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Kind: captions Language: en all right so we got to talk about this this business is really really cool it’s a product I want to use and I think it’s a business that could be kind of big revolutionary [Music] maybe yeah you probably saw this because it’s been going viral over and over and over again and I always look for products that have this playground virality meaning anytime somebody shows you that you’re using it or they share a picture of it it immediately Sparks a big reaction and so I saw I’m going to share these three posts so there’s like check these out the first one is this Reddit post and so I go on Reddit and I see this post and it’s in the r damn that’s interesting subredit which is one of my favorite subreddits and it’s basically a video of somebody inside this venue and it’s like a sports bar meets IMAX so you’re sitting there you’ve got a beer you’re just hanging out with your friends but ‘s a giant screen it’s almost a dome that’s over you where it looks like you’re front row at a football game in this case and they’re cheering and their crowds went crazy but it it it looks like you’re in the stadium but you’re not in the stadium you’re just in a bar and this is called km or as I’m calling it The Minis sphere some people have probably heard youve probably seen the the sphere in Las Vegas it’s this giant huge Dome that’s uh you know in the middle of Las Vegas and it’s this insane $2.3 billion doll project that is you know just remarkable it looks like it’s kind of cool it’s like one of those things where it’s like humans built the pyramids and then we built the sphere it’s like is Marvel of uh of engineering and Technology well the cosm is basically a minis spere so it’s like a 2,000 you know seat venue that you can use for sports games and all this stuff and now they got a couple of them popping up I think this is really cool I think it rides on a bunch of big trends so it’s you know uh out of home entertainment I think is a big deal I think people are looking for places to congregate to drink to eat and to enjoy themselves and movie theaters are sort of stale like I think streaming has sort of kicked movie theaters ass in a way and now this is the out of home way of punching back this thing I think is going to be a much better way to watch live events and live sports than sitting at home yeah so basically if you’re listening um if you see the photos it’s as if they so they build this massive it’s not even a bar it looks like it looks like a science center it’s like a huge building that they’re building just for this thing and you go in and it’s like as did you ever go as a kid to the Science Center where it has the Omnimax yeah like a planetarium where screens All Above you that’s basically what it is but they had to raise $250 million to to build this because it’s like a massive no they just raised that so they just raised that a few months ago they built the first two without or they built the first one at least without that because that was in July who funded that so the story of this is there’s a guy who’s behind it and he started one of the biggest real estate property management software companies I think called Real Page the guy’s name is Win oh yeah uh something win so he has this thing called Real Page Real Page got bought by Thomas Bravo for like 10 billion dollar this guy made a couple billion dollars out of it he then starts his own kind of by the way you might be confusing the name Steve win is the guy from um Las Vegas the casino guy yeah I think this guy’s name is also win but it’s w yeah so oh that’s it’s a different Steve win that is that is behind this one and so he uh he’s got this Venture Capital firm m capital so he basically what he did was actually pretty interesting so you said it’s like a planetarium no no no it is a planetarium do you know the backstory of this no I no so he went and bought three companies so he bought the companies that make the science planetarium things for every you know Museum or whatever like you know science place so they he bought that company then he bought another company that you know did the LED screen part of that then he bought another company that was like the like cameras and technology part of it so it’s a rollup of three or four companies now at this point that he did and because of that they have you know they’re basically the Monopoly on um I I mean it’s not a monopoly as and nobody else can do it but they’re the biggest player in developing this type of technology these types of screens what he did was realize hey this is cool but it doesn’t have to just be for for the planetarium like you could use use this for sports if you send your own video crew to go film like the the sort of Courtside or fieldside seats at these different venues and so they do they’re basically a full stack thing so they have the rights with the leagues uh like UFC for example they have the rights with the UFC they have the rights with C certain football leagues and they go they send a full production crew there so it’s not just what you’re it’s not just what you see on TV but bigger it’s its own thing and so they have like Crews that are almost like VR where you see like they’re right there by the end zone and then as the guy crosses the camera is turning with them and then they have a live production team that’s basically cutting between the different cameras that they have to show what’s going to be on that huge screen and so that’s how they actually made this that’s the backstory of how they did this that’s that’s amazing I did not realize that that’s how it started all right real quick I want to talk to you if you are new to business if you are just getting started maybe you’re new to this podcast you’re trying to get out there and do your first business there’s a lot of people who listen to this podcast that fall into that category and HubSpot has made something pretty cool for you most people in your first business you might do something like freelancing or being a solopreneur it’s an easy way to get started you don’t need to have a lot of money it’s a great way to build skills and build that monthly cash flow but knowing where to start is not super easy the folks at HubSpot have created a kit that you can go download it’s a it’s a ultimate entrepreneurship kit for people who are really getting started in this journey they also have a solar preneurship guide that will give you sort of the mindset that you need to go on this journey check it out it’s the ult entrepreneurship kit the link is in the description destion below this video check it out and enjoy I really want to go to one of these I’ve had a friend who uh his name’s hat I think you you know hat he went to the one in Dallas and he sent me a video of it do not have a friend named hat who’s who is our friend named hat he he he messaged us about he hosted the Dallas MFM meet oh okay gotcha uh friendly you’re friendly with a guy named hat and he uh he sent me a video and he was like hey I’m in Houston and it was a some sports games some sport game and I was like that game’s not in Houston and he’s like no no no this is a screen right like I’m not here right now this is a screen and I genuinely thought he was there and so like I would pay I’m I as soon as UFC is on this I’m gonna be paying money it is this weekend actually so this weekend’s uh sphere the the the fight card they’re having at the sphere I believe is going to be shown in the cosm so they they basically have a mix of things because it’s not just Sports so there sports but then they got cir to solay and so if you want to go see o but you want to see o like in the best seat that ever existed plus the backstage plus follow with one of the performers Plus in the air you can go watch o at this thing and so I was doing the math on this and I I don’t have the exact numbers here but here’s here’s the rough math on a venue like this so they have general admission which is kind of like standing room only you could just literally there’s people just sitting on the floor and those are 22 bucks so super cheap and they’re going to make the money on those people through you know beer and and french fries or whatever then they have the like booths or tables type of thing which is each seat there is kind of like between 50 and 200 bucks depending on the the day and the the event and they could fit you know a th000 general admission and a th000 you know premium people into this thing but they have shows all the time because they have like the cirto thing they have this like Art Exhibit thing they have a orbital thing that’s space then they have sports and so they have 64 events this month like in the next coming month and I don’t know what I don’t know how you know what the occupancy is like but it’s pretty easy see that this thing is probably somewhere between you know four to six million a month in Revenue right now not counting all the alcohol sales so you know that that might be double uh you know over there so I I would say low-end maybe three to four million on tickets and on the high and then you know double that once you once you factor in all the food and alcohol purchases I talked to this guy the other day and for MoneyWise we did this podcast with him and he basically made something like $25 million he like owned a a tech company he sold it he got 25 million in cash he still owns 25 million in equity in the business and he’s based out of uh Canada inside of a a 2,000 person town and he sold the business made his money whatever and he still has his office in that small town and he said in the small town of 2,000 people he employs roughly 50 of them and he owns the fanciest office building on the Main Street and they have barbecues and [ ] like that every week where the community come and hang out whatever and it made me sad that I make a make money on the internet and that I make money remotely with the remote staff because it’s hard to see the magic that you’re working so hard to create or hopefully your output is Magic where you create products and services that people love and it made me really bummed and I was like I want to get into like more physical stuff or to be able to like physically see my creation even if it’s just like employees in an office and when I see products like cosm it seems trivial like oh we’re just doing it’s just like a place where people could drink beers and watch sport but that’s it’s more than that and to see this as your output of like I’m creating something that is physical that I can go and see and be proud of while people are watching and enjoying it I am envious of that as someone who does mostly watch sport drink beer but they can watch sport drink beer in front of a huge screen a big ass screen no I know what you mean I I would feel that way but I’ve done a restaurant I have an e-commerce thing that has physical products and I’ve also done some events and every time I’ve done any of those things I hate it I’m like oh my God this would be so much easier I would enjoy my life so much more if I could I am so much happier sitting behind the computer on my laptop in my boxers you know I told you the Peter levels photo of him sitting on a couch with his neck scrunched in the worst posture no shirt boxers laptop on that to me is the Jordan logo dude that is that is the Jord that is somebody dunking from the free throw line of life and and that’s what I want I don’t want any of this [ ] where I have to like have a brick and mortar venue I know it sounds romantic but no can I tell you something that’s gonna sound stupid and ridiculous but I think it’s true and it’s gonna make a lot of money stupid and ridiculous but I think it’s true it’s gonna make a lot of money damn dude did you just do a personality test that was awesome just described yourself is that your bio yeah there’s people who are like efgs or whatever have like an i d o i d it’s the new Myers brick dude that was awesome yeah I D iot what are you oh are you an e aarin um listen to this so you know how like let me let me think how what’s the best way to phrase this because we’re coming from a morons perspective all right uh so there’s something that I think has not been like touched on for forever for at least in the startup world and it bothers me and the reason why it bothers me is because Tesla when that came about that was like oh my God this is like the craziest thing ever know would ever touch us but but it it has worked and now rivan and there’s other now car startups same with SpaceX SpaceX when they started it was like this is ridiculous you can’t make a hardware company that goes to space that’s ridiculous now we have andrel we have a bunch of other stuff like that and they’re getting funding and they’re proving that like this is a good idea there’s a category of products inside your your home you probably have used this product today that it boggles my mind why there’s no innovation so to put this in perspective I believe all right so there’s about 15 million cars sold per year there’s about 13 million units of this product sold per year basically everyone in America has them they cost thousands of dollars the lifespan of these products is like five years and that is the washer and dryer it boggles my mind while we’ve not seen more Innovation with the washer and dryer and yes I’m going to say I say washer because with an R that’s a weird Midwestern accent I’m going to get that out the way because people are gonna make fun of me but what’s been killing me is and I’ve said this for years that there’s not a good twoin one washer and dryer so this company called LG they came out with this like washer and dryer the other day that it’s a two two in one washer and dryer and it was on the Wall Street Journal and it there’s videos on YouTube talking about this washer and dryer these nerds like me who are like into this technology they’re like going bananas uh that this technology has actually is actually coming to fruition which basically being the main critique of the washer and dryer in one is that it was really hard to create a so when you have a washer that means it has to be water sealed but when you have something that’s water sealed it’s hard to increase the temperature so how do you put heat in there to dry your clothing and that technology is actually really hard but these guys have actually like they’re slowly getting around to where it’s actually working and it’s amazing how big some of these businesses are uh that sell just mostly washer and dryer so if you look at Whirlpool I believe what Whirlpool is publicly traded last year they had $22 billion in sales and about half of that Revenue was from washer and dryers and what’s crazy to me is that that’s compared to rivan which is a venture startup now I think it’s publicly traded $2 billion doll a year in sales right and so like it’s crazy to me that a lot of these sexier Industries in the hardware space cars Rockets self-defense are getting funded and are like popular but the washer and dryer in particular I’m making a prediction that in the next 10 years maybe 15 we’re going to see a lot of movement in this space and I think the appetite is big and I’ll give you another example there’s this company called impulse Labs have you heard of impulse Labs no I’ve never heard of them so impulse labs and you can make the same case that I made for washer and dryers you can make that case for ovens or stove tops but if you look at stove tops the majority of homes in America have electric stove tops and electric stove tops are a huge pain in the ass because the way they work I believe is that there’s basically only one temperature and so it’s like an on or an off and so when you use an electric stove top even though you put it on high that just means that it’s going to like self-regulate to where it’s going to stay on for a certain amount of time and then turn off for a few seconds and then turn back on and then turn back off to a point where it’s high then with medium it’s going to turn off for longer and then you know what I mean it’s going to like try and stay at that same time that’s actually like makes a huge difference in your cooking if you’re into like cooking nice meals and it’s a huge pain in the and so these guys called impulse labs they have built this technology to where you have a battery that’s charging all of the time and that battery when you want to use your stove it like turbocharges your stove top so it keeps the heat at a steady temperature and it gets hot really really fast and so they’ve launched these new stove tops and when I hear their argument about how big this business can be I kind of have bought in to like I think this actually can work now the downside is that you have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars potentially but when you’re thinking about stov tops and washer and dryers these are actually really really big markets right like like this like similar size of car companies but are drastically underfunded potentially have less competition than a lot of these other uh Industries because there’s not a lot of startups attacking this well I think this is pretty interesting but I’m G to poke a few holes in your argument there’s many but this argument that I’ve presented it’s like we’re going to call this string cheese swiss cheese I think is the way look no it’s string cheese there’s no there’s ways around it PE back some holes in this in the string cheese here let’s keep the analogy going so the problem with the kind of rockets and or um cars and let’s just take cars for example I think the reason that rivian and Tesla have so much had so much heat when they came out even though they weren’t selling that many units was people see that there uh first of all cars are much more expensive than washers and dryers so that’s the first thing multiple of maybe 10x higher higher price per unit so yes they sell the same number of units but at least 10x higher maybe 20x higher in a lot of cases on top of that um you buy multiple of them so like I don’t know when you get like I haven’t replaced a washer and dryer in five years since I’ve been living in a place well have you lived in one home for one place have you lived in one house for five years but is that the is that the shelf life of these things you have to replace them after five years is okay gotcha the other part of it that I think is is hard is with Tesla and and rivan I think the thesis is that all cars eventually go electric so you basically take the entire fleet of cars and you say these are all going to have to switch to electric and that the traditional car makers are not going to be these guys will figure out how to rant production before the traditional car makers figure out how to go electric and I don’t know if that’s proven out to be true or not I mean Tesla has obviously beaten the traditional car makers and I think Tesla’s worth more than like all of the other you know next five car makers combined type of thing it’s ridiculous and whereas I don’t think the two in one necessarily maybe maybe it’s true that two in one basically replaces all all combos I’m not sure the last thing I would say is that a lot of these have like switching costs so for example you know this stove top even if I like it I’m not going to rip out my stove to do this it’s only going to be let’s say new builds that are going to put something like this in like this stove top whereas with a car the switching cost is lower because I can always get a second car I can my I can trade cars it’s not the same as like ripping up my kitchen in order to get the so I think that’s the hard part about some of these is you have a lot of capital and a lot of difficulty but some pay out you know 10 or 100x and that’s why the funding goes to the space companies goes to the military you know weapons companies and goes to the car companies before it’s going to go to some of these that being said I have the I have the June thing uh I have the June oven and I gotta say it’s good but it’s complete Overkill and so I think the hard part of this is like like I don’t know if you used it but there’s a camera inside of it so you put a bagel inside and it just says wait wait wait I got it bagel and I’m like yeah cool still got to push toast uh like the fact that this camera was in here that recognized the bagel is like a cool demo But ultimately like not that important of a feature compared to you know just like not being $ thousand dollar right the I think the June is like $1,000 or more so yeah I’m not I’m not super convinced on these but I do like where your head’s at which is what are these sleepy industries that need Innovation where size is there sleepiness is there but the Innovation is super low that in general is a is a good place to go if you’re really determined and can make some [ ] happen you know who kicks ass in one of these spes is shark ninja have you heard of shark ninja like they make ninja and shark it’s two different brands but under one company shark ninja I believe it’s a bootstrapped company started in 1994 it got bought and went public but within six years they were doing 100 million in Revenue within within year eight they were doing uh $250 million in Revenue based out of Boston American company the products that they make amazing they have made some of the best products so like their vacuum is amazing I own the creamy which is like the greatest thing ever they helped innovate and create the air fryer some of these Appliance businesses have been shockingly good and surprisingly bootstrapped well you know my favorite one of these that’s like not as hard to do but uh also kind of a sleepy industry is hexclad do you have hexclad do you have any their pans I’m thinking about buying some so convince me why I should buy them well dude I don’t know I think you know one of the things here is like uh customer has like a different like awareness and sophistication level so I don’t actually know what would make a great pan if there I’m sure there’s people out there who are like no no no only cast iron or only this type of pan or it’s all marketing whatever but I’m in the bucket that’s like the fat part of the bell curve where it’s like yeah marketing just kind of works on me um right like I saw that Gordon Ramsey invested $100 million into hexclad which is wow stunning amount of money and let me make how does Gordon Ramsey have $100 as I say that out uh let me make sure that I I have this right so I guess his studio so Studio Ramsey Global a partnership between Fox and Gordon Ramsey is investing 100 million into he so not him personally let’s say but him and his Venture Studio or whatever his Venture Venture firm their website is beautiful and I want to buy hexclad right now because of their so I bought it the pans are pretty good uh I don’t know again if they’re the best pans ever but they’re they’re good and The Branding is great the visual of it so like the pan itself has little um hexagons as the bottom of it so it’s like instantly recognizable product like when I look in my cabinet I have like all my generic pans and then I can literally just see the difference of a hexclad pan and it’s like ties to the name and then you have Gordon Ramsey as the influencer behind this and it’s just pant dude it’s like a sleepy industry that everybody needs it’s a high value High aov product and these guys Crush they do hundreds of millions in revenue and uh you know they’re they’re sold in Costco they have like amazing distribution I think they’re one of the biggest Shopify stores overall and it was such a non like I don’t want to disparage them by calling it non- Innovation but it’s not rockets and it’s not electric cars right it’s like non-stick pans but it is it is very well done and uh I’m very impressed with their execution and it’s a great business were they just was it just get a person here’s what it says 2013 the two co-founders Danny and Cole they had worked for a now defunct cookware company and decided they wanted to start their own so they started you know working on it they dabbled with a couple products they started selling in 2016 2017 they get a deal with Costco and the business has doubled almost every year since 2017 they’re one of the top Shopify sellers in the world they have one of the biggest black Fridays of any uh they said I have never heard of anyone who sold more than us on Black Friday which I think is just pretty dope it’s a very very well done product they make you feel Elite you know by buying this this pan whether the pan is is Elite or not is sort of secondary it’s an amazing example of just like what brand marketing and influence can do for you speaking of food and cooking do you have any plans for the holidays because I’ve got some uh I got an idea for you okay you inviting me over or what’s happening right now it’s even better this is even better are you free I’m free all right I’ve got like a little like eight week little project for you if you’re interested you know it’s no big deal it’s just a little small it’s like a it’s like the equivalent of like a super Lego okay go for it Weight Watchers do me a favor and Google Weight Watchers Stock right now yeah okay what’s their market cap at oh gez 58 million what happened Oprah what happened that’s what happened Oprah left Oprah’s gone are you serious that’s caused this well and they lost U $110 Million last year and the business declined by OIC hit him what what happened I think OIC hit him well let me make an argument as to why Weight Watchers is going to start selling OIC and why Shawn is gonna own 10% of the company so listen that’s your little your eight-week project your holiday project so Weight Watchers was started I think in the 60s and the way it started was it was there was this housewife in New York City and she uh was a little overweight and she got a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight and then she created like an eight person support group where she got her friends to give her $2 per meeting and they met once a week and it helped everyone lose weight they were held accountable and they loved it she did it for about a year and then eventually this one man and his wife or his his wife was like hey you should you need to lose weight you go to This Woman’s support group I bet she’ll lose weight and this guy was a businessman and he was like hey um we should definitely make this a thing like her name was Jee he was like hey Jean this should be like a business this was amazing I actually like lost weight and it changed my life a little bit and so they come up with this idea to franchise the business and they launched it in 1963 and by 1968 they had a million members each paying a monthly fee in order to attend a local meeting that was based off of their dieting advice but a local meeting where you would go once a week or once a month in order to have like your support group and then by 1968 they sold the business for $350 million and uh they sold it for 7 $71 million then which is something like $400 million in today’s money oddly they sold to Hines Hines ketchup which is like the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight Watchers would suggest but anyway uh they do their thing and then uh Oprah comes into play and so Oprah comes into play and when she comes into play the the stock like takes off to where like she buys a bunch of the stock and then within like weeks or something like that she has tripled her money and it booms and it takes off well over the last handful of years her Weight Watchers plan has been shedding her weight to watch watch her stock and she’s been losing a bunch of her stock and selling it and now it’s plummeted and so the stock is horrible and so my opinion is if I’m Weight Watchers I think I’m just gonna start selling OIC that’s what I’m going to become if I have millions and millions of members who are subscribed to me for weight loss tips if I needed to you know just only care about money my new game is well I I and by the way they have uh 3.8 million uh paying subscribers the name of my game is hey for an additional $300 or $400 or $500 a month we really can guarantee that you’re going to lose well they’re definitely going in this direction so I didn’t realize this but uh do you know who the CEO of Weight Watchers is no who her name her name is SEMA sistani and the reason that name sounds familiar is because she was formerly the CEO of mircat do you remember mircat the like live streaming app what uh yeah so she worked with Ben Rubin and when they turned into house party they ended up getting acquired SEMA and uh ends up now being the CEO of Weight Watchers and she recently wrote an email to the to the team so this is uh couple months ago and it says team as this the week draws to a close I want to take a moment to address some of the breathless media coverage I’m sure you guys have seen and basically it says hey we’re we’re in a good cash position we have strong liquidity the work we do matters our business is healthy and it says we’ve repositioned the company to grow with a clear differentiator we’re going to offer a full spectrum of weight care from behavioral which is the thing where they what they’ve been doing to clinical and clinical being you know the sale of of essentially you know semaglutide type products is is where they’re going with it so I think it’s kind of interesting what you’re saying because uh I don’t know what the what is the price of a Weight Watcher’s subscription if you have insurance semi glutide is somewhere between $500 to $1,000 per month per month exactly and so like let’s if your insurance and your insurance will cover if you have diabetes or if you’re obese and I think isn’t there like government proposal to like make like I don’t know free OIC to everybody like isn’t there like some proposal that’s like going to cover it in uh that the government would somehow cover this well the OIC issue is basically highlighting an issue with uh the healthcare system and just so it’s funny that oepic is like the straw that’s breaking the cables back but they’re like dude in Europe this drug is $5 in America it’s $1,000 what the hell what’s going on also no NIS which is like the company that makes um OIC they’re not only I think the I think they are now the most valuable company in Europe but on top of that I think they spend more on lobbying than like any any other company right now and so they are pushing very hard for us lobbying um which is insane so Weight Watcher subscription is $9.99 a month right now for the first nine months and if you just take the idea that they’re going to go from making $100 a year per pen customer to you know even if a fraction of the audience decides yes I’d like to push a button and start to get OIC or start to get whatever their their generic version is going to be called you know they’re going to jump to 5,000 or $10,000 a year for those customers right so if you believe that they have the right distribution and they have the End customer relationship they might be swapping out you know training wheels for Harley-Davidson in terms of business models and the business is is quite large Unfortunately they lost a lot of money but last year they did 900 million in revenue and had a100 million loss so those are huge numbers but their market cap as of today is $60 million and so I don’t care but it’s gonna be fun to watch because there might be a roller coaster here and it’s so here by the way the one of the reasons the business is not doing great so by the way your project for me was to what to take o zic or to buy the I might do both a little B what I okay so when Oprah did it so there the estimates are that she made a quarter of a billion dollars over 10 years of owning and then selling the stock so basically she announced that she was uh uh like you know part of Weight Watchers the stock doubled in a matter of days and so in February of this past year 24 the stock went down by 25% just when she announced like all right uh it’s ran ran its course I did my thing I’m out I’m no longer involved I think Sean Pur is gonna be the new Oprah I think that look for $2 million you can own 4% of this company did I math that right or close to 4 perc I think and then just announcing it we’re gonna do a a good old fashion pump and dump who whoa whoa you just got us flagged but so some agencies out here dude they’re listening to podcast now you know we’re big in the SEC right now right this podcast is viral there I’m joking by the way but I do think that um a $60 million market cap for a business that has these large of numbers even if it is a massive loss and a reputable brand I’m just reading about them on the Fly here while while you talking about this but it looks like they made a $100 million deal to buy sequence which is a telea health business that lets you do virtual prescriptions for patients who want weight loss drugs and that they will start doing the the semag glute head stuff soon so we’ll see yeah I just thought this was interesting I want to put it on record that we discussed this because maybe there could be like this could be like one of those big opportunities but because $60 million for a brand that’s so reputable in some circles But like everyone knows what that means uh that’s like pretty amazing to me okay I like it SAM stock picks by way there’s a great um there’s a great you by the way uh any stock pick I have just don’t listen to anything that I ever give advice on regarding the stocks like it’s horrible what’s that guy there’s a guy who does this YouTube channel called good work I think he’s part of morning Brew and he put out this video that I thought had the best the best YouTube title that I’ve seen I know is it Zin no no not the Zin one his Zen one was also was also great the Zen one was is Zen gonna kill me and the boys and now now the new one is can this extremely loud man make you rich and it’s a picture of Jim Kramer who’s like you know Shilling some some uh some stock I thought it was awesome dude the their videos uh he’s the best that guy Dan he’s the absolute best I want our YouTube team to just look at these titles and thumbnails this is what winning looks like this is what we need to do I’m just going to read you some of their their other title so his other title so Saudi Arabia go Saudi Arabia going sio mode on its SciFi city state it’s the picture of that giant wall that Saudi Arabia’s building helping a fourth grader explain her loser dad’s stupid hedge fund job [Laughter] lol yeah it’s great yeah a big fan of this guy uh he’s he’s really good I the Austin’s one of my uh best friends uh the founder or the CEO of morning brew and I give them a hard time for a long time because they’ve morning brew has not been able to like hire interesting talent and hiring and retaining and developing Talent on a media as a media company that’s really really really hard you got to find interesting people which is hard and then the most interesting creative people are typically also the biggest pains in pain in the asses to work with and to retain them this guy guy and a few others actually but this guy is a really good example of how a media company finds talent and nurtures it and makes him huge yeah he’s doing amazing uh good job what is his name by the way I don’t know this guy’s name but Dan Tumi Dani yeah Dan you’re doing a great job so I moved to this new city it’s called Westport Connecticut it’s h a 35,000 person town and I’ve been reading all these books about like uh biographies of politicians and stuff lately so I thought I don’t really know anything about politics I’m going to see what I can if I if getting involved is even interesting so I just emailed the mayor which like I didn’t know if that was a thing or not but I just found her email and I emailed her and now we’re going to go get lunch together you get lunch with the mayor I said in a small circle of the internet a very tiny corner I’m a little bit popular and uh I’m not sure what that means to you if anything but I’m just trying to like make myself look a little bit important to you and I would love to hang out and introduce myself with no agenda and that’s all I said and she said absolutely and so what’s the plan here what are you going to do I don’t know yet I got to figure out how to be conniving and how to take over a town I don’t have a plan yet but I just thought it was interesting are you’re gonna like B like two seasons of House of Cards or something and just start to get yourself in the mindset yeah yeah I’m just gonna like come with like armed guards and just take over like it’s I’m gonna pull I’m gonna do a it’s going to be a May yeah I’m the may I don’t know I just I uh I think local politics are are like a really interesting way to actually have real impact and but it kind of just seems fun and so I didn’t know that you could email a mayor and they would reply but they did it reminds me of when we got to college my buddy Dan that you’re given like a school ID right a school email address so his was I don’t know like DNC 6 duke.edu and so the first thing he did which I would have never thought to do but he’s a weirdo and a genius and so he goes he emails DNC 7 or no DNC 4 and DNC 5 and he’s like fellas I’m here I don’t know who you are I don’t know what does initial stand for for you but I’m here to carry the torch the Legacy what do you guys do and like one of them’s a banker somewhere and it’s like could have led to like you know like an internship basically just by sending out a random email being like hey I’m the I’m the I’m the new guy in town that has the same uh you know I’m the next in in the alpha numeric sequence here for us and did they become friends I don’t know I feel like he just would open up all these doors and just look inside be like what’s in this closet right you know when someone comes into your house like what’s this over here that’s you seen people do that with their with their phone number they change one number and their phone number and they text them and say that their phone number cousins yeah exactly you said something a few weeks ago that had an impact on me and I’ve been meaning to bring this up to you but I had to test this out so you told me that uh there’s been a few weekends where Friday to Sunday you did phone list and I thought that’s a great idea uh the problem is is that I’m uh an addict of all types of sorts and just like everyone else getting rid of my phone is like really hard so I looked for a solution and I found this thing this isn’t a sponsored thing I’ve never talked to these guys I just think it’s cool have you seen this it’s called brick yeah I’ve I’ve dm’ these guys they’re young guys I don’t do you know who did you look them up yeah so I looked them up so let me explain what this product is but I think it’s only 49 bucks so for listening uh on your headphones and not looking at a screen I just showed a brick it’s like a 2 in by 2 in square uh that’s made out of plastic just like 3D printed plastic and the way it works is you download their app and you say which apps are allowed so in my case I think I’ve allowed texting phone calling and email uh and basically I use this brick and I touch my phone with it and it bans or like makes every app on my phone except for the ones that I’ve allowed it makes it so I can’t use them unless I touch this brick again and there’s an emergency button within the app so but only three times can I click Like emergency override and I could override like if I’m away from this brick but if I leave this brick at home I can only use the apps that I’ve allowed on my phone shockingly good this works I like it I love it and I think these kids who started it I think they started it when they were like 20 year-old college kids is that right yeah something like that and I think this business might be amazing you know it’s only 50 bucks it’s hard to make a lot of money on $50 but what’s interesting is that we build all this technology to like get we want new we want more convenient we want better and then after a while you get used to this life and it gets better and more efficient and more addicting and you want to create things now that will undo all of that and so I’ve been testing leaving my phone at home I’ve been testing but that’s a little bit inconvenient sometimes because what if there’s like a real emergency so do I have to buy like a dumb phone but then buy a dumb phone I need uh a whole different cell phone plan it’s like a safe for the pantry you like put your snack in it and then you lock it it’s like this can only be open at 7.m yeah well one and one time I broke it to get to my phone like it’s [ ] up how bad I am and so this brick so far I think is the best solution I have found that’s cool yeah I looked into this because I was curious about it I think it’s a really cool idea I like the design of it too by the way I like the name of it how it just bricks your phone loved how bricked up you are about this whole thing so I I think it’s a great I think it’s a great product I don’t use it personally but I have thought about doing the the kind of dumb phone smartphone thing and this does seem better than having two phones but I would lose this brick for sure so what is it so if I lose this brick I can just through my own phone just put in the emergency and be like hey I need my phone back yeah but only like three or five times I forget the number but after a certain number then the app like the the Brick doesn’t work and you got to go buy a whole new one it’s like a nicotine patch for cell phones yeah and it’s awesome and that’s exactly what it is and I think it’s actually pretty good and it’s cheap enough that I’m going to just like start gifting these out it’s a great passive aggressive gift right yeah it’s like getting your a pallet out I guess hey [ ] here’s something you need yeah but uh these These Are Awesome by the way I think it’s a is is it called NPC is that the technology that they use for this is that thing NFC I think NFC sorry which like it’s like a very very very tiny chip and then the rest is just like 3D printed plastic and so there are like interesting ways to make this fun like you can 3D print anything and just touch your phone and so like for example if you have a music event or not a music event like a like a small club or something at your home like if you have like an event something where it’s like a book club or you have 10 people coming you just touch your thing everyone touched their thing and that bricks your phone like there are like a bunch of cool ways to to make this F wait so that can break anybody’s phone or just your phone if you if you have the app I think it could break anyone’s phone okay well there’s a there’s a Next Level to this of course of course but it’s actually quite cool and then you have you seen the things where you go into comedy shows and you put your phone in one of these like airtight bags yeah I hate those things but I understand I hate them too they’re at the local school that I live at they’re starting to do that for the school so you have to leave your phone in these bags yeah my four-year-old is in TK and she’s told me her friend has a phone she’s like yeah she showed me it’s a real phone in her bag it’s hers and I have so many questions I’m like and we’re like friends with the parents I’m like do I just text the parents be like yo you got your get a phone or or do I just text the kid and be like is this a real phone what’s going on that’s insane can I finish with just a a pro tip a life Pro tip a little framework a little bit of value here at the end I feel like we gave some dessert and now it’s time for for a quick vegetable all right all right so I have a friend who is named Stan and Stan is a Silicon Valley OG and what’s interesting about s Stan is that for many years uh Mark Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Stan and he always said no no no no and and Z just kept reaching out kept trying to recruit him and eventually got Stan to join Facebook and he ended up running messenger the the bit you know the the multi-billion user product inside of Facebook what is a recruitment from Zuck look like so he’s you know he’s not he just not one to kiss and tell so he didn’t give too many details in brag about it too much but I got the sense that Not only was he recruited but he had been he had reached out to him many times across the years and eventually made him an offer you know too good so good he couldn’t refuse and so he joins and I ask Stan and I goes Stan what are you like why why are you so good and I was like no no no bad question let me ask a better question like what are you doing differently than the average person here in Silicon Valley who has maybe the same skill set as you but isn’t having the same result as you are you asking why Zuck wanted him or why he’s had success throughout his entire career I knew Zuck wanted him I didn’t ask why zck wanted him I asked him specifically I said why does somebody who why are you having more success than the average person who has the same skill set as you like is it that you’re just working 10 times harder are you 10 times smarter than somebody or do you do you know something or you do something and he told me one thing that I thought was interesting he said a few things but the one that stood out this was many years ago by the way so I this still sticks with me is he said you know in Sil La we’re big on being data driven and data data data and data is awesome but he goes what I found is that most people when they look at data they already have a story in their head about what they think happens or what we need to do and then they simply just search for data that’s going to confirm that story or they just like squeeze the data until it fits that cookie cutter story that they want he goes I’m he goes I’m different because I just do one thing different I look at the data and I ask a simple question what story is the data telling me and what story is the data telling me is a much better question for example we were just looking at the Weight Watcher stock and I was like what happened and you go Oprah I was like Oprah what happened and you go Oprah happened but if you actually look like the stock falls off a cliff as soon as like the OIC Trend started right like that was the that was the date Oprah left I think in like 2014 or something she left like a long time ago but the stock really fell off a cliff when uh OIC took off and the data is telling us that something happened in early 2023 that really hurt Weight Watchers stock and then you go look at what actually happened and I’ve I just felt this in one of my companies too where we in my Ecom store is like we’ve been beating every month forecast and then August was the first month we didn’t beat and I asked the team I said what happened and my CMO will give one answer and our chief product officer will give another answer and then the the website guy will give a different answer and how am I supposed to figure out what answer and the way I figure it out is I tried I just told them I saidst the data first and then tell me the story because what what always happens is they tell me the story and then they’ll go find some data that might some cherry pick a bit of data that might support that but they’ll leave out a bunch of other data well it’s like you ever played those things where it’s like find a word uh in uh like it’s like the puzzles in the New York Times Like find find this word it’s like if I already know I’m looking for this word yeah where like if I know I’m looking for this word I I think I could find it but if you tell me that I got to find a variety of words I might find those first exactly exactly and so uh what we I just flipped it I just said before you give me your your idea of what H what went wrong can you first just show me the picture of the data like the full full set of the data of what happened and then it should tell us a story so then we just started asking the question what data what story is the data telling us and I think that that is just a much better way to approach data uh decision-making and I think that is a great hack that this guy who’s had amazing success in his career says you know this is one thing I do differently that I think it leads to a different result because every time I do that you know it’s like how do you be right more often one way is just remove a bunch of your bad habits and bad biases that’s causing you to make bad decisions and I think this is a good habit that would lead you to make better decisions so I wanted to share that that’s kind of a weird that’s if for for you to think for him to think why am I so successful not weird weird the right word that’s a very particular well I I specifically asked what are are you doing differently not why are you so successful but what do you do that’s different than the average person who’s got the same skill set as you what is it that you do differently so for example I know you know Sam you’re a great writer I be like you know why are you a great writer and you might say well I practiced a bunch or I read or I naturally have a gift for it a different question is what do you do differently than other people who also write blog posts or write newsletters what would your answer be I potentially am significantly more honest than most people and I explain all the bad sides and the good sides up front in a particular story which makes people like and trust me more so uh like I try to be the opposite of Sensational yeah you wrote an email to the mayor and you said your honest thing was in in a small corner of the internet unpopular I don’t know if that matters to you but I’m trying to impress you because I I don’t know if that worked but I’d like I’m say that I say that to impress you nobody would say in the email I say that to impress you like obviously they do that to impress them but nobody says that out loud I think your gift is that you are willing to say the the uh the honest part out loud and that that endear people to you and that makes it more likable and that makes it more distinct and that makes it stand out versus you know re reasons that other people their writing might stand out so I think that’s a it’s a great example of like that question of what do you what is it that you actually do that’s different versus how do I become successful or you know how did you become successful like people have different they’ll give you a different answer depending on the question and I guess what I’m saying is calling him weird is not the right word because that sounds negative what I mean is that’s such a a particular and unexpected answer of like oh you just look at the data and you’re like not judgmental about it uh versus coming to it with an emotion or a story to prove so it’s like you’re you’re like you’re black and white uh about different information and you’re not uh coming with an agenda right it’s a weirdly specific answer I agree now the caveat is this was like 10 years ago when he told me this and also I bet if I asked him the same question today he would give me a different answer maybe that was just top of mine because of what was going on that day in his his world or what he had noticed recently why did you well why did you just remember this now because I I saw the problem pop up in my own company where I was like oh this is hard I can’t get to the truth because everybody already has a pre-baked answer and then when I tell them hey can we figure out what went wrong they say yeah yeah yeah I’m going to go figure it out but really it’s just oh wow wow they never changed the answer when I just said hey what went wrong and I say can somebody dive in and they come back with the same answer every time it’s like wow what’s the point of diving in if you already had the answer and then when you dive in you simply just go find one or two cherry-picked uh data points that support that and then if I go look and I say well is that really true because what about this and it kind of violates the narrative so it’s more like maybe you’re right but that doesn’t explain all of this correct and um and then they’re like oh yeah that’s true and so I need I needed the I I need my own team doing it and I think in general if more people did this they would be more successful myself included I I’m I’m guilty of this as well where I have an immediate reaction of what we should be doing or what’s bad about what we’re doing or what’s not working and then I try to find data or examples that support it versus first looking at the at the actual data and feedback and then saying what story is this telling me when you go through that how often do you question if you are right or wrong or put differently what level of certainty is your average big monthly decision it’s a great question what percent certainty is my average monthly decision in this in the situations where I have data because there’s two types of decisions there’s data where there’s decisions where we have information and there’s decisions that will actually go create information meaning we’re only going to know this by trying this and that will gather more information here’s here’s what I mean every month or quarter or so a business that is in the 5 million 10 million 20 like the some range where it’s like all right this like definitely is working but I don’t know if it’s going to be massive medium or it could even go out of business eventually but like there’s something here so for for those types of businesses uh every quarter or month there’s a decision that can potentially change the trajectory entirely or not impact anything at all and I’ve noticed that like it’s like monthly or quarterly and I asked myself wondering like before I was very certain certain like this if I do this I’m gonna do this we’re gonna figure it out now I’m actually realizing the decisions I make on for during those periods can actually be very impactful both in a negative and a bad way like you can make a decision today that you PID for in 18 or 24 months and so I used to be very confident now I’m less confident of like I think this but I want everyone to know I don’t know anything right right and so what I’m asking for you is are you how do you come to these decisions with high certainty or low certainty I don’t really think about it like that if I had to answer that part it would probably be high certainty for the next phase the next Chunk meaning I know that I’ve looked at what the options are and what the information we have is and of those two and once I take those you know I have the menu of options and I got the the uh the information that we have I can make the right decision for this moment that doesn’t mean it’s going to end up being right it means given what I had that what that that had to be the right decision there was no o there was a only other suboptimal decisions from there but there’s still some probability that that’s not going to be true but I couldn’t have known that because I just didn’t have the information I think I’ve done a good job of hitting the ball into the net where I look back because I do this often I look back and I say could I have known this or did I already know did I actually know deep down and I ignored it or did I know could I have known but I rushed and I have cut those down a lot mostly honestly because I work with Ben and I talk things out loud and when I’m talking out loud I can literally hear like I can litigate against my point I can hear the holes in my argument right and I and I’m comfortable enough with him to be like to be saying it out loud and not feel stupid to mids sentence be like but actually I think that doesn’t matter at all or but actually that might not even be true I I might just be saying that or I’ll stop Midway and just say but honestly of those things the most important thing I said was this and that actually wipes out all the other [ ] and so never mind let’s go for a no instead of a yes and I’ll just edit it midair because he’s he makes me feel comfortable enough and or we have enough trust built up or it’s only about getting it right there is 0% about appearing right which in my my other companies before I think I was much much more tied to having to feel like I needed to maintain some appearance of being smart and in charge and knowing things and I even and I wouldn’t I wouldn’t litigate my own thoughts I would not cross-examine them enough and I think that led to a lot of bad decisions before and the reason I’m bringing that up is I’m feeling this is a similar thing as I um get a little bit older and sometimes have more success and sometimes not what I’m learning is that there’s a million different ways to get done different to get different things done and there like for example we saw uh go viral this founder mode thing and everyone loved it and maybe that is the right for certain people I could point to many examples of successes that are not right it’s the exact opposite it it violates exactly what that person is saying is is the law and as I grow and start getting to some of these decisions I’m learning a little bit I I’m it’s more becoming um I don’t know anything let’s just do what feels good and so I guess it’s like surrendering to like the world of like I know nothing right I it’s so you know you you you you’re kind of back to where you were when you were 18 years old uh of like I don’t know the right way whereas when you’re a little bit younger you read all these books like according to the startup what’s that startup book about lean MVP uh Lean Startup according to the Lean Startup we have to do this this and this and so you just do that and sometimes it works but there’s just there’s so many different ways to make the same thing work because of that I when I get to some of these decisions I’m significantly less confident in having the right answer but I’m kind of okay with it well I think there’s a difference between confidence and certain so I’m definitely less certain that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m less confident meaning I could be confident that this is the right decision to make but I can agree that hey there’s low low uh certainty here that this is going to work or that this is correct one of the things that’s helped me is to uh figure out some words to describe this because what I found was that one of the big leaks was that I was miscommunicating my own certainty to others meaning I talk in a very confident way or I’ll say let’s do this and even though in my mind I’m like let’s do this and then we’ll know by next Friday or we’ll try it three times and then we’ll know after three times whether this was the right path or the wrong path but I want to go try it three times right I want to go give it three weeks or I want to go give it three months I know that for certain but that was coming across to other people like this is the way and this is the right answer and then they got very they got a lot of whiplash when that would change and I’m like why are you getting Whiplash we were looking for we wanted to try it to know if this was the correct path or not and turns out we’re going to turn and so I found that I use this phrase a lot now which is let’s turn over another card which is like a poker term right so it’s like in poker you operate with you have your hand first have your your two cards you just know is it should I fold here or is it worth worth seeing the Flop so I’ll say that let’s see the Flop here what see the Flop is let’s take the call with the person let’s take the meeting let’s make the Prototype let’s draft the thing um let’s write down let’s let’s write down this the the plan and then let’s see after that if we want to do it or not and then sometimes we’ll say you know what let’s turn over another card which means let’s get to the next Milestone of inform information to get to a point where we will have more certainty of whether this is the correct thing to do or not and that language at least taught kind of like my little team which is is they know now how much like yes we are doing this we’re committed to doing this step but we’re not committed to doing the next Thousand Steps because we’re going to tone over another card and we’re going to find out some more information we’re going to find out right oh we think this guy is really great should we hire him let’s turn over of another card let’s do some reference checks and let’s give him the project right we don’t need to debate more we’ve already debated as much as we need to given the information we have at this point it’s about getting more information and the other thing that’s helped a lot is be specific about what information so often uh Ben will hit me with a likew let’s see or like um yeah I just want to like look into it more or like I want to try it out and then we’ll just pause be like cool what what specific information do you think you lack right now like if we don’t have enough de information to make a decision what is the information we need and then you often realize you’re like uh um uh and actually it’s just I didn’t feel confident enough to make a decision right now I don’t even really know what I’m looking for so even if I spend another few weeks thinking about this or exploring this I’m going to do it half-hazard because I don’t have Clarity on even what I’m looking for I don’t know what what question I’m trying to answer here so therefore probably gonna have probably gonna still be as uncertain three weeks from now as I am today but when you you kind of try to pin down like well what do we really need to make this decision or what extra information do we need to know you might be able to like make the decision that afternoon yeah I mean I guess I’m become old uh but like I thoroughly enjoy like like like these are the things I think about lately uh it’s just like am I making the right decision uh you know like uh what’s that one smart dude say a life unexamined is a worthless life what’s that dude’s name Socrates uh and so I’m like examining like some of my um decisions and things like that um anyway I could talk about the stuff all day but it gets pretty nerdy I think I have another little exercise for you I do this thing it’s on the wall over here you can’t see it but I take every month and I just make a box so it’s like a 12 box grid and in it we’ll look back and we’ll say okay last six months a 12 box so it’s like January February each each month is a box okay so I just make it make a like a calendar looking thing and then what we do is we just go and we look and we just say what’s the one thing we did or like what what were the things we did that month that were the the like big the things that actually made an impact we worked you know 24 days out of the month or whatever we did so many things but like when you zoom out and you just look back you’re like what were the things that actually mattered that much similarly we’ll say and and in that could be a decision it could be you know a a product you launched or a thing you did it could be a buy sell decision it could be a hiring firing decision it could be whatever right but it’s all Big Font so it’s like it’s got to be something you can read from like you know 10 feet away meaning you can’t just write in there your entire to-do list and when we do that it’s amazing because every month has like an embarrassingly low number of things that actually mattered like one to three and everything else was just the cost of doing business everything else was just the noise that it took to get to those one to three things that even mattered in a month and when you do that you start to but the good thing about going back and looking at it is the more you go back and look at it the more that in the moment you start to realize like oh this is probably going to be the thing for the month that actually matters let me really like focus and get this part right because it’s probably going to make up for like all the rest of the the random activity the random motion that I’ve been doing this month because you see you start to see patterns of like what what even could make it into this box and you know those were the things that mattered okay this month this seems like it’s probably going to be the thing that we’ll end up writing in the Box for the month and you never write it before well I don’t know before exactly right like I just on a given day I kind of know what I’m focusing on in a given week I kind of know what would make for a good week but when I zoom out it’s like you know um the decision to invest in X or the decision to um bring on this person um this trip that we took that had those five meetings in person that would not have been the same over Zoom um you know spending that two days with that person who we think is like just awesome value add to our life such a fun awesome person and going deep with that person rather than keeping at surface level like little things like that or it’s um the decision to stop working on X project uh was the main thing we did that month and that was huge because had we not done that we wouldn’t have had the time and the the bandwidth to do this thing the next month um so it’s usually things of that at that level that’s pretty good I’m gonna start doing that is that it is that the Pod are we doing a Sarah’s list on Wednesday yeah next next episode we’re gonna do Sarah’s list I got I got probably six or seven companies right now um that I think are are good contenders for it and if you don’t know Sarah’s list we’ll do the teaser here Sam’s wife Sarah blew my mind me and Sam were entrepreneurs we’re taking maximum risk we’re living off of nothing you know like Sam was paying himself like 20 grand a year or something like that at the time and I just looked at what we were doing which was this kind of like one in 20 shot of success mostly eating [ __ ] every day had to be Innovative had to take high risk and then we looked at Sarah who joined I think Airbnb and Facebook companies that were like we I could have told you in my sleep that those were winners and she joined as like employee 400 or a th000 or something like that like not even betting on it when it was the first 10 employees and the basic math was that if you get a job that’s let’s just say I I don’t know her numberb so I’m just want to make this up you get a job where you’re making let’s call it $150,000 a year base salary and then they give you a stock option Grant that’s going to give you 40,000 a year of stock on top of that um so you get let’s say a $200,000 is stock package that if that company just basically four X’s uh five x’s in a four years time span you’ve made a million dollars without taking any of the risk that we were taking as entrepreneurs and she did it multiple times she did that multiple times and we realized wow there is a set of companies that are like they’re past the point of like they’re out of the going out of bus they’re out of the the death trap of or you know like the highly likely to die you know area these are great businesses that will just keep growing keep compounding you could join them today as employee 500 and you will become a millionaire without doing any of the entrepreneurial stuff if you could just identify the kind of like 10 companies a year that fit that mold and so we take a stab at identifying those 10 companies um and that’s that’s what we call Sarah’s list and that episode we’re gonna record Wednesday um so I gotta prepare for it I got a couple but it’s really hard this is actually a hard list to make because I don’t want to like you’re not exactly giving advice but some people take it as such so I want to make sure that it’s good well we’ve also done the look back at the last time we did it and I think our our hit rate was pretty we’ll do it again we’ll go we’ll go look at we’ll go look at an update and see what was the hit rate of the ones we did last time we do not Proclaim to be you know that these are all going to work no way right that’s not that’s not it and the hit rate’s good because we pick things that are obvious and they get big that’s the point it’s all relative to the current valuation of the company right so oh yeah that was already a billion cool it’s six now so it’s 6X right your $200,000 stock package is 6X now um all right that’s today’s pod we’ll talk to you Wednesday