20,000 side side hustle.
37:32
Like there's you know, probably like a hundred houses in this area, flyer them and then um go start putting up lights and just say, "Hey, knock on the door.
37:40
Yeah, we just put up their lights.
37:40
Would you guys want lights this year?"
37:41
Like I think that's a that's kind of an easy win.
37:45
Um Okay, let me give you now some ideas.
37:50
So, you don't like haunted houses.
37:53
Uh I I'm fine with a haunted house but man, the effort to get out there is probably going to be cold.
37:57
Got to get the kids ready.
37:58
You got to go go in the car, you know, all that stuff.
38:02
Why isn't there a haunted house I could just do from the seat of my chair at home? That's right. VR haunted house.
38:08
If you ever put on a VR headset, there's one thing VR is kind of amazing at.
38:13
VR is kind of amazing at this like immersive experience where you can like look look right and you could just get scared.
38:18
Like if you've ever done the demo where you're rock climbing and they're like, "Look down."
38:21
And you look down it's legit scary.
38:23
And then they'll make your character like start to slip.
38:25
Yeah, you get that feeling in your stomach.
38:28
And so, VR haunted house, no-brainer.
38:28
I don't know if there is one or not, but like you know, these there are I think 100 VR apps that do over a million dollars a year.
38:37
I feel like the VR Halloween app, the VR haunted house app, yeah, you can sell this thing for 20 bucks a pop and probably make, you know, I don't know, couple hundred thousand if not a million dollars in in a year just with the amount of of sales that go on in VR.
38:48
Um Cuz you'll be competing against nobody.
38:51
And they'll feature you, right?
38:51
Cuz you're cool content for that month.
38:53
So, you'll get like free promotion basically through Oculus store. It's an eight. I dig it. Eight. All right, cool.
39:00
Um okay, my next one is going to be Spirit store for Christmas. Am I dumb?
39:06
Is there no Spirit store for Christmas?
39:09
I don't know, but I do know that my wife is like your wife where like this weekend we are walking around and she's like anything that had a pumpkin flavored candle, she was walking in.
39:16
And like she bought like a caramel apple.
39:21
She's like, "I got to get a caramel apple today.
39:22
Like we have to have one today today Yeah.
39:24
Like what is that [ __ ] Pavlov been doing to our wives, man?
39:28
Like there is something with this certain scent and certain color that like, you know, I must have.
39:32
Must have this pumpkin in my life.
39:36
I just learned this weekend Have you ever heard of nesting?
39:37
Do you know what that is? Yes.
39:40
I didn't know what that was.
39:40
So, I just learned what it was thing, dude, by the way.
39:43
It's It's so like for the single guys listening, I guess when you of our audience.
39:53
Yeah, it's all the neck beards out there.
39:56
For all the people listening to this on a Peloton.
40:00
In your one-bedroom San Francisco apartment.
40:02
But basically, when a woman, I guess, is like I don't know when it happens, but like I think later in the pregnancy part of the pregnancy, she starts to nest.
40:09
I guess that means like you start like preparing for the baby.
40:12
You want to like clean constantly.
40:14
Basically, you want to have an environment where the baby can come to and be safe.
40:17
And so, you want to clean, you want to organize, you want to make sure that there are no corners.
40:22
That's So, that's a real thing?
40:23
It's Well, I I definitely experienced it.
40:25
Like, we were and we were like, "What's going on?"
40:26
And then, other people who had already experienced it were like, "Oh, nesting, yeah. Baby's coming soon."
40:30
You know, you can sort of feel this It's like, is your wife suddenly cleaning, organizing?
40:33
All of a sudden, the to-do list just gets like knocked out because it's like, "Oh, there's a burst of clarity and energy and like urgency around preparing the home for certain thing. That's crazy.
40:46
So, you know, it's interesting like we we we think that we are like these civilized like creatures different from an animal, but then like there's these these situations that happen.
40:56
For example, if you're a man, if someone like disrespects you publicly, you start feeling this like, "What is this rage I feel inside of me?"
41:00
Like, I want to go Do I want to go fight right now?
41:03
Or like Or like with a woman, it's like the nesting thing.
41:05
Like, there's all these like things and having a kid is like a really good example of when like these weird things just start happening that like I I I thought I was different.
41:14
I thought I wasn't just one of those animals, but it turns out I'm just a beast like, you know, the rest of the the animal kingdom.
41:18
And nesting is one of them.
41:20
And maybe there's something about Halloween where just Sarah just has to drink or eat pumpkin-flavored [ __ ] just constantly.
41:31
And it's just And like, it's the same way with Christmas.
41:32
She's like, "Oh, we got to go get the cinnamon thing." Yep.
41:35
I'm like, "We don't need it."
41:36
But she's like, "No, no, no.
41:37
Like, you don't understand that hot thing that I'm going to hold with both of my hands near my nose like a small koala.
41:42
And then, it's like, "What is this What is this position that all women assume during during winter?"
41:49
So, the Spirit CEO even said this.
41:49
He goes, "Fall, the turning of the leaves, the pumpkin spice latte, and the Spirit store.
41:58
We have become a symbol of the changing of seasons.
42:00
People now wait for our store to pop up.
42:02
That's how they mark time the passage of time in their lives."
42:06
So, anyways, I thought you know, I thought, "Why is it there a spirit for Christmas?"
42:09
What What does Spirit do well?
42:12
Decorations, desserts, and bad gone goof good gift ideas.
42:18
That's the three D's of Spirit. You are superb.
42:22
I'm going to start calling you Ted. Ted Perry.
42:27
You're going to say something like "dag gone". Yeah.
42:31
The dag gone I needed another D.
42:31
The dag gone good gift ideas.
42:33
So, Christmas has all these things. Yeah, triple D. It has decorations.
42:38
It has specific desserts, egg nog, candy canes, all this stuff. And you need gift ideas.
42:45
You need to go try out toys and things like that.
42:48
And so, you know, Hallmark tries to capture this.
42:51
I think they're doing it wrong.
42:51
I think Spirit needs to get in the spirit of things.
42:54
Spirit needs to pop up for Halloween, stick around for Thanksgiving, and a Christmas push, and then wind things down right after Valentine's Day.
43:02
That's the Spirit you need to get you need to get on this this 6-8 month program.
43:06
I'm sure you've thought of this and you have a good reason why you don't, but I I I like to play pretend CEO.
43:12
You know, like I think that's something that you and I or whoever is listening don't think about enough is when you're thinking about a company to build, you rarely do you think this would be awesome to run.
43:21
And being CEO of the holiday company would be awesome. Yeah.
43:26
I mean, that would just be like a fun thing.
43:28
Are you changing the world? Nah. Are you having a blast? For sure.
43:33
Tis the season, as we say at The Holiday Company.
43:36
Yeah, that's the This is it's it's the holiday code. Tis the season. Yeah, yeah. What a beautiful word. Yeah. Tis clearly underused. Yeah, I love the tis.
43:51
Uh yeah, so I'm I'm about this we're onto something.
43:54
So, okay, a couple other interesting things.
43:56
So, this pet costume thing I think is like a real trend.
44:01
Um you know, we've seen pet vitamin companies like Zesty Paws sell for $600 million.
44:04
We've seen pet you know, pets is like a huge niche.
44:07
And so if 700 million is spent a year on pet costumes, I feel like you could just kind of like I mean, I can't tell you off top of my head who is the the go-to for pet you know, for for pet costumes.
44:17
And so that tells me you know, there's more than enough room on the e-commerce side for it.
44:22
Um You know, the the story behind halloween. com is also crazy. It's all the same thing.
44:27
It's basically like somebody stumbled into this idea and then couldn't even keep up with demand as Halloween grew and now it's effing huge.
44:34
All right, so that's my that's my Halloween rant.
44:36
That's my Halloween you know, breakdown and backstory. Um let's see. Did I miss anything?
44:42
Dude, we So I wanted to talk about a few things.
44:45
Well, we go to this one topic really quick.
44:47
It's I think it's only okay, so I don't want to spend that much time on it, but then I want to hear your Sully story, the Twitter thing, and the Warren Buffett thing.
44:54
I think these are all those are all awesome.
44:55
But this is just one thing to put on your radar.
44:57
Have you heard of this company called Humane? Humane?
45:00
Is this the um like phone on your chest? Yes.
45:05
So basically this is just it's it's kind of interesting. pitch, Humane. Yeah.
45:12
I don't actually know what it is and I don't think anyone knows what it is.
45:13
But basically I saw this YouTube video talking about it.
45:16
It's the first time I've ever heard about it, which is interesting because they've raised $130 million from like some of the best VCs out there.
45:23
And the people who started is is this husband and wife company.
45:26
I think they spent like one of the the husband spent 20 years at iPhone or at Apple building the iPhone.
45:32
I think he was like one of like a six or 10-person team to like the original team to come up with the iPhone.
45:38
His wife was also a director of engineering I think of of Apple or something like pretty impressive like that.
45:42
And they've recruited like 100 plus employees. Most all are from Apple.
45:47
Like 60 or 70 of them are from Apple and they're like Apple ballers.
45:51
They're not just like the average just like entry-level person.
45:55
And so it's kind of an interesting signal and they filed for all these patents.
45:59
One is like a wearable multimedia device and cloud computing platform with laser projection projections.
46:05
Another one is like a portable Yeah, I mean that they could go anywhere. You know what I mean?
46:08
Like we're going to see a bunch of interesting stuff.
46:10
Another one is like a portable battery pack.
46:12
I mean like they've done all these amazing things.
46:16
They don't even have a website.
46:18
Like you can't you can't really learn anything about it. to the website.
46:21
First of all, if you go to the website, you got to commit three typos to get there. It's hu. ma.
46:28
Like me, humane but split up with three two different periods.
46:32
And then you get there and it's a picture of like the sun.
46:37
And it just says what did it say?
46:37
It said like I forgot what it said like change everything. Yeah.
46:43
So, I have a I have a strong take on that.
46:45
But let me finish this, which is basically their whole point is that they view phones as a divider between us and the world and they want your phone or whatever that is going to replace a phone to be an extension of our bodies, which that's like pretty vague.
46:57
I don't know what the hell that means, but I guess it means like they want to build a new iPhone, but it's not going to be a handheld device.
47:04
It's going to be like clothes that you wear or lenses in your eyes.
47:05
I'm not I'm not exactly sure. But two takes.
47:10
One, I completely agree and I think that as an industry, we're like way in we're we're we're too early to say that there's something actionable right now, but I do think in like 10 20 years we we're we're going to be anti-phone.
47:24
We're going to be like like what the [ __ ] you're looking at this [ __ ] This is like cancer. Why are you doing this? Why are you What? You're smoking?
47:28
What are you doing smoking?
47:29
That's kind of like how we look at smoking.
47:31
Number two, I think unfortunately I I don't know you guys, Bethany and Imran.
47:34
I think those are the two founders.
47:37
I'm sure you're wonderful people, but I think any company that raises that much money and has a site that says change everything and has raised $120 million and has never shown anything, I think they always fail.
47:51
Nine out of 10 times, I think that they're going to fail because of their hubris and it's like what the hell are we making here?
47:58
What's What's one that didn't fail? Is there an example?
48:00
Like Quibi was the most recent one that was like this and Quibi failed. Magic Leap before that.
48:07
Magic what were the other ones?
48:10
Like you know Juicero, that one failed.
48:11
I mean The only one I can think of is jet.
48:13
com and uh But one would argue that that didn't succeed.
48:18
One I can One would say it didn't fail, but like they probably sold a slightly above of the valuation in which that they raised at.
48:27
Yeah, like I don't know if the underlying business was healthy or not.
48:30
It I didn't feel like jet.
48:31
com became this main big consumer thing that was going on, but like you know, who knows? The world is really big.
48:36
Maybe there were a ton of loyal jet.
48:37
com users who were, you know, using it all the time and the business was working, but it did seem like it was the the team, the story, the technology that got acquired by Walmart in order to make Walmart's online thing better.
48:50
But nevertheless, still a definite win.
48:54
Marc Lorey friend of the pod, love the guy.
48:57
You know Owns a [ __ ] NBA team, so like it worked.
48:59
You know, in terms of wealth creation. Small more importantly.
49:05
Uh but like you know, how many of these dream big, raise big, hype big, build in stealth for multiple years and then like launch with the world changing device um or world changing product? Mhm. Yeah. No. No. No. No. No.
49:21
I'm reviewing the track record here and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
49:26
If I had a nickel every time that happened, I mean I would maybe have a dime. Yeah.
49:31
It doesn't It doesn't happen a lot.
49:33
Like you're playing the game Minesweeper, it looks like that.
49:34
Um you know, okay, so so here's a couple things.
49:38
Um number one, we did talk about this before because when they came out the patent I think got leaked and it looked like at that time the device was some kind of clip-on sort of like camera that you basically would wear on your your chest.
49:50
Um sort of like a GoPro, but for everybody.
49:54
I don't know if this is still the the product or not, but I remember that was the the idea.
49:57
Um, and it was like, oh, that's cool.
50:00
You just kind of have this like hands-free, you know, camera, audio device, that sort of thing.
50:05
Oh, yes, I do remember that.
50:06
that was kind of interesting, but that that would only be to capture.
50:08
It wouldn't be to, um, you couldn't like look at that and read something or or watch video or anything like that.
50:15
So it wouldn't fully replace a phone.
50:16
But I'll say a couple things.
50:16
I think they're solving the right problem, which is the phone is not the last it's not the last frontier.
50:21
There's certainly going to be some kind of wearable device after this. Is it a watch? Is it glasses?
50:26
Is it, uh, something like this?
50:29
Is it a drone that's floating above your head all the time? I don't know.
50:31
But like most likely it's going to be glasses, um, you know, that that seems to be where everybody's going and so like we'll see.
50:39
But definitely will happen and definitely will change the world when whoever does get that form factor right.
50:43
So it is inevitable in my opinion.
50:43
The next thing, the phone really is causing like, you know, a lot of damage and problems in terms of how society like, you know, with the extreme strength that came from this device that helps us never get lost, never be bored, never never be alone, all that good stuff, you know, I remember going to a doctor and he was like, he did a scan.
51:00
He's like, oh, yeah, you have a little, you know, slight thing up your C4, C5, whatever, like your your vertebrae.
51:06
He's like, uh, I was like, oh, [ __ ] like what did I, you know, did I what did I do wrong? down.
51:11
He's like, oh, no, everybody has this now.
51:12
It's from looking at the phone.
51:14
He's like, it's like the most chronic problem in the in the in the country right now is people's vertebrae are like, you know, messed up cuz their neck is always craned down.
51:20
And I was like, oh, damn.
51:22
Man, I got to really start raising my phone higher when I'm looking.
51:30
I got to really get like a selfie stick or something.
51:35
Is there a neck brace I could use? And he sells them.
51:39
Yeah, then the doctor sells them on his like drop shipping store.
51:41
So, um, okay, so I think they're solving the right problem.
51:45
I also think that the like people think that you know, the common thing people would say, and this is kind of the white knight a thing that I hate, which is "I don't want to have more technology.
51:55
I don't I don't want to have, you know, glasses that have my phone on them, on my eyes all day. Like, shoot me now."
52:05
I'm like, "All right, I will shoot you now."
52:06
Your Your impression to kill you.
52:09
Your Your impression of a white knight, you're basically like a white Californian guy.
52:14
I think you put a little more like lower-ness in your voice, and I think you've got this the best white guy impression I've ever heard of. Yeah.
52:24
Social media All I can say is they need a Rahul Legma in their life.
52:34
We'll talk about him in a second.
52:34
But, um, but dude, so so I think that there's this idea of like, "Oh, you know, social media's too crazy. I want to detox.
52:41
I want to I'm not going to I don't want more technology.
52:46
Oh my god, I I don't want to live in a world like that." Guess what?
52:50
It's coming, and you're going to love it, and you're going to do it.
52:52
And like, yes, it will have some negatives associated with it, like anything, but like it is going to happen.
52:56
What one thing that's going to happen with it is this Zuckerberg has this law.
52:59
He He said I I don't know if you remember this back in the day, but he he coined this term Zuckerberg's law.
53:05
Did you ever hear what this was? No.
53:07
He tried to get away from He said it one time in an interview, never said it again, cuz it was like sounded bad, but like it stuck with me, which was he goes, "Every year people are basically willing to share up to twice as much as they were willing to share the year before."
53:19
So, in terms of like, you know, we weren't sharing our status updates about what we were doing all the time, but then like, you know, Twitter comes out.
53:26
And now people are just tweet, you know, sharing every random thought on their mind.
53:28
We weren't sharing our location before, but then Foursquare and others came out, now we start sharing location.
53:32
Uh photos, we were only sharing, you know, we weren't sharing online. Then we shared albums.
53:38
Then we shared a single photo.
53:38
And then with Snapchat, we'll just share like, you know, tons of photos cuz they all disappear.
53:42
So, like basically, as long as a product can unlock, there is like pent-up demand to share twice as much as you're currently sharing.
53:48
And I feel this all the time.
53:50
There are so many moments of the day that I wish I had captured.
53:53
My kids did something cute or some you know, my trainer said something awesome to me in a workout.
53:57
But I'm not I don't have my hands on the keyboard at that moment to capture that video, that note, or that that image.
54:02
And so, I think that there is a like big pent-up demand to be able to share way more moments or capture way more moments and share some portion of those than is happening today.
54:13
And that will happen with either glasses, uh you know, like maybe a drone camera, or like a this wearable thing on your chest.
54:19
So, I think those things are all working for it.
54:20
The thing that's working against it is once you get this cute ass domain and you raise like a hundred million dollars and you go into stealth and you hire a hundred people and you're basically like, "We're going to change the world."
54:32
Um you're basically saying, "I'm going to, you know, like follow this path, you know, I'm going to walk off this cliff like the many before me."
54:39
that that many companies before me that have done this.
54:41
Like, "Hey, magically, if I could see you down there, right?"
54:44
Like, you know, that is the the challenge with some of this stuff.
54:47
Yeah, I I don't think it's going to work, but I think it's a cool I think it's a cool move.
54:51
I'm glad they're doing it. Yeah. What do you say? He's got some cornrows. Yeah, it's like Hey.
55:00
Like, what do you say to his wife after they're like, "Hey, you want to feel what it's you want to feel what it feels like to spend a hundred thirty million dollars?"
55:05
Like, you know what I mean?
55:07
They're just like Like, you You feel like spending money?
55:09
Like, you know, they just like are coming up with the way just to blow this cash, but um Pick one more of these things for the last few minutes. Suley or Warren Buffett?
55:17
They both are incredibly interesting.
55:19
Uh let's do the Suley one.
55:19
All right, so he he tells the story.
55:21
He goes, you know, when I sold my company Tiny, uh TinyCo was the name of his his company.
55:26
It was a mobile gaming company.
55:26
He says, "There was two parts.
55:28
There was our original games that we had been making like Tiny Monsters, Tiny Zoos, stuff like that. And our licensed game.
55:32
Like, we made the Family Guy game, the Harry Potter game, the Marvel game.
55:38
And we got acquired the acquirer, the guy who people who bought us, they really wanted the like the licensed famous IP games.
55:45
And so after the acquisition, we decided to sell the first one.
55:46
And there was a bunch of potential acquirers and they all one of them, you know, offered us 500k for it.
55:51
I thought it was a good offer, but we could get more.
55:55
So I created a new bidder.
55:55
I hit up a former engineer from TinyCo and I told him to bid.
55:58
I said, "You're going to need to offer like a million dollars like two times the current offer to get the deal because you're just like some random guy." And he did.
56:06
And it was a lot more than than Jam City imagined.
56:08
It was more than the market price and as such he won the bid.
56:12
And I was like, "Congrats.
56:12
All right, you It was a million dollars, right?
56:13
It was only a million dollars.
56:15
I was like, "Congrats, you got it.
56:15
Okay, now here's the deal.
56:16
You we've under invested in these games.
56:18
You should, you know, just you got to work like 60 hours a week.
56:20
Just put some money into ads to grow it, add these features that'll help, you know, retain it better.
56:23
And like you're going to be able to three or four x the revenue in the next 12 months."
56:29
And the guy like, you know, sat there and he's like, "I got a better idea.
56:32
He's like, I'm working today at as an engineer at this company. I'm just going to quit."
56:38
And then he's like, I look he's like, "I'm just going to do the absolute minimum to keep this thing like refreshed and working."
56:42
And so he goes, "Instead of doing more work." He goes, "You know what? I'm good with this.
56:46
I'm just going to tap out of the workforce at age 31 and I'm going to retire.
56:49
I don't need to spend any more money.
56:51
I'm going to live, you know, like within my means and like this app that I just bought for a million dollars is going to keep giving me cash flow for, you know, forever.
57:00
I don't need a job anymore.
57:00
Um and I'll just always maintain it so it keeps bringing me that cash flow.
57:04
And in the meantime, I'm going to work on my hobby projects and other software things that just scratch my itch."
57:10
And he goes he goes, "Then, you know, just like the world started working in his favor on on top of that."
57:13
He goes, "You know, like Epic and Apple got into a lawsuit.
57:17
Apple had to change their the rev share deal so they said for for anybody making less than a million in revenue, we'll give you 30% instead of taking a 30% cut, we'll take a 15% cut."
57:26
So immediately profit went up by 15% for this guy.
57:28
He goes, "The business has generated more than 3 million in profit since he bought it.
57:33
The purchase price assumed that revenue would go down over time, but it remained steady and actually grew during COVID.
57:38
And he goes, "Takeaways, the only way to win the rat race is to opt out."
57:41
This is a takeaway that I understand intellectually, but I have not accepted emotionally.
57:46
Frankly, I'm still blown away by my friend's act of saying, "Yeah, I have enough."
57:52
And he goes, "Number two, when I tell you something to buy something, buy it.
57:55
When I tell you to work harder on something, don't do it."
57:59
And and then he was like, you know, the self-serving part of this thread was like, you know, a lot of businesses have these little baby businesses inside that are undervalued.
58:06
Like, if you have one of these, like, you know, I want to buy one.
58:09
I think these businesses don't have a lot of value in them.
58:10
And so, um uh and so, uh Yeah, so basically, and I think by the way, he didn't just buy the whole million with like a million dollars of cash up front.
58:20
He financed a portion of it, right?
58:22
So, he put down maybe 300,000 and financed the rest, as an example.
58:27
And so, would you ever do that?
58:27
Would you could you see yourself tapping out?
58:32
Yeah, I think about that all the time. Uh you know Really?
58:35
Yeah, not tapping out forever, but I feel like tapping out in the sense that I really have this urge to work on whatever the most I creative and fun project is, which might make zero dollars or negative dollars.
58:47
But don't you do that now, in a way?
58:50
Like, that's why how I started this podcast.
58:51
My plan when I started this podcast was I was like, I think I'll probably lose 10 grand a year all-in on production, um you know, paying my editor, you know, a couple hundred bucks a month and like, you know, I was like, you know, I was like, booking the studio, you know, four times a month, that's 400 bucks.
59:03
I was like, I'll probably net will lose 10 grand.
59:08
I'll have some sponsors, but net will lose 10 grand.
59:09
I was like, yeah, I'm totally happy to do that, cuz I think this project could be a lot of fun.
59:13
And instead of starting a new business, I started this podcast.
59:16
And this podcast turned out to be like my favorite thing I've ever done, but the best project I've ever started.
59:22
And actually turned out to be a pretty good business, actually, on top of that.
59:24
And um I kind of want to do that again.
59:27
So, I kind of want to go look at like what's something I would be willing to lose money doing cuz it's that fun to me or that intriguing to me.
59:36
Cuz I think that that's probably a better signal of like what I really want to do and therefore will take an interesting shot at doing something.
59:43
Dude, I think that like a lot of people dream about retiring.
59:44
Um and I've I've a few times in my career I've taken like as much as a month off to a year off. Sabbatical, that thing.
59:55
Yeah, I used to call it a sambatical and uh I was like, "I'm on a sambatical."
59:59
And uh every single time I love it at first and at the end I'm like, "Dude, I got to go do something.
1:00:04
I can't I can't just do this.
1:00:05
I I like Like your your friends can't hang out with you on a Wednesday at you know, 1:00.
1:00:08
Like you're just so bored and you're like, "I need to go create. I need to produce.
1:00:12
I need to like" and then I just realized I am not built and men or you know, all people but I I can always speak from a man's perspective.
1:00:19
We are not built to sit idle.
1:00:22
We are you know, created to work.
1:00:25
I don't think we're actually created to work 100 hours a week, but I think we are created to work like 30 hours a week and like that's the minimum where it's like you just have to produce and you have to contribute.
1:00:33
Otherwise, you feel pointless and I think you die sooner. Well, jeez.
1:00:39
Uh for first I don't think Well, yeah, when people dude, when people I think women are way more active in general. Men are more lazy. Yeah, sure.
1:00:46
Yeah, I don't I I don't mean men in particular.
1:00:48
I just I mean human, but also I mean like I I only know my I only know like what men are like cuz I'm a man, you know, that's what I mean. Uh so yeah, sure.
1:00:55
All humans I'm sure are like that.
1:00:57
I just haven't had this conversation with a lot of people.
1:00:58
Uh but I think that when you retire like I've I've got family and they're like, "I'm going to retire."
1:01:02
I'm like, "I don't think you should retire.
1:01:03
I just think you should work a little bit less or do a 6-month vacation."
1:01:06
Because I think the sooner you retire, that's just you're just like take you're just actually taking off 40 years on your life. Do you know what I mean?
1:01:14
Like if you're going to retire, you at least got to go volunteer.
1:01:16
Like you got to contribute in some capacity.
1:01:18
You got to have something that you're living for. Yeah, yeah, totally.
1:01:21
My I wouldn't take a sabbatical.
1:01:23
Uh I would I would just pour my energy into a more creative project that like is not the best business use of time.
1:01:29
Like I have a bunch of ideas that I think could make a bunch of money.
1:01:34
And then I have a bunch of ideas I think would be really fun to do that would probably not make any money.
1:01:36
It might not even get anybody to to use it or like it.
1:01:40
Maybe it'll turn out crappy, but like I'm intrigued to do it.
1:01:42
And so that's the temptation for me most of the way. That's the way.
1:01:48
all the things I want to do they all cost money.
1:01:49
So I'm like [ __ ] I got to go earn more.
1:01:52
Yeah, but you don't like in reality you don't.
1:01:55
Well, it's only you know, I guess perception is reality. Who knows?
1:02:00
Yeah, but you you can change perception easier than you can change reality.
1:02:02
So it's just change change that. Yeah, I got to run. But yeah, good episode. All right, that's a pod.