The $70M/yr Sports Bar + Sleepy Industries Worth $100M

All right, so we gotta talk about this. This Business is Really, really cool. It's a product I want to use. And I think it's a business that could be kind of big. Like revolutionary, maybe. I feel like I could rule the world and nowhere. be what I want to

Yeah, you probably saw this because It's been going viral over and over and over again. And I always look for products that have this. Playground virality, meaning Anytime shows you that you're using it or they share a picture of it. It immediately sparks a big reaction. And so I saw I'm gonna sh share these three posts. So there's like

Check these out. The first one is this Reddit post. And so I go on Reddit and I see this post. And it's in the R slash Damn, that's interesting subreddit, which is one of my favorite subreddits. And it's basically

A video of somebody inside this venue. And it's like a sports bar. Meets IMAX. So you're sitting there, you've got a beer, you're just hanging out with your friends. But there's a giant screen, it's almost a dome that's over you.

Where it looks like your front row at A football game in this case. And they're cheering and their crowds went crazy, but it It looks like you're in the stadium, but you're not in the stadium. You're just in a bar. And this is called Cosm, or as I'm calling it, the mini sphere. Some people have probably heard you probably seen the uh the sphere in Las Vegas. It's this giant, huge dome that's uh, you know, in the middle of Las Vegas and it's

This insane two point three billion dollar project. that is remarkable. Looks like It's kind of cool. It's like one of those things where it's like humans built the pyramids and then we built the sphere. It's like a his marvel of uh of engineering and technology. Well the cosm is basically a mini sphere. So it's like a Two thousand

You know, seat venue that you can use for sports games and all this stuff. And now they got a couple of them popping up. I think this is really cool. I think it rides on a bunch of big trends. So it's you know uh out of home entertainment, I think is a big deal. I think people are looking for places to congregate, to drink, to eat, and to enjoy themselves. And movie theaters are sort of

stale. Like I think streaming has sort of kicked movie theaters ass in a way. And now This is the out of home way of punching back. This thing I think is gonna be a much better way to watch live events and live sports than sitting at home. Yeah, so basically if you're listening Um if you see the photos, it's as if they so they build this massive, it's not even a bar. It looks like

It looks like a science center. It's like a huge building that they're building just for this thing and you go in and it's like as you did you ever go as a kid to the science center where it has the I was OmniMax. Yeah, like a planetarium where it's screen's all above you. That's basically what it is. But they had to raise two hundred and fifty million dollars to to build this because it's like a massive. No, no, they just raised that. So they just raised that a few months ago. They built the first two without or they built the first one at least without that because that was in July. Who funded that? So the story of this is There's a guy who's behind it.

And he started one of the biggest real estate property management software companies, I think called Real Page. The guy's name is Wyn. Oh yeah. Uh something like Wynn. So he has this thing called Real Page. Real Page got bought by Thomas Bravo for like ten billion dollars. This guy made a couple of billion dollars out of it. He then starts his own kind of

By the way, you might be confusing the name. Steve Wynn is the guy from um Las Vegas, the casino guy. Yeah, I think this guy's name is also Wynne, but it's W Oh really? So it's a different Steve Wynn that is that is behind this one. And so he uh he's got this Venture capital firm, Marcel Capital. So he basically what he did was actually produce things. So you said it's like a planetarium. No.

It is a planetarium. Do do you know the backstory of this? No. I uh no. So he went and bought three companies. So he bought the companies that make the science planetarium things. for every, you know, museum or whatever like you know, science place. So they He bought that company and then he bought another company that you know, did the LED screen part of that. Then he bought another company that was like the like cameras and technology part of it.

So it's a roll up of three or four companies now at this point. that he did. And Because of that, they have Yeah, they're they're basically the monopoly on um I I mean it's not a monopoly isn't nobody else can do it, but they're the biggest player in developing this type of technology, these types of screens. Wow. What he did was realize Hey, this is cool, but it doesn't have to just be for

For pl the planetarium. Like you could use this for sports. If you send your own Video crew to go film Like the the sort of

courtside or field side seats. at these different venues. And so they do they're basically a full stack thing. So they have the rights with the leagues. uh like UFC, for example, they have the rights with UFC, they have the rights with certain certain football leagues. And they

full production crew there. So it's not just what you're it's not just what you see on TV, but bigger. It's its own thing. And so they have like crews that are almost like VR where you see like They're right there by the end zone. And then as the guy crosses, the camera's turning with him. And then they have a live production team that's basically cutting between the different cameras that they have.

To show what's gonna be on that huge screen. And so that's how they actually made this. That's the backstory of how they did this. That's that's amazing. I did not realize that that's how it started. I really want to go to one of these. I've had a friend who uh his name's Hat. I think you

You know Hat. Uh he went to the one in Dallas and he sent me a video of it. Who's who is our friend named Hat He he messaged us about it. He hosted the Dallas M F M meeting. Friendly. You're friendly with a guy named Hat. And he uh He sent me a video and

He was like, Hey, I'm in Houston and it was of uh some sports games some sport game and I was like that game's not in Houston and he's like No no no This is a screen Like I'm not here right now. It this is a screen. And I genuinely thought he was there. And so like I would pay I'm I I as soon as UFC is on this, I'm gonna be paying money. It is this weekend. Actually. So uh this weekend's uh Sphere.

the the the fight card they're having at the sphere, I believe is gonna be shown in the cosm. So they they basically a mix of things because it's not just sports. So there's sports, but then they got Cirque de Soleil. And so if you want to go see O, but you want to see O like in the best seat that ever existed, plus the backstage, plus follow of them one of the performers, plus in the air. You can go watch O at this thing. And so the I was doing the math on this and I I don't have the exact numbers here, but Here's here's the rough math on a venue like this.

So They have general admission, which is kind of like standing room only. You could just literally there's people just sitting on the floor. And those are twenty two bucks. So super cheap. And they're gonna make the money on those people through Yeah. Beer and and French fries or whatever.

Then they have the like Booths or tables. type of thing, which is Each seat there is kind of like between fifty and two hundred bucks, depending on the the day and the the event. And they could fit, you know, a thousand general admission and a thousand, you know, premium

people into this thing. But they have shows all the time because they have like the Cirque de Soleil thing, they have this like art exhibit thing, they have a orbital thing that's space, then they have sports. And so they have sixty four events this month. Barely in the next coming month. And I don't know what I don't know how, you know, what the occupancy is like, but

It's pretty Easy to see that this thing is Probably somewhere between, you know, four to six million a month. In revenue right now. Not counting.

all the alcohol sales. So, you know, that that might be double uh you know there. So I I would say low end, maybe three to four million on tickets. And on the h and then, you know, double that once you once you factor in all the food and alcohol purchases. I talked to this guy the other day on for MoneyWise, we did this podcast with him, and he basically made something like twenty five million dollars. He like owned a a a tech company, he sold it, he got twenty five million in cash. He still owns twenty five million in equity in the business.

And he's based out of uh Canada. Inside of a uh Two thousand person town. And he sold the business, made his money, whatever, and he still has his office in that small town. And he said that in the small town of two thousand people, he employs roughly fifty of'em and he owns the fanciest office building on the main street and they have barbecues and shit like that every week where the community come and hang out, whatever. And it made me sad that I make a m make money on the internet and that I make money remotely with the remote staff because it's hard to see the magic that you're working so hard to create, or hopefully your output is magic where you create products and services that people love.

And it made me really bumped and I was like, I want to get into like more physical stuff or physically see my creation, even if it's just like employees in an office. And when I see products like Cosm, it seems trivial. Like, oh, we're just doing it just like a place where people can drink beers and watch sport. But That's it's more than that. And to see this as your output of like I'm creating something that is physical that I can go and see and be proud of while people are watching and enjoying it.

I am envious of that as someone who does mostly. They can watch sport drink beer. But they can watch sport drink beer in front of a huge screen. A big ass screen. No, I know what you mean. I I would feel that way. But I've done a restaurant. I have an e commerce thing that has physical products. And I've also done some events. And every time I've done any of those things. I hate it. I'm like, oh my God, this would be so much easier.

I would enjoy my life so much more. If I could what I am so much happier sitting behind a computer, on my laptop, in my boxers. You know the I told you the the Peter Levels photo. Of him sitting on a couch. With his neck scrunched in the worst posture, no shirt, boxers, laptop on.

That to me is the Jordan logo. Dude, that is that is the drama. That is somebody dunking from the free throw line of life. And that's what I want. I don't want any of this shit where I have to like have a brick and mortar venue. I know it sounds romantic, but No.

Look, your luck. That's the perfect segue to today's sponsor. Because look, if you like to create content. Doing what you and I do of having a podcast, that's kind of hard because you have to have like a schedule all the time and you gotta like go and perform. Doing video is even worse because video is like impossible to edit and it's just a pain in the ass. Writing Is without a doubt.

the best in terms of having the best lifestyle'cause you could just write late at night. You don't have to be dressed. You can do it in your bed, whatever. It's also the best because it might be a newsletter might be one of the most profitable creator outlets I think there is in terms of like CPM than willingness to uh people to buy subscriptions. Can we tell the story of when you were doing the hustle, I remember you How to blog. And you were doing these viral blog posts that were like a guy's you know microdosing LSD. You like paid some some dude like two hundred bucks to micro dosed LSD. Another guy was living on soil and for thirty days straight.

And like documenting it every day. And these these posts were getting millions of views. And then you came into my office and you're like Yeah, I'm switching to a newsletter. That's like Old, what do you mean? What are you talking about? And you were way ahead of the curve and you told me you were like Yeah, I think these things make like fifty bucks.

Per thousand. Impressions like fifty dollar CPM. And I was like, No way, dude. A YouTube video. A video. Like video ads gotta be Higher. Like YouTube a YouTube creator is making like four dollars CPM.

Why would a newsletter make fifty dollars CPM? And you were absolutely right. Of course, you know, six years later, I started a newsletter company doing the same exact model for the same exact reason and ended up, you know, selling it, you know, as just the same way you did. It is is amazing how well that business model works. And If you're gonna do a newsletter, where where should you do it? Here you should do a beehive, of course. And we're gonna give that plug, but I wanna give you the n the math behind the thing that you just talked about, which was basically let's say that when I was doing those newsletters uh or those blogs, let's just say that like one or two went viral and I would get like two hundred and fifty thousand visitors that month or two hundred thousand visitors that that month, I made like a thousand dollars. Let's say I had a uh newsletter that had uh a hundred thousand subscribers and I wrote to them daily.

Uh, that's five grand a day. that I would make if I could get fifty dollars CPM, which I was. Exactly. So It's like the math was like so I literally went from like five thousand to three hundred thousand dollars per month and in one you have to pray to the viral gods to go viral. In the other, you basically just you told me you called it your pirate ship. You're like, I'm a pirate. This is our pirate ship, and every new email subscriber is a little wind in our sails. And I I love that metaphor. And I think it's the same way that I know a ton of people who are on beehive that have like a newsletter with 10,000, 12,000, 22,000, 32,000. Readers that are

It's great. They get to put out to the world their thoughts, their ideas. Um, and they get paid to do it. I think it's an amazing thing. So check it out. If you're Looking for a place to do a newsletter. Beehive dot com. It's B E E. H I V The worst thing about'em is the spelling of the domain. Everything else is flawless.

Can I tell you something that's gonna sound stupid and ridiculous, but I think it's true and it's gonna make a lot of money. Stupid and ridiculous, but I think it's true it's gonna make a lot of money. Damn, dude. Did you just do a personality test? That was awesome. Describe yourself. Is that your bio? Yeah. There's people who are like EFGs, whatever I'm like at I'm gonna get O I new Myers Briggs, dude. That was awesome. I D I O T. What are you? Oh, are you an M O R O N? Um listen to this. So You know how like

Let me th let me think how what's the best way to phrase this,'cause we're coming from a moron's perspective. All right. Uh So there's something that I think has not been like touched on. Sure. Forever for or at least in the startup world. And it bothers me.

And the reason why it bothers me is because Tesla when that came about, that was like, Oh my God, this is like the craziest thing ever, no one would ever touch us but But it it has worked. And now Rivian and there's other now car startups. Same with SpaceX. SpaceX, when they started, it was like this is ridiculous. You can't make a hardware company that goes to space. That's ridiculous. Now we have Android. We have a bunch of other stuff like that. And they're getting funding and they're proving that like this is a good idea.

There's a category. Of products. Inside your home. You probably abuse this product today. that it boggles my mind why there's no innovation. So to put this in perspective, I believe all right, so there's about fifteen million cars sold.

Per year. There's about thirteen million units of this product sold. Per year. Basically everyone in America has'em. They cost

Thousands of dollars, the lifespan of these products is like Five years. And that is The washer and dryer.

It boggles my mind while we have not seen more innovation with the washer and dryer. And yes, I'm gonna say I say washer. Because with an R, that's a weird midwestern accent. I'm gonna get that out the way'cause people are gonna make fun of me. But What's been killing me is and I've said this for years that there's not a good two in one washer and dryer. So this company called LG. They came out with this like washer and dryer the other day. That it's a two two in one washer and dryer.

And it was on the Wall Street Journal, and it there's videos on YouTube talking about this washer and dryer. These nerds like me who are like into this technology. They're like going bananas, uh that this technology has actually is actually coming to fruition, which basically being the main critique of the washer and dryer in one. is that it was really hard to create a so when you have a washer, that means it has to be water sealed. But when you have something that's water sealed, it's hard to

Increase the temperature. So how do you put heat in there to dry your clothing? And that technology is actually really hard. But these guys have actually like they're slowly getting around to where it's actually working. And It's amazing. How big some of these businesses are.

uh that sell just mostly washer and dryer so if you look at Whirlpool, I believe what Whirlpool is publicly traded. Last year they had twenty two billion dollars in sales and about half of that revenue was from washer and dryers. And what's crazy to me is that that's compared to Rivian, which is a venture startup now I think it's probably traded. two billion dollars a year in sales. Right. And so like it's crazy to me that a lot of these sexier industries in the hardware space cars, rockets, self defense, are getting funded and are like popular. But the washer and dryer in particular.

I'm making a prediction that in the next ten years Maybe fifteen, we're gonna see a lot of movement in this space, and I think the appetite is big. And I'll give you another example. There's this company called Impulse Labs. Have you heard of Impulse Labs? No, I never heard of him.

So impulse labs. And you can make the same case that I made for washer and dryers. You can make that case for ovens or stove tops. But if you look at stove tops. The majority of homes in America have electric stove tops.

And electric stove tops are a huge pain in the ass because The way they work, I believe, is that There's basically only one temperature. And so it's like an on or an off. And so when you use an electric stove top, even though you put it on high, that just means that it's going to like self regulate to where it's gonna stay on for a certain amount of time and then turn off for a few seconds and then turn back on and then turn back off to a point where it's high, and then with medium, it's gonna turn off for longer. And then you know what I mean, it's gonna like try and stay at that same time.

That's actually Like makes a huge difference in your cooking if you're into like cooking nice meals. And it's a huge pain in the ass. And so these guys called Impulse Labs. They have built this technology to where you have a battery that's charging all of the time. And that battery when you want to use your stove.

it like turbocharges your stovetop. So it keeps the heat at a steady temperature and it gets hot really, really fast. And so they've launched these new stovetop. And when I hear their argument about how big this business can be I kinda have bought into like I think this actually can work. Now the downside Is that you have to raise Hundreds of millions of dollars potentially.

But What are you thinking about stove tops and washer and dryers? These are actually really really big markets. Right. Like we're like this like similar s uh size of car companies.

But are drastically underfunded. Potentially. have uh less competition than a lot of these other uh industries because there's not a lot of startups attacking this. Well, I think this is pretty interesting, but I'm gonna poke a few holes in your argument.

There's many the but this argument that I presented, it's like sh we're gonna call string cheese. Swiss cheese. No, it's string cheese. There's only there's ways around it. So the problem with the kind of rockets and or um cars, and let's just take cars, for example. I think the reason that Rivian and Tesla have so much had so much heat when they came out, even though they weren't selling that many units, was People see that they're uh first of all, cars are much more expensive than washers and dryers. So that's the first thing. Oh yeah, that's multiple of maybe ten X. higher pri higher price per unit. So yes, they sell the same number of units, but at least 10x higher, maybe 20x higher in a lot of cases.

On top of that Um you buy multiple of them. So like I don't know when you I I haven't replaced a washer and dryer. And five years since I've been living in the a place. Well, have you lived in one home for one place? Probably not from it. Have you lived in one house for five years? But is that the is that the shelf life of these things you have to replace them after five years?

Okay. Gotcha. The other part of it that I think is is hard is With Tesla and Rivian, I think the thesis is that All cars eventually go electric. So you basically take the entire fleet of cars and you say these are all gonna have to switch to electric and that the traditional car makers are not gonna be these guys will figure out how to ramp production before the traditional car makers figure out how to go electric.

And I don't know if that's proven out to be true or not. I mean Tesla has obviously beaten the traditional car makers. And it's I think Tesla's worth more than like all of the other You know, next five car makers combined type of thing. It's ridiculous.

The two in one necessarily. Uh maybe maybe it's true that two in one basically replaces all All combos, I'm not sure. The last thing I would say is that a lot of these have like switching costs. So for example you know, the stove top, even if I like it, I'm not gonna rip out my stove to do this. It's only gonna be, let's say, new builds. That are gonna put something like this in, like the stove top.

Whereas with a car the switching costs is lower because I can always get a second car. I can my I can Trade cars, it's not the same as like ripping up my kitchen in order to get these. So I think that's the hard part about some of these is You have A lot of capital and a lot of difficulty, but some pay out, you know, ten or a hundred X.

And that's why the funding goes to the space companies, goes to the military, you know, weapons companies, and goes to the car companies before it's going to go to some of these. That being said, I have the I have the June thing, uh I have the June oven. And I gotta say It's

Good. Right. It's complete overkill. And so I think the hard part of this is like like I don't know if you've ever used it, but there's a camera inside of it. So you put A bagel inside. And it just says Wait, wait, wait, I got it.

Bagel. And I'm like, Yeah, cool. Still gotta push toast. Uh like the fact that this camera was in here that recognized the bagel. Is like a cool demo, but ultimately like not that important of a feature.

Compared to, you know, just like not being a thousand dollars, right? They the th the I think the June of it's like a thousand dollars or more. So yeah, I'm not I'm not super convinced on these. But I do like where your head's at, which is What are these sleepy industries? That need innovation.

Where size is there, sleepiness is there, but the innovation is super low. That in general is a good place to go if you're really determined and can make some shit happen. You know who kicks ass in one of these faces? Shark Ninja. Have you heard of Shark Ninja? Like they make Ninja and Shark. It's two different brands, but under one company, Shark Ninja. I believe it's a bootstrap company started in nineteen ninety four. It the it got bought and went public.

But Within six years they were doing a hundred million in revenue. Within within the year eight they were doing uh Two hundred fifty million dollars in revenue. Base out of Boston, American company. The products that they make

Amazing. They have made some of the best products. So like their vacuum is amazing. I own the creamy, which is like the greatest thing ever. They helped innovate and create the air fryer. Some of these appliance businesses have been shockingly good. And

Surprising bootstrapped. Well, you know my favorite one of these that's like Not as hard to do. But Mm-hmm.

Also kind of a sleepy industry is hex clad. Do you have hexcloud? Do you have any other pants? I'm thinking about buying some. So Convince me why I should buy them. Well, dude, I don't know. I think the you know, one of the things here is like

Uh Customer has like a different like awareness and sophistication level. So I don't actually know what would make a great pan if there I'm sure there's people out there who are like, No, no, no, only cast iron or only this type of pan or it's all marketing, whatever. But I'm in the bucket. That's like the fat part of the bell curve where it's like Yeah, marketing just kinda works on me.

Um right, like I saw that Gordon Ramsey invested a hundred million dollars into Hexclad. Which is wow. Stunning amount of money. And I I let me make sure. How does Gordon Rams they have a hundred thirty dollars? As I said, uh let me make sure that I I have this right. So I guess Studio so Studio Ramsey Global. A partnership between Fox and Gordon Ramsey is investing a hundred million into X Cad. So not him personally, let's say, but him and his venture studio or whatever, his venture venture firm. Their website is beautiful and I want to buy Hexclad right now because of their website. So I bought it. The pan's pretty good. Uh I don't know again if they're the best pans ever, but

They're they're good. And the branding is great. the visual of it. So like the pan itself has little um hexagons as the bottom of it. So it's like instantly recognizable product. Like when I look in my cabinet, I have like all my generic pan, and then I can literally just see the difference of a hexagon pan and it's like ties to the name. And then you have Gordon Ramsey as the influencer behind this. And it's just pants, dude. It's like A sleepy industry.

That everybody needs. It's a high value, high AOV product. And these guys crush. They do hundreds of millions in revenue. And uh you know, they're they're sold in Costco. They have like amazing distribution. I think they're one of the biggest Shopify stores overall. And it was such a non like

I don't want to disparage them by calling it non innovation, but it's not rockets and it's not electric cars, right? It's like non stick pans. But it is It is very well done and uh I'm very impressed with their execution and it's a great business. Were they just uh was it just a a Here's what it says. In twenty thirteen, the two co-founders, Danny and Cole, they had worked for a now defunct cookware company and decided they wanted to start their own.

So they started, you know, working on it. They dabbled with a couple of products. They started selling in twenty sixteen. Twenty seventeen, they get a deal with Costco. And the business has doubled almost every year since twenty seventeen. They're one of the top Shopify sellers in the world. They have one of the biggest Black Fridays of any uh they said, I have never heard of anyone who's sold more than us on Black Friday, which I think is just pretty dope. It's a very, very well done product. They make you feel. elite, you know, by buying this this pan, whether the pan is

Is a lead or not is sort of secondary. It's an amazing example of just like what brand marketing and influence can do for you. Speaking of food and cooking. Do you have any plans? For the holidays'cause I I've got some uh I got an idea for you. Okay, you're inviting me over or what what's happening right now? It's even better. This is even better. Are you free? I'm free.

All right. I've got like a little like eight week little project for you. I if you're interested. You know, it's no big deal. It's just a little small it's like a It's like the equivalent of like a super Lego. Okay, go for it. Weight watchers. Do me a favor, and Google Weight Watcher stock right now. Okay.

What's their market cap at? Oh geez, fifty eight million. What happened? Oprah. What happened? That's what happened. Oprah left. Oprah's gone. Well, and they lost uh a hundred ten million dollars last year and the business

decline by ten percent. I think the Zempic hit him. Well Let me make an argument as to why uh Weight Watchers is gonna start selling out as epic and why Sean is gonna own ten percent of the company. So listen. That's your little your eight week project, your holiday project. So Weight Watchers was started, I think, in the sixties. And the way it started was it was there's this housewife in New York City and she uh was a little overweight and she got

a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight. And then she created like an eight person support group. Where she got her friends to give her two dollars per meeting and they m met once a week. And it helped everyone lose weight. They held were held accountable and they loved it. She did it for about a year and then eventually this one man and his wife or his his wife was like, Hey, you should you need to lose weight, you go to this woman support group, I bet she'll lose weight. And this guy was a a businessman. And he was like

Hey, um We should definitely make this a thing. Like Her name was Jean. He was like, Hey Jean. This should be like a business. This was amazing. I actually like lost weight and it changed my life a little bit. And so they come up with this idea to franchise the business. And they s launched it in nineteen sixty three.

And by nineteen sixty eight, it had a million members. each paying a a monthly fee in order to t attend a local meeting that was based off of their dieting advice, but a local meeting where you would go once a week or once a month in order to have like your support group. And then by nineteen sixty eight They sold the business for three hundred fifty million dollars in today, uh they sold it for seventy w seventy one million dollars then, which is something like four hundred million dollars in today's money. Oddly they sold to Heinz, Heinz catch up.

Which is like the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight watchers, but But anyway. Uh they do their thing. And then uh Oprah comes into play. And so Oprah comes into play and when she comes into play

the the stock like takes off to where like she buys a bunch of stock and then within like Weeks or something like that. She has tripled her money and it booms and it takes off. Well, over the last handful of years, her Weight Watchers plan has been shedding her Weight Watch Watcher stock and she's been losing a bunch of her stock and selling it. And now it's plummeted. And so the stock is horrible.

And so my opinion. Is if I'm weight watchers. I think I'm just gonna start selling Oh, that bag. That's what I'm going to become. I'm if I have

millions and millions of members who are subscribed to me for weight loss tips. If I needed to You know, just only care about money. My new game is Well, I I and by the way, th they have uh three point eight million uh paying subscribers. The name of my game is

Hey, for an additional three hundred dollars or four hundred dollars or five hundred dollars a month. We really can guarantee that you're gonna lose point. They're definitely going in this direction. So I didn't realize this, but uh Uh do you know who the CEO of White Watchers is? No who? Her name her name is Seema Sistani. And

The reason that name sounds familiar is because she was formerly the COO of Meerkat. Do you remember Meerkat? The like live streaming app? What? Uh yeah. So she worked with Ben Rubin and when th they turned into house party, they ended up getting acquired. Cima and uh Ends up. Now being the CEO of Weight Watchers.

And she recently wrote an email to the to the team. So this is uh Couple months ago. And it says Team, as the week draws to a close, I want to take a moment to address some of the breathless media coverage I'm sure you guys have seen. And basically it says,

Hey, we're we're in a good cash position. We have strong liquidity. The work we do matters. Our business is healthy. And it says we've repositioned the company to grow with a cleartiator. We're gonna offer a full spectrum of weight care. From behavioral, which is the thing where they What they've been doing. Too clinical.

And clinical being you know, the sale of of essentially, you know, semaglutide type products is is where they're going with it. So I think it's kind of interesting what you're saying because Oh I don't know what the what is the price of a Weight Watchers Subscription. If you don't have insurance, semiglutide is somewhere between five hundred to a thousand dollars per month.

Per month. Exactly. And so like let's if your insurance and your insurance will cover it if you have diabetes or if you're obese. And I think isn't there like government proposal to like make like I don't know free O Zempic to everybody? Like isn't there like some proposal that's like gonna cover it in uh that the government would somehow cover this? Well the Ozepic issue is basically highlighting an issue with uh the healthcare system and it's just a f it's Funny that it was that big as like the straw that's breaking the cable's back. But they're like, dude

In Europe, this drug is five dollars. In America, it's a thousand dollars. What the hell? What's going on? Noble Nordisc, which is like the company that Makes um a Zempic They're not only I think the I think they are now the most valuable company in Europe. But on top of that, I think they spend more on lobbying than like any any other company right now. And so they are pushing very hard for US lobbying, um, which is insane. So Weight Watcher subscription is nine ninety nine a month right now for the first nine months.

And If you just take the idea that they're gonna go from making a hundred dollars a year Per paying customer. to, you know, even if a fraction of the audience decides, yes, I'd like to push a button and start to get Osempic. or start to get whatever their their generic version is gonna be called, you know, they're gonna jump to five thousand or ten thousand dollars a year for those customers.

Right. So If you believe that they have the right distribution and they have the end customer relationship. They might be swapping out You know training wheels for Harley Davidson in terms of business models.

And the business is is quite large. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of money, but last year they did nine hundred million in revenue and had a hundred million dollar loss. So those are huge numbers. But their market cap As of today. І сексті мільяр. And so I don't care.

But It's gonna be fun to watch because there might be a roller coaster here. And it's so here, by the way, the one of the reasons the business is not doing great. So by the way, your project for me was to what, to Or to buy the stock? I might do both. When I okay, so when Oprah did it, so there the estimates are that she made a quarter of a billion dollars over ten years of owning and then selling the stock. So basically she announced that she was uh uh got like you know, part of Weight Watchers, the stock doubled in a matter of days.

And so in February of this past year, twenty four, the stock went down by twenty five percent just when she announced like all right. Uh that's ran it ran its course. I did my thing. I'm out. I'm no longer involved. I think Sean Perry's gonna be the new open. I think that look But Two million dollars.

You can own four percent of this company. Did I math that right? Or close to four percent. I think Just announcing it. We're gonna just do a a a good old fashioned

Pumping dog you just got us flagged by some some agencies out here, dude. They're listening to podcasts now. You know we're big in the SEC right now, right? This podcast is going viral there. I'm joking, by the way. But I do think that um A sixty million dollar market cap for a business that has these large of numbers, even if it is a massive loss and a reputable brand. I'm just reading about them on the fly here while you talk about this, but it's it looks like they made a hundred million dollar deal to buy Sequence, which is a telehealth business that lets you do virtual prescriptions for patients who want weight loss drugs. And That they will start doing the the semi glutead stuff soon. So we'll see.

Yeah, I just thought this was interesting. I want to put it on record that we've discussed this because maybe there could be like this could be like one of those big opportunities. But because sixty million dollars for a the a brand that's so reputable. In some circles, but like everyone knows what that means. Uh that's like pretty amazing to me. Okay, I like it. Sam sto stock picks, but By the way, uh any stock pick I have just Don't listen to anything.

that I ever give advice on regarding the stocks. Like it's horrible. What's that guy? There's a guy who does this YouTube channel called Good Work. I think he's part of Morning Brew. And he put out this video that I thought had best The best YouTube title That I've seen. Is it Zin? No, no, not the Zen one. The Zin one was also was also great. The Zin one was Is Zinn gonna kill me and the boys? And now the new one is

Can this extremely loud man make you rich? And it's a picture of Jim Cramer who's like, you know, shilling some some uh some stock. I thought it was awesome. Dude, the their videos uh Uh he's the best. The guy did. He's the absolute I want our YouTube team to just look at these titles and thumbnails. This is what winning looks like. This is what we need to do. I'm just gonna read you some of their their other titles. So uh his other title. So

Saudi Arabia go Saudi Arabia going sicko mode on its sci fi city state. It's the picture of that giant wall that Saudi Arabia's building. Helping a fourth grader explain her loser dad's st stupid hedge fund job, L O L Uh Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this guy. Uh He's he's really good. I No uh

Austin's one of my uh best friends, uh the founder or the CEO of Morning Brew. And I give'em a hard time for a long time because they've Morning Burrough has not been able to like hire interesting talent. And hiring and retaining and developing talent on a media as a media company, that's really, really, really hard. You gotta find interesting people.

Which is hard. And then the most interesting creative people are typically also the biggest pains in the pain in the ass is to work with and to retain them. This guy and a few others, uh uh actually, but this guy is a really good example of how a media company finds talent and nurtures it and makes him huge. Yeah, he's doing amazing. Uh good job. Uh what is his name by the way I don't know this guy's name but Dan Toomy. Dan Toomy. Yeah. Dan, you're doing a great job. So I moved to this new city. It's called Westport, Connecticut. It's uh a thirty five thousand person town. And I've been reading all these books about like

uh biographies of politicians and stuff lately. So I thought I don't really know anything about politics. I'm gonna see what I can if I if if getting involved is even interesting. So I just emailed the mayor, which Like I didn't know if that was a thing or not, but I just found her email and I em emailed her. And now we're gonna go get lunch together.

I said in a small circle of the internet, a very tiny corner. I'm a little bit popular. And uh I'm not sure what that means to you, if anything. But I'm just trying to like make myself look a little bit important to you and I would love to hang out and introduce myself. With no agenda.

And that's all I said. And she said Absolutely. And so what's the plan here? What are you gonna do? I don't know, yeah. I gotta figure out how to be conniving and how to take over a uh a town.

Uh I don't have a plan yet. But I just thought it was interesting. Are you gonna like ban like two seasons of House of Cards or something and just st start to get yourself in the mindset? Yeah, yeah. I'm just gonna like come with like armed guards that just take over like it's I'm gonna build I'm gonna do a coup. It's gonna be a coup. Yeah, I'm the I don't know. I just I uh I think local politics are are like a really interesting way to actually have real impact and but it's kind of just seems fun.

And so I didn't know that you could email a mayor and they would reply, but they did. It reminds me of when we got to college, my buddy Dan. They you're given like a school ID, right? A school email address. So his was I don't know, like DNC six at duke.edu. And so the first thing he did, which I would have never thought to do, but he's A weirdo and a genius. And so he goes, he emails

DNC seven and or no, DNC four and DNC five, and he's like Fellows. I'm here. I don't know who you are. I don't know what does the initials stand for for you. But I'm here to carry the torch, the legacy. What do you guys do? And like one of them's a banker somewhere, and it's like could have led to like, you know, like an internship, basically, just by Sending out a random email being like hey

I'm the I'm the I'm the new guy in town that has the same uh you know, I'm I'm the next in the in the uh n alphanumeric sequence here for us. And did they become friends? I don't know. I feel like he just would open up all these doors. And just look inside and be like, What's in this closet? Right? You know, when somebody comes into your house, they're like, Oh, what's this over here? That's people do that with their with their phone number, they change one number and their phone number and they text them and say that their phone number counts. Yeah, exactly. You said something a few weeks ago that had an impact on me, and I've been meaning to bring this up to you, but I had to test this out. So you told me that Uh, there's been a few weekends where Friday to Sunday you did phoneless.

And I thought that's a great idea. Uh the problem is is that I'm uh an addict of all types of sorts and just like everyone else, getting rid of my phone is like really hard. So I looked for a solution and I found this thing. This isn't a a sponsored thing. I've never talked to these guys. I just think it's cool. Have you seen this? It's called brick.

Yeah, I've I've DM these guys. They're young guys. I don't do you know who uh did you look'em up? Yeah. So I looked them up. So let me explain what this product is, but I think it's only forty-nine bucks. So for people listening uh on on your headphones and not looking at a screen, I just showed a brick. It's like a two inch by two inch. Square. Uh, that's made out of plastic, just like three D printed plastic. And the way it works is you download their app and you say which apps are allowed. So in my case, I think I've allowed texting, phone calling.

An email. Uh, and basically I use this brick and I touch my phone with it. And it bans or like makes every app on my phone except for the ones that I've allowed, it makes it so I can't use them. Unless I touch this brick.

And there's an emergency button within the app. So but only three times can I click Like emergency override and I could override like if I'm away from this brick. But If I leave this brick at home, I can only use the apps that I've Allowed on my phone. Shockingly good.

This works. I like it. I love it. And I think these kids who started it, I think they started it when they were like twenty year old college kids, is that right? Yeah, something like that. And I think This business

might be amazing. You know, it's only fifty bucks. It's hard to make a lot of money on fifty dollars, but What's interesting is that we build all this technology to like get We want new, we want more convenient, we want better. And then after a while you get used to this life and it gets better and more efficient and more addicting and you want to create things now that will undo all of that. And so I've been testing leaving my phone.

At home. I've been testing But that's a little bit inconvenient sometimes because what if there's like a real emergency? So do I have to buy like a dumb phone? But then to buy a dumb phone, I need uh uh a whole different cell phone plan. It's like a safe for the pantry. You like put your snack in it and then you lock it. It's like this can only be open at seven PM. Yeah, well one and one time I broke it to get to my phone. Like it's fucked up how bad I am. And so this brick So far

I think is the best solution I have found. That's cool. Yeah. I looked into this because I was curious about it. I think it's a really cool idea. I like the design of it too, by the way. I like the name of it, how it just bricks your phone. Loved how bricked up you are about this whole thing. So I I think it's a great I think it's a great product. I don't use it personally, but I have thought about doing the the kind of Dumb phone smartphone thing. And this does seem

better than having two phones, but I would lose this brick for sure. So what is it? So if I lose this brick, I can just through my own phone. Just put in the emergency and be like, Hey. I need my phone.

Yeah, but only like three or five times. I forget the number. But after a certain number, then the app, like the the brick doesn't work and you gotta go buy a whole new one. It's like a nicotine patch for cell phones. Yeah, and it's awesome. That's exactly what it is. And I think it's actually pretty good. And it's cheap enough. Then I'm gonna just like start gifting these out.

It's a great passive aggressive gift, right? Yeah, it's like uh g getting your appellate out, I guess. Uh something you need. Yeah. But uh these these these are awesome. Uh by the way, I think it's uh Is is it called N P C is that the technology that they use for this? Is that the thing, I think. N F C, sorry. Which is like it's like a very, very, very tiny chip. And then the rest is just like

three D printed plastic. And so there are like interesting ways to make this fun. Like you can three D print anything. And just touch your phone. And so like for example If you have a music event or not a music event, like a like a small club or something at your home. Like if you have like an event, something where it's like a book club or you have ten people coming, you just touch your thing, everyone touched their thing, and that breaks their phone. Like there are like a bunch of cool ways to to to make this. Wait, so that can break anybody's phone or just your phone? If you if you have the app, I think it could break anyone's phone. Okay. Well there's an there's a next level to this. Of course. Of course. But it's actually quite cool. And then you have you seen the things where you go into comedy shows and you put your phone in one of these like airtight

Yeah, I hate those things, but I understand. I f hate'em too. They're at the local school that I live at, they're starting to do that for the school. So you have to leave your phone in these bags. Yeah, my four year old is in T K. And she's told me her friend has a phone. She's like, Yeah, she showed me.

It's a real phone. In her bag, it's hers. And I have so many questions I'm like. And we're like friends with the parents. I'm like, do I just Text the parents be like, yo, you got your kid a phone? Or or do I just text the kid and be like, is this a real phone? What's going on?

That's insane. Can I finish with just a a pro tip, a life pro tip, a little framework, a little bit of value here at the end. I feel like we gave some dessert and now it's time for for a little a quick vegetable. All right. All right.

So I have a friend who is named Stan and Stan is a Silicon Valley OG. And what's interesting about San uh Stan is that For many years. Uh, Mark Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Stan. And he always said, No, no, no, no. And and Zuck just kept reaching out, kept trying to recruit him, and eventually

Got Stan to join. Facebook and he ended up running Messenger, the the bit you know the The multi billion user product inside of Facebook. What does a recruitment from Zuck look like? So he's you know, he's not uh he's not one to kiss and tell, so he didn't give too many details and brag about it too much, but

I got the sense that Not only was he recruited, but he had been He had reached out to him many times across the years and eventually an offer, you know, to get so good he couldn't refuse. And so he joins And I asked Stan and I go, Stan

What? Are you like, why why are you so good? And I was like, No, no, no, bad question. Let me ask a better question. Like, what are you doing differently than the average person here in Silicon Valley? Who has maybe the same skill set as you But isn't having the same result as you. Are you asking why Zuck wanted him or why he's had success throughout his entire career? I I I knew Zuck wanted him. I didn't ask why Zuck wanted him. I asked him specifically, I said, why does somebody who

Why are you having more success than the average person who has the same skill set as you? Like Is it that you're just working 10 times harder? Are you 10 times smarter than somebody, or do you do you know something or you do something? And he told me one thing that I thought was interesting. He said a few things, but the one that stood out. This was many years ago, by the way, so I this still s sticks with me. As he said.

You know, in Silicon Valley LA we're big on being data driven. And data, data, data. And data's awesome. But he goes, What I found is that most people When they look at data, they already have a story in their head. about what they think happens or what we need to do. And then they simply just search for data that's gonna

Confirm that story. Or they're just like squeeze the data until it fits. that cookie cutter story that they want. He goes, I'm he goes, I'm different because I just do one thing different. I look at the data and I ask a simple question. What story is the data telling me?

And what story is the data telling me is a Much better question. For example. We were just looking at the Weight Watcher stock and I was like, What happened? And you go, Oprah. I was like, Oprah, what happened? And you go, Oprah happened. But if you actually look, like the stock falls off a cliff as soon as like the Ozempic trend started, right? Like that was the

That was the date. Oprah left I think in like twenty fourteen or something. I see left like a long time ago. But the stock really fell off a cliff when uh Ozepic took off. And so data is telling us that something happened. In early twenty twenty three that really hurt Weight Watcher stock. And then you go look at what actually happened.

And I've s I just felt this in one of my companies too, where we In my e com stores, like we've been beating every month forecast. And then August was the first month we didn't beat. And I asked the team, I said, What happened? And my CMO will give one answer.

And our chief product officer will give another answer and then the the website guy will give a different answer. And how am I supposed to figure out what answer? And the the way I figure it out is I tried I just told them I said Post the data. First, and then tell me the story.

'Cause what uh what always happens is they tell me the story and then they'll go find some data that might Some cherry pick a bit of data that might support that. But they'll leave out a bunch of other data. Well it's like You ever played those things where it's like find a word?

Uh in uh like as like the puzzles in the New York Times like find find this word. It's like if I already know I'm looking for this word. Yeah, where it's like if you if I know I'm looking for this word, I I think I can find it. But if you tell me that I gotta find a a variety of words, I might find those first. Exactly, exactly. And so Uh well we did I just flipped it. I just said Before you give me your your idea of what happened what went wrong. Can you first just show me the picture of the data? Like the full full set of the data of what happened.

And then It should tell us a story. So then we just started asking the question, what data what story is the data telling us? And I think that that is just a much better way to approach Data uh decision making. And I think that is a great hack that

This guy who's had a m amazing success in his career says, You know, this is one thing I do differently that I think it leads to a different result. Because every time I do that. You know, it's like how do you be right more often? One way is just remove a bunch of your bad habits and bad biases that's causing you to make bad decisions. And I think this is a good habit that would lead you to make better decisions. So I wanted to share that.

That's kind of a weird That's if it For For you to think for him to think why am I so successful? Not weird. Weird's the right word.

That's a very particular Well, I I specifically asked, what are you doing differently? Not why are you so successful, but what do you do that's different? And the average person who's Got the same skill set as you. What is it that you do differently? So for example I know that Sam, you're a great

You know, why are you a great writer? And you might say, Well, I practiced a bunch, or I read, or I naturally have a gift for it. A different question is What do you do differently than other people who also Write blog posts or write newsletters. What would your answer be? I potentially

Mm. significantly more honest. than most people and I explain all of the bad sides and the good sides up front. in a particular story. Which makes people like and trust me more.

So uh like I try to be the opposite of sensational. Yeah. You wrote an email to the mayor. And you said uh your honest thing was in a small corner of the internet, I'm popular. I don't know if that matters to you, but I'm trying to impress you because I yeah, I don't know if that worked, but I'd like to I'm saying that I say that to impress you. Nobody would say in the email I say that to impress you. Like obviously they do that to impress them, but nobody says that out loud. I think your gift is that you are willing to say the the uh the honest part out loud. And that that endears people to you and that makes it more likable and that makes it more distinct and that makes it stand out versus

you know, re reasons that other people their writing might stand out. So I think that's a it's a great example of like that question of what do you what is it that you actually do that's different. versus How do I become successful? Or, you know, how did you become successful? Like people have different they'll give you a different answer depending on the question. And I guess what I'm saying is calling him weird is not the right word'cause that sounds negative. What I mean is That's such a sh

A particular And Unexpected answer. of like oh you just look at the data and you're like not judgmental about it. uh versus coming to it with an emotion or a story to prove. So it's like you're

You're like you're black and white uh about different information and you're not uh coming with an agenda. It's a weirdly specific answer. I agree. Well the caveat is this was like ten years ago when he told me this. And also I bet if I asked him the same question today, he would give me a different answer. Uh maybe that was just top of mind because of what was going on that day in his his world or what he had noticed recently. Why did you Well why did you just remember this now? 'Cause I sa I saw the problem pop up in my own company where I was like, Oh, this is hard. I can't get to the truth because everybody already has a pre baked answer.

And then when I tell them Hey, can we figure out what went wrong? They say, Yeah, I'm gonna go figure it out. But really it's just Oh wow. They never changed the answer. When I just said, Hey, what went wrong?

And I say, can somebody dive in and they come back with the same answer every time? It's like wow, what's the point of diving in if you already had the answer and then when you dive in you simply just go find one or two cherry picked uh data points that support that. And then if I go look and I say, Well Is that really true? Cause what about this?

And it kind of violates the narrative. So it's more like Maybe you're right, but that doesn't explain all of this, correct? And um and then they're like Oh yeah, that's true. And so I need I needed the I I need my own team doing it. And I think I uh in general, if more people did this, they would be more successful, myself included. I I'm I'm guilty of this as well. Where

I have an immediate reaction of what we should be doing or what's bad about what we're doing or what's not working. And then I try to find data or examples that support it. versus first looking at the at the actual data and feedback and then saying, what story is this telling me? When you go through that

How often Do you question If you are right or wrong. Uh Put differently.

What level? of certainty is your average Big monthly decision. Great question. What percent certainty is my average monthly decision?

In this in the situations where I have data,'cause there's two types of decisions. There's data where there's decisions where We have information. And there's Decisions that will actually go create information, meaning We're only gonna know this by trying this, and that will gather more information.

Here's what I mean. Every month or quarter or so, a business that is in the five million, ten million, twenty like the some range where it's like all right, this like definitely is working. But I don't know if it's gonna be massive, medium, or it could even go out of business eventually, but like there's something here. So for for those

types of businesses. Uh every quarter or month. There's a decision that can potentially change the trajectory entirely. Or Not impact anything at all.

And I've noticed that, like it's like monthly or quarterly. And I asked myself wondering, like before I was very certain. certain like this if I do this, then we're gonna do this or we're gonna figure it out. Now I'm actually realizing the decisions I make on uh for during those periods Can actually be very impactful, both in a negative and a bad way. Like you can make a decision today that you pay for in eighteen or twenty four months.

And so I I used to be very confident. Now I'm less confident of like I think this, but I want everyone to know I don't know anything. Right, right. And so what I'm asking for you is Are you s how do you come to these decisions with high certainty or low certainty? I don't really think about it like that. If I had to answer that part, it would probably be High certainty.

For the next phase, the next chunk, meaning I know that I've looked at what the options are and what the information we have is. And of those two th and once I take those, you know, I have the menu of options and I got the the uh the information that we have. I can make the right decision for th this moment. That doesn't mean it's going to end up being right. It means

Given what I had, that was that had that had to be the right it decision. There was no uh there was a only other suboptimal decisions from there. But there's still some probability. that that's not gonna be true, but I couldn't have known that'cause I just didn't have the information. I think I've done a good job of Hitting the ball into the net.

Where I look back 'cause I do this often. I look back and I say, Could I have known This Or did I already know? Did I actually know deep down? And I ignored it.

Or did I know or could I have known, but I rushed. And I have cut those down a lot, mostly honestly, because I work with Ben and I Talk things out loud. And when I'm talking out loud, I can literally hear Like I can litigate against my point. I can hear the holes in my argument.

Right, and I'll and I'm comfortable enough with him to be like to be saying it out loud and not feel stupid to mid sentence be like But actually I think that doesn't matter at all. Or But actually that might not even be true. I I might just be saying that. Or I'll stop midway and just say But honestly, of all those things, the most important thing I said was this.

And that actually wipes out all the other shit. And so never mind. Let's go for a no instead of a yes. And I'll just r edit it midair because He's me he makes me feel comfortable enough and are we have enough trust built up or it it's only about getting it right. There is zero percent about appearing right, which in my o my other companies, I think I was much, much more tied to having to feel like I needed to

maintain some appearance of being smart and in charge and knowing things. And I even and I wouldn't I wouldn't litigate my own thoughts. I would not cross examine them. Enough. And I think that led to a lot of bad decisions before. And the reason I'm bringing that up is I'm feeling this is a similar thing as I um

get a little bit older and sometimes have more success and sometimes not. What I'm learning is that there's a million different ways to get done different to get different things done. And they're like, for example We saw uh go viral this founder mode thing and everyone loved it. And maybe that is the right for certain people. I could point to many examples of successes that are not right.

It's the exact opposite. It it violates exactly what that person is saying is is the law. And as I grow and start getting to some of these decisions I'm learning a little bit. I I'm it's more becoming um I don't know anything. Let's just do it feels good. And so I guess it's like surrendering to like the world of like

I know nothing. Right. I d it's so you know, uh you you you you're kinda back to where you were when you were eighteen years old, uh of like I don't know the right way, whereas when you're a little bit younger, you read all these books like according to The start what's that startup book about lean MVP? Uh Lead startup. According to La Lean Startup, we have to do this, this, and this. And so you just do that. And sometimes it works. But There's just there's so many different ways to make the same thing work. Because of that, I want to get to some of these decisions, I'm significantly less confident. in having the right answer, but I'm kind of okay with it. Well I think there's a difference between confidence and certain. So I'm definitely less certain. That doesn't necessarily mean I'm less confident, meaning

I can be confident that this is the right decision to make. But I can agree that hey There's low, low uh certainty here that this is going to work or that this is correct. One of the things that's helped me is To Alright.

Figure out some words to describe this. Because what I found was that One of the big leaks was that I was miscommunicating my own certainty to others. Meaning I talk in a very confident way. Or I'll say let's do this.

And even though in my mind I'm like, let's do this and then we'll know by next Friday, or we'll try it three times, and then we'll know after three times whether this was The right path or the wrong path? But I wanna go try it three times, right? I wanna go give it three weeks or I wanna go give it three months. I know that for certain. But that was coming across to other people like this is the way and this is the right answer. And then they got very they got a lot of whiplash when that would change. And I'm like, why are you getting whiplash?

We were looking for we wanted to try it to know. If this was the correct path or not. Turns out we're gonna turn. And so I found that I use this phrase a lot now, which is let's turn over another card. Which is like a poker term, right? So it's like

In poker you operate with you have your hand, first you have your your two cards. You just know is it should I fold here or is it worth Worth seeing the flop. So I'll say that. Let's see the flop here. What's the leave the flop is let's take the call with the person, let's take the meeting. Let's make the prototype. Let's draft the thing.

Um, let's write down let's let's write down the the the plan and then let's see after that if we want to do it or not. And then sometimes we'll say, you know what, let's turn over another card, which means Let's get to the next milestone of information. to get to a point where we're we will have more certainty of whether this is the correct thing to do or not. And that language at least

taught kind of like my little team, which is Yes. They know now how much Like, yes, we are doing this, we're committed to doing this step, but we're not committed to doing the next thousand steps. Because

We're gonna turn over another card and we're gonna find out some more information. We're gonna find out, right? Oh, we think this guy's really great. Should we hire him? Let's turn over another card. Let's do some reference checks and let's give him the project. Right. We don't need to debate more. We've already debated as much as we need to, given the information we have. At this point it's about getting more information. And the other thing that's helped a lot is Be specific about what information.

So often uh Ben will hit me with a like Well let's see. Or like, um, yeah, I just want to like look into it more or like I want to try it out. And then we'll just pause be like, Cool. What it what specific information do you think you lack right now? Like if we don't have enough decis information to make a decision.

What is the information we need? And then you often realize you're like uh um Uh, and actually it's just I didn't feel conf confident enough to make a decision right now. I don't even really know what I'm looking for. So even if I spend another few weeks thinking about this or exploring this. I'm gonna do it haphazardly because I don't have clarity on even what I'm looking for. I don't know what what question I'm trying to answer here. So therefore, probably gonna have probably gonna still be as uncertain three weeks from now as I am today. But when you sh you kind of try to pin down like well, what do we really need to make this decision? Or

What extra information do we need to know? You might be able to like make the decision that afternoon. Mm. Yeah, I mean I guess I'm

Become old. Uh but like I thoroughly enjoy it. Like like Like these are the things I think about lately. Uh it's just like Am I making the right decision? Uh you don't like uh

What's that one smart dude say? A life unexamined is a worthless life. What's that dude's name, Socrates? Uh Uh and so I'm like examining like some of my um decisions and things like that. Um Anyway I could talk about this stuff all day, but it gets pretty nerdy, I think. I have another little exercise for you. I do this thing, you it it's on the wall over here, you can't see it, but

I take every month and I just make a box. So it's like a twelve box grid. And in it will look back and we'll say, Okay, last six months. A twelve box. So it's like January, February. E each each month is a box. Okay. So I just make it make it like a calendar looking thing. And then what we do is we just go and we look and we just say

What's the one thing we did, what are we what were the things we did that month? that were the the like big s the things that actually made an impact. We worked, you know, twenty four days out of the month or whatever. We did so many things, but like when you zoom out and you just look back, you're like, What were the things that actually mattered that much? Similarly we'll say

And and in that could be a decision. It could be you know, a a la a product you launched or a thing you did. It could be a buy sell decision. It could be a hiring, firing decision. It could be whatever, right? But It's all big font. So it's like I'm it's gotta be something you can read from like, you know, ten feet away, meaning you can't just write in there your entire to do list.

And when we do that, it's amazing because every month has like An embarrassingly low number of things that actually mattered, like one to three. And everything else was just the cost of doing business. Everything else was just the noise. That it took To get to those one to three Things.

That even mattered in a month. And When you do that, you start to but the good thing about going back and looking at it is The more you go back and look at it, the more that in the moment. you start to realize like, oh, this is probably gonna be the thing for the month that actually matters.

Let me really like focus and get this part right,'cause it's probably gonna make up for like all the rest of the The random activity, the random motion that I've been doing this month. Because You see you start to see patterns of like what what even could make it into this box. And

You know, those are the things that matter. Okay, this month, this seems like it's probably gonna be the thing that we'll end up writing in the box for the month. And you never read it before? Well, I don't know before exactly, right? Like I just on a given day, I kinda know what I'm focusing on. And a given week, I kinda know what would make for a good week. But when I zoom out it's like

You know, um The decision to invest in X or the decision to um Bring on this person. Um, this trip that we took that had those five meetings in person that would not have been the same over Zoom. Um

You know, spending that two days with that person who we think is like just awesome value add to our life. So such a fun, awesome person. And going deep with that person rather than keeping it surface level. Like Little things like that, or it's um The decision to stop working on X project. uh was the main thing we did that month. And that was huge because had we not done that, we wouldn't have had the time and the the bandwidth.

To do this thing the next month. Um so it's usually things of that at that level. That's pretty good. I'm gonna start doing that. Is that it? Is that the pod? Are we doing a Sarah's list on

What's next next episode we're gonna do Sarah's list. I got I got probably six or seven companies right now. um that I think are are good contenders for it. If you don't know Sarah's list, we'll do the teaser here. Sam's wife, Sarah. blew my mind. Me and Sam were entrepreneurs

We're taking maximum risk. We're living off of nothing, you know, like Sam was paying him stuff like twenty grand a year or something like that at the time. And I just looked at what we were doing, which was this kind of like One in twenty shot of success.

Mostly eating shit every day. had to be innovative, had to take high risk. And then we looked at Sarah. Who joined I think Airbnb and Facebook companies that were like We I could have told you in my sleep that those were winners.

And she joined as like employee four hundred or a thousand or something like that. Like not even Betting on it when it was the first ten employees. And the basic math was that if you get a job that's what's just say, I I don't know her number, so I'm just gonna make this up. you get a job where you're making Let's call it$150,000 a year base salary. And then they give you a stock option grant. That's gonna give you$4,000 a year of stock on top of that.

Um So you get let's say a two hundred thousand dollar ish Stock package. that if that company just basically four X's uh five X's in a four year time span.

You've made a million dollars without taking any of the risk. that we were taking as entrepreneurs. And she did it multiple times. She did that multiple times and we realized Wow, there is a set of companies that are like They're past the point of like

They're out of the going out of business. They're out of the the the death trap of our you know, like the the highly likely to die, you know, area. These are great businesses that will just keep growing, keep compounding. You could join them today as employee five hundred. And you will become a millionaire. without doing any of the entrepreneurial stuff. If you could just identify the kind of like

Ten companies a year that fit that mold. And so we take a stab at identifying those ten companies. Um that's that's what we call Sarah's list. In that episode we're gonna record Wednesday. Um so

I gotta prepare for it. I got a couple But it's really hard. This is actually a hard list to make because I don't want to like You're not exactly giving advice, but some people take it as such. So I want to make sure that it's good. Well, we've also done the look back at the last time we did it. And I think our our hit rate was pretty good. We'll do it again. We'll go we'll go look at we'll we'll go look at an update and see what was the hit rate of the ones we did last time. We do not proclaim to be, you know, that these are all gonna work. No way, right? That's not that's not it, but And the hit rate's good because we pick things that are obvious.

And they get big. That's the point. It's all relative to the current valuation of the company, right? So oh yeah, that was already a billion dollar company. Cool, it's six now. So it's six X, uh right. Your two hundred thousand dollar stock package is six X now. Um all right, that's today's pod. We'll talk to you Wednesday. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my law in it like my days off On the roadless travel, never looking back

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