Long-Lasting Companies, Pandemic Monitoring & Deepfake Businesses

Let's go outside of the tech world. So two brands that that I am looking at that have lasted a long time. Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton has lasted maybe two hundred and fifty years now. And when you think of Louis Vuitton, you know what you're getting. Same with New York Times. New York Times has been around for two hundred and fifty years. Not everyone likes them, but you know what they're pursuing, which is their version of the truth. But then let's go to Raising Kane. You ever been to Raising Caines? Of course, dude. Love Raising Kane. I met the founder of Raising Cains once. He is awesome. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my law in it like no day song on a roll. We're live, what's going on? What up? How are you? I'm thriving. All right, good. So I've been thinking about this conversation you and I had. We talked about outsourcing.

And I'm actually gonna put a lot of words in your mouth. I'm implying that you said a lot of stuff, which you didn't exactly say. So y you're kind of more of a representation. But Rob Deirdick said something amazing a few pods ago. He said Two amazing things. One, he goes, I was looking for these twenty, thirty million dollar wins and I would do like twelve of them, he said. He goes, Instead, I'm actually only gonna do one or two things and I'm hop and I'm gonna hope that they're gonna be big. And then he also said he has this thing called forever estates. Do you remember when he talked about forever estates? So afterwards he sent me mock ups of this. And I like Googled the architect and everything and there was this really cool article that they Rob and the architect wrote together. So Forever Estates. Rob said, I want to build this home. So basically he said he had twelve million dollars liquid at the time, 10 million dollars. He went and bought this plot of land. And then he goes, To build the home I want, it's gonna cost thirty million dollars.

At the time I didn't have that and I it sounds like he maybe he he has it now. But he was like, basically, I want to build this home where the Deer Dick family for many generations can meet at this home to discuss. family planning and family issues and things like that. And so I'm gonna build this home exactly how I want it. And we're gonna call it Forever Estates because hopefully it lives forever. I found that very inspiring. Did you find that inspiring? Loved it. Loved it. I love when people take an absurdly long view And more than anything, I love when people have a vision for their life and what they're doing.

When somebody's got a clear and compelling vision for their life That is like one of the most attractive traits to me. It doesn't even matter if I agree with that vision. It's that they have that vision and that they agree with that vision is what matters. I thought it was awesome and he sent me mock ups of the home and I was like, dude, this is so inspiring. And so I got I got all up hot and bothered about this. It was awesome to me. And so I started thinking about companies that can last a long time.

I've been a little bit obsessed with this because with Hampton Things are going well. We're not a success yet. But it's very clear that like I always tell our team, physics will allow this to work.

There's demand. I've got a good audience for this. We've got a good team. Physics allows us to exist. There's nothing that gets in the way of this. We're already somewhat successful. The only question is how great will it become? And I'm starting to think, how do you create something that lasts fifty and a or a hundred years, whatever it is?

And the word brand is something that I've been thinking about a lot. And I think you and I, as well as our audience, we get in these like short term Thinking and we use like the A word. the arbitrage word. Or we use like we use these certain words that People actually don't think about branding. They don't think about soul. And I've been thinking a lot about that lately. And there's this book that I'm reading where it's called Lessons from the Century or Lessons from the Century Companies Club. So it's like this one woman studied like companies that have lasted a hundred years and she's like, What are what do they all have in common? And I've been thinking a lot about that. And you brought up something. You said you invested in this company, Shepard, which I think is awesome. I actually am starting to use them.

I'll give you a plug. Is it Grow Shepherd? Or support Shepard.com. Yeah. Support Shepherd.com. You talked about that investment in the company, and it's and you're talking about outsourcing. It's basically you hire people in the Philippines, I think also Latin America, and they do a bunch of odd jobs, but you said something like, I want to hire tons of these people. And I started thinking about that. I started thinking, should I do that? And then I realized I shouldn't do that. I actually should do that for some roles, but the thing that but I had this like off site, this like a Hampton retreat with like a bunch of our employees, and I realized You have to build a real strong company culture and you have to figure out how do you keep employees for a long time. And that's one of the key

Keys to building a brand that can last a long time. And I wanted to hear How are you And this, by the way, this topic is not that exciting for anyone who's in survival mode. This topic is more exciting for people who are in like Thrive mode, where it's like I got this thing working. To be clear, the first phase of the company is just build something that people want and figure out if you can get it to them. Don't worry about culture, don't worry about brand, don't worry about the forever plan, don't worry about the twenty five year vision. None of it's gonna matter if you can't do the first thing. Sam has done the first thing with Hampton.

He has proven that he can create something that people actually want and he can sell it to them. And now he's thinking. You know. And now you get what I call progressive ambition. I wanna do a whole video on progressive ambition. I'm gonna show people

If you go back and you watch Mark Zuckerberg's early interviews. And people are like, Where does this go from here? You're on eight campuses now. You're where are you gonna are you gonna open this up to everybody, high schoolers, everything? He goes he's like fifty schools. Our goal is to get to uh you know, all the major colleges. I'm not sure. Everyone keeps saying why you know, expand, expand, expand. Some things are cooler when you don't expand and I don't think well do we have to open up to everybody? I'm not sure. I mean some something's a really we could build something really, really useful for college students. Maybe we should just do that.

And then now the guy's like created higher balloons that give internet to farmers in India so that they can use Facebook, right? Like the he got progressively more ambitious as he went along. And that's a crazy story. In itself, by the way. Facebook, I think Sarah helped to work on this or something at Facebook. F Facebook basically puts these planes over India.

So any Indian can access internet because the issue with growth of Facebook is they literally have everyone on the internet. So they have to create more internet for people. They gotta create a bit more TAM. Like we're taming it up right now. Hold on. We gotta give more people the internet so they can use our app. But that's cool that it started where that that's a great phrase, progressive ambition. Very common for different companies. You can go back, oh I've I'm a forensic I'm saying I'm an archaeologist. I go back into the to go study the early origins of these companies, and you find this very, very commonly. But

They start with a sort of humble ambition. Then as things start to work, they snowball their ambition. They become more and more ambitious as they go, realizing the opportunity is wider and bigger than they had initially. Yeah, planned for. And that one step of success earns the right. to go for the next step of success.

And that it is okay to ladder up because what most people do is they look at them today and they say Well now they're trying to do A B C and D. So I when I start need to also plan for A, B, C, and D. And it's actually like no, you actually just start with with A. You don't you don't actually have to do anything else. Of course there are exceptions. There's Elon Musk saying we're gonna, you know, but uh you know, even Elon, for example, let's take one of the most ambitious companies in the world, SpaceX. Right.

What's the goal? What's the mission statement? It's like Make the human species multiplanetary so we can survive when we ruin Earth. Or Earth gets, you know, hit by an asteroid or whatever. And so It's like wow, what's more ambitious than creating a rock literally rocket science?

To create rockets. that will eventually take us to live on Mars. Wow, that's like the biggest vision ever. When SpaceX started His initial vision. Was

To do a test demonstration. Sending a plant in a rocket. into a certain like a certain height. I don't remember exactly where it was. To t you know, have the first living thing. you know, go out of you know, past the moon or whatever, wherever you're trying to take it.

And that's all he wanna do, is just take a plant out there. He's like, Oh, I'll just fund this, you know, it'll take me twenty million dollars, but it'll inspire people towards science and You know, hopefully NASA will then fund Real Mars missions after that. And then only Uh you know, along the way, he's like, You know what?

Screw this plant thing. I'm gonna Let's actually do it ourselves. We don't need to inspire an asset. Let's just do the whole thing ourselves. He also got Progressively more ambitious. And also when he first started, he started a thing called Zip Two, which I'm almost certain it's basically like putting the yellow pages on the internet. Which I'm sure he had some r cute way of sp spinning it where it was a grand plan, but it he made twenty million dollars off of it, which is a lot of money. But he was like I in his head, he's like, I gotta get my nut. You know what I'm saying? He's like

You see, every every human has a number. Phone number and you can reach them. This is one of the most marvelous things in the world. And i you need a way to reach them. It's information, you know, he'll he'll make anything sound fancy. But actually one of the interesting things is Elon is also credited as like he created PayPal. He didn't actually create PayPal.

You know, PayPal the product. was created by, you know, first Max Levchin and Peter Thiel. But Even then when they merged with

Elon's company, he had this big vision for X dot com. He's like X.com is gonna be everybody's full financial life. It's gonna be banking, it's gonna be mortgages, it's gonna be loans, it's gonna be sending money, it's gonna be savings accounts. It's gonna be all things to all people. And that was the vision for x.com when they merged, Elon was the CEO of the merged company. And the plan was to create X dot com.

And so he had this big, audacious, crazy vision. His forever plan about how he's just gonna change the whole financial system. And actually the only thing that worked was going back to the basics, let's make something that people actually want and see if we can get into that. And it was like

Oh yeah, eBay sellers would love a way for people to pay the money when they send them the like beanie babies. And so literally it was send money via e like send money via email small amounts. hang a pal was the actual use case that people wanted and needed. And it was only when they Essentially booted him out. And focused on that small

use case the smaller vision, did PayPal actually take off? And so, you know, sometimes you almost have the r the reverse where you start too audacious and actually you need it you you d you skip the step of finding that initial foothold and that that's what PayPal actually did. And here's the rub, which is very similar to that, that I'm experiencing that I'm trying to think about, which is so in order to build a company that lasts a long time, you need a you need a few things, which I could talk about, but It it starts with having a brand. It starts with having a very clear defined purpose.

You have to have employees who you want to work with for a long time. And there's a bunch of things. But how do you balance Paying the bills. And taking customers.

And also like having this mission that might be polarizing to people. And I'm trying to figure out when is that transition? Do you always have it? And that's something that I'm constantly thinking about now, which is I don't think it's a switch. I think you have to have it embedded in your culture early on. But where do you make sacrifices? Where do you make sacrifices? I I'm not sure. I'm not sure on going from short term to long term thinking how that happens. And that's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. So it's hard to kinda give advice without any specifics, but I'll Do it anyways.

I'll be the advice guy for a second. So when w when I was doing my fur very first company, it was a stupid company. We're trying to do the Trying to make a restaurant chain. The Chipotle of Sushi.

And We had all these micro decisions to make, like any business does on a day to day basis. Should we use this packaging or this packaging for our thing? Well, this one costs more and looks better, but this other one, you know, we would have better margins'cause it costs less. And then there's this other one that's eco friendly and blah blah blah. And so

One of our mentors at Duke. She sat us down and she's like guys You're having the wrong conversation. Really, what do you mean? And she's and she's like, It's not about packaging.

What do you mean? Let me ask you this. What decision can you make upstream of this that would make your packaging decision obvious? I was like, Well uh we don't really get it. She's like You gotta know what do you value.

Right. Are you about Ruthless efficiency and margins. Because if so Then The choice is obvious. There's no choice.

Right? You just choose the one with the the cheap packaging with the best margins. Are you about Are you is your number one value the c Quality of the customer experience. 'Cause if it's the quality of the customer experience, you're definitely not gonna choose the cheap one, but you also won't choose the eco one that's gonna kinda melt

you know, it's the old paper straws problem. It's not actually the best product, but it is eco friendly. Like so if you're all about Product quality, that's what you're gonna gonna go all in on. That's your number one value. Then the packaging decision's obvious.

Same thing with the other side. If you're all about sustainability, if that's your number one value. Then the decision is obvious. She's like, You don't know which packaging to pick because you don't know what you stand for. You don't know your values. And she's like, What you wanna do is figure out Your values, number one. So what are the things you value more than other more than other things?'Cause they're

And and you only know what you value when you're choosing amongst good options. It's obvious to value something when you have a good option and a bad option. There's no You you didn't test your values there. Your values only get tested. When you have

multiple good options, but they're good in different ways. And that's when you need to know. Which one do we value? The second thing that she said was Jeff Bezos has this great quote where he goes They're like, Oh, you know, Amazon has been around forever and you guys have just kept growing and growing and growing and

You know, through every innovation cycle, you know, the internet, mobile phones, whatever, Amazon has been Cloud, you know, M Amazon's done great. How do you stay on top of the curve? And he goes. Because we don't look for trends. We ask ourselves the opposite question. Instead of saying what's gonna change, we say what's not gonna change.

So basically he's like. We're customer obsessed. That's the number one value for them. And then he's like, number two, we ask what's not gonna change. Oh P Are people ever gonna want less selection? No. Are they ever gonna want higher prices? No. Are they ever gonna want slower delivery? No. Okay, cool. So now we know that those are the never the never changing things.

So all we gotta do is how to f figure out how to give them more selection, lower prices, and faster delivery. That's what they care about. They're never gonna not care about those things. They're always gonna care and all we gotta do is just continually find a way to do that. So I think that gives you

A sort of long term orientation, like for Hampton. What would you say are the never gonna change things? I've gotta figure that out, frankly. When I started it was the same thing as Zuckerberg, which was I just want to like Be around smart people.

You know what I mean? Are people ever gonna wanna be around lower quality Found. No, they're always going to want that bar going up. That they look in their peer group and they're in awe. How did I get in this room? Right. I think that's gonna be the first feeling you want to create is. Holy shit. All the other people in my group Are awesome. I can't wait to talk to these people.

Right. I think always the number one. The quality of the other members. in their group to them. And then I I think the the the thing I've been thinking about is they're always gonna want their peers to be committed. So you ha if it so we've been thinking about well what happens if you don't show up to a meeting? It's like well we should just

Ban them. Let's ban them. You miss one term. Both of those things we mentioned hurts revenue. Cause if you make the door you want to increase revenue, widen the door, baby let them all in. No, let everybody who wants to pay the bill come in. Okay, but now you've ruined the quality of member problem. You know, the long term People will never want this to go in that direction. You're you're screwing that up for short term profit.

Same thing on the People don't show up. You ban them. Or you also, you know, have to go ahead and remove that subscription revenue. From from the from from the old Stripe account. And so you're not gonna want to do that either.

But It will only happen if you take this long term orientation. And say no, no, the thing we value the most is People want a product. It's high quality people that show up and care about this community, about this group.

And If either of those two w every decision has to be first and foremost From that point of view. Does this increase the quality of our members or decrease it? Does this increase the commitment levels or decrease it? And I also think that so you you were given the example of Facebook and Amazon.

And I looked at those as examples as well. But let's go Outside of the tech world. So Two brands that I am looking at that have lasted a long time. Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton has lasted Maybe two hundred and fifty years now. And when you think of Louis Vuitton, you know what you're getting. Same with New York Times. New York Times has been around for two hundred and fifty years. Not everyone likes them, but you know what they're pursuing, which is their version of the truth.

But then let's go to Raising Cains. You ever been to Raising Kane? Of course, dude. Love Raising Kane. I met the founder of Raising Cains once. He is awesome. You guys got a I don't know his name, but Google Raising Cain's founder and like watch talks with this guy. He's like a southern boy, I think from Louisiana. He started a chicken finger place, I think at LSU. And if you go to Raising Kings now, here's what you're gonna get. They all they sell is chicken fingers. You can basically get'em Deep breaded and deep fried or not breaded and deep fried. And then I think they only sell Pride. Or fried. Fried or obesity fried. Which one do you want? Yeah. Like there's like there's only uh there's no options, and you get it on a styrofoam.

Like a styrofoam school lunchbox type of thing. And they're not fancy, but you know what you're gonna get every time. And he's like adamant. He's like, We are gonna perfect this. We're gonna get this. It's gonna be fried the exact same time every single time. And it's not sophisticated, but you know what you're gonna get. Another brand that I like. Fucking dollar general. You ever go to a dollar general? Yeah, of course. Dude, it's it's not sophisticated, it's not high end, but you know there's gonna have a ton of stuff and it's gonna be low quality and it's gonna be affordable. You know what you're gonna get every time. So I don't think you need this sophisticated like

It's day one here at Amazon and W like No, you don't need that. You could you could have like No, like we're fashionova, like it's cheap. Apparel that You know, you don't have to make a lot of money and you could buy and we're always gonna be on top of shit.

You don't need a lot of that stuff. that high end, like sophisticated stuff. You can be anything. But it's just cool that like to see people who are adamant about what they are and they just deliver value every time, or at least they're they're focused on the brand. So anyway, that's my spiel about that. And the reason I was thinking about it was because you were talking about outsourcing stuff and I'm like, Oh, that definitely seems cheaper. But it is it cheaper for every role in the long term because you have to build in order to build a brand that lasts a long time. And let's let's be straight here.

This is all about like doing dope shit. It's also about making more money. I think you can make more money if you drag out your Excel sheet where you're like, Oh, this grows thirty percent, twenty percent every year. Yeah, drag that shit out for fifty years. A C. Let's see what's going on over there. Right. It this is it's this is also rooted in like adventure and fun and exciting and in greed. So I don't want to get that twisted. But anyway, you have people who want to work for you for ten, twenty years. it gets really interesting and I think you can actually like embed different things in the culture. Do you know White Castle? You ever heard of White Castle you know White that is, right? Dude, White Castle, I fucking love White Castle. I went and looked at their like LinkedIn I was trying to figure out. Their executive team, like all of them have worked there for like thirty years. And I used to make fun of them like Oh man, these fucking suits. I'm like, No, no, no, no, no.

They know who their customer is, they know what they're doing, and they're you get the same shit every time and it works because there are people have worked there for fucking thirty years and they like know what the company's about. So anyway. That's my rant. Rant over. But it's something I'm thinking about it. Something I'm thinking about. I'm glad we just discussed this publicly. I'm actually gonna I was taking notes.

Yeah. Yeah, good. I I think that's cool. I I take the exact opposite point of view for the for the record. I do not think about building things that are gonna last fifty and a hundred years. I think that's really hard and I think it's unnecessary. I wanna be the thing that lasts fifty or a hundred years, not an individual brand necessarily. Well, you are the brand.

It depends on how you want your career to go. Some people get really excited about building something and being a part of something and working on something for thirty years. I get more excited about taking like sort of seven year chapter arcs of my life. It'd be like cool. I wanna have five you know, I only get one life to live.

I wanna experience all the things. I want to ride all the rides. And so I do a I know I did a a a tour of duty on I I lived in Australia and Indonesia and all these other places. That was fun. That was where I'm the great adventure. I moved to Silicon Valley in the heart of San Francisco. And I tried to do the billion dollar startup thing.

Now I'm doing this basically cash flowing business side of things and podcasting, creating content. I'm a content creator now. That's interesting. That's fun in it in a new way. I'll shift at some point. Seven years from now. I'm not gonna be a content creator anymore or I'm gonna shift the content. I'm gonna create T V shows or stand up comedy set or something. Yeah, but you do realize that's all rooted. I'm gonna like jujitsu your ass.

You realize this is all rooted in the same shit, which is like It it is a consistent brand and you're changing the monetization. I might not even put my name on like you my name is not always gonna be front and center on everything. When you're a content creator, it is, but s other times it's not. For me the more important thing is I'm not gonna bank on people recognizing my brand in order to do something. I do want to accumulate enough financial freedom and runway so that I can go pursue things that don't have to make money.

Right away. And so but but you know, it's all about what you the vision for you you have for yourself. So that's why I was talking about Rob Deerdek has this vision for his house. You have a vision for Hampton, what you're trying to create as this long term enduring thing. I have a vision for my life or my career that is

chapters and episodic and I wanna have that variety and new challenge where I have to like go become uncomfortable and try to get good at something new and learn go learn the dark arts of a whole different industry and go become a beginner again. That's something I get excited about more so than creating one thing that's gonna last a long time or I'm gonna be a part of for a long time. Is that a phrase we're gonna start using the dark arts? I mean that's the that's patented. So yeah, we uh I have to send little things to him for saying that right now.

Um, where do you want to go? Let's move on. Okay. I got Two quick ideas for you. In general, I want to say this, by the way. In this pod, I think we're gonna make a shift in how we create the content. So right now, every episode is this mismatch of

Breaking down a business, talking about frameworks. an idea, business idea here or there. I think what we're gonna start to do is segment them better or chunk them better. Theme the episodes better. So you know what you're gonna get. And we just go really hard at one thing. So we're gonna do episodes where it's really hard on

Just ideas, business opportunities that we see. We're gonna go really hard on certain topics like one man businesses or you know businesses that have very few people But just crush it. It's gonna be a lot harder for us to do the prep for that. But I think it'll make for much better episodes. So we've been talking a bit a little bit about that. I think we should put it out there that we want to start doing that.

But until then. Let's mismatch a little bit. I got an idea for you. Okay. If you made it Grid.

Of Customers that are Easy to acquire. Or hard to acquire. On one side.

And then customers that are not that valuable. Super valuable. On the on the other axes. One box that interests me there is Hard to acquire.

Super valuable. And the reason why is because those companies can become very, very defensible. Very, very valuable, right? Your value as a company or even as a person. It's just based on how easy are you to replace. You want to be irreplaceable irreplaceable. That's how you can actually

Make more money in the long term. So what's on that in that quadrant? Like a fucking plane manufacturer or something like that? Something that sells to government. So you go get government contracts. Not easy. Might be boring to do. Long term. Expensive government contracts.

It might take you years to get to the point where you can get one, but when you get one Very valuable. And very defensible. And so I was thinking about this because I invested in this drones company. Called Valance.

Long time ago. I invest maybe many years ago. I don't I have no idea how they're doing. I was a small investor. I don't even get the updates. But At the time, they were doing pretty well. Uh you know, I was like, Okay, cool, this valuation's a little bit rich for where you're at, but why is it, you know, why do you think this is the right valuation? And it was like But they're about to get this government contract that's a hundred million dollar a year contract. One customer will now become

Worth more than all their customers combined because And what's the term length of uh that contract? I think it was like a uh there was a couple that they were up for. I think they were like sort of three and five year deals. And once you get one government contract, you're sort of de risked. And you've done all the you know the clearance and all that stuff. You basically you have to get your company to a spot where you could get a government contract. And once you have one, being able to get the next one becomes more likely. 'cause you're sort of in the trusted vendor circle. So

I was like, Oh, that's pretty valuable. I was just thinking about one the other day. You know, with this whole Covid pandemic. Somebody out there has gotta be selling. Some kind of pandemic modeling software.

Or detection software. To every government. In every country of the world. And this is also have like a network effect where as soon as you're provide you're the provider of this Product to

One government. It's actually something that all governments would then choose you for because you know, the more governments you get the more compelling your case becomes. And so I wonder who's building kind of the Palant what Palantir did for I think like national security type stuff. Somebody's gotta be doing for biosecurity. So who is creating the

Pandemic monitoring, detection, modeling. Awareness program. That you can then go sell. to every single government. on earth.

as an indefinite ongoing contract. Hey, these things happen once every hundred years. We had the Spanish flu, we got Covid, all right. I'm just gonna go, I'll be your provider because hey, they're they're devastating when they happen. And I can I can be this for you for the next hundred years. I think that's a a hundred year company that is probably quite defensible and quite valuable if you can do it.

I'll talk to some of my friends who work at Palatier and be like, Hey, what you guys do today? And they're like, Oh, just like stopped a terrorist attack in France. How about you? So Uh run'em. Blog post. You know what I mean? Tweet Tuesday today. Yeah. My five favorite tweets in my newsletter. It's cool. It's like those uh have you ever worked at those th there's all these like net worth calculators where you're like, Where will I be in fifty years? And you're like, Well, if you were to start in like eighteen eighty four, this is where you'd be. If you were to start in like nineteen ninety five, this is where you'd be and you can like see like, well, because that this fifty year or this thirty years actually had slow growth. This

10 years had fast growth and you like see all the different scenarios. You're like, so if we take the average, it's this, but if this happens, this. So you're kind of like talking about like that, but with like potential illnesses. Who have you researched out there? I haven't I haven't researched any of this, but I'm I'm sure there already exists these sort of like uh you know like'cause People have been worried about these sort of like viral Things but obviously they were insufficient, right? So like whatever existed

Obviously sucked. Because We didn't detect it. We we didn't Have any plan for it. And we had no idea how fast this thing was spreading. Like literally the best pandemic model I saw was made as a side project by Kevin Sistram, the founder of Instagram for fun on the side, where he's like, Oh look.

I can break down by state. The R not the viral coefficient basically of this And of this virus. Based off of this public data I'm getting about hospitals and hospitalizations. And I can use that to kind of show which states are flattening the curve versus which states are about to go exponential.

And You know, they should really consider doing something. And it's like Somebody's gotta be doing this at a This gotta be the easiest sales pitch of all time right now. Is kind of what I I guess what I really mean. It's like If you're sitting at MIT or one of these places, just be like

Wear a sign that says I went to MIT. And then go walk into the government building. Open up the fanciest like Matlab. you know, like model you could find and be like You need to pay for this and just see what happens. I think I feel like they can get we can get pretty far right now with this pitch of like, Hey, we'll help you with the we'll help you keep track of these viruses.

Do you remember about two years ago, you and I were both interested in people who were trying to detect Fires. Forest fires. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. We did it we did this on the pod, right? Th there was probably like one or two like kids, like college kids fooling around with it, but then there was like I think two different

Companies that raise money, I think from founders front fund, and actually they were ex palantier guys. I forget the name of the company. It's a four letter word. It was like Gell or I forget what it was. But they were I tried to invest in'em and they were like They they weren't having it'cause they were getting big and they they didn't need any money. But Do you know what happened to those guys?

I don't know the name of it. That's really hard to remember. No, I also don't know what what came of it, but Yeah, there was I remember when the California wildfires were happening. It felt like every Three months there was like a new fire. And the entire like

State of California was like covered in smoke. Yeah, I remember when that I remember when that was happening to to find early detection of wildfires was like a like a a startup idea that a bunch of people got funded for. Yeah, it was really interesting. What we need to do, what I'll do not this week, but next week,'cause we have Jack on next, but is I'm gonna actually do research and see how these guys are doing because it's very similar to what you're talking about. And what was your other thing that you were looking at? You're gonna go from

Sound of governments to sound of Jessica Simpson. Yeah, exactly. This next idea is So celebrities are having This like deep fake crisis.

Crisis and opportunity. So Deep fakes are getting really, really good. And celebrities now have a crisis plus opportunity. So the crisis is You've seen this fake Tom Cruise, deep fake Tom Cruise. This guy's like amazing. Looks just like Tom Cruise and and it's like a video. You know, it's

This is getting really good. You're not gonna be able to tell. Dude, did you see Do you see the ones where they put our podcast in Spanish? Yeah. Those are awesome, by the way. We should do that. We should release our They were amazing. They were so good. I've I've heard of these new scams where they'll take people whose voice and video you get access to and they call your parents. I mean like Hey Dad, look, I'm

Trapped. I need some money. Can you please send it? Like just don't ask questions, just send the money. It's wild. And so I think there's an opportunity here. So I think celebrities who get paid for their name and face and you know, Oh, I gotta go Fly to you know, Arizona and shoot this commercial for Gatorade right now. And it's gonna be three days, but I'm gonna get paid all this money, blah blah blah. That's gonna change into

Danard would like to l use your your AI clone. In their commercial. You cool with that? Yeah, you get to sit at home and collect the check. And it's like Maybe it's fifty percent less

you know, expensive for the brand. Maybe it's the same cost for the brand, I don't know. But celeb, you don't have to do the work anymore. That's gonna be a big deal. So the more famous you get now, you're not gonna have to actually do the appearance thing because you'll just send your your AI stunt double to to go do it.

So that's an opportunity. But there's also a risk there, which is what if somebody's just doing it without your consent? And so I think somebody's gonna need to create a sort of celebrity Deep fake licensing company? So it's a company that goes and says, Look, we're gonna create the legal entity

that's going to house your name and likeness that other brands can come interact with when they want access to this. We're also gonna do the detection to find out is anybody doing the unauthorized use of your name and face Somewhere. And we will t handle all the take downs for you. So it's kind of like a reputation dot com.

But for this new deep fake thing. So you basically will go and I think you'll You cre you need to it's almost like angel list. You need to create the legal framework for how these work. You need to go sell this to every agency and say, Hey

You should it we've created one for you know you you have one of these for all of your your clients on your roster. And when a brand comes to you Use this to issue the license. That has the rights and controls on it.

that has the digital encrypted watermark on it. That has the tracking on it. And then we will also fight anybody who is trying to use it without pay you. Because that's gonna become an issue as well. That's what I think is gonna happen. I think somebody can build that company right now.

I used to get all these emails when I first started the hustle because what we would do is we eventually bought a Getty's license, which is like fifty grand a year. But before that we would use I would just type in whatever picture I wanted and then I would go to Google and click like allow for commercial use. And then I would like I would use those pictures on our website. And then at once we got popular, we would get all these emails from these patent trolls. Or not patent trolls, I mean I got we were w we were using someone else's picture and they would say Send us three grand and we'll go away. Otherwise we're suing you. And I started looking into them and basically what they did was they've just built this technology so they could detect if someone's photo was being used and they would automatically like crawl. They would use like who is and find out who the webmaster was and send you this email.

And I wonder like how those folks turned out, like what's going like how some of these people actually built those those things and if they were profitable, I imagine so. Like there was one time I used someone's picture. I think it was like the it was like a thumbnail picture. It was the smallest picture, and I didn't even know we used it. And I think some maybe someone at our company took a screenshot of it and like try to alter it and then put it on our website in the smallest way. And they totally caught it. And within like a few hours, we had to send them Like three thousand dollars. It's like shit, they got us. I wonder like what that looks like in the world of AI when you are having a bunch of these fake celebrity videos. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think somebody's gonna need to create the good version of that. So one option is become the troll. The other option is

become the official sort of like broker of of these of the usage of these digital deep fakes. All right, so that's my second one. The company, by the way, is called Felt. F E L T dot com. Felt. That's what we had talked about. Good remembering. You wanna talk about how you flew Ben out to convince him to move with you? Yeah, I think it's good actually because

Remote work is you know, obviously All the rage and remote work is great in a bunch of different ways. But I'm of the opinion. Which is remote is great.

When You have things figured out and you need people who are just operational to do things. Anytime there's A lot of Needs figuring out.

or creativity or just your brain trust, I think works best in person. And so I told Ben the other day, I was like, Ben, I think we're on to something with what we're doing. Business partner, Ben. Business partner, Ben. I was like, you know, he lives in Austin right now. And I was like, You gotta I was like, You gotta move out here. And he's like Oh but like you know I Live here now and

Wife, kid. Yeah. Family in Texas. I was like, yeah, I know, but like you we both believe the following, right? Every time we get together

Magic happens. This can be pretty big. Like what we're doing can become pretty big. And so even like if ten to twenty percent improvement on Uh what we're doing is actually worth

maybe tens of millions of dollars. So it's like, you know, it could be worth it to move. And California's a great place too, so it's not like I'm saying, you know, let's go to rural Ohio or something. And so he was like, Okay, why don't we do this? So he moved out here for the month. So he got a Airbnb. In the Burbs or San Francisco. In the Burbs where I'm at, and he's like I got an Airbnb.

Brought his wife's kid. Came out here, he's just been living here for the month. And and I also I offered him I was like, dude, I'll pay you

If you move. But I told him I go. But the number drops. By twenty percent every quarter that you don't move. I was like, This is not like a standing offer forever. It's a burning, it's an exploding offer. I said you should take your time. Should think about it, but you should also know every quarter that you don't move

That number goes down. Dude, he he should tell you you come you get your ass to Texas. Yeah, no, he knows I'm not going anywhere. He knows I'm not going anywhere. That's not the that's not the deal. I actually lived in Texas for a long time. And you know, the other thing is like Here. You know, in San Francisco, there is kind of like for for example, for a rolling fund.

There's so many companies, so many other investors, so many people in the startup world, like proximity is power. You wanna be near as many other people as you can that are doing the same sorts of things as you as you are. To the extent that your lifestyle will allow it. And so yeah, uh uh we'll see. He told me I think I think I got like a ten to twenty percent chance of him coming out. I was I was with him A week or two weeks before he went out there and I was shocked.

When he told me that he thought that there was maybe a twenty percent chance that he could be convinced. The end the levy entity, the the household. And I was shocked that it was twenty percent. Is it still twenty percent? I don't know, I think so, but we also work a lot when he's here. So I'm sure his wife's like, dude, this is Terrible. Like you work more now? Like oh man, I don't want to do this. And so that might be working against us.

The other thing though is The way we work is kinda goofy. I don't think most people do this, but You know for coding they have pair programming? It's not that popular, but

Some people do it. And well pair programming is What's the name of that agency that was in San Francisco that was like a really popular dev shop? Like went public at one point. You know, you know the name. Uh, yeah, I don't remember it. But yeah, I know what you mean. They popularized it at least. I don't know if they invented it or popularized it, but basically it's two programmers Working on one computer. You know, right? It's like the uh engineering two girls, one cup, basically. It's like

You sit together. There's one keyboard. You would think, well, okay, you have half the efficiency, like only one guy's working, only one guy's coding. But actually you get more than double the efficiency because it keeps you completely focused. And you and your partner are basically both talking things through and figuring things out on the fly.

And literally me and Ben do that when he comes out here to work. We I'm like Alright, put your laptop down, like just We s buddy up side by side at this desk. It will just work on the same thing at the same time. And like I can't just like open Twitter and start messing around over there. He's like, What's happening? What what are you doing? Can you can't just like open new tabs.

You know, as you're figuring something out, one of the guys pointing something out and you just sort of really stacking that's like I call like stacking focus. It's like whatever my level of focus is, plus his level of focus on the same thing. So that's been good. The other is The in between time. So already when we work remote. We call each other all the time.

You know, probably on the phone. Two hours a day, three hours a day maybe. on calls either with others or just ourselves. But What's happening now is

We'll work on something for a bit. That's kinda like us being on a call together working on something. And then we're like all right. Let's go get Food. We'll just hop on our bikes, we'll go to this taco shop. We go get the go to the same taco shop every day, we get the same same meal every day. What do you play Wolfleball afterwards? But while we're doing it, it's sort of like the best ideas are coming out.

In all the in between time. And that's the time where normally If we would be like, Okay, yep, bye. Close Zoom or close Google Hangouts or whatever. And then

Yeah, I I put on a podcast and he does something else and You know, it's the in between time where you get the serendipitous ideas. So it's just kind of reminding me how valuable it is to work in person. So here's the issue that you have, or I've always had with you, which is whenever I am around you Both of us are

high ish energy people where You're the type of person that eggs people on. And then I'll egg you back on. Or I could see like it and I'm not even that bad at that, but you do I'm sure there's a lot of other people like Sulli where you guys just start egging each other on. And it's like, wait a minute, we're totally off track here. We should just do the same thing over and over again.

Does this having him around just distract you further.'Cause I can see you guys just like You're sitting on two like love seats and you're throwing a football back and forth, and you're like, Why don't we do this? What if we did this? It's like Well fuck it. Let's just do it right now. There's definitely a part of the day every single day that's like that. I crumple up a piece of paper, I throw it to him, he throws it back, and we're playing catch. Talking about bullshit that like, you know, things we could do.

That are Not like Just the obvious things. But the beauty of it is As I've gotten older and I've gotten wiser, And I've been doing this podcast.

Two things have happened. One, I hang around you and you're very good at just Doing The thing. Every day. Whether it's your workout or it's whatever I'm just gonna do the thing. And I I don't wanna get distracted by everything, I'm just wanna do the thing. Uh so hanging out with you is all helps.

There was also a guy who came on the podcast long time ago. One of the earliest episodes. And he design it's he's from Peak Design. They make these like Camera bags.

So he Started his company off. Two years ago? Yeah, this was like one of the first fifteen episodes, I think. And um

He so he makes these Camera bags, who knew? And they do like I don't know. At the time, like seventy million a year in revenue. Off of camera bags and I was and like clips for your

D SLR camera. I was like, What the hell is this that big of a market? And he had done it off of Kickstarter and he Kind of inspiring guy. And as I was talking to him, I go, So what's your philosophy around business? He goes Everybody's got these like plans, they got these ideas, blah blah blah. It's like life and business is just the six inches in front of your face. It's just this. He just held up his hand.

Six sisters for he goes, I just look at this. And I just do Six inches in front of my face. It's all I'm focused on. And I just do that every day. And that stuck with me. And so we have I don't you can't see it, but on the wall here. I wrote

Six inches in front of our face on a giant like post like a giant sticky pad thing. These things are great, by the way. You should buy these uh giant sticky pad things where you sort of tear the paper. It's like a huge post-it note that goes on your wall. Dude, at Monkey Inferno Your Old Office, you were like that guy. You always had whiteboards and like pads. That was your thing. I was at the one up like writing. Yeah, that was you. You always said that. So Yeah, I have it here and it says The six inches in front of our face. And so the first thing we do every day when he comes over Is

We reprioritized the six inches front of our face like What are the small no brainer Steps forward that will make this like one percent better today. And we The first three hours of the day, we don't do anything else besides knock those out.

I think Theoretically, we could just do that for eight hours a day. I would get bored out of my mind. Also, I can kinda get eight hours of work done and three hours of focus. When I put my mind to it. And so That's what we do first.

And then for the rest of the day, we think, okay, what what else could leapfrog something forward beyond those one percent obvious improvements? So we knock out anything. Anything we can think of that's a one percent obvious improvement. the six inches in front of our face first. And so that's how we've been able to stay focused. Dude. Do you shared something on Twitter about what's this football player's name, Russell?

Russell O Kong, yeah. Oh my God. So I'm not a football I'm not a sports guy at all. So I didn't even know who this person was. And you'd share this thing, this basically who is he? He he was was he was he good? Yeah, he was awesome. He was a former lineman. So linemen are you like the biggest guys on the football field. So he's you know, probably I don't know, three hundred pounds or something like that. Uh he's like six five. He's he's six five, three hundred and ten pounds when he played. Yeah. And he was like a star. Like he won he like won a Superbowl ring, he was a pro bowlers

Awesome, awesome player. I remember I think he was playing at on the Seahawks for a while. That's that's kind of what I remember him. He's now on Twitter. There's a couple of these athletes like Indominus, Russell O'Koon, that are like kind of like on tech Twitter somehow. And so Russell's DM him and they'll and and he's been he's been replying to my DMs. Yeah, like Matthew Delavadova invited me to an event the other day. I was like, this is so cool that they've crossed over and they've got their athlete camp. They've also got

Kind of business, tech, interest and by the way, the best thing about it is they come in so humble. Which is like they don't come in with this Well, you know who I am. personality. Like w this Saturday we so we do I I started this basketball pickup game every Saturday for founders and investors out here in the East Bay.

And we rent this gym and then we we all just play Pick up for like three hours. And Zaza Pachulia came and he's a he's a former player on the Warriors. And he tweeted like Oh yeah, I'll uh I'll play. And I didn't invite him to the first one'cause I thought he was joking when he replied.

And then he emailed me after the first one was like, Bro, what happened? I didn't get the invite. No way. And I was like, You actually were gonna show up? And so he came this week He was fucking awesome, dude. Like not awesome at basketball. Obviously he's awesome at basketball compared to us. Zaza is is like a big Russian looking guy or I don't know where he's from. Where is he from? I don't know exactly. Serbia or I think he's from I think he's from Serbia. I'm not a hundred percent. Just Google it. Georgia. Georgian. Yeah, he's like seven foot And he's just he's a beast. And so now he works for the Warriors and he does like their business side their operation basketball operations and investing.

For them. And uh he's a super personable, super funny guy, like was totally humble and like you know did he play? Yeah, he played with us for three hours. What? It was amazing. I was talking so much trash to him and he was just such a good sport about it. It was amazing. So uh I just I gotta say I was so I've been so impressed. With

the way that kind of like the athletes I've seen that cross over into business and tech. They do it with I don't know, so much finesse. It's it's really impressive. Wait, what did you learn about I love seeing pro athletes in real life and just like seeing'em joke around or like behind the scenes Instagram videos where they're like, Hey, watch this. I bet you I can jump over this thing and they jump over this like huge thing. You're like, Oh my God. These people like we're we're not the same type of person. Was there any athletic attributes that he had? Or was he just totally chilling? Well

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, if you see Zaza play in the NBA, Zaza was basically like a screen center. Like his number one skill was He could set a huge pick to get Steph Curry a shot. But when he played against us, he's Steph Curry. He's just draining shots from all over the court. You he didn't even take these shots in the NBA. You never saw him take these shots, and he's just And he made all of them. Basebay pulling up from the three point line. And he has I was like, When's the last time you played? He's like, twenty nineteen. I was like No way. He's like, No, no, I've I've shot around. He's like, I'm you know, I'm in the basketball facility, so I shoot around. But he's like, I I don't I don't even know the last time I like played it like a g like a kind of like a a competitive game.

So he f a couple things. So his warm up was like a real warm up. Like he like He's talking, but he's doing these like Hip flexor openers. And I'm like, Oh yeah, he's like He's actually an athlete. He's had

So like get his body ready many, many, many times over. And so You see like a bunch of the dudes who come in and it's like oh here's this V C or here's this like tech founder and we're like I don't know, I just tighter touch my toes. Is that what I do to warm up? Like We don't know we don't even know what to we don't even know what to do to warm up.

Whereas he's like doing these like you know hip openers. Then the second thing is when he played h obviously his game is a lot better than you see on TV'cause you gotta be a star in your role in the MBA. And he was a star in his role as this like Paint protector, screen setter. Here he could do a lot of other things that he never got to show there.

The other thing is like he was like a bear. So he was mostly Yeah, just playing point guard, just passing the ball mostly. You know, obviously he could post any of us up. He's got a foot on all of us, you know, in terms of height. So he wasn't just abusing that, but like we beat him the first game and then they won like six straight. You beat'em. You beat his team? Yeah, we won the first game. But yeah, they were just like, you know, whatever. We we got off to a quick start.

But then the they went on a six oh run or something like that, just crushing everybody. And then when we came back out to try to beat them was a very competitive game. And then it's like We poke the bear. Like all of a sudden he started driving to the hoop.

And he started like playing like aggressive. It's like, Oh yeah, don't forget the bear can kill you. The bear might be nice right now, but the bear will let you know that like I could kill you if I wanted to. And he just shows which dial he was gonna Yeah, he's like let's let's just put it to a six now. We were at a three. Let's just put it we'll just put it at a six just for a few minutes. All right, we'll go back to a three. This has been a three. Up till now. I'm just gonna show you that, then I'll go back down. Wow, that's awesome. That I love seeing those types of people like just like in normal settings. And so Talk about Russell. So what Russell's doing, I I saw him, you shared it.

He has this website and it's Here's why it's interesting. One, he's doing a forty day water fast. That alone is interesting. But what's even more interesting is he's doing it in a very like I wouldn't have expected this like six foot five, three hundred pound football player to be so introspective. And if you go to his website, do you know the name of his website actually? No, I don't have it in front of me. If you just Google his name and then go to his Twitter and you can click off to the link.

He's got this website, A, it's built on ghosts. Which is like a pretty like in the no nerdy web platform. I think it's Okungfast.com is at least where the That's where you host it. Google it, you'll see it. But it's like a yellow website and like he has email pop ups and like everything is set up really actually like exactly how it should be. Like the email pop up is like thoughtful. And then you go to a confirmation page, that's thoughtful, and he's blogging every single day and he's posting the same picture every day. So as of now, I think he started this thing at Two sixty. I have the no.

He's d he's gone. He's going on a 40 day water only fast. He's lost. A hundred pounds so far doing it. And obviously it's not just about the weight loss. It's about like

sort of like the mental challenge and the mental clarity that he's getting as he's doing this, like, you know, sort of this this really intense fast. I think he's on day twenty one. Well uh he talks about how it's a spiritual thing and he and he basically like he he's just so much more thoughtful than I ever would have pegged this guy just'cause I'm stereotyping like an N F L player and like his writing is very good, very clear, and there's a lesson that he's learning each day and he talks about that. And Everything's well written. It's just wonderful. It it's a really, really cool to say the fourth thing. Fourth day was the hardest, he goes, because this is where the body is transitioning into a new state. So he's like, I had headaches, fatigue. My body was transitioning to using fat as the energy source rather than, you know, the in the i input of new uh, you know

carbohydrates and whatever. And he looks good. So you could see even when he started it, you look at day one where he started, he still looked pretty lean. Now you look at him at he's starting to get like skinnier and skinnier and skinnier, and his writing is starting to change. It's very fascinating. And he's been tweeting about it every day as he goes and he's been blogging about it. I think it's awesome. I love seeing this. Right. Yeah, and he's also like he's on day twenty one. He's on day twenty one. He's also like a Bitcoin Max. He's he's an interesting guy.

By the way, there's a guy I met named Byron Jones, who retired this year. He was like one of the best cornerbacks in the in the in the league. And he retired, I think, at thirty. So he came into the league probably twenty one, twenty two, and he retired at thirty, which is a early retirement. And he got paid very well, probably made like, I don't know, eighty million dollars playing to the NFL.

But he had said something when he retired, which is that I can't run or jump anymore. And which is shocking'cause this is like one of the most athletic guys That was in the NFL at the time when he was playing. And I went to a dinner. He had a forty four inch birth. Wow. Forty four inch ver and twelve foot broad jump.

Um freak. My buddy Romine Host this Event called Game Time every year in LA. And it's basically a mix of investors and athletes that get together. And so I've been I've gone the last couple of years and He hosts this dinner and at the dinner there was a few NFL players on the table.

And they all mention like I forgot what they were called a tor torbital. Not torbidal. Not the steroid. It's like some shot. The NFL players get. Basically it's a pain tolerance shot, a pain reduction shot, pain killer. And they're they were just like, dude, that shot

It's like magic and it's a curse. Because it doesn't make you feel better, right? It just makes you not feel pain. No no you feel better. Sorry, it doesn't cure an injury. But it doesn't cure the underlying issues. It's like you he's like we would go from, you know, Sunday you play Monday

You feel Bad. Tuesday you feel like man I was in a car accident and their body feels like it's in a car accident. You're like, there's no way I'm gonna be able to practice on Thursday. And play next Sunday. Like that's just like where my body's at on Tuesday versus Sunday. Seems crazy.

And they said that like they're like man that you know, like the culture in the NFL is like you gotta play, obviously. And so These like a lot of guys get Yeah. in the habit of taking this one shot. T something. I forgot what it's called. And they take the shot and they're like, It's like a miracle, dude. Like within an hour

You're running again. And they're like you went from not you know like h limping to like you're just back to you. But also Every time you do it, it's like taking T you know, it shortens your career.

Because it's just so bad for your body what you're actually doing to your body when you do that. It's not like the underlying tissues have healed. In the process. It's kind of a crazy. So I think one cool thing about what Russell's doing is he's basically like trying to rewind the clock on

Yeah, when you're in when you're in alignment they tell you to beef up. And what he's doing is is doing a sort of a rapid and drastic change in his physiology in order to get his weight down. So that he can live a l you know, longer, healthier life as he goes. Yeah, he said I went through a pulinary embolism. I don't I don't know what that is. Is that a heart thing? I had lacerated lungs. No idea how you get lacerated lungs, but that's wild. A series of

Yeah, a series of surgeries, ligament and tendon ligament and tendon damage, and getting up every day was just really hard. I thought magically when I finis playing it would get easier, but it got harder. I had completely depleted my testosterone. So he basically just explains he's like I was left in shambles. And so that's I guess one of the reasons why he's done this. And I think it's really, really, really cool. I don't think I'm gonna do it. Shout out to him but I like I like seeing him do it. What else you got? I like this question I got. So

A guy tweeted at me. I wanna get your take on it. So his name's Christian Van Oofel. Great name. So Christian says question for you, Sean. He goes, What work?

Seems like small boy stuff, but actually packs a punch. So we have this phrase we say on the pot all the time, no small boy stuff. And we don't even d like spend a ton of time defining it'cause Honestly. All these stuff's kinda obvious, but I would say the general buckets of small boy stuff would be

you know, overly worrying about things. Small boy stuff would be thinking small rather than thinking big, thinking short term rather than thinking long term. you know, caring too much about what other people think of you. You know, there's a whole bunch of things that you classify as small boy stuff, like complaining when things get hard or things don't go your way, complaining in general, waiting in general. These are all like small boy moves. But I thought his question was great because

The magic is in things that other people think are small, but actually pack a punch. And I had an answer, but I'm curious what your answer would be. I'll give you you want me to go first or you want to go first. I'll give a very quick example. We had our I keep talking about the off site, my CEO of the company. He put all this effort into creating like little individual awards for people and like writing like appreciation notes and like being very thoughtful in the itinerary. And I was like, dude, just like who gives a shit? Let's just get in a room and hang out. He put all this work into it, spent hours and hours and hours, one hundred percent worth it. I I I was giving him a hard time and then afterwards I go, Nope. You are right. I was wrong.

That that is an example of things that seem below your pay grade that you you proved it was worth it. Love it. I would actually also give you credit'cause That would be one of my answers, which is Admitting when you're wrong openly and quickly. I remember hearing a story about one of the guys at Sequoia who's awesome.

Like help build Sequoia into like the Most successful V C brand or one of the most in in a long time. Somebody asked, like, what makes him great? They go. All he cares about is getting it right.

He'll be in a meeting with you. He'll say his opinion and somebody else will say their opinion and you know Most people either start to debate or It's like We're talking past each other. It's like I'm talking about one thing, you're talking about another and

I'm the boss, so I'm gonna get my way. And he's like He's the first guy and he has this Phrase he always says, Well he'd go. Okay. Nope. I like your way better. Let's go with that. Like, nope, that's better. Like, let's go with that is a awesome small

but big thing you could do as a leader in in any company. It sets the culture that it's not about who's right. It's about getting it right, getting to right, you know, over time. Here's what I wrote as as some of my answers. I said Small bo s things that seem like small boy stuff is actually big. Doing customer service yourself early on. So being on the front lines.

Answering customer service emails, questions, feedback. Picking up the phone all that stuff. Manually onbirding your first Ten or a hundred users. So literally yourself sitting there with them, going to sit side by side with them and having them install your product.

or onboard onto your product and and answering their questions. Seems like an unscalable small boy way of you spending your time. Actually no. It's a huge, huge thing and it'll teach you a lot about your product and your market. Sending follow ups? Follow up following up with somebody who didn't answer you always feels like

You know, like a little low status bitch move, but It packs a big punch. Follow ups are where all the magic is. And I think there's also a big piece of follow ups, which is A lot of people don't follow up because They don't hear back and they assume They say they're saying no. They don't like me.

They hate this idea. Uh uh in the first place. They get in their h head about it. They start assuming the worst. Instead assume the obvious. People are busy and they forget. People are busy and didn't get around to it yet.

And when you follow up with that mindset, that's the sort of no small boy mindset was like I'm offering something of value to this person. Of course they would want it. Maybe they haven't yet. Seeing the value in it. Maybe I didn't conve convey properly, or they just haven't gotten around to it. They're busy and that's okay. I'm still here. The other one I wrote was

Finding things that recur daily And making them two percent better. Because daily things that you do f things you do with high frequency compound. If if you made them slightly better. And so This is where I think a lot of people are like, Why are you optimizing for your shoes or your mattress or your pillow or

Whatever, like I'm a stickler for how a meeting starts. I'm always like, No no no, at the start of every meeting we say All right. The purpose of this meeting is this and a good outcome of this meeting would be, yeah. Why?

If you can't say X and Y, like we're not doing the meeting. I'll stop people and I'll say, No, no, do this. Or uh When people talk, I'll be like, Hey, you you know, you're talking a really low voice and you're not sitting up straight like can you just Do it like Say it with some energy.

It'll make a difference. And like But That's Every meeting then people know that's how we do meetings. And so once you teach people how we do meetings, we're gonna have a lot of meetings at this company. So we're gonna make'em better.

We're not just gonna have shitty meetings and let'em let'em slide. So finding recurring things and making them slightly better because it'll compound over time. So that was my What was your partner's name at Monkey Pronounce? Furcon.

Furcon, I think, was like the pr I don't know him well, but I could only I could hang out with him for thirty seconds and I could just tell he's the man. at seeing redundancies, seeing things that you do over and over and over again and be like, Yeah, we're gonna get rid of that and we're gonna fix it by doing this, this, and this. And it seems like you're like, dude, You're just slowing us down. What are you doing? He's like, No, no, no, you gotta go fast to go slow, or you gotta go slow to go fast. He seems like that type of personality. Did he did he do that all the time? He was definitely he had You know, the hackers laziness, which was like

I'm not gonna do something unless I'm s Unless it's clear that it's gonna That it matters. Like I'm just gonna do shit. Just a do shit. That's the first thing. Second thing I'm not gonna do the same thing every day.

I if I if I'm doing it if I have to do it multiple times, I'm automating this. And same thing, he would look around and be like Yeah, what's Sean doing? What's Jason doing? Like are the non technical people and he'd be like Hey. Neil, you see, Jason keeps

What he's doing is he's going and finding each person manually on Twitter. You should just scrape this whole list. Put it in a database. And Copy paste this code snippet so that he can put that on his machine. So that he could just have his leads ready so he can go faster.

He would do a lot of stuff like that. Like he told a story early at App Levin. So Appleven was a A mobile ad tech company that is now worth billions of dollars. And he was Yeah, co founder of it. And when Furcon told me a story, he's like, Yeah. Adam.

The CEO, he's like one thing he really cared about was his dashboard. Like What does our dashboard look like so that I have visibility? And he's like, I'm like, I kinda watched Adam to see like, is there really any value out of this? Or is he just You know, sometimes CEOs just have pet projects they just want to look nice. And he's like, is it that or is there value here? So he shadowed. He's like, all right, I'm not gonna set my computer, I'm setting your computer. You show me what are you looking at with this dashboard? What do you do with it?

And so he showed him and he's like, Yeah, I do I look at this, I look at this, and that tells me who we need to go after. for these deals and I need to figure out how much to offer them so that I can get them faster. Like, you know. Instead of just saying you should work with us for these features, if I just make a monetary offer that's better than their current ad network, they'll switch. And he's like Okay, so you need to figure out this list, you need this data, and then you need to know

a projection of how much we can make with them. So you can offer less than that. But still more than what they're probably making for their current ad network. And I should just show you which what their current ad network is. In this dashboard. I'll just figure that out by looking at their SDK, blah blah blah. And he looked he basically put together this like command center for the CEO and he's like

He basically built a sales tool rather than working on features of the product. He's like I'm gonna build you something. And what so what they did was they would go to a developer, they say, You should use our ad network and they're like, I already have an ad network. He's like, Cool. I'm guessing your ad network pays you nine dollars CPM? They're like

Yeah, something like that. He's like cool. We'll pay you twenty two dollars. Exactly. How can you do that?

Don't are ad network's better. I consider it to convince you our networks better, but I'll just sign this paper that says says we're already gonna pay you twenty two dollars no matter what. Like I'm just confident it's gonna perform because I know our ad network's better. And they're like Okay. But here's the you know you got a switch and we have these

Two engineers standing here next to me, they're gonna help you switch. Today. And then they would just and they just rolled through the ad market because they were able to go to people and make them. no brainer offers. How did they make them no brainer offers? They because they had this command center internally that was.

How big is this app? What are they currently using? How much are they currently making? How much do we think we can make of off them? And then how do we have a spread there that we can work with? And so I thought that that was a great example of for kind of figuring out How to make the company successful in a way that most engineers would not do because most engineers just want to work on Product and not even product.

Like the under the hood parts of the product, which is like even worse than making the product better. Dude, this is the most wholesome episode we've done in like two months. Because we weren't talking about like

CEOs fighting each other and shit. No one's making no one's getting made fun of. We're totally aligned. Lots of take home value here. This is this is a this is like the most wholesome thing we've done in a long time. I actually I'm like I feel like I'm learning this is that this episode was good because I've I'm sitting here in a notebook taking notes.

I'm learning. That's a good scene. Yeah. Love that. Well that's it. That's the episode. Good pod. I feel like I can root Well be what I want to I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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