Ideation Bootcamp, Bitcoin Thieves Steal Billions, Stonks.com, and More

They they find Um A bunch of burner cell phones. They find like a bag of like fifty thousand dollars of cash. They find a bunch of like the hardware wallets that had the bitcoins in them.

And then they found like folders on their computer that were like fake passport ideas and like places to go. Places to run away. Like they found like folders that said that shit on their computers. I don't even entirely understand what happened, but I have a backstory about it. You will get the full backstory and ten bullet points. Yeah, you need to go earlier. So but we but we did bullet point it and what so here's what happened. Two thousand sixteen. This crypto exchange called Bitfinex got hacked.

And at the time, I think like a hundred twenty thousand bitcoin got stolen. That was like seventy million dollars got stolen. And it was like it was bad. Uh that was like a big hack. The price of Bitcoin that week dropped. By forty percent. So it was like a It calls like this huge uh you know, like uh uh fear shock in the market.

But The thing about Bitcoin is Bitcoin is on a public ledger, right? Like it's a it's a public blockchain. So everybody could see the coins. Everybody saw all the b the coins are in this wallet. And like And so

All the other exchanges were like look, this is bad for the industry. We will try to prevent like if if that wallet tries to cash this out, we won't let'em cash out. Uh the money. So For many years that money kinda just Sat in those wallets or

Was moving in like really small Small transactions back and forth between a like a a web of wallets. Clearly somebody was trying to like launder the money, essentially. They were trying to But but how how did he how did they even get into the first place? So there I don't know. I don't know what the exploit was that let them hack the accounts, and they didn't hack all the accounts on Bitfinex. They actually just hacked Like

Some of the whale accounts. So they were able to take one hundred twenty thousand bitcoin from not all the accounts and the funny thing is Bifin X didn't have the money to like make those users whole. So what they did was they They reduced everybody on Bitfinex's balance.

By thirty three percent or something to like balance it out. Some like horror like imagine if your bank did that. That would be like insane. I'd be like, Oh, they robbed that guy's vault and you're taking my mind away to like even it out for everybody? Like, no, thank you. Um so anyway, it was bad and this is the reason why Bifnex is not like, you know The biggest exchange now. Um

So anyways, that the money sat there. Now fast forward. Five and a half years go by. Last week People start to notice bigger transactions coming from The uh the Bitfinex hack wallets.

Um And so they're like there's these alerts on Twitter like Whale alert, whale alert like the coins are moving. The coins are moving, hundred thousand dollars, a million dollars of the coins are moving, ten million dollars, whatever. And so um And so the Fed go or not the Fed, sorry, Department of Justice goes, kicks down a door in New York. In to this cut this

This husband and wife couple's house. And they look like you know. You're complete like average Joe. Clean cut like this is not like You know, doesn't look like a grimy criminal

Mastermind operation. Uh, and I'll explain a little bit more about that in a second, the funny bit about that. Uh but basically they seize uh like their computers, they s they find Um A bunch of burner cell phones.

They find like a bag of like fifty thousand dollars of cash. They find a bunch of like the hardware wallets that had the bitcoins in them. And then they found like folders on their computer that were like fake passport ideas and like places to go, places to run away. Like they found like folders that said that shit on their computers. And um and they seized three and a half billion dollars worth of Bitcoin because the price of Bitcoin's gone up so much. So that seventy million has become three and a half billion dollars worth. And so these guys were trying to launch they they don't think these are the hackers.

But they were trying to launder that money. They may have been the hackers, they don't know. They that's not proven. But they were trying to launder the money and the the the DOJ had been like If you've seen that meme of Charlie from It's Always Sunny where they had like the cork board. And he's like trying to like find the find the the crime or solve the crime. That's what they had been doing,'cause they had they had this web of all these wallets. And finally they found that oh it's trying to cash out in this wallet owned by this guy.

Ilya Dutch Lichtenstein or whatever. But how how did what what type of idiot would use this? Well eventually you need to get the money just a little bit. They were trying to get the money out through like Walmart gift cards. They were buying like five hundred dollar Walmart gift cards with Bitcoin. They were doing like PlayStation games. They were like They were trying all these small things, but they could never move the bulk of the money. So if you want to move like in mass

You gotta do something that ha that lets you move size. And usually those Could you buy an NFT and then sell it? No, like eventually you need to get the money out of the wallet. That's the problem. So so it so the problem so In order to do that, there's like an off ramp, right?

How do you get it into you know, US dollars, for example, if that's what you wanted to do. Um you know, he left it there for five and a half years and they were probably living off it and spending it in some ways, but like You wanted to actually like

Yeah. Uh remove the tr paper trail. of the blockchain, you need to get it as an off ramp But to get as an off ramp, you have like a um You know, your ide like these exchanges, they they require you to upload your license and like

They have laws they have to comply with called KYC, know your customer. And so eventually they found that somehow the DOJ they didn't explain exactly, but They they identify that th the money was moving towards a wallet that was owned by a known person. That's how they ended up finding these guys.

Now the funny part is awesome, go ahead. So that Well, so the I when I read about this, I was like, Wait, that name sounds so familiar. Both their names sound familiar So the guy it w his name is Ilyah I L Y A, I think it was like a very like weird name. His last name is Lichtenstein. So he spoke at the first hustle con. I never talked to him.

But um He had a company called Mixed Rank, which was just a normal startup, went through Y C And he spoke at Hustle Count and then his Girlfriend or wife. She was a copywriter and I remember talking a little bit with her because she her name's Heather Morgan, I think, and she had a

Um a website all about writing sales emails. Totally. Is that right? Or the hack? She had like a LinkedIn post on like five hacks for your your cover letter for your job interview, like you know, like that sort of thing. And so Yeah, she was doing that. She and so they

And the funny thing is like The reason the internet kinda went crazy with it was because Here you had two very unlikely characters. So um We had a bunch of friends text us.

It takes me. 'cause I was writing this this edition of The Milk Road. And I was like, um anybody know this guy? And you you knew him, but Some other people knew and they're like, dude. You would never

get vibes of like this guy might just go launder billions of dollars was like Smart, like kinda like his guy, like engineer type. Uh he like he like showed very little emotion. No, I did not think that this guy like Yeah, and and and then her, she's like this like super strange Kanye West level weird Uh you know, like person. She she basically

She had like an alter ego that was called Rosal Khan. And Razlocon was her rap name. And then she has like these. super fucking cringy. rap songs on YouTube like

Dude, okay, I have you know I have uh Uh, you know, I I think it'd be cool to be a rapper, but if I hear myself, there's no way I'm publishing that because It sounds so bad.

The first such. And so uh It's horrible. It it's so bad. The the top comment was

Paris Hilton. I'm gonna prove to everyone that You can ha uh that having money means you can rap good. And then it said Heather Morgan, Hold My Beer. I didn't even know Parisone has w has like a rap song. Yeah.

So yeah, yeah, there's just like she's like one of the strangest characters. Like I watched I I went deep, dude, for this I was writing this thing and I was like Oh, let me get some examples and then I couldn't look away because like the Dude, it's like videos of her wedding comfortable and like she she like. forced everybody to like they built like this golden

mini Taj Mahal that she sat in and then her bridesmaids lifted it up on her shoulder and brought her in. But even though the audience at her wedding is like uncomfortably clapping like off beat'cause they're like, uh This is this not normal? There's like and there's like clearly only fourteen people in the room. And then she does a rap performance at the wedding that was like equally cringy and she's just like humping the air, which is weird.

To the guy, Iliad? Dude, this freaking guy Uh I'm looking at these pictures. Yeah.

That's hilarious. This woman's Really hard to look at. She's just cringe city. That should have been her rap night. Cringe city. That would have been like okay, I get it. You're gonna be the cringiest. Cool. Um that's like And Henry Sahudo a crushing the the the king of cringe.

Uh Yeah, that's what she should have done. Like it it's super strange. But um but yeah, basically they recovered it and so now what's gonna h and it Anyway, it's just a bunch of interesting little bits to it. So the DOJ is gonna give the money back to Bitfinex, it looks like.

Bitfinex had when they they launched their own token at one point in time called the Leo token. That's like used in their ex if you trade in their exchange, it'll give you a discount using the Leo token. So They had to put it a thing when they launched the Leo token was like, Hey, if we ever recover anything from that hack Um We'll use eighty per up to eighty percent of it to buy back and burn our Leo tail, which will cause like the price, you know, Leo holders to benefit from if we ever recover from this.

And so now they're gonna get like three and a half billion dollars to buy back so the Price of Leo token? Like shot up like under sixty percent in uh twenty four hours'cause people are like Oh wow, that's gonna be a lot. But they said we're not gonna just

cause a bunch of sale pressure in the market. We're gonna do a controlled sale over like a multi year period. Um so that it's like scheduled and doesn't like affect the bitcoin market or whatever. Uh God, this is such a good story. This would make This is exactly.

Here comes, you know, incoming incoming Netflix stock. Uh have you seen the this I saw the I just watched this clip like Every day for the past three days. And it just absolutely cracks me up. I was hoping Ben can uh play it in the thing, but I don't think it'll work. I don't think the sound will come through. So Have you seen this clip?

Of b of this interview of Bill Gates. Back in the day. Jumping over a chair? Yeah. Have you seen this? Yeah.

It like it just a normal one of him jumping. Just the So he's doing some interview with some woman about Microsoft. And she goes.

She goes, Is it true that you can leap over a chair? Is that that impressive? Well first of all, it is impressive. Uh for for Bill Gates to be able to do that. Second of all. Just w I don't know why this is being talked about. And then he goes, So she goes, Is it true that you could jump over a chair? And he goes

It depends on the size of the chair. You know, just like and then the cuts it's like a hard cut. To a chair? Is it true that you can leap over a chair from a standing position? It depends on the size of the chair. Uh I'll cheat a little bit.

That's an old clip. You've you've just now seen that. I no, I came back into my life'cause I was thinking uh somebody had said something like, Oh yeah, you know, back in the day or You know, in the good old days. Somebody said some phrase like that. And in my head I go What are they even thinking about when they

When they say that and I go. I'm gonna have I was like, What's the funniest back in the day thing. And I that clip came to mind. And so I decided any time somebody says back in the day or or you know in the good old days, I'm gonna think only of that

moment where Bill Gates says, depends on the depends on how high the chair is. I always just think of Uncle Rico. The Uncle Rico clip in Napoleon Dynamite Rico. I used to be able to throw a pig skin over them mountain. All right, so listen, I did something that I did not think I was ever going to do. Um so last year Yeah, two thousand.

one or no, uh two thousand twenty, whenever Covet happened. I launched just course. that I I don't even know if I ever talked about it called the ideation boot camp. I did it with Goggin. I invested in his company just like you did in Maven. You have already done two of them, I think, and you have a third coming up. I decided to launch one. I launched one the other day. I only talked about it on Twitter. I've not talked about it on here yet.

But So if people wanna do it, it's called the ideation boot camp and it's basically my research Um My research framework and how I research stuff.

It's but it's uh you go to Maven dot com. So Maven. How do you say mate? How do you like You say m Maven, it rhymes with like Raven. Uh with with an M. W but with an M at the end No that's right, that's right. Yeah, and you could see my name is on the front page, but what they don't have yet, and this is what I told Goggin, they so me and Sean both invest in this company and as part of investing in it. He made us promise to do courses.

Yeah. Um, which was actually a good kick in the ass because now I actually had to do it and it it has been fun. But Um He needs like custom URLs. He doesn't have that yet.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like s Maven.com slash bl blank slash whatever in order to to get to your thing. But I just have the they made it for me. They made uh power writing. Powerwriting course dot com. They're gonna make it for me, but they're that that that goes there. But they have to make it for you. But I'm I'm doing this thing.

Yeah. I think it's gonna be pretty badass. I think I'll continue doing it maybe once a year, but maybe I won't ever do it. I don't know. Give an example. So give a teaser of like Okay, so so this is about coming up with a great idea. Figuring out so coming up with ideas and then picking the ones that Seem like better ideas than worse ideas in a short amount of time. Is that the hook? Yeah, I I'll give one old example. So basically when Trends launched, I wrote this article about plants and I'm like, Man, I think someone could build like an online nursery.

or an online plant business. And the reason why I came up with that idea is I read the annual report for one eight hundred flowers. And they said the f of and one eight hundred followers is a big company does a billion or something in revenue. So they've got a large perspective. And they said that our fastest growing segment is millennials buying succulents online. This is growing like crazy. And then I looked on at their financials and it looked like the m the majority of the profit came from people buying accessories. So chocolate or fancy pots. And I'm like

Well there's the fucking idea. You make succulents and you make it like really cool pots that are artists. And you like figure out what the contribution margin is and then what Alex said about what did Alex say yesterday in the podcast like opportunity of value. Or value of opportunity. Like he like phrased it actually better than I've phrased it historically, but basically you could do a bunch of math.

It's really like simple arithmetic and you're like in order to get your repeat purchase rate Uh Uh the total adjustable market times your contribution margin. And like that's how you can come up with a good idea in that space, just off that one insight. And so that's an example. So I just list out all like my frameworks.

And how I research. And it started with reading the re reading the annual report for one eight hundred flowers, which Uh that sounds like the most you know kinda unique starting point. for finding not even just finding specific opportunities, but just like training your brain. to think about the world wider than the curr the way you currently think about it. That's that's how I would phrase it.'Cause like

I I don't think you necessarily find the best ideas. By being like okay, I'm gonna go read You know, the har the HBS business school, you know, the Harvard Business School's annual report. And in there I'm gonna find a business idea. I think that's a little too hardcore. No, what what the way it works is you have this general thing. So this general thing is basically what's this combination of things that I'm interested in. Things that I'm good at and things that can make money.

All right. I know what that general I think is I'm gonna go to very particular places to find information that's gonna help guide this and what it's gonna do is gonna help me s Find a handful of problems that I'm interested in solving. And these problems for sure have demand for them. I'll give you an example of this, uh how this played out in my life. So I I invest in this company. The gu a guy actually came to our podcast, our live podcast.

Show in San Francisco. Which was like in your office, very s you know, it was a very small crew, maybe fifty people, seventy five people, something like that. I don't know what it was, but it was the very first live thing we ever did. And um This guy comes up afterwards and he's like Uh, hey, that was great. Um, and I'm like, Yeah, what do you cool, what's your story? What do you do? And he's like, Oh, I'm

I currently run the perception team on the self driving cars uh division of Uber. Um He was very charming, very good looking. I was sold too. Handsome guy. Uh Ver very confident. So he wasn't like

Hey, Kashon, can I just pitch you my idea? I'd really just want to tell like that that's always like uh sure, man. Uh I'd you talk while I think of a way to escape. It's usually how that conversation goes. And so this was different. This guy was you know, he I was genuinely interested, then he started saying things and then I was like

Oh, so he's like Yeah, but I'm leaving it work on my own startup. Okay, what what is it? Uh what is the Uber artificial intelligence guy, you know, like uh guy who works on the AI team at Uber? And so he was starting his own self driving car company and he's like, you know, here's what we're gonna do. We're focusing on

He's like, You know, it's funny I I s I was You know, I was looking at what we were doing at Uber and he was like What stood out what jumped out to me, this is kind of like one of your ideation things, is like Sometimes some a stat will come out. And um at Twitch my the CEO Emmet he used to call the the he used to say sometimes you look at data

Not for a specific answer. But just to find something that makes you go, huh? Or like That's weird. It can't be right, can it?

And um and so he used to the C he used to mentioned like you don't always go looking do it a write a SQL query just to get a specific answer. Sometimes you just browse until something jumps out at you as being like Not what you not on trend. And so anyways, this guy had said

Seventy five percent of all um Uber rides are like, you know One passenger. going less than it was like sixty percent sixty something percent were going were one passenger and sixty percent were going less than three miles. So it's like short trips of just one person inside of a dense city.

And he's like, you know, so it's kinda crazy, right? We have this like four person, maybe six person, six seater car. That weighs thousands of tons. With a with one driver driving one person one mile. Like That seems inefficient.

And so he was trying to create a a a new vehicle that was like a one person vehicle, one or two person vehicle. That was electric and self driving and optimized for very short trips. And I was like, Oh that's really cool. Anyways. I invest fifty thousand bucks. You fast forward like a year.

And uh you know, he's like grinding away in this garage in San Mateo. Uh, trying to get a car to drive itself. And I would go down to the he was working literally out of a storage unit. So I would go to the storage container like kind of a What's it called? Like uh Like public storage or something like that. Public storage, yeah, literally. And then he'd roll up the garage on like unit three three or whatever.

And Then he'd put me in it, he'd be like, All right, let's see if it works and I'd be drive in a circle around the storage facility, uh storage like Parking lot. And it's like well, that was bizarre to sit there and just like drive me. Yeah, so it was working, but it w very you know, like

That's a closed environment. It's pretty easy to get that to work. But he was working on okay, now let's take it out a mile. Okay, now let's go get a sandwich from the shop. And like that's what he was doing for like a year. So anyways Um

He w at the time the idea the initial idea was like to be kind of like an Uber competitor, right? Like somebody will just push a button, this ride will show up roll up to them with no driver inside. They hop in, they actually drive themselves to the location, then they le they just walk out and the thing will drive to the next passenger by itself. I was like, Oh, that's really cool idea. We were trying to figure it out.

And I felt like we were hitting a wall. And this is where something like your course will help because If your all if your if all your ideas are boxed into your own life experiences And you're like a you know, twenty seven year old engineer who's worked at, you know, tech companies, like your life experiences are pretty narrow.

And only once we got out of that and started like Figuring out these little like You know, like these these these these unique spots, like when you when you read an annual report, you go, huh. So I was reading an annual report. Uh we talked to a We just took a random meeting. We took a random meeting with some transportation lawyer. He mentioned that he does work for this company. And I looked up that company and it's basically like this

I don't know, like thirty billion dollar company that I've never heard of. And what did it do? They partner with like Fifteen cities.

And they go to the city and they say, Hey, um You need buses and scooters and ferries and trains and all that stuff. Yeah, you just commission us. We'll we'll bid for your for the right to run transportation in your city. And they would get and so this wh the whole thirty billion dollar company or whatever was like

Off of like fifteen city contracts. And then I thought about it, I was like, Oh, of course, like San Francisco doesn't run their own buses. Like you know, or whatever. Not every city's gonna wanna be in the transportation business. They just contract it out to some vendor. And I was like, Man, that's an amazing business'cause that vendor now has lock in like The city's not gonna change. So they're just gonna like

They just get to eat up they have a monopoly on city transport. And then that got me thinking about those city bike Share programs. If you've seen those city bikes. And then their annual reports were online and I went and I read about it and City Bike did the same model They went to New York.

And they built like a hundred million dollar revenue business doing city bikes in New York, and they were the only ones who had the license to do it. And then they did it in San Francisco, and then they sold to lift. For I don't know, some hundreds of millions of dollars. And I thought That's a really cool model. And so then we started brainstorming, dude, could you go to a city? that needs this type of transport, like a different type of transport than what they already have with their buses and whatever.

And just say we'll be the vendor for you. That's that's exactly what they did. They went to Las Vegas. Did it work? Uh yeah, is it well, I I haven't talked to'em recently, but yeah, they got a contract basically with Las Vegas. Where the city was like, Yeah, we have this thing called a transportation desert.

It's like a place where our routes don't really go, but a lot of people need to go in this area. And they're complaining to us about it. So, you know Yeah, we'll pay you guys. We'll we'll pre buy. You know, like quarter million dollars of rides from you? Um

And so it's like instead of trying to get half a a quarter million people To download your app like Uber and do whatever you got one city official to say I'll buy two hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of rides. And that'll last us a few months and let's see how that goes. And that's what you and I do to people. So Because we just study and break down stuff, I think

w you you and I go through the same discovery and aha moment. I hope that our audience does. Which is Basically you see it once you know what's possible. Or once you know like what other people is possible, your standard of what's possible kind of changes and you're like, Well, of course I could do that. They did that and they did by doing this, this, and this. I already know exactly how they did it. It's like Um it it it would kinda be like

Me telling you Well just go get big muscles. Like I don't I I can't get big muscles. Like I don't know what that means. Versus like We'll just lift this weight, do it four times a week, and and here I'll remind you every single time and you could do it. It's like when you know like

a specific routine or you know what's possible, it definitely changes your perspective on what you should be doing. And uh Hopefully that's what the podcast does, but that's what the course will be doing. But um I don't know, I wanted to go. So go sign up. Where'd they go? Maven.com. Maven dot com. They'll see your face.

They'll see my face. I it's called the idea ideation boot camp. You have one too. The the power writing course. This is your third time doing it? My third time doing it. Yeah. And you did it because you're like, uh people like I think Goggett said that you have the second highest rated course.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a forget who had number one. It's really good and uh Yeah. Uh second place is the best place. Uh reach.

Is it said that you're not going to be able to still at the top. I don't remember which one he said. It was like either one or two. I think we don't uh I don't really care about highest rated'cause I was like, you know Honestly, people's rating will be more based on themselves, like It's just I I see to use your gym example. Um most people aren't

Like if if you're out of shape it's not because you have the wrong Work out program and trainer, it's because you know, most likely you're not even going to the gym. Then if you are going to the gym, they're not working going consistently. If you're not going consistently, if you're even if you are going consistently, you're not working out with intensity. And then comes

the program for back buys and shoulders that's gonna help you get the m most gains. And so similarly like I had um It's like, yeah, we had a high rated course, but then I looked at it, I was like, Man fifteen or twenty percent of people just never showed up to the single money. They paid and never showed up. Okay.

Yeah, that's That's all. I don't think you could solve that. Yeah, well, you know, and I and I luckily I was wise enough to not have heartache over that'cause I was like That's actually just like uh completely common pattern with all online education. Is people don't finish or they don't start.

For something that they'll even pay a bunch of money for, which is really wild. So it's like of the people that come. What what kind of experience do they have? And then You know, six months, nine months later, are you still getting emails? No, I used your thing. It was you know, I got this outcome out of it. That's like

That's the only real true measure of success. And I don't think of a hundred people go into the course. It's not gonna be a hundred people who have that. Twenty people aren't even gonna show up. You know, sixty percent of pe sixty of them are gonna forget everything within a year or never never implement it.

And really it's the like the fifteen to twenty out of a hundred. That go like use the thing and better their better themselves. Yeah, it sucks. Um Do you want to talk about this Bitcoin?

Bitcoin. What do you want to talk about? Uh I ha okay, so I have a couple ideas and then I have a couple of random topics, but let's do ideas first. Um

So I wanna get I wanna shout out a couple of ideas that I saw other people saying that I thought were kind of interesting. So Uh here's the first one. So you invested in this thing, uh stocks dot com. Right.

It did. And uh explain for people who don't know what Stonks is, explain what it is. It's actually kind of like pretty dope. I I had the opportunity to invest. I know the guy super well. Who started it? Uh He was our biggest competitor when we were doing my startup. Um so I was like watching them. I like kinda saw how they operate. So I knew these these guys are really good.

But I didn't get the idea fully right away, and the valuation was really high because they have a good track record. So I was like, ah, okay, I'll just pass. I'll be a user, not an investor. You invested. So explain what it is. Yeah, so it's like Shark Tank meets Angelist. And so Angelist is a platform where you can Uh if anyone starts a company, they can go on and they can get investors and they make it easy so anyone could invest Like a thousand dollars into your company. And you know what Shark Tank is. And so basically stocks you it's spelled uh like

The reason I was like, Is this gonna work? Because it's spelled like a joke. Yeah, it looks like it's like spelled like a meme and like their logo is like a silly it's like the Wall Street Betts guy. But it's uh so once a w how often what's the cadence now? Is it every day or once a week? No, I don't think it's every day. I think it's once a week or so. So once a week, but then they have like big ones that are once a month. And they do some pre vetting and they find interesting startups. And all types of entrepr uh investors are on the phone or on the call listening. And they could ping in with a question and the whole audience can watch in real time. And so I've been a guest, I've been an investor, or they call it investors.

Where you're like you're able to ask questions and I've seen people write checks for fifteen, a hundred thousand dollars live. So the experience is like a live like a Twitch channel, basically. Like an auction. So a startup goes up, they pitch their thing. The invest some investors can ask questions in the chat, some are asking questions live. And then you just see in the chat, it's like

So and so. Is investing ten thousand dollars. So and so is putting in forty thousand dollars. So and so is putting two thousand dollars in. Have you seen one where people they'll raise like I think somebody raised over ten million dollars in ten minutes, is that right? I think the well the company raised ten million stocks raised money from guys like me, but and then Andreessen Horowitz Just like angel investors and then they let their users invest and they raised like ten or fifteen million dollars in

A few hours. And so so what is co what's cool is you're a founder. Normally your fundraising is like This multi month process. That you're almost dreading getting started with. You're like, Okay, I gotta first get all my ducks in a row and then I gotta start Reaching out and figure making a list, a pipeline to reach out to, and then asking

People to go out to coffees or asking for intro and following up and then pitching and then Follow up meetings. This shrinks that three month process into like Seven minutes on stage. That's what's dope about this for the for the uh founder. For the investor, it's also a time saver, right? Because

And Uh my job is to look at Interesting companies. So these guys, if they're doing the hard work of curating them and putting them on stage and letting me make a snap decision, they're creating a demo day, basically. Where they they pack in a bunch of

good startups in in theory, right? And it th the whole It's either gonna work because they curate great startups, or it's gonna not work because the great startups don't wanna do this. Well how do you think of this. When when I talked to him, I was like, Oh, this is a no brainer. I I only invest ten thousand dollars, but it was it because he I would g I would have done more, but uh this was a no brainer. Early on he was like, you know, it's Twitch for um Twitch for Angel Investing and I've just seen every other live streaming pro I would have too much battle scars, like I've seen so many live stream products fail.

And I was like, Bro, why are you going into this? You know that as well as I do, you know, like that's so hard to do. I didn't really understand what he was saying as the idea and then He I was like so I asked him a couple of questions, he sent me the memo and I saw the evaluation and I was like uh So I think it's a dope idea. Okay, so now here's the the riff on it, right? So that's cool in and of itself. So uh Elaine Zelby, who's been on the pod a couple of times before, and she uh she's uh she's an idea person just like us.

So she had this idea that I thought was c pretty cool. She goes Stonks.com for other things. Can I t I agree. Can I tell you what one of our friends uh Moy Zalid Tweet something and It needs to be for homes.

Stocks for homes. Be like it's because what the the cool thing about stonks is you could see what other what questions other smart people are asking. And with cars, so bring a bring a tr bring a trailer, my favorite car website. It has a comment section and I could see what smart people are asking, like is this a sixty seven Or a a a a nineteen sixty seven or a nineteen sixty eight, because the nineteen sixty sevens offered this thing and the real collector's items are sixty eight.

You know what I I'm just picking that up, but With and with houses it's the same thing, like I I remember s our home, like our realtor was saying, like, is this made out of stucco or this other thing? And I'm like, I don't know what any of that is. And then they're like, Did you guys like spray the installation or is it like a I'm like I I don't know what that means. I I I wish I could see like what questions I knew smart people were asking. And I wish you could do that live. Okay. I wish I could I wish and then you could have an up vote uh an up vote. And I think I would like it to be for houses.

So I think uh Okay, that's interesting. The one that she had said that I thought was pretty cool was hiring. So stocks.com for people. Okay, so how does that work? So Okay, there's general hiring, which is like, you know, our hiring is like this like

Large spectrum from like temp staffing. Or I just need like an hourly employee to show up today. And then like tomorrow they may not come back. to like Craigslist, to Uh, then you get to like LinkedIn and Indeed, which is kinda like mass market. If I'm a

If I'm a you know junior, you know, or I'm I'm a mid level marketing manager, I might get job opportunities on LinkedIn or indeed that might be where I go look. Then you have like Angelist, like pla vertical places where it's like if I want a job in startups, I won't go to Indeed, I'll go to Angelist,'cause that's where the startups hire or the That's a job board for startups. And so then you have this one like really interesting thing. And then you have like headhunters.

Which do executive placements and kind of like uh You know, how do you find a CMO, you hire a head hunter, you pay them a ton of money and then they get like a huge cut. So somewhere in there. I think there's an opportunity to Let people hire like top talent.

Live like this. So if you were able to Essentially it it's like a reverse job interview. So instead of me going and interviewing with you, you know what this kinda reminds me of, and it's kinda I'll say it though. This kinda sounds like a like a Like a slave on it. Yeah, I knew you were gonna say I knew you were gonna go there. And actually it makes me it makes me a little this makes me very uncomfortable, actually. Like I

That I mean like A talent auction, is that what we're gonna call it now? Yes, at will, bro. It's like you get paid your at will have to do it. It's right, like that's like saying employment to slavery, right? It's not. Um it's a so but there was a a website, I don't know if you saw it call come out that called it was called Developer Auction. It was controversial for this exact reason. So this came out Maybe six years ago or so. It ended up Um

It got really hot. So what they were doing was they're saying Look. How developers. It was like part of Y C or they were They piggybacked on Y C in some way. I don't remember if they were a Y C company or what they did was they were like

We're only gonna take developers. Or we're only gonna let Y C companies hire from this place. So it's like if you're a dev who wants to work for a Y C company. Come on to developer auction, you get the highest dollar bid'cause these guys have money and they want great devs. Wh which which was just a little bit of icing on the douche cake. Like you're doing you're you're doing uh douche Yeah, you're doing an auction now, you're doing it only for Y C. That's the lay that's the cherry on top of the douchebag cake. The d douche and de leche cake, yeah. So so basically they

They kinda did that. And so w what was happening was developers were getting way more money on this and they also didn't have to do like a multi week job interviewing process, it was like They say, Hey, yeah, I was at Reddit early ish. First forty employees. I worked on the fraud fraud system and this and this.

I'm interested in uh you know companies doing machine learning. And then Boom, job offer. And job offer at a twenty percent premium. A developer auction, all they had to do was just say

They just had to be like Harvard. They just had to be selective. It's like no, not any company can just apply here. We're gonna pick and then No, not any developer can apply here. We're gonna pick. Now, ultimately, I don't think the model worked because they're not like the biggest thing ever now. I think they ended up like kind of pivoting or softening it. Well, all talent marketplaces are really hard businesses, I think. To scale. Yeah. Uh yeah, to scale. I think that you could have a lot of you can have like you can be a rec a recruiter and make millions of dollars a year. You can be just a job board and make millions of dollars a year, but if you want to be hired dot com

Then Mm I I don't know if it can it's really hard to work. So I think the trick here is to do it with something that's visual. So okay, stonks is cool because it's a live video stream. So one question is What in what

What category? Does having y a visual screen that's showing you something work way better than a resume that was attached to an email or a job board. And so I think like potentially designers or even something like more niche than that, like Ready designers, video editors.

Graphics, something like that. Um, like this could be maybe how like the video game industry hires or something like that. I don't know. There's There's something there. to doing this. I don't know I I didn't I didn't see which exact example she she had the example of hiring And I didn't even read on. I was like, Yeah, great idea. Let me just like riff off that.

That's pretty interesting. So I thought that was cool. And then I think there's probably some other areas where you could do that. And I think the trick is Normally the reason live stream products fail is because The viewers you're compete like you don't wanna compete for viewers with people who are just doing this for leisure. Um,'cause they have a ton of options. They can just open TikTok, they can, you know, go for a walk, they can do anything. You need people, you need the viewers of the the buy side.

For this to be their job. Um, so that's why actually real estate or real estate investors, instead of maybe even maybe it's not just for buying my home that I'm gonna go live in, but maybe it's like multifamily properties get auctioned off in this way. And it's multifamily investors that are showing up to to buy pieces of that action or something like that. I think I think that'd be cool. I I think I told you those a hypothesis I had in two thousand and twelve, I I remember when I was in the apartment business, we we had like a uh an apartment finder thing. And

Uh I was like I'm pretty sure that people It's not that far away that people are gonna start renting homes and buying homes without ever seeing them in person. Like like like uh this was before Matterport was around. And I think we're there. Like I

I would buy a house. Would you buy a house without seeing it? No. I wouldn't maybe not mind rent I for sure would rent a place without seeing it. Yeah. But I think I I there's a world I think where we're gonna buy them soon without ever seeing a house. Right.

The other one that's kind of w all out of left field here is did you ever watch the Zoom Bachelor that some of our friends did? Sheel was the Zoom Bachelor. Did you ever watch it? Uh no, I don't watch that shit though. Well I just don't watch reality TV. It was like just people do it wasn't real TV even, but it was basically like Pierce Shield, he's a he's an investor, he's single He's a good guy. We think he's great.

And so as a as a joke, as a kind of a lark They created a A live stream. And they curated a bunch of single women and they were like, All right Uh

And they basically in the course of an hour it was like here's six women They introduce themselves, he cuts two. Like all right, of the four women, now he's gonna ask you a question like All right, what's your ideal Friday night date? What would we do? And then sh one girl's like, Oh I think we would whatever, like just people want to watch a movie, whatever. There was like I don't know, like five hundred people live watching it, which is a pretty big like live stream channel. Pretty good.

Um and this was like again, it was all kind of done as a joke. It was just friends. I I don't think Any of them really wanted to date each other, but it was just like to do the show. Well maybe there's something like that, right? The Bachelor's one of the highest rated shows ever. And then you see stuff like it. Uh

There's like a matchmaker show on Netflix. That's like Indian matchmaker or something like that. As people pay thousands of dollars to like uh to matchmakers to find like kind of like eligible candidates. Like that's a that's a that is a niche thing that exists in every city. You and I have a fr you have and I you and I have a single friend and I for a gift, I nearly bought him a four thousand dollar matchmaker. And I didn't end up going through with it because it's like I don't know if they're gonna like follow through with this and that's too much money to spend if they don't do it. And I don't know if they're gonna find it insulting. But I was like I interviewed this lady three different times. I'm like trying to figure out if this would be the right f fit for our friend.

Um I think that I think they're interesting. I think more people should use them. I if there was a private version of this that was, you know, you it was more expensive. Um Well so now we're talking about auctioning off sex. Yes. Well we're talking about auctioning off the things people want, right? So yeah, it just so happens to be talent, sex, things like that. Um

That's coming, by the way. Uh Ev Williams has said this quote. Ev Williams started uh Twitter and blogger before that and medium now. He uh he goes, Here's the recipe for a billion dollar internet company. Have you heard this quote before? Yeah, s here's the here's the recipe for a billion dollar internet company. Take a human desire.

Preferably one that's been around for hundreds of years. Use technology to remove steps. And um that was his whole thing. He's like, you know so he's like That's how I built blogger, Twitter, everything else. I Twitter took out a bunch of steps. For a human desire that people had.

And um And I I think that's just like, you know, sounds stupidly simple, but is actually true. Let me tell you about something that I saw. I did not research this at all for this Talk, but I wanted to just bring it up. because you we were talking something about something similar. Um I'm trying to find I'm trying to figure out how I'm gonna manage so I bought this farm.

I need to like get a manager to help run it. And there's these property management companies, but they don't really have like the touch It's a little sterile. And like to make this work the way I want it to work. I want someone that's a little bit more close to it. Um

So in your brain, in your head What when I think of an outsourced person Like what's like the image that you're that I that you get. Can you just explain that to me? No, no, just just tell me like what uh outsource VR.

Uh a a virtual assistant. Yeah, like I don't know, somebody in the Philippines or India who's, you know Sitting at a desk. Uh, you know. Type it away for for Like in a call center style. Okay. Now when I say um military spouse. Military spouse, what comes to your mind?

Um Patriot. Patriot, a woman in America. Uh white blonde. uh speaks great English sitting you know in the comfort of her uh you know her home office Uh talking to you know customers.

What attributes are there? Uh Any loyal, organized, um Trustworthy, things like that. Exactly. So there's this company called Squared Away. So Google squared away here before, by the way

Yes, we have. Uh, but I didn't get it. We talked about one episode We did one w we did one episode where we talked about um Like A cool way to come up with the w a type of company that you want is uh who would you want to hire. Like what demographic you want to hire. So who do you want to serve, right? That's another one, right? Yeah. Ultimately gonna be serving a customer and so it Helps a lot if you care about them and

And understand them and want want more of them to be around you every day. So mill uh Go uh what's it called? Go squared away. I don't know why why it's called go squared away. Or maybe it's just called the business is squared away. The domain. They just couldn't get square away.com probably.

And it's the most expense the cheapest tier is two hundred dollars for the five hours. Great copy on this website. Look at this. So what It's great. Let's go to this. So what's another what's another outsourcing company? Can we just find like Upwork? Like uh go to um Let me just google like Outsourcing Or let's say virtual

Assistant. Or uh yeah, virtual assistant. If they show up on the top of Google, they might have good copywriting, but while you're looking for that, so the copyright On this page, so you go to uh Squared Away, it says The best company perk is personal assistance for your entire team.

Art. Our team of military spouses gives you your time back. And it's a picture of a lady holding up her sign. waiting for her husband to get off the plane from like coming home from my prepare this screen. So Ben, open up flexjobs dot com. This is this is just a perfect example. Uh uh Flickst Job's not terrible, right? Like it's it showed up at the top of Google. It's not a t I I've never used a service. I'm not saying that. I'm saying just the website. It's not horrible.

Um But it's not special and it doesn't make you feel anything. Right, so I can't read. So just compare the feelings. Okay. So it and if you're on you should be watching on YouTube to be able to see this. So If I go to Flex Jobs, I see It's kind of like blue and orange tacky sight.

With stock photos of literally Men and women Incorporate out of the running away. Like we're doing a ballet leap. Away from you.

And then it says. The number one job site to find vetted remote work from home and flexible job opportunities since two thousand and seven. Okay. Great. And then it and then it's like Good Morning America, C and N, Wall Street Journal, whatever. Okay, so this is It's okay. And the headline is find a better way to work.

Generic, vague, doesn't make me feel anything. Um And you know, just the this is this doesn't do it. Now go back to go squared away. Go squared away. What do they say? The best company perk.

personal assistance for your entire team. So already They're selling the benefit, right? You who's coming here is probably looking to hire a personal assistant. Um And they Um and they focus on they they frame it as

This is the best perk you can offer your employees. Instead of just Find a personal assistant. Which assumes you already know you want a personal assistant. They sell you the benefit of having a personal assistant that you're providing the best perk for your team.

Then they have this like Black and white photo of like a military mom holding a child's hand. With a sign You know Uh you know, like I'm thinking of thinking of you, Daddy.

As you know, the as he leaves for the plane, she's like at a airport hangar. Right, like an emotional scene. And she seems like somebody who you would want to support. You would love to like Help this woman out. And that she seems like somebody who you would want, not like

You know this The stock photo photo of a corporate person running away from you. Yeah. How crazy is that? This is beautiful branding because I don't know how many people are in the military, but like a military spouse is not like

I mean uh that's a the it's not that ex uh uh It's not that rare. So like I I may hire these people for doing all types of jobs. And they are a military spouse. But as soon as they brand it as

I but I'm like, Oh well you definitely are are a good person. Exactly. Like even though I've I they it doesn't necessarily mean they're a great person, but for some reason I think that Even though you're a good person for bringing this company up. Yeah. Right. Bonus points. Yeah. Yeah, you're you're uh you know, you you get free free virtue for for having brought this company up as something cool. Is this beautiful branding or what? Like why why did we even why did we talk about this before? Uh we talked about it before, same thing I was we were talking about uh the stay at home mom workforce and like how do you tap into that, like labor markets that are under Underutilized. So excess talent that doesn't

that's that's looking for a job. And we talked about, you know, what could you do with stay at home moms? And then we brought this up. And they actually shared the clip because they were like, hey, this was cool. We got like featured on this thing. And so that's how I remember that we've talked about it before, but uh I don't how did we get here? What were you talking about? So you were talking about the Oh well I don't I don't remember. We are talk we I think we were talking about like talent like talent marketplaces and I was and I just I I I didn't even res I'm I signed up for g uh what it what's it called? Get square away squared away. I entered the I'm waiting for them to call me back.

But I signed up because I but when I went to it I was like Oh my God, I'm in love. I want I wanna hire this woman in the picture. I need I need her to hire if I use the service It like washes away the fact that I like don't do compost. I forgot to recycle that bottle. And I feel like the the woman's just gonna have my back so hard. Like she's just gonna like just And I thought they basically.

No, but she's my partner. That's like how I feel. And I just thought they don't they this website I've never seen I've never felt this way about a job. Whoops. You were talking about managing a ranch. So you were saying you were you might use this instead or just kind of It reminded you that nobody's doing that in the property management space of making you feel the way that this makes you feel about assistance. Is that right?

I don't even remember the angle that I had, but yes, I think I'm gonna use this to manage my ranch. But I thought I thought it'd be a good idea. Alright, so let's let's go to another one. So Can I tell you uh All right, I'll do a quick one. I just want to get your take on this. So I follow this guy, uh, and I don't know if this is his name, because it sounds like a fake name.

I've been talking to him. I just sort of realized I don't know if this is his real name. Uh but his his Twitter handle is Pure Rich. And um And I don't know if he's His name is Pridge. His name is Al Cah. Okay, his name is P

His name is Peter Richelson. Pier Richelson. So that's his thing. Uh So anyways, he he's uh he's another guy who tried a talent marketplace and now has pivoted to something sweet. So Uh he had initially he had a Y C company.

And it like didn't work out. And then he like as a like they just needed money. And they were like Yeah, we just shut down our company. Um, you can you can hire us. We're a YC Duo.

You can just hire us. We'll do a project for you for like as a contractor for like two weeks. Cost money, but like you're getting a Y C founder duo. Where can you hire that? Oh my God. And I was like, dude, this is fucking amazing. I was like, I would love to hire We C founder duos and I was like If you think about it, like

Some number, maybe twenty, thirty, forty percent of Y C companies are gonna shut down. And like, you know, those people might just go get jobs, but actually it might be Cool for them to like continue to brand themselves as a Y C company, as a Y C founders.

And be able to be hire be able for hire. So they did that for a little bit. And I thought that was cool. That's how I got in touch with him. Now he's doing something called cal dot com. Have you seen this? It's a competitor to Calum B.

Cal dot domain just see. All right. All right. So scheduling infrastructure for absolutely everyone. So basically what they are is we've talked about Calendly Calendly before. Calendly basically gives you a little A link. That's a calendar where somebody can book you. So that's great for like a salesperson.

Who's like, uh hey, yeah, would love to chat about, you know, how we might be able to help you out. Here's a link to my calendar. Grab a time that works for you. And it like lets you go, pick a time. It email both of you a calendar invite like takes care of the whole like booking process. So Calendly had become like a I think a billion dollar plus company

Uh Uh recently like two billion dollar company. And they're aren't they like weren't they bootstrapped for like a really long time or something crazy? They had like Yeah, the guy was an African immigrant who Uh Bootstrapped it to like twenty million in revenue, raised a round at like a billion, and then recently raised another round at like two or three or four. So that business is working. So Cal.com, I think is a great competitor. So I'm gonna invest in this because

I believe in this model that they're doing, which is commercial open source software. So Cal Calendly is not open source. Cal.com is is open source. What does that mean? That means you can Hey, you can read the source code. B, you could basically like self host it.

So s a lot of companies don't want their kind of like data and for information in the hands of another company. They like to be able to self host the software that they're using. And also be able to fork it or remix it in some way that like is customizable to them. And so

These guys are growing fast. I switched over from Cal and Lead, now I use Cal. Is it awesome? Yeah, it's a sick product. And you could you embed these on your website. So it's like If you have a website, you're like, I don't know. Uh

You give people you're a you're a lawyer. You need people Like instead of saying here's a contact us form and then one of our humans will reach out to you And then we'll try to schedule a time. And by that time you already forgot How interested you were. So what this does is do just embed your your booking calendar right here.

And it reads your existing calendar, so it won't let anybody book a time that's already taken. And you could set up rules like Don't do meeting like I need a minimum ten minute gap in between meetings or whatever, right? You set some rules. You just embed that right here. So in the heat of the moment when somebody's interested You can grab that lead right away to get them booked for a meeting.

And so Do but how do you use it? You're not a company. You're so I'll use it either for if I'm gonna invest in a comp if I'm if I'm doing talking to a founder and it's like hey, yeah, we'd love to chat sometime next week. All right, you know, here's my calendar. Feel free to grab any time that works for you. Um, and some people find that like offensive, whatever. I I don't know, people are too sensitive about shit. Like Yeah.

Just trying to be it's we're trying to h try to make it flexible for the other person to pick whatever time works for them without requiring four email back and forth or pawning you off. To my assistant. Who's gonna like take it from here? Um and you'll have to email them four times to find a time that works. And so

Uh so I use it for that. I'll also use it for like random meetings. So I'll have a calendarly that's just You know, like I'll I'll have like, you know, just backslash Sean and I'll put like a one hour of random meetings once per month. That anybody on the internet can go book. And so those are ways that

that I just add a little like randomness and serendipity into my life, that's like in a controlled fashion of when it when it can happen. Okay, this is Yeah. You they did a really funny flex. So if you go to the website, you see a thing that says claim your username.

And When you f refresh consistently. You see different names in the auto filled example. And it's all people who are well known, and I bet

are investors of the company. And you see that and you're like oh James Bashare is a Naval, those person. Yeah, those guys are they are investors. Yeah. Isn't that funny how they did that? Yeah, that's cool. I could

There's a if you if you look, by the way, this is a common model. There's a closed source winner. And there's an open source winner. for a bunch of different categories and software. So this is just like a a very simple way to find good deals is If you if you missed out or you you see a great company that's like c completely closed source.

Just Google for the commercial open source company and then if they have a great team behind them. There's usually like a separate segment of the market that's quite large that they can go attack just by going From this like open source self hosted model. These guys have exploded. They went from like nothing to a lot of traffic. They're growing fast. Yeah, you should invest too I'll I can introduce you. Yeah, do it. I would love I love this stuff.

Can we talk about the Bitcoin thing, please? Yeah. By the way, I didn't even say his idea. That whole thing wasn't even a thing. Oh What's the idea? He goes Um I wish somebody built this called the Anywhere School. I think this is just kind of interesting. So he goes

The Anywhere School is for people who want to travel the world, but they don't want their kids to education to suffer. So here's how it goes. The and he put out just like a one page PDF memo of just like here's what it would be. If anyone's building this, like Yeah, take this and run with it and let me know. And so what it was is like

You join a classroom, but it's a traveling classroom around the world. So the classroom's gonna be like we're gonna spend three months this year in Paris. You know, three months in Bali and three months in wherever, you know, like Thailand and three months in in South Africa. And the family and the kids go with it. So the kids get a consistent structure. The teacher stays the same, their friends stay the same. But they get to experience a l a year of of world travel.

And um and so it's like for prepar for people who wanna have travel but don't want to wait. Or don't want to trade off their kids' stability and education. And I actually think that's a kind of a cool idea. And I I don't think this is like a huge, huge business. Maybe it's bigger than I think, but I just think that's awesome and that should be pretty neat.

So the anywhere. And and and I also think that's a uh while I was googling Anywhere School and uh there there's nothing interesting. I think that's a great name. Great. Okay, let's let's do the big thing. Wait, really quick. Before we get to that.

What were you gonna say about Strauss Belnik? You're gonna love this. So y you know I know about this. I know. So do you explain who he is. So there's this guy named Strauss. How do you pronounce his nest? I think it's right. Zawnek

Uh I'm I'm just doing this off memory, so correct me. I think he's the CEO of uh uh Take Two Interactive, which is basically the owner or creator of Uh And like In like eight other games that are of that.

caliber. So like um maybe like a five or ten billion dollar a year company that owns like the biggest video games in the world. And He's probably in his mid to late fifties.

And he looks like a G. I. Joe. So he's this like jacked dude. who gets up at like five AM in New York and works out really hard and a lot of people are invited to go work out with them. Um but it's all like high caliber

That's exactly right. So he created a kind of like I call it the Breakfast Club, but it's basically like a morning A morning workout club. And Ben, you can Google this, that there's a uh a YouTube video that's called Strauss Delneck's Invitation Only Fitness Club. It's a two minute video, so it's just like really easy to watch. And you can see basically

Um When you go to it, it's like He goes. He goes, I made a decision. that I was gonna treat fitness as a like important part of my schedule. So like okay, I'm a CEO. If I had a board meeting, I will I'm not gonna skip it or move it because I'm feeling tired.

Right. So he's like, I'm gonna treat fitness The same way that I would treat uh Like Like a like a meeting or family time or whatever. Like I'm gonna put it like first order importance. And then

He's like, but you know, how do I like juice this up? And I'm a big fan of this. This is a a big life hack. Which is Multiply activities. So You know, like I've done this before too, which is

You wanna uh hang out with cool people or have friends? But you don't you don't you know you you only have maybe like one hour of recreation a day. So are you gonna choose fitness or friends? Well even better. Let me just Find friends who like fitness and let's work out together.

Right. You do this all the time. I do this too. And so what he did was he was like, All right. We're gonna wake up at five or six in the morning, um, in New York. They go somewhere and do a different fitness related activity. It doesn't matter how fit you are, although the pictures that they share, like everybody got like a six pack.

Everyone's jacked. And then it's called like the program and it's basically like Kinda networking. Kind of friends hanging out. And kind of fitness all at once. Uh, but instead of being kind of each of them, actually that's the wrong way to say it. It's

It's like the hundred percent of each of those because when you work out with somebody It's like the New York banker style of doing it and so they get up, they do something different every day. And um And he like would pay for it. So he's like, All right, if we're doing this activity, like Money is not gonna be the object that stops somebody.

From doing this? So I'll I'll just p cover it for our whole group. And we'll just go do whatever the heck activity we want to do. And so the guy's in great shape. He's like, Oh, I love it'cause I get to hang out with like a bunch of like

Really interesting, motivated, like kind of twenty, thirty year olds that are like pushing me to A be more fit and like don't be the old man. But also like These are really talented, ambitious people who are who see the world differently than me, right? And so I thought this is just a fantastic

Idea. And um Bev's tell me a friend of a friend of a friend of his was was doing it. And uh I was invited when I was in New York, but for some reason the scheduling didn't work out. I couldn't go.

Yeah, they get up early. Well that's the beauty of it, right? So how do you prevent this from being just the moochers? Show up. Who just want you know just the the networking and all that. You make it at six AM? Uh and you make the fitness thing kinda hard. That's the fil filter that will self select for the type of person you want to be around.

Or this kind of thing. I just hate working out at six AM. I hate working out. I thought you'd be all about it because like, you know, the harder the better for you. I yeah, like I would go, but like the problem with My my issue with working out at six AM means I've gotta wake up at like five twenty, which means I've gotta go go to bed at like nine. And if I have to go to bed at nine, I'm in bed at nine and I'm so anxious, thing saying to myself, If I don't go to sleep now, like

I'm not gonna be able to wake up and I get so anxious about waking up early that it makes it not fun. Totally, totally you know what I mean? I I I I I don't work out early. I work out as a midday break. Every day. So I I work out three PM every day. And uh

And actually I I pretty much stop working at that point. Then I come back and I start working again at like eleven PM or midnight. And so I don't have to wake up early. And I have a bunch of energy when I do that. But the the the the takeaway for this for me, the voice in my head when I heard this, I go Oh yeah, I forgot. Sean.

Build your cult. And um I think that's just like the takeaway is you gotta build your cult. It's like Do the things you want to do. Uh open them up so that others can do them with you.

Do them in a way that's like slightly hard and everybody's making a bit of a everyone's stretching themselves in some way. Because that's the sacrifice and the buy-in, the blood oath that you want in your cult. And like Just fucking build your cult. Be around the type of person you want to be around. Dude, this is this is why it explains. You're building your cult. That's a great example.

I was doing it. General Assembly guy. What did he do? Uh Daybreaker? Yeah, Daybreaker. It was like a five AM party with no alcohol. Build your cult, right? Like what do I want? I wanna start my day. Yeah, I wanna start my day with a bunch of energy, dance, blah, blah, but I don't want alcohol and music. I don't like nightclubs. So I'm gonna bring I'm gonna build my own cult. That's awesome. Um did you have anything else you wanted to do or should we wrap it?

Uh

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