#29 - Powder Diets, Instagrammable Experiences & Distribution First

Okay, quick break to talk about our sponsor for today. That's right. A few weeks ago I uh did a fake ad read where I said this episode is brought to you by nobody. And uh ever since then people just email reaching out to advertise on the podcast, which is great. And uh this is a really cool company. The sponsor for this week's podcast is Supercast. So you know, if you wanna cash in on your podcast. Supercast can help you unlock predictable recurring revenue from your audience.

How was that? by cutting out the middleman and turning listeners into paying subscribers. In fact, podcasters using a subscription model can make twice as much versus advertising alone. I like that. visit supercast.com slash hustle.

To learn and ear more. Alright, I'll have to check that out after this. I do love me some subscriptions. So me and Sam met um Actually we met in a really fucking random way. So we we met because Sam Sam was hosting HustleCon. And he was uh he I get an email from Sam Parr that says

Hey Sean. Uh heard great things about you. Um heard things gr heard great things about your space, Monkey Inferno. Um office is so dope. Hey, you know what? We uh I have HustleCon coming up like in a week from now. And I need a spl I need a space to host my my speaker dinner. It's gonna have badass speakers. This guy, this guy, this guy, this guy you know, all these people are coming.

Um You know, would you be down to to host it? And I read it and I was like, I don't know this guy. There's nothing about like you know, like I was like this is he's full of shit. Like he hasn't heard anything about me. And but he probably saw our space because our space was really cool. And for the record I had.

It wasn't I wasn't. I I assumed it was bullsh but I was like, still this is gr this is high class bullshit. And so I was uh I was like, Yeah, this sounds great and uh and he was bringing some value to the table. He was like You can attend the dinner, you'll meet all these people. So I tried to n negotiate back. I was like Cool, uh as long as I could speak at HustleCon.

I'll do it. And he was like no, there's no spots left. Uh and I was like, All right, fair play, you can still do it. And so th that's that's actually how we met. Um that night at the speaker dinner and I met a few of my best friends there. Uh which is like testament to the idea of like just show up.

It's become like a motto of mine, which is Uh showing up like it's just eighty percent. And like for you guys who came here, you could have done anything, you could have stayed home, Netflix. gone on dates. You know, you could have done whatever you guys do, you know, you could have done tonight. Uh but you showed up and so good things can happen when you show up and and and so uh we used to do a weekly Weekly or monthly?

Where it was Sean and three of our friends and we would meet up every single week and then eventually every single month for Years I felt like seven PM Once a week or once every two weeks we would get together. And um It was uh it's what we call a junto now, j uh which is basically like a a meeting of the minds.

And Sam was in it and w you invited a couple of friends that were really good. And uh the idea was like, hey, you spend most of your time where you have to sell If you you know, if you're doing a business, you gotta sell to investors. You sell to your customers, you sell to your teammates that hey, things are going great. Um but in reality

Things are usually not going great. Default, but most of most of the time things are not going great. And so uh we wanted a group of people that you could talk to and it's like, you know, thirty percent therapy. Alright, so that's probably like seventy percent therapy, thirty percent strategy. Uh but we like told ourselves it's all about the strategy, which was that Hey, if I say I'm having trouble with this thing.

Uh turns out Sam's really good at marketing and he could be like dude why don't you just do this, this and this, go read this blog post, it's awesome, it'll help you out. But then also we would have like insider knowledge because of'cause I host conferences you uh you're just very personable, you know everyone and then we have an uh investor friends and like we had this network of We were like went like one step away from anyone we ever wanted to speak with and so we would also like hear rumors and we'd bring up those rumors like I heard this person was doing this. Right. And that's kinda what the podcast one this part of the podcast turned into. Yeah, exactly. Uh so that's how we got to know each other and that's why I knew Sam would be good to do these uh brainstorms with. Uh, so I'm curious for people who are uh did anybody come from out of You you came from out of town, right? San Diego.

San Diego. Livermore. Livermore. Malibu. Love it. Sacramento. Who came the furthest? Who thinks they came the furthest?

Los Angeles okay very good. San Diego's the furthest. All right. Round of applause for the guy who came from San Diego. On like ten days notice, I I I think. Yeah, whenever I hear that I'm like why?

Yeah, we we don't say that part out loud. Uh what is the answer? Why? I said something. Okay. Should we start with that? What's the question? I I I feel like you came from San Diego. I I owe it owe it to you.

I do want to Preface this by saying I feel like Because of the We've created the

You created this podcast, I created the hustle. People think that like we have answers and that's definitely not the truth. But what is the truth is though that I like Because of the business. Because of the business that I've created in you as well. I've met so many freaking people and seen so many patterns and have heard of all these stories and so

I would say if four questions that's where the answer's coming from. Yeah, what I always tell people is if you know uh there's a lot a lot of people out there who are smarter and wiser than me. But you probably don't know him, so I'm the best you got. So go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

Sorry, your media post about why it failed and how it failed and I know you mentioned that churn rate But what other Issues did you see

uh coming and like what other reasons besides the churn rate did you have when it came to the failure? So okay, so we we built a uh an app called Blab. Jake's here, Jake was part of Blab, Jason was a uh Blab I think he joined right when we closed Blab down. I think somebody else said they were a user of Blab here. Uh, basically Blab was like a way you could push a button and start a talk show. So basically what we're doing now. But like

online. And so you could have two up to four people talking on screen and unlimited people watching. And so now like Periscope, Facebook Live, now a lot of things are out there that Try to do stuff like this. Uh we tried. Um your question was why did it fail? It failed for really two reasons. One was

Um When most people make content If you look at YouTube, podcasts, blogs Ninety nine percent of content is really bad. And uh not bad by my judgment, but bad by the market's judgment. It doesn't get any views. It doesn't get a following.

And the problem with live is that um You know. You can get away with that if your YouTube or your blog post'cause the good stuff sticks around. It's still there. So, you know, the one percent that's good, you can find it and enjoy it and that You can create a successful service.

with live you have this really hard problem where The good stuff is only good while it's on and then as soon as they go offline, it's gone. So it's like exponentially harder to have good entertainment on all the time. And we we felt that pain. And so ultimately that's why I failed. The other weird thing was

Uh, do you do you guys know who Martin Shkreli is? So if you drive I blab with him on your show. I didn't know who this guy was, but he came on. I was like, wow, who's this guy Martin? He's the biggest user we have. This guy's got thousands of people watching him and we were this tiny service at the time. And uh turns out I Googled him and he his like the first thing that comes up is Martin Screli, most hated man in America. And I was like, Uh oh it's not a good thing and and basically he was the guy who had bought a dr he had bought some drug and jacked up the price. Um which is like

Pharma Bro. Pharma Bro. And then he did all kinds of other stuff. He's in now in jail. Uh so that's like the that's where the story ends. Uh but he was on our service and he would blab every night. He was actually our star user. He used it as g like he used it perfectly. We had other celebrities try to use it, but it was like very inauthentic. This guy he would use it all the time and uh he would use it every single night and he was driving hundreds of thousands of people to us. So we were growing, but Uh, if you guys know about um 4chan or some of these other like internet like

Actually I shouldn't say anything, don't attack me anymore. I am I'm scarred. Uh but there was a a group called Lizard Squad at the time. Who did not like Martin Sheli, and they did not like that we were letting him Broadcast on our platform. And so uh they started

Dosing us, uh basically s like Like you wouldn't believe. Every day for I don't know, Jake, how many months straight did we fight this Yeah, as as long as Martin was on, they would do this and um

It was un it was unbelievable. So the other reason it failed was that we had one of the most prolific internet hacking groups Attacking us with their full force. While we were like this new startup and was not previously not ready for this. As one of my best friends I saw like this whole thing is that His setup.

as an entrepreneur was like way different than most people They basically Too nice. Yeah. Inferno was so there's this billionaire named Michael Birch, or he's close to a billionaire. And

Most people when they get a little bit of money, maybe they'll buy a nice car or a nice watch. This billionaire had probably a five I don't know what your budget was, but let's say five million dollar a year incubator where Sean was the boss And got to spend this money on launching cool stuff.

And I think it created a little distraction'cause like you had the freedom to every three months try something. Yeah, we we had a private chef. every day and we have like you know a ball uh office in the bar uh sorry a bar in our office. Now these weren't in my opinion, I don't think they're the reason we failed, but they do create a sense of security and comfort But like you know. Who's running a business that's like Imp your office is embarrassing.

Like you are your daily conditions are like You you Nobody raised their hand. Like who's Yeah, thank you, like just be honest here. What it is. Like your back was against the wall. I used to take dates to my office to impress them. I don't think it's I don't think most entrepreneurs would take their dates to their garage to try to impress them, right? When a lot of people start companies their back's up against the wall like I gotta make this work. You never really had your back up against the wall. Which I thought was awesome. Um and maybe it is awesome, it could be awesome, but

Yeah, that might have been a that might have been a factor for sh for sure. Um but it's hard to say, right? When you f when you fail, it's hard to say why you why exactly you failed. You try to pinpoint reasons, but It's usually a multiple things. Same thing with success. If you ask successful people how'd you do it? Uh, usually they don't even remember the hard times. They sort of blacked out and uh and and forgot about all those things they used to do when Of the pre success. And so I I

In general I try not to take uh put too much weight in you know, why did you fail or why did you succeed? Because it's so nuanced and uh Yeah.

Um Cool. Yeah, what's up? question for you. So you've like run startups, you've built great companies. Yeah you're like Wait.

Yeah, don't remind me. I asked him that the other day. The question if you if you didn't hear on the podcast, uh was You've done startups, now you're an employee at at at a company. How do you what was it? How do you bounce? How do you make sure you're a good employee. How about even first of all

What did it what was the almost the difference of Running versus not having to. Uh major difference, right? So like um so right now I have a baby, uh a two and a half month old baby and uh Like You gotta keep the baby alive. That's like the only job. The job is keep the baby alive and you gotta do stuff. You can't the baby's not just gonna stay alive. You gotta actively do things all times a day. Like my wife wakes up panicked just every hour just to be like I don't know what I'm supposed to be panicked about, but I gotta s keep this baby alive.

That's how a startup felt to me, which was like By default, we were failing every single week. You know, today I've got Twitch and we have a you know what what you would consider like a high pressure job. Like I'm basically running international growth for them. But Twitch's not gonna fail.

Tomorrow or the next week. Pretty much regardless of what I do. it's gonna be additive, but if I do a okay or or mediocre job the company doesn't fail. And so there's just a different level of pressure when literally the whole thing's gonna fail. You're gonna owe people money who you raise money from, your employees who took a bet on you and came to work for you, they're gonna be out of a job. That's just a different level of pressure and if

If you can see I have like sort of gray hairs on the side here. Even though I'm thirty one years old, because I think that was the the pressure then. So To me that's the difference. I don't know if you've tasted the difference, uh she wants to know how you balance it, but I would I I would say that uh I our company is uh I a good business. Um, I don't like running a company. I really like starting a company.

And they're way different. Yeah. And it takes two two different skills um to do it. And you either have both or you don't. Um The other thing w which was how do you make sure you're a good employee um I don't know. I don't know if I'm necessarily a great employee, to be honest with you. Um In fact, like when we got we got acquired to do one thing within the company

And then within two months uh I'm like, no, we should do this other thing that's like really important. And I pivoted. which like I thought my days of pivoting were over when I left my startup, but Um

So I think in some ways I was a bad employee. I didn't do the job I was meant to do. But maybe there's a trade off which was um You know, the project we're working on now is a start up type project, it's more of an entrepreneurial type of project within a big company. I think it's possible to balance that because That's how I started this was

When I I had another business and we sold it and s then started this. The the things that are built between like six PM and one AM are pretty amazing. Um And to be to be honest, now those hours are for my family, they're for working out, they're for the podcast. They used to be for the business, those same hours. Um and so I don't give those hours to my job. And that's that's why I said I'm not sure if I am a great employee. And we can keep doing questions or go through some of the stuff we had here. Yeah, do you guys want to hear uh I guess Show of hands. Who wants ideas and then we'll do who wants question more questions. So if you want to hear

Hands up now. Okay. And if you want Q and A Now.

Just do you do you want to just ask a question? Oh okay. The meta question. Alright, we'll do some ideas. And you guys can tell us'cause you know, when we do these ideas, um We literally like

throughout the week take notes of interesting stuff I'm hearing. that other people are doing or stuff trends I'm noticing or stuff I read in the in the trends group. Um I'm curious also who here is a subscriber to trends? That's pretty good. Yeah, to trend. I know.

Yeah, it's uh pretty good. You wanna get it? Yeah, who's going to House Cron? I'm gone. All right, okay. Um we're just gonna do polls all night. That's that's the whole thing. Um so yeah, we we do these ideas and um and I've actually found that there's this great practice. So I actually encourage you, even if you're not doing a podcast about new ideas,

Um Act like you are, because now that I write down new ideas'cause I know, oh shit, we're gonna brainstorm on Thursday or Friday Um it's got my brain constantly looking. And if I wasn't doing this podcast, I wouldn't be writing these notes down. My brain would kind of just start to ignore those interesting things. They would just think, Oh, that's for other people to do. Um and I notice this a lot in our company too.

If uh you know, there's a lot of smart people and and I actually asked someone today, I said, So have you thought of any business ideas while you've been working here? And they like were confused I even asked the question, and it's because their brain wasn't thinking about that. And um And I encourage you to train your brain to look at the stuff. I just love I do this I do it all the time. Yeah, you have a backlog. Okay. So uh what do we got? I got a couple ideas. I'm gonna tell you about one that I'm pretty bullish on.

Ah, so anybody ever heard of Amazing Grass? It's okay, so um so I wanna eat healthy and um eating healthy is basically it's actually really Fucking simple. Yeah. Real food, not processed food.

Mostly vegetables and just like don't eat too much. That's the hole. That's the diet book. But eating vegetables like pretty tough. So I started taking this powder called Amazing Grass. And basically it's the equivalent of like Like I was too lazy to cook vegetables, so I started doing green smoothies.

And now this is like Hey, you know what? Don't even do the smoothie. Just put this powder in water and chug. And uh I'm like great, you know, sign me up. Like if you could just inject it in my veins, I'll take that too. And so um so I I I don't know what you think of this, but you're bringing it up now. I feel like this This is already a pretty popular thing, right?

I it's new to me. I've never so I've So athletic greens is similar. That's what I said to him too. So Athletic Green I think is similar, but it's a it's a green powder. And and so I don't know if Athletic Green is a green powder, I think it is. Um I saw this, I was like

The same way that the protein powder industry has just sort of like gone up and up and up and Um as really, you know, if you're trying to bulk up, that's just becomes a part of your staple like routine. I think that Uh this is sort of the It's the vegan version of it, right? It's basically instead of trying to bulk up

It's about uh hacking your way into health. So it's about getting sort of everything you want from your greens faster. Uh and the th the thing I like best about it is that it tastes like shit. So I believe that it actually works. Like if this thing tasted good, I would be like, Oh no, this is this is garbage, this is just sugary something, something Uh athletic rings. I think Adam brought you some right now. No. It's it's really expensive. Is that stuff expected? They're and they are required. Uh no they got a private equity investment. So they're worth more than that. Yeah.

Yeah, private equity. Very profitable, typically. Exactly. So the idea that's here is not to invent something that's already invented, but to do it in a new way. So Uh we have a lot of friends that do D to C companies, uh direct to consumer uh brands and this to me was like screaming for direct to consumer, right? I bought it 'cause I was in Whole Foods and I just saw it and I grabbed it. Uh but this is something that would be

You know, D to C if you were thinking about D to C products it's like a checklist in your head, right? So you wanna A price point that's high enough, so Um you know, you don't want to sell a two dollar product'cause the Facebook ads are too expensive. You want something that's recurring and that basically people consume. Not something they buy once and uh they keep forever. So this is consumable, it's a high price point, it appeals to the health and fitness market, which is a very big market, and um and is very like sort of shipping friendly and you can private label it pretty easily.

The idea here is to go D to C with Like a competitor to athletic Koreans. Um Through Facebook, Instagram. Why would you hate D to C this is like the a lot of these direct to consumer companies which D to C like But you know how well our friends are doing with it. So how could you hate that? I think that This whole D C first of all, like everything's D D C so we're just talking about like

Basically it's like in my mind it's White it's Shitty products that are white labeled that are either pink Turquoise or yellow. Use a lowercase font. As a logo.

And they triple the p or quadruple the price of the normal. That's like saying a tech company, you remove the vowels and you you know dot L Y and you know, like Io, right? Like similar and I would never I think it's stupid too. But I my take on the direct to consumer thing, which like I said, it's not even like direct to consumer. Whatever this like category is. All most of like Like away travel, I think their suitcases suck. And you don't like the products. I think most of these products are horrible.

Because I have friends that own these companies. And they print money. Yeah. But they just like find something shitty in Alibaba or whatever. And they It's just all market. It's a mark it's I think it's a it's a

solus marketing machine that will make you rich But when when Facebook gets more expensive, which it is, uh we pay four times more that five times more than what we did two years ago. Yeah. It's gonna close. Okay, fine. What ideas you got? Uh you guys see honey got acquired? Yeah.

Um I've been bullish on Chrome plugins for a while and I think I've been bullish on them is If I don't I I've actually posting this in the group, if anyone's seen it. Before this acquisition. So I'm treating my own horn, but Uh

I love Chrome plugins because people dismiss them as silly dumb ideas. So Shopify apps are dismissed as dumb ideas. WordPress plugins are dismisses dumb ideas, newsletters, my company's dismisses small dumb ideas, and Chrome plugins as well. And they think that it's like The small silly thing, like it's a Chrome plugin.

And it's like no it's not. It's just like If you're Paypal, are you an app? Are you a website? It's like you're a service and then you just happen to deliver through a particular mechanism. And so to me, Chrome plugins are just services. And they just so happens to use a Chrome plugin, and I'll tell you firsthand, we own a Chrome plugin, and I was showing Sean the stats before this. The Chrome plugin is the stickest

delivery mechanism of a service or product that I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, we were looking at the stats and you guys launched it like three years ago. Yeah, and um fifty or sixty percent of those users we we we literally watched launched it on day one and never touched it ever again. And most of the users are still using it every single day. Yeah. And so this is a thing we launched called Snippets. Does anyone actually have Snippets? Oh, you have it? Oh you did? Someone did have it, Kathy, you have it? Okay. It was just a silly widget. There was like no thought in it and it's in it and it's neat, but it doesn't like provide like a ton of value.

And it's still people don't the I think the reason people unplu on uninstalled it is they got a new computer. Yeah. Um But like Oh with

Twenty five hundred users. will drive a hundred thousand page use uses of that thing a day. And it's a Chrome plugin. So Another example is Grammarly. You guys know Grammarly? So the founder spoke at Hustle Counter and I was shooting the shit with them and this was

Uh two tausent sixteen. So this was three years ago. Um and I was like, Max, like is it what is this thing about? He's like, I'll tell you this. We just raised a hundred million dollars in funding. And I took and that money meant most to me and they only bought ten percent of the company. I was like, Holy shit.

And he's like tell me all the n a little bit of the numbers. And uh I was like, It's a plug in he's like, Yeah, it's gonna be huge and I think they actually just raised more money recently at Some huge valuation. The stickiness of plugins are crazy so in my head I'm thinking what server like

With the hustle, we're just A new service. or an information service and we just pick the mechanism of email 'Cause it's incredibly sticky. Um

Chrome plugins way stickier. Than anything I've seen. And um In my head I'm constantly thinking of value that can be driven on it. Something that

You need that. Each and every day. Um because a Chrome plugin is perfect for that. Right. And you uh Gmail plugins too. Yeah, you you were saying for um

for snippets you you were saying that you guys promoted it just once and so like the graph basically looked like Launch day. There's a spike of users. Then no new users, but the that no new users coming in, but the active users is just like steady for three years straight. Uh and this is like a very interesting graph too. Yeah, but I actually we what we could have done is It was an ad based thing and I don't really like advertising as a business, but we very easily could have seen how much revenue we earned per per paid view and actually paid to promote it.

We probably should have done. We would have made probably millions of dollars because it's gotten like a hundred or a hundred and fifty million page views already. Um But if you look at honey I studied how they're growing. They're growing through Tabula and Alperine. Um those little art those little

Images, thumbnails at the bottom of like CNN dot com. Um'cause they calculated the L T V And we're just spending like crazy to acquire users. I also think Google lets you pay So

Like app installs. Yeah, the you also I I like I like how you think because you like to work backwards from distribution. I think distribution first. So just think of distribution channel. Okay, Chrome extensions. And then work backwards until a product makes sense. Like you do that basically with email. For the for for the hustle. Yeah, you know who taught me that was um

This guy uh the Nerdwallet? It's like um two hundred million dollar year business, they bootstrapped it for a long time, then they raised all his money. He taught me that. Um How did they do that? They basically work backwards from what? Google I told one of the founders to w is in we raise we've had not raised any VC, but we raised a little angel money. I told one of the founders I was like, we have this conference and I think I he's like I could build this huge email list. I learned how to do it and I know how to do that really well. And he goes

And I was like, I don't know what I want to sell and he goes You'll figure it out. Getting the audience is the hard part. And uh I was like I I that sounds reckless, I don't know what you're talking about.

He's he was right. And so I learned that once getting the audience And baking distribution into your cost to acquire a customer. So basically getting the audience means acquiring a customer. Acquiring a customer's way harder. Because if you think about it, think about how many shitty products there are in the world that are huge businesses. Like go to that

convenience store across the street and you'll see like Really bad. I mean That's subjective, but you'll see like candy or something that you're like, Man, this is not that high quality. But they're in every fucking store in the world. Right.

Twenty pieces of candy right before this. It was an incredible experience. I sat there and he he just like a a small child Halloween loot just downed it while we were talking. And then he had to like with two hands get all the wrappers and throw it away. I was like candy. That was phenomenal. But the I think a a business is just distribution and then the product. And There's s loads of examples of amazing products that completely die and become horrible companies because You know No one wants to go and buy it.

But If an inferior product has great distribution, like What you see at the gas station, you're like well. Fuck, I just need this thing. I'm gonna I don't care if it sucks. Right. Obviously if you have great distribution, great product

That's where magic comes in. Yeah. I'm curious, does anybody here have an idea? Like have you Are you all just idealists? Alright, here we go.

What's your name? Karen, great. What's your idea, Karen? You wanna come up here and say it into the mic? You wanna get on the podcast? Oh, Taniline.

I don't know. Are you pitching your own business or are you You're pitching your own actual business. Okay, this is actually an ad. It's still an idea, you know. The idea is that we need to live more connected to nature. Have places to co work and co live.

crazy, you know, mobile first lifestyle. You know, and that we can do that together by living in shipping containers in poorly performing R V parks that we purchase and then move everyone in, have a great co working space. And we're out there in nature going for a walk. Breathing fresh air. Yeah. Container ships. Or container units. Container units that people live in vacation in. I think it's vacation. They vacation or live?

Well, it's for short medium term. Short to medium term living. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. It was way too hard. No, that's okay. And Karen, what do you think um that's how I would tell my friends. Have you heard of Auto Camp?

I'm. What do you think of AutoCamp? Actually I stayed there. And um it is absolutely gorgeous, but It doesn't allow any of you guys to buy into it. And we're given the opportunity to co own something. Right? So autocam's a great way to spend uh a lot of money on a glamping unit.

Right. But they're all stacked next to each other. So it's all about the re relay out of the space so that there is actual Nature involved? Do it by the land? No.

So it's like an R V it's like a trailer park. But you rent it out, you make money the whole time. Yeah, that's okay. I'm not being disrespectful. Got it. Um but also we rent it out, we um get company off sites and yoga retreats. Can you put twenty thousand out, like twenty percent down? Sure down.

Alright, looks like you got a sail. How many square feet are they? That's right. Pass the day. Plus the deck with a garage door that opens out so that it's a small one bedroom apartment six fifty, right?

Or no, studio's four fifty, probably, right? Mm. Okay. So it's a s it's a studio apartment. It's a studio part. Yeah. Nice.

Yeah, I like the I actually like this general idea. First, I like that you uh pitch your business, that's hustling. I like it. Um and then I actually like this idea and the reason I asked about autocamp is because I'm fascinated by um say what autocamp is. So autocamp is basically uh glamping, which is like a glamorous camping uh experience. It's it's Airbnb if you want to like go out in nature. But you're like me and you don't want to do any of the work that's involved with going camping. And um That's how I think about it, at least. I'm sure they would pitch it slightly more like with more flowery words.

So they raised about a hundred and ten million dollars recently. Um and they only have about five locations, which means these guys must be printing money. And does anyone know the difference between P E and V C Okay, so if you raise from P E You're A good V C'est more aspirational. V C is your business is gonna suck for ten years and then might become hum humongous. P E is your business is awesome now and they'll drain it. Um that's the short short short answer.

Yeah. Like they they already have have earnings. Right. So I remember uh Uh you can sit back down. I don't want you to have to stand the whole time.

I remember reading did anybody remember when Sony's got Sony got their emails hacked? So so I r I read like all of'em and I was like uh I was I was trying to s figure out like w is there any good stuff in here'cause you know, an email hack you would think. The one thing I remember that stuck out was um Well there's some cool emails early on when Snapchat was on the rise and I think the guy who was CEO of Sony or whatever at the time, he was like on the board of Snapchat. So he had some good, like kind of raw thoughts about you know he didn't know these were gonna be public, so he was telling the truth about what he thought about the business.

And uh the other thing that I thought was interesting was some guy wrote an email to the to the top guy at Sony here and he was like a like a trend spotter type of guy. I don't know if you know about this, but like record labels and fashions, they have people who are trend spotters. They go all around the world and just try to look for what the trends are. And um this guy was like he's like three things and he he said Uh E DM is the rock and roll of this generation. You need to know that. Um two

Yeah, th that was right. That was right. That was was totally spot on. And he's like related. Um This generation loves festivals. He's like in general Um turn key.

Yeah, turnkey outdoor experiences. So uh zero effort, but I get to be out in nature, away from my computer. Um it's sort of a response to the fact that we're always sort of indoors, at a desk, connected at all times. He's like those are those are big and number three was bonus points if it's Instagrammable. And uh and I've actually seen this play out. So like when we talked about the ice cream museum street. And and all these ideas, they all actually fit this same like ethos of Uh how do you get turnkey experience with Instagramable moments?

Uh we did a Spartan race together and it's the same thing. It's a you know turnkey, you feel like you're tough. Um or if you're me, you feel like you're out of shape. And then like, you know, Instagramable experiences along the way. Um there's one other idea that we were talking earlier about that's that's sort of like this, which is Um Studs. So Studs is a new startup that's based in New York. I thought was pretty interesting.

What they're doing is they looked at what was working in malls. So I don't know if you ever remember uh Clares that are inside malls. So Place you go get your you go get your ear pierced. There's lotta men here, I don't know. I saw some nods. Earrings. Yeah, it's like where you go to get your ears pierced if you're like young. If you're like, you know, a tween.

And so um So Clares has like four thousand locations around the world. They were doing like you know Uh they sold it, you know, in two thousand seven for three billion dollars. So they built a you know, a a sizable business. They still had a billion and a half in sales last year. Yeah, a billion and a half in sales last year. And um so it's a big business, but it's like kind of outdated. Like Claire's hot topic. These were all like

popular mall stores back in the nineties. And so what Studs is doing is just reimagined it. So it's a cool looking place. Uh like every part of the store is like Instagrammable. Like you would you would want to take a photo of yourself there and share it out. And you're getting your ears pierced, which is something that's like internet resistant. Like it's not like probably not gonna get like direct to consumer ear piercing. So um so you need to be you need a physical location to do this. And when all of retail is dying

There's a small segment of retail that's thriving. And these are things that are uh that are essentially internet resistant businesses. And so I'm very interested in those and thinking through what more those might be. So we should talk about things that We think won't work. And I would put that in my category. Um I think it's too cute. And I think that I think there's a problem with people, particularly in San Francisco and New York.

who build things only for San Francisco and New York or LA people. Um so one of my favorite companies is Wish, Wish dot com. H has anyone not heard of Wish? Some people. Not that many though. Okay. Last year it would have been Okay, but which dot com.

They offices nearby. They've been popular for Five years now? And not just popular, like I think like ten billion users a month. Like one of the most popular websites on Earth. Uh

Sessions. Like web s web sessions. I have uh sorry. Yeah. Uh I have uh um a tool that sh guess web sessions. Yeah. So that would Potentially be a billion users. But it it was big enough that I'm friends with the founder on Facebook. I don't actually know him, but we became Facebook friends somehow. And he always shares like a screenshot. He's like we're we're we were downloaded more than Instagram this month. Right. So that's how big it is. Anyway, I love them because they made stuff that teenagers in Middle America where I'm from Would buy.

And what always angers me about these companies. So you don't like the Soul Cycle type of like Barry's Boot Camp type of companies. No, I like'em. I just think that not everything works that way. Like the whole point of Claire's was that it was like Shitty stuff that young people don't have any money want. And there's that serves a purpose. Yeah. Um but a lot of new companies don't make stuff for that demographic.

And I think that like that's It doesn't make sense to me. Yeah. It's like a high end it's like got that millennial pink thing. It's like I think that

Most people start too high end and too coastal when there's You could just crush like it's like uh you know what I I would I love way more than that is fashion Nova. You guys know Fashion Nova? Okay, Fashion Nova. Explain the explain the business more. Who doesn't know Fashion Nova? Wow. Okay.

Uh it's the new wish. Fashion Nova is awesome. A year I mean it's pretty it's pretty big now. Bootstrapped by uh uh a Middle Eastern guy, an immigrant, which is another reason why I like it in he's in LA. His parents had a mall store like Claire's That sold really sh has anyone been to like New York and seen these like stores that sell women's jeans and women's clothing that are all like knockoffs and not Really low quality. That's what his parents ran and he's like I should sell this online.

And so he Went right to Instagram and gave funny looking clothes to young women. And they would wear it. But it like became a joke, almost like world star hip hop.

Where it was like Fat like they they were like you know how like young guys will y will yell whenever there's a fight, they yell like World Star Well they advertise with all these uh Instagram models that it became a joke. that Bash Nova was on everything. And it turned out that They're actually kinda cool.

And so Fashion Nova Is Uh I think it's one of the largest Shopify stores out there and it's like a six hundred million dollar a year fashion brand. And they sell really cheap low quality clothes, but they're kind of like funny and cool. Right. It's like Cardi B is now their spokesperson. And they and they just went crazy on the influencer side. So like if you go Down the right Instagram rabbit hole, you will see Fashion Nova everywhere.

relatively normal folks. Right. It's affordable. Um it's kinda funny they put themselves in the middle of culture. I like that. Gymshark is another cool one that did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I I like those businesses too. Um all right, I want to turn it over questions. Do you want to do things that we don't think will work or cool? Okay, let's do it. What do you got? Uh once you say your we always talk about things that we think will work. And I try never to do this because I always respect someone who tries something, even if it is stupid. Right. You want to start with yours? Well the to be clear, they have our respect.

Yeah. But we think it's stupid. Okay. Um so the b the the c the way you qualify for this is most people think this is a good business. But we actually think it might be a bad business. And I agree with you on most things that you've said. I think you do me. Turns out Sam wrote them down and now we're doing it live. Okay. Um so Patreon. So uh Patreon is is not a cool business to hate on because it's like The nicest business. Uh Patreon basically lets any indie creator, so you're a blogger, a podcaster, whatever, you can say, Hey fans, support me directly, give me five bucks a month, that'll help me do my art. So I could do that with this show, for example.

I think that's a really cool thing. I think Patreon is gonna be a bad business even though that's a cool thing and the reason why is they went uh it's you know bad is always relative, right? So it's high expectations. They raised V C money, a lot of V C money, I think. I don't know what they're la I think they raised fifty million dollars in their last round. So that means they're trying to track towards like a billion dollar plus exit. And on the other side you have the business model, which is to take essentially five percent of the patronage donations and so

If you just sort of calculate out, you're like, all right, to get to You know, to be a billion dollar business, you need to be about a hundred million in revenue um as a as a business, which means they're gonna need to ha make twenty times that. uh is needs to be flowing through their system. And I just don't think that's ever gonna happen. And I don't think that um and I also think that's like highly commoditized. Like I work at Twitch. We have a built in way for you to give money to broadcasters. Do you know how many can you say how many people So the reason I think it's bad is I have seen media companies when they ask for donations, it's a horrible business. Right. Like very few people ever the only reason Wikipedia does it is because it's the most popular website in the countr or the world.

Like or one of wh I don't think that people donate money. I like Substack, which is a newsletter subscription company because people give you give It's not Please give me money. It's I'll allow you to get my information if you give me money. Right. Yeah, yeah, it's different. Paying for a product versus uh like Tipping. So from Twitch I can tell you people definitely do tip a lot. Uh people definitely just voluntarily give money to things that they could also get the content for free. The whole Twitch business model's off that uh uh based off that uh business model isn't, is it?

the majority of revenue will come through. Yeah. So a lot of people do this behavior, but Uh what I would say is that Uh the bad part is when you're taking like a five percent cut. Of Of that you have such a small

Um you have such a small share. And so like You know, for Twitch I think the default share is fifty fifty. Fifty percent is way more than the sort of five percent and I think Patreon tried to up it to like seven percent once and everyone revolted. And uh so that's show they basically have no like headroom to to take a bigger bigger cut of this. So like if we're gonna stereotype then they probably don't have a lot of money in the first place. And so any percentage will and some guy went and scraped all the top Patreon pages to see how who's making the most and like the top people are not very big. And so it just to me it's like I don't know, it doesn't add up. It doesn't pass a sniff test.

Firefly. So have you guys seen these Ubers? With the oh you worked at Uber. So you maybe know a little bit. U Uber's with the ad on the top? It's like

Mm. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we talked to these guys when they were first raising their seed round. Yeah. And with all the deck. And it was promising. I don't think it's gonna work though. You didn't think so at the time either. Yeah. Because you didn't invest. Yeah.

Um they have since raised money. Yeah, it looks like they're doing phenomenal. And they might be. I always just thought it was weird because uh like you used to work at Uber, I always just thought There's a huge platform risk because Uber, I would say get off. Yeah, because if Uber ever decides if it the bigger this gets, Uber might say, Hey, that looks like a good revenue stream we should own. And the learning of this, I think But I'm wrong still, but I might be right. Is

I think you it's impossible to build up. It's very unsafe, but it's doable. Zinga did it. It's very unsafe to build a business on top of one platform. And they only have two platforms left and over. Don't love this business. A company that was

About to sell for two hundred million dollars. Last. January Facebook changed their algorithm. And it went out of business in March. I know the one you're talking about. It's a media company, right? Yep.

Yeah, we won't say it. Yeah. But it's a true story. It was in the news probably, and I think that's exactly what will happen to the Firefly and any company that builds on top of a platform. I remember when you were starting the hustle, I was like, You need to do Facebook video, Snapchat. Get go to Snapchat. Snapchat's where it's at because all these things were hot and trendy. And you were very adamant. You're like, I'm gonna do email because

I'm not you know, I'm not suscepti you know, I own my community then, right? Like These are people I have a direct relationship with, I'm not dependent on Facebook. And it makes Uber stupid. It makes it look trashy. Yeah, also I think it's

Uh Firefly Blanet. There you go. One point for Sam. There's still up like a hundred, but like, you know, Right. Not even a little bit. No, I don't I don't want anyone who's taken a risk to fail, but I think they will. Um and it sucks because the drivers make they prom I think they promise two or three hundred dollars a month for drivers. So of course I want all these guys to win. I want it to be great. I also think that in a r when a recession happens in two or three years, brand advertising, which is what that is, it won't it's gonna go away. Whatever's gonna exist, TikTok.

And that type of advertising is gonna go away. The valuation that they eventually raised that, I bet you was more revenue than all the taxi advertising did as a whole. Yeah. Okay. Is there any way they can pivot? There's always a way you can pivot. Can you pivot successfully? Uh what would you do?

I I don't know So you let's say you get the they have some assets, right? Let's say they're gonna have they have money in the bank. They have Uh a network of drivers, let's call it ten thousand drivers that have their unit installed on top. Um what does that allow them to do? How do the how how can they leapfrog from that to something else interesting? Is there anything that comes to mind? Maybe there's something there.

You're still platform dependent, but that's a way less obnoxious. Oh I think they you think they look good? I

You like ads, okay. Would you put that on your car for th an extra three hundred dollars? I can see that too. Yeah, the reason it works is they're on the road.

And they install them for free. And you can probably run it off your time. Your car business. Quick question about You were mentioning platforms and things sort of.

Not too relying on them. But what about something like Shopify or Amazon? That's a different kind of different things. So there's two types of platforms. Um, I remember there's a story of Facebook back in the day released their Facebook platform which was like, Hey, you can build games on Facebook, this is gonna be awesome and they were being hail as like the next great platform. And uh the story I don't know if this is true or not, but the story I read was

Uh Zuck goes and meets with Bill Gates and it's showing about Facebook platform and really Microsoft was the last The previous like uh huge platform, right? The the Microsoft operating system that had all these different apps you can you can use on on it. And um Bill Gates was like this is horseshit. Like this is not uh this is not a platform. He's like, What do you mean? Like developers can build on this. He's like, That's not what a platform means. A platform is where the str the strategy is for the all for the sum of all the apps that get built on this to be worth more than the platform itself.

So like although Microsoft was always a huge company if you added up the value of all the different programs that could run on Microsoft the total enterprise value of those was greater than than the value of Microsoft. And that was that was their strategy. Uh we will be able to sell more operating if we have more apps. Therefore we need to make sure the apps win on our platform, otherwise we can't sell our operating system. Which is very different. The second is like more like what Facebook did, what Twitter did, which is like hey, we got a whole bunch of users um and we got people trying to build stuff'cause they're all enthusiastic. We'll give them some access to try to build some things.

In the second place the the idea though is you gotta get in while the getting's good. And you gotta be really good at diversifying great gas. So for example, movement watches, one of our friends who spoke at Huss bootstrap sold the company for$100 million. They

Built a brand. And young people like that brand. Blue apron and uh Plated. Also hustle count speakers, I was talking to him and he was like we couldn't build that thing now.

Because the cost to acquire customers is way too expensive, and we didn't get in early enough to build this brand equity. So the idea is that we have to do it. Amazon's a good example. Uh. Make sense. AdSense, whatever it is. They got big they they were the biggest customer of Google.

But they're Built a brand. Yeah. You wanna do escape. There's a great talk that this guy, Josh Elman, uh he's a VC here, who he he ran growth at like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. He's had a good career. And so he wrote he gave a talk called like um

uh building building a rocket ship on the back of a rocket ship or something like that. And uh really what he's talking about is like, hey, it's great when these platforms are around You can go get some easy growth on top of them. But you gotta make sure you're building escape velocity to get off them quickly because you will not survive living off them. And so uh when you just as much as you're thinking about all the all the advantages you're getting, you better be thinking about how you're gonna build your escape uh off of those platforms. Like Zinca did. We grew a lot from Facebook and when we were doing that, an advisor told me.

And I was paranoid the whole time. We began diversifying um and it hasn't wor it it hurt us, but it worked. Right. Like native who was on the podcast uh when he was talking you know, the he talks about how They use Facebook and th that's how they sell the majority of their product, but they're constantly trying to grab customer email addresses. And then they remarket via email so they're not reliant on the newsfeed. They diversify through like now they're in stores. So now that they're in stores they're less reliant on the Facebook relationship. So they're Always trying to build those different assets and different d relationships with customers.

Does our stuff show up at the top all the time? Every group I have shows up the top. Actually. Yeah. Well th they they publicly announced they were like our strategy is to promote groups. So that means right now, like don't make a page. It's the algorithm is favoring it. But also don't try to live there forever because the day that they decide that's not the thing. I know this works because Zuckerberg said this in an announcement last February. This was the same announcement, like I said, that killed all my friends' company. They said we're prioritizing group content, among other things.

But if you go down to Bart and all the other places, in the commer commercials, they're advertising groups. And so whatever they're spending on their brand advertising, that's the thing they want to succeed most. So you have at least two years where that is still gonna be like the focal point. And then who knows after that. And so I that's one of those when you say work backwards from distribution. It's like well if I knew this is gonna work great on Facebook through groups which is not even pay uh you're not paying for ads Uh you could just work backwards from that. Like what's a great group I could build. And then based off that group, what's a great sort of product or or sort of off-platform commerce I could do.

Five or ten more minutes of questions. Cool. And we looked at a ton of Amazon companies and their valuations were horrible because of that same reason.

Quite, yeah. And so we're going to be able to do it We sold or he was is he was selling companies that were selling on Amazon for like one or two times earning. So if a company made like ten million in revenue, or let's say five million in revenue, one million in profit, they would sell for like eight hundred thousand dollars. And put that in perspective, our company.

Um five. So we spend five times more to acquire one customer as we did one year ago. That's crazy. What you got? No, I think that they're gonna Um

Scott is his Instagram cheap. Never have you. So when I started the company,

I don't want to reveal too much, but let's just say that like I'm gonna make up these numbers. Um let's say one subscriber to us is worth twenty dollars. We were able to acquire a customer for a dollar fifty. Now it's five or ten times. Some days it's ten times. In my opinion that just means that the A company like mine cannot be. Be really expensive to start again now. That said, there's all these other ad products on Facebook that are really good. For example, like I said, groups. Groups are awesome. You can acquire you can advertise on Facebook and get someone to join your group. Um for really cheaply. And so I think that there's other things. I spent hours on on Oculus this weekend, and I think that's gonna have so many ads in it.

You guys if the margin's there. We'll do a couple more. What a glass.

Yeah. No, I don't care about that stuff. I stay in my lane. What's up? I have a quick question about Not that I don't care, I just don't know anything about it.

I'm curious how you guys would. They work in mind. She's not going to

What would you think about? Our friend had a company that Ramon had a What Ramon had our friend had a business built on top of that same demographic. And he had four hundred thousand people in his groups.

And he started with one group and made it like sub interest. No, it was mostly soap operas. Yes. So he he basically drove them to a blog, there he captured their email address and the blog he just did advertising because he had enough scale where he could do it that way. And then from a Facebook group he would post articles in there and then collect emails, and then back to the blog, and then back to the group. And it's very circular. Perfectly broken evenly. So to me starting with a large Facebook group is the same as starting with a large email list.

You can like segment it out pretty good. into different interest. Interest groups. Literally and meta like figuratively. Anyway, um Yeah, I don't have too many answers. You gotta know the customers really well, like why they're in the group in the first place, what they're interested in, that sort of thing. But I would say generally people err on the side of being too afraid to charge, too afraid to ask.

Uh they think it's gonna offend people and everyone's gonna run away and all this stuff. And turns out if you're pretty honest about what you About the value you think you're providing and you say, Hey Would you guys be interested in this? Um that's like a very easy way to start. And I think people You know this is what it would cost. Would you guys be interested?

And that doesn't mean that necessarily it's gonna work. But you'll know the opposite. If no one even says they're interested, then then don't bother. But you can knock it out the park by having a premium one that's twenty dollars a month and you do special stuff for them in the group. What we learned about our trends thing, which I thought was a amazing, is more people have been buying because of the group as opposed to the content. Mm. I didn't realize that.

Jason, what you got? Yeah. I like what you guys. Can I say one? Yeah. And we were just talking about this. I think that there's a huge misconception about this like idea of like this person who starts something and then grows it to a huge publicly traded company. I actually think that it's m better for most people to find professional managers. And that is like not popular. Andries and Horowitz they say that they want the founders to be the CEO?

I think that most Founders would not want to be CEO. And would suck at it. And there's been a lot of companies that have been completely running the ground because

Someone who starts a company, maybe. A visionary or creative. And really bad at operating. And I think that a lot of people don't acknowledge that. I used to make a mistake, which is I would listen to somebody and they would say one smart thing, two smart things, three smart things I'm like, that's a smart person and then I would sort of auto accept all other statements that they make. Um and I never did this explicitly, but that's actually what was happening in my head. I was just Uh taking it all in. And so now I have and then I went the other way and I was like, I don't wanna listen to nobody, I'm gonna figure it all out myself.

And uh And I couldn't even last on that for six months because I was like, Well, I wanna hear what people think. I'm actually very curious. And so um now my mindset's very different, which is absorb everything. I try to take I try to hear everybody's point of view. Uh, but then I really like have like a sh a wall, like a firewall, which is like

What do I actually believe? Which of these things resonate with me? Which of these things um like do I want to actually incorporate into you know my own little personal Bible. And so uh I would say a lot of stuff that's sort of conventional wisdom Um doesn't pass that test. I think you said one which was like uh Starting a business versus running and operating a business. Two two sort of different things and Um Uh the way I would I would think about it a little bit differently is I think that there's some really underrated business opportunities. So I think that

Uh buying a business buying an existing business Uh should be way more common than it is. The media investors all glorify starting a new thing. But uh there's so much value in buying a business and um and actually just increasing the value. It's a w much faster path to business success. Now if you don't care about business success, you just wanna make some change happen in the world, that's different. Um the second one that I think is like comp like sort of criminally underrated is

Um I've told you this before. Uh working uh working at a job I think is uh is Is is a flawed way to get to financial freedom. And um I'm not like the first person to say this.

Uh I think most people would sort of agree with this, but the reality is that the majority more majority of people uh work as employees. And um if you work as employee, you sort of have the the deck stacked against you. Um you might be a great employee. Okay, let me let me let me tell you why I think it's bad. Uh, if you're a great employee, you might be two, three, five times more productive or have higher output than the person next to you.

But you'll never really get paid two, three, four, five X somebody who's in your peer group uh at your company. Companies sort of Have you ever met salespeople? Yeah, salespeople but what what they do is they just raise the quota. It's like okay, fantastic, you did it. Here's your new way to get that same bonus. Like I think if they do performance If you are paid on performance. then you can knock it out the fire. Maybe I think most jobs are not m from my experience, sales jobs, uh they also basically they just keep raising your quota so that y you know you you can't continue to earn at the same rate you're gonna be able to do it. I would say there's all there's only a few ways to get rich. It's you get lucky, which includes marrying into it. Inheritance or lottery. Yeah, the best way. You start a business.

Or you become a salesperson. And salesperson includes anything that is like Performance related that's typically sales in tech world, it could be like growth as well. Um have you guys read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad? I'm just curious. When I read that that was one of those like

I'm gonna write that in my Bible. Like that one resonated with me. I was like this makes absolute sense and if you haven't read the book. Uh I don't think he's a crook. Yeah. I I do this with a lot of people, like Elon Musk, a lot some people think he's like a hero and super genius. Some people think he's a fraud.

Didn't he go to jail? My point is this, is like I don't really care about a person because From what I've encountered here in Silicon Valley, I've met my heroes and They're just they're people have flaws, people are weird, people have strengths and weaknesses.

And I don't judge their philosophies or or wisdom based off of uh their h totality as a person. And so this guy his philosophy around in Richard Port, it resonated with me. And so that's one that I've let in that I don't think most people here Okay. I can't.

Ideally, yes. The reality is a lot of people do the opposite too, right? So I agree with you but I'm gonna add a second perspective. You're you're working so this is uh I'm gonna I don't want to call you a knot. How do you pronounce it?

Ah no. Okay. I have a friend who spells it the same way, we call him a knot. Uh he's working on a self driving car. That's that's like a go bigger go home. I think that that's awesome. I think that you'd be I'm from Missouri. So I've got a lot of

People aren't as smart as you, but my friends are not as smart as you. But there's people who are rich because they start a small business that makes $500,000 to a million dollars a year in profit, and that just goes straight through the pocket. I would argue, though, that I agree with you. I think I I will if you would accept my money, I will bet money on you, and I think that you will win. But I think that you can make it. Did you just meet this guy? Yeah. Did you spend three minutes on the side? I would I think that a lot of people are surprised that we have this database.

We surveyed six hundred people. And there's people who own restaurants that are making six hundred thousand dollars a year on a a two and a half million dollar thing. Now who knows what type of life you want. That's pretty cool for a lot of people. That's great for most people. But I do agree with you, but that is probably why you're probably gonna be the best. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I feel you.

I feel you. Aside from the lucky tier, you won't get rich unless you're solving somebody's problem, unless you're giving value to other people. You're just gonna capture some percentage of that value back. Now The the thing you said, which was and if if you're listening to this, you probably didn't hear what he said, which was uh don't go try to start s start a business to make money. uh go out there start a business to solve problems and money will come.

Uh I call yeah, that's the top of the pyramid. And if you're living by that, I think that is amazing. I also know many people who start businesses because Um they enjoy the act of starting a business. And uh they try to find different problems to solve. And um and they don't necessarily know which problem ahead of time, they just decide that's who I am, I'm a business person, I'm gonna make it happen. And I I think that um While what you're saying is is amazing. I think what it does is it isolates people out who don't feel that true calling of which problem to solve.

Um and it's okay to know that there's de many different styles. My father owned a company that sold onions. He was an onion salesman. That's my dad did. And he knocked it out the park because we were poor and he wanted to send me to private school. I think that is possible. That's my point. I think that your thinking is gonna

Make you a home run versus whatever is successful, but not a home run. I wanna leave everyone with one little exercise, uh that I think is amazing one To do yourself. Uh I'm gonna do it to you. It's uh I wrote down we're gonna play the game real quick. Sorry, Mike, one last question. Hold on. Show your shirt. What So his shirt says Southern Sam's Wieners as Big as a Baby's Arm. My first company was a hot dog car called Southern Sam's Wiener's Big as a Baby.

You you you made this shirt. I wasn't trying to get more. You get people to eat hot dogs. I was doing it because

I wanted to get paid and I wanted to work outside. Wherever the attention is. That's if you're trying to get people's attention, that's where you gotta go and you gotta figure out how to play that game. So now it's on TikTok.

Fantastic. Now you gotta learn how to Do music videos and get people's attention. I think it's freaking awesome. Yeah. I think that the sixteen year olds of today are amazing. I think that

Their bullshit detector is going to be higher than any other generation's bullshit. And that's it. I I think that the only way you're going to be able to circumvent that is by not bullshitting. And so it's going to be really hard, I think, for a Walmart to advertise there unless they do something hip and cool, which big brands are able to do that, like a Nike or something. But I think that with Facebook not so much Instagram, but with Facebook it was really easy to scam people before I started a legitimate company. I I like most internet people, I d r did scams. Facebook was easy to do that. I mean everyone every right everyone who has made money on the internet.

Anyway, it was easy to do on Google. A little less, but still easy to do on Facebook. Kinda hard on Instagram. I think with TikTok it's gonna be very, very, very, very hard. That's my opinion. So I think TikTok is is uh amazingly fun to use.

Um I also feel like a perv when I'm on it,'cause there's also like a lot of like just sixteen year old girls, no matter what I'm trying to watch. Like I like basketball, but it's like no, here's what you like. I'm like, Oh god. I don't know how I feel about this. Um But but the other thing is I also don't know how long this this lasts because I know TikTok is pouring so much money into buying users.

Um And usually the uh apps like TikTok don't have great retention. So I'm curious in the long haul. Uh apps t apps that don't typically Right, but the the sort of The wave and the critical massive users is really like eighteen months old and because they're buying so much, you can't tell

how much is leaking out. Like they've spent over a billion dollars. I knew it I knew it was a Chinese company, but I wasn't sure if it was a Yeah, dude, I I'm ballish on that. I

Usually products that uh like the Facebook type products that feature your friends, WhatsApp, Instagram, all Products that have people you know in them are like sticky forever. Products that are entertainment like a Vine or you know they they have a harder time doing it and th they can do they can do it. So I'm just saying it's not like a given. that TikTok's just gonna be the thing, you know, four or five years from now. It's totally possible, but it's not a given. The last thing I'll say is just uh do what's native to the medium. So like I know a lot of people a lot of music artists are trying to use TikTok. They're designing songs.

To be tick talkable. And so they're like uh'cause on TikTok a lot of the dancers are like little hand gestures. So they're designing lyrics that are like pick up the phone, say goodbye, thumbs down, see you later. And like they're designing a song that can be TikToked really easily. And so I think that's the type of thinking you have. I I'm always inspired by like Um Dame Cook. got really big'cause he gamed LimeWire back in the day. He would the people were searching for Chris Rock comedy. So he'd like put like five minutes of Chris Rock comedy and forty five minutes of Ding Cook comedy right afterwards. And that's how he got his followers'cause he knew how to like game that system'cause that's where the attention was at that time.

And so, you know, that's how I would think about it. Yeah. Game. Oh yeah, the game the game's real simple. Uh this is a game you can play with you you can do to yourself, you can play with other people. It tells you a lot about people. So I interview and hire a lot of people. And I found that this three line test.

uh tells me a lot about the way somebody thinks. So I'm gonna play with you. So all you gotta do is just answer first thing that comes to mind when I I'm gonna say a sentence and I'm gonna fill an I'm gonna leave a blank. That's where you say your thing, okay? Um Uh people are Friendly. Life is

Adventurous. I am An animal. Very good. Okay, so Uh I've noticed that people have a a a default reaction and it is a you don't have to be held to it.

Uh but these are like the core beliefs that you carry around in the world. So Uh if you think people are stupid, or if you think people are complicated. Uh I bet you're gonna have a lot of problems with people as you go around the world if that's kind of like what's what your top of mind thing is. Uh mine used to be um Life is Great. Just something generally positive. But I updated it because I heard a better one and I was like, Ooh, I like that. I'm gonna take that. Uh which was just life is what you make of it.

And I was like, Oh, that's a more empowering way to think about things. Like no matter what's going on in my life It's gonna be about what I make of this situation. And so I encourage Ask yourself these three questions. Say what do I think people are Life is I am. And then ask yourself, am I happy with those answers? And also try it on other people, it'll tell you a lot about them. So I wanted to leave you guys with that little framework.

Cool.

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