0:00
So you're not afraid to share ideas? Oh, no.
Search this video
0:01
I'm super afraid to share ideas.
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But that's I mean one of my ideas that I'm actively exploring and here I am sharing it with everyone here.
0:17
We should address the elephant in the room.
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Why are we on Why are we on a plane?
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So Are we just flexing on everybody now? This is my Tai Lopez.
0:23
Hey guys, I'm just on my jet. So so it's not that.
0:29
Yes, this plane it's a Citation CJ3+ and I fly planes for fun.
0:33
So it's been my passion and my hobby I think since even elementary school I was obsessed with airplanes and um it was always my goal to be able to afford a fly one and and then I learned I I earned interviewed a bunch of very wealthy people and I said, "How do you afford an airplane?
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Like how successful do you have to be?"
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And the secret was you don't have to be that successful.
0:58
You just have to have a big tax bill and good cash flow.
1:00
And so Which takes success to get to that point, but It takes some success, but Less than you think.
1:06
A lot less than you think actually um because it's like a house.
1:09
You could finance it, get you know, put 20% down and then you know, the the rest is walk through that in a second.
1:15
So the the funny thing was we did an episode a normal episode where we were on Zoom and it was great. Uh you can go see it.
1:20
It's called like Jess Mah like high school dropout, you know, blah blah.
1:24
We we we YouTubed it to you to make the title good.
1:27
But like you know, I don't know 300 400,000 people have have listened to that interview across all the platforms.
1:33
And I wanted to do a second one and you were like, "Hey, I'm in town.
1:35
If you can kind of meet me here."
1:36
I was like, "All right, let's go. I'll meet you there."
1:39
And the second thing is you're actually great with tax tax hacks.
1:41
And you're better than my accountant who I pay I pay this guy to be like, "Hey, come up with ideas that I can lower my tax bill legally, but how can I do it? What are the ideas?" And he's a idea poor. You're very idea rich.
1:53
And so I thought okay, it's kind of fitting cuz one of the things we'll talk about at the end is your uh you've talked to a lot of rich people and tried to try to learn what are the options?
2:01
What are the possibilities as far as taxes goes?
2:03
And that's I want to learn that from you.
2:04
Yeah, I mean we'll talk about that as relates to business ideas, but um as relates to tax ideas, it's actually a pretty similar process.
2:10
Like I'll just talk to as many people as possible and I think the mistake people make with taxes is they have their one tax person and that person worked with their parents and that they've been loyal, but actually this is a very bad place to have loyalty.
2:26
It's really good to talk to like I've talked to dozens Promiscuous.
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You want to be very promiscuous here.
2:31
I've talked to dozens of tax attorneys and tax accountants about their ideas and I just keep track of all their ideas and then I talk to all my friends, ask them for their tax ideas and consolidate it. That's so true.
2:42
There's like this weird loyalty.
2:43
It's like yeah, he's been doing my taxes for 4 years.
2:44
Like yeah, but nothing has changed and you want to get ideas from everybody.
2:48
So let's let's do this plane real quick.
2:50
So a plane like this what does it cost roughly?
2:52
What do you have to put down and what is the tax savings or something?
2:56
This is a mini tax lesson for this plane.
2:58
Yeah, a mini tax lesson on the We go into more detail on this on the last episode I did with you guys, but this is a $12 million plus airplane and uh you could put 20% down on the airplane.
3:07
I got this pre-owned, so saved a few million bucks and it's just good as new.
3:14
So you put down roughly 2 million bucks.
3:16
Uh yeah, you put down about a few million bucks and then you just pay monthly financing on it.
3:19
But then you get uh you get to write off up to the whole thing.
3:23
Last year it was 60% up front, but now with the the new administration it looks like accelerating depreciation is back.
3:29
So if you bought a $12 million airplane, financed it, you can write off the whole $12 million off your tax bill even though you only put in 3 million bucks.
3:38
So you're going to pay the government or you could buy an airplane. Right.
3:41
So you it looks ridiculous.
3:44
$3 million is going out of your bank account.
3:45
Either way the money's leaving your bank account, so like it looks lavish, it looks ridiculous, but this is why rich people do these things. Right.
3:54
And I just wanted to debunk that myth.
3:56
Like a lot of people are scared to admit that.
3:58
They don't want to share that cuz they want to flex more. They want to show off.
4:03
But it's just a practical matter. Right.
4:05
And you use it to like literally be more efficient and go meet people where otherwise you might not have taken that day trip to go do it.
4:10
Like you came up You're like, "I want to have lunch with you."
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And so you flew up, we had lunch and you flew out.
4:15
And I was like, "Wow, I First I felt honored, but secondly man, there's probably a lot of people that I think I would have kind of amazing opportunities or build a relationship with, but I don't do it because the logistics are actually like in the way.
4:28
Of course this is not accessible to most people, but like if you're in that successful entrepreneur bucket um it kind of makes sense logistically as well. It does.
4:35
Yeah, and you know, we've got Starlink on board, so flying flying out here I was able to make five phone calls and be on Zoom and you know, do FaceTime video where I'm like, "Yo, what's up?" Right.
4:46
And like it's it's a practical matter of saving money, but it looks really bad.
4:51
If you're an operating CEO of a company you're going to get shot on by your employees, your customers, your investors and I realized that that would be a problem for me a few years ago.
5:01
So that's why I stopped being an operating CEO actually.
5:05
It it was really I had this conflict of like can I do everything I want to do you and I know it's the right thing to do.
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I know I will I know I will well I know I'll create more abundance.
5:15
You know, I'll create more value for my companies.
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But at the same time I know I'm going to get more flak.
5:20
I'm going to have more people who want to rip on me unfortunately and I'm sure this video will not help with that at all, but like I defend it.
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It's like a practical matter. Right. I love that. Unapologetic.
5:30
So uh enough about the private jet. It's cool.
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It's going to make for a great great shot.
5:35
First time for the podcast.
5:37
What I want to talk to you about is what you're great at, which is ideas um and coming up with new ideas for businesses.
5:42
So the track record here is you've been an operating CEO.
5:45
You started this company called Indinero when you were really young, right?
5:48
How How old were you when you started that?
5:50
I was 19 when I started I knew absolutely nothing.
5:52
Yeah, and then I built that company up and then started a bunch of other companies.
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Several of them are nine figure valuation businesses.
6:00
I have no unicorns under my belt, so that's a big insecurity of mine right now.
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I'm going to be super honest about it.
6:06
I don't have a single unicorn, but you add them all up I've got you know, multiple unicorns. Right.
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So that became my strategy.
6:11
I decided I'm really not good at building unicorns, but I'm really good at coming up with smaller businesses. full of horses.
6:18
Yeah, a barn full of horses where I create more we just coined something there by the way. That was all you. Good work.
6:26
Um but yeah, if if uh I could just raise less VC money for these companies and just create more of them and not be directly operating them, then that could add up to being just as valuable if not more valuable than if I created one unicorn.
6:39
Not to mention all my friends who are CEOs of unicorns Miserable.
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So miserable and so stressed out and also they don't have the ability to live an amazing lifestyle because of all the stuff we talked about.
6:52
They're scared of the optics um and they own a much smaller percentage of these businesses.
6:59
Like a lot of my unicorn CEO friends, they own like 5% of a billion dollar company, which is remarkable amount of money.
7:04
That's a lot, but you know Yeah, totally.
7:08
I mean it for the lifestyle, not the uh You just have to decide what you're in it for. Just be honest about it.
7:13
people who are in it for the impact. That's dope.
7:14
They they should do that.
7:16
They should save the world. I'm on the world.
7:17
I'm glad that they're saving it. Yeah.
7:18
I personally don't want to do that with my time.
7:21
I want to indulge my curiosities, have fun conversations and just enjoy my life with my kids.
7:25
Like that's kind of what what I like to do.
7:27
That's my that's my gold standard. Yeah.
7:28
So your story is basically 19 years old, you start Indinero, you run that company, you grow that company and then you you like you said, you transition from starting and running companies yourself to now you have this like your own hold co where you're you're incubating or creating companies and you said that in the last 4 years you've started four companies each worth over a hundred million dollars.
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I've co-founded companies and when I say co-found, sometimes I didn't do a whole lot.
7:54
Maybe I helped with idea.
7:54
I got the early team on board.
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I got some early funding.
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And then on some of them I'm still really active and on some of them I'm not active and I'm just like a significant shareholder. Right. All right. Hey, real quick.
8:08
If you're liking this episode with Jess, then we got something cool for you.
8:10
So when the episode ended, we asked her We were like, "Hey, you were talking about how you have this this playbook, this recruiting guide, you have this like content guide. You have these things.
8:20
Would you mind sharing one of those with us?"
8:21
And she actually just sent us like all of them.
8:23
So uh she wanted the listeners to be able to have them for free.
8:26
So they're in the show notes below.
8:27
It's her talent playbook. It's a recruiting guide.
8:29
I think it's an operations guide for how she runs her companies.
8:32
These are straight from her.
8:34
They're available in the show notes below. Check them out.
8:35
I mean somebody's giving you free gold.
8:39
All you got to do is take out your hands and just accept the gold.
8:41
All right, back to this episode.
8:44
I want to ask you about your idea process cuz that's amazing to be able to do that.
8:47
I want to be able to do that.
8:48
So let's talk about that.
8:49
Uh let's talk about ideas.
8:51
How do you get ideas to start these companies?
8:52
And then what are some ideas right now that you're excited about?
8:55
Yeah, I'll talk about process first.
8:57
So um I love Y Combinator ideas, the request for startups.
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And when I was coming up with my first ideas for businesses, like Indinero, that was inspired by that list.
9:09
And it's a list of a hundred business ideas where they say if you build this, we are more likely to fund you. Right.
9:17
And I really wanted to get into Y Combinator and um and then I put together this spreadsheet.
9:22
So I had this matrix of criteria.
9:25
And one of my top criteria was complicated enough that other people won't copy me too fast. Hm.
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I think that's really important.
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If I'm a first-time founder, I need to have more legroom.
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And then another criteria was I can pseudo bootstrap this.
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Like I can raise some angel money, but I don't need to raise like a hundred million dollars.
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So like I'm not going to build Tesla or SpaceX.
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I want to build something that 2 million dollars could get me very far.
9:54
My other criteria was I wanted recurring revenue.
9:59
I wanted something that was sticky, like a must-have.
10:01
And so I literally went through every single one of those ideas on the Y Combinator list, and I rank ordered them based on these three criteria, and business accounting and tax management seemed to be the better one for my criteria.
10:16
And so my process is I, you know, go online and I scrape these ideas.
10:20
I've even gone to Reddit to look for ideas.
10:22
I have one-on-one lunches and dinners with people like you where I just say, "Hey, like what are ideas you're exploring?"
10:30
And then we'll just have a brainstorm.
10:31
But none of the ideas I've actually worked on came from me sitting in a room with a whiteboard and just like coming up with stuff. Yourself?
10:40
Yeah, that's never worked out.
10:42
I've tried it, by the way, with uh no success. Okay.
10:44
So you you had this thing on your phone.
10:47
You had like this idea database. You had like 300 ideas. Uh-huh.
10:51
And you promised, you said, "I'll show some of them today." And Yeah.
10:54
even though these are things you might still go do, I think.
10:57
I might still do some of these.
10:58
So do you want to give us a couple of them? Absolutely.
11:00
Um it's called the idea hopper.
11:02
So actually, let me pull it up on my phone real quick. Okay, great.
11:04
Should we start with the ones we talked about before with the She gave me a teaser of like two or three of them that I was like, "Don't tell me more, but yes."
11:12
Like should we start with the doge as a service Okay, yeah, yeah.
11:13
Yeah, I like I like I like this one. So So explain this one.
11:16
So doge as a service for companies. Explain.
11:19
Yeah, I mean, most companies have so much waste.
11:21
You have people who barely show up or they're phoning it in, and I have friends who say, "Oh yeah, like like I you know, my husband quiet quit his job.
11:31
He's like working 2 hours a day, and no one's tracking it, so he's available to hang out."
11:35
Those are the people you want to get rid of.
11:37
So what if you could create a software platform that goes through and tracks who is actually on Slack, who is actually emailing, who is like using their computer?
11:46
And if not, then they're fired.
11:49
So doge as a service for companies.
11:51
And so it would be uh team of consultants to be a consultant plus AI. How would you do it?
11:56
I think AI could do a lot of it.
11:58
I also thought that if you're an enterprise, then it's you could sell this to consulting firms like uh McKinsey or BCG or whoever and say, "Hey, you guys can offer this to the CFO."
12:08
Oh, but they're already doing They're already in there.
12:09
They're already in there, and it that makes you seem more valuable as consultant cuz you could say, "Hey, we could demonstrate that we'll save you hundreds of millions of dollars.
12:18
You'll pay us only $20 million, and this AI did all the work."
12:21
Yeah, that's actually pretty interesting.
12:22
I I don't think enough tech teams build tools for the consultants who have already done the sale.
12:28
Cuz what McKinsey's amazing at is they got this relationship with a Fortune 100 company. They're on retainer.
12:33
They're getting paid millions of dollars a year.
12:36
And if you can sell them a tool that either helps them land and expand that contract or just save overhead in actually like executing that contract, that's going to be pretty valuable.
12:45
Like if I was like building AI right now, I would not be trying to make something that like I'm going to not only build the tool, but also figure out all of the go-to-market.
12:55
Maybe you could actually just sell this to consultants who already have the go-to-market done. Exactly.
12:59
That That's I mean, one of my ideas I'm actively exploring, and here I am sharing it with everyone here.
13:07
Hey, so you're not afraid to share ideas, or what's your philosophy around that?
13:10
Uh no, I'm super afraid to share ideas.
13:12
Um but on the spot, dude.
13:13
You just got me really comfortable, so here I am.
13:14
Um this is an idea I've been playing around with for a few months, and I really like it a lot. Okay, I like it.
13:21
Um I didn't want to be one of those people who said, "Okay, here are my shitty ideas. Now you go do them."
13:27
Like I think that'd be just really lame. Totally.
13:29
All right, what else you got?
13:30
So doge as a service, that's one I like.
13:32
this is the trendy category, okay?
13:35
Um another idea is uh you know, everyone says SaaS is dead.
13:41
Agents are the new thing.
13:41
Well, what if you could build vertical agent as a service for an industry?
13:47
So for example, build a library of agents for dental offices or for auto mechanics. Right.
13:53
Or for, you know, clothing uh designers or manufacturers or whatever or distributors.
14:00
So there are all these industries, but where they need their own very unique library of agents to automate their tasks, and you can go really deep there.
14:08
So this is more of a thematic business area, what which will be I think we're going to see thousands of businesses doing this. Right.
14:15
So okay, so somebody's building a tool.
14:17
And so you're saying you don't even have to build the agent.
14:19
You're like, there's going to be somebody who builds an agent that's about picking up a call uh and booking an appointment, let's say.
14:27
Appointment booking agent.
14:27
So what you used to have to have pay a receptionist to do, now AI's pretty damn good.
14:32
It's going to be able to do that fully. Right.
14:34
So you have horizontal companies right now that sell the voice agent for any industry.
14:37
The problem is you still have to do a lot of fine-tuning and work for if you're a dentist. Right.
14:44
So what if we you're a company and you look for all these off-the-shelf tools and make your own agents and plug them all in and tune it just for dentists? Right.
14:54
And so it's plug and play. I'm a dental office.
14:55
I can use your company, and it has like 100 different pieces of AI already baked into my workflow. Gotcha.
15:02
That's the idea in a nutshell. Okay, I like that.
15:04
should do this for an industry you know about.
15:05
Like if you're passionate about, you know, dental offices, then do it in dental offices.
15:09
Um so that's uh Yeah, shoutout to anyone who's passionate about dental offices.
15:14
You are This was your day.
15:14
You got to We recognize the more the more boring the better.
15:18
That's the Constellation Software model, right?
15:20
So we invested in this company that's uh vertical SaaS, which was uh called Shop Genie.
15:27
They just So we invested in it, and I think within a year or two they sold for mid-eight figures.
15:30
And what they did was they went to auto repair shops, and they were like, "Hey, guess what?
15:35
Auto repair shops need a CRM."
15:35
So there was always CRMs like HubSpot and others that they work for any type of business.
15:41
And he's like, "Well, but auto repair shops have specific things that are, you know, uh Very specific.
15:47
they built a tool that was just for them, and then they went and they got like 3,000, 4,000 auto repair shops in like a year to use them.
15:51
And by the way, Very successful business.
15:54
Yeah, I was like, "Dude, how did you get so many shops to use you?"
15:57
And he's like, "There's this guy who's like the auto repair influencer.
15:59
He's like the Kardashian of auto repair shops, and he vouched for us."
16:03
And then all these people uh you know, followed on board.
16:06
He's like, "That guy makes like 20 million a year as the like biggest influencer to other auto repair shop owners." It's like really insane. Oh, wow.
16:14
There's riches in the great business idea, yeah.
16:16
So So what they did was they gave him this tool, and it was like for booking your appointment and the text message follow-ups or whatever.
16:22
And what you're saying is like and vertical SaaS has been a thing.
16:26
Constellation Software did it.
16:26
What you're saying is instead of vertical SaaS, it's going to be like Vertical ass. Agent as a service. Vertical ass. I love it. All right.
16:32
So But seriously, and then the more like random the better.
16:37
Like if you could apply this to like, you know, marine shipping or to like resource mining, you know, then Constellation will be acquiring and rolling up these vertical ass companies in the next few years.
16:50
Like that's That's the future.
16:50
What was the marine shipping cargo ship idea you were telling me about?
16:55
Yeah, that was another idea I had on my idea hopper.
16:58
The idea was in a nutshell, could we uh oh yeah, it was uh coding for uh these cargo ships.
17:06
Coding like the paint coating?
17:06
Uh-huh, but to make it more efficient so that these ships could go even a few knots faster, um and that saves you a ton of money on fuel, and then you don't need to like take these ships out of the water as often to recoat them.
17:18
So this could be like millions, if not tens of millions of dollars over a decade for your entire fleet of cargo ships. Totally random idea.
17:26
I got this from having dinner with someone who was playing around with this idea or looking at funding something like this like many years ago, and the other person just didn't have the money to proceed with it.
17:37
And so my I Like I learned about that just from having dinner with someone. Yeah, that's crazy.
17:42
And so you When Let's say you have an idea like that. Uh-huh.
17:45
Uh so first it's like where Who the heck even thinks about cargo ship coding? Okay. Definitely not me.
17:49
I mean, most of these ideas that the common theme is I didn't come up with any of these ideas. Right.
17:54
So you're a good spotter, would you say?
17:55
Or what what are you good at?
17:57
I'm good at initiating conversations with people who are likely to have ideas or have access to ideas.
18:04
Like you have good access to ideas, so like I've sent you an idea before, and now that I think about it, like uh my buddy James Currier has this great phrase.
18:11
He goes, "You want to turn yourself into an API."
18:12
And what he means by that he goes, you know, like a website has an API, which basically says, "Here's what I can offer you.
18:17
I I can give you location data.
18:20
So you you ping me, I give you location data.
18:23
That's what I'm good at."
18:23
And by the way, here's here's what I want to get from your API, right?
18:26
Here's the things I'm interested in.
18:27
I'm interested in acquiring geospatial data.
18:28
So you kind of have made your API like, "Hey, I'm always interested in hearing interesting, kind of weird, off-the-beaten-path ideas."
18:36
So when I hear one, I think, "Oh, Jess would like this." Yeah. Right?
18:39
And so you've put yourself in my mind and associated yourself with she likes to hear weird, cool, off-the-beaten-path, you know, ideas that that you know, she she's good at making them happen.
18:50
And then in return, I you know, you're like, "What are you What are you good at?"
18:53
It's like, "What do you offer as your API?"
18:55
It's like, "I have a business, and I'm trying to recruit a CEO, and I know you've done that a bunch of times."
19:00
I'm like, "Oh, if I go to Jess, she's going to you know, reduce my error rate and make me go faster at this cuz she's really going to be helpful in doing that."
19:06
Or if I have a new idea, she's really good at flushing it out over a lunch, like riffing on it, and then being like super motivated to be like, "All right, what are we going to make this happen?
19:14
Like let's push the ball forward."
19:15
So I think you've kind of done that in the idea space, which is powerful. yeah.
19:20
Like I get people calling me all the time saying, "Hey, Jess, do you have like 5 minutes to chat?
19:24
I have this random idea I want to get your thoughts on, and would you build this with me?
19:28
Or if I did it, would you fund it?"
19:31
I get those calls all the time, multiple times a week, and it's like, "All right, like yeah, I'll find time to call you back, but um it's like what Warren Buffett did.
19:41
He just got the word out there, "Hey, I'm buying businesses.
19:43
Call me if you're ready to sell, and it's a fast, easy process."
19:47
I'm doing the same thing with ideas. Yeah, that's great.
19:49
My business partner Ben I was thinking while you were talking like his API is so funny is two things.
19:55
One, Ben always knows a guy.
19:58
So, you're like, "Do you know anybody?"
19:59
He's like, "I know a guy who knows a guy."
20:01
That's always Ben's thing.
20:02
Like he always knows a guy who knows a guy.
20:03
And the second thing is a lot of people will go to Ben, they'll just text them when something good happens in their life.
20:07
And I always am like, "Why did they Did you ask?"
20:09
He's like, "No, no, they just told me."
20:11
And like we just just closed this big deal or we just did this thing and they haven't announced it.
20:18
And he's not that close to them, but what I realized is I do the same thing with him because he's somebody that makes you feel good when you win.
20:23
You don't feel like there's any envy or he's not going to try to take anything from you.
20:28
He's like genuinely pumped for you. That's awesome.
20:31
And because of that, he just gets this wealth of inbound of people who are winning. Mhm.
20:33
Which is also great for us for investing cuz we're like, "Oh, wow, these guys are doing really well.
20:37
Do they need more capital? Do they need something?
20:39
Like maybe we could help them." And that's a superpower.
20:40
So, I think people There's like these underrated superpowers.
20:43
Like the thing you're describing about I'm good at you know, maybe talk having interesting conversations, getting good ideas, and making people feel like they should come to me with interesting ideas.
20:54
That's not even a skill you could learn in school or nobody would even tell you that that's a thing. Yeah.
20:57
But you're going to build generational wealth off that. Yeah, that's well said.
21:01
I think it's equally as important to know what we're bad at.
21:05
You know, like for me, I realized that I'm not the best operating CEO.
21:07
Like that's just not my forte.
21:10
And after I realized that and came to peace with that, then I was able to say, "Okay, well, I'm going to come up with ideas and recruit great teams and then empower them."
21:19
And that's what I'm going to figure out how to be great at and be great at. Exactly. So, um let's do more.
21:25
I want more ideas idea hopper. You got me going.
21:31
The code name is Holy Health.
21:35
And I came up with this idea because I heard of another business that was minting like tens of millions of dollars in EBITDA within 36 months.
21:43
And all they did was help one niche of uh like medical provider get access to insurance.
21:51
And then I did some research, I plugged this into ChatGPT, and I realized there's so many of these other types of people like chiropractors or physical therapists where they can get insurance reimbursement, but they're so small, they don't have the um the scale to negotiate with an insurance company on getting reimbursed.
22:10
So, they just charge Technically, they could. Technically, they could.
22:14
But is it that they don't have the time or the skill or like you need to band them together? Both.
22:17
So, if you band them together, then they can get some reimbursement and then you could create, you know, agencies of service to support them to create more lock-in.
22:25
And then you could help them with their customer acquisition.
22:28
So, it's got to be the full stack.
22:30
And this other company did that for one of these different verticals.
22:32
Um and I heard about that through a friend who heard about the company.
22:36
And I'm like, "Oh, man, that's a great idea.
22:40
Could I do something adjacent to that that's not copying them, but similar in some ways?"
22:45
similar blueprint, but in a different space that needs it. Exactly.
22:48
So, you would go What would you do for that?
22:49
So, you would uh let's just walk through this.
22:50
So, I want to hear So, you have that idea you I heard about it It actually starts with a clue.
22:54
I got a clue because I was having lunch with a friend and he's like, "These guys are making like 30 million in EBITDA."
22:58
I'm like, "All right, cool."
23:01
What question are you asking that friend?
23:02
Cuz um we were just talking before and I was like, "How the hell do you get these" I go, "What is your info diet that you are getting these ideas that I don't get to hear about?
23:11
You're doing something different.
23:13
You know, you're not just consuming the same stuff I am cuz you're getting different ideas.
23:15
So, can we talk about that real quick? The the info diet? Yeah.
23:19
I mean, none of these come from reading uh a blog post or watching a podcast.
23:25
All these are from in-person conversations.
23:27
I think a lot of people are lazy, they just want to come up with stuff by staring at their computer.
23:32
Nothing good comes out of doing that.
23:32
If I'm being candid, you have to get out of the building.
23:35
Um you have to like just talk to people.
23:39
And when you're talking to them, what are you What are you asking?
23:39
Like, "Hey, what's interesting?
23:40
What have you seen that's that's cool?"
23:43
"Yeah, what's the coolest uh what's the most interesting exotic business idea that's minting cash that you've seen recently?"
23:50
And so, I'm not asking them for a business idea, I'm asking them for what's an existing thing you've seen. Right.
23:54
I say, "Why What's the key to their success?
23:57
And why does no one know about this?" Right.
23:58
And like why hasn't anyone copied them yet?
24:02
And you know, why is now the right time for Right.
24:07
So, you're filtering as they're as they give you the exotic business that's minting cash, you're like, "Was there some spe- secret sauce that's not replicable?"
24:14
Like, "Oh, maybe they're super influential in the community.
24:17
Okay, that would take forever to build.
24:19
Could this be done in another space?
24:19
Is Does this take $100 million of venture capital or could it be bootstrapped?"
24:24
And then they're like, "Oh, yeah, like these guys just bootstrapped it."
24:25
I'm like, "Oh my gosh, now my mouth is really watering."
24:28
Like, "Okay, and what are the other risks here?
24:31
Like can AI just replace this in 36 months?"
24:33
That's like the new risk factor in my like criteria that y'all have to ask for. So, you get the clue.
24:40
You get the clue from the conversation conversation key question Yeah.
24:45
and then you get the clue.
24:45
Then you run it through your filter mentally just there.
24:48
Let's say now you're excited about the idea cuz you're like um Holy Health.
24:52
And And you give it a you give it a code name.
24:53
Is there Everything has to have a code name. Is that Why is that? It makes it real?
24:56
It makes it feel more psychologically real.
24:58
And like, okay, then I have something to remind me of the rest of the substance of the idea. Cool.
25:05
And so, I'll just like throw the idea into ChatGPT.
25:06
Before you even tell your co-workers, you're like, "I think with AI first." Uh yeah, exactly.
25:10
I tell everyone before you tell me anything, think with AI as well. Yeah.
25:14
And so, everyone does that.
25:14
And I say, "Give me like 20 ideas of potential names for this idea."
25:18
And then I just pick one.
25:20
And this is the code name.
25:20
And then we put it in the idea hopper.
25:21
And then Did you see the CEO of Microsoft went on a podcast I think Bar Kashi's podcast recently. He had this great line.
25:28
He goes, "My new workflow is think with AI and then work with my co-workers."
25:33
So, he goes, "I think people are thinking about it like AI is going to replace your co-workers or your employees.
25:38
It's just going to AI is going to do a task."
25:40
He's like, "But right now, the best use case is me thinking and sparring with AI to get clarity.
25:45
And then I go work with my co-workers after that."
25:47
Sounds like you're kind of doing a similar thing.
25:50
Yeah, we definitely do that.
25:50
And what we're trying to do is um have all of our meetings be recorded.
25:54
So, even if it's in person, we're just like turning on Granola and having I have a big one of those uh conference speaker phone things.
26:02
And it's just recording everything.
26:03
And we're going to feed it in to create digital twins of all of us.
26:07
Then have like basically thousands of versions of ourselves just brainstorming and sparring with each other Oh my god, that's to refine ideas even further.
26:15
It's like those little like chess arenas or whatever where they train the AI to just compete with each other until like until there's like a winner winning strategy. Yeah.
26:22
And I actually How are you doing the digital twin thing?
26:23
We're actually doing We're actually training one based off of you as well.
26:26
So, I'm We're going to have it just watch every single video you've been part of.
26:30
So, it knows how to think like you.
26:32
Be like, "Hey, bring Sean into these conversations. Bring uh Satya. Bring Zuck. Bring Elon. Bring like whoever."
26:40
And I want all of them to like help battle test this uh you know, conversation.
26:47
That's amazing cuz And so, that way I don't need to pay for you.
26:49
You know that's useful when if you just ask a question like, "Oh, what would Elon do in this situation?"
26:52
Or you know, take your most high agency um badass friend who's not afraid and seems to have like clarity in the moment of of fog of war.
27:01
If you just have that friend you've hung out with them enough and you literally just ask the question, it's like they're in the room.
27:07
And I know if that works, then an AI that's actually trained on them is going to be insane.
27:12
Do you know how you'll do that?
27:15
How will you create Like what are you going to use to make the me uh you, there's so much polite consent for my team members.
27:20
That's why I'm making sure that they record every single interaction in the company with each other.
27:25
Um and like is there a tool to do that or are you going to make your own tool or Granola to to get the transcripts.
27:29
Cuz once you have the transcripts, then you can just feed that into any of these um So, any any LLM will be able to like It's going to do a pretty good job.
27:38
Yeah, you we could go into more advanced conversation on this, but that's like 90% do this.
27:43
So annoying, people are using my voice in ads all the time now.
27:44
And I'm like, this is this is wild.
27:46
Uh like how do I sue you?
27:49
I don't even know who you are. Right.
27:51
Second thing is that um but I'm going to.
27:53
Anybody who's doing it, I'm suing you.
27:54
I'm actively working on that.
27:56
I'm telling AI to figure out how to Yeah, I I told ChatGPT I'll sue you if you do it. Yeah.
27:59
Uh but then also also um What was the other one? Um Oh, writing style.
28:05
So, people will just put in ChatGPT be like, "Write this in the style of whatever."
28:08
Cuz I've written a lot of content publicly.
28:09
And it's it's not it's not me, but it's like it's definitely kind of close to me.
28:15
It's like, "Oh, that's 18 months away from being better than me."
28:17
So, that's definitely happening.
28:19
You might as well embrace it.
28:20
We're almost going to need like a safe word that's like, "Is it human Sean that I'm talking to or is this AI Sean that I'm talking to?"
28:25
Like we need a code word.
28:28
I know, but but it's like really exciting.
28:30
And um and so, yeah, Satya's He's on point. He's on point here. Um so, where was I?
28:35
So, you were telling me about Okay, so, we're going through your process.
28:37
So, you get excited about the idea. Yeah.
28:40
You you you have the code name.
28:41
And you then have a meeting with your team. Uh-huh.
28:45
What are What are you doing in that meeting?
28:47
What What are you trying to do to advance that idea forward?
28:48
Yeah, every week we have a R&D team meeting is what we just call it.
28:54
And we talk about the ideas that we're playing with.
28:56
And the problem here with Holy Health, cuz this was a live idea and it still is a live idea.
29:03
Everything I've shared today is still live, by the way.
29:05
And um the problem is we just had too many of these ideas.
29:10
I mean, we have hundreds of these ideas.
29:11
And we try to work on too many at the same time.
29:15
And the problem is then you don't really advance any idea forward enough between each week meeting.
29:21
And then we lose excitement. Right.
29:24
So, now the new rule is we're going to we're only going to have two.
29:26
And we're going to take them all the way until they're busted before you replace and bring in another one. Right.
29:32
And so, like what do you do?
29:32
So, you have the meeting, you pitch you pitch the idea.
29:35
Do you have a way of kind of pitching it to your team or what How do you What What's What's happening in that meeting?
29:40
In that meeting, anyone can pitch. So, it's not just me.
29:42
Um everyone usually has different ideas.
29:45
And um and so yeah, it's like, "Hey, here's a AI-defensible idea, XYZ.
29:50
Here's why it's a Maui idea."
29:53
So, we kind of have a common understanding on what a Maui idea is. Which is roughly what?
29:57
It's roughly an idea that can cash flow, that doesn't require a lot of outside funding, we could fund it ourselves, um and where it's like boring and complicated enough where random people are not going to copy us that easily or reverse engineer that easily.
30:13
Um that those are Maui ideas, and that's what I encourage anyone else to do as well.
30:20
Okay, so Like if you're an auto mechanic expert, then that might be your theme of idea, and we have that for like financial services in particular. Right.
30:29
And so you um what what do you Where do you leave that meeting?
30:32
You say, "All right, what are we going to do next?"
30:33
We say, "Okay, what are we going to get done to advance this between this week and next week?"
30:39
Um and then we just get very specific, and it's like, "All right, like person A, you're doing these five things.
30:43
Person B, you're doing these five things."
30:45
And the next step might be like, "Okay, let's just go call like for Holy Health um the next step was let's just call some chiropractors and ask them um if they, you know, figure out who accepts insurance and who doesn't and why.
30:59
And then ask them, "Why don't they plug into these existing companies that should be that doing something similar?"
31:05
So, a lot of it's just like, "What are the questions we're curious about?"
31:09
And psychologically, are you trying to disqualify an idea or you trying to qualify an idea?
31:12
Like, what's the mindset?
31:13
Is it I'm trying to figure out is this good or bad or is it like I'm listing the riskiest assumption, I'm doing it?
31:19
What what are you trying to do during that those next few weeks?
31:23
It's uh it's it's not we're trying to figure it out or or disqualify it, per se.
31:27
I think either attitude might be too extreme.
31:30
It's more like there might be a creative angle here that no one else has thought through, and so we're not married to this idea.
31:35
We're holding it very loosely.
31:37
We just have to figure out like, "Okay, we might hear an interesting insight from a chiropractor that says, 'Hey, your idea's okay, but what would make it really good is if you also added in all these AI agents to automate away my receptionist, and and then, you know, my customer acquisition is terrible because XYZ.'
31:53
Like, those are the insights we're looking for to then manufacture an upgraded version of the idea.
32:00
So, we assume the first idea is terrible, and it's going to go through like 10 pivots. Right.
32:04
Like Which is very useful because that's almost always the case.
32:07
And if you don't have that attitude, you basically you hear something really juicy, but you're so locked in.
32:13
It's like somebody was handing you gold, but you were out there just you know, searching for for bronze, and it's like, "What Are you sure? You sure you want that?"
32:22
I was going to ask you, you know, you you're talking a lot about ideas.
32:24
In Silicon Valley, there's this idea there's this phrase, which is you know, ideas are are are worthless, execution is everything. Do you buy that? I think it's BS.
32:35
I think it's I think it's some of the worst advice I've ever heard in Silicon Valley. So, what's your take?
32:42
My take is that ideas are really freaking important, and if you have the wrong idea, you could be a great team, and you're screwed.
32:48
And actually, I modified my thinking on this cuz I was uh scout for Sequoia Capital for many years, and they would show us a bunch of these like great ideas with amazing traction, especially in consumer internet.
33:03
And then they would ask us, "Would you invest on this memo, yes or no?"
33:05
And so we would vote, and then they'd say, "Well, here's what happened to that company.
33:10
It ended up being you know, a zero.
33:13
Even though they had the best team, the idea was still garbage, so it ended up being a zero."
33:19
And that was like a common theme I noticed.
33:21
So, they would train almost train you on historical memos, basically? Yeah. Oh, wow. That's incredible.
33:27
But you but if the traction was great Is it Is it usually the traction great or just the team and the the thesis was great?
33:34
the the early traction might have been good, and the team looks good, but then if you really think through the long term, like, is this idea sticky after a year or two? Will there be copycats? Like Right.
33:43
is it like Is there anything that really holds a consumer in?
33:46
You know, that's where these ideas would then lose steam and die.
33:53
And so that kind of helped me think about this a bit differently.
33:56
And so you're saying ideas are super important.
33:58
Ideas are really important, and the team is really important.
34:00
They're both really important, but to say, "Oh yeah, like ideas are dime a dozen."
34:03
Like, really, it's not just the idea, it's like the whole thinking of the business.
34:07
Like doing the calls to like understand or meeting with the chiropractors in person or the auto mechanic and really figuring out these juicy tidbits that you're not going to find out um by sending out a stupid survey or by using ChatGPT to tell me, "Hey, what are the problems that chiropractors have?"
34:23
Like, that helps you build an interview script for what you're going to then uh talk with them about, but then, you know, uh you have to show up.
34:31
So, like when I was building an Anaroo, I would go to Yelp, and I would call these CPAs, and I would say, "Hey, I'm like a 19-year-old college kid.
34:40
I know nothing about business.
34:42
I want to do something to help accountants.
34:44
Can I come to you, buy you lunch, and just like ask you some questions just for 15 minutes?" And then you show up.
34:50
They're not going to kick you out after 15 minutes.
34:51
15 minutes is going to turn into 2 hours, and you have your notepad, you're scribbling. Like, they love that. They want to be helpful. Right.
34:59
And um I did a lot of that personally.
35:01
Like, I just showed up and asked them my questions, and then got all these insights, and we we still do that.
35:08
I'm still on these calls. Okay?
35:11
Like, even if it's not in person, if you could at least do like hour-long plus you know, uh expert calls.
35:15
Like, we use GLG for this.
35:18
There's also um like Alpha Sites.
35:21
And then they charge you a lot.
35:23
You know, you might be paying 800 bucks or 1,000 dollars to talk to an expert in a very difficult-to-find area.
35:29
Versus like accountants and chiropractors, like you could just call someone on the internet.
35:32
But if you want to find like an expert in titanium mining, how are you going to find that person?
35:37
You go to GLG, and you pay them a thousand bucks, they'll find the person for you, set up the phone call for you. Right.
35:41
And we do that all the time.
35:44
The way you're talking about ideas and markets, it reminds me of there's this story of this marketer, and the marketer goes to I think a a seminar or something like that.
35:53
There's other marketers there, and he goes "Okay, um we are going to Let's pretend we're opening up a hot dog stand.
36:00
And um he's like, "So, I can get He's like, 'I'm a genie.
36:02
I will give you anything you want to make your hot dog stand the most successful you can make it.'" Uh-huh.
36:07
So, he goes, "What do you want?"
36:08
And so first person, "What do you want?"
36:09
The guy's like, "Uh I want the best ingredients, best buns." He's like, "Got it. Best buns. You, what do you want?"
36:14
He's like, "No, no, no, buns That's foolish.
36:17
In the food business, location is everything.
36:19
So, location All right, I got you this corner spot in a high-traffic area. Cool. Uh location, you got it. What do you want?"
36:24
And each person had like best branding, best whatever.
36:29
And he goes, "Um I have one thing that I think will beat all of you if we all if we all did the same thing, and we all got our wish granted."
36:34
He goes, "All I want is a starving crowd."
36:38
And um if you're a marketer, like you're going to spend a lot of time and energy trying to sell something.
36:44
The absolute best decision you can make up front is finding a starving, ravenous crowd, and it sounds like, you know, when you say ideas, really the idea, you know, what's underneath an idea is a customer or set of customers who have like a real pain and like a desire to solve that pain.
37:01
You know, like they are they are hungry, and they're hungry for something.
37:04
And if you just show up with even decent buns and hot dogs, like they'll buy it, you know, instantaneously.
37:09
It's okay if it's a little cold, it doesn't matter.
37:12
Yeah, that's a great story.
37:12
It's uh it's about like how acute is this problem?
37:16
And ideally, um one hallmark of a Maui idea is the customer doesn't have to pay anything.
37:23
So, in Holy Health you don't pay to be on our platform.
37:25
By being part of our platform, you make more money.
37:30
You get more customers, and we'll take a cut of that in exchange for helping you grow your business.
37:35
like that model because there's no friction. that model.
37:37
It's like, why would you say no to that?
37:39
It's like you're just saying no to more business.
37:41
Yeah, that's like those companies that um they'll negotiate with all vendors on your behalf, and like, "Whatever we save, we'll take 20%.
37:48
You're saving nothing today.
37:50
If I save you any money, I'll take 20%."
37:52
And it's like, "Okay, go have at it."
37:54
You You were talking about you had a couple other ideas.
37:56
You had like a divorce one. What was that one?
37:59
that was like um I had so many friends getting divorced and still do, and people say they need an advance on their alimony, or like there's going to be or their money gets tied up and locked up cuz they're in divorce proceedings, and they're really rich, they're really successful, but they can't tap any of their capital while it's all tied up.
38:16
So, what if we could just give them some of their money back?
38:18
And And so that was just like a funny random financing around, you know, the window of a divorce or the alimony. We called it divorce. fund.
38:29
Didn't go forward, that one?
38:29
No, I mean, people will talk about it and stuff.
38:30
We still joke about it, but there are other ideas that we got more excited about, so.
38:36
So, we'll talk about failures cuz one of the things you said to me before this many failures.
38:39
You were like, "I like your podcast, but, you know, sometimes you listen to people, and it just sounds like it's I had this idea, it worked, I'm so great."
38:47
You know, like that's that's a podcast problem.
38:49
And you were like, "I want to be super honest about things we were trying that are not working or failures I've had."
38:55
Where do you want to start?
38:56
Yeah, I mean, I would start by saying when I use YouTube and I have all these entrepreneur business podcasts, I spend a lot of time flipping through, and I think, "Man, like I'm not doing enough.
39:09
Like, I'm not good enough."
39:09
Even when like I watch your podcast, I think that.
39:14
And I think that a lot of people, you know, probably share that view.
39:17
And and and the people you interview, I know a lot of these people. These are my friends.
39:22
I know what they're secretly struggling with. Yeah.
39:25
And they're not necessarily sharing all of that, and I think that's just important to know.
39:28
So, in my case, looks like I am good at coming up with these things and having success, but most of the time, they're total duds.
39:37
And one example is we had this idea, we called it CredBoost.
39:39
Terrible idea in hindsight.
39:41
I'm so embarrassed to share this, but I'm going to share it anyway.
39:44
The idea was we're going to help you like improve your credit and repair it and you know, we had the customer acquisition funnel going and it was high churn, low price point, very high violation by the FTC.
40:00
You know, it it it got compared to credit repair businesses too much and you know, my idea was we're going to boost your credit, not repair just repair your credit.
40:07
And it could have made money, but we just got bored with that and so I burned a few hundred thousand bucks experimenting with that and then I put in the wrong team.
40:14
So I made so many mistakes on that.
40:17
That was an early incubation that went nowhere.
40:21
And this other idea was we're really going to help veterans of the US military find new jobs and we're going to get paid by Vet Tech and the GI Bill to do that.
40:33
And we could do this all online, so it's virtual, it's scalable and we're helping veterans.
40:38
So it felt like it was really good idea. Yeah.
40:40
And the veteran, all they have to do is say yes.
40:42
So we launched all these ads, all these veterans signed up.
40:46
They're like, "Hell yeah, I could double my salary, make more money and do this all online from the comfort of my home."
40:52
And um and our payment mechanism was this thing called Vet Tech, V E T T E C and it had bipartisan, you know, acceptance.
41:05
Everyone loved it, but it got stuck.
41:07
It got approved by the house and never went up to the the Senate and the money dried up and we were like, "All right, well it'll get renewed imminently."
41:14
And 18 months after that, still not renewed today, still not renewed.
41:18
And we're like, "Okay, well that business died just because of that."
41:22
And then I tried to pivot it.
41:22
I'm like, "Oh, can I get the GI Bill to pay for it?"
41:25
But then the GI Bill requires in person and then after that we lost interest.
41:29
Like I was the only one excited about this.
41:31
They're like, "Guys, we got to help the veterans." Right.
41:33
My team's like, "We have other ideas that will make more money, Jess, and we want to make money."
41:37
Like, "All right, I'll come back to this when the time's right."
41:40
So swings and misses for sure. I want to show you this.
41:44
I want to I want you to read this.
41:44
This is from a talk you gave. Oh man, 2011.
41:47
This is when it hurts, but not just cuz an idea is wrong.
41:51
Sometimes it's even when the idea is right. Yeah. running a company.
41:55
Can you can you read this? I want you to read that.
41:57
wrote this to my mom and my dad on Saturday, June 4th, 2011 at 5:56 a. m. So I was up all night. I couldn't go to sleep. I was so upset. Subject line? Kind of sad.
42:10
Um I feel like I'm burning meat off rich on the outside, but completely broken on the inside.
42:15
There's just a lot of pressure right now because the company is running dry on money in the next nine nine or so months and we really need to produce this summer or else we're really screwed.
42:24
Um this was about a year after Y Combinator for me.
42:31
Anyway, I want to start seeing a therapist or something because this is just no way to live.
42:34
I have no idea how you handle this entrepreneur job, Jess. Wow.
42:38
And my mom, she's not an entrepreneur. She came here.
42:40
Do you remember sending that? I do.
42:41
I absolutely remember that. I remember the night.
42:45
I remember how I was just like very upset.
42:49
Cuz I had all these hopes and expectations on myself and you know, Paul Graham even he was my mentor and he's like, "You're going to be one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, you, Patrick Collison and Sam Altman."
43:01
And I'm still the least successful today and I still think about that often.
43:06
And um that weight was on your shoulders.
43:08
That weight was weighing on my shoulders.
43:09
It still is on my shoulders and um and my mom called me and she said, "Hey, like I love you no matter what, even if you're a total business failure, I'll still love you."
43:19
And then I just cut all my expenses, cut my burn, moved into a tiny apartment with my business partner and and then just slowly crawled out out of the hole.
43:29
And then yeah, we grew into an ad tech yeah, it's a few hundred employees, profitable, good business, not a unicorn, but gave me all the training and um spiritual training to pursue entrepreneurship and be comfortable with mistakes and failure. Mhm.
43:46
Were you at that time I guess like what was the conversation with yourself to like cuz you're like, "I did these things. I lowered my burn. I did this. I did this."
43:54
So those are the actions, but before the action comes some there's some inner monologue.
44:00
There's some conversation you got to have with yourself and I love the inner monologue because your whole life gets dictated by this tiny little voice in your head that nobody hears.
44:09
It's the one telling you how to feel, what to do, where to stand, what to say.
44:13
And I think training that and learning how to like kind of improve that inner monologue is so important and you it gets better in moments like this, right?
44:23
That's when it gets that's the muscle building for that that inner monologue.
44:26
Do you do you remember kind of what you were telling yourself at that phase? You you wrote this.
44:30
Your mom tells you something.
44:31
What did you tell yourself?
44:31
I distinctly remember what the monologue was that whole evening, which is I am destined for greatness and I am not producing my best work right now.
44:39
I am not showing up at my best.
44:41
I'm not playing to win and I'm I'm falling behind and I need to diagnose what went wrong and I need to keep on trying and I will not accept or tolerate failure.
44:53
That was what was going through my head.
44:55
listening to to a song at that time?
44:56
Where did that come from? That was fire.
44:58
No, it was How did you get yourself into that state?
44:59
From kind of sad to like kind of kick ass. No, that was sad though.
45:04
That was not It was not an empowered attitude.
45:06
I was I was thinking that and but because I knew that that was my situation, then I went from like, "All right, like I need to do all this or I'm screwed."
45:16
And then like, "All right, I'm really sad and I got to process my emotions.
45:19
Just get it out of me and you know, be honest with myself that I'm struggling.
45:24
I need to ask for help and I didn't have a great community cuz back at that time you you know, as an entrepreneur you want to show off. You want to posture.
45:34
You want to seem like you're better than everyone else.
45:35
And then after that I realized I could just be honest and I'll still have friends and I told all my girlfriends and and stuff more people were struggling than I realized.
45:46
More of my Y Combinator batchmates were also running out of money and if you we look back today, most of the companies from that batch did not make it.
45:54
Most of them went BK and then people took normal jobs or started new companies and then eventually found success.
46:01
And so yeah, I still think about that.
46:01
I still have thoughts like that today.
46:04
It's not It's a work in progress. Right.
46:07
You know, I've I've done whatever, 600 of these episodes and at certain point, you know, you'd have to be sort of stupid to not realize like there's a mindset amongst the common mindset that I think great entrepreneurs have and I I've distilled it down into this.
46:20
I think a great entrepreneur's mindset is they're ignorant of the past cuz it's already done.
46:27
If they live there, they'll die there.
46:29
And if you just case stay stuck on, "Well, I've been failing for five years."
46:32
Then you will feel like a failure and you won't be able to to win.
46:35
So you're ignorant of the past, realistic about the present, which is kind of what you said.
46:40
Like, "I'm not showing up at my best.
46:42
I'm not putting in all the effort.
46:42
I'm not doing the obvious things that I should be doing right now.
46:48
But I'm also not it's not over."
46:48
And so they don't make it worse than it is.
46:51
They don't make it better than it is.
46:52
They see it as it actually is.
46:52
So ignorant of the past, realistic about the present and delusional about the future.
46:56
And you have to have that delusion because if you're just realistic and practical about the future, you don't do anything great. Yeah.
47:02
That's really well articulated.
47:02
I think also going through moments like that I remember then talking to my business partner and we did a full postmortem.
47:11
We listed out every single strategic and tactical mistake and thing we did wrong and what we would do different if we went back in time and I wish I wrote this somewhere because it was a long list.
47:26
I mean, it was like I would do everything different if I could go back in time with that attitude.
47:29
And even today I was talking to or yesterday I was talking to one of my colleagues and the number of bad ideas we funded and experimented with um and our process flaws, you know, we we would also do everything different going three years back if we could.
47:48
But we're talking about this constantly and that goes back to what we talked about at first, quota worry.
47:54
So every week what if we break this entire workflow?
47:59
No matter how good things are, let's still reflect on all the mistakes we made so that we can improve and not repeat that again.
48:06
It doesn't have to be when times are tough and when you're about to run out of money that you're reflecting on like everything. Yeah, yeah. No old mistakes.
48:11
It's kind of like the it's the no new friends, it's the no old mistakes of what you want.
48:16
You don't You don't want to make the same mistakes again.
48:17
You said something when you were talking about like, "I'm not You said, "I'm not showing up the way I need to."
48:21
You said, "I'm not playing to win." Yeah.
48:22
And so I think I was talking to your boyfriend before this and he goes I asked him I said, "What's a what's a Jess-ism?"
48:28
Meaning like if you talk to people enough, you start to see their the things they repeat, the things that are like their philosophy that they're like actually operating on.
48:34
And he go he said something like um play to win, don't play not to lose. Explain that.
48:43
I think that came from this story that I just shared where I one of my problems was I was playing not to lose.
48:49
So I was in a scarcity mindset and when I'm running out of money and I'm in scarcity mindset um I mean there's research that talks about how your IQ drops by a lot during those periods and so I'm not going to think outside of the box and um playing to win means I'm optimistic, I'm delusional about the future of it, right?
49:11
So I I see a lot of my friends who are just like playing it too safe.
49:16
They're not they're not trying new things um and so you can't do the same thing you've been doing and expect a completely different outcome. Right.
49:24
What's an example, maybe not in business related, where in your life you're playing to you had a moment where you're like, "Ah, I need to play to win here instead of play not to lose."
49:32
personal life like uh for example with the airplane, you know, this is a physical manifestation of that attitude. Mhm.
49:40
And why it's really fun to share that with everyone today, it's easy to say, "Oh, I'm going to be frugal.
49:45
I'm going to save the money.
49:45
I'm going to let it compound.
49:47
I'm going to invest it in my other businesses." Or, you know, screw it. I'm playing to win here.
49:53
This is going to manifest way more abundance for me than if I don't or you know.
49:59
me something that when we were at lunch that inspired me.
50:00
You met somebody I think who threw a great event and you hired this person.
50:05
You were like, "Hey, here's a budget and I will pay you whatever you're making at your job.
50:09
I'll pay you that or more or whatever."
50:11
You're like, "I want to have four events a year in these four cities with the most like inspiring fun people in my like that I want to create I want to engineer some serendipity, some luck, some fun, some cross-pollination of people and ideas four times a year in these in these places."
50:29
And I remember I've told probably five people this because you need some resources to do it.
50:33
Yes, of course, of course.
50:34
Like don't If you're in the YouTube comments, there'll be that guy who's like, "Oh, it must be nice to have money." Great.
50:39
There's a version of this in your life, too.
50:40
You can take people out to dinner, right?
50:42
It doesn't have to be a grand event.
50:43
But I was like, "That is an investment that I don't even have a line item for." Yeah. Right?
50:50
I kind of know if I did it probably really good I would A have a lot of fun and B like yeah, I do think good things would happen.
50:55
But you took a almost like intentional business capital allocation approach to the like luck and fun part of your life.
51:05
Which I think most people leave untouched.
51:06
Luck and fun is just something that either happens or doesn't happen.
51:08
It's not I don't use my business brain for that.
51:10
I use this other part of my brain.
51:11
It seemed like you almost used your that same brain for both.
51:13
Yeah, cuz I wanted to kill two birds with one stone or three birds with one stone because I want to have fun.
51:19
I want to do more business, meet cool people, but I also had this friend who hated her private equity job and really wanted an excuse to leave.
51:26
And so I was able to present that to her.
51:28
The vision was four events a year with, you know, the most successful entrepreneurs and investors I know.
51:34
And we're launching the first one literally today.
51:37
That's exactly what I'm flying off to after we're done.
51:39
And then the vision is we'll do a summer thing, a fall thing, etc.
51:45
But it was really expensive and so what she and I decided to do was we would help her find other work, other events.
51:53
So I'd set her up with my other friends throwing events.
51:55
She would charge per event and she would get paid based on the revenue coming in to the events.
52:02
So it's all variable versus her being on my payroll.
52:05
And so for this event what I did is I called a bunch of my friends and said, "Hey, you got to pay something cuz I have hard costs here."
52:11
And they paid in and then she only paid herself after there was a profit.
52:15
So you can get creative about this.
52:18
For the ideas we were talking about earlier and my whole team, bunch of these people are on contract. I found them on Upwork. Okay? Like you could do this.
52:27
What what type of person like what skill set do they have that you found on You said like Fiverr or Upwork?
52:30
Yeah, like one's a product management UI UX thinker.
52:36
One is a financial services guy.
52:40
One was a intern of mine.
52:40
He was at UCLA and he asked me to speak to his entrepreneur club and then he said, "Hey, could I like take you to lunch?
52:48
I want to get some advice from you.
52:50
What should I do after college?"
52:51
I'm like, "Just intern for me and I'll teach you the ropes."
52:55
And then he was so good that now he's full-time with us.
52:59
But he's probably one of my best idea sparring partners.
53:02
And then here this event planning person, I met her from the Burning Man community.
53:09
These people are everywhere around you.
53:11
They don't necessarily have a fancy specific resume. And they're fun. I love them. We work well together.
53:16
That's what's more important than the resume. Right.
53:18
I met a friend recently who told me this he said something in passing.
53:22
He goes, "I was at this event and then there was this guy who was he was dressed differently blah blah and me and my friend we collect eccentric people.
53:28
So we went over to him and had a chat." I kind of paused him.
53:32
I was like, "That's kind of a cool thing you just said like I collect eccentric people." I don't do that.
53:38
And I was like, "But what do I what do I collect?
53:39
Like if I just put myself in the if I said, what am I a collector of?"
53:42
So like for me I'm a collector of what I call golden nuggets.
53:45
It's like I can have this conversation with you and I'm just looking for two, three, four things.
53:49
Like I don't need two hours or 90 minutes of a conversation to be perfect.
53:53
I need three ideas that spark something, three golden nuggets that will change my way of thinking or acting.
54:00
So I'm a great collector of those.
54:00
I'm also a collector of like young talent.
54:03
Like I see somebody who's young, who's hustling or is talented in some way, I will like kind of really help them out because I want to A stay young myself and be helpful, but B I kind of want to be able to connect dots between young people and good opportunities or young people and funding or whatever it is.
54:20
And so I think there's this interesting idea of like figuring out what is it that you collect.
54:23
Like some dudes collect stamps. Some dudes collect bugs.
54:26
What is it that you collect?
54:26
So like for you, what do you what would you say you collect?
54:29
I would say I collect interesting people with outside of the box ideas who also like to have fun.
54:36
That is the key intersection I'm looking for. your Venn diagram. Exactly.
54:38
Cuz I think you could find interesting people where they're not fun. It's very transactional.
54:44
They're just in it to make money themselves.
54:46
But then the problem with that is then I can't do any business with them.
54:49
So that's So then my idea was, "Okay, how do I bring more of these people together so that we can have more serendipity?
54:55
Oh, I'll just create my own event and then bring them there and then have a bunch of my people also, you know, talking to them, getting their ideas and seeing where we could partner on stuff." Right, right.
55:05
Engineering the serendipity.
55:05
Our buddy Nick Gray does a like no cost, low cost version of this.
55:09
So he used to do renegade museum tours.
55:11
He like he loved museums.
55:13
So his Venn diagram was like fun people who are interested in like, you know, going to a museum on a Friday night.
55:19
And he would host his he wasn't a part of the museum.
55:22
He would just take people on a tour cuz he knew the museum better than the tour guides.
55:26
And he would take them on a fun version of the tour.
55:27
They'd like have a drink outside after beforehand.
55:29
They would go in and they would like do little fun things at the different stations.
55:33
So that guy was one thing he did.
55:34
Another way he engineered serendipity he would throw these like singles events where he himself was looking to date somebody, but he's like, "Well, I could just kind of do that.
55:44
I can swipe left or right or like is there something I could do more creative that will not only help me find someone amazing, but maybe even like a bunch of our friends find somebody amazing."
55:52
He started hosting these singles events.
55:53
And again, the it's a pizza budget.
55:55
It's not like it's super fancy.
55:57
Doesn't have to be fancy, right?
55:59
Like I feel like I need to say that cuz we're sitting on this like jet, but like I mean most of the stuff we do is like very cheap, cost-effective and pays for itself and sometimes makes a profit, you know?
56:08
So like just but just taking that intensity to engineering some serendipity. I kind of love that.
56:10
Before we leave, what do you just leave me with what are you currently nerding out about?
56:15
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about like cancer and oncology.
56:21
I've been thinking a lot about longevity and you know, we're still funding a lot of the research with Mike Levin who's my favorite scientist of all time.
56:27
He's the bioelectricity ninja.
56:31
And I've been nerding on out on this a bit more because I was mentioning to you before you got here.
56:37
I've been in a bit of a sad mood this week.
56:41
I had a friend die of cancer a few days ago.
56:43
Never smoked a cigarette in her life and had stage four lung cancer.
56:50
And um and it's just more examples of this in my life.
56:54
Every year two I lose a friend like that and and so it's not necessarily going to make money.
57:01
It's not going to improve my lifestyle, but I'm just like I got to nerd out on it. Right.
57:06
Is there exciting progress in the cancer oncology stuff right now?
57:09
Like is there something Is there a new paradigm or a new pathway that's interesting?
57:15
Yeah, like with Mike we he talks about how he's been able to use bioelectricity to normalize cancer cells.
57:20
So everyone right now in the field is talking about how do you kill cancer? Right?
57:25
You think about chemo, radiation.
57:28
It's really painful on the patient.
57:29
But if you could just normalize cancer and not have to kill it, that's going to be a lot more comfortable.
57:36
of makes it like a normal non-cancerous cell basically?
57:39
going to be cancer, but it's more benign essentially.
57:42
So that's really cool research.
57:44
He's got a lot of great stuff on longevity, making lab animals live longer.
57:48
I don't think he wants me to talk about it publicly yet, but How insane is the AI AI for medicine and biology?
57:55
How is that How is insane is that going to be?
57:58
I think it's going to be amazing.
58:00
I think it's also going to be a lot harder than people think.
58:05
Cuz you have AI that's coming up with all these ideas, but the bottleneck is still regulatory. It's still FDA.
58:08
It's still getting a clinical trial put together.
58:14
That's one area where we're going to see slower progress than everyone is bragging about.
58:17
Whereas, you know, with everything else we discussed with digital twins, if we could have two of us brainstorm ideas, there's no bottleneck there.
58:25
The only bottleneck is like spinning up the computer and then us pulling the trigger to fund ads or fund whatever.
58:31
But in health and bio it's people's lives are at stake.
58:33
It's going to go slow still I think unfortunately. Okay.
58:38
Well, where should people find you and what should they send you?
58:42
Yeah, um if you have any exotic outside of the box business ideas you want to run by me and I'd love to discuss that with you.
58:49
Shoot me a note and I am on LinkedIn.
58:52
LinkedIn just search Jess Ma.
58:57
And I post on my blog there almost every week partially using ChatGPT to come up with my blog posts. But I still review it.
59:05
I'm like, "Hey, write me a blog post that's 2950 characters long cuz the LinkedIn limit's 3,000 in my voice about XYZ XYZ and insert these anecdotal stories."
59:18
And and then like within two minutes I have a blog post. That's amazing.
59:23
But so I post there and these are real life stories of my life.
59:24
And just send me a message on LinkedIn.
59:27
Would love to hear from people.
59:28
And also the last pod we did, I made a bunch of friends.
59:31
Like people just cold emailed me and I'm like, "Yeah, I'll grab lunch with you.
59:37
I'll grab dinner with you."
59:37
And two people I met from the pod are coming to my retreat.
59:41
That's uh that's amazing to hear.
59:44
That's a a point of pride for us is like we want it to be if somebody comes on the podcast they you should get more kind of inbound messages from this than any other podcast you go on.
59:52
And the second would be that the people who message you are people you would actually want to talk to.
59:57
That would be the goal, right?
59:57
That if we're doing that we've kind of built the right tribe here.
1:00:00
So, Yeah, you guys did a great job with that. Real community.
1:00:03
So, thanks for having me here. cheers. Cheers. All right, here we go.