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Let's go outside of the the tech world.
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So two brands that that I am looking at that have lasted a long time, Louis Vuitton.
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Louis Vuitton has lasted maybe 250 years now.
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And when you think of Louis Vuitton, you know what you're getting.
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Same with New York Times.
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New York Times has been around for 250 years.
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Not everyone likes them, but you know what they're pursuing, which is their version of the truth.
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But then let's go to Raising Cane's.
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You ever been to Raising Cane's? dude. Love Raising Cane's.
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I met the founder of Raising Cane's once. He is awesome. Uh we're live. What's going on? What up? How are you? Uh I'm thriving. All right, good.
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So I've been thinking about this conversation you and I had.
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We talked about outsourcing.
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And I'm actually going to put a lot of words in your mouth.
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You didn't actually say everything.
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I'm I'm implying that you said a lot of stuff, which you didn't exactly say.
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So so you're kind of more of a representation.
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But Rob Dyrdek said something amazing on this pod a few pods ago.
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He said two amazing things.
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One, he goes, if I just do these He goes, I was What did he say?
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He goes, I was making I was looking for these 20 30 million dollar wins.
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Instead, I'm going to look at and I would do like 12 of them, he said.
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He goes, instead, I'm actually only going to do one or two things and I'm and I'm going to hope that they're going to be big.
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And then he also said he has this thing called Forever Estates.
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Do you remember when he talked about Forever Estates?
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So afterwards, he sent me mock-ups of this.
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And I like Googled the architect and everything.
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And there was this really cool article that they Rob and the architect wrote together.
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So Forever Estates, Rob said, I want to build this home.
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So basically he said he had $12 million liquid at the time.
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$10 million he went and bought this plot of land.
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And then he goes, to build the home I want, it's going to cost $30 million.
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At the time, I didn't have that.
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And I I sounds like he maybe he has it now.
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But he was like basically, I want to build this home where the Dyrdek family for many generations can meet at this home to discuss family planning and family issues and things like that.
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And so I'm going to build this home exactly how I want it.
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And we're going to call it Forever Estates because hopefully it lives forever.
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I found that very inspiring.
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Did you find that inspiring? Loved it. Loved it.
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I love when people take an absurdly long view.
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And more than anything, I love when people have a vision for their life and what they're doing.
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When somebody's got a clear and compelling vision for their life, that is like one of the most attractive traits to me.
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It doesn't even matter if I agree with that vision.
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It's that they have that vision and that they agree with that vision is what matters.
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I thought it was awesome.
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And he sent me mock-ups of the home.
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And I was like, dude, this is so inspiring.
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And so I got I got all up hot and bothered about this. It was awesome to me.
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And so I started thinking about companies that can last a long time.
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I've been a little bit obsessed with this because with Hampton, things are going well.
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We're not a success yet, but it's a very clear that like I always tell our team physics will allow this to work. There's demand.
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I've got a good audience for this. We've got a good team.
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Physics allows this to exist.
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There's nothing that gets in the way of this.
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We're already somewhat successful.
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The only question is how great will it become?
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And I'm starting to think how do you create something that lasts 50 in a or 100 years, whatever it is.
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And the word brand is something that I've been thinking about a lot.
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And I think you and I, as well as our audience, we get in these like short-term thinking.
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And we use like the A word, the arbitrage word.
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Or we use like we use these certain words that people actually don't think about branding.
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They don't think about soul.
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And I've been thinking a lot about that lately.
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And there's this book that I'm reading where it's called Lessons from the Century Lessons from the Century Companies Club.
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So it's like this one woman studied like companies that have lasted 100 years.
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And she's like, what do what do they all have in common?
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And I've been thinking a lot about that.
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And you brought up something.
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You said you invested in this company Shepherd, which I think is awesome.
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I actually I'm starting to use them. Um I'll give you a plug. Is it grow Shepherd? Or support Shepherd? Supportshepherd. com, yeah. Supportshepherd. com.
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You talked about that investment in the company.
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And it's And you're talking about outsourcing.
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It's basically you hire people in the Philippines.
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I think also Latin America.
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And they do a bunch of odd jobs.
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But you said something like, I want to hire tons of these people.
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And I started thinking about that.
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I started thinking, should I do that?
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And then I realized I shouldn't do that.
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Because I actually should do that for some roles.
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But the thing that like you should do it for some roles.
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But I had this like offsite this like Hampton retreat with like a bunch of our employees.
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And I realized you have to build a real strong company culture.
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And you have to figure out how do you keep employees for a long time.
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And that's one of the key keys to building a brand that can last a long time.
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And I wanted to hear how are you And this by the way, this topic is not that exciting for anyone who's in survival mode.
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This topic is more exciting for people who are in like thrive mode where it's like, I got this thing working.
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to be clear, the first phase of the company is just build something that people want and figure out if you can get it to them. Um Right.
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Don't worry about culture. Don't worry about brand.
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Don't worry about the forever plan.
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Don't worry about the 25-year vision.
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Um None of it's going to matter if you can't do the first thing.
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Sam has done the first thing with Hampton.
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He has proven that he can create something that people actually want and he can sell it to them.
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So now he's thinking long you know And now you get what I call progressive ambition.
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I want to do a whole video on progressive ambition.
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I'm going to show people if you go back and you watch Mark Zuckerberg's early interviews and people are like, where does this go from here?
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You're on eight campuses now.
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You Where are you going to Are you going to open this up to everybody, high schoolers, everything?
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He goes He's like, 50 schools.
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well, you know, our goal is to get to you know, all the major colleges. Um I'm not sure.
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Everyone keeps saying why you know, expand expand expand.
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Some things are cooler when you don't expand.
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And I don't think do we have to open up to everybody? I'm not sure.
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I mean some some things are really We could build something really really useful for college students.
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Maybe we should just do that.
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And then now the guy's like created like higher balloons that give internet to farmers in India so that they can use Facebook, right?
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It's like He got progressively more ambitious as he went along.
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And that is totally story in itself, by the way.
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Facebook I think Sarah helped to work on this or something at Facebook.
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Facebook basically puts these planes over India.
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So any Indian can access internet because the issue with growth of Facebook is they literally have everyone on the internet.
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So they have to create more internet for people.
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got to create a bit more TAM.
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Like we're TAM-ing it up right now. Hold on.
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We got to give more people the internet so they can use our app.
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But that's cool that it started where That that's a great phrase, progressive ambition.
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Very common for different companies. You can go back.
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You go I've I'm a forensic I'm an archaeologist.
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I go back into the to go study the early origins of these companies and you find this very very commonly that they start with a sort of humble ambition.
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Then as things start to work, they snowball their ambition.
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They become more and more ambitious as they go, realizing the opportunity is wider and bigger than they had initially you know, planned for.
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And that one step of success earns the right to go for the next step of success.
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And that it is okay to ladder up because what most people do is they look at them today and they say well, now they're trying to do A B C and D.
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So I, when I start, need to also plan for A B C and D.
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And it's actually like, no, you actually just start with A.
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You know, you don't actually have to do anything else.
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Of course there are exceptions.
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There's Elon Musk saying we're going to you know, but you know, even Elon, for example, let's take one of the most ambitious companies in the world, SpaceX. Right? What's the goal?
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What's the mission statement?
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It's like, make the human species multi-planetary so we can survive when we ruin Earth.
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Uh or Earth gets, you know, hit by an asteroid or whatever.
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And so it's like, wow, what's more ambitious than creating a rock literally rocket science to create rockets that will eventually take us to live on Mars.
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Wow, that's like the biggest vision ever.
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When SpaceX started, his initial vision was to do a test demonstration sending a plant in a rocket into a certain like a certain height.
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I don't remember exactly where it was.
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To you know, have the first living thing you know, go out of you know, past the moon or whatever, wherever he's trying to take it.
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And that's all he wanted to do.
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It's just take a plant out there.
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And he's like, oh, I'll just fund this, you know, it'll take me $20 million, but it'll inspire people towards science.
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And you know, hopefully NASA will then fund real Mars missions after that.
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And then only you know, along the way he's like, you know what? Screw this plant thing.
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I'm going to Let's actually do it ourselves.
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We don't need to inspire NASA.
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Let's just do the whole thing ourselves.
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He also got progressively more ambitious.
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And also when he first started, he started a thing called Zip2, which I'm almost certain it's basically like putting the yellow pages on the internet.
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Which I'm sure he had some cute way of spinning it where it was a grand plan.
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But it it he made $20 million off of it, which is a lot of money.
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But he was like in his head, he's like, I got to get my nut.
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You know what I'm saying?
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He's like you see every every human has a number, a phone number. And you can reach them.
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This is one of the most marvelous things in the world.
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And you need a way to reach them.
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It's information You know, he'll he'll make anything sound fancy.
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But actually one of the interesting things is Elon is also credited as like, you know, the He found He created PayPal.
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He didn't actually create PayPal.
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Uh you know, PayPal the product was created by you know, first Max Levchin and Peter Thiel.
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But even then when they merged with Elon's company, he had this big vision for x. com. He's like, x.
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com is going to be everybody's full financial life.
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It's going to be banking.
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It's going to be mortgages. It's going to be loans.
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It's going to be sending money.
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It's going to be savings accounts.
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It's going to be all things to all people.
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And that was the vision for x. com.
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When they merged, Elon was the CEO of the merged company.
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And the plan was to create x. com.
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And so he had this big audacious crazy vision.
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His forever plan about how he's just going to change the whole financial system.
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And actually the only thing that worked was going back to the basics.
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Let's make something that people actually want and see if we can get it to them.
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And it was like, oh yeah, eBay sellers would love a way for people to to pay the money when they send them the like Beanie Babies.
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And so literally it was send money via send money via email small amounts paying a pal was the was the actual use case that people wanted and needed and it was only when they essentially booted him out and focused on that small use case the smaller vision did PayPal actually take off.
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And so you know sometimes you almost have the the reverse or you start to audacious and actually you needed you skip the step of finding that initial foothold and that that's what PayPal actually did.
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And here's the rub which is which is very similar to that that that that I'm experiencing that I'm trying to think about which is how do you balance take so so in order to build a company that last long time you need to you need a few things which I could talk about but you it starts with having a brand it starts with having a very clear defined purpose it starts with having you have to have employees you want to work with for a
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long time and there's a bunch of things but how do you balance paying the bills and taking customers and also like having this mission that might be polarizing to people and I'm trying to figure out when is that transition do
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always have it and that's something that I'm that I'm constantly thinking about now which is like where I don't think it's a switch I think you have to have it embedded in your culture early on. But where do you make sacrifices where
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But where do you make sacrifices where do you make sacrifices I'm not sure I'm not sure on on on going from short term to long term thinking how that happens and that's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately.
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So it's hard to kind of give advice without any specifics but I'll do it anyways.
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I'll be the advice guy for a second.
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So when when I was doing my first very first company it was a stupid company we're trying to do the trying to make a restaurant chain the Chipotle of sushi.
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And we had all these micro decisions to make like any business does on a day-to-day basis.
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Should we use this packaging or this packaging for our thing?
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Well this one cost cost more and looks better but this other one you know we would have better margins cuz it cost less.
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And then there's this other one that's eco-friendly and blah blah blah and so one of our mentors at Duke she um sat us down and she's like guys you're having the wrong conversation and we're like what do you mean?
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And she and she's like it's not about packaging.
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So what what do you mean?
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She's like well what let me ask you this what decision would what decision can you make upstream of this that would make your packaging decision obvious?
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I was like well I we don't really get it.
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She's like you got to know what do you value? Right.
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Are you about ruthless efficiency and margins?
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Cuz if so then the choice is obvious there's no choice. Right?
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You just choose the one with the the cheap packaging with the best margins.
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Are you about are you is your number one value the quality of the customer experience?
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Uh cuz if it's the quality of the customer experience you definitely not going to choose the cheap one but you also won't choose the eco one that's going to kind of melt you know this old paper straws problem.
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It's not actually the best product but it is eco-friendly.
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She's like so if you're all about product quality and that's what you're going to going to go all in on that's your number one value then the packaging decision is obvious.
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Same thing with the other side if you're all about sustainability if that's your number one value then the decision is obvious.
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She's like you don't know which packaging to pick cuz you don't know what you stand for you don't know your values.
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And she's like what you want to do is figure out your values number one.
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So what are the things you value more than more than other things cuz there are and and you only know what you value when you're choosing amongst good options.
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It's obvious to value something when you have a good option and a bad option.
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There's no you you didn't test your values there.
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Your values only get tested when you have multiple good options but they're good in different ways and that's when you need to know which one do we value.
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Um the second thing that she said was uh Jeff Bezos has this great quote where he goes they're like oh you know Amazon has been around forever and uh you guys have just kept growing and growing and growing and you know through every innovation cycle you know the internet mobile phones whatever Amazon has been cloud you know Amazon's done great.
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How do you stay on top of the curve and he goes cuz we don't look for trends.
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He goes we ask ourselves the opposite question instead of saying what's going to change we say what's not going to change.
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So basically he's like we're customer obsessed that's the number one value for them and then he's like number two we ask what's not going to change.
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Oh peop- Are people ever going to want less selection? No.
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Are they ever going to want higher prices? No.
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Are they ever going to want slower delivery? No. Okay cool.
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So now we know that those are the never the never changing things.
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So all we got to do is have to fig- figure out how to give them more selection lower prices and faster delivery.
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That's what they care about they're never going to not care about those things they're always going to care and all we got to do is just continually find a way to do that.
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So I think that gives you a sort of long-term orientation.
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Like for Hampton what would you say are the never going to change things?
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I've got to figure that out frankly.
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When I started it was the same thing as Zuckerberg which is I just want to like be around smart people. Do you know what I mean?
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ever going to want to be around lower quality founders? No.
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They're always going to want that bar going up that they would look in their peer group and they're in awe.
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How did I get in this room? Right?
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I think that's going to be the first feeling you want to create is holy [ __ ] all the other people in my group are awesome.
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I can't wait to talk to these people. Right?
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That's going to be I think always the number one the quality of the other members in their group to them.
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And then I I think the the the thing I've been thinking about is they're always going to want their peers to be committed.
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So you have if So we've been thinking about well what happens if you don't show up to a meeting?
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It's like well we should just ban them. Let's ban them.
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You miss one meeting you're done.
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both of those things we mentioned hurts revenue.
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Cuz if you make the door you want to increase revenue widen the door baby let them all in.
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Now let everybody who wants to pay the bill come in.
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Okay but now you've ruined the quality of member problem.
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The you know the long-term people will never want this to go in that direction.
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You're you're screwing that up for short-term profit.
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Same thing on the people don't show up you ban them.
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Well you also you know have to go ahead and remove that subscription revenue from from the from from the old Stripe account.
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And so you're not going to want to do that either.
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But it will only happen if you take this long-term orientation and say no no the thing we value the most is people want a product where it's high quality people that show up and care about this community about this group.
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And if either of those two we every decision has to be first and foremost from that point of view.
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Does this increase the quality of our members or decrease it?
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Does this increase the commitment levels or decrease it?
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And I also think that so you you were giving the example of Facebook and Amazon and I looked at those as examples as well but let's go outside of the the tech world.
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So two brands that that I am looking at that have lasted a long time Louis Vuitton.
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Louis Vuitton has lasted maybe 250 years now and when you think of Louis Vuitton you know what you're getting.
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Same with New York Times.
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New York Times has been around for 250 years not everyone likes them but you know what they're pursuing which is their version of the truth.
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But then let's go to Raising Cane's.
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You ever been to Raising Cane's? Of course dude. Love Raising Cane's.
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I met the founder of Raising Cane's once. He is awesome.
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You guys got to I don't know his name but Google Raising Cane's founder and like watch talks with this guy.
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He's like a southern boy I think from Louisiana.
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He started a chicken finger place I think at LSU and if you go to Raising Cane's now here's what you're going to get.
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They all all they sell is chicken fingers.
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You can basically get them breaded and deep fried or not breaded and deep fried and then I think they only sell Fried or fried or obesity fried which one do you want?
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Yeah like there's like there's only there's no options and you get it on a Styrofoam like a Styrofoam uh like school lunch box like type of thing.
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And they're not fancy but you know what you're going to get every time and he's like adamant.
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He's like we are going to perfect this.
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We're going to get this it's going to be fried the exact same time every single time and it's not sophisticated but you know what you're going to get.
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Another brand that I like [ __ ] Dollar General.
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You ever go to a Dollar General? Yeah of course.
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Dude it's it's not sophisticated it's not high-end but you know what they're just going to have a ton of stuff and it's going to be low quality and it's going to be affordable.
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You know what you're going to get every time.
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So I don't think you need this sophisticated like it's day one here at Amazon and we're like no you don't need that.
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You can you can have like no like we're Fashion Nova like it's cheap apparel that you know you don't have to make a lot of money you can buy it and we're always going to be on top of [ __ ] You don't need a lot of that stuff that high-end like sophisticated stuff.
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You can be anything but it's just cool that like to see people who are adamant about what they are and they just deliver value every time or at least they're focused on the brand.
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So anyway that's my spiel about that and the reason I was thinking about it was cuz you were talking about outsourcing stuff and I'm like oh that definitely seems cheaper but is it cheaper for every role in the long term because you have to build in order to build a brand that last long time?
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And let's let's let's be straight here.
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This is all about like doing dope [ __ ] It's also about making more money.
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I think you can make more money if you drag out your Excel sheet you're like oh if this grows 30% 20% every year.
18:29
Yeah drag that [ __ ] out for 50 years.
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You know what I'm saying?
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let's see what's going on over there.
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Right and this is it's this is also rooted in like adventure and fun exciting and in greed.
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So I don't want to get that twisted.
18:42
Uh but anyway you have people who want to work for you for 10 20 years it gets really interesting and I think you can actually like embed different things in culture.
18:50
Do you do you know White Castle?
18:51
You ever heard of White Castle?
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You know what that is right?
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Dude White Castle I [ __ ] love White Castle.
18:55
I went and looked at their like LinkedIn.
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I was trying to figure out their executive team like all of them have worked there for like 30 years.
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And I used to make fun of them.
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I'm like oh man these [ __ ] suits. I'm like no no no no no.
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They know who their customer is they know what they're doing and they're you get the same [ __ ] every time and it works because their people have worked there for [ __ ] 30 years and they like know what the company's about.
19:14
So anyway that's my rant rant over but it's something I'm thinking about it.
19:18
Something I'm thinking about.
19:18
I'm glad we just discussed this publicly.
19:20
I'm actually going to I was taking notes. Yeah. Yeah good. I I think that's cool.
19:25
I'm I take the exact opposite point of view for the for the record.
19:29
I do not think about building things that are going to last 50 or 100 years.
19:32
I think that's really hard and I think it's unnecessary.
19:34
I want to be the thing that lasts 50 or 100 years not an individual brand necessarily.
19:38
Well you are the brand if that's the case.
19:42
I think about it is this.
19:44
It depends on how you want your career to go.
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Some people get really excited about building something and being a part of something and working on something for 30 years.
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I get more excited about taking like sort of seven-year chapter arcs of my life and be like, "Cool.
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I want to have five You know, I only get one life to live.
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Um I want to experience all the things.
20:02
I want to ride all the rides.
20:04
And so, I do a I you know, I did a a tour of duty on the I I lived in Australia and Indonesia and all these other places. That was fun.
20:10
That was a really great adventure.
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I moved to Silicon Valley in the heart of San Francisco and I tried to do the billion-dollar startup thing.
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Now I'm doing this basically cash-flowing business uh side of things and podcasting creating content.
20:20
I'm a content creator now. That's interesting.
20:24
Uh that's fun in a in a new way.
20:26
I'll shift at some point.
20:26
Uh you know, you know, seven years from now, I'm not going to be a content creator anymore or I'm going to shift the content.
20:31
I'm going to create TV shows or stand-up comedy center or something.
20:35
Yeah, but you do realize that's all rooted.
20:36
I'm going to like jujitsu your ass.
20:38
You realize this is all rooted in the same [ __ ] which is like your br- it it it is a consistent brand and you are changing the monetization engine.
20:47
not even put my name on like you my name is not always going to be front and center on everything.
20:50
When you're a content creator, it is, but other times it's not.
20:52
For me, the more important thing is I'm not I'm not going to bank on people recognizing my brand in order to do something.
20:59
I do want to accumulate enough financial freedom and runway so that I can go pursue things that don't have to make money right away.
21:05
And um and so but but you know, it's all about what you the vision for you that you have for yourself.
21:11
So, that's why I was talking about Rob Dyrdek has this vision for his house.
21:14
You you have a vision for Hampton what you're trying to create as this long-term enduring thing.
21:18
I have a vision for my my life or my career that is chapters and episodic and I want to have that variety and new challenge where I have to like go become uncomfortable and try to get good at something new and learn a different you know, sort of you know, go learn the dark arts of a different area of different different whole different industry and go become a beginner again.
21:38
That's something I get excited about more so than creating one thing that's going to last a long time or I'm going to be a part of for a long time.
21:44
Is that a phrase we're going to start using the dark arts?
21:47
I mean, that's the deal on that's patented.
21:48
So, yeah, we're I have to send a royalty to him for saying that right now.
21:53
Um where do you want to go? Um let's move on.
21:55
Okay, I got two quick ideas for you.
21:58
In general, I want to say this by the way.
22:00
In this pod, I think we're going to make a shift in how we create the content.
22:04
So, right now, every episode is this mishmash of breaking down a business, talking about frameworks, an idea business idea here or there.
22:10
I think what we're going to start to do is segment them better or chunk them better.
22:17
Theme the episodes better.
22:17
So, you know what you're going to and we just go really really hard at one thing.
22:21
So, we're going to do episodes where it's really hard on just ideas, business opportunities that we see.
22:26
We're going to go really hard on certain topics like um one-man businesses or you know, businesses that have very few people, but just crush it.
22:34
It's going to be a lot harder for us to do the prep for that, but I think it'll make for much better episodes.
22:39
So, uh we've been talking to you a little about that.
22:40
I think we should put it out there that we want to we want to start doing that.
22:45
But until then, let's mishmash a little bit. I got an idea for you. So, Okay.
22:48
If you made a grid of customers that are easy to acquire or hard to acquire on one side and then customers that are not that valuable and super valuable on the on the other axis.
23:03
Um one box that interests me there is hard to acquire super valuable.
23:09
And the reason why is because those companies can become very very defensible, very very valuable, right?
23:15
Your value as a company or even as a person is just based on how easy are you to replace.
23:20
You want to be irreplaceable.
23:22
That's how you can actually make more money in the long term.
23:24
So, what's on that in that quadrant?
23:26
Like uh like a [ __ ] plane manufacturer or something like that?
23:32
Something that sells to government.
23:34
So, you go get government contracts. Not easy.
23:37
Hard might be hard to do. Might be boring to do.
23:39
Long-term expensive government contracts.
23:41
It might take you years to get to the point where you can get one.
23:44
But when you get one, very valuable and very defensible.
23:49
And so, um I was thinking about this. I was like, "What?"
23:52
Cuz I invested in this um drones company called Volansi uh long time ago.
23:57
I've invested maybe many years ago.
23:59
I don't I have no idea how they're doing. I was a small investor.
24:01
I don't even get the updates.
24:03
But um at the time, they were doing pretty well and they had a uh you know, I was like, "Okay, cool.
24:10
This valuation is a little bit rich for where you're at.
24:12
Well, why is it you know, why do you think this the right valuation?"
24:14
And it was like, "Well, they're about to get this government contract that's a hundred million dollar a year contract.
24:18
One one customer will now become worth more than all their customers combined because And what's the term length of that contract?
24:27
it was like a there was a couple that they were up for.
24:29
I think they were like sort of three and five-year deals, something like that. So, it's like Okay.
24:32
These are huge deals that you can get and once you get one government contract, you're sort of de-risked and you've done all the you know, the clearance and all that stuff.
24:39
You basically you have to get your company to a spot where you could get a government contract.
24:43
And once you have one, being able to get the next one becomes more likely cuz you're sort of in the trusted vendor circle.
24:49
So, I was like, "Oh, that's pretty valuable."
24:52
I was just thinking about one the other day, you know, with this whole COVID pandemic.
24:56
Somebody out there has got to be selling some kind of pandemic modeling software or detection software to every government in every country of the world.
25:07
And this does also have like a network effect where as soon as you provide you're the provider of this product to one government, it's actually something that all governments would then choose you for because you know, the more governments you get, the more compelling your case becomes.
25:20
And so, I wonder who's building kind of the Palantir what Palantir did for I think like national security type stuff.
25:28
Somebody's got to be doing for biosecurity.
25:29
So, who is creating the uh pandemic monitoring, detection, modeling, um awareness program that you can then go sell to every single government on Earth as an indefinite ongoing contract.
25:43
Hey, these things happen once every hundred years.
25:47
We had the Spanish flu, we got COVID. All right.
25:48
I'm just going to go I'll be your provider cuz hey, they're they're devastating when they happen and I can I can be this for you for the next hundred years.
25:55
I think that's a a hundred-year company that uh is probably quite defensible and quite valuable if you can do it.
26:02
I'll talk to some of my friends who work at Palantir.
26:04
I'm like, "Hey, what you guys do today?"
26:05
And they're like, "Oh, just like uh stopped a terrorist attack in France. How about you?"
26:08
So, uh wrote a blog post. You know what I mean?
26:13
Like I did my five tweet Tuesday today. Yeah. All right.
26:16
My five favorite tweets in my newsletter. It's cool.
26:19
Have you ever looked at it's like those Have you looked at those there's all these like net worth calculators where you're like, "Where will I be in 50 years?"
26:25
And you're like, "Well, if you were to start in like 1884, uh this is where you'd be.
26:29
If you were to start in like 1995, this is where you'd be."
26:32
And you can like see like, "Well, because that this 50 year or this 30 years actually had slow growth.
26:37
This uh 10 years had fast growth."
26:38
And you can like see all the different scenarios.
26:41
You're like, "So, if we take the average, it's this, but if this happens, this."
26:43
So, you're kind of like talking about like that, but with like potential illnesses.
26:47
Uh who have you researched out there?
26:49
Uh I haven't I haven't researched any of this, but I'm sure they already exist these sort of like uh you know, like cuz people have been worried about these sort of like viral things, but obviously they were insufficient, right?
27:00
So, like whatever existed obviously sucked because we didn't detect it.
27:08
We didn't have any plan for it.
27:08
And we had no idea how fast the thing was spreading.
27:11
Like literally the best pandemic model I saw was made as a side project by Kevin Systrom, the founder of Instagram for fun on the side where he's like, "Oh, look.
27:19
I can break down by state the R naught, the viral coefficient basically of this pan- of this virus uh based off of this public data I'm getting about hospitals and hospitalizations.
27:30
And um I can use that to kind of show which states are flattening the curve versus which states are about to go exponential.
27:37
And you know, they should really consider doing something."
27:39
And it's like somebody's got to be doing this at a This got to be the easiest sales pitch of all time right now is I guess kind of what I guess what I really mean.
27:46
It's like if you're sitting at MIT or one of these places, just be like wear a sign that says I went to MIT and then go walk into the government building, open up the fanciest like MATLAB, you know, like model you could find and be like, "You need to pay for this."
28:03
And just see what happens.
28:04
I think I feel like they can get you can get pretty far right now with this pitch of like, "Hey, we'll help you with the we'll help you keep track of these viruses."
28:12
Do you remember about two years ago, you and I were both interested in people who are trying to detect fires uh forest fires? Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah.
28:21
We did it We did this on the pod, right?
28:23
There was probably like one or two like kids like college kids fooling around with it, but then there was like I think two different companies that raised money I think from Founders Fund Fund.
28:33
And actually they were ex-Palantir guys.
28:35
I forget the name of the company. It's a four-letter word.
28:36
It was like Gelt or I forget what it was.
28:39
But they were I tried to invest in them and they were like they weren't having it cuz they were getting big and they they they didn't need any money.
28:47
But do you know what happened to those guys? Uh Felt maybe? Was it Felt? F E L T?
28:54
Um I don't know the name of it.
28:55
That's really hard to remember.
28:57
Uh but no, and I also don't know what what came of it.
29:01
But yeah, there was I remember when the California wildfires were happening and it felt like every three months there was like a new fire and the entire like state of California was like covered in smoke.
29:11
Um yeah, I remember when that I remember when that was happening.
29:15
To to find early detection of wildfires was like a like a a startup idea that a bunch of people got funded for.
29:22
Yeah, it was really interesting.
29:22
What we need to do What I'll do not this week, but next week cuz we have Jack on next, but is I'm going to actually do a research and see how these guys are doing because it's very similar to what you're talking about.
29:30
But what was your What and what was your other thing that you're looking at?
29:33
You have this other thing that celeb- You're going to go from selling to governments to selling to Jessica Simpson. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, about the same IQ.
29:42
So, basically this next idea is how uh so, celebrities are having this like deep fake crisis crisis and opportunity.
29:52
So deep fakes are getting really really good and celebrities now have a crisis plus opportunity.
29:59
So the crisis is you've seen this fake Tom Cruise this deep fake Tom Cruise this guy's like amazing looks just like Tom Cruise and it's like a video and you you know it's this is getting really good.
30:09
You're not going to be able to tell Dude did you see did you see the did you see the ones where they put our podcast in Spanish?
30:17
Yeah those are awesome by the way we should do that we should release our podcast in every language. They were amazing.
30:20
They were so good I've even and I've heard of these new scams where they'll take people whose voice and video you get access to and they call your parents and be like hey dad look I'm trapped I need some money can you please send it like just don't ask questions just send the money. It it's wild it's wild.
30:37
And so I think there's an opportunity here so I think celebrities who get paid for their name and face and you know oh I got to go fly to you know Arizona and shoot this commercial for Gatorade right now and it's going to be 3 days but I'm going to get paid all this money blah blah that's going to change into Gatorade would like to use your your AI clone in their commercial. You cool with that?
30:57
Yeah you get to sit at home and collect the check and it's like maybe it's 50% less you know expensive for the brand maybe it's the same cost for the brand I don't know but celeb you don't have to do the work anymore.
31:09
That's going to be a big deal.
31:09
So the more famous you get now you're not going to have to actually do the appearance thing because you'll just send your your AI stunt double to to go do it.
31:18
So that's an opportunity but there's also a risk there which is what if somebody's just doing it without your consent?
31:23
And so I think somebody's going to need to create a sort of celebrity deep fake licensing company.
31:31
So it's a company that goes and says look we're going to create the legal entity that's going to house your name and likeness that other brands can interact with when they want access to this and we're also going to do the detection to find out is anybody doing the unauthorized use of your name and face somewhere and we will handle all the takedowns for you.
31:52
So it's kind of like a reputation.
31:53
com but for this new deep fake thing.
31:55
So you basically will go and I think you'll you you need to it's almost like AngelList you need to create the legal framework for how these work.
32:03
You need to go sell this to every agency and say hey you should we've created one for you know you have one of these for all of your your clients on your roster.
32:14
And when a brand comes to you use this to issue the license that has the rights and controls on it that has the digital encrypted watermark on it that has the tracking on it and then we will also fight anybody who is trying to use it without paying you because that's going to become an issue as well.
32:32
That's what I think is going to happen.
32:33
I think somebody could build that company right now.
32:35
I used to get all these emails when I first started the hustle because what we would do is we eventually bought a Getty's license which is like 50 grand a year but before that we would use I would just type in whatever picture I wanted and then I'd go to Google and click like allow for commercial use
32:51
and then I would like I would use those pictures on our website and then at once we got popular we would get all these emails from these patent trolls or not patent trolls I mean I got we were we were using someone else's picture and they would say send us three grand and we'll go away otherwise we're suing you. And I started looking into them and
33:06
And I started looking into them and basically what they did was they just built this technology so they could detect if someone's photo was being used and they would automatically like crawl they would use like who is it to find out who the webmaster was and send you this email and I wonder like how those folks turned out like what's going like how some of these people actually built those those things and if they were profitable.
33:23
profitable. I imagine so like there was one time I used someone's picture it was like in the I think it was like the it was like a thumbnail picture it was the smallest picture and I didn't even know we used it and I think maybe someone at
33:35
our company took a screenshot of it and like try to alter it and then put it on our website in the smallest way and they totally caught it and within like a few hours we had to send them like $3,000 it was like [ __ ] they got us. I wonder like
33:45
I wonder like what that looks like in the world of AI when you are having a bunch of these fake celebrity videos you know what I'm saying? Yeah yeah exactly.
33:53
So I think somebody's going to need to to to create the good version of that.
33:58
So one option is become the troll the other option is become the official sort of like broker of of these of the usage of these digital deep fakes.
34:07
All right so that's my second one.
34:09
The company by the way is called felt f e l t. com felt.
34:11
That was the it was the that's what we had talked about remembering.
34:16
You want to talk about how you flew Ben out to convince him to move with you?
34:20
Yeah I think it's good actually cuz remote work is you know obviously all the rage and remote work is great in a bunch of different ways but I'm of the opinion which is uh remote is great when you have things figured out and you need people who are just operational to do things.
34:38
things. Anytime there's a lot of needs figuring out or creativity or just your brain trust I think works best in person um and so I told Ben the other day I was like man I think we're on to something with what we're doing uh business
34:54
partner Ben business partner Ben I was like you know he lives in Austin right now and I was like you got to I was like you got to move out here and he's like like you know I live here now and wife kid we have family in Texas. I was like yeah I know but like you we
35:08
I was like yeah I know but like you we both believe the following right?
35:12
Every time we get together magic happens um this can be pretty big like what we're doing can become pretty big and so even like a 10 to 20% improvement on what we're doing is actually worth tens of millions of dollars so it's like you know it could be worth it to move and California's a great place too so it's not like I'm saying you know let's go to rural Ohio or something and um and so he was like okay why don't we do this?
35:42
this? So he moved out here for the month so he got a Airbnb in the burbs or San Francisco in the burbs where I'm at and he's like I got an Airbnb brought his wife kid came out here he's just been living here for the month and
35:55
and I also I offered him I was like dude I'll pay you dollars we should bleep that out um if you move and he was like and I but I told him I go but the number drops by 20% every quarter that you don't move I was like this is not like a standing offer forever. It's a burning
36:14
It's a burning it's an exploding offer.
36:16
I said you should take your time you should think about it but you should also know every quarter that you don't move that number goes down.
36:23
Dude he he should tell you you come get your ass to Texas.
36:26
Yeah no he knows I'm not going anywhere he knows I'm not going anywhere and that's not the that's not the deal.
36:29
that's not the that's not the deal. I actually lived in Texas for a long time and you know the other thing is like here in California you know in San Francisco there is kind of like for for example for our rolling fund there's so many companies so many other investors so many people in the startup world like you want to be like proximity is power you want to be near as many other people as you can
36:53
that are doing the same sorts of things as you as you are to the extent that your lifestyle will allow it and so so yeah we'll see He told me that he got like a 10 to 20% chance well I was I was with him a week or two weeks
37:08
before he went out there and I was shocked when he told me that he thought that there was maybe a 20% chance that he could be convinced and by he I mean the the Levy entity the the household and I was shocked that it was 20% is it still 20%? I don't know I
37:21
I don't know I think so but we also work a lot when he's here so I'm sure his wife's like dude this is terrible like you work more now like oh man I don't want to do this and so so that might be working against us.
37:37
The other thing though is uh the way we work is kind of goofy like I don't think most people do this but you know for coding they have pair programming it's not that popular but some people do it and what pair programming is I I
37:50
think um what's the name of that agency that was in San Francisco that was like a really popular dev shop it was like it like went public at one point you know you know the name uh Yeah yeah I don't remember it but yeah I know you mean. They popularized it at least I don't
38:03
They popularized it at least I don't know if they invented it or popularized it but basically it's two programmers working on one computer you know right it's like the engineering two girls one cup basically it's like you you sit together there's one keyboard and you would think
38:18
well okay you have half the efficiency like only one guy is working only one guy is coding but actually you get more than double the efficiency because it keeps you completely focused and you and your partner are basically both talking things through and figuring things out
38:30
on the fly and literally me and Ben do that when he comes out here to work we I'm like all right put your laptop down like just we buddy up side by side at this desk and we'll just work on the same thing at the same time and like I can't just like open Twitter and start messing around
38:45
over there he's like what what's happening you can't just like open new tabs you know as you're figuring something out one of the guys pointing something out and you just sort of really stacking I call it like stacking focus it's like whatever my level of focus is plus his level of focus on the same thing. So So that's been good.
38:59
The other is the in between time.
39:01
So already when we work remote we call each other all the time.
39:06
You know probably on the phone two hours a day three hours a day maybe on calls either with others or just ourselves.
39:13
But what's happening now is we'll work on something for a bit that's kind of like us being on a call together working on something and then we're like all right let's go get food and we'll just hop on our bikes we'll go to this taco shop we go get this we go to the same
39:26
taco shop every day we get the same same meal every day we play wiffle ball afterwards hold hands and we skip home basically but while we're doing it it's sort of like the best ideas are coming out in all the in between time and that's the time where normally if we be like, "Okay, you know, bye." close Zoom or close Google Hangouts or
39:44
close Zoom or close Google Hangouts or whatever.
39:46
And then, you know, I put on a podcast and he does something else.
39:48
And, you know, it's the in-between time where you get the serendipitous ideas.
39:54
Um so, it's just kind of reminding me how valuable it is to work in person.
39:58
So, here's here's the issue that you have or I've always had with you, which is whenever I'm around you whenever I am around you, both of us are high highish energy people where you're the type of person that eggs people on and then I'll egg you back on or I can see like and I'm not even that bad at that, but you do I'm sure there's a lot of other people like Sully where you guys just start egging each other on.
40:20
And it's like, "Wait a minute, we're totally off track here.
40:21
We should just do the same thing over and over again."
40:25
Does this having him around just distract you further cuz I can see you guys just like you're sitting on two like love seats and you're throwing a football back and forth and you're like, "Why don't we do this?"
40:33
Yeah, "What if we did this?"
40:35
It's like, "Well, [ __ ] it.
40:36
Let's just do it right now."
40:39
I got the day every single day that's like that.
40:40
I crumple up a piece of paper, I throw it to him, he throws it back.
40:42
And we're playing catch talking about [ __ ] that like, you know, things we could do that are not like just the obvious things.
40:50
But, the beauty of it is as I've gotten older and I've gotten wiser and I've been doing this podcast two things have happened.
40:57
One, I hang around you and you're very good at just doing the thing every day.
41:01
Whether it's your workout or it's whatever.
41:05
It's I'm just going to do the thing.
41:06
And I don't want to get distracted by everything.
41:08
I just want to do the thing.
41:09
And so, hanging out with you helps.
41:10
There was also a guy who came on the podcast a long time ago.
41:16
One of the earliest episodes.
41:18
And he designed it's he's from Peak Design.
41:20
They make these like camera bags.
41:22
So, he started his company off When was that? That was two years ago?
41:27
Yeah, this was like one of the first 15 episodes, I think.
41:29
And um he uh he so, he makes these camera bags. Who knew?
41:35
And they do like, I don't know, at the time like 70 million a year in revenue off of camera bags.
41:38
And I was like and like clips for your DSLR camera.
41:43
I was like, "What the hell?
41:43
Like is this that big of a market?"
41:44
And he had done it off of Kickstarter and he kind of inspiring guy.
41:48
And as I was talking to him, I go, "So, what's your philosophy around business?"
41:51
He goes He goes, "Everybody's got these like plans, they got these ideas, blah blah blah."
41:57
He goes, "I think he's like, "Life and business is just the 6 in in front of your face."
42:03
And he's like "It's just this."
42:04
He just held up his hand 6 in front he goes, "I just look at this and I just do the 6 in in front of my face. It's all I'm focused on.
42:12
And I just do that every day." And that stuck with me.
42:15
And so, we have I don't you can't see it, but on the wall here I wrote 6 in in front of our face on a giant like post like a giant sticky pad thing.
42:25
These things are great, by the way. You should buy these.
42:26
These are giant sticky pad things where you sort of tear the paper.
42:29
It's like a huge post-it note that goes on your wall.
42:32
Dude, at Monkey Inferno, your old office, you were like that guy.
42:34
You always had whiteboards and like pads. That was your thing.
42:39
at the one You were always standing up like writing. Yeah, that was you. You always said that.
42:43
Hey, you guys want to do a whiteboard sesh real quick?
42:45
Uh so, so yeah, I have it here and it says the 6 in in front of our face.
42:50
And so, the first thing we do every day when he comes over is we re-prioritize the 6 in in front of our face.
42:56
It's like, "What are the small no-brainer steps forward that will make this like 1% better today?"
43:04
And we the first 3 hours of the day, we don't do anything else besides knock those out.
43:08
And I think theoretically we could just do that for 8 hours a day.
43:11
I would get bored out of my mind.
43:12
Also, I can kind of get 8 hours of work done in 3 hours of focus when I put my mind to it.
43:17
And so, that's what we do first.
43:20
And then for the rest of the day, we think, "Okay, what what else could leapfrog something forward beyond those 1% obvious improvements?"
43:27
So, we knock out anything anything we can think of that's a 1% obvious improvement the 6 in in front of our face first.
43:33
And so, that's how we've been able to stay focused.
43:39
Our software is the worst.
43:39
Have you heard of HubSpot?
43:41
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
43:47
I think I love our new CRM.
43:49
Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.
43:54
Dude you shared something on Twitter about uh what's this football player's name? Russell? Russell Okung, yeah. Oh my god.
44:01
So, I'm not a foot I'm not a sports guy at all.
44:03
So, I didn't even know who this person was and you shared this thing this basically who is he?
44:06
He He was Was he Was he good? was awesome. He was a former lineman.
44:11
So, linemen are like the biggest guys on the football field.
44:13
So, he's, you know, probably I don't know, 300 lb or something like that. Uh he's like 6'5".
44:18
He's He's 6'5" 310 lb when he played. I don't played, yeah. And he was like a star.
44:23
Like he won he like won a Super Bowl ring. He was a pro bowler. Awesome awesome player.
44:26
Um I remember I I think he was playing at on the Seahawks for a while.
44:30
That's That's kind of what I remember him. Uh he's now on Twitter.
44:33
There's a couple of these athletes like Ndamukong Suh, um Russell Okung that are like they're kind of like on tech Twitter Somehow like And so, Russell's And you can DM them and they'll and he's he's been replying to my DMs.
44:45
Matthew Dellavedova invited me to an event the other day.
44:46
I was like, "This is so cool that they've crossed over and they have got their athlete camp.
44:50
They've also got kind of business tech interest in there."
44:53
They like the By the way, the best thing about it is they come in so humble.
44:57
Um which is like they uh they don't like they don't come in with this like, "Well, you know who I am." personality.
45:07
Like this Saturday we so, we do I started this basketball pick-up game every Saturday for founders and investors out here in the East Bay.
45:12
And we rent this gym and then we we all just play pick-up for like 3 hours.
45:18
And Zaza Pachulia came and he's a he's a former player on the Warriors. And he Oh, really?
45:24
like, "Oh, yeah, I'll I'll play."
45:24
And I didn't invite him to the first one cuz I thought he was joking when he replied.
45:30
And then he emailed me after the first one was like, "Bro, what happened?
45:32
I didn't get the invite." No way. No way.
45:36
You actually were going to show up?"
45:36
And so, he came this week.
45:37
And it was [ __ ] awesome, dude.
45:40
Like not awesome at basketball.
45:41
Obviously, he's awesome at basketball compared to us.
45:43
But, he um Zaza is Is it like a big Russian-looking guy or I don't know where he's from. Where is he from?
45:50
Uh I don't know exactly I think he's from I think he's from Serbia.
45:53
I'm not 100% He's He's it. Georgia. Georgian.
45:54
He's Yeah, he's like 7 ft.
45:57
Uh he's just he's a beast.
45:59
And so, now he works for the Warriors.
46:01
He does like their business side their operating basketball operations and investing for them.
46:06
And uh he's a super personable, super funny guy.
46:09
Like was totally humble and like, you know, obviously play?
46:13
Yeah, he played with us for 3 hours.
46:14
And it was It was amazing.
46:16
Um I was talking so much trash to him and he was just such a good sport about it. It was amazing.
46:21
So, I just I got to say I was so I've been so impressed with the way that kind of like the athletes I've seen that cross over into business and tech they like they do it with with like, I don't know, so much finesse. It's really impressive.
46:35
Wait, what did you learn about I love seeing pro athletes in real life and just like seeing them joke around or like behind-the-scenes Instagram videos where they're like, "Hey, watch this.
46:42
I bet you I can jump over this thing."
46:43
And they jump over this like huge thing. You're like, "Oh my god.
46:45
These people like we're not the same type of person."
46:49
Was there any athletic attributes that he had or was he just totally chilling? Well, yeah, for sure.
46:54
I mean, if you see Zaza play in the NBA, Zaza was basically like a screen setter.
46:59
Like his number one skill was he could set a huge pick to get Steph Curry a shot.
47:05
But, when he played against us Right. he's Steph Curry.
47:07
He's just draining shots from all over the court.
47:10
You He didn't even take these shots in the NBA.
47:12
You never saw him take these shots.
47:13
And he's just And he made all of them?
47:15
fast break pulling up from the three-point line.
47:16
And he has I was like, "When's the last time you played?" He's like, "2019." No way.
47:22
no, I've I've shot around."
47:22
He's like, "I'm you know, I'm in the basketball facility, so I shoot around."
47:24
But, he's like, "I I don't even know last time I like played at like a game like a kind of like a competitive game."
47:30
And so, he a couple of things too.
47:30
His warm-up was like a real warm-up.
47:32
Like he like he's talking, but he's doing these like hip flexor openers.
47:36
And I'm like, "Oh, yeah."
47:39
He's like he's just he's actually an athlete who's had to get his body ready many many many times over.
47:45
And so, you see like a bunch of the dudes who come in and it's like, "Oh, here's this VC or here's this like tech founder."
47:50
And we're like, "I don't know.
47:52
I guess I'll try to touch my toes.
47:52
Is that what I do to warm up?"
47:53
Like we don't know we don't even know what to We don't even know what to do to warm up.
47:58
Whereas he's like doing these like you know, hip openers.
48:00
Then the second thing is when he played obviously his game is a lot better than you see on TV cuz you know, when the competition is so you you got to you got to be a star in your role in the NBA.
48:09
And he was a star in his role as this like paint protector screen setter.
48:13
Here, he could do a lot of other things that he never got to show there.
48:16
Uh the other thing is like he was like a bear.
48:18
So, he was mostly, you know, just playing point guard just passing the ball mostly.
48:23
Like getting obviously he could post any of us up.
48:25
He's got a foot on all of us, you know, in terms of height.
48:26
So, he wasn't just abusing that.
48:28
But, when but like we beat him the first game and then they won like six straight. And then You beat him? You beat his team?
48:35
Yeah, we won the first game.
48:35
We they were just like, you know, whatever.
48:37
We got off to a quick start.
48:38
Um But, then the they went on a 6-0 run or something like that just crushing everybody.
48:44
And then when we came back out to try to beat them it was a very competitive game.
48:47
And then it's like we poked the bear.
48:49
It's like all of a sudden he started driving to the hoop and he started like playing like aggressive. It's like, "Oh, yeah.
48:54
Don't forget the bear can kill you.
48:55
The bear might be nice right now, but the bear will let you know that like I could kill you if I wanted to."
49:00
And he just showed which dial he was going to Yeah, he's like, "Let's let's just put it to a six now. We were at a three.
49:05
Let's just put it We'll just put it at a six just for a few minutes.
49:08
All right, we'll go back to a three." twisted.
49:09
This has been a three up till now.
49:12
I'm just going to show you that then I'll go back down. Wow, that's awesome.
49:17
That I love seeing those types of people like just like in normal settings.
49:21
And so, talk about Russell.
49:22
So, Russell's doing I I saw him you shared it.
49:24
He has this website and it's Here's why it's interesting.
49:28
One, he's We'll put this We'll say what he's doing.
49:31
He's doing a 40-day water fast.
49:32
That alone is interesting.
49:34
But, what's even more interesting is he's doing it in a very like I wouldn't have expected this like 6'5 300-lb football player to be so introspective.
49:42
And if you go to his website, do you know the name of his website actually? No, I don't know.
49:46
I don't have it in front of me.
49:47
If you just Google his name and then go to his Twitter and you can click off to the link. He's got this website.
49:51
A, it's built on Ghost, which is like a pretty like in the know nerdy web platform. I think it's Okung Fast.
49:56
com is at least where the I think that's where the um that's where he's hosting it.
50:04
If you just Google it, you'll see it.
50:06
But, it's like a yellow website and like he has email pop-up pop-ups and like everything is set up really actually like exactly how it should be.
50:12
Like the email pop-up is like thoughtful and then you go to a confirmation page that's thoughtful and he's blogging every single day and he's posting the same picture every day.
50:21
So, as of now, I think he started this thing at 260. I have the notes here.
50:27
Well, I think we buried the lead.
50:27
So, he's he's gone he's going on a 40-day water-only fast.
50:31
He's lost 100 lbs so far doing it.
50:35
And obviously it's not just about the weight loss.
50:37
It's about like sort of like the mental challenge and the mental clarity that he's getting as he's doing this.
50:45
Like, you know, sort of this this very it sounds to me like a really intense fast.
50:48
I think he's on day 21 now.
50:51
Well, he talked about how it's a spiritual thing and he and he basically like he he's just so much more thoughtful than I ever would have pegged this guy just cuz I'm stereotyping like an NFL player and like his writing is very good, very clear and there's a lesson that he's learning each day and he talks about that and everything's well-written. It's just wonderful.
51:07
It's a really really cool to see this guy do the same. day was the hardest.
51:10
He goes, "Because this is where the body is transitioning into a new state."
51:14
So, he's like, "I had headaches, fatigue.
51:15
My body was transitioning to using fat as the energy source rather than you know the in the input of new you know carbohydrates and whatever." And he looks good.
51:24
So, you could see even when he started it.
51:26
You look at day one where he started, he still looked pretty lean.
51:29
Now you look at him at day one, he's starting to get like skinnier and skinnier and skinnier and his writing is starting to change.
51:35
It's very fascinating and he's been tweeting about it every day as he goes and he's been blogging about it. I think it's awesome. I love seeing this. Right.
51:43
Uh yeah, and he's also like He's on day 21. He's on day 21.
51:45
He's also like a Bitcoin maxi.
51:48
He's a he's an interesting guy.
51:49
By the way, there's a a guy I met named Byron Jones who retired this year.
51:54
Um he was like one of the best cornerbacks in the in the in the league and he retired I think at 30.
51:59
So, he came into the league probably 21, 22 and he retired at 30, which is a early retirement.
52:07
And he got paid very well, probably made like I don't know, 80 million dollars playing in the NFL.
52:11
But, he had said something when he retired, which is that I can't run or jump anymore.
52:14
And which is shocking cuz this is like one of the most athletic guys that was in the NFL at time when he was playing.
52:22
And I went to a dinner He had a 44-in vert.
52:23
Wow, 44-in vert and a 12-ft broad jump. Um freak.
52:26
My buddy Romine uh hosts this event called Game Time every year in LA and it's basically a mix of investors and athletes that get together.
52:36
And so, I've been I've gone the last couple years and he hosts this dinner and at the dinner there was a few NFL players on the table and they all mentioned like uh I forgot what they're called.
52:44
Like Tor- Torbitol I'm not I'm not Torbitol. It's not the steroid.
52:47
It's like some shot that NFL players get.
52:52
It basically it's a pain pain tolerance shot, a pain reduction shot, painkiller.
52:56
And they're they were just like, "Dude, that shot is like magic and it's a curse."
52:59
They're like Cuz it doesn't make you feel better, right?
53:03
It just makes you not feel pain. No, no, you feel better.
53:06
Sorry, it doesn't cure an injury.
53:08
doesn't cure the underlying issues.
53:08
It's like you He's like, "We would go from, you know, Sunday you play um Monday, you feel bad.
53:17
Tuesday, you feel like, man, I was in a car accident.
53:19
And their body feels like it was in a car accident.
53:21
You're like, there's no way I'm going to be able to practice on Thursday and play next Sunday.
53:27
Like that's just like where my body's at on Tuesday versus Sunday seems crazy."
53:30
And they said that like uh they're like, "Man, you know, like the culture in the NFL is like you got to play obviously and so these like a lot of guys get get in the habit of taking this one shot, T something.
53:39
I forgot what it's called.
53:42
And they take the shot and they're like, "It's like a miracle, dude.
53:43
Like within an hour, you're running again."
53:45
And they're like, "You went from not you know, like limping to like you're just back to you."
53:51
But, also every time you do it, it's like taking time you know, it shortens your career because it's just so bad for your body what you're actually doing to your body when you do that cuz you're not like it's not like the underlying tissues have healed in the process.
54:03
And um it's kind of a crazy thing.
54:06
So, I think one cool thing about Russell's doing is he's basically like trying to rewind the clock on you know, when you're in when you're a lineman, they tell you to beef up and what he's doing is is doing a sort of a rapid and drastic change in his physiology in order to get his weight down so that he can live a you know, longer healthier life as he goes.
54:25
Yeah, he said, "I went through a pulmonary embolism."
54:26
I don't know what that is. Is that a heart thing? I had lacerated lungs.
54:30
No idea how you get lacerated lungs, but that's wild.
54:32
A series Yeah, a series of surgeries, ligament and tendon ligament and tendon damage and getting up every day was just really hard.
54:41
I thought magically when I finished playing, it would get easier, but it got harder harder.
54:46
I had completely depleted my testosterone.
54:49
So, he basically just explains he's like, "I was left in shambles."
54:52
And so, that's I guess one of the reasons why he's done this and I think it's really really really cool.
54:55
I don't think I'm going to do it.
54:59
I like I like seeing him do it. What else you got?
55:01
Um I like this question I got. So, a guy tweeted at me.
55:05
I want to get your take on it.
55:07
So, his name's Christian Von Euful. Uh great name.
55:11
So, Christian says, "Question for you, Sean."
55:14
He goes, "What work seems like small boy stuff, but actually packs a punch?"
55:17
So, we have this phrase we say on the pod all the time, no small boy stuff.
55:20
And we don't even like spend a ton of time defining it cuz honestly, small boy stuff is kind of obvious.
55:26
But, I would say the general buckets of small boy stuff would be um you know, overly worrying about things.
55:35
Um small boy stuff would be thinking small rather than thinking big, thinking short-term rather than thinking long-term.
55:40
Um you know, caring too much about what other people think of you.
55:42
You know, there's a whole bunch of things that you classify as small boy stuff.
55:44
Like complaining when things get hard or things don't go your way, complaining in general, waiting in general.
55:50
These are all like small boy moves.
55:54
But, I thought his question was great because the magic is in things that other people think are small, but actually pack a punch.
56:01
And I had an answer, but I'm curious what your answer would be.
56:02
I'll give you Do you want me to go first or you want to go first?
56:06
I'll give you a very quick example.
56:06
We had our I keep talking about the offsite.
56:09
My CEO of the company, he put all this effort into creating like little individual awards for people and like writing like uh appreciation notes and like being very thoughtful in the itinerary and I was like, "Dude, just like who gives a [ __ ] Let's just get in the room and hang out."
56:23
He put all this work into it, spent hours and hours and hours. 100% worth it.
56:27
I I I was giving him a hard time and then afterwards I go, "Nope, you were right. I was wrong."
56:32
That that is an example of things that seem below your pay grade that you you proved it was worth it. Love it.
56:37
Uh I would actually also give you credit cuz that would be one of my answers, which is um admitting when you're wrong openly and quickly.
56:47
I remember hearing a story about um one of the guys at Sequoia who's awesome.
56:50
Uh like helped build Sequoia into like the most successful VC brand or one of the most in in a long time.
56:58
Somebody asked like, "What makes him great?"
56:59
They go, "All he cares about is getting it right.
57:01
He'll be in a meeting with you.
57:04
He'll say his opinion and somebody else will say their opinion and you know, most people either start to debate or uh like we're kind of like it's like we're talking past each other.
57:12
It's like I'm talking about one thing, you're talking about another and I'm the boss, so I'm going to get my way.
57:16
And he's like, he's the first guy and he has this phrase he always says, where he would go, 'Okay, nope, I like your way better. Let's go with that.'
57:23
Um like nope, that's better.
57:25
Like let's go with that is a uh a awesome small, but big thing you can do as a leader and in any company.
57:33
It sets the culture that it's not about who's right, it's about getting it right, getting to right, you know, over time.
57:38
Um here's what I wrote as as some of my answers.
57:40
I said, "Small things that seem like small boy stuff is actually big.
57:43
Doing customer service yourself early on.
57:45
So, being on the front lines, um answering customer service emails, questions, feedback, picking up the phone, all that stuff.
57:55
Um manually onboarding your first 10 or 100 users.
57:58
So, um literally yourself sitting there with them, you know, going to sit side by side with them and having them install your product or onboard onto your product and and answering their questions.
58:10
Seems like an unscalable small boy way of you spending your time. Actually, no.
58:14
It's a huge huge thing and it'll teach you a lot about your product and your market. Um sending follow-ups.
58:21
Follow-ups Following up with somebody who didn't answer you always feels like, you know, like a little low-status [ __ ] move, but it packs a big punch.
58:28
Follow-ups are where all the magic is and I think there's also a big piece of follow-ups, which is a lot of people don't follow up because they don't hear back and they assume they say they're saying no, they don't like me, they hate they hate this idea.
58:42
You don't want to look stupid.
58:44
They get in their head about it.
58:44
They start assuming the worst.
58:47
Instead, assume the obvious.
58:47
People are busy and they forget.
58:51
Uh people are busy and didn't get around to it yet.
58:52
Um and when you follow up with that mindset, that's the sort of no small boy mindset.
58:56
It's like, "I'm offering something of value to this person.
58:59
Of course they would want it.
59:01
Maybe they haven't yet seen the value in it.
59:02
Maybe I didn't convey convey it properly or they just haven't got around to it.
59:05
They're busy and that's okay. Um I'm still here."
59:09
Um and the other one I wrote was finding things that recurred daily and making them 2% better.
59:13
Because daily things that you do things you do with high frequency compound um if if you made them slightly better.
59:21
And so, this is where I think a lot of people are like, "Why are you optimizing for your shoes or your mattress or your pillow or whatever?
59:27
Like why are you Why do you care so much about how your um you know, like I'm a stickler for how a meeting starts.
59:34
starts. I'm always like no no no at the start of every meeting we say all right the purpose of this meeting is this and a good outcome of this meeting would be you know why and if you can't say x and y like we're not doing the meeting I'll stop people and I'll say no don't do this or uh when people talk I'll be like hey you know you're talking in a really low voice and you're not sitting up straight
59:54
like could you just do it like say it with some energy it'll make a difference and like but that's every meeting then people know that's how we do meetings and so once you teach people how we do meetings we're going to have a lot of meetings at this company so we're going to make them better we're not just going to have shitty meetings and let them let them slide so finding recurring things
1:00:11
and making them slightly better because it'll compound over time so that was my what was your what was your partner's name at Monkey Inferno um Furqan Furqan uh Furqan I think was like I don't know him well but I could only I could hang out with him for 30 seconds and I could just tell he's the man at seeing redundancies or not redundancies uh seeing things that you do over and
1:00:32
over and over again and be like yeah we're going to get rid of that and we're going to fix it by doing this this and this and it seems like you're like dude you're just slowing us down what are you doing he's like no no no you got to go fast to go slow or you got to go slow to go fast he seems like that type of personality he did he do that all the time he was definitely um he had you
1:00:49
know the hacker's laziness which was like I'm not going to do something unless I'm unless it's clear that it's going to that it matters like I'm not just going to do [ __ ] just to do [ __ ] that's first thing um second thing I'm not going to do the same thing every day if I if I'm doing it if I have to do it multiple times I'm automating this and same thing he would look around and be
1:01:09
like you know what's Sean doing what's Jason doing like all the non-technical people and he'd be like hey Neil you see Jason keeps what he's doing is he's going and finding each person manually on Twitter you should just scrape this whole list put it in a database and and copy paste this code snippet so that he could put that on his machine so that he could just have his leads ready so he
1:01:31
can go faster and he would do a lot of stuff like that like he told a story early at Apple 11 so Apple 11 was a a mobile ad tech company that um is now worth billions of dollars and he was co-founder of it and when Furqan told me a story he's like yeah Adam the CEO he's like one thing he really cared about was his dashboard like what does our dashboard look like so that I
1:01:52
have visibility and he's like I think I kind of watched that I'm just seeing like is there really any value out of this or is he just you know sometimes CEOs just have pet projects they just want to look nice and he's like is it that or is there value here so he shadowed him he's like all right I'm not going to sit at my computer instead of your computer you show me what are you
1:02:06
looking at with this dashboard what do you do with it and so he showed him and he's like yeah I do I look at this I look at this and then that tells me who we need to go after um for these deals and I need to figure out how much to offer them so that I can get them faster like you know instead of just saying you should work with us for these features if I just
1:02:20
make a monetary offer that's better than their current ad network they'll switch and he's like okay so you need to figure out this list you need this data and then you need to know a projection of how much we can make with them so you can offer less than that but still more than what they're probably making for their current ad network and I should just show you which what their current ad network is
1:02:38
in this dashboard I'll just figure that out by looking at their SDK blah blah blah a look he basically put together this like command center for the CEO and he's like he basically built a sales tool rather than working on features of the product he's like I'm going to build you something and what so what they did was they would go to a developer they'd say you should use our ad network and
1:02:57
they're like I already have an ad network he's like cool I'm guessing your ad network pays you $9 CPM and they're like yeah something like that he's like cool we'll pay you $22 he's like how can you do that don't worry our ad network's better I could sit here and convince you our ad network's better but I'll just sign this paper that says we're already going to pay you $22 no matter what like I'm just
1:03:17
confident it's going to perform because I know our ad network's better and they're like okay he's like but here's the you know you got to switch and we have these two engineers standing here next to me they're going to help you switch today and then they would just and they just rolled through the ad market because they were able to go to people and make them no-brainer offers how did they make
1:03:33
them no-brainer offers they because they had this command center internally that was how big is this app what are they currently using how much are they currently making how much do we think we can make off them and then how do we have a a spread there that we can work with and so I thought that that was a great example of Furqan uh figuring out how to make the company successful in a
1:03:54
way that most engineers would not do because of most engineers just want to work on product and not even product like the under the hood parts of the product which is like even worse than making the product better dude this is the most wholesome episode we've done in like two months because we weren't talking about like CEOs fighting each other and [ __ ] no
1:04:12
one's making no one's getting made fun of we're totally aligned lots of take home value here this is this is a this is like the most wholesome thing we've done in a long time I actually am like I feel like I'm learning this is this episode is good because I've I'm sitting here in a notebook taking notes I'm learning that's a good sign love that well that's it that's the episode good pod