0:00
He quit his job, and in the first year he does it.
Search this video
0:01
He hits actually five grand a month.
0:03
So, he even surpasses his his one-year goal. And he just keeps going.
0:07
So, he first year 60k, second year like 100 something k, third year 250k.
0:12
Fourth year 7 million, fifth year, you know, it it just keeps growing.
0:14
Today this business does over 30 million a year. No way. Are you kidding me?
0:28
Sam, do you want to Do you want to start with updog? Am I supposed to?
0:38
Thought I would catch you sleeping there.
0:43
You should have just gave it to me. That's way below you.
0:45
You should have just gave it to me.
0:47
Um all right, before we start, I want to dedicate this podcast, Sean, Oh. to two groups of people.
0:54
Because I've had run-ins with the these two groups of people, and I've taken for granted how special these two groups of people are.
1:00
The first one, people who start businesses and are English speaking as a or or not not native English speakers. It's insane.
1:09
I like have I hung out recently with a few friends that you know, are entrepreneurs and they don't speak English natively. That's so impressive.
1:18
I take it for granted so much until I've got to communicate someone of a different language. That's amazing.
1:22
So, I want to dedicate this pod to that.
1:24
The second group of people, people who start businesses and they're not wealthy and they're just starting their businesses trying to make their dreams come true while they have newborns or little kids. How impressive is that?
1:35
Like I didn't take I didn't I kind of took that for granted.
1:37
My parents said that when I was younger.
1:38
I don't realize now now that I have a kid, I realize how scary that is.
1:41
So, I want to dedicate this podcast to those two groups of people. Wow. Good guy points. Okay, I like it. Um dedication accepted.
1:51
Shout out to Shout out to all those groups.
1:53
Um I have a few interesting things to share with you today.
1:56
Do you have a few interesting things or or what?
1:58
I have two things you're going to like. What do you got?
2:00
I'm going to take you on a journey.
2:02
So Sam, buckle up cuz I got a little something for you.
2:04
I'm going to tell you about a journey I went down and the journey starts with a tweet I saw that was very interesting.
2:09
You know, Bitcoin hit an all-time high price, AI's taking off.
2:12
My I wasn't in I'm not interested.
2:15
What I was interested in is a picture of a guy holding a giant avocado.
2:20
And I was like, what is this?
2:20
And he says he says he said he goes, "These are the best avocados I've ever had.
2:25
They were grown by my 93-year-old Japanese neighbor.
2:29
I have had to use Google Translate to talk to her about the variety and she thinks it might be uh one that just grew from this this specific seed.
2:34
If that's true, this could be a new landmark variety.
2:38
The Hass avocado was discovered in similar fashion and is now the most popular avocado in the world.
2:45
This avocado that I found cannot be propagated with normal methods.
2:47
Uh it doesn't take well to air layering.
2:49
I don't know what this means.
2:52
He says, "So I'm going to have to start with the seed.
2:53
I'm going to grow it out the tree.
2:55
I'm going to cut it from the mature tree, graft it onto its own seed."
2:58
I don't even know what any of this means.
2:59
But then he's like, "And then I'm going to try to recreate this avocado.
3:02
It will probably be a 3-year experiment. Wish me luck."
3:07
And so I saw this and I What a noble quest.
3:09
You're like, "What does this avocado teach me about life?"
3:14
No, what has life led me to to make my life about this avocado cuz I am so fully invested in this 3-year journey about this guy who's going to try to grow a better avocado and it led me down a rabbit hole about him and about the avocado.
3:25
So the guy is this guy named Kevin Espiritu. Do you know this guy?
3:29
He's calls himself the plant daddy on Twitter. No, but I'm in. You don't know this guy? No. you do.
3:35
When I just started describing him you were like, "So he's got a pretty amazing story and I'm going to first tell you his story then I'm going to come back to the avocado.
3:40
We're going to Tarantino this a little bit. All right.
3:43
So this guy basically he used to work at Scribe, the like book in a box company.
3:48
They they help you produce books. So So working at Scribe.
3:50
He's like an early employee there, and on the side he um used to have hobbies of like video games and online poker, and he was just playing non-stop.
3:57
And so to get away from kind of his online addiction, he's like, "You know what?
4:03
I'm going to start gardening."
4:03
Like him and his brother, they're This is the quote in the article they go, "Hey, let's go hit up a nursery."
4:10
They go to a plant nursery and they are like, "All right, we don't know anything about gardening, but like uh we want to do something.
4:15
We want to do something away from a computer, outside with our hands."
4:19
And they go buy a bunch of stuff and they're trying to figure it out.
4:21
They go online, they're looking up blogs to learn, and along the way he starts blogging his journey.
4:28
And so he's at Scribd and he his little blog starts getting, you know, a little bit of traffic cuz he's posting his experience.
4:34
He's very relatable cuz he's an absolute noob beginner.
4:35
And so people who are Googling are also absolute noob beginners and they start to like this.
4:41
And eventually he's like, "You know what?
4:42
I'm going to quit my job."
4:42
At the time the blog is making, I don't know, 16, 17,000 dollars a year.
4:45
So roughly two two-ish grand a month, a little bit more than that, right?
4:51
So uh a little less than two grand a month, sorry.
4:52
So he's uh he quits his job and he's like, "I'm going to go all in on this thing."
4:58
And at the time he's all about this one type of gardening called hydroponic garden.
5:01
Gardening, is that like where the the plant is like raised uh is that right?
5:06
Yeah, it's like not in the soil and in water? Something like that. I said exactly. I have no idea.
5:11
All right, so he's he creates r/hydro, which is like a Reddit community.
5:15
So he starts just building a community around other people who are interested in the same type of thing he's doing.
5:20
Along the way he's like, "Oh dude, I think this hydroponic thing is a little too niche."
5:23
He rebrands it into something called Epic Gardening.
5:27
Epic Gardening today is huge.
5:27
He's got Dude, I'm on the website and I'm looking at his social numbers. Holy crap.
5:31
He's got like 2 million on TikTok, 2 million on YouTube, a million people here.
5:35
His His Twitter pops off.
5:37
So he's done really, really well with his Epic Gardening content.
5:40
He's just a dude in the baseball cap, super like relatable.
5:44
When you watch his videos, he's like he's just a very likable guy.
5:46
He's got the gift um that you need when you're going to do this type of content.
5:49
And so he keeps going and he basically for 10 years essentially bootstraps his company.
5:55
So starts with like a $10 domain, pays five bucks for hosting, and he was like, all right, I'm going to try to get this thing and his goal was I'm going to try to get to three grand a month cuz three grand a month means I can live off of this like blog revenue.
6:07
He quit his job and in the first year he does it.
6:09
He hits actually five grand a month.
6:11
So he even surpasses his his one-year goal. And he just keeps going.
6:14
So he first year 60k, second year like 100 something k, third year 250k.
6:20
Fourth year 7 million, fifth year, you know, it just keeps growing.
6:22
Today this business does over 30 million a year. No way. Are you kidding me?
6:26
And he just raised a huge amount of money from Chernin, the same guys who backed, we talked about Eater, Barstool, others.
6:34
They have this content to commerce idea and they're like, this guy in the gardening niche is going to be able to do big things and and he'd already kind of proven it.
6:41
So what he did was he was doing pretty well with the content.
6:45
He was just like learning.
6:45
So he's like, dude, I've been on YouTube for so long, you know, since you know, basically 10 years now on YouTube.
6:49
He's like, I'm just keep evolving with whatever the new meta game is of YouTube.
6:54
And what ends up happening is that in 2020 [ __ ] takes off during COVID.
6:59
So COVID was the big like inflection point that like really took this from moderately successful to very successful. Two things happened.
7:05
COVID first where his channel all of a sudden he said he started adding like 15,000 subscribers a day cuz the same thing he had when he was like, uh dude, I'm just so so sick of being inside on my computer.
7:17
I want to get outside and do some gardening.
7:18
The whole world basically felt that when COVID hit.
7:19
And so a lot of people got interested in in this and then he's like, cool, all my money up till that point was ads and affiliates, right?
7:27
So just like YouTube AdSense uh YouTube ad revenue and then, you know, affiliate links to products.
7:35
And finally he's like, Was he doing 30 million that way? 30 million through ads?
7:39
no, no, way less than that.
7:39
He was doing like, you know, less than a million doing that.
7:43
But then he decides, all right, I'm going to launch a product and he's like, I'm going to create a gardening product.
7:47
So, he imports a product from Australia and immediately it works.
7:49
And so, he's like, oh, this this is kind of a good idea.
7:53
And he starts to uh sell that product and you know, the beautiful thing about these creator businesses, right? We've talked about Mr.
8:00
Beast, we've talked about Logan Paul with Prime, Mr. Beast with Feastables.
8:05
You know, the the mass creators, what they do is they take a mass market product like, you know, Gatorade Gatorade or chocolate.
8:11
And they're like, cool, we'll sell this commodity product using our branding and we'll use our branding to get into retail.
8:15
Well, for like the medium, like the the mid-tier creators like this guy or, you know, like us for example, you have to actually create a niche product that's going to be higher ticket, higher value um and you're going to use your audience to do it.
8:28
And so, what's cool about this is you create something that's called negative CAC.
8:33
So, what does negative CAC means?
8:33
Every business otherwise has a sales and marketing Talk dirty to me, baby. I love negative CAC. Keep going.
8:38
which is customer cost is the amount of money you have to spend in marketing or sales to get a customer.
8:45
And for most businesses, this is maybe 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%.
8:47
For some companies, it's 80% of their revenues are just how much it costs to go market to to to acquire a customer.
8:56
With a media business like this, what ends up happening is you get negative CAC, meaning he gets paid 1 to 2 million dollars a year for his YouTube stuff, for his content, right?
9:03
His blog and his YouTube stuff.
9:05
He's making money on that and that's his customer acquisition channel.
9:10
So, it's like kind of an unfair advantage.
9:12
This is what the Turn In guys are really smart about doing.
9:13
Shout out to Mike Kurns over at at Turn In, where they recognized they identified that, hey, some of these creators have high trust, they have high authority in a niche, and they actually have a business model where instead of spending 30 or 40% of your revenue on acquiring customers, you actually have negative CAC.
9:29
It's actually you have not only zero, it's better than zero.
9:31
You actually have a profitable media company that is being used to acquire these customers.
9:36
And that's the beauty of it.
9:37
And so, he he jumped and he was went from making, you know, let's say a million bucks a year to 7 million, 7 million to 20 million, and then now he's over 30 million a year in in revenue.
9:47
And the other cool thing is, he's bolted on some acquisitions.
9:49
All right, everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm going to show you a real-life example.
9:56
So, I've got this company called Hampton, joinhampton. com.
9:57
It's a community for founders doing between 2 million all the way up to like 250 million dollars a year in revenue.
10:02
And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these cool surveys.
10:04
And so, we have a lot of founders who have high net worths, and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask, but provide a lot of value.
10:12
So, things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, if they're optimistic about the next year in their business, all these questions that people are afraid to ask, but well, we ask them anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey.
10:25
And so, what we do is we created a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool, and it basically has a landing page that says, "Here's all the questions we asked.
10:32
Give us your email if you want to access it."
10:35
And then I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they want this survey, and I can see did they come from social media?
10:42
I can see did they come from Twitter, from LinkedIn?
10:45
Basically, everywhere else that they could possibly come from, I'm able to track all of that.
10:48
And then, I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became a member of Hampton.
10:55
In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey, how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that.
11:00
But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it.
11:04
And a lot of times it takes a ton of work to make that happen.
11:05
HubSpot made that super, super easy.
11:07
If you're interested in doing this, you can check it out, hubspot. com.
11:10
The link's in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did, so you can actually see the landing page and how it works and everything like that.
11:17
I'm just going to do that call to action, then. And it's free.
11:22
Check it out in the description.
11:22
All right, now back to MFM.
11:23
Hold on, what's he selling?
11:25
He's got like a seed product.
11:27
Um, so they're like some tracey crap.
11:29
I don't know, I don't I don't know anything about this.
11:30
It's called botanical seeds.
11:31
Um and he bought that company actually.
11:34
That's not the one he started.
11:35
He bought that because they had retail distributions.
11:38
They were in like 4 or 5,000 stores. So, he's like, "Cool.
11:41
Let me buy this cuz I know that my audience will help grow this, right?
11:45
This is what I did with Shepherd, too, right?
11:46
It's like, let me buy this company that I is already a good business knowing that my audience will acquire a bunch of customers for it.
11:52
And like that's what happened with Shepherd.
11:54
We basically tripled the business using this strategy.
11:56
He's doing the same thing in the gardening niche.
11:58
And so, he bought this seed business.
12:00
And then he bought this like houseplant business, um which is actually a cool story.
12:04
So, he's like, he gets into He's like, "During COVID, everybody wanted like house plants."
12:08
I think you guys talked about this with Trends, too, like the Trends were We talked about this uh year and a half, I think, before the pandemic about uh like succulent succulents.
12:15
Where like people were wanting to buy succulents online and there's not a lot of options. You were totally right. You were ahead of trend.
12:22
What he did was he was like, "Cool.
12:24
Um should I start creating this content?"
12:25
And he realized a very like, you know, in the in the uh the growth of any entrepreneur, eventually you start to realize that, "Hey, sometimes it's actually easier to buy than build."
12:33
And so, what he did was like, "Well, I could try to create all these articles, rank for them in SEO, or" he found this website that was called like, you know, yourhouseplant. com.
12:44
And he's like, "Dude, this actually has like good content and it's good SEO.
12:47
They just don't have any business around it."
12:48
And so, he's like, "I think I could make this product a lot better, but I could like get this off a head start."
12:53
So, he he does a Whois lookup.
12:53
And it's some Indian VC owns this as a side project.
12:57
He buys it for a thousand dollars.
12:59
And immediately like month one, he's making more than a thousand dollars off this thing.
13:03
And then grows that property.
13:04
And so, he's done this a few times and he raised money from Chernin to be able to go do more of these.
13:07
And so, I think this guy is amazing.
13:08
I've asked him so many times to invest cuz I'm like, "Dude, this is you are going to win and you're going to win in such a big way, it's going to shock people."
13:18
Like I think as I'm saying it now, it sounds like pretty cool, pretty obvious and as his growth happens.
13:22
But like 10 years ago, so so non-obvious.
13:24
Even 4 or 5 years ago, even when Kevin started to get more popular, it's like, "Okay, cool. You're a YouTuber." "Okay, cool.
13:32
You're a YouTuber with an e-com shop." I was like, "No, no, no.
13:36
You are going to be the most trusted influencer in the gardening niche.
13:37
And the gardening niche, you know, look at how much Yeah, there's full retail brick-and-mortar stores that are selling fertilizer and different things like that.
13:46
Like, he can take this huge if he does this right.
13:49
And now it's just going to be a question of how fast his kind of business development can can level up with the content skills he already has. And he's got the look.
13:56
I'm looking at his Instagram. He's wearing flannel. He's got a nice smile.
13:59
Like, he's got it's he's basically like a uh what's the what's it called? Chip and Joanna? Yeah. Gaines. Yeah, the Gaines. Yeah.
14:07
He he's got that type of vibe where I look at him and I'm like, "You're relatable. I trust you.
14:09
You're somehow a little bit aspirational, a little bit."
14:13
That sounded like an insult. I didn't mean it.
14:14
I didn't mean it for it to sound like that. Uh but, this is awesome.
14:17
Uh and dude, these guys at Chernin have done this so many times.
14:21
They did it with Meater, who we or was it Meater who we talked about a few podcasts ago?
14:25
They did it with Cars and Bids and Doug DeMuro.
14:26
This is like when people say they're going to do this, I often think it's like a at a small scale.
14:32
These guys are doing it at multi-multi-multi-billion-dollar scale. Uh it's really cool. Yeah, exactly.
14:38
So, I think this is this is amazing.
14:40
Now, let me circle back to the avocado thing.
14:41
So, he says, "I'm going to do this three-year avocado mission."
14:44
And he says something about the Hass avocado. And so, I go look it up.
14:46
I'm like, "Where did this Hass avocado come from?" Learned a couple things.
14:50
Number one, it's not pronounced Hass. It's Hass.
14:55
So, we're all saying it wrong.
14:57
That's the first thing I learned.
14:57
Second thing, do you know the story?
14:58
Have you heard the story about the the Hass avocado? No. I I would No. All right.
15:04
So, basically, avocados weren't avocados were absolutely not popular back in the day. So, nobody ate them.
15:10
They didn't taste very good for a Not even like in Mexico? No.
15:13
They were not They were just not a popular fruit.
15:14
They were these It was a green product. It was not very popular.
15:18
It didn't taste very good.
15:18
And it had It wasn't even branded very So, some people called it avocados.
15:22
Some people called them alligator pears.
15:25
Some people called them like in Mexico they called them the like I don't know how you pronounce the word, but it was the like the Spanish word like the native word for testicle.
15:33
Like they're like, "Yeah, you want to go go eat a testicle?"
15:35
And it's like nobody really liked this this fruit. So, enter Rudolph Hass.
15:37
Rudolph Hass basically is a mailman from Milwaukee.
15:43
He's now living in California and he decides he wants to plant an avocado tree.
15:47
So, he goes and he buys some seeds and he tries to plant it, but like you have to I guess do some grafting process or whatever to get thing to like take and it didn't work.
15:56
And so, he's like, "Ah, it didn't work. Whatever."
15:57
He thinks about just cutting it down, but he just doesn't get around to it or whatever.
16:00
So, he just lets the tree grow.
16:02
And he lets it grow for like a year or two and then his kids like notice that there's fruit on it.
16:06
They pluck they pluck it.
16:07
They open it up and the kids really like it.
16:10
This is how the story goes.
16:11
Kids really like it and he's like, "Oh, why are you eating that? That's that's not good."
16:14
And they're like, "No, it's great." He tries it.
16:17
He's like, "Oh, this is actually really good. It's way creamier.
16:18
It's got like kind of a nutty taste and there was way more space between the seed and the peel.
16:24
So, it was like softer, creamier and there was just more of the actual like filling."
16:28
And he's like, "Whoa, these are actually really good."
16:31
And so, he starts eating it.
16:31
It's the you know, word starts to spread.
16:32
He goes and he partners with a local nursery and he's like, "Hey, can you help me grow more of this tree um because this tree is like bearing this amazing fruit."
16:39
And so, the nursery's like, "Cool.
16:41
Yeah, we'll we'll do more of this tree and we'll give you, you know, some royalty off this thing."
16:46
And then now Hass avocados are like 80% of worldwide avocado sales.
16:51
These trees are planted all around the world, Mexico and China and everywhere.
16:55
Like this is the dominant fruit.
16:57
And it's not even that old. So, he patented in 1935.
16:59
So, we're talking avocados as we know it today are less than 100 years old.
17:04
So, now here's a couple of interesting things I found from this.
17:07
So, number one, a lot of fruits are like this where they actually start kind of shitty.
17:10
They don't taste very good.
17:12
And then through a process of artificial selection, so like not natural selection, artificial selection, you find the good-tasting fruit and then it becomes the dominant species because that's the one everybody wants to eat.
17:21
I just didn't really think about that too much.
17:22
Yeah, like a like a banana, like an old banana from 100 plus years ago tasted like a carrot. They weren't as sweet.
17:29
And that's happened to that's happened with a lot of our fruit.
17:31
It's gotten sweeter and sweeter and sweeter.
17:33
So, they're like the Honeycrisp apple.
17:35
Uh there's like a cotton candy apple right now.
17:37
And a lot of like health advocates are like, "Dude, you shouldn't even eat modern fruit cuz it's like it's not exactly how it used to be in in the health benefits are are aren't nearly have the same properties in it cuz it's a different thing. Optimized for taste.
17:50
So, um couple of couple of more interesting facts.
17:51
Number one, this guy, even though he said he got like a fruit patent, which I was like, "What the hell is a fruit patent?"
17:55
Um he didn't make much money off this thing.
17:57
I don't think he really had the patent.
17:58
I don't think he really benefited from it.
17:59
His son, Charles, came out and told the LA Times that even though that he My dad created the greatest avocado in the world and his total royalties lifetime are $4,800.
18:12
Less than $5,000 he made off off of um of discovering this.
18:14
And I I say discovering cuz he didn't invent this. He didn't mean to do it.
18:20
Um he didn't like you know, like manually try to create this.
18:21
He discovered it and he even he says this.
18:24
He goes, "It was an act of God that I discovered this this fruit."
18:26
And so, um I found that interesting.
18:29
The third thing I found interesting is the marketing behind this.
18:31
So, even though this thing tastes good, it didn't take off right away.
18:36
And one of the reasons why is that an avocado doesn't look like most fruits.
18:41
So, most fruits are colorful.
18:41
They look very appetizing.
18:43
Like the reason they called it the alligator pear was cuz like the skin was basically like all wrinkly and like tough and like like the way an avocado that we all know looks.
18:53
And so, nobody wanted to eat it.
18:53
They were like, "This thing looks bad."
18:54
And so, nobody would even try it.
18:56
And so, the like fruit association of California comes together and does probably what the greatest like greatest act of any committee ever.
19:04
They were like, "Look, couple things.
19:06
Number one, we can't keep calling this [ __ ] testicles and alligator pears.
19:09
Like we got to come up with one name that we like.
19:12
All right, we're going with avocado.
19:13
Everybody needs to call this the same thing so that this can spread in popularity.
19:17
The next thing that they that they did that was very very smart.
19:21
They were like, cool, uh why aren't people buying these?
19:23
They're like, well, because they look like they've gone bad, right?
19:25
They're dark it's like black basically.
19:27
It looks like fruit that's gone bad.
19:28
So, they're like, all right, new new marketing campaign.
19:30
We're going to put stickers on every one of these that says ripe tonight.
19:33
Basically, that this is the this is perfectly ripe.
19:36
It's ready to eat tonight.
19:38
And this is already true.
19:41
It's just that consumers don't understand this.
19:42
And so, they put stickers on on every avocado and suddenly avocado sales started to boom.
19:47
Cuz once you try it, you like it, but people weren't trying it because they didn't they thought it had gone bad instead saying, this is ripe ready to eat tonight.
19:52
That was the second thing that they did.
19:54
Um And the third thing was that they were like, they needed to educate people that a green avocado is actually a bad avocado.
20:01
And then this was a good avocado.
20:03
And so, they did all this marketing to make it work, which you never really think about with fruit.
20:07
Like you don't think about fruit marketing, but everything around us is the product of some ad guy trying to boost sales.
20:14
So, I'm like, once you realize that, you can learn two things.
20:17
You can learn a lot about marketing and you can learn a lot about uh you know, the products that you see are not as they appear.
20:24
You you become a little more skeptical, a little more jaded towards all products when you realize that even avocados were basically like, you know, they were just someone's some drop shipper somewhere had a great idea.
20:33
Dude, we First of all, this is awesome.
20:36
This is very interesting.
20:36
We should do an entire episode on fruit and marketing.
20:40
It's actually really interesting.
20:42
Uh Planet Money have a had a podcast on the Honeycrisp apple.
20:44
You know, it's the most popular you know, before uh a lot of apples like that existed, it was Red Delicious.
20:50
Uh it's like kind of fascinating.
20:54
I met a guy who had done a venture-backed startup.
20:56
It was like raised a bunch of money, was trying to grow, business blows up.
21:03
And we check in with him.
21:03
We're like, yo, like what are you thinking for what's next?
21:05
And I think he's going to say some AI crap, some like crazy, you know, whatever, some some big idea.
21:12
And he's like, "I'm I'm trying to invent a new fruit." And I'm like, "What?" And he's like, "Yeah."
21:17
He's like, "You ever had a mango?" I go, "Yeah."
21:19
He goes, "You think you've had a mango?
21:21
Wait till you try my mango."
21:23
I was like, "I'd love to try your mango. Send it to me." He sent it to me.
21:26
And basically he was he was cut like he was basically like the shape of the fruit really matters.
21:30
So, for example, like the ease of eating.
21:31
So, he had these like uh his mangoes were like circular spheres basically.
21:36
They're like little balls.
21:37
And his little mango balls were ready to eat. They were super juicy. The texture was perfect.
21:42
And I was like, "Wow, this is genuinely an amazing mango experience. Thank you for this." What's it called?
21:48
Well, he kind of pivoted off that idea cuz he's like, "The logistics of it are so hard."
21:51
He's like, "To get fresh" He's like, "It tastes really great when it's fresh."
21:56
He's like, "But just the logistics to get this like to customers is so hard.
21:57
I would have to go about this in this way, this way, this way."
22:01
So, he pivoted off that idea in the end.
22:02
But And then you have to like I'm fortunate that I got to try that mango.
22:06
And the crazy part is, and this is like actually kind of like an interesting moat, is that it takes 10 or 15 years to do because imagine if you're building a website and you can only make a change once a year to that website and see the results and be like, "Ah, [ __ ] that didn't work. Next year, let's see."
22:21
Because you have to you know, you got to wait for it all to grow. It takes a long time.
22:24
Um and so we should do a whole thing right?
22:28
Like uh you know, I guess there there's some rules around the patents.
22:31
So, the rules that I read were basically like you If you want to do a fruit plant patent, you can't um you basically like it has to reproduce asexually.
22:40
It has to be created by breeding or grafting. It cannot be discovered.
22:44
If it's already in the wild, it can't be patented.
22:46
Like there's a bunch of rules like that.
22:47
So, like, you know, the first fruit plant the first plant patent was this guy Henry who planted the the climbing ever-blooming rose.
22:55
And like he created that rose and he patented that plant and then he gets to benefit from that.
22:59
So, I think when we do our fruit and plant episode, I think we got to go find like the greatest fruit preneurs to ever live.
23:04
Uh yeah, we I I just looked him up on Twitter.
23:10
I have had some interactions with him.
23:11
You know what's funny about Twitter is these there's so many people like I remember I was talking to this woman named Shelby Church and they're like YouTube celebrities.
23:19
They'll have five or 10 million subscribers on YouTube and you go to Twitter and they've got 10,000 followers.
23:24
And on Twitter, they're just trying to learn like the rest of us to get a business in- insight and things like that.
23:30
This guy is not that popular on Twitter, but he's got 10 million across all of his other socials.
23:35
We could just DM him and get him on here. That's kind of cool. Yeah, let's do it. I would love that.
23:40
So, I'm going to uh show you something here.
23:42
So, I made a video of Camp MFM that I want to I want to show.
23:46
So, originally, by the way, this is my debut of of vlogging and you'll notice that the video is not a vlog. Why?
23:53
Cuz your boy sucks at vlogging. It's hard. I learned that. It's really hard. that the hard way.
23:59
Um he'd be like, "All right, so I'll just get a shot of you um walking into the house."
24:02
And I'm like, "I just walk into the house."
24:03
He's like, "No, no, no, you can't just walk in."
24:05
I was like, "What do you mean?"
24:05
He's like, "You got to say something and then you got to walk in kind of an interesting way."
24:09
I was like, "Dude, I don't walk interesting or say I just walk into places.
24:12
There's no one here to talk to.
24:14
What am I supposed to say?"
24:14
Anyways, didn't work out so well, but we have A COOL VIDEO.
24:19
WE are playing FOR THE ROLEX.
24:22
THIS IS CAMP MFM, the once a year retreat I host with Mr.
24:24
Beast where we get 20 entrepreneurs and three days living in one house together where we play basketball, play poker, What the [ __ ] was that?
24:31
and just have a whole lot of fun.
24:33
And this year I asked my buddy Max if he would come with us and record the whole thing.
24:36
Always has to have a camera. A long time.
24:45
Man, there's a lot of good. Not as much good.
24:51
Space in the championship. Yeah, that's right.
24:52
Each team has to do a cold plunge in the pond. YEAH!
24:57
THEY GO DOWN and screen and do Hey, the the the buzzer went off. Really deep breath. Go. Wow.
25:41
Straight to the top, never going down, don't wait for the drop.
25:43
Never stand still, that's I had a super chill, had a great time, and can't wait for next year.
25:52
All right, so two things.
25:52
Number one, number one, if you're just listening to the audio version, you got to go to YouTube to see it.
25:57
We're not even going to put that in the audio version cuz it's not going to make sense.
25:59
So, go to go to the YouTube video if you want to actually see the video.
26:02
Sam, I have three questions for What do they search? What do they search?
26:05
Oh, they search My First Million.
26:07
Or you can just search The Greatest Podcast of All Time, either one should show up if Google's doing their job right.
26:11
And you search My First Million, click on this episode, and you'll see the video um here.
26:15
So, Sam, I have three questions for you.
26:19
Number one, how much FOMO are you feeling right now knowing that you skipped this year's Camp MFM?
26:22
In fact, we may need to not even name it Camp MFM, just name it Camp Sean. I didn't skip it.
26:28
I could I had a newborn child.
26:31
I was committed to being with her for a certain period of time. I didn't just skip it. I couldn't go.
26:36
By the way, there was a hilarious moment when we were there.
26:39
Everyone was like, "Dude, where's Sam?"
26:41
And I was like, "Oh, he can't come. He He just had a baby."
26:45
And then everyone was like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." And they're nodding.
26:47
And then one guy goes, "Wasn't that 2 and 1/2 months ago?"
26:51
And then we were all like, "Yeah, what the hell?
26:53
And I don't even I don't even thought about it."
26:54
And we were like, "You can totally go for 2 days and it's 2 and 1/2 months in."
26:58
And so then we all laughed at you and then moved on.
27:00
It was 2 and 1/2 months ago, but I committed to 3 months. I committed to 3 months. I had to stick with it. So, that's point one. What's point two? Point two.
27:09
What do you think of my not vlog video there?
27:11
What could we have done better?
27:13
So, I was going I I wrote this down to let you know, I don't think you can have any of that music on there.
27:17
You know, I think it's going to get taken down.
27:19
No, I think it's going to be fine.
27:21
Conor Price That's Conor Price's song.
27:22
He was going to send it to the camp. It's fine.
27:25
The the first song was Dropkick Murphys.
27:28
The first song is fine and it's going to be absolutely fine.
27:30
Nothing's going to get taken down.
27:32
This isn't like a like oh, I just got to ask for permission type of thing.
27:36
Like it literally won't like like the algorithm's going to like prevent this from going live.
27:40
So, I think you have to change that song. But, it's great. I thought it was great. Okay, Nark.
27:45
Um okay, third third question. Third question for you.
27:49
Have you noticed this trend?
27:51
Uh right, part of this is me just showing you a a vacation photo album basically.
27:54
But, the other part is noticing that um I think we started a movement, dude.
28:00
I think I just [ __ ] around and started a movement.
28:03
So, I didn't mean to do this.
28:05
Did you just invent vlogging? No, not the vlogging.
28:09
This the movement is of these kind of like man camp active conferences.
28:12
I don't know I don't have a good name for it.
28:16
I'm thinking it's something something like a man business camp type of thing.
28:18
So, I did this Camp MFM thing.
28:18
Then, I started noticing other people who heard the podcast were like, "Oh, you know what would be cool?
28:24
Like Sean the Biz Dev for basketball, let's do it for something else."
28:27
And so, I I have a few of these that are now started.
28:29
So, um our boy Danny Miranda has like a running club type of thing. Yeah, dude.
28:33
I see them out there all the time. There's like 50 of them. Looks like a blast.
28:36
Um Pat Walls from Starter Story uh was like, "Hey, what if we did this for tennis, pickleball, whatever?"
28:42
And they called it the MRR Open.
28:44
Like the monthly recurring revenue open. Great name. That's a great name. Better than our name.
28:50
[ __ ] This guy this guy in Hampton messaged me and he goes, "Hey, heard about Camp FOMO. So awesome. Had the same idea."
28:58
This guy Victor who's like, "I'm going to do this for poker."
28:59
And so he did a poker getaway weekend rented a house invited a bunch of people and they just played poker all weekend.
29:06
I think this is the new new wave of of getting you can either just get together for drinks. But guess what?
29:11
The cool kids don't drink anymore.
29:12
Everyone's sober as a saint. Dude, isn't it insane?
29:15
Did you Did you see Whole Foods announced the most popular beer that they sell? Do you know what it is?
29:21
It's Athletic Brewing Company, a non-alcoholic beer. Yes.
29:23
A non-alcoholic beer is the top selling beer right now in Whole Foods. Is that insane? No one drinks. Yeah, no one drinks.
29:29
So nobody drinks anymore.
29:32
So what what are we going to do?
29:33
Get together and just you know, suck our thumbs?
29:35
This is not going to work.
29:36
So next thing, nobody wants to just sit at a conference or you know, like a lecture hall and just sit there and listen to speakers. Kind of boring.
29:45
You want to weave it in with these things.
29:46
So I think this kind of active conference thing is cool.
29:48
I think more people should make these. You can invite me.
29:52
I would love to know about them and then politely politely pass cuz I don't like to leave the house that much.
29:57
But I think more people should do these and I'm hoping that I'm just hoping that I get credit for starting this movement.
30:03
And I know people are going to go out and say, "No, no, this has been going on forever." But that was the past.
30:09
But I'm the present future and I just needed to tell you that. I think it's awesome.
30:12
I I want to go to the next one and I'm going to make it a point to go there and make a big deal out of it because I do have FOMO after seeing that video. Good job.
30:19
And vlogging's not only is if you're giving birth next year when it's happening. You better be there.
30:24
It Dude, vlogging sucks by the way. Did you Mr.
30:29
Beast made fun of you in that video or he made fun of you?
30:30
He was always with the camera.
30:31
Was he giving you guys a hard time for having a camera there?
30:35
Yeah, cuz I showed in you know, with a camera following me basically and the funny part is always with the camera.
30:40
That's the first time I've ever done done a vlog as evidenced by the fact that at the end I was like, "That vlog kind of sucks.
30:44
Let's just make a hype video out of it."
30:47
But it was really fun actually having a guy there.
30:48
This our buddy Max came and uh he did a great job.
30:52
It's really embarrassing.
30:52
I see a lot of people like vlogging and walking around and they have a guy following them on camera.
30:56
It's It's quite embarrassing.
30:57
It draws a lot of attention to you.
30:58
I find it to be very very humiliating.
31:04
The upside, you might get famous.
31:04
The downside, you're immediately humiliated.
31:09
Uh all right, let me tell you about something. Yeah.
31:12
I'm going to talk a little bit about the best business in the world.
31:16
Now, this business Chamath, who I think is coming on the pod actually, has said it's the singular best business model and monopoly ever created.
31:25
This is easy for you to guess, right? Ritz crackers. No. It's got to be Google. Google, Facebook. Yeah. Google.
31:34
And so, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Google and search engine stuff because I've been interested in this for years.
31:39
I've been interested in DuckDuckGo, which I called that shot.
31:43
I think I missed the I thought it was going to grow a lot faster than it than it uh actually has, but it's like slowly coming about.
31:48
This is by the way, this is going to be the episode where we take credit for things that we had absolutely no part in and actually didn't call our shot and in fact kind of doubted it early on.
32:00
Yeah, it's like, "Hey, do you like making right-hand turns on a red light?" I invented that. that.
32:04
I was doing that when I was 16. Yes.
32:06
I I created that I created it. I created that.
32:11
Uh and so, the reason let me tell you why I've been interested in it.
32:13
Type four athletic fitting dress pants.
32:21
Hey, the auto complete didn't even did had no idea what I was doing there.
32:23
That is not a common search. Thick boy pants. Yeah.
32:30
I was searching for this the other day and I had to scroll down so far to get to a website because if you look through like the first it's it's like tons and tons of images. Is that what you see?
32:40
So I see tons of images, so I see a whole shopping carousel.
32:45
Then I see a couple of ads and then I scroll down I see Amazon. Okay, yeah, go ahead.
32:49
So you got to scroll down a ton to get to a website.
32:53
It's actually quite annoying.
32:55
And so Google's been pissing me off.
32:58
And we you just talked about how they like have gone through some stuff and you still believe in the company.
33:02
I'm slowly to lose I'm slowly starting to lose face in their company the search has been really [ __ ] and it's starting to piss me off.
33:09
And so I've been looking for all their other alternatives. Did you Google for that?
33:13
Did you just Google search for alternatives?
33:15
Yeah, I mean I it's like it's like even though I hate it I use it, you know, like it's like an an abusive lover.
33:18
But I was doing some research on when they first started.
33:22
So Google started in the late 90s and when they did Sergey and Larry the founders they created this paper called the anatomy of large scale hypertextual web search engine. Riveting riveting stuff.
33:35
But Please take our my power writing course Larry Page. That title is awful.
33:42
And in that paper they talk about like what they think is possible with a search engine and and and they kind of started from an academic point of view which is pretty cool though to see like their their predictions.
33:51
And there's this one line it says in general it could be argued from the consumer point of view the better the search engine is the fewer advertisements will be needed for the consumer to find what they want.
34:03
And then he goes he says the goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.
34:09
So like 30 years later they just went back and edited it and they're like Nah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
34:16
Like the the subtext on their like the sub headline is just psych.
34:20
Like they just like uh and then and then it said for this reason as well as for this reason we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and won't be aligned with consumers' needs and they actually go on to say that they think a subscription service uh search engine is actually the answer.
34:42
Of course, that is the opposite of what they've eventually uh have become. You know, Google is a 1.
34:48
5 trillion-dollar company market cap company and 95% of the revenues come from search and it's the greatest business model of all time.
34:55
I would I don't know how many people work at Google exactly.
34:58
I think I think over 100,000, but I would I would imagine that you could basically fire everyone but like a thousand people and the company would just thrive.
35:05
It would be the most profitable company in the world.
35:08
And the crappy part about Google, well, I guess it's good for them, bad for us, is that their moat is quite simple, which is the more people who use the search engine, the better understands like which results to give you and so it's just going to get better or supposedly better and better and better, but harder for a new person to create a an alternative.
35:28
Now, ultimately, I think actually Open AI is going to be an alternative.
35:29
Uh Gartner had this report where they said by 2026 they think 25% uh Google search is going to be reduced by 25% because of uh AI, but I found a new alternative that just launched uh publicly a few days ago or about a month ago.
35:46
They've been around quietly, but they like kind of made it they had like a big like launch uh coming out party the other day and it's kind of cool.
35:51
So, it's called I actually don't know how to pronounce it. It's Kagi. Yeah. Sorry. Off to a good start.
35:59
I mean, how do you say this word? K A G I Yeah. Kagi? Kagi? K- Kagi? Yeah, I don't know.
36:06
But, it's got an interesting premise.
36:08
So, it was started by this guy named Vladimir.
36:11
And the premise is is that there are zero ads and it's five to ten dollars a month for a subscription.
36:17
And I think that that's like an interesting premise, but I don't think that that would work that well.
36:22
However, this guy's story is pretty interesting.
36:26
So, he started bootstrapping this business in 2018, slowly started making progress, and at this point, he's got about 30,000 people who pay for it. And if you go to kagi. com, kagi.
36:37
com/stats, he reveals all of his stats.
36:40
And so, you can see the number of paid members, you can see how many searches are happening per day.
36:46
You All of his stuff is pretty transparent, and I love when people do that stuff.
36:50
It's so fascinating to see.
36:53
And the reason he had this like big like launch recently is because they just raised 800 I think it was $800,000, and very stupidly, they It looks like they're spending that $800,000 to buy 20,000 t-shirts to send to their 30,000 members.
37:07
So, so Vlad uh Vlad has some questionable judgment when it comes to uh finances. Yeah. Yeah.
37:17
He's So, they blog like all about the business.
37:21
So, if you go to their uh blog. blog. kagi.
37:23
com, they blog about like everything that's going on in the company, and so, they're actually pretty transparent.
37:28
And in the thing, he was like, "Yeah, and we're uh we're going to be sending out 20,000 t-shirts."
37:34
And I was like doing the math, and I was like, "Oh, that's That's like 800 grand.
37:37
Like So, so that's questionable.
37:42
But, they had he has like this whole manifesto online, and it's pretty fascinating.
37:46
And And this This is the type of entrepreneur who I really like because he's got this blog, uh his personal webs- website, he says, "I'm dedicating the work way, be honest.
37:54
When you found out the founder's name was Vladimir, already you were pretty biased to like this thing, right? Yeah, I'm in.
38:00
You can add an extra million to that valuation if your name is Vladimir. Yeah, I'm in.
38:04
It's a general rule, and I have no arguments with that.
38:05
Yeah, he's he's he's born in Yugoslavia, and he like had all these like little like indie hacker projects for a long time, worked at GoDaddy.
38:13
So, he's got he's a very technical guy, he seems very savvy.
38:14
He was a VP of product at GoDaddy.
38:18
Uh he had another company called ManageWP, which was a web application that helps users manage uh WordPress sites, and that got to a couple million revenue.
38:26
So, he had some experience.
38:27
But, he has this blog where he goes, "I'm dedicating this work on Kagi to my three children while I try to make the web a more humane and and friendlier place for them."
38:35
And I started reading that, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm really fascinated by this guy. I'm very interested."
38:42
And so, on his blog, they talk all about the company and like how it's working and things like that.
38:47
And he's got all these like great lines about how he's like, "Paying for search engines is unusual, but that's the only choice if you want to build an independent search engine that isn't ad-supported.
38:54
You could do donations, but I don't think it's going to work.
38:57
5 billion people use a search engine.
38:59
99% of people are never going to pay.
39:01
The thing is, the tiny minority of people who think differently, the 1% that will pay, it's still quite a large number.
39:06
That's 50 million people."
39:06
And he talks about it, "20 years of ad-supported search have created resistance to the idea of paid search, but a lot of people are already coming to the realization that the predicament that they found themselves in with ad-supported search is not good for them."
39:18
And my point through all this is, I think I agree with this guy.
39:21
The issue is that I don't think I don't think he's going to win.
39:26
I think I agree with all of his stuff about subscriptions, and I'm on board with that, and OpenAI is really good for that.
39:34
Well, but I'm very fascinated with guys that are going after Google at the moment. There's been a few. There was you.
39:39
com, which I don't think is that intriguing. Uh there is neeva. com, so n e e v a. That was one.
39:47
And there's a few others.
39:49
And this is the type of idea that if you told me that you're going to launch this, most people, as well as mine, gut reaction is like, "There's not a chance you're ever going to be Google."
39:58
But, when you start thinking about it, I think it's really interesting.
40:00
And I want to know what's your opinion of these people trying to build these search engines, and do you actually think that any of them will work other than OpenAI?
40:08
Well, I think I agree with you on pretty much all fronts, which is that uh Google Search over time has become more and more just use for something and you get an ad and the ad the result the top half of the page is ads and that's what that's what you get.
40:22
Google I think in Kagi's website it says that Google if you just take the revenue divided by the number of users on average I believe that they make like 300 bucks a year off of each customer I think it's like 277.
40:35
And so that's 23 bucks a month and that's like what you're worth to Google.
40:38
So what this guy's doing is basically saying hey instead of Google making 23 bucks a month off you you pay us 10 bucks a month and we'll have no ads.
40:45
And I think that I agree with you which is that the big threat to Google is obviously the AI driven engines and Google's trying to become that themselves.
40:53
So you know it whether it's chat GPT or it's Google or it's Bing or it's some new one that we haven't heard of Perplexity or whatever else that is the big thing which is it's a better experience.
41:04
And so they're trying to win with better experience.
41:07
Then you have DuckDuckGo which is basically like we are the anti-Google.
41:12
Right we're going to in Kagi's in that same bucket we're the anti- anti-whatever.
41:15
I would say DuckDuckGo's is the surprising success.
41:16
The amount of traffic they have we we did a whole thing on them you know in a few episodes ago which was looking at the traffic numbers and how stunning they were.
41:26
What I think is cool about Kagi is that it doesn't need to beat Google.
41:30
It this is just like I'm going to build this I'm a cockroach.
41:31
I'm going to build this business and you can't kill me because I'm going to be supported by my customers.
41:36
Right now it sounds like he's probably making like what two to three million bucks a year in revenue.
41:40
Uh I think it's closer to one to 1.
41:40
5 uh subscription revenue. we'll say 1.
41:44
5 million in revenue and he's probably able to run the thing break even or profitably at that rate and um you know he'll just keep crawling.
41:51
You know next year he'll be at 40,000 members and then next year he'll be at 60,000 members or whatever.
41:54
He'll just keep growing and he's not even worth it's not worth killing if you're Google.
41:59
It's it's too small to matter um and he doesn't have to become huge.
42:02
I think what he's saying is like my mission is for people that you know believe in this.
42:08
The the point he says the 1% who would pay. I don't think it's 1%. I think it's like 0. 1% that would pay. Um here's your option.
42:14
And now the question is how good is this?
42:16
Like for example, you're into this, did you sign up, pay, are you using this now instead of Google?
42:20
It's so hard to use something instead of Google because they're the default everywhere.
42:23
Yeah, and basically my frustration with Google is borderline to the point where I'm like, all right, I'm out.
42:31
But the thing is is that I'm like so it's Six or seven more times Google and I am out of here.
42:40
The issue is like I've logged in with everything like on Chrome. You know what I mean?
42:45
I'm like, [ __ ] I got to type in all these passwords. This sucks.
42:47
But I mean I definitely, you know, chat GPT has definitely taken away at least 30% of my like Google time, which is a pretty insane number actually.
42:58
And I uh we're going to have to do an entire episode on Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
43:02
These guys are crazy fascinating.
43:04
And I was reading a little bit about them when I was like researching how Google started and they were like huge [ __ ] And like Sergey Brin And dude, they were [ __ ] You're going to have to explain that one to me.
43:16
So Sergey Brin, he's got this uh he had his resume online and in the code he put uh if you inspect the source code of his website, you'll find Brin's hidden objective laid out bare, which is and this is in quotes, this is exactly what he had in the code.
43:30
I want a large office, good pay, very little work.
43:35
Frequent expense account trips to exotic lands would be a huge plus. Is that real? That's insane.
43:38
That's on you can go to the website right now and find it.
43:43
Uh You would never expect somebody who's like innermost goal is a big office, no work, expense accounts to create [ __ ] Google.
43:54
Yeah, it it it it's funny. It's funny.
43:56
And then there's stories of Larry Page um where he he was just kind of like they had this like combination of just like being really blunt and were uh blunt and just like not totally understanding normal human emotions.
44:09
And so Larry and Sergey, they took pride in the fact that they would argue with each other.
44:14
And they would call each other stupid and be like, your idea is so stupid. That's dumb.
44:17
Why are you And they would like fight and fight and fight and then one person would win and then the other person would like concede and be like, oh, your idea is better.
44:25
And they would bond over that.
44:25
And then they're like to all the other employees, they they're like, that's what you all need to do.
44:31
Unfortunately, when you're at like 50 or 100 or 300 people, most people aren't like that.
44:35
And there's these crazy stories of like uh apparently Do you know how like a janitor when they take out the trash often times and they replace the bag, they'll actually leave an empty bag at the bottom of the trash in case someone else wants to take it out and they're like, well, there's a bag already there for you.
44:51
Larry saw this and he was like, that's the most efficient way I've ever seen anyone clean. That is brilliant.
44:54
And he made this whole like memo about how the janitor does that and how brilliant that is.
45:00
And he's like, why can't you guys be like this?
45:02
In fact, everyone in the office needs to be like this. Here's the new rules.
45:05
And he laid out these like eight rules and it was like, if you think that your idea is right, go straight to the person who's in charge and tell them exactly what you think and don't hold back.
45:13
Or it would be like, if you are working on a project and you're not providing value, leave that project right away and go and let the doers do what they need to do and just get them coffee and like just like serve them.
45:24
And like he would do all these things that are very logical and like If you disagree, sue more. Yeah.
45:29
Like he would say these like crazy things that you hear them and like, yeah, I mean, that's more productive.
45:34
Unfortunately, like this whole thing called human emotion kind of gets in the way.
45:37
And so it's probably not practical when you have 500 employees.
45:39
But there's all these stories about how these guys would behave and it's very fascinating.
45:44
And they were they were [ __ ] when they first started.
45:47
I think Google right now is going through this period where their CEO kind of I think he kind of sucks, to be honest.
45:51
Uh and so I think they're going to like come back.
45:54
But right now I'm not bullish on Google.
45:56
I think they're going to be around for a whole a real a time cuz they're so big.
45:59
But I'm eager to see something come and kind of crush them. Yeah, yeah.
46:05
Well, I think the the funny thing about all like crush them type of ideas is that when a company's really successful, it's like a giant castle with a huge moat.
46:15
And everybody who tries to like siege the castle, it's like the Kojis of the world.
46:19
They're basically trying to cross that moat and take over the castle and it's too hard.
46:22
The castle's too big, too strong, the moat's too big, etc.
46:24
And what ends up happening is that you the thing that beats that castle is not somebody who comes and takes their land.
46:33
It's somebody who just walks over like 2 miles and is like, "Hey, this is actually like this is fertile land over here that everybody's ignoring."
46:39
And they build a new castle over there and actually the thing that diminishes the castle is that that original castle is just no longer as relevant.
46:46
Like the world and the attention has moved.
46:48
The new plants that everybody wants to grow on this other land over here and nobody took your thing, but you know, you became less relevant in the world.
46:57
Yes, no one wants that thing anymore.
47:00
didn't defeat IBM or whatever by making, you know, by beating them at their own game.
47:03
They were like, "Oh, actually the game is software. It's operating systems."
47:07
And then the things that beat the the Microsoft monopoly and like Microsoft, the biggest tech company in the world, got then beat by the Googles and the Amazons and the Facebooks of the world, which were like, "Hey, okay, cool.
47:18
You can keep the operating system.
47:19
We'll take the internet."
47:21
And Microsoft missed the internet.
47:21
The internet was the place.
47:22
And then even when the internet was the place, then it was like the companies that made it on mobile were the ones that were like, "Oh, cool.
47:28
Yeah, you can have that desktop app.
47:29
We're going to make, you know, Uber and we're going to we're going to create these new mobile companies, you know, Instagram, WhatsApps.
47:36
And they outpaced the growth of Facebook.
47:39
And so now the present now the thing is, well, AI is here and crypto is here and these are the the new lands and then the big projects that are getting built here, they're just they're just competing for something in a different game altogether.
47:51
And I think that's really that's really what ends up happening more so than somebody over cakes, you know, a company like Google.
47:58
It's that Google becomes less relevant. You don't need search.
47:59
Why do you not need search?
48:01
Well, cuz the AI just does it.
48:02
Why would I go Why would I go search for links?
48:05
That doesn't even make sense anymore. I don't need that.
48:06
I just need You know, I need the answer.
48:07
Or even better than the answer.
48:09
Oh, I just need this little AI agent that's just going to like look at what I'm doing and then like do do jobs for me, right?
48:15
Like I don't even have to go search for an answer.
48:16
It knows the answer and then it does the task, right?
48:19
That's where this is going.
48:21
And so, whoever does that is going to actually be the one that is the next Google without even creating a new search engine. Right.
48:26
And that's nine out of 10 times it seems that's how like big innovative things come about where it's like, you know, all these people are trying to make the world's fastest car and they're trying to make a a V6 turn it into a V8 and then we're going to turn it into a V10.
48:39
We're going to put more cylinders in, more horsepower.
48:40
And then you're like, oh, this electric car just like went way faster. It has zero cylinders. Uh You know what I mean? That's how it works.
48:49
Did I tell you about the my boss who his boss was Larry Page and what he told me?
48:54
Uh so, he didn't tell me many stories, but he told me one, which was I came in once and I was like, yeah, um I was like presenting my goal.
49:00
I was like, yeah, our goal is to do, you know, 9.
49:04
1 this year uh what I don't remember what the metric was. Like like 9.
49:07
1 million users or something like that.
49:10
And he's like, you know what Larry Page used to say when I would uh present a goal, like I'm going to do nine of something?
49:17
He's like, he would just say, that's a wuss goal.
49:18
If you can do nine, you can do 10.
49:21
He's like, never set a goal at nine.
49:24
It's like And then I was like, what?
49:24
And he's like, I I just said what I said.
49:27
If you can do nine, you can do 10.
49:29
Saying nine is just a wussy way to go about things.
49:31
And I was like, he told you that?
49:34
He's like, yeah, he would tell everybody that. And so, I stole that.
49:36
And I I made the change and then now in my company they do the same thing.
49:39
If anybody ever comes to me like, yeah, we're going to do four and a half.
49:42
No, you're going to do five.
49:44
Yeah, we're going to do 9. 2.
49:44
No, no, you're going to do 10.
49:45
Like if you can get If you're going to get 9. 2, you can get to 10. Trust me.
49:48
It's like when uh 5'10 guys lie and they say they're 5' 11".
49:51
It's like, dog, just say 6' 1". Be the real thing. Act as if, my friend. Yeah. Act as if, my friend. Act as if. Um, all right. That's the pod.