SPEAKER_01
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SPEAKER_02
I'm like, so what are you gonna do? And he's like, I wanna buy a big space. And basically it's like, he's creating his heaven on earth, which I've come to realize is like, that's actually what I respect the most.
SPEAKER_01
Which takes two weeks. I don't even like that description. I say they're taking the world and they're just bending it over their leg to help the shape that they want it to be.
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road.
Let's travel never looking back.
SPEAKER_01
All right, we're live. Bro, what's up? Listen to this thing. I'm gonna tell you something.
I have been being really healthy this summer and didn't eat a lot of sugar. Didn't have no sugar other than fruits and vegetables and just no sugar added. Today was my planned cheat day after three months of doing this and I ate some ice cream.
I feel miserable.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the cheat day is always underwhelming. It's always like I'm looking forward to it. I'm planning for it.
Then I start doing it. I don't even feel good while I'm eating it.
SPEAKER_01
It's like when you drink and then the next day you're hungover and you're like, why did I do that? But then you immediately do it again a few days later. I kind of feel like that except instead of like three days, it's like, it's 10 minutes. So I eat something and 10 minutes later, I'm feeling horrible.
I'm like, oh, fuck it. There's still some left though. I should probably do it.
SPEAKER_02
You have such an extreme personality. You always go to these extremes. You also, I feel like this is also why people hate, like fit people is because they like have these types of problems and normal people are just like, what are you talking about? Like what is the big deal? Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you waking up in the middle and I thinking about ice cream? It's like, you know, the way that some people get annoyed about like crossfitters and like people who love to talk about intermittent fasting.
I think there's people who feel that way about us with business and money, which is just like, dude, not everything's a business. It's okay. And I would say that if we succeed, we need to succeed in creating people that are as annoying as crossfitters as our fans.
I think that's my new goal.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you need freaks. And here you've got, you're at a huge disadvantage. You know why, right? It's because you are what I like to call emotionally stable.
You have too much good emotional health in order to, you know, be extreme. Like some people, I'm reading this great book about leaders and how the guy, the author looks at a lot of like interesting leaders who we like. Like, so for example, Abelink is one of the most written about, I think the most written about American figure ever.
Winston Churchill, a bunch of people like that. And he basically, his whole theory is that during okay times, a mentally stable leader is, could be adequate, but during bad times, mentally unstable leaders typically are the best at leading because they understand like the ups and downs. They are kind of like crazy enough, kind of like when an entrepreneur like invent something or start something versus the type of person who just runs it and runs it like even keel.
And they're like, well, you kind of need some extremes at extreme times. And it like analyzes history on emotionally unstable people and looks at like, oh, they're actually the best during bad times.
SPEAKER_02
Well, I think people underestimate this cause in theory, it sounds like you want somebody who is stable. In theory, you want, let's say you joined a startup or a small company, you want it to be like, oh, how do we make decisions? You know, we, we talk about it as a group, we get a bunch of different perspectives. And then we sort of all chime in with what we think and we go with, you know, maybe the majority.
It's like a democracy. And actually that shit doesn't work in startups. It is not the norm and that would be the outlier if it was to work.
The norm is what they call the benevolent dictator. So it's basically, we agree for better or for worse, that person's the captain. They're the captain and we're going on their ship and either we're going down or we're going to the promised land and that's how the best startups work is they pick a captain and they just go ride or die with that person.
And they say, look, for better or for worse, we need to make decisions fast. So one person's going to always be faster than a committee. We need to be extremely decisive.
So we can't be torn constantly by warring, you know, one group wants a, the other group wants B, we can't have that. Three, we need it to be a little bit extreme because look, we're trying to do an extreme thing here. So maybe we need an extreme leader.
And so I think in companies, you actually want a dictatorship and people don't like that. They're uncomfortable with that because that's not what you want in your country maybe, or that's not what you want in your, you know, your local city, but it is what you want in a company and it is what you want on any creative project. It's kind of my view.
You want kind of a crazy genius who's going to be the creative force driving the thing and everybody else get on board or get off. And that's, that's how you ran the hustle. That's how I run my companies.
It is definitely the way when it comes to, to creating new stuff from scratch.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And then it actually makes sense. And let me explain how I was and you tell me if you're the same way, but if you look at like, with a CEO, it like, it doesn't really matter if there's a 30% not approval rating.
It's just like, does it work? You know, for a publicly traded company, it's like, it didn't matter, unfortunately, or fortunately, the way you look at it, it doesn't matter if you're an asshole, did the numbers go up and did you achieve what you said you're going to achieve? And so it doesn't matter if you're employees. I mean, it matters if it becomes a retention problem, but if it just, if you have a 10% approval rating, but your numbers are great, it's great. If you have a 10% approval rating and you're the president of America, well, you're jobless, you know what I mean? Like you're not going to win the next election.
So it's just like all about appeasing to 1%. And because of that, we get used to this idea of like democracy and like, you know, I don't want to be led. This is like, you know, don't lead me, just like, get me involved.
And so I remember when I started my company, I was like, yeah, that's how I'm going to run it. Like, look, it's, this is like a meritocracy. We are all here working together and it is that, but it is definitely more like, hey, I'm the boss.
I will take input in from everyone. I'm making the decision and this is the way that we're going to go and it's my job to make sure that you feel inspired to be here and all this other stuff. And I remember feeling really self-conscious about that.
And then there'd be times where I wasn't the leader, like for example, when I joined HubSpot, or maybe when you and I work on this podcast, it's like, well, I'm not exactly the boss. And I actually felt a lot of security and comfort when I said, hey, who's the boss of this project? And you just say, is this person the boss? Great, hey boss, what, you know, make your decision please. And I felt actually good about like being a follower.
And then I realized that maybe I think my employees, when I'm the boss, like you have to have a boss, I think. And when you are the boss, it's kind of cool, but also very stressful. But when you're not the boss, it's like, yeah, I'm okay taking this role.
And I recognize we need a leader, just tell me what to do.
SPEAKER_02
Right, yeah. What do they call it? One neck to choke. It's like, there needs to be one neck to choke when it comes to any situation or any problem.
Like if it's like, if I don't know who's in charge, if I don't know who actually makes the call, then you lose one really powerful thing, which is accountability. And so I think that's really important. I think that you're absolutely right.
I don't mind whether I'm the person or I'm not the person in charge. I just like that there is a person in charge. I want a benevolent dictatorship because that's what I've had personally seen work best.
I remember when I was at Twitch and we did the first executive offsite. So it's like, I don't know, the sort of like 15 exec leaders in the company go to whatever, some fancy place. They have a spread of, you know, like whatever tea and crumpets.
And it's like we're in here.
SPEAKER_01
David Buster's in Daily City, yeah.
SPEAKER_02
Fridays, you go to Fridays, very happy hour.
SPEAKER_01
Potato skins at the nuclear Margarita.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Yeah, you need a loaded potato and you start to decide the future of the company.
SPEAKER_01
You got to feel like your customers, you know, you got to go to the Applebee's and you got to get the nachos.
SPEAKER_02
So the CEO and the CEO, they get up there and they say, hey, look, we read the results from the last, the last offsite we did last quarter. And it seemed like the big thing you guys wanted was you felt like the decision making was too top down. And you didn't have a say and you feel, it felt like your ideas either weren't heard or, you know, the groups, you know, it was, it was all just sort of mandated from above and you just had to execute.
You didn't feel empowered. So this time we're doing a different. And they like spent the whole day and it was like, what are your ideas, children? And then everybody writes down their ideas and sticking to it.
Awesome. Let's do a color voting system. Everybody vote on your top three ideas.
SPEAKER_01
And you're like, and it's like, you know, so you want to do a commercial with the Rolling Stones, Sean? You know that that that cost a million dollars. Well, okay, we'll take that into account.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, who here, who here keeps writing billboards are back? Back from where? What is this idea about? Right. So it's like, you basically, and then you go through this whole day process where everybody's talking about it. And you could tell that these extra, in a way, they're interested, but they're also like biting their tongue a bit because they're like, look, all right, we said we're not going to just like slam in with our opinion and just overrule everything and be like, guys, it's fucking obvious.
We're doing one, two, and three. What are we talking about here? And so they didn't do that. They let everybody do their things.
Great, come up and we leave the offsite. Fast forward to the next quarter of the quarter after that. So three or six months later, we go for the next offsite.
It's like, oh, we're in the feedback. We feel like we just don't know how decisions are being made. We kind of wish that the leadership would just step in and give us clear direction on what we're going to do.
Like, hey, we're ready. We just need some clarity from you guys.
SPEAKER_01
It's called the long con, man.
SPEAKER_02
This is the long con. And so they basically were like, here, we'll let you try this. And I was just like, am I the only one in the room that just remembers what the last feedback was, which is the exact opposite, which is like, it's too top down.
And now it's like, are the leaders going to be leaders or not? Like, we need clarity. Your job is to give us these decisions. Like, we feel like you're just sitting back and then now it's mayhem.
And it's like, and so that was like the affirmation of something I always believed. The second part.
SPEAKER_01
There's a skit from the Chappelle show where he wants to get Oprah pregnant. So he, you know, he wants to have Oprah's baby and he gets her pregnant and goes, gotcha.
SPEAKER_00
Don't do this, it's yours.
SPEAKER_01
Got you, bitch. What? It's really a new shit. And like, that's how I feel, and it is just like, saying to himself after like three months, he's like, gotcha.
SPEAKER_02
The second thing is war time and peace time. I think this also matters a lot. So you want this sort of like dictatorship when it is war time.
And for start up there for a company, there's usually two war times. There's the beginning. When you're nobody, you have no customers, no product, no direction, you have no market share, no nothing.
And then if you start to succeed, you will hopefully enter some version of peace time where it's like the thing is working. We don't need to every day wake up and worry about dying or killing our competitors or like all the stuff. Like maybe you're working on, you know, maintenance, fixing bugs, maybe you're working on talking to customers and making sure you're support, you know, the things that you kind of push by the wayside.
Now there's more time to go do those things properly. You work on security, we work on server robustness,
SPEAKER_01
whatever it is. The same thing, but more and better a little bit every time.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you don't need to go and conquer new lands. You're basically taking your existing land and saying, oh, you know, we need to fix up some things around here that we ignored during the war time rush. But then you enter war time again inevitably.
And that's when, you know, the competitive landscape changes, you know, a new platform gets released, competitors emerge, whatever. You know, the economy changes. And being able to shift between those two gears is pretty tough.
I think very few leaders can be the best war time CEO and the best peace time CEO. Usually you're one or the other, you're an amazing peace time or amazing war time. And then you sort of stay too long when the season shifts.
And so I think that's the other thing to recognize because people will always say, oh, this person's good or bad. And it's like, well, actually maybe they're just amazing at one season and the season has changed. And now a different type of person would actually be best for what's going on now.
And so that's the other thing about like, kind of this dictatorship stuff that you got to know is like, what season are we in? If we're in war time, I want a war time CEO. If we're in peace time, I need a peace time CEO and I need to know when to shift.
SPEAKER_01
I always hated saying this because there were so many people who died and it was so bad for so many people. But I remember thinking like, dude, COVID was awesome. Like I loved, I loved being in the trenches, you know? Like it was actually quite exciting.
It's exciting now because I know how the story ends and things end well. At the time I was quite scared, but looking back, I was like, oh, I feel alive. Like this is what it's about.
SPEAKER_02
And honestly, I kind of hate the war metaphor because, you know, first of all, there's people who are actually in war. So yeah, that's true. This is a, it's a borrowed term and they didn't give us permission.
The second thing is, you know, our war is fought literally at a keyboard with clicks firing left and right. And so, you know, there's a part of me that just feels very lame. It's like, yeah, I felt so alive when I was logging into Google Analytics every morning and checking out, you know, what was going on.
It's like, well, do you acknowledge that you're kind of a soft bitch, right? Like, it's like, okay, yeah, as long as I acknowledge that, then it's okay to continue this metaphor, but let's acknowledge it is a metaphor. It is not like real in any way. But I know what you mean, which was that when these big shake-ups happen or there's a downturn where most people's reaction is, oh, shit.
I'm sure, you know, this is bad for me. And they just go with the sheep of like, it's bad for me. Versus a lot of other people recognize, hey, this is happening whether I like it or not.
And given that it's happening, the questions I need to ask are, what opportunities does this open up for me? Where does this, what am I now gonna get strong in that I was otherwise weakened? What have I been neglecting that now it's time to put my focus on, right? Like just ask yourself better questions. Then you start to focus on, cool, I'm gonna take market share in this area. I'm gonna quickly pounce on this thing that I've otherwise been neglecting, that I now matters a lot.
Or, hey, oh, now that everybody's comfortable with remote work and stuff like, what, that opens up this new opportunity for us and just ask better questions and you'll get better answers.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, speaking of, so I've got two topics here that are like kind of related to like Mad Men and Crazy People. The first, have you ever heard of this guy named Brett Adcock? No. Have you heard of this company called Vedere? Do you remember Vedere?
SPEAKER_02
Not really, okay. But no, I don't know, I couldn't tell you what it is.
SPEAKER_01
So this guy named Brett Adcock, I just met him recently and he joined our community and I began to know him. Listen to this guy's background. So he's 36 years old, he's from Central Illinois.
And around 2012, 2015, he started a company called Vedere. And it's nothing particularly sexy. It was just basically like a job site and it was a little bit like hired.
com. And eventually, hired.com tried to bully Vedere.
Hired.com was also a similar business, a job board, but like, you know, more in depth, more technology. And they raised north of $100 million.
Fast forward five or six years later, Vedere ended up buying hired.com when hired.com went bankrupt.
And so Vedere was basically a job website to help people recruit engineers, raised $10 million. Eventually was acquired for 120-ish, about 150, I think. So this guy, Brett, he's 36 now.
So back then when it was acquired, that was in like 2015. So he was in his 20s. He made low digit tens of millions of dollars.
So he didn't tell me, but I would imagine in the $20 million range. But here's what he did tell me, listen to this. He put 100% of his money minus a little bit of cash that he put down for a down payment for a house.
So when I say 100%, he told me, he goes, I didn't own any outside equities. I owned nothing. I had my down payment at my house and 100% of the earnings that I made, which was low tens of millions, put into the business bank account.
And then he started a company called Archer. So basically they make like these car, some people call them flying cars. They're basically like helicopters.
Helicopters, but they kind of look like a car body. And I was like, how did you learn about this? And he said, I learned it all on my own. I read 50 engineering books and built three generations of electric aircraft in 2018 at the University of Florida, where I was doing engineering courses as an undergrad.
I had to build a lab there to have facilities big enough in 2018. And so with owning zero public equities outside of Archer, that Archer stock, he makes zero outside investments. And he said, because he needs extreme focus.
So we put all this money in Archer. Archer eventually does a SPAC. I believe they did a SPAC, but they went public.
So they sold like a billion dollars worth of these flying vehicles to United Airlines or something like that. Takes it public for three or $4 billion. Now the stock is, you know, like most stocks in the growth space, is it doing so hot? But I still think it's a billion dollar company.
And his net worth skyrockets to a billion, I think now it's in the three or 400 range. And makes all this money from Archer. And now, I can't talk about his new startup, but I can't soon, he's told me he took basically $200 million and he's put all of it into his new company.
And still to this day, he goes, the only stock that I own is Archer and my house. That's like the only outside investments. And then now the new business.
And so I go, you know, is your wife and family okay with this? He goes, I've been doing, I've been going all in and been doing this for 20 years. They're used to it by now. And I said, well, what do you think about people who say, you know, you're kind of nuts.
Why don't you square away a little bit of money while you can? And he goes, I don't care what people think. I just want to build the future. And this guy, he's not like one of these Elon Musk types where he's like hard to talk to and you like ask him a question.
He's like, you know, so smart that he can't articulate it. He's like fairly normal, I guess, normal in quotation marks. But he's like easy ish to, he's easy to talk to.
He's a personal personable charismatic guy. And you're like, oh, you're seeing very reasonable. And then he says he does this stuff.
And I'm like, you are insane. You're a madman. And so really interesting guy, totally under the radar from central Illinois.
He's only 36 years old. So I got along with him because I'm from Missouri. Really fascinating dude.
Wow, amazing. All right, everyone. Today's episode is brought to you by Imperfect Action hosted by Steph Taylor.
It's a podcast on HubSpots podcast network. The audio destination for business professionals. Imperfect Action is a bite-sized online marketing podcast for business owners.
So join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions that deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing for strategy for business owners. A few recent episodes include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feels so hard in 2022.
And another one is five ways to make content creation less consuming. So check it out, it's called Imperfect Action. You can look it up wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_02
So that's incredible. So they basically, are they actually planes? Or are they what they call VTOL, like vertical takeoff and landing cars?
SPEAKER_01
The second one. So kind of like a helicopter-ish. It looks like a helicopter.
It looks like four blades, four helicopter blades attached to like, you know, as Honda Civic.
SPEAKER_02
Right. And why do you need this? What does this do differently than a helicopter?
SPEAKER_01
I have no idea.
SPEAKER_02
You're like, question, here's Sam's question. Does he ask you? It's usually name, where you're from. And then instead of like, you know, what do you do? It's like, what other equities do you own? And like, how much of your personal net worth are you reloading into your next company? Wow, okay, let's focus on that.
I don't even want to know why,
SPEAKER_01
why you've created this computer.
SPEAKER_02
I have no idea. What the actual helicopter does.
SPEAKER_01
That's what a website's for. I don't know, to take cool pictures. I don't know, what are planes for? It's just like a plane, I don't know.
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I'm looking at the website. Oh, it's also just cool pictures of the aircraft.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. I don't give a fuck what the widget is. It's a widget.
SPEAKER_02
It's just like this beautiful black woman getting into this helicopter in a dress. And I'm like, what's she doing? What's the purpose here? And then the next photo is she's on like a sand dune in Dubai. And it's like, oh, did she just fly to the desert?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, she had like a point net. Yeah. Amazing.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, she had to go somewhere. I don't know, I'm sure there's something. I'm sure there's something.
Sorry, Brad Adcock. We did not do it justice there on the actual thing. But OK, so hold on.
There's a little question or a plot hole about the story. So it said that he had to, he was an undergrad in 2018, but you said he sold his company like in 2016.
SPEAKER_01
So did he go back to school or he was in school? Like he went back to school to learn how to do this stuff.
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, even more incredible. This guy's interesting, right? He went back and became an undergrad.
SPEAKER_01
Yes. And he told me, he goes, he goes, whenever I do something, I go all in. He goes, for example, I'm going all in on my latest thing.
I went all in on Archer. He goes, when I was starting Vetterie, there was a time where I took a personal loan one month because I didn't have any money, my personal account. And we had to pay rent.
And he goes, this is just what I do. And so he said he wanted to learn about electric cars or whatever this cool shit is. And he went and learned about it at University of Florida.
SPEAKER_02
Wow. Okay, that's incredible. Speaking of people who go all in, you know my buddy Furcon.
And he's been on the podcast. We haven't had him on a while. We should bring him back on.
But basically he was my co-founder at my last startup before we, we, it was called Bebo and we sold it to Twitch. And then since then he left and he was, I was like, what are you going to do?
SPEAKER_01
Well, you got to say what he did before that.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, before, he's got a kind of a crazy story. Before that he was a co-founder of a company called app Lovin that went public and it's like, I don't know, a 15, $20 billion mobile ad network, mobile gaming company.
SPEAKER_01
So like one of the fastest growing companies ever.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, just an incredible story. Like they've only, they only ever raised $4 million. And they took that $4 million of external capital.
So they took, I think $4 million from the founders and $4 million from, from like strategic investors. And they turned that into basically like $20 billion of equity value, which is insane capital efficiency.
SPEAKER_01
So it's like $20 billion of revenue. So it's like a big business.
SPEAKER_02
And they like rotated. They were a mobile ad network and then they went public and when they were going public, it was like, mobile ad network, their comps were not very good because most mobile ad networks were like not doing very well. And even though they were like, well, our business is actually really good, but we're just going to keep getting compared to these low multiple other mobile ad networks.
So they basically executed a pivot mid-flight. And we're like, well, on our ad network, the number one advertisers are games. That's who makes the most money on our network.
So it's, it's pays the most money on our ad network is mobile games. So they're like, why don't we just build mobile games and buy mobile gaming studios? And so they built up this mobile gaming arm that I think does over a billion dollars a year in revenue. They needed two billion on just the Amazon basic of games.
Yeah, exactly. So they started buying up these little partnering buying up studios and building their own studio in house. And then they would just use their existing reach and their ad network to like grow their own games and insane.
And then they got valued at much higher because they had like a different story than just wear a mobile ad network. And that's it. So anyways, Furcon's been doing crazy shit, but he's been going all in since he was very, very young.
So when he was 15, he worked at a dot com during the like dot com boom. Like his dad was like, Hey, I met this guy. They raised like an advert.
com is like, this guy raised 50 million dollars on a PowerPoint. He needs somebody to build his website. He doesn't know how you know how to build websites.
Like, why don't you go work over there? So at 15, he's working at a dot com. Then he starts his own ecom site. That's like selling cool like mods for your computer.
You know, people like trick out their cars with like rims and stuff. He was doing that for like your gaming computer or stuff like that. You can have like a see-through case with like blue liquid going through it or stuff like that.
And he goes to San Jose state. So not like a fancy school freshman year. He's like, and seeing an immigrant.
SPEAKER_02
Well, yeah, his family's they're Pakistani, but they, they've lived, he grew up in the Bay Area. So he got around. That's part of the magic is like his dad worked, I think at IBM and like, when he was like five years old, his dad would bring home like the early computer or the early printer and be like, let's assemble this together.
So that's how he learned how to do shit. So anyways, he's freshman year at San Jose state. He's like, dude, I just keep leaving the classroom to take calls because like, you know, we're out of inventory or whatever.
And so he's just quits San Jose state. He goes all in on the ecom thing. He figures out one hack with the ecom thing, which was like a back then, I think on Google or Yahoo or somewhere where people were searching for stuff.
You could just sort by cheapest. So he just wrote a bot that would always price one, like their, their main like high selling skew one cent lower than whatever the cheapest price was. And it was like his loss leader and it would always bring somebody to the, to the site.
And that's what he, that's when he decided to quit school was he was in a class and they were describing what a loss leader is. He's like, oh, that's the shit I'm doing with my like, I'm like, I'm like selling this stuff at a loss to get traffic. He's like, I don't need to be here.
I'm learning this shit like in the real world. So he just left and just like, I dropped out and then he's like, whatever, goes on, he spends a couple of years playing poker as well. Like, you know, the bunch of different crazy stuff comes back, starts doing startups.
And now, and so after we saw, and after app 11 goes public, the guy never needs to work again. He's got all the money in the world. And I'm like, so what are you going to do? And he's like, he's like, I want to, like I said, I'm going to buy a big space.
Basically it's like, he's creating his heaven on earth, which did he buy that
SPEAKER_01
space or did he rent it? It looks beautiful.
SPEAKER_02
He's renting that one, but he was looking at buying before then when COVID started happening, he's like, I'm just going to lease these. They're all like dirt cheap leases now.
SPEAKER_01
And like, I don't know. He got the sick place over on the Presidio.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So he's in Fort Mason. He's got like, I don't know, maybe 10,000, 20,000, 25,000 square feet or something like that.
It's crazy. And he basically created his heaven on earth, which I've come to realize is like, that's actually what I respect the most. It's like, I don't respect because people will be like, oh, on one hand, you guys go all in on Elon or Brett Adcock, these guys who go all in.
Is that what you love? But you also love this guy who's got this amazing lifestyle and works four hours a month.
SPEAKER_01
The same thing.
SPEAKER_02
The same thing. They're creating their heaven on earth. And I think that is the, that my best description of what I admire and what I want to do is create my own little heaven on earth, which takes two.
SPEAKER_01
I don't even like that description. I say they're taking the world and they're just bending it over their leg to help the shape that they want it to be. You know what I mean? They're just, they're just spanking their walls.
They're spanking the world. Yeah. They're a dominatrix and the earth is the recipient. No, they're just like making the world.
Cause that's what it feels like. It feels like they're forcing things. They're forcing things.
SPEAKER_02
They see an industry and they say, Billy, go get my belt and then they bend the industry over and they spank it. Yeah, exactly. Billy, go get my belt.
That's another one. So, so he's also an all in kind of guy. He basically immediately created like a lot of work for himself.
He rented out the space. He puts 40, there's, I went there to visit. There's 40 people working in there.
I'm like, who are all these, this is like a bunch of young brown dudes. Like, who are all these Indian dudes everywhere?
SPEAKER_01
What are they doing? Dude, I invested in one of them because they're just part of his thing. I was like, Fur Con, are these guys legit? And he like told me this huge explanation. I was like, all right, so just say yes or no.
And I, and I, Just say less.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. Yeah. I actually want to just invest in the index because actually individually, all of the ideas are a little bit crazy. They're all crazy.
One of these is going to work. I just don't trust myself to pick the right one. So I actually have talking to him about like, how do I just index into all of your crazy? Like, I would like a piece of every brown dude in this under this roof here.
Like, how do I do that? And I think we're going to work it out. But I don't tell you about one of the things that I saw there. So, dude, the guy I invested in was a white guy.
SPEAKER_01
Shit. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02
You're the NBA GM drafting Kyle. You should take LeBron, I think. So, so one of the guys I met in there, they were doing something called orange wood robotics.
Have you ever heard of this company?
SPEAKER_01
No, but obviously I'm in. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02
So I go in and there's a reason it's called orange wood. I'll explain in a second. So they go in and I go, I walk in and there's a bunch of people at their computers.
And then there's the big thing he wanted to do was he was like, you know, a lot of engineers, they want to work in a space with other smart engineers. That's cool. But one of the things that engineers struggle with, he's like, the first thing I bought when I got money is I bought like a 3D printer and you know, then like this robotics thing.
And then I bought this drone thing. And he's like, I just want to have a whole bunch of hardware available for free to engineers that are building stuff that requires this stuff. That's very expensive.
So they can come and hack on these, these tools and they don't need to like go buy this, you know, $15,000 machine that does this thing. And so that's what he did. And so when I walk in, I'm like, what's going on in there? There's basically a room with a bunch of robotic equipment in there.
I walk in and there's this company called Orangewood. And what these guys are doing is they basically are like, I was like, explain what this is. They go, oh, we have this robot that can paint stuff.
And I was like, okay, why? And they're like, well, you know, like, you know, look around this room, like you see that, you see this, you know, there's this process called powder coating. You ever, you ever powder coated something? And I was like, you obviously don't know who to talk to. Yeah. So I was like, no, I was like, is that for donuts? What is that? And he's like, no, basically it's this like process where you need to paint. I still can't expect it to be.
SPEAKER_01
By the way, that was a good one. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02
You do that thing in text where you're like six out of 10, eight out of 10 on any joke.
SPEAKER_01
That was a good one. I like that one, the powder coating for donuts.
SPEAKER_02
So basically they're like, you know, it takes, you know, a specialist, you have to, you know, you have to hire labor. Labor's really hard nowadays. And it's also like a chemically intensive process.
It's not really that good for you.
SPEAKER_01
Basically powder coating, like I do it with motorcycles. So like your motorcycle frame is just metal and then they powder coat it, which is it kind of looks like paint. I don't actually know exactly how it works, but you do it in like a room that's sealed and you do it with gloves on.
And it's like you're putting, it looks like a powder on it. And it's like a sealant slash protected thing slash paint. Right.
SPEAKER_02
So they basically trained this robot to do it. And what they do, the trick is that the world has changed where there's now this like robotic arm. That's a general purpose robotic arm.
So think of it like an iPhone, right? It's a piece of hardware that you could buy that you could program to do anything. Right. So when Steve Jobs came out with the iPhone, they were like, this is an iPhone. It can access the internet.
It has a GPS inside and it can make phone calls. Like that's what it could do. And from there, you guys figure out the rest, right? Like initially they didn't have the app store, but then when they did have the app store, now all of a sudden you get the flashlight app.
And then the app that turns, you know, it's like a ruler uses the camera to like measure something. Then you get like Strava. It's like, we'll use the GPS to do this thing.
So it's basically like a programmable general purpose tool. So that's what's happening with these robotic arms. These guys wrote software to teach that robotic arm they bought how to powder coat things.
And then they taught it how to paint floors. And then they taught it how to weld things. So this thing can literally just weld the shit together.
They taught it how to, you know, pick and pack things. So it could take things out of one place and put it into another place based on what it looks like. And that's amazing.
And the way you do it is like, you just write a program that does each of these functions and you need to specialize it. And then there's just more sophisticated ways to put a camera on top and they'll teach it to like recognize stuff. So like my cousin was doing this where he was teaching this robotic arm.
Literally I went to his office and it was straight up a robotic arm and like a hole. And his whole thing was, can I get the arm to go in the hole? And I was like, what's going on here guys? Like this is a little like, you know, sexual robot. And he's like, no, this is basically in the future electric cars are going to need to get charged.
But when they're self-driving, there's no driver to get out of the car and plug it in. He's like, so you need the charging station to be able to automatically attach to the car. Otherwise we're never going to have self-driving cars that work that are electric because who will fill them up? You'll need a person there always to be able to go do this.
And they'll need basically gas attendants at every gas station to do this. Which in my mind, I was like, that doesn't sound so bad. But like, you know, there's a reason he pivoted.
But the point is they were training this arm to be able to use the camera to find the hole and exactly get in without scratching the car. And so there's like this whole industry of people that are doing this. They're just figuring out how to program these general purpose robotic arms.
And they're making very interesting businesses off them. So these guys are doing it with painting. I thought that was pretty cool because it's like a high value thing.
Like you rent it for 500 bucks for the day and it'll paint all your shit. It's like that's cheaper than hiring a person to do it and more reliable maybe because it'll do it like perfectly even every single time. You don't have like human error.
And so the other one that's interesting like this is Cafe X, which you've probably seen in the malls, which is basically a robotic version of Starbucks.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And like you see it and you're like, oh, what was this stupid? And then you start thinking about it and you're like, oh my God, the implications here are quite big.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. No, I saw that. I was immediately like, this is one of the smartest ideas I've ever seen.
Cafe X because you're not like in San Francisco. Imagine Starbucks, but now shrink Starbucks down to the size of like a jumbo vending machine. And it's see through and inside is just a robotic arm and you go, you place your order.
You're like, I need my cappuccino. I want it, you know, whatever double shot and I don't drink coffee. So I don't make it up.
But like, you know, oat milk and two sugars and basically the arm then starts to like move around inside and it makes your coffee that it hands it to you. And then it waves and it does a dance and you get to walk away. And basically you pay, you know, $2.
50 and you're getting a robotic coffee. So the, why this is dope is it takes up like one tenth of the real estate of Starbucks. It has no like labor costs or very, very low labor costs.
It's just the person who comes and cleans the robot at the end of the day and refills the ingredients. So there's like, you know, very low labor cost and the robot like never gets tired, never calls in sick. It just like runs all day and just makes the exact same coffee all the time.
And it could do that with like, you know, a hundred drinks or something like that. And so Cafe X hasn't quite taken off. I think there's, they did some stupid things.
And I remember hearing that like, at one point, like in the seed round, the founder only owned 4% of the company or something. They like f-ed up their cap table or something like that. Yeah, I heard of that too.
And so, you know, that, that particular startup, I don't think it's going to work. But I'll be damned if this is not going to be a thing. Like this is going to be a thing.
It just makes too much. It has such an economic advantage and it only has technology risks. And I think people really underestimate that because most businesses have extreme market risk.
We don't even know if the customers want it and we don't know if they're going to adopt it. Then it has, but this has like, well, if the customer wants it, it's not, not really a question. The customer wants a fast, delicious coffee.
Yes, that's not like, that's not that hard to do. And instead of making Starbucks as a place where you go sit, it's optimizing for people who want to get in and get out like subway stations and stuff like that. Like people who are quickly on the go and has such a big financial advantage.
If they can do it because of the real estate and the labor costs. Now the only question is, can you make the robot arm work well enough? And actually that's a problem that engineers are good at solving over like a 10 year period.
SPEAKER_01
So I'm trying to just do this math to make sure I'm, wow. Okay. So check this out. So I know a few, a few of these guys doing these startups that involve, so a lot of them use the word humanoid.
Have you heard that word?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, don't like it.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don't like humanoid, but basically it's robots that do jobs of humans like gas station attendant. So I was just curious and this cafe X is interesting. There's another one that's doing it for pizza.
I think it's called zoom. It's called zoom.
SPEAKER_02
That was one of the popular ones. SoftBank put like, I don't know, $500 million into it or something ridiculous.
SPEAKER_01
Which sounds silly, but I, and this is, I only did this research while we were talking. It could be way off, but I'm looking at a government website. It seems legit.
Do you know what percentage of working Americans work in fast food?
SPEAKER_02
Oh man, it's got to be high, but I'm going to give you the homie move and I'll say 7%. No, that was way too much.
SPEAKER_01
I asked that poorly. So about a, about three and a half million Americans work in fast food jobs, which is like a point. Oh wow, 1%.
That's significant dude. That's significant. 10% of those work at McDonald's.
So McDonald's employs like 250, 300,000 people. It's kind of astonishing. I'm, I'm a fairly libertarian person, but when I think of these things, I'm like, what are these people going to do for work? I mean, there's just, that's only, we're only talking about fast, fast food.
You're talking about all these other things, I mean, potentially 5% or 10% of Americans of workers. It's like, you know, maybe you don't have a lot of that many skills. Like when these things happen, I'm like, I don't know what's going to happen with these people.
It's not a good situation. It almost is more scary than it is interesting. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. People always say that, I don't know. I just feel like it's, there's really two questions, which is like, A, is this new? No, for forever technology has been like making things easier and getting rid of jobs.
Like, okay, you know, maybe we were, you know, doing stuff by hand on the fields and then we got the tractor and that like maybe reduced the number of people you needed by 10x in order to run a farm. Technology has just gotten more and more pervasive and it's like, what's, what happened to all the horse carriage drivers? What happened to all the people that worked in factories? What happened to all the people that did this and that? And the reality is like they shift, they shift around. So, you know, some people will become robot attendants and they'll become good at like managing and cleaning the robots and many fixing them when they, when they bug out.
Some people will shift into a new type of labor and like whether that's, they become entertainers on social media, they become, you know, there's new jobs that will get created from every single thing that they get done. And like, you know, what's the other question is like, what's the alternative? Do you pump the brakes on making things better, faster, cheaper? Like that doesn't seem like you, it's possible or real or like.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I'm not going to let, I'm not going to let like my feelings get away of like progress and technology. I'm just saying like it, it, that doesn't mean that it's not frightening.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I just think, you know, there's a little bit of carnage whenever any change happens, whether it's, you know, change for the good or it's changed for the bad, right? Like I think in any, there's a little bit of collateral damage along the way. And the question is like, you know, that also creates opportunities because if you created a business that re-skills people, not only are there going to be a lot of people that need re-skilling, but maybe the government will pay you to help re-skill workers in the economy. So the free market can come up with a solution to how to absorb this labor, how to re-skill this labor and do things like that.
So I don't really worry about stuff like that, but I do think that it's very interesting to me that these robotic, like these general purpose robot, robot like pieces can now be programmed to do just a variety of things that are otherwise, you know, today human labor.
SPEAKER_01
Have you seen this TV show called The Bear?
SPEAKER_02
I've seen a few episodes, I haven't finished it.
SPEAKER_01
Alright, so the background in the show, is it necessarily the important topic here? But it's a topic I want to ask you about, but the background is basically a restaurant in Chicago, the owner kills himself and the brother inherits this restaurant and it's a mess. And the brother is a trained chef from French Laundry, which is like the best restaurant in the world. And he comes to this kind of like shithole restaurant and he's got to turn it around.
So that's the whole premise. And I'm watching this show and I used to work at a restaurant, like most kids, if you know, 15, 16, 17, 18, I worked at a restaurant. And this show reminded me how miserable they are.
And like this goes on the list, like right below like music festivals of things and businesses that you should never start and run from no matter, almost no matter how good they are. And are like this shit.
SPEAKER_02
Wait, why music festivals? What's wrong with music festivals?
SPEAKER_01
Dude, any business that you could that you spend 18 months working on and if it rains that day, you're completely screwed. Like the odds that like rain come and ruin your whole years of work. That's the work.
That's like, I don't want to join that business. I mean, like music festivals, they're just horrible and they're horrible because the bigger and more people who that go and the more money that you make, the worse the experience gets. That's why I always disliked conferences.
I was like, damn, the better I make this for me, the worse it is for the attendee and thus harder for them to come back over and over again. And with a restaurant, you see inside this kitchen at the bear at the it's called like Chicago beef, I think you see the behind the scenes of the restaurant. It is impossible.
This is playing business on the hardest mode possible. People are angry. People are vulgar all the time.
Remember when I used to work at a restaurant, like there was a huge contingency of drug addicts, you know, you get off work at 2 a.m. What are you going to do? You're going to go immediately go to the bar and get screwed up and then come back to work and stay at 11. Lots of drug addicts, lots of people calling in to stick for work, lots of people angry, lots of vulgar hostility.
This looks like a horrible business to be in. Your sushi restaurant was probably a little bit different than this, but was it at all similar to what I'm seeing in the bear?
SPEAKER_02
Well, ours wasn't just because a we only ran it for three months and we were only open and live for three months and B we were the we were the labor for most of that. We only had a couple other people. The but what way I experienced this was we went and worked in other restaurants to shout out to learn how do you actually run a restaurant right.
So like we worked in other sushi restaurants. My buddy Dan worked inside of a noodles and company to see like how does a fast casual like process thing work or whatever. And how does that work? With a lot of salt.
He was just like, dude, like because we used to eat at these places, he's like, don't order the tomato bisque. I was like, the best gets a soup. The soup is the good things like don't order the tomato bisque.
I was like, what's wrong? He's just like, bro, you never seen salt like you see him. It's like somebody who is just like traumatized by what they saw is just like, dude, those people in the back don't give a shit. They're going to put whatever they want in this.
It does and the things that they're supposed to put are so bad for you and this stuff just sits around and like he's like, don't don't eat this stuff. I was like, okay, yeah, sometimes the less you know, like I remember when we were working in the kitchen and we worked out of a commissary kitchen. So there was other people there.
The food truck people would come prep there the caterers and the worst was the guy who would sell hot dogs. He had like a hot dog stand, not no offense, but like he would just come in with 350 hot dogs. He would pour them all into the sink and we're like, that's the sink where we do everybody does their dishes in there.
It's like pouring your hot dogs in a hot tub and he was like just started turned up the water was just washing them and then he was just like chucking them to the side after they've been like rinse for a second. I was like, first of all, why are you washing the hot dog? Why did this need washing? It was like a favorite came out of a package. You washed it.
You washed it in the grossest sink possible and you just threw it on the side. I was like, somebody's going to eat that like six hours. I was like, I will never eat a hot dog again.
I think forget about what even went into the hot dog, which I think in itself is gross. Like when you watch these documentaries about like, you know, farming and stuff like that. And I was like, just watching this dude watch the hot dogs before taking him to the ballgame.
I was like, this is sick.
SPEAKER_01
You say no offense is not going to be my new name. So I'm going to be like, I'm just going to be talking about anything like, yeah, dude, I was running this guy and he smelled so bad. No offense.
And I'm just going to start saying no offense. It was like all the time. And like, I walked around the streets and they were disgusting.
No offense.
SPEAKER_02
And this person was so annoying. No offense. I mean, nothing wrong with annoying people.
So no offense.
SPEAKER_01
I'm going to start saying no offense. I'm going to throw no offense there. And they're all the time.
That's disgusting. But anyway, this show, what's interesting about it though, and this was a lot of similarities I see in what you and I do. What a lot of our friends do and a lot of listeners do is they are so passionate about this thing.
And at first I was like, why are they so passionate about this? And I started, I was like, oh, wait, no, this is just their, this is just their shtick. You know, my outlets a little bit different, but it's like the same type of obsessed. They love it.
They love it. So anyway, cool show. And I wanted to bring it up because I wouldn't sure if it was similar to your restaurant experience.
SPEAKER_02
I think it was like we used to do a thing. You get off at 1am and then, you know, the thing closed at midnight. You got to clean up, prep for the next day.
It's one before you get out of there. And now you're hungry and tired. You don't want to eat your own food.
So you go to another restaurant. They're getting off. They'll just cook for you for free.
But then like, you know, two people are doing cocaine in the bathroom and you're like, this isn't like, you know, the most productive lifestyle. The restaurant industry, I would say the bonding is very, like the camaraderie was amazing. And I would say there's something very soulful about like feeding people that's like really great.
But then the hours are brutal. It is business on hard mode. And there's a lot of like degeneracy.
Same thing with like poker. I used to play poker. I love the game of poker.
I hated sitting in a casino playing poker because I just felt like I was surrounded by so many degenerates. And I was like, this is not a high quality of living. Like just sitting here in this kind of artificial air with this guy who's like fell asleep next to me because he's been here for 42 hours straight.
Like this is not who I want to surround myself with. I need to get out of this situation. Let me tell you about something that is the opposite of that kind of an inspiring work environment.
So I saw this Tik Tok and it just, that's not two Tik Toks. I don't want to remind you. I want to tell you about, I'm not going to play them here because it'll take a little too long.
Maybe in the YouTube video, we can, we can play them. But I want to know if you've seen these one went viral. So it was, did you see this viral clip of the pitcher on the Mets coming out to the, coming out to pitch? He's like the closer.
So he was coming out to do his thing and it's normally on TV, they just cut to commercial in between like the chain, like the lineup change because it's like whatever. It's going to be two minutes. The guy's got to warm up.
He's got to run out from the bullpen. That takes a little while. Baseball's slow already.
He's got to warm up then whatever. They usually come back. But this time they stuck with it.
So they showed, did you see this clip or am I just, should I describe it? Keep going. Keep going. So they're like walking out behind the guy like walking out from the thing emerging basically into the stadium.
So they have a dope camera shot.
SPEAKER_01
Oh, and they're using that UFC lens. Have you noticed all these guys are using the UFC's beautiful lens where it like blurs out the bag.
SPEAKER_02
Special. Yeah. And then they, and the guy normally comes out to this song. I don't even know what it's called.
It's like whatever. I don't know. The guy, Timmy, Timmy Trump.
It's just like the singer, you know, he's featured on it. This guy with his trumpet, but the Mets had brought the guy there live. And so he was kind of hiding and he comes out.
He's got his little trumpet and he's got a microphone on the end of the trumpet and he starts playing the song. And he's playing the song live. And he's just like the guy's running out into like the roaring crowd and it's just so dope.
All right. Business is cool, but like God sports and music just have this special thing, this special moment, these special feelings that you can't, there's nobody is that passionate about our podcast. Nobody is that passionate about this piece of software.
But when this moment hits, the guy runs out, he's the hero, the trumpet guys there, he's playing their crowds going nuts. And it was just like this special moment. And it was a lot of showmanship.
I watched that and I get this feeling I'm like, that was dope. I'm glad that they went that extra mile for that showmanship. Does that create, I will never watch baseball, but like I'm a fan of like this guy, that song.
You don't watch baseball at all.
SPEAKER_02
Way too slow for you, right? Too slow, too boring. Used to love it, but you know, when I was a kid. So now I swipe up on TikTok.
The next video is this teacher and it says revealing the music, the year musical part one. And I'm like, I don't know, I just hung around for an extra second to watch it. He goes, he goes, all right.
And this year, the musical is going to be, and he like reveals the whiteboard and there's nothing there. And then there's like a small envelope and everyone's like, what? And then he's like, he opens up the envelope. He's like, it's going to be, hold on.
This just says turn on the computer. And then the students are like, what's going on here? And clearly the teacher had kind of set up a bit to like just make it more fun. And like, you know, everybody loves this because it's like, here's this teacher of like a middle school or high school or something like that.
They didn't have to do this. Like, you know, most teachers are just sort of like, they want to just roll out the TV on the black, you know, like trolley and just be like, all right guys, just watch this fucking movie for an hour and like just leave. Right. Like being a teacher is exhausting. And like it's easy.
It would be very easy to phone it in most don't and some like this guy go the extra mile. And so now he clicks his computer and it's a video and it's him. And he's like, Hey, it's me from the future.
And he's just like, it's a silly bit, but he's talking back to it. He's like, what are you doing here? He's like, I don't know. I read the envelope.
It said to turn the computer. He's like, you just got to do whatever the envelope says. And it's like, it goes back and forth.
So he's like doing this skit with himself. That's good. And he's like, he's like, and it freezes.
And then it freezes and it says, wait, everybody look under your desk and like one kid has this special thing. And it was like this elaborate, almost like an escape room leading up to this reveal. And I saw that.
And so what was the plan? Video is viral. The play was like, I don't even remember. It was like, it was like not something like that cool.
It was like, you know, Les Misroblos, whatever. It was like some like, you know, who cares? But like by the end, the students are going nuts because they're so invested at this point. They sort of midway through, they realized, okay, this is cheesy, but I'm into it.
He's doing this for us. And like, all right, I want to know. He built up tension.
And the reason I bring up these examples is because there is a word that my trainer uses all the time. You must understand what you have learned. And nobody else in my life, I know talks about this.
My trainer all the time goes, yeah, you got to have a little showmanship. And showmanship is a word that I think like for most of us doesn't even enter our brain on a day to day basis. And my trainer will always tell me he's like, you know, he'll be at Starbucks before, you know, he'll go get a coffee before our session.
And he'll always tell me these stories. He's like, you know, I decided to add a little showmanship. So I told him my name was blah, blah, blah, and they wrote it on the cup.
And then by the time the person was done, you know, I told them, like, you know, whatever he'll say, you know, Bond James Bond. And then they'll just laugh. They'll have a little chuckle and then they'll write Bond.
He's like, add the comma James Bond and then they'll do it. They'll laugh a little more. Now, he just like made their day a little more entertaining than it was, than it had to be if he just said, my name is John and OK, cool.
You're just another John. And so he always talks about adding showmanship and it's just like walking through life and just identify little moments where you could do something slightly different than like the norm. And I have a like, I have kids now.
So I do this with my daughter all the time. Like we used to have such a hard time getting her to eat. And my mother came over and like, you know, as a classic sort of like mother-in-law thing, she's like always being like, do this, do that.
You guys are doing this wrong. Like, you know, it's true. She's got like, I got out 30 years of parenting experience.
We got two, but like it's also really annoying to be told what to do and how to parent better and how to like do this, do that. So we're normally, my default was kind of annoyed. But one day she was like, she was like, like the milk bottle was like way less.
I said, how did you get her to drink the milk? And she's like, oh, she loves to drink out of this like little measuring cup instead of like the normal cup. And she goes, change of presentation. And I go, and I was like, and so now me and my wife will always joke because we're always like, oh God, so annoying.
Joe's telling us what to do. But then like, like sometimes she does pull this like rabbit out of her hat and like, you know, we'll do something. My dad doesn't want to do it.
And then we just changed the present like changed the presentation of how we're getting her to do it. And all of a sudden she's super locked in. Like I do this now.
When I feed her, I couldn't get her to eat vegetables. So I decided to create like my own version of the show chopped. So I'm like, okay, close your eyes.
I'm going to put one thing in front of you and in front of your brother and like take the bite. And then you need to tell me is it one thumbs up, two thumbs up or thumbs down. And then I do a huge reaction based on the score they give me.
And she's like, I want to play the close eyes game. I want to play the close eyes game because she and I can get her to eat a whole meal if I'm willing to basically create a television show out of it. It's really like exhausting for me.
But honestly, it's like also kind of fun and it gets her to eat anything. Whereas otherwise that's actually even more exhausting to try to feed her something she doesn't want. And so this idea of showmanship keeps weaving its way into my life.
And I wanted to bring this up because for somebody out there, they're going to basically use this as like your word of the day. Find a way to like weave in a little more showmanship into what you're doing. A little change of presentation as we say.
Have you, do you think about this at all?
SPEAKER_01
I do. And so I was, I had to go find it, but have you heard of this guy named Trent Griffin? He's like this like 60s, maybe 60 something years old white dude. And his Twitter bio just says like, I used to work with Bill Gates at Microsoft.
So you're like, oh, you're automatically like wise and interesting. So he has a blog called 25 IQ. And I was reading it the other day and he had this article called a dozen beliefs about business, money and life that Kanye West shares with other great entrepreneurs and investors.
It's like, oh, that's an interesting title. And the very first line has always stuck with me. And it's about con it's from Kanye and it says, for me, first of all, dope.
This is what I like the most. It's just doping this people who want to make things as dope as possible and and by default make money from it. And I always think about that quote because I also get caught up and like, well, this does this and this is this and this is this.
And it's how it makes money. And I'm like, oh yeah, but this is super lame and not that cool. And like, this sucks my soul.
What am I doing? Like this isn't awesome. You know, and it's like, well, what is awesome? I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I do think about that all the time where I'll try to like nickel and dime things about what I'm going to buy. Or like the other day, I bought some like Air Force ones and I was like trying to like get like this cheap ones and I'm like, brah, I can get the $250 Air Force once and I don't have to justify it.
Like if they're cool, they're cool. They're dope. I'm doing it no matter what.
And I always have to justify like certain decisions to myself was like, this is just cool. Do it because it's cool. I only have one life.
So yeah, I think about this all the time. Yeah, do it because it's cool.
SPEAKER_02
I think it's a great for most people who listen to this podcast are probably like high achiever. Types and they're probably rational and like analytical about a lot of decisions. And so I think for that audience, actually you need to add more of this other ingredient, which is the yeah, for sure.
Do it because it's cool. Eff it. Don't measure it.
And also honestly, the same thing can either be done boring or dope. It's like, it's not the thing that's dope. Yeah, it's how you do the thing that's dope or not dope.
And so, you know, the broccoli itself wasn't dope when I turned it into this game. I made it more dope for her and therefore she has a different experience and I have a different experience in doing it. And if I consistently do that, well, there's just more experiences throughout my day that are dope.
And what's a dope life? It's a bunch of dope days. What's a bunch of dope days? It's a bunch of dope experiences throughout the day. Right. You just break it down into moment. Like you could break it down into its atomic unit and realize that like the boringness or like routine of your life is like, you know, in your own hands.
And if you just add a little showmanship to yourself and to the people around you, you kind of change how the experience feels. And I'm guilty of this in many ways, but like, you know, I'm seeing how this helps me and I wanted to share this little framework. Do you remember Boosted Skateboards? Yeah, these are all over the place in San Francisco.
People would like skateboard up the hill because it was like, you know, San Francisco is so hilly and it was like, look like magic. How are they going up this?
SPEAKER_01
And now like electric scooters are the norm. So like the bird scooters are always good. So that's like considered normal now.
But about eight years ago Boosted Skateboards came out with this longboard skateboard that would go 25 miles an hour. I remember I bought one and it was crazy. It was so cool.
And I met the founder and I was like, tell me about your background. He's like, oh, I worked at NASA and I was doing this other thing. And then I thought about like working in the government and like setting people to Mars.
I thought that had been like interesting, but I decided to launch this skateboard company. I was like, well, you know, are you interested in skateboards? He's like, no. I was like, were you interested in this other thing? He's like, no, not really.
I was like, well, why'd you go to skateboards? He goes, because it's fucking awesome. And I remember him saying that and I was like, well, yeah, you got a point. Yeah, yeah, it is.
It is awesome. And when he told me that, I just, I remember a shift happened in my life. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah.
That's a good addition. I got to add that to my like box of checks, checkbox, you know, things to do. Like, you know, it makes money.
It makes my mom proud. It's effing awesome. And I remember him saying that.
And I was like, oh, yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, Tony Robbins has this thing he says, which is like, you'll meet your standards, not your not your desires. And basically like a standard is like more of a must. A standard is like, you know, I'm not going to eat at a restaurant.
If I saw flies flying around everywhere, that's below my standard. And so an important thing to figure out is like, what are my standards for the things that I do in my life? It sounds like for this guy, one of his standards for like, what do I work on is, is this awesome or not? It's not a people that shit is completely optional. Nice to have for sure.
It's not part of the standard. And then you meet certain people and this is the best thing you could do. Like why do people have that phrase of like, you are the average of the five people you spend your most time with is because it's because fundamentally you will adopt the standards of the people you're around.
It's not because they'll teach you things. It's not because they'll give you good advice. It's because fundamentally you will adopt the standards.
Like I remember we have a couple of friends who are like you. Like you're one of my friends who's very fit. I have other friends that are very fit or they care about being very fit.
And whenever there's a question of like, all right, let's go grab some food. What do you guys want to eat? It's like, I know that I can't suggest, you know, I can't, Cheesecake Factory is not on the list. You know, like I can't, I can't take these guys there.
That's not their standard is that that's not what they eat. And so like, you know, I automatically I will start to only suggest and therefore only go to places that I know meets their standard of what they consider.
SPEAKER_01
I fucks with Cheesecake Factory hardcore chicken piccata all day.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I'm not above it. Yeah, we have a couple of friends that like is like, oh, cool. Like you ordered the gordita.
What's good here? I've never been to this place.
SPEAKER_01
Dude, can I talk about something that that I can't decide if actually, and we could wrap up with it. It can't decide if it's awesome and dope or not. So basically I want to give like people perspective on you and I is like behind the scene.
So you and I, Sean and I get DM'd or cold email all the time. And a very common thing is, hey, can I like give you content to share and I'll do it for free or something like that. And the bad thing about freeze, you kind of get what you pay for.
So when it's free shit, you're like, oh, this is too much work. I don't want to share your stuff on Twitter. I don't want to share your stuff on whatever.
It's just it's not good. I don't want to work on it. For some reason, I gave one of these kids a chance and I say no to everyone.
I gave this kid a chance, he DM'd to me and I was like, you know, I'll give you, I'm going to give you my password to my TikTok and I want you to impress me. I go, send me a picture of your social security card. Send me a picture of your boss and send me a picture of your driver's license.
And he did. And I go, all right, if you fuck, I was like, if you, because I was like, if you screw me over here, I'm going to get you back. So like I have your information.
Here's my password to my TikTok. I gave him the password. Showmanship.
SPEAKER_02
That's great. Showmanship. A threat is also showmanship.
That's what I did.
SPEAKER_01
I go, look, like if you do something bad to me, I'm going to get you. And so I, um, I gave him my password to my TikTok.
SPEAKER_02
Give me your mother's address because I will be mailing her your index finger in an envelope if you fuck this up.
SPEAKER_01
Well, because there's like no information that I could get to like get back at this person. You want to mean like, I'm like, I need you to have something.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. We're in balance. You could really screw me by posting on my account.
What am I going to say? I need to equally be able to screw you. I can continue.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. And I gave him the password to my TikTok. It's been one week.
So in one week, this kid has taken you and I's videos and posted it to a day on TikTok. And in six days, maybe I think one week's tomorrow, he's gotten 1.5 million views.
And I went from basically zero to like not having to count to like eight or 9,000 followers as of now. A handful of videos have gotten one got 500,000, one got 700,000, a bunch got 50,000 followers, 150 or 200,000 likes, tens of thousands of comments. And I'm like, that's kind of interesting, but I don't exactly believe that this is true.
Like I don't know if this is true. And so I was like, post a video where there's a call to action. So we did a video about my favorite book and it shot up the charts.
And I'm like, all right, people are actually like these people are somewhat engaged.
SPEAKER_02
So like buying a book out of the charts like on Amazon, you mean?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. So and this is the second, this is the second time that I did this. So one time I recommended a book and right before I recommended it, I took a picture of its rating on Amazon and then I recommended it.
And the next day it was number one in the entrepreneurship category and number one in the business category. And I took screenshots of it to like prove it. It was the book called how to get rich that that tweet reached 2 million people.
This other video that I did, I talked about the same book and it shot up. I think now it's number one in entrepreneurship again. And that video has been viewed 500,000 times.
SPEAKER_02
Bro, let's write our own book. Like if you got this kind of Oprah influence, I mean, while you're referencing this guy's dead, he doesn't need your help. Come on, let's write our own book.
SPEAKER_01
Let's see. Okay. Yeah. Look, how to get rich is now number 30 in all of Audible and originals. It's number one in the small business category.
Yeah. Look up how to get rich. Go look at right now.
Look at the categories like it like skyrocketed after this video. And I can't decide if this whole TikTok game is actually, you should do it where it's
SPEAKER_02
like, you should do it simpler. Which is just like, if you're a real person, I don't know if these TikTok views are real or not. If you're real, just put like a one in the, just type the number one.
I am going to see who's going to do that, you know, because, because I feel the same way about these TikTok views. It's like our favorite words, little, little Fugazi, little Fugazi. This is Fugazi Fugazi element to these TikTok views.
It's like, how, you know, is this really 1.5 million people? What does this mean? Do they actually watch it? What's going on here? If so, that's amazing. But I'm, you know, some things can be too good to be true, but that's cool.
Yeah, you've shown up on my feed for what it's worth, but I think it's because we're, I have like two TikTok plans and you're one of them.
SPEAKER_01
This, this book video got 414,000 views. A couple of them got 70,000, 50,000, we have 700,000, lots of 20,000. I can't decide if this is real.
And if it is real, I don't want to sound like Gary V, but I'm like, oh, everyone should do this. Like this is easy. This is this kid in Miami is just doing this and he just spun this up and it's working wonderfully.
And like you, I don't, I mean, I think you're actually better than me, but I'm not like that charismatic. I'm not that good. Why is this game so easy? And is this game, is it real? And also honestly, is it worth it? I'm not convinced that it's worth it.
SPEAKER_02
Well, if you can spike a book to number one in the charts, that shows that there's some value there. There's some influence there. Like, and it's not just a number, but kind of lame.
SPEAKER_01
Like most of, most of, there's a lot of amazing stuff on TikTok. Basically these 18 year old kids are like the most creative people I've ever seen. And then there's guys like you and me, these like money people and influencers and everyone's doing the same fucking circle jerk, Alex or Mosey stuff.
And it's really lame. And so I don't know how to make it interesting. And right now what I'm doing, I think it's not interesting, but the results are incredible.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. But is it effing awesome to go back to your standard TBD, TBD, you know what's effing
SPEAKER_01
awesome is when you create content and then like someone like legitimately famous and cool, like Hassan, like hollers at you and then you're like, yeah, this is the awesome part about it. So like, like that, you know what I mean? Like that's worth all the lame tweets that you and I have done is getting to hang out with like a couple of really cool people.
SPEAKER_02
You know what's cool about selling your soul? Sometimes someone pays the price for it.
SPEAKER_01
You know what's cool about being a whore? The money.
SPEAKER_02
I know that. No, we're out.