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This is an example of a business that is um what I call one chart businesses.
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I'm full of catchy today. One chart businesses.
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So, what's a one chart business?
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There are times you can look at one chart and one chart alone can be your business plan. All right, we're live. What's going on?
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I haven't seen you in a week. What's going on?
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Um Nice jacket, uh by the way. That's fresh.
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Wearing white is Wearing white is just a It's a choice. move. It's a choice. It's It's a summer move.
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You You going You going to Reuben's party or what? Uh no.
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I I don't think I'm I'm not on that list.
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last year that you were in the Hamptons when Rick Rubin was having his party and you were like, "What's this?"
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And you didn't Wasn't there some story like you hung out with all the limo drivers, the Uber drivers Yeah.
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Basically, the the beach that I went to was five doors down from his house.
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It's a public beach and there's a parking lot there and my me and my family were just there hanging out. We drove by.
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We saw like, you know, Henny Henry Kravis, the founder of KKR, you know, like 50 billion-dollar guy, like pull up in his two billion-dollar or two million-dollar Bugatti.
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We park in the parking lot and I see all these huge Escalades, all black Escalades and I see like these It's mostly like these You can tell they're drivers. They're in suits.
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They're playing soccer and eating sandwiches and drinking soda and I walk over.
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I'm like, "What the hell is this?"
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And they're like, "Oh, it's this guy named Michael Rubin. He throws this party."
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I go, "Well, who are you driving?"
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And they actually tell me who they're driving and I'm like, seeing how I was I am, I I go like, "All right, like what's the what's the on them?
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Like are they a good tipper? What's their deal?"
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And they like spilled the beans on like what it's like.
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He's like, "Oh, this person's actually broke, you know, like he always haggles with us over $500."
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Or yeah, so I hung out in the parking lot in Michael Rubin's party.
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Most uh relatable blue-collar thing to do is just to go and be like, "Hey, pass the sunflower seeds."
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and just start kicking it with these guys in the parking lot.
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I saw It was like a movie a little bit.
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It was like they were just like playing soccer and drinking Coke.
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Yeah, by the way, the way you described that was definitely like straight out of like a favela in Brazil.
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You're like, "Yeah, they were just drinking Coca-Cola and and eating sandwiches while playing soccer in the park in the gravel."
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That's really what they were doing.
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I mean, it was it was pretty it was like but it was fun and you know, it was all like these Long Island guys.
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Like, "Hey, what are you doing?"
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You know, like that type of thing.
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I saw a video of that party and I think the reaction when they post that video for most people is like, "Oh my god, like so cool.
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I would I you know, I hope one day I can attend this the white party at Michael Rubin's house."
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I got to say, I saw that thing and I was like, "This would be my worst nightmare."
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It'd be very uncomfortable, right?
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Having to look cool I just that alone is already I have a halfway to hell.
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Having to look cool dressed up for a You're wearing a You're Sean's wearing Sean's wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt right now. Just fly.
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Uh by the way, I bought this recently. This is new.
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This isn't like some old thing in the closet.
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This is I bought this during my trip just now.
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Um So, having to look cool and then going to a place with a bunch of people who are super famous and then having to like be in Tell a story.
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conversations and like try to get into conversations and then be in those conversations. I just want to go home.
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I don't even I just I I already want to go home and I wasn't even invited.
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So, Michael Rubin, you can lose my invite is what I'm trying to say.
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Yeah, it's like you'd rather play their their characters in Madden than actually hang out with them.
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Yeah, I would just start cleaning.
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I'd be like, "I'm just going to make myself useful here cuz the the rest of socializing is not going to work.
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I'm just going to I'm going to Marie Kondo this right now and like just start taking out trash and like I'll just join the serving the crew like serving appetizers because I'd be like, "I know I will have more fun doing anything besides this.
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Where do you want to go from here?
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I was looking at a company called After. After. com.
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Have you ever heard of this? After. com? A very good domain. So, an amazing domain. So, After.
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com is cremation as a service, basically.
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And you can pre-plan it, or you can do it after somebody passes away.
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The reason I actually want to talk about this, it's an interesting business on its own.
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This is an example of a business that is what I call one chart businesses.
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I'm full of catchy today. One chart businesses.
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So, what's a one chart business?
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There are times you can look at one chart and one chart alone can be your business plan.
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So, for example, have you seen the rise in the popularity of cremation? No. Popping off nowadays.
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Cremation is like uh So, you got pods. It's in right now. So, I saw this chart.
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I thought did not everyone get cremated?
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Basically, cremation um in the United States in like the last, I don't know, 20 years or something like that, has gone from like 10% of the population chooses cremation to over 50%.
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I think it's actually it's almost 60 or 70% now, which is like kind of insane.
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I had no idea this was true.
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Um Uh so, burial rates are going down and cremation rates are going way up.
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Um And you just see that one chart alone.
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You're like, okay, in 20 years this the the thing has shifted where it went from the super minority to the majority.
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All right, that alone tells me there's room for building interesting business in this space.
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It's a one chart business.
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And there's actually been several of these that I've like encountered over the years.
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Like, one chart uh one chart can tell you tell you a full story.
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Um and so, this is what this is one of them.
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And these guys have built a really good business on top of this.
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I can't I don't want to go to too much detail about their actual thing, but I just thought that was crazy.
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And this is like where like what you guys had with trends was like kind of a cool business because you guys would identify trends like this.
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You would say, "Okay, yeah, in the 19 in the 1960s cremation was 3%.
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And then in 1990s it grew to 17%.
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And right now in 2020 it's over 50%."
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Um if that's true, then what?
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What are all the second-order consequences of that?
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Who are the providers for this?
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Who does the B2B e-commerce of this?
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Who has the highest SEO ranking for this?
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And that website's actually going to be way more popular than than they realize because um this is growing over time.
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And so you take that one chart and you can actually run a whole business plan off of it. Wow.
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So do they um A, yes, you're right.
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And B, I'm looking at After. com.
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They I don't think they've raised money.
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They're they're they're Mormons.
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They're based out of Provo, Provo, Utah.
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Um uh this is this is wild.
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It How did you find this?
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Uh they reached out cuz I was I told people I was buying minority stakes in businesses and investing in businesses.
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And I think these guys were raising money or wanted to I think they were raising money.
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They not try to sell uh these they're they're I think they're trying to go big, fundraise.
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So um they reached out and that This definitely could be big. It's $2,500.
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Their TAM is everyone on Earth.
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We're all getting there eventually.
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Do But they don't own like uh uh an oven, do they?
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Like they just like It's the logistics.
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So basically what they do is they get the lead, they then book the kind of like the they they take the prepayment if you're going to do it ahead of time or um afterwards they they say, "Okay, we will be your provider."
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They can do like kind of like the full logistics.
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So basically, you know, it's like the Domino's pizza tracker, right?
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Pick up, drop off, delivery, like they do the whole thing.
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Um you know, and you can see kind of step by step where you're at in the process. Th- this is wild.
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So to your first point, uh our good buddy Jack Smith, you know, he started Vungle, sold it for $750 million.
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It was making a million dollars a day in revenue.
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He told me I was like, "Jack, why'd you start Vungle?"
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He's like, "Well, I just saw that mobile like like games on your phone were going to be really popular.
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I just saw like a chart."
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I think he said from Forrester research report.
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He's like, "I just saw this chart that says like, 'Oh, mobile games are like taking over the world.'"
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And he was like, "What can we make on top of that?"
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Like and that's why he came up with Vungle, which was ads in a game.
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And so he built an ad network.
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And it was the same thing where he's like, "Oh, that's a thing.
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Let's just get on that tidal wave and like just Like it don't matter which surfboard we pick, let's just pick a board and hopefully it will catch."
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And uh And that was like the same thing.
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Famously Jeff Bezos says this is how he decided to quit his job in uh I think he worked at some private equity firm uh that's famous and he quit his high-paying job and was like, "I'm going to go start I'm going to go start a uh internet company. Why internet company?"
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He goes, "I read a stat during my research for at the firm that the internet is growing uh 2,300% per year and that blew my mind and if that's true, then I'm going to go build an internet company."
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That line is a beautiful line.
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So we actually use that quote on the front page of Trends where he goes, "I started to He goes uh He goes, 'I saw a report that said the internet was growing by 2,300% per year.
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Nothing grows that fast unless it's in a Petri dish.'"
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Uh And he's like, "That's when I knew I had to start something and so I wrote a list of ideas of things that we could possibly sell on the internet and we just so happened to choose books." Yeah, exactly.
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They chose books cuz he was like, "Oh, I What is the advantage of the internet?
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You can have infinite selection cuz there's there's no shelf space limit, right?
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There's no physical shelf."
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So he's like, "What has wide selection?
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Okay, what also won't go bad? Can't be perishable.
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So it has to be durable."
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Um and then what all what is easy to ship?
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And so he's like, you know, those three and he's like, "There's market demand for it, cool. Books.
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Books will be the a where where we start."
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Um by the way, I just found a Steph Smith, so former, you know, writer of of trends, had a great um tweet about this, actually.
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So, I just pulled this up while while you were talking, while I was looking for the quote.
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And she said, "Uh famously, Jeff Bezos had this stat that made him quit his job.
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What are the generation-defining stats of today? Here's number one." Here's what she had.
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"The cost of mapping a genome has fallen by 100,000% over the last 15 years."
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So, it went from like $100 million to less than $1,000. Um, so mapping genomes.
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If that's true, if the cost is dropping like like a rock, what what what could be done on that?
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The second, um college tuition has outpaced how much people earn by 10x.
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Here's this one chart that uh that shows, you know, people's earnings over time and the cost of college over time.
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It's like cost of college going way up.
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That's a one-chart business right there.
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Cyber insurance loss ratios have increased for years, despite exponentially growing rates.
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Your loss ratio is basically how many claims you have.
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So, cybersecurity is becoming an exponential issue.
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The percentage of men under 30 not having sex has tripled in the last decade.
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So, before, um men not having sex was like, you know, 15% now it's 30% of men are are not having sex under the age of 30.
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Before the age of under the age of 30? So, you just made it. Nice. Um So, Yeah. Um are you?
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Uh a couple of the ones she had in here.
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It used to be that 8 hours of sleep was a normal on average, now people get 6. 8.
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Um so, the sleep industry and the like effects of of not sleeping are going to go going to go up.
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Um The electronic system in a car was 5% of car costs, now it's 50% of car costs.
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Um it's not just self-driving cars, there's cars are basically rolling computers.
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Dude, those are brilliant.
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You you you like I've I've definitely have started stuff because I've seen things like that.
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I remember sitting with one of the founders of Calm, this guy Alex 2, and we were at lunch and he just burst out laughing out of nowhere.
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And we were like, "What?"
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He goes, "I just realized that there must be like 10 million people a day dying on Facebook. He goes, "What?"
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He goes, like Facebook must have so much churn just due to death.
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He's like, "They probably have millions of users churn because they died every day." That's insane.
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And he He just starts He starts laughing.
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like, "Hey Alex, like you freaking autistic weirdo.
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Like He's just laughing so hard.
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And he was like, "Can you imagine millions of people churning cuz they died every day from your product?"
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He's like He's like, "What do they do with those profiles? How does that work?"
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And he's like, "What if What if there's a team of people just like the morgue at Facebook just cleaning up these dead profiles?"
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They should sign up for after. com.
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people died during lunch today than use our product."
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You know, like more people on Facebook died than have ever used our product.
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He's just laughing uncontrollably at this.
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You're like, "Yeah, that's hilarious, Alex. That's That's so funny."
12:31
So, this is my first time recording back in Austin.
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So, basically most summers between like May and October, I go to New York cuz I have family there and we like to stay there.
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This time we only did it for like 6 weeks and I'm back.
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And every time I come back, I get this immense amount of stress because typically when I go, I'll go for 3 months and I only bring a carry-on.
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So, I basically bring um a pair of Crocs, a pair of workout shoes, and one nice dress shoes.
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And then I bring like two workout shorts, two workout shirts, and I just clean them regularly.
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workout shorts, a box of Captain Crunch, and a switchblade.
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That's called summer ready.
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With the yo-yo like uh those little are the little pager things on my belt.
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Yeah, I got my Yo-Omega, my Crocs, and some bubble gum, and I'm good.
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Okay, so you So, why why do you say you're stressed out?
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What do you mean you're stressed stressed about what?
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Because All right, so I I bring nothing basically.
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I bring very little stuff and I rent a furnished place, and then I In my book bag, I bring two lights for the podcast, an extra cell phone that I hang up, and that's my camera, and this microphone.
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And I come back to my house, and I realize I've got a closet full of stuff.
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I've got two cars that I got to go and like, all right, I got to make sure that like the battery didn't die. I have a motorcycle.
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I got to make sure the battery didn't die, the tires are full.
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I've got this cold plunge where I got to go like make sure I filled it with water, and I got to clean it.
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I just have like Like there's just stuff.
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There's stuff to like maintain.
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And I saw a picture of our friend Sahil, and he had his baby Roman, a beautiful baby, but in the back he had literally three barrels. They were barrels. They were not buckets.
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They were barrels of toys.
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And I see all this stuff that I have now, and I'm stressed out about this stuff.
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I've got to go ranch an hour and a half away. I got to go check in on.
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I have all this stuff, and I'm freaking out about having kids, about all this other stuff I'm going to get.
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Sarah's making like a uh baby shower registry, and I see all this stuff, and it's so much stuff.
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It's freaking me out, man.
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I don't want any of it, and I'm wondering I don't think you freak out over this cuz I think you you probably have a lot of stuff.
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But I for one am freaking about it.
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Have you Do you you don't live lightly at all?
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Bro, living heavy might be the title of my autobiography.
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That I mean What do you What do you talk about living lightly? Um yeah, I indulge.
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Uh our kids have tons of crap. That's what kids do.
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They They bring a bunch of crap into your house. I got a dog. Dogs have some crap. I got some crap.
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There's just stuff everywhere.
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I literally have a ball pit and a tent and a fort and a like, you know, I I have so much stuff in every single room.
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If you saw this room I'm in right now, you would want to like pass out.
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But I got to say I'm not I'm not therapist, but I kind of feel like what you're having is actually um like fatherhood fear, and you're just redirecting it, misguiding it, and pretending that you're worried about the stuff.
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I think this is some underlying life's about to change, I'm about to become a parent, I'm about to lose my freedom, and I think it's expressing itself in some weird ways, like when you get hives because you're worried about your math test.
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Well, I get a little nervous, and you might be right, but also I get a little bit nervous just about all the stuff I have in general.
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So, I was talking to my buddy Dennis, and he's got he's a single guy, he's got three cars, and he's like, "Ah, I have all these cars, and like I got to go like run them to make sure because I haven't driven this thing in a month.
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I got to go like drive it around."
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I'm like, "Dude, it's like we all wanted this and then we all got it, and now we realize we just have to go take care of it."
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And like if I see someone with a Ferrari, I'm like, "Man, if you get a flat tire, that's like a $10,000 like repair to like get that to where you need to go, where you got to repair it, and you got to fix it and everything." Right.
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It just takes so much mental space.
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And so, what are you going to do?
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You're going to give it all away?
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You're just going to cry about it?
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What's the situation now?
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The situation is you have to be a conscious consumer, I think, which is like my woo-woo phrase of the week.
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But basically, I have to be really really careful.
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And so, I'm going through the baby registry, and I'm like, "If it doesn't like if it's not a book, we we shouldn't ask for it, and we should actually like basically say to people don't buy us anything."
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But like I'm just I'm trying to say or if you want something and they sell it Target, you have to walk there and get it other cuz I don't want all these boxes around the house.
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We got to like it's Isn't it crazy that we buy stuff, it comes from Amazon, then we have to pay 1-800-Got-Junk to come and we have give them $300 to go throw away all the stuff? You know what I mean? Like the boxes. It's It's It's weird.
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So, I'm just going to buy less stuff.
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That's basically what I'm going to do.
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I think Is that not the answer?
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you're on the right side of history.
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Um although I think with kids is a different game.
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Like for example, one of the reasons I got a lot of stuff It Saying you're on the right side of history is such like a woo-woo way of saying I agree.
17:04
Like It's It's like the right side of history is what like uh political people use.
17:10
You're on the right side of history. You know why it works?
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Cuz you're talking about the most minor personal pet peeve, so I got to elevate it by saying you're on the right side of history, making it feel a little more grand, okay? That's a little trick.
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You don't I I think it's weird that you don't experience this.
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I think a lot of people are experiencing this right now.
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And they're And like when you go to some people's homes, they they have a basement full of stuff, and I'm like, "Dude, a cluttered a cluttered room is a cluttered brain in my mind."
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I threw away I I hired a guy to come over, cleared my calendar, I hired a guy to come over, and he just took so much crap out of our house.
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Like we just removed everything out of the garage.
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He took a whole dining table, chairs, a rug that I didn't like, just took loads of stuff away, and it felt like, you know, the satisfaction when you like pop a zit or something like that. It felt like that. I popped my house's zit.
17:57
It does feel great when you get rid of stuff and you lighten the load, but what I would say is one of the reasons I had a lot of stuff I have a lot of stuff as a as a parent is because you end up I don't know, not everybody does this, there's better parents than us, but we bribe our kids a ton.
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And it turns out that like the thing you want more than like a neat and tidy home and foot light footprint is like 13 minutes of relaxation.
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And you know how you get 13 minutes of relaxation?
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You stop at freaking Dollar General or whatever, and you buy some crap that your kids going to be excited about playing for like 30 minutes.
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And like that's all you need.
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And you if you have that, all right, it's worth it.
18:37
We'll get rid of that later.
18:38
And so having stuff that your kids can play with is how you get to be on the internet.
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And if you don't want to be on the internet, cool.
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Keep your minimal house, and you can go and entertain your kids with your bare hands.
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But if you don't want to do that, you better buy the ball pit and the slide and the nugget and like all these little things so that they have stuff to do.
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you you've got the Target grocery cart, the Target checkout scanner.
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"Oh, let's play grocery store.
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You go shopping and buy everything, and I'll be sitting over here on my laptop."
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And then they do it, and another 9 minutes passes and I'm just 9 minutes closer to freedom till the day that they're old enough to go to school.
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And so you know that this is it's a really it's it's a tool for survival is what I'm trying to say.
19:22
Yeah, and the last thing on this is the reason I love going to New York is when I go is because I say like San Francisco and New York where I lived in San Francisco for 10 years, you're you're outside of San Francisco now, New York as well, it's a land of ones and 10s.
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Meaning everything about that place is either one out of 10 or it's a 10 out of 10.
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The beauty, the energy, the excitement, 10 out of 10.
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The crime, like seeing the homeless people do stuff, like like like feeling like it's a third world country sometimes, that's a one out of 10.
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Austin is a land of six and sevens.
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Everything's mostly pretty good mostly all the time.
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It's never going to blow you away with inspiration, but it's always going to be like oh, this is nice. I feel nice.
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Whereas, you know, you walk around the city of New York and like some of the time you're like, this makes me feel alive.
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You know, like this is like I just like inject this in my veins.
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And then the other times you're there you're like, I need space. I need quiet. Like I'm freaking out.
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You know what I'm saying?
20:16
And so what I'm trying to figure out is what's a good life?
20:19
Is it surrounding yourself with ones and 10s or is it surrounding yourself with seven all the time?
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And that's something that I that we're debating at the moment.
20:26
this is that's a big life question.
20:26
What do you think the answer is? I don't know yet.
20:29
I'm I don't have to make my decision yet, but I was wondering if you've ever thought about that.
20:34
Uh I've never thought about it as as well as you just put it.
20:38
What I would say is that anytime I learned this thing a long time ago, which is one choice is no choice. Right?
20:44
Cuz if you have if you only have one choice, that means you really actually have no choice. Yeah, just inertia.
20:48
Two bad choices just tells you you need a third choice.
20:51
And so I think what you're actually saying is you need a third choice.
20:55
Um like you know, the thing that worked for me was live in California but live in the burbs so you don't have the crime and and stuff like that.
21:03
You do lose a little bit on the energy and the like kind of ambition around you, but you can kind of hack around that a little bit.
21:10
Um so you get kind of the weather, the beauty, the the the sort of the the California sunshine, all that good stuff um without the the San the downtown San Francisco crime and um you know, recklessness, lawlessness.
21:24
I think what I'm going to do and we could wrap up here.
21:25
I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to we're going to rent a place for 1 year in Westport, Connecticut.
21:30
Never in a million years did I ever thought I'd say I'd live in Connecticut, but I met this woman who I'm going to talk about, Dafina Smith.
21:37
And she goes I like I met her through Hampton and she was like, "I know what you're going through.
21:41
I I went through the same thing.
21:42
We found this place called Westport, Connecticut, 60 minutes outside of New York City.
21:45
It sounds crazy, but come and visit me."
21:47
I went out there and I was like, "This is nice."
21:52
So I might do Westport, Connecticut, but I can't believe I'm might be a Connecticut person, but I think that's what we might do.
21:56
Speaking of which, do you want me to talk about her? Yeah. Tell me the story.
22:00
Uh I met this woman at a Hampton dinner, sat next to her.
22:02
Uh basically her name is Dafina Smith and her her store or her company's called Covet and Mane, so you can check it out.
22:09
It's a Covet like you want something, so c o v e t and then Mane like hair, m a n e. Are you on the website? Yeah.
22:16
There's just um Like you know, I don't want to go to Rick Rubin's party, but this party that I'm looking at right here looks amazing.
22:23
This is just like beautiful women running through the like just holding hands and running through the sand, which is just hilarious. Dude, so check this out.
22:30
So she started out in real estate just doing normal stuff, but her parents own a beauty supply uh like store, like a brick like a small store.
22:38
And so she starts helping them out and so she starts saying like, "Oh, let's create a website and we'll sell hair extensions online."
22:43
Um so you I I don't know if your wife uses hair extensions. My wife does sometimes.
22:48
Hair extensions basically it costs uh sometimes two or three thousand dollars for really fancy ones, sometimes cheaper five hundred to a thousand dollars and they basically like weave this they basically like sew extra hair into your hair and it makes it look really nice for a woman.
23:01
And she starts selling this online.
23:04
She's like, this doesn't really work that well the way I the way that I thought it was going to work.
23:07
So instead, what she does is she invests around a hundred to a hundred fifty thousand dollars into starting this business.
23:13
And what she does is she starts hollering at different um this is beauty stores.
23:18
And she creates like an invite system where she's like, look, we don't have that much inventory and we want to like onboard people effectively.
23:25
Uh so you just apply and then if we can like make this happen, we'll start sending you our product.
23:29
And our product is really high quality.
23:30
And then also we can start sending you some customers because we're going to do really good with the marketing.
23:34
We're going to send people who want our particular type of hair.
23:37
And hopefully when you go and get hair, you'll tell your friends, oh I got this brand of hair.
23:42
You can go to their website and see who deals their stuff.
23:45
Well, anyway, she only has six employees.
23:47
In her first year of business, they did four million dollars in revenue.
23:51
And they're in year four or five and they're doing tens of millions in revenue.
23:54
By year two, she was already in the tens of millions.
23:56
Uh year four, she's doing many tens of millions.
23:59
They have like two or three agents agencies who work for her, but only about six full-time people.
24:03
And if you go to their website, they're killing it.
24:09
And I was like, how what are you doing so well?
24:10
She's like, man, we host these like meetups where it'll be like tons of uh women who own these beauty supply companies.
24:17
So or like, you know, like literally a brick and mortar like beauty store.
24:22
And we do like these parties where we like teach them a little bit about how they run their business.
24:24
We'll have speakers who are like have best practices.
24:27
And then also like if they happen to want to apply to sell our product, we'll do that.
24:30
And that's like basically how they're getting most of their customers.
24:34
And it's a super fascinating company because A, it's just a simple ish website.
24:40
I mean, it's nothing like crazy fascinating.
24:42
Her the the hair is of high quality.
24:45
Which by the way, do you know how they get hair from this? No. Is it donations? It's real hair.
24:50
It's usually No, it's from it's from India.
24:52
So like there's I guess in certain parts of India it's like holy or something to shave your head or they go to China where you can pay people and they'll cut their hair and you buy their hair from them.
25:01
And so it's real hair and so it's like a process to get like a high-quality hair extension.
25:06
But she built this company on on on on this on this idea of like going after these hair salons and it's super fascinating because A, this is an industry that I knew nothing about and B, I actually think things like this could be pretty huge because it costs two or three thousand dollars to get this done in some cases.
25:21
So I forgot I actually went down this rabbit hole a long time ago because a guy I did dinner with once uh in when I used to host these mastermind dinners um worked at this company called Maven.
25:30
Did you ever hear about this company?
25:33
Yeah, they they they raised too much money I think.
25:35
They raised like thirty million dollars from Andreessen Horowitz and Serena Williams and Jimmy Iovine like you know every cool person you can imagine.
25:43
And um so they raised all this money and this guy Taylor came to dinner and he was I think like the COO or something like that.
25:51
They're based in Oakland.
25:53
And he was telling us about this.
25:53
He was like uh he's you know basically one guy explaining to like five other guys who've never like done hair extensions about how crazy this business is and he's like yeah like you have these stylists.
26:05
The stylists are basically like you know these kind of like independent contractors.
26:09
People follow them from like salon to salon like wherever they're working they're trying to book them and then the stylist has to go and procure the actual hair.
26:16
And so they go to like these warehouses or these wholesalers to go buy the actual hair.
26:23
And then they get the hair from India and I remember going on a YouTube rabbit hole of like how they get the hair from villages in like India or China or where places like this cuz that's where the bulk of the hair gets imported from and how they get paid you know whatever dollars for for their hair and it's like kind of a controversial thing about like you know is this like is it exploitative?
26:44
There's like rumors of like people being forced to do it which is not great.
26:48
Um and so there's all all kinds of stuff in the supply chain about ethically sourcing the hair.
26:55
And there's some great videos on YouTube about this.
26:56
If you're ever curious, I I you know, I recommend this is like a fun fun rabbit hole to go down.
26:59
Um, I don't know what happened with Mavin because I think they raised a lot of money.
27:06
And I haven't heard about them in a long time.
27:08
And um, it looks like they raised 40 million more to go into Walmart.
27:15
I mean, it looks like they're still going to million in total.
27:19
They raised 76 million dollars. A lot. I don't know why.
27:21
And I no no offense to to Taylor. No no offense to Taylor.
27:25
I hope they hope they succeed.
27:26
But there's something about companies with this pattern of like um, cool idea, usually underrepresented founder going after space that that, you know, white tech startups ignore, then like raises mega round from celebrity investors.
27:46
And then you kind of don't hear about the fruit like maybe they raised too much money, like too much money can break companies.
27:50
This happened with like with that Tristan Walker's company like Walker and whatever. Walker Brands.
27:57
They made like a razor for black men to shave their head, I think.
28:01
Uh, yeah, or their beard or whatever.
28:02
And I I think that was a great idea.
28:02
Um, that was a great like model.
28:05
But when you raise that much money, it puts so much growth pressure on the business it can sometimes break it.
28:10
And so I hope that this didn't break it, but um, I've just seen this happen several times now.
28:16
Start to start to notice a little bit of a pattern.
28:18
Yeah, uh, it says in the press release that they have they've done It says they did 120 million in revenue, but they phrase it in a way where I think that means the company's lifespan.
28:26
They've done 120 million in revenue. But yeah, it's stupid.
28:31
I think that your cap table's like one of the very few things in business that is an irreversible decision.
28:35
It's very challenging to make up for that mistake.
28:37
And so this is why this woman uh, Defina she like when I met her, I was like I started talking to her.
28:43
I'm like, are you on social media?
28:45
She's like a little bit, but I haven't decided if I actually want to go all in on it.
28:47
And I was like, you're If you Google this lady, you'll see her name's Dafina Smith.
28:51
I'm like, you you could be You know, you could be like a huge deal if you wanted to.
28:54
Like you What What do the kids say? You got the rizz. She's got the rizz.
28:58
She's like this like very charismatic, very pretty, tall, like composed.
29:04
Like when I see her talk, I'm like, "Oh man, you're like a a proper CEO.
29:08
Like you got the it factor."
29:11
Uh and she's like She's like, "I don't know if I actually want to be famous or I don't know if I actually want to go hard that way."
29:16
Where I'm like, "Well, whenever you want to, I I think you'll kill it."
29:19
And so I saw when she started telling me her story, I had no idea that this stuff could be this big.
29:23
And she told me some of the numbers behind it, and I was like flabbergasted at this type of business. Uh yeah, that's crazy.
29:29
Um so So her model is this kind of like direct-to-stylist model.
29:33
There's a few other businesses that are like this.
29:36
Have you heard of StyleSeat? Yeah, I like StyleSeat.
29:38
Uh my wife used it for a little while.
29:40
What What exactly is it though?
29:42
There was a period of time where like or this happens a lot in business where there's a period of time where one idea like when an idea works, it can work across like a couple of verticals.
29:49
Not all verticals, but a couple of verticals.
29:52
And if you figure it out, it makes sense.
29:53
So there was a time when like uh Mindbody Online was getting uh popular.
29:56
It's basically like this idea of sort of like directly booking online booking of yoga classes, online booking of Pilates classes.
30:05
And then the fact that there there was like this rise of the instructor, like the celebrity instructor.
30:09
This happens with Peloton, it happened with yoga, it happened with Pilates.
30:12
There's like people started There People realized that you you're not coming for the venue, you're coming for the specific instructor.
30:19
And the same thing is true the way, that that Mindbody company So Mindbody was software for yoga classes originally.
30:25
I think they went public.
30:25
I think it's like a wildly Yeah, it's like a billion-dollar company.
30:29
Um and with very like old-school software.
30:31
Like it wasn't like slick, new, fresh, blah blah blah.
30:33
Um but people started to realize that like same thing it was true for stylists.
30:40
Like you don't go to the hair So some people go to the local you know like me my selection of where I'm getting my haircut is like what is the closest place to me in that moment that I have 30 minutes right like I'm going there.
30:51
Yeah yeah which Great Clips is available at the moment who's got a big enough bowl to put on their head.
30:56
I just got a haircut in LA I went to this fancy LA place cuz I was this the nearest place I went in and I sat down and then I he started cutting my hair he said what do you want blah blah blah I was like I don't know can you cut my hair like the standard dude cut.
31:08
I don't even know what it's called and then he's like okay I think I know what you're talking about he starts and I go He think?
31:17
I go I was like I was like oh shoot cuz he was going so slow he was like cutting every individual hair with the scissors to like make it awesome.
31:24
And I go actually different instructions can you give me the best haircut you can in 15 minutes? He's like what?
31:31
And I was like yeah I only want to be here for like 15 minutes can you just do your best inside a 15 minute time slot.
31:40
And he was like I don't know if I should be offended or like this is exciting and he was just like all right 15 minutes?
31:46
He's like can you put a timer on?
31:48
I go yeah and I put a timer on and then this guy like cut the out of my hair for 15 minutes and I was like wherever you're at when you're done let's just call it.
31:55
He's like you can come back later.
31:56
He's like you can come back later today man I I'll finish and I was Like it's hair it'll it'll be it'll be it'll be back where it is in five days.
32:05
He's like he's like I won't charge you I was like you couldn't pay me to come back you know I'm done I don't want to spend more time on my hair.
32:12
Dude I go to these Orthodox Jewish guys in Brooklyn I go to these I go to these Jewish guys in Brooklyn and I love them because it's all about efficiency and then I'll end up just sitting down at the chair anyway just be like tell me about Uzbekistan I want to hear us some stories but like I
32:25
want a place where they're just going to call me Bob and there's going to be a a handwritten sign that's hopefully misspelled that says haircut $28 beard trim $8 like that's what I want like you you better have Scotch tape in that drawer of yours like otherwise I'm out. If you take credit cards, I'm out.
32:41
If you take credit cards, I'm out. Yeah.
32:44
So, um anyways, I don't know how I got on that.
32:47
Anyway, StyleSeat made it easy to book a stylist and I think they got valued at one point like at a nearly a billion dollars.
32:53
And Melody, the the woman who's been running it, she's been doing this for like a decade now.
32:55
Um I'm really curious to see how that one that would plays out.
32:59
She also raised a bunch of money and and kind of was going for it.
33:02
But this this hair salon barber thing is kind of big.
33:06
Like I don't know if you've seen Squire.
33:08
That's another billion-dollar company in this space. What's Squire?
33:12
Squire is the same thing for barber shops.
33:13
So, it's basically like barber shop booking software.
33:15
Um so, you know, it's a it's an app that lets you book you know, book your barber mobile.
33:23
Barbers were always like, you know, pick up the phone.
33:24
They're cutting someone's hair.
33:25
They pick up the cordless phone.
33:27
They're like, "Yeah, come on in. Uh what's your name?"
33:28
And they're like, can't even write it down cuz they're cutting someone's hair at the same time.
33:32
So, Squire just kind of like streamlined that process and I think they might do payments as well.
33:35
Um so, like pe- people providing software to these brick-and-mortar um like small businesses is really it's a really really hard niche.
33:46
But when you if you can do it, if you can get the product product market fit, the scale is really big cuz there is a lot of these small frag- like it's a giant fragmented market.
33:54
And there's so many of them that if you can actually figure out a product that works and a sales model that works, which is the two hard things, um these things can be a lot bigger than they sound because it sounds like, "Oh, who software for hair stylists? Who cares?"
34:08
Um well, it turns out it's actually like there's a lot of them.
34:10
Yeah, and I would never want to work in that industry cuz I think it's it does seem impossibly hard.
34:14
But uh i- if you're into it, it can work.
34:22
Our software is the worst.
34:22
Have you heard of HubSpot?
34:24
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
34:30
Think I love our new CRM.
34:30
Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better.
34:37
Let me give you a blue-collar side hustle.
34:38
So, uh we haven't had one of these blue-collar side hustles in a while, so uh we're bringing it back.
34:44
But you like you like took one flight and you were around blue-collar people and you got inspired.
34:48
I left my house and I, you know, I was around somebody and who listens to podcast, so uh shout out to Bricia.
34:52
She uh owns this amazing restaurant in LA.
34:58
She I don't know if you know this.
34:58
So, she listens to the pod and she's like, "Every time you guys shout out, you're like, 'Four female listeners.'
35:01
I'm like, 'Yeah, that's me. Woohoo.'"
35:04
Like, you know, I feel so good.
35:05
And then Dude, a lot of women are offended by that.
35:09
I don't say that anymore.
35:10
I still say it cuz I say it with with endearment.
35:12
Um you know, lean I lean into the joke.
35:15
Um the problem is that the joke's not that funny, so you know, it it may not be the right thing to lean into, but but I'm I'm committed.
35:21
Um so, anyways, I go to her she has this restaurant in LA. How'd you meet her?
35:26
She had taken my power writing course and um she had volunteered to like I do this thing where I'm like, "Okay, show me your website."
35:32
and we do like a live teardown of it.
35:34
And so, we had done one of her website uh cuz she sells these like michelada like drink things.
35:40
Um like this kind of like mobile or sorry, this little like uh she has like her restaurant, but then she has like this e-commerce side of her business, too. So, anyways, Okay. I done a teardown of it.
35:49
Didn't pay much attention to it after the fact, but Ben, um business partner Ben, keeps in touch with anybody that I meet.
35:55
He's just like somehow has tabs on everybody and he's like, "Yo, she's blowing up in LA."
35:59
I'm like, "What what do you mean?"
36:01
He's like, "She's got this restaurant. Um she's blowing up.
36:04
Like, the restaurant's getting really popular.
36:05
Her brand is getting really popular.
36:07
She's got a podcast that's getting kind of popular."
36:10
Um and he's like, "Yeah, she's What's her full name?
36:11
Let's get We'll give her a proper shout out. What's her full name? Bricia Lopez.
36:15
Okay, so uh she and she's got a cookbook.
36:18
Like, she's kind of like doing her thing.
36:19
She's got a lot of a lot of stuff going, which I think is pretty fun.
36:23
She's got a book called Asada, The Art of Mexican Style Grilling by Bricia Lopez.
36:26
Um I met her and her brother.
36:28
So anyways, so she invites us, she's like, "Hey, you're you're in LA, you're having meetings anyways.
36:31
Come to our restaurant and like, you know, or whatever."
36:34
We we come to her restaurant, she serves us this amazing meal.
36:36
You know we talk about restaurant owner owner energy? She had it.
36:39
She literally has restaurant owner energy.
36:42
Like we walked in, we're in her place, she's like, "Sit down."
36:45
Food just starts appearing.
36:47
We're not ordering anything.
36:49
She's literally like making my plate by hand.
36:51
She's like She's like feeding me like I'm a baby. She's like, "Try this." Was that free? Did you have to pay?
36:56
I wish I could have paid.
36:56
She's like, "Your money's no good here."
36:58
And so the restaurant owner energy was flowing. I loved it.
37:04
Uh I literally when we walked out, our buddy was like, "Wow, is that what it's like to own a restaurant?"
37:07
I I And then our other friend was like, "This is how every entrepreneur makes the mistake of owning a restaurant."
37:12
Cuz they experienced the 1% amazing feeling when you host people at your restaurant and not the 99% of actually, you know, running a hard restaurant.
37:21
So she um Anyways, we're we're hanging out.
37:23
She's like, "I love the pod."
37:24
She's like, "I love the Blue Collar Side Hustles."
37:26
I was like, "Oh yeah, I haven't done that in a while."
37:28
She goes, "I got one for you." I go, "What is it?"
37:29
She goes, "The lice lady."
37:33
I was like, "The lice lady?
37:33
What are you What are you talking about?"
37:35
And so she goes She goes, "Dude, uh she's like, I have kids that are in school and um if you ever if anybody in class gets lice, everybody has to get checked for lice.
37:47
And not just not just all the kids, like your whole family basically has to get checked for lice."
37:52
And she's like, I'm thinking of like the pigeon lady in the park who has pigeons all over the place.
37:56
Is this I got I was thinking like it's a woman that just has lice all over, like hanging on her shoulders, and she feeds them crackers?
38:02
to go to like one of these, I don't know, like licetreatmentla. com.
38:07
It's a mobile lice testing service.
38:07
So what she's what she said was she goes, "Yeah, basically somebody inevitably gets lice in school.
38:14
Everybody then has to get tested before you you can't come back until everybody gets tested clean, certified clean."
38:19
So then you can either go and do it like or if you want them to come to you cuz it's time-consuming to like go and book an appointment somewhere.
38:27
You can basically there's a lice lady you can just text in LA.
38:28
You text her and she's like, "Cool, I'll come out there.
38:31
It's 300 bucks for me to come out.
38:33
I'll test you and your whole family, plus like I don't know, 50 bucks a pop or something like that, $100 for like your certificates."
38:39
And it's basically like she makes, you know, like whatever, 500, 600 dollars for doing this like test for the whole family to get them all cleared.
38:47
And she serves like these like eight districts in LA and it's like that's her territory.
38:50
And there's like another lady out on the East side and she serves her territory.
38:54
And they don't cross paths otherwise there's a bit of a showdown.
38:57
And so, um she's like, "Yeah, this lady's making tens of thousands of dollars a month just booked she's booked out with these lice inspections and lice treatments." And I was like, "Wow." This is awesome.
39:09
I mean, who would have ever who would have ever thought?
39:10
Uh you know, like This is amazing.
39:13
Cuz you know, you she comes over, she's got to check four or five people in your house and it's a whole it's a whole deal.
39:19
Dude, and a lot of them have like pretty cute branding.
39:21
This one's called the licelifters. com.
39:24
And then there's like hairhelpers. com, the hairangels. com.
39:28
And they're all just made on like pretty simple WordPress sites.
39:30
If you go to similarweb, they get great they're getting traffic and then uh they've like just crushed it on the Google review and the Yelp review.
39:39
And some of them have like I'm at licelifters.
39:41
com, they have locations in Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, uh New Jersey.
39:46
It's almost like a like a franchise.
39:49
This is super fascinating.
39:51
This is really fascinating. right?
39:52
Like it's uh you know, lice busters. Here we go, you know? We'll come get you. Um it's crazy.
39:57
Yeah, they they this is like a little model that I think works locally.
40:01
If it works locally, you could do it in a bunch of locations.
40:03
If you do it in a bunch of locations, you could even franchise it out or or go nationwide if you if you really got aggressive with it.
40:08
So, I kind of love this this little uh this little blue collar side hustle.
40:12
And it's one of these like hidden in plain sight niches, right?
40:17
Doesn't take a genius to uh to pull this thing off.
40:20
Dude, if you go to licebustersusa.
40:20
com, the one you're on, I mean I made that up, by the way.
40:23
Is there actually a Lice Busters?
40:25
just Googled Lice Busters. Lice Lice Busters USA.
40:27
com, they have a couple dozen locations.
40:31
Uh no, this is a really super fascinating thing. Um Yeah, this is cool.
40:37
How much does it cost to have a Lice Buster come to your school?
40:39
I bet you it's like a thousand dollars for the day or something. None of Yeah, exactly.
40:43
None of them do like clear pricing on their website, which is how you know it's kind of a rip.
40:48
Um but like, you know, they got you in a hard spot, too, right? It's like a locksmith.
40:51
All right, they come over.
40:53
They're like, "Well, hm uh this is a 1988.
40:55
It's going to be an extra five hundred dollars."
40:58
You're like, "Well, am I really going to tell you to go home, call another locksmith to price compare?" Like, impossible, right?
41:04
Like, no one no one has more power on Earth than a locksmith when they're at your house.
41:10
Like, it is over at that point.
41:12
know you know that's like a huge scam, right?
41:15
Have you ever read about locksmiths?
41:15
So, I knew this guy from Israel who ran one of these things, and he was like, "If you Google Locksmith Nashville, he's like, there's like eight of the ten listings on Google.
41:24
They're all different branding. I own all of them.
41:28
And I basically like I have like indentured servants.
41:30
So, I got like my friends who come in from Israel.
41:32
I say, "You have to work for me for two years."
41:35
And he basically sends them leads.
41:35
And the name of the game is you go to the person's house, you tell them it's two hundred dollars on the phone, you actually charge them four hundred dollars.
41:42
And it's like known for being one of the most shady things there is.
41:45
It's the locksmith industry.
41:45
Have you not like ever heard about that?
41:48
Never heard Never met an honest locksmith.
41:49
Uh guy comes to my house.
41:52
He's like, "Ah, you know, first he takes it forever."
41:55
And it's like basically takes so long that you're like, "By the time this gets here, you're already worn out."
41:58
It's like a negotiation without them even being there.
42:02
And then it's too late to call somebody else.
42:04
You just want to get into your damn car or your house.
42:05
And then they show up and they're like, "Uh this is going to be trickier cuz the um, the this is a house.
42:13
And we're like, yeah, of course it's a house.
42:15
It's like, yeah, it's got studs.
42:16
So, we're just going to be I have a stud fee.
42:18
And I'm like, stud fee, what are you talking about, bro?
42:22
And he's like, oh, like, there's oxygen in the air.
42:24
I'm going to have to charge you for that.
42:28
And oh, it's made out of wood?
42:29
And literally what happened the last locksmith, the guy came and he tried to charge us $600.
42:34
And then we were like, no way.
42:34
Just out of principle, no way.
42:38
You stand here, I'm going to break this door down with my shoulder and get it repaired for double. What's he like?
42:42
All right, fine, 100 bucks.
42:44
No, he stood there and he watched us break the door down with our shoulder.
42:49
And then we paid $1200 to get the door repaired.
42:51
Um, I got to tell you, never felt more satisfied paying the $1200 cuz that sheet didn't get my money.
42:59
What did he say when you smashed the door down?
43:00
Very alpha of you, by the way.
43:03
Well, dude, imagine the intent the imagine the moment of anticipation when I'm about to charge.
43:09
And I've only ever seen this in movies.
43:10
I have no idea how much force this is going to take.
43:14
And if this fails, if I get slammed into this and it doesn't break, I hurt my shoulder and fall down.
43:21
The absolute worst case scenario, now I got to pay this guy and I got to go to Kaiser.
43:24
Instead, I was like, I must get through this wall.
43:27
And like, you know, like moms can lift cars when their children are in need?
43:31
Like, my ego was trapped and I had to break this door down.
43:36
There was no other option.
43:36
And of course, I came through in the clutch.
43:40
Um, so you know, it it it ended up working out after two or three solid bangs.
43:43
The the key was I didn't fully commit to the first one. I gave it like a tester.
43:47
Just kind of like, oh, let me just Yeah, I'm going to do it over here on the side.
43:51
And like, can we get to the edge? No, the middle.
43:52
Middle's the way to go, right?
43:54
Like, where's the point of weakness?
43:57
I could see you standing there like licking your finger to see which way which way the wind's blowing.
44:00
Like, you're just like calculating.
44:02
Like you got a piece of chalk and you're like doing a little math to figure out like where the best like point of entry is.
44:08
Yeah, just doing things to stall.
44:08
I just like took my shoes off. Like I don't know why.
44:12
Like I was just like let me just hold on.
44:14
And I was just thinking like okay, what am I going to do to get this door down?
44:17
And you like warm up your hands?
44:19
know why I needed to perform for this guy.
44:20
Like I could have just told him to leave and done it in my privacy, but I had told him like that's a rip-off.
44:23
I'm going to break this door down.
44:26
All right, so let me tell you um This is actually a good segue to a topic I wanted to talk to you about.
44:31
I didn't know how we would work this in, but it worked out perfectly. Got him.
44:36
this phrase that I love, which was um I'm looking for that I'm looking for a AAA Locksmith. So AAA Locksmith. What's a AAA Locksmith?
44:45
So back in the day when they had the phone pages, people would the yellow pages, people would go to like find a service like Locksmith.
44:51
And um It's like doing four four-minute abs instead of seven-minute abs, you know, you got to Yeah, exactly.
44:56
You could differentiate on many things.
44:58
You could say, "We're a Locksmith uh company. We're honest.
44:59
We have We have good pricing.
45:02
We are like Nobody knows that."
45:04
They're just looking in the yellow pages.
45:05
They don't know how to find you find out anything more about you.
45:09
They're just going to go based on which Locksmith stands out.
45:11
Guess who stands out the most? The one at the top.
45:14
And so I call it the trip AAA Locksmith idea because people started to game the system.
45:20
They're like, "Oh, instead of calling themselves Smith's Locksmiths like then they're far down the list."
45:24
They would call themselves A Locksmith.
45:25
And then some other guy was like, "No, no, no.
45:28
We're double A Locksmith." So AA Locksmith.
45:30
They would show up first in the like the list.
45:32
Some other guy comes in and he's like, "No, no, no. I'm AAA Locksmith. Triple A Locksmith."
45:35
Because they're going to be first on the list.
45:38
Because actually that's all that matters.
45:39
First on list going to get 80% of the the dials.
45:42
And so I love this this story because it showed me like you want somebody who like I always said when we were hiring engineers, I want to hire AAA Locksmiths.
45:50
Which is somebody who could do the job on the engineering side, but they have just enough of their mind just 10 15% of their mind is going to think about hey, how do I get more customers?
46:00
Oh, if I just put two A's in front of my name, I'll be at the top of the list. Nope, I'll do that.
46:04
That that that immigrant it's like that immigrant hustle. Yeah, exactly.
46:07
So, I want the engineer that's got just enough of that that that little that moment of micro hustle where they just figure out, oh, this little thing is going to help me you know, help me get a little bit further in life.
46:17
So, I was thinking about these micro hustles cuz again, I left the house, start to observe things, start to notice how broken some industries are. So, I'm at a dinner.
46:28
How long were you gone for? Five days. An eternity. Okay.
46:31
Um I go to dinner and uh sitting with some friends and the this happened five times.
46:37
So, we went to dinner every single night while we were out while I was in LA.
46:40
Every single night the same thing happened at dinner. We eat.
46:44
At the end, waiter comes up and he says, um can I get you guys a dessert menu? Dessert? Anybody want dessert? Dessert?
46:54
And then, you know, his voice is going up like a hot air balloon and then everybody at the table awkwardly looks around.
47:02
I You want Did you want any Did you want dessert? I'm good. I'm good.
47:06
Dude, that's a That's a That's a rookie waiter move.
47:08
You You set the You just set it down.
47:10
Even if you just set it down, it's the same sort of thing.
47:11
So, I was like I said, okay, what's the micro And and so, I was thinking about it.
47:15
I was like, what's the micro hustle move here?
47:17
If I'm a waiter, so I'm looking for these moments where you cuz I meet a lot of people that are like love the pod.
47:23
Um yeah, I want to do my own thing someday, but the currently I just have this job.
47:28
And like the gap between the current job and running their own successful company feels large in their mind.
47:35
And here's the way to shrink that gap.
47:38
Well, the real way to shrink the gap is just do it, but let's say you're you're not just doing it yet.
47:43
Yeah, teach me about some teach me about some shrinkage. Let's go. Yeah, you're an expert.
47:46
Maybe you should actually explain this. Yeah.
47:52
Whoa, preaching to the choir here.
47:52
So, So, I'm like, how do you to think like a business owner, think like a little bit of an of a hustler when you're in your job.
48:02
Find the moments where you can hustle inside inside your job.
48:06
And I'm not talking about pitching your boss an idea.
48:08
I'm talking about just going rogue and making some happen.
48:11
Learning how to be a triple A locksmith, how to use human psychology to your advantage.
48:14
So, the last dinner, I see this guy and this guy's a little more clever.
48:22
One guy, he goes he takes instead of saying "Dessert menus? Anybody want dessert?
48:27
Should I bring a dessert menu?"
48:29
Um and instead of just putting down dessert menu and then hoping for the best, this guy comes to me at the side of the table he goes, um he goes he goes I'll he goes I'll leave this with you to order dessert for the table. Oh.
48:41
Oh, That was smooth as a mother and I was like, "Wow, like I guess I am the the head of the table, though the man of the house.
48:49
I do need to provide for my my my my friends here, you know?
48:52
I do need to to give them an experience.
48:54
And he just whispered it to me like, "This is our our little secret.
48:57
You just tell me what you tell me what you want.
48:59
We'll we'll surprise them."
49:00
So, I was like, "That was a smooth move."
49:01
I And I started thinking, "What could go even further?"
49:02
And so, I started everywhere I was going I started brainstorming these little micro hustle moments.
49:07
So, then even with this dessert thing, I said, "What would make it more fun?"
49:10
I said, "What if what if they actually set down a thing?
49:11
Cuz most people, when it comes to dessert, they it looks like there's two answers, yes or no.
49:20
But there's actually a third answer.
49:20
Do you know the third answer when it comes to dessert? No, what?
49:24
I'll have some if you want some.
49:24
That's actually where everybody lands.
49:26
It's like, "Yeah, I'll I'll do one if you're doing one." Right?
49:30
Like, this is how people feel with things.
49:31
And so, I I thought somebody should actually just set down a little thing in front of everybody and say, "All right, here's a restaurant at the end of the meal, there's three little buttons I can put in front of you.
49:40
Button number one, no thanks, I'm fine.
49:42
Button number two, hell yeah.
49:45
Button number three, I'll have one if everyone else wants one.
49:48
And uh on three, we do our reveal.
49:50
We make it fun, you do the reveal.
49:52
If anybody says yes and anybody says I'll have it if everyone else is having it, say no more.
49:59
Would you guys like the brownies or the truffles?
50:00
Oh, okay, truffles, yeah, let's go.
50:02
And you could get I think you could add on like $40 to every ticket if you just did it this way.
50:08
Dude, I love I love those games like that.
50:11
It's like it's like In-N-Out secret menu. Yes. You know what I mean?
50:14
Like I love these games at restaurants.
50:16
That's my favorite thing.
50:18
a lot of life is just played in your head.
50:19
And if you're just sitting somewhere, the challenge I give everybody is how do you play a little game in your head today where you say, all right, let me add a little showmanship.
50:28
Let me add a little restaurant owner energy to what I'm doing right now.
50:32
Let me add a little psychology to what I'm doing right now.
50:36
And if you do that every day, you become a different person.
50:38
Like I I fully believe this.
50:39
You literally become a different person and you have more fun versus just going through the motions as you were before.
50:45
So, this is my little rant on finding that little micro hustle and being the guy who figures out how to do the dessert menu in a way that makes everybody feel good and actually gets you gets everyone eating dessert.
50:56
Cuz there's a version of that for your job, whatever your job is.
51:00
The mini rizz, a little mini rizz.
51:02
You did this at the Hustle.
51:02
We talked about when you did the everybody gets $100, let's go to Costco and let's see who gets the best thing, right?
51:09
Like Yeah, it was the it was the best.
51:10
Yeah, that was our team-building activity was we had I think we had 12 employees.
51:13
We gave everyone 50 bucks.
51:15
We said you can team up, you can do it on your own, but at the end we're going to vote we're going to have three character uh three awards, which is most useful gift, your favorite gift, and the most tasty gift.
51:26
And you have to we try to win one of those awards.
51:29
Yeah, and I love these stories of people who just take the ordinary and uh and sort of like add a little extra to make it extraordinary.
51:35
All right, anyways, that's my rant.
51:37
Who Who are you at dinner with?
51:38
Or who'd you go to LA with?
51:39
And did you Did anything amazing happen?
51:42
so many amazing things happened.
51:42
I wanted to actually write my notes and send them to you so that then we could do an episode just breaking the whole thing down cuz there was so much so much that you recognized a lot.
51:50
You get recognized Not at all actually. Really?
51:55
LA's got real actual famous people so um Maybe people don't know that you're like 6'1.
52:00
I think cuz a lot of people are I think would be surprised at how tall you are.
52:04
When I go to LA, I mean I I get stopped a dozen times a day.
52:06
I think I maybe I just stick out more than you do maybe. It could be. I'm shocked by that.
52:11
Or you're just super unapproachable which I could see that as well.
52:15
Yeah, I think that's actually more of it.
52:18
I must have just like you know whatever resting face or something because yeah nobody's really coming up to me that much.
52:23
It happens actually here in the Bay Area but when I was in LA I don't think it happened one time so that was good.
52:27
Uh You know it's it's always good to get back to your roots as I say. You're not from LA.
52:34
No, I mean like my humble non-famous roots.
52:39
Where who'd you go you went with Ben probably Suli anyone else?
52:42
Uh no, it was just me and Ben went and then Suli lives down there so he joined us for half the trip.
52:48
Well, I want to hear all about it so I guess we'll have to wait.
52:52
Uh I got some other quick ones.
52:52
I want to I want to hit hit you with some some quick hitters.
52:55
So this is I'm going to call this my weird AI tool of the week.
53:00
I don't know if this is going to be a recurring segment but it might be cuz there's a lot of weird AI tools. So click this link.
53:05
There's a company right now in YC that is called Round Table roundtable. ai.
53:11
And I saw this post on Hacker News.
53:14
Um it wasn't the most popular post but I found it and I thought it was fascinating.
53:17
So this guy goes Cuz that's what you do. That's what you do.
53:19
You got to find you find the good Exactly.
53:21
So I was I was I was deep in the bag and I found something.
53:23
So um they just posted this Loom video that says, "Hey, check this out. We are Round Table.
53:29
We use AI to simulate surveys."
53:32
And they go Um they go "You know research user research and market research is really important but it's expensive, takes time to design and analyze and run the run the research. So, here's what we do.
53:43
We use AI to simulate a survey. I was like, what?
53:49
And they go, "Yeah, basically LL like LLM's, the new tech that's behind like Chat GPT, is great at um simulating what something something like a human would say."
54:00
And these guys just took it to the nth degree.
54:02
So, they go, "You write a survey with a bunch of questions.
54:04
You define your audience.
54:06
Like, I want people who are um 45 years old or older, right?
54:11
And uh so, you could say um for example, "Are you interested in buying an e-bike?"
54:17
Um and it would say, "Yes."
54:17
is answered 28% of the time.
54:21
But if you narrow it down, you say, "Let me filter only people who own a Tesla." Now, "Yes." is 52% of the time.
54:27
And uh you know, for example, if you say um "Where did Where did you learn to code?"
54:32
Um Okay, you can ask that question.
54:33
People will say one thing.
54:34
But if you say, "How old are you?"
54:36
If you say only 45 years old or older, then everybody will say books.
54:39
If you say younger than 45, 70 76% of people say online.
54:43
Um And so, you know, it's kind of crazy that basically like And you could say, "What What's the most important factor for you choosing an airline to fly?"
54:52
And it and like 5% of people will say legroom.
54:53
But if you filter it, say people who are 6 ft or taller, it jumps to 20% of people saying legroom.
54:59
And so, I saw this and I was like, "What the hell?
55:02
Like, does this defeat the purpose of the survey?
55:04
Like, you're going to just going to make up the answer and give it to me?"
55:08
But then I guess humans are actually a lot more predictable than we think.
55:10
And this thing is trained on like the entire internet's data set.
55:15
And I just thought this was remarkable.
55:17
And I couldn't believe like, is this actually going to be the case that you can actually just AI could just fake answer your surveys and tell you do your user research for you?
55:25
Doesn't that sound absolutely bizarre?
55:29
So, it's not there yet because one person he goes, "Hey, look. I had I I ran a survey.
55:34
I I 'Was the moon landing fake? Option A, yes. Option B, moon."
55:41
94% of people voted moon.
55:44
Uh and but that said, uh I actually do think the same results would actually come if you actually asked people that exact same question.
55:54
Like most people would be like, "Oh, it's not lamp. You know what I mean?
55:57
Like, "Oh, I think I know what you're saying.
55:58
You're you're saying you meant to put yes there."
55:59
Uh so but but this is like a really thought-provoking idea.
56:06
Yeah, and honestly I haven't even spent enough time like actually figuring out like is this literally a joke or is this like the next big thing?
56:14
And that's kind of interesting.
56:16
Anytime you get something that's like either it's satire.
56:17
This was actually started by The Onion. Or it's genius.
56:25
It's like you driving around being like, "Ah, it. I'll be a taxi."
56:26
Did I ever tell you about the time that I ran um the disco way, that's not how Uber started.
56:31
Just in case you didn't know.
56:35
It wasn't one man just deciding, "I'll be a taxi."
56:39
But did I tell you that I used to do that? No.
56:42
So one for two two New Years in a row, my buddy Joe and I, we rented a Zipcar minivan and we wore If If you Google this, you'll see photos of me doing this.
56:55
We wore fake afros and disco clothes. I'll try to find it.
56:57
But we had the It was called the Disco Frisco Taxi.
57:03
And we would drive around uh If you look up Disco Frisco Taxi, you'll see my name, you'll see Disco Taxi.
57:07
And we would drive around being like, "Hey guys, where you going?
57:11
You want to go to this place? All right, cool. How about uh 30 bucks?"
57:14
And they would say, "All right, cool." They would get in.
57:16
They'd be like, "All right, you entered in the Disco Frisco Taxi. Spin the wheel.
57:19
You can win a juice box Brought to you by the makers of the touchy-feely wheelie, which is what the thing I do MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY.
57:32
YEAH, IT'S LIKE ALL RIGHT, YOUR DESTINATION IS my home.
57:36
All right, yeah, let's go.
57:41
So you basically made your own like cash cab and you would just what charge them like $200 cuz it's New Year's and they're like desperate?
57:46
And we would be like, "How about 50 bucks?"
57:47
And they would say, "All right, cool."
57:50
And so we would make like a thousand dollars a night on New Year's.
57:52
I was It was a disco Frisco taxi.
57:53
So I don't remember where I'm even going with this, but uh yeah, round table, cool, into it.
58:04
Um really good, really good. I like that.
58:07
Where do you want to go from here? We wrapping up?
58:08
Uh yeah, let's wrap it up.
58:10
All right, that's the pod. We done.