#144 - Shaan's Giving Away A Company, A Mysterious, Anonymous New App and The Most Gimmicky Marketing Thing The Guys Have Done

Yeah. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back Alright, well um What do you want to talk about, Sam?

Did you see I lined up? You have like a little crush on Mr. Beast, I think, right? Uh I do not have a little crush on Mr. Beast, but I think he's doing interesting stuff. So his manager's coming And I think we lined up did we line up one or two more people? Uh yeah, his manager's coming. Next uh next podcast. The podcast that comes out Friday. And then um That deep Senoville. You know, those guys there reach out to me. I will I I will hope to set something up with them.

But uh No more guests, or we don't have a lot of guests plan. Our friend Sully's coming on in a couple weeks. Oh is he all right? That's cool. Sam, you seem uh you seem out of it. Are you okay? I'm tired. I just I'm tired. That's all. Do I need to crack open a Topo Chico for you?

No, I'm I'm I'm good. I'm good, man. Yeah. It snowed in Austin yesterday. I was freezing my ass off and I stayed inside and like slept and didn't exercise that much and it still wore me out. So I'll give you uh I'll do an idea that's based on the way you're feeling right now. So Are you familiar with smelling salts? Yeah, I mean, originally they're meant for like waking someone up after an injury. Yeah, like after a n knockout. Yeah, like Barstool Sports uses them as a joke where they like

go and find someone whose eyes are closed and they put'em under their nose to make them throw up. Yeah. So basically, um I've been looking into smelling salts and I originally wasn't gonna even talk about this idea on here. because I I gave it to a friend of mine to execute. So nobody copy this idea. But if you can help out or you got ideas, feel free to uh to to chime in. But I like this idea. So Smelling salts traditionally, I only knew them because okay, boxer gets knocked out, you wave the s smelling salts in front of their nose and they wake up. The other option is you uh or the other people that use them are like uh weightlifters. So before a body like any weightlifting competition, you'll see a lot of weightlifters you know, crack a smelling salt open and uh and basically just, you know, use it to get kind of amped up before they do their lift. And um it's a stimulant. And so uh same thing with football players. There's a whole bunch of videos of Peyton Manning and a bunch of NFL players before games uh using smelling salts to sort of get amped up and get ready to go. So I thought that's interesting. And I'm somebody who I never drink coffee. Uh, I don't drink any coffee, I don't drink any soda. So I basically never do like caffeine S stimulants, but I'm really into this idea of um

But being able to quickly snap into like I don't know, like a peak state of mind. All right. I treat like I treat my work day like an athlete treats their pregame, you know, routine. Like you know, I don't just Get up and start start working. Like In the same way an athlete doesn't just kinda roll out of bed and go play a game, like they have a warm up and they have a routine they do beforehand to get themselves ready to go. Do you take smelling salts? I don't. And I don't because smelling salts are not that good for you, right? Smelling salts have ammonia. It's not terrible for you, but over a long term basis, it's known to like irritate the lining of the nose and the skin and uh the interior of your your nasal passageway. And it's not great for you, but it's effective. And so

And it's more effective than most than like coffee or you know, like drinking a shitty energy drink. And so I thought, okay, what if I can create a smelling salt that's not bad for you. So a smelling salt that doesn't have the same harsh chemical, but still has the same stimulating effect. And idea would be to sell this to two groups of people, potentially. One is like The pre workout crowd. So pre workout is a big supplement. uh category. So like no explode was one, but there's a whole bunch of these pre-workout powders you take. Basically just something to get you amped up before you work out. And it's not a protein powder, it's a pre-workout powder. And then there's another group of people that I think would be good for this, which is just people who work at a desk who are kinda like productivity nerds and they want to uh to like optimize themselves. They want to do a little bit of biohacking slash like productivity nerdery to make this happen. Did you look at the have you looked at this stuff on Amazon?

Yes. So I typed in smelling salt. So there's this The leading company looks like is called Atomic Rhino. And there's another one called like a uh um something sport, ammonia sport. They all look like that on the cover is like a guy exploding with steroids, basically. It just looks like a meathead product, because it is a meathead product today. Oh my God, this is crazy. I'm gonna buy this. The reviews are really good. They're probably all fake, but it's how interesting. How about this one? Asylum smelling salts. Right. So good you go crazy. Yeah, exactly. So that's the all the existing products in the market are branded like this. Uh and then you have a whole other batch of like people that that buy products that are uh, you know, like essential oils and whatnot. They're kind of like a different brand. And so what I and so I talked to my listen to this one. It's called

Nose torque. The most potent long lasting smelling salt available. Number one choice of power lifters worldwide. Exactly. I don't want nose torque, but I'm down to get like amped up and in the zone. So I so here's what I did. So I I called my friend. Uh one of my best friends from college is this guy Tofiq, and he's a uh ear, nose and throat surgeon. Um now and he's like, you know, probably one of the smartest guys I know on balance. And I asked him, I said, Hey, uh, how bad are smelling cells for you? And like, are there alternatives? And he basically said two things. He goes, Well,

You know, a smelling salt is just a really, really strong odor. In fact, it's ammonia. It basically smells like piss and uh like a really strong concentrated form form of piss. It's a stimulant, yes, but it's not like it makes you you know, stronger in any way. It doesn't like actually do anything to you, but like is like it's sort of like a placebo effect because if you do it all the time, so if you keep taking it, if you have a really strong odor before you do something and your body starts to act a certain way, it will anchor that connection. And so like If you want to get into that state of mind, that mood faster, the smell could just become an anchor for it. And so he's like, Yeah. And he gave me a couple of compounds. He's like, These would be superior alternatives to the ammonia blend that you know, the ammonia formula that these guys use. Use this instead, this won't have the damaging effects, but will still have the strong uh stimulant. And so I think this is a little a fun little D to C idea. I'm gonna do it. I have a an operator now who's who's who's doing it uh for me because I don't have the time. And uh I can't wait to see where this goes because I think nose torque and you know, like nasal blast are not the way to do this. Yeah, I'm looking this up. This is

Something. I can't believe this. Will be interesting to watch. I would never bet my money on it. But I would love to pay the entry fee just to watch you fuck it up. So I'm gonna build this one in public. So everything from sourcing to whatever. So I'm having the guy who's who's working on it, uh basically um blog about it. I'll announce that a little bit uh, you know, when he when he writes his first thing. We'll we'll we'll kinda introduce it. Anyone I know?

Uh yeah, someone you know. Someone who ha in fact has even been on the podcast once in a small way. So we'll we'll leave it as a teaser for now. But smell like salt. Are they the same ethnicity as you? Uh, they're not the same ethnicity as me. No. Hmm hmm. So that's one idea. Uh let's do another idea. So Actually I'll tell you about something pretty interesting. Since you didn't really have too many topics I'm just gonna kinda monologue half this podcast and you react to these things that are going on. All right, so I've been

What's the right way to introduce us? Okay. So something cool happened to me last week or two weeks ago where I got a DM from somebody, can't say who, but it's like a very well known person in the kind of like tech world. Somebody who I kind of like look up to, consider like awesome. I don't know this person, so I was surprised to get a DM from them. And they basically said, Hey, join this uh like kind of private community on Apex. I never heard of Apex, don't know what that is. So join this private community on Apex. A bunch of us are on there. I think you'll like it. And I just thought this was spam. I was like, oh, someone's account got hacked and they're just trying to like they're just spamming everybody using this person's account. Uh to try to grow their thing, I guess. So I wrote back I like kind of actually kinda rudely, I was like Okay, like did you get hacked? Like I you know, what is this? And the person was like

No, uh did not get hacked. I don't know what you mean. Um, I'm inviting you to this and I was like, But you don't even know me. And it's like person's like, Well, actually I've seen you on Twitter you know, followed you kind of for a little while. You know, just Twitter respect. So thought I'd invite you to this.

And I was like, oh shit, this might be real. Okay. So I go and click and I'm like, what's Apex? So Apex is a new app. So anybody can create their own Apex. They can create their own little island, right? So you can create an island. So this person had created one. You can invite whoever you want to it. You invite a real person, but once they join, you can make it anonymous or sodonymous where you can kinda pick a random username. So it's like a m the idea is like a digital masquerade party. So uh you invite all your friends, but everybody comes with a mask on. So nobody knows who's who, but everybody knows we're all kind of like We've all been curated here. It's not just randoms of the internet. What's it called? The app is called Apex. And it's out. It's not a test flight, so it's actually in the in the app store. And I really like this idea. I've actually Myself wanted to create something like this. I wanted to create a version of this that was like um public. Like I wanted to invite a bunch of badass people, let them all be anonymous, but everybody in the thing is badass. And so they feel free to say whatever they want.

But it's not just like random anonymous egg accounts on Twitter or YouTube comments. How would I find this? Private groups. Apex private groups. It's like uh two arrows up. Two arrows up, yeah, exactly. Interesting. So uh you know, like there's a bunch of apexes, right? Like I'm you know, I'm in one, I just created another and I'm like, Okay, so I created one. Oh my gosh, dude. This is so weird. The why would they do this? The if you go to The Apex screen. I like the um

The app screen. The App Store? Like the App Store preview. In their demo picture, the username is called Efery Jepstein. Yeah. Well, I don't know which one you're looking at. I see one that says Kill Blinton and uh Beth Jesus. Uh those are the ones that I've got. Effery Jepstein. Uh and then the you know the the group is called the Illuminati. Uh and so they're like lean they're like leaning into they're leaning into like This is a place where you can say what you want, which is like

timely, right? Like, you know, the president just got deplatformed and banned off of like every social network. Um, this has been an ongoing issue, like I've gotten in you know hot waters for this, you've gotten in hot waters for this, where you say something on Twitter, it's a toast associated with your real name. you get kind of like a lot of backlash for it. And then the next time you tweet, you sort of think twice before you do it, because hey, I you know, I don't want to ruin my reputation just if if people disagree with me, or if I say something kind of without thinking about it, or I have employees, I got a company, I don't want the I don't want advertisers to pull out. If I say something that's just my personal opinion So I like this. I think this is the way the world is going, which is a retreat away from social media to private media. I think people are leaving the town square and they're going to their favorite pub and uh they're gonna close the door and they're gonna basically people are gonna hang out in private groups more and more and more. It's already happening. And this is, I think, an app that is Well designed to do uh to do well there.

There's just two guys behind it I that I've seen on Twitter, a designer and a developer. And uh It's very cool. So I created a new a new little one. I'm gonna invite some people to it, let the masquerade go. And it's cool because I can invite people. And then to like to get in, you have to like authorize your Twitter or your your I can set it where I can say They have to like prove they are who they say they are on the at the door. And then they create their account and their username and whatever else after that. And uh then you can But who can verify that they are somebody the creator of the group of the private group. The host of the party, basically. So can I tell you my prediction on this? Yeah. Gonna get quite popular. Okay.

If it raises seed funding early on. It's ruined. Because what if it stays independent for a while and gets a you huge user base and then raises money. Then there's a shot. Oh, okay, gotcha. So it's not not it's not the raising that's gonna it's not the raising that kills them. You're saying it's a signal. Like if they get a bunch of money before they get hot, I think I'm gonna bet that they die. Is that it? It's kinda like a uh like a WhatsApp type of deal where like or something that like it's already successful and it's already big, we're just gonna make it bigger and more successful. If you do like a

a thing where they raise money on And They get too much of the wrong hype. I think it's gonna die. Okay, I can see that. I can see like uh like you know, there's three apps that I'm referring of that are the same thing, like the secret thing. So like okay, here's what we'll do.

I will create one for Listeners of this podcast. Well just try it out. We'll see what happens. So the way to get it is the app is called Apex. If you search the app store Apex private groups. And uh The symbol is like two little arrows going up. And I created a group Just now. I'm calling it platform nine and three quarters, just like uh Harry Potter. And uh don't do that. Just call my first million. How do you do my I don't even know how to type in three quarters.

It's three quarters of 0.75. I did 0.75. Okay, I can rename it. So I'll rename it to my first minute. I'll put the link in the description of this podcast episode. That's the private link to join. And uh it's a masquerade party. Now I don't know, well, I don't know if that group particularly is gonna be that interesting. I think this is interesting when you kind of like curate the set of people. But we'll try it and we'll see what you you can see who they are. I can see when they join who they are. I don't think once they join, I don't think I know what they set their name to and who's who. I don't think I that would be You just know I person is in the room and they're one of the five here. I just know at the door I can say yes or no to the person. And once they're in, I don't know who's saying what, I don't know who's who. Uh I hope that's the way it works. If I can just always see everybody. That's kind of lame. Let me see.

Yeah, I don't think I could yeah, I cannot see once you join, I don't know. I don't know, I can't tie your real identity to your uh to your username. I'm excited to try this. I don't have my phone on me, but I'll use it. And by the way, here's the other interesting thing. The group I'm in, you know, you have like What you see on Facebook and Twitter every day, like okay, I go check social media, everybody says X. Everybody's uh kind of in agreement. This is good, this is bad, these guys are evil, these guys are heroes. And then I do I'd go into the Apex and it's like The not the opposite opinions, but

You hear people say things there that they're that you just don't hear people saying in public social media. And that's why it's quite addictive to keep checking it because it is interesting. There's this There's this And they're not idiots'cause like they were invited in, they were curated in. It's not just like Randos, you know. There's this firm. Who you and I know well.

It started as a two person V C company. They were associated with me. And they say they have this very public presence. And when they talk about stuff, I'm like, Oh, okay, you feel that way. In private.

one time I've brought a few things up and I'm like, Well, you know, you believe this and They've just been like Oh no, that's I mean no. Like that that's way too woke. We don't believe it. Like that's no. Just like we want to get we want we're just here to get rich. Well, how do you feel about that? My opinion is that is the week of the week and I want nothing to do with you. For people that are kinda two faced, you mean? Yeah. Or but another perspective on this is fair, which is like

Yeah, but they're pl so like you and I have a couple of friends. That Maybe have this persona of being this nice person and in real life they're just cutthroat, ruthless, and they'll destroy you. Maybe you could one justification is Yeah, they're playing the game. I mean, this is just how it's played and they're just trying to get yours. You can't be mad at them. But then the other side is like, no, you're a punk. You don't have any integrity. Just like sit call it like it is and be you twenty four seven. Where do you come out on that of like people in this app not talking like that? I think in two things. One is

We're all guilty of it. So um we are all guilty of You know, signalling one thing. To the public and uh, you know, there being a d a gap between like reality and what we signal. So like the innocent version of this is, you know, you go post on Instagram pictures of yourself, you know. at a brunch cafe with avocado toast and a mimosa, and you're saying how great life is, and then you know, you go home and you're lonely and miserable, right? Like uh we don't post that part of our lives. And so there's a a silent like lie that happens there, which is you know, you om you lie through omission, right? You only say

The good things that make you look good, and you don't share any of the things that don't make you look good. And so there is sort of a false presentation of yourself. Then that's level one. Level two is what you talked about, where it's like Or sorry, level two is you think something, but you decide not to say it because You don't know how other people are gonna feel about it, right? You let their their opinions of you matter, you care what other people think, and so you censor yourself. That's called That's level two, yeah. Fear and self-censorship, uh, you know, take it out. And then there's level three, which is what you talked about, which is just a straight up

Lie uh where you say one thing and you actually mean another or believe another. And uh yeah, if you're level three, I also consider you kind of like a punk. And uh, you know, you you lose some respect points there. And I you know, I I try not to do that ever myself, but maybe I've done it uh at some point in my life. I'm definitely guilty of levels one and two, where like, you know, only post the good shit, leave out the bad shit, and also think something, but don't know how other people are gonna react to it. So um might as well just like not say it, don't cause a fuss. Well, that's different. That's a little different. Yeah. Can we talk about this guy who you have listed the best segments that I get from you or the Billy of the Day? Yeah. Which one do you want me to do? There's only one up there, the guy with a K, right? It's not a guy, that's a woman. So um the woman's name is

Cataline Cariko. I have this person as Billy of the Week. In reality, not a billionaire. But Just a fucking baller and this story is incredible. So

Do you know who this person is? Never been. I didn't know them before this either. So Catelyn Cariko, and I hope I'm saying the name right. I've never heard it said, I've just read it. By the way, in one of the most recent reviews, someone said that even though I butcher everyone's name, they're happy that I try really hard. Uh all right. So this person is kind of the key person for why we have the Covid vaccine. So a little bit of science. So normal vaccine is You get injected with like a dead or weakened version of the virus, right? So you send in a version of the virus with its, you know, legs tied together and handscuffed, it's dead, it's weak, and your body creates an immune response to the virus, right? Those take a long time to develop, and you can't always develop them for all different types of viruses.

The reason we were able to get this vaccine done faster was obviously A, the whole world decided this is a big problem, but B, they used a different technique, a technique called mRNA vaccines. If you just take out all the science jargon in simple terms, what it is is mRNA is a little messenger. The messenger has a little envelope. The envelope is like, here's the genetic code of the protein that's on top of the virus, right? Like a virus is just like a a little cell that has a protein on top. It's kind of like that's its face or its hat. If you want to recognize the virus. Look at the protein. That'll tell you which one's the virus. So the messenger RNA goes in with the envelope. The envelope says, This is what the hat looks like. It goes into your cell. The cell opens up the envelope and says, Oh, this is what the protein looks like. Cool, let's make some of this protein. And your ribosomes make the protein and the protein goes in your bloodstream. So you get the protein of the virus, so your body can start to recognize it and fight it, but it's just the protein. It's not the actual virus. So you can't get sick from it. Uh so that's the breakthrough in the way this vaccine works. And so this woman has been working on this technology for like I don't know, thirty years or something like that. She's like, you know, came from, I don't know, somewhere in Eastern Europe, Germany, Ukraine, something like that. And um

She was working on this and then everybody initially was really excited about MRNA vaccines. I was like Like most things, it's like There's the initial hype, like with VR or crypto or whatever. And then there's like the trough of sorrow where people give up on it and they're like, ah, this will never happen. And so in the nineties, Everybody in the scientific community gave up on mRNA vaccines. This woman basically like threw away her career because she believed in it. She was like, All right, I know there's no funding for this. Nobody will hire me to work on mRNA vaccines. There's there's just no money in this space, but I believe. And so she just kept working on it. And kept persisting all the way through the nineties, a decade plus.

And eventually she published a paper that kind of like showed that like what the power of mRNA can be for various use cases. And that paper was read by three different groups of people. One was this guy at Stanford, and he uh he was like a kind of a postgraduate uh PhD person at at Stanford. He reads this paper that she put out and goes, holy shit, this is gonna be big. and um starts working on mRNA. He ends up c uh inventing a company called Moderna. Moderna is one of the vaccine creators, uh one of the people who one of the companies that has the vaccine for COVID. And it's Wow, Moderna's only 10 years old. Exactly. So this guy leaves Stanford. He partners up with two scientists. There's a guy, there's a badass guy. Uh this guy is actually like, you know, somebody who should be Billy of the Week. He is at like MIT or somewhere, and this guy's got like 250 kind of patents that he sold to pharmaceutical companies. So he's like the man when it comes to commercializing the stuff.

And so these three guys co found Moderna and Moderna's now like a I don't know how many ten billion dollar ish company off of this woman's work. They like you know they kind of license her work. So another company gets started called Bio and Tech. They also read this paper. So imagine how cool this is. It's like Satoshi with the Bitcoin white paper. She just publishes this scientific paper and then people all around the world are reading this, and the light bulb is going off simultaneously with three different companies at once. To say, oh my God, this is gonna change everything. And so bio and text gets formed. They basically bring her on as like, they licensed her tech, so she got paid as a licensee of the of the technology, and then now she's like a The vice president or whatever of their science division. So she's kinda like a co founder of one of the companies that's also doing very well. She looks exactly like I would expect her to look. She looks like a hardened person. Hardened Hungarian biochemist. This is

Correct. Uh she looks like she And her daughter is like an Olympian, like a gold medalist. Like she you know, like this whole family's probably just badasses. Yes. This woman looks like she will solve like she looks like a the female version of James Bond. Yeah, like she's she's a badass. If you just read like kind of what she went through as an immigrant working on this thing nobody believed in, and now she's gonna win the Nobel Prize for this. Like 20 years later the payoff happened. That to me is like so admirable to to believe in your thing. When everybody else stops believing and you just say fuck it and you just keep going for two decades. That's like three decades. That's that is badass. So she's sixty six years old. So she's part of one of the companies and then there's another company doing this. And now Pfizer and others are using the same technique to to cure COVID. But this is not just gonna cure COVID. So like This idea of mRNA vaccines is actually the most promising path we have to curing cancer also. Now I'm not saying it's going to, because like there's a lot of false hope when it comes to these things, but um, you know, the way we we try to cure cancer today is we're like, oh, you have cancer cells in your body? Let's just nuke your whole body with radiation. Uh let's kill the good cells, the bad cells. You'll lose your hair, you'll throw up. Like let's just kill you and like right when you're on the brink of death, we'll stop giving you radiation and like hopefully we've killed the cancer cells in that time.

And what this instead will do is it's gonna allow for what's called like a designer vaccine for cancer, which is People are gonna figure out what cancer you have. Oh, here's the cells that you have that are cancerous. What proteins do they have? And then let's create the vaccine just like we did for COVID with mRNA. To get your body to produce those proteins and start to build immuno defenses for it. So it's like immunotherapy. When you hear these stories, do you think that well, I'm just I'm working on this clothing company or I'm looking on this video video game platform. And then you you read this and you just do you say to yourself

I'm worthless. No, I say to myself, I'm gonna tell everybody how awesome this person is so that you know, the five people that listen to this that are capable of doing this are gonna be inspired by this person. They're gonna go do something like this themselves. Okay, that's such an easy out. I'm the messenger, baby. Okay, that's a that that's a good answer. Yeah, correct, fine. You could say yep. Honesty, my a my true answer is something like that. Like When I took a step back after we sold and I was like, All right, well, what do I do with the next ten, twenty years of my life, like What do I want to work on? I was lucky that the thing I like to do, which is like

learn stuff and teach stuff through things like this podcast or whatever. I think genuinely that is the highest leverage thing any one person can do. Well, I think that's it's silly to compare, but it's undeniably interesting that if you can have a mad a large audience and tell them of cool people who deserve to be well known. You're right. That that's not just tell them of cool people. I'm just saying in general, teaching, I believe, is like a multipli it's a force multiplier, right? I agree with you. I go try to do something myself, right? I'm one operator. I can be the greatest operator in the world. I'm Elon Musk, uh or somebody like that. That's like the pinnacle of that. I agree with you. On the other hand, you could be a teacher. A teacher basically is gonna have now have and number of students, right? So I could reach a million students, I could unlock them as operators to be better. And now that's leveraged what I have in my talk on here about boring businesses all the time. And we talk about it, the reason we talk about it is like, well, we haven't heard about it before, but also They make a lot of money and it's easy and it's not a lot of work. Well it's a lot of work, but it's simpler and it's a surefire way. At the end of the day And this isn't an insult. At the end of the day, that's a very hedonistic way of viewing life. That's a very much like I'm gonna I don't care what I'm doing because I'm providing for me and my family. Which, you know, supplying for your giving your family good life. That's not quite hedonistic, but it's still like if you include your family in it, it's quite selfish and

Again, nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is. But We go like whenever I go and like get sick and meet a nurse practitioner who helps me or hear about this woman, I'm like There is You know how people say like

You know, just'cause you're rich doesn't mean you're like more valuable than someone else. I agree with that. But then I hear this woman, she could be poor, I have no idea. I'm like, oh, that one was more valuable than me and more valuable than a lot of others. Yes. The people who are like the Catalan Cariko's and the Elon Musk's and the um Forgot the guy who, you know, started microfinance or whatever, micro lending. The people who go and someone who's gonna go and fight climate change, let's be honest, they don't listen to this podcast for the most part. And if they do, the things they're hearing here are not really gonna help them do that thing. Uh, right. Like the great scientists

Scientist entrepreneurs, essentially. They are motivated and inspired by different things altogether. There's a different teacher for them, right? There's a different person out there who gives them information and inspiration. And it's not me for the most part. If I do what I do though, there's a like a different argument, right? There's the hero argument which says The world needs Elon Musk and Cataline Cariko's to like solve the big problems and like make us all better. That's what I'll call the top down hero solution. Superman flies in.

Saves the day. And then there's the bottoms up solution, which is like Well, if every single person got a little bit smarter, a little bit happier, a little bit healthier, a little bit more kind, and you know, a little bit more, you know, motivated and inspired every day rather than feeling they're going through the motions, if you like solve it at the individual level for the masses, you make the world better in a different way. Right. And so that's a bottoms up approach to doing the same to to sort of having a same same level of impact. So if I was gonna like be a little dreamy about what I'm doing, uh, or what not feel like a piece of shit, I should say, it's like Well, if I can help a whole bunch of people be a little bit healthier, a little bit happier, and a little bit like more free financially so that they can like spend their time doing what they want and not in some like kind of tedious, monotonous job every day, that's a different type of unlock versus these people who are gonna have these big breakthroughs and like solve big problems for humanity.

People talk about legacy fighters a lot. You know, athletes particularly UFC guys. They're like it's about legacy. And then business people all also say that as well. They say um Like all right, I have money now, it's all about legacy. And I'm like, okay, yeah, your legacy is

Making your name known part of it. Your legacy's definitely leaving the world a better place. I think that's cool. But then I always try to look at the opposite of everything. And the opposite of that is like just live a quiet existence. And this is like what I said about being hedonistic and selfish, live a quiet existence Have a ton of fun and take care of your family.

And Just Seek pleasure. Part of me is like legacy's cool, but why the hell do I care? I'm dead. Screw it.

I'm having fun now. Like when I think of like Steve Jobs, he was like, Yeah, but how are you gonna change anything when you're uh like not working eighty hours a week and I'm like I'm not. Right. Yeah, I don't want to. Yeah, I those things bother me because I'm like, We're we value these Elon Musk of the world and I acknowledge that they need to exist, but then most of the time I'm like I don't wanna do that. Right. Fuck that guy. Yeah, well there's a question of like do I need to change the world, right? Do what how do I wanna live? That's fair. Like, okay, so I was listening to something interesting. I'll tell you about this conversation. So

I don't know how randomly on YouTube I got onto this video that was Scott Adams, who's the creator of Dilbert, and um Naval Ravakant, who's like kind of the Silicon Valley uh, you know, the guy who created Angel List and and a bunch of other cool things. They're at his house. They're at Scott at Scott Dilbert's house and they're just talking. They're doing a periscope and they just recorded the thing. And they agree about a bunch of things. And then one question came up, they go, What do we disagree on? Naval goes, Yeah, I think we disagree on like the importance of having kids. And Scott's like, What do you mean? I got kids. He's like, Well, yeah, but like you adopted or like, you know, biological kids. And he's like, And Scott's like, Well, like and then they kinda laugh and say Naval's like, look, look, look, I'm not saying adoption is bad. I'm not saying foster care is bad. I'm just saying like For me it was really important to like biologically I have my own biological kids and like reproduce, basically. Like

At his core, he's a scientist, and he's basically like at a evolutionary from an evolutionary um point of view, you know, we are reproducing machines. All that we're doing, those of us who made it this far, is because in our genes there is a desire to replicate, to reproduce, and that's how we stayed on. And other people who didn't care about reproducing didn't reproduce, and their genes are are now dead. And so Scott goes, Well, I would say I'm reproducing, but just in a more efficient way. He goes. I put out ideas into the world through my blog, through this, you know, live streams, through my comics, with Gilbert. If my ideas go live on, uh they'll live on far longer than any child of mine will. Like they an idea can live forever. An idea can get into like thousands of people where I'm only gonna be able to have a a couple of kids. So like for me My replication is what I'll call mimetic and not genetic. And uh I thought that was interesting. I've always found this interesting. And I think I've brought this up before, but like

Part of Your legacy, it doesn't have to be what you did. It can be like an idea or philosophy you put in the world that lives on far beyond your kind of like flesh and bones, your you know, your little meat sack that you live in. And so like do you think about that, like forget about legacy like oh I'm the guy who built the railroads, but like do you care about your about like your ideas spreading. I mean to some extent you do, otherwise why do this podcast. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I do. But I asked myself why and is that really important? Like, okay, so there's like the fun factor of like yeah, it's awesome. You're powerful, you're rich, you do whatever you want.

That's cool. What's the opposite look like when you're not that? Is it a significant difference in happiness and fulfillment? Right. Maybe not. I don't know, but I do question this. All right. So of those three paths that we just talked about, and maybe there's more. Path one. The point of your life, you're optimizing for enjoyment of your life.

Number two is you're optimizing for legacy or some kind of impact on the world. And then three is you're trying to have your kind of ideas spread, and your ideas are your legacy, not your accomplishments. Which one? Resonates the most to you or none of them. As of now, I think I'm a three. Either a three or a one. And then some days for sure you'd say one. I think I'm more of a one of an enjoyment. But in the future. I think I'll be a number two in impact. But as of today, right now, I have a feeling

I don't know this yet. I have a feeling when I have children it changes a little. Mm. Does it? Not really. I guess it changes, but like maybe for different people in different ways. When I'm with my daughter, like I kinda like I guess I'm in one of two modes. Either I'm like, oh my God, I just want to go do something else. This is so boring. I've read this book forty-five times in a row. Like bubbles, bubbles everywhere, bubbles, bubbles in my hair. Like I'm just tired of this. I want to go do something more fun. Do you know how fun the internet is? I'm tired of like this babysitting that I'm doing right now. And then other times I'm with her and I'm just like, dude, who cares about like

success. Like all I need to do is just hang out with her. She's awesome. And uh like you know, I don't really need to go be like super ambitious. Like what a waste of energy to go sit in my room on my computer. And I'm literally like in one of those two camps at all times. I think this is normal. But maybe not. I think that for the people who are extremely successful, they don't uh waver. Right. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I have a I have another idea for you because I think we got philosophical for a bit. So which idea do I want to do? They kind of seem anticlimatic when we're talking about like what's the purpose of your life? And I'm like, Oh, here's an idea. That's okay. By the way, Sean, people have been telling me they like listening to us because it's not always strictly business. They listen to us on a regular basis because they need uh someone Was comparing us to All In that podcast and then Morning Bruise thing. I don't know what it's called. Apparently they both talk about politics a lot.

It's almost like oh I hate that. I just want to like turn my like they say they want to turn their brain off, but at the same time they turn it on with us, but we don't ever talk about it. Well it's an escape, right? Like uh we yes, it's a very good escape. Yeah, and uh and like I I always wanted to rename the podcast what was it, like idea porn or something like that. Because Porn itself is also kind of like an escape. It's just kind of a pleasure thing. It's not like a long term commitment. Like I think a lot of people listen to these ideas not to go do them all, but just because it's like interesting and entertaining and then they're be done with the podcast and be done with it. Embrace the banter, embrace the escape. Are you gonna talk about micro biz? Uh yeah. All right. Did you see what I did with this? This is funny. No. It looked aw I like the sound of that, though. All right. So you actually missed this opportunity. I pounced uh before because you didn't reply. So Wait, how did I not reply? Okay, so this guy, Andrew, runs this company called microacquire.com. Yeah, he's in the trends group. Yeah. And so he emailed you and me, and he emailed us both and was just like, hey, kind of a fun idea. There's a bunch of small micro businesses, like a five thousand dollar a little business that's you know can buy for five thousand dollars. What if we just gave it away to somebody like in the community?

And then I guess like you didn't reply or whatever. And so he DM me, he was like, you know, what do you think? You want to do this? And I was like, Yeah, let's and so then like literally I didn't even like really reply to him. I just tweeted it out. I was like You know, people don't really know this, but like buying businesses is like most awesome ways to go as an entrepreneur. Like instead of building from scratch, you can buy. And like You know, if you want to just like learn about business, don't go to business school. Like, let me save you the time and money. I'll just give you one of these micro businesses and go like learn by doing. I'll just give you this five thousand dollar business. And uh I said, you know, Andrew, what do you say? Well, you you in on this? You know, you you want to do this? And he was like, So I kind of made it public, like what he was doing in the DM. And he's like, Hell yeah, like I'm in and I'll I'll provide some coaching and we'll waive the fees of the transaction or whatever. And then other people started chiming in, like, dude, this is awesome. I'll chip in five K too for free.

And so we ended up with fifty seven thousand dollars in the bank of people who are willing to just let us basically now we have a fifty seven it was a five thousand dollar bankroll to go buy a business. Now it's a fifty seven thousand dollar bankroll to go buy a business. Cause people were just like yeah just pick a cool operator Let them like take one of these businesses and run with it and uh let them like build it in public and like talk about it as they go. Like this is a cool experiment for science. So who who what what business are you guys gonna get? So then I said, all right, so then a bunch of people replied as like pick me as the operator, because like hey, who doesn't want to just get a gift a business gift into them We found a couple of people and I think we're just gonna like do like a thirty minute phall with the final two or three people and just pick one from there.

Give it to Henry Johnson. Henry Johnson, okay. I don't know if you replied to it, but I'll check him out. I know who you're talking about. He's very active in our community. And so then I went through all the businesses. I was like, okay, which one is good to buy? And you know, most of them I would say are like are bad, like to the point where I was like, okay, if you if I gave someone this business, I'm giving them kind of a shitty job to go to. Um so like I want to avoid that. You know, this experiment will be fun if the business has a enough potential where like This can actually like grow into something. So picking a good operator and good business are important here. So anyways, I'm curious of what's gonna happen. We're gonna finalize the the whole thing this week. And uh I think what we're gonna do is gonna finalize we finalize the money, we finalize who the operator is this week, and then we're gonna take a 60 day window and we're gonna say, All right, in the next 60 days, it's like a little tiny micro spec. It's like you have sixty days to find a company to acquire with this blank check. And we're gonna publish the whole thing on my newsletter about like, okay, here's what they're doing, here's how it's going, so on and so forth. So I'm excited. How do you have time to do all that?

Well, I'm not doing it. I'm just picking the I just tweeted it out and I picked the operator. Yeah, but even like organizing this stuff is Andrew from Micro Require is like more of the guy who's gonna like make it happen because for them this is like the best fucking advertising. Like he was showing me the stats from the tw just from the tweet alone, I think he got like you know, four or five thousand followers on Twitter, which like double uh probably doubled his Twitter following. And then he showed me the Google analytics of the site and there was like, you know, a thousand plus concurrent view users on the site at that very second. And so you know, I'm sure he got he already kind of like made his money back just in terms of people buying the membership or finding out about it. But it's, you know, credit to him of like it was his idea to do something cool like this, like give away a business. That's a way better marketing push than just saying, hey, um Did you know? Like I my site exists. Come come visit it, right? Like I think he deserves the additional traffic he's gonna get out of it, but he's gotta do the work now to like make it all go. I'm not gonna do the work. Yeah, I'm looking it all up now. This is uh It's a great site. I he's been doing it for a minute and now it's it was okay at first. Now it's really getting cool. I really like the concept of the site. I would say like just in full you know transparency, uh most of the deals on there I think are very bad deals, but you know, whatever. That's any marketplace has a bunch of junk and has some really good stuff. That's where all the value is. So

Don't be like, Oh, Sean said micro car is great. I'm gonna go buy some business on here. Like I would not advise that as just like a like do your homework. Okay. Your shoulders, are they tired? No, dude, I just get stronger as the hour goes on. Okay. What's do one more last one, maybe Eureka surveys. I wanna save that one. The guys uh the guys uh so we talked about user testing and these guys are doing something dope with uh in that vein and he DM me and he shared the numbers, but I think they wanted to like Like they're just like they want to push out of private beta into public beta. So he's like, wait one week to talk about it. I was like, All right, find a problem.

Well you wanna do one more? Yeah, let's do one more. Um Okay, here's like okay, I'll give you two really dumb simple ideas. Maybe something like this exists, but I ran into these pain points and maybe somebody could build a simple tool that solves these. So the first one is Amazon affiliate link. So you Sam on your blog, you used to sell Amazon affiliate, right? I used to have his affiliate links. Yeah, I would make about four or five grand a month. And to do that, you have to become a like official affiliate or something like that, correct?

Yeah, and I've been banned many times for doing um stuff that I didn't think was banable. There's kind of a process you have to go through to do that, because like for example A bunch of people were asking me about like you know my setup of like a podcast and stuff like that. I was like, Okay, cool. Why don't I just publish the have a blog, but like for example, I didn't know that you so there's rules. You cannot There's like many rules, but one of the rules is you cannot email people A link.

Yeah, which is crazy. That's why I was gonna do it in a newsletter and I was like, How do you do that? And then they ban me. It's a big pain in the butt or the other day. It used to be like four and a half percent commission. They just said, All right, for most all these categories, now it's two percent. Like they just change it whenever. Okay, so this idea might not actually be viable. It might not work with a term service, but basically like a one off, like you know, like link shorteners like Bitly and shit like that. Like why not just like a one off way to generate an affiliate link for Amazon products? Because I don't want to go become a merchant and a f long term affiliate and become a blogger, like none of that stuff. But like why can't I just like affiliatize my link once this There's this company called Skim Links. Have you heard of Skim Links? No. Is that what that is? It's an E c yeah, a little bit. They uh they're about twelve years old.

They in two thousand seventeen they did a hundred uh they did a billion dollars in gross market or what's it called? Gm V, yeah. G M V. So let's say they took a thirty or forty percent cut. That's Three hundred million dollars, which I don't know if it's that high. Probably way less, is my guess. What even two percent uh of of a billion is not sure not nothing. Yeah, it's actually probably thirty, forty million they do. But

That's what they do and they've been around for a while, twelve years. It's a pretty reputable company, pretty big. They've raised Tens of millions, maybe close to a hundred million in revenue. And it is kind of similar and it's quite effective. You never heard of Skim Links? I've heard of it once before, but I didn't know uh if it works for does it work for for Amazon products or no? I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that they call email me on a regular basis to sign up. But I guess you're saying something valid.

Yeah, so basically like I just think there should be like a disposable simple way to affiliatize my link. And somebody should make like a bit.ly that just does that easily. Maybe Skim Links is kind of already this. Um Yeah, and it's it's actually owned by another company. Have you ever studied like AdTech? Uh I mean not studied it, no, but tech companies like Like, okay, so the company that owns Skim Links is called Contexity. The company that owns Contexity is called Symphony Tech Group, founded in 2012. Its total portfolio includes$2.5 billion in revenue and 15,000 employees. There's ad tech companies that you, unless you're in the in the world of ad tech. have no idea exists, that are just massive, massive, massive, massive. It's amazing.

Oh wait, sorry, Symphony Tech Group is PE. I was wrong. But You get the idea. Like some of these ad tech games or ad tech businesses are freaking nuts. Right. And uh and I don't really understand how most of Adtec truly works because it's like such a complicated machine of like cookie swaps and data transfer and it's like all kinds of like, oh the pixel is hashed and then the hashed user is passed to here. It's like What's going on? Like how do these businesses work? And who who the hell thinks of this stuff? And you know, obviously, you know, there's a lot of money to be made, so so good on them. Okay, here's another kind of simple idea. I think I've kind of said this before, but Facebook advertising is like

one of the like, you know, big industry. You know, there's probably like nine to ten million advertisers on Facebook. Uh let's say even half of them are are are active or you know, whatever. Let's say four million active advertisers on Facebook. Make up some round numbers. And um The ad manager is just like such a pain in the ass to work with. It's a horrible thing. And um one of the biggest problems with it is just visualized just going and checking how are my ads doing. And you know, they present it in this like very like sterile table kind of way. And I think that somebody

I think that there should be just like somebody who just says, all right, how do I build a layer on top of Facebook ads that is useful to some of the four to 10 million advertisers of Facebook? Like what should they look at every morning? How do I make this presentation more visual, right? Like how do I take all your ad creatives And then like layer on the data on top, or how do I show you you and your competitors' ads and how like just Layer on top of the Facebook Ad manager is have you seen Adspresso? Yes, so I've used Adspresso. Before and I found it like

Okay to use. Uh it it like kinda got outdated, right? Like it's it was like kitty shit. The problem I th I found that if you get really complex If you learn how to operate Add manager. It's quite complex and you need it to be complex. Right. I'm not saying replace that manager. I'm saying Build things using that as the data source. There's certainly going to be some value add thing you can do that just uses that as the data source, and people are going to be willing to pay you monthly to

Get ex ex extra value or alternative view or you know, different different level of insight. You want to hear a crazy story about this? So there's this company called contextual or context logic. You know what that is? You ever heard of that?

No, Chris Redlitz, one of my s uh seed investors and a good friend and mentor of mine, he was telling me about this company started ten years ago in his office. He had a f small phone and he had a few extra offices and he let this young guy named Pete, who formerly worked at Google and his partner Dan, I think his name was. Both worked at Google, both build up AdWords, and they started tinkering around and they built this thing called contextual. Logic, I think it was called. And it was a new ad network that was doing exactly what you've described, but for Facebook. And they started using it and they're like, Well, we need to test it. Let's sell some stuff on it. And they started selling some stuff on it and they just went to Alibaba and just sold crap. And they're like, Wait a minute, we can't give this away.

And so they pivoted and they started selling other people's stuff and then let merchants get on there and they used their advertising prowess to do it. And they eventually renamed that company Wish. That is how wish.com started. It was started because they were creating exactly what you're describing, and it was so good, they say. No, this is our competitive advantage. And so now they're public this is ten years later, I think, they're publicly traded with a twelve billion dollar market cap. So if you look up Wish, you'll see that they raise money under context it's either context or contextual logic. And The founder is Jack. Have you seen this guy? Mm-hmm.

Okay, I'm gonna send you uh Pete, the founder? Yeah. Yeah, I have. I've I've I've chatted with him via email once or twice. He's an oddball. He's uh He uh He's very quirky. Uh you can see in his Instagram picture here. I love uh tech founders that are jacked, by the way. I find it hilarious. I remember one time there was the Facebook F eight like annual conference Facebook does. Facebook is run by some of the smartest people in the world, but they're not like

The most you know, like athletic or well rounded or great public speakers, necessary. Dork right. Like, yeah, there's a lot of dork there. And for some reason I was sitting there and I was watching this and I was like, I noticed every single exec that got up there. was jacked this year. I was like, what kind of who's the personal trader? What is the program that they all got on? You know, who's putting creatine in the milkshakes at you know in Menlo Park? What is going on? Because there was one year that literally everybody was jacked. I have nothing more to say in the story, but it was probably have like a doctor who lives with them. Yeah, don't they have like in San Francisco, don't they just like own one of the buildings like where they own all all like all the all the execs have like apartments in the same building in SF. So that when they do need to come to San Francisco, they kinda have like an apartment there. Cause their office is not in San Francisco. No, uh Facebook. The office is not in San Francisco. So like Cheryl and and a bunch of the other execs, I think have like A bunch of

Penthouse condos in this one tower. So the tower is like twenty five percent occupied by s Facebook executives who are not there. Except for like two days a month when they go to San Francisco and then they use this as their And it has like a Botox clinic and like a TRT clinic and like an HGH clinic. Did you ever watch the show on Netflix called Selling? Selling sunset? I think it's called. Oh yeah, those guys were the worst. Did you watch the show? Did you see the Botox thing that they did? Yes, the worst. I can't stand it. I thought that was so funny. That is everything I'm against. People who haven't seen it. The real estate agents, they try to sell these like luxury properties. And they're always trying to drive foot traffic to their open houses. And their open house, their their tactic, their marketing tactic to you know, most people it's like, oh, it's an open house.

Okay, we'll have wine. Maybe we'll put some cold cut sandwiches out or some cheese cheese board. And this one girl's like, fuck that. I'm gonna make I'm gonna get all the real estate agents to come to this. I'm gonna do Botox and Burgers. So she had a doctor there giving Botox shots to the agents for free. He wanted to get Botox at the at the show again. And I was like, Wow, what a different world than I live in. That this is even a thing. I don't think I know a single person who has Botox. Maybe maybe I didn't, I'm just oblivious to it, but like I've never heard anyone in my social circle ever speak about getting plastic surgery or Botox. They don't talk about it, but I don't think they're gonna talk about it. Do you know anyone that gets Botox? Uh my sister had Bell's palsy where that paralyzes your face, and so she had to get it. Uh I almost for that. I'm saying for like people who do it just for this like aesthetic, you know, just for the the look. I don't know. They don't tell me about it. No, I don't know anyone. What's the like most gimmicky marketing thing you've done that's like, you know, your equivalent of the uh

the burgers and botox uh marketing stunt. Well, when I ran Southern Sam's wiener's as big as a baby's arm. If you put your baby's arm in a hot dog bone and put mustard on it and took a picture, you got a free wiener. Ha ha ha. I love that one. I have one that's like that. When we were doing the sushi restaurant thing, we you know, it's all up it was a delivery only, so there's no s there was no no storefront. It was a cloud kitchen. So how do you get people to hear about your restaurant if there's no storefront? So I was like, all right, we gotta make a splash. So we were

Based in downtown Denver, I was like, okay. And I was just tired. I used to go in a I would go into a skyscraper building. I would just kind of sneak past the concierge guy. I would go in the elevator and hit one. I'd get out and I'd start talking to the front desk lady of every floor of like a eighty floor building or whatever. And I got tired of that. So I was like, Okay, what's a what's a better technique than me going door to door selling sushi, essentially. And uh I was like Of course, I'm a huge idiot. Like we didn't even try Facebook ads. This is like Facebook was out. This is twenty ten, twenty eleven. Like we could have done Facebook ads, we just didn't even know. And so what I did was there was a nearby um beauty school, you know, like where where you learn to like uh cut hair and like do stuff like that, I guess. I forgot what they're called, cosmetology schools. And I went in and I said, Hey, do you do any of your girls like sushi? And they're like, Oh my God, we love sushi. You know, it's like bringing candy to a to a four year old's birthday party. And uh I was like, I will give you guys free sushi for life if you put these shirts on of ours and you go downtown and you basically like, you know, the free hugs campaign. Do the free hugs campaign and then tell like just basically like while you're wearing our stuff. Did it work? And

It worked. It was amazing. Like businessmen would come out of the thing and they'd be like, free hugs. And like they would give these guys a hug. The guy would like, you know, start blushing and be like, did I just cheat on my wife? And then uh he's like, No, it's just a hug. What's the deal? And it's like, Oh, we're doing this because we're part of this new sushi restaurant that's in town. You guys should totally order from it. The further away me and my ugly face got from that. the campaign, the better it worked. Like these girls were amazing. And we had like way more sales from that. That's a pretty good one. Thank God it worked though. Yeah. Uh all right, we're at the hour. So uh Abreu, how did we do? How did I do? Cause I think I did that episode. I know, I'm sorry. Be honest with me, Abreu, how did I do? Sam did as much as I did this episode. Um for real

I feel horrible. I'm just not I'm just I hadn't uh I just feel like I'm a little drunk, so tired. Sean, you were an A, uh, but overall the episode's like a B-ish. Fuck, that means I was a C, though. You coasted to a C. A C is a passing grade, man. You you got through. All right, I'll bring the heat next time then. Sounds good. I gotta run. Bye, bye. See ya.

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