Giving founders brutally honest feedback

0:00 And so it's like damn, you have written off the most obvious growth channel. With this Internal narrative of we tried that, it didn't work. It didn't work is a sentence I'm very skeptical of now. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

0:15 Here's what I got for you today in this podcast. I have A story about two kind of like blue collar founders. who just got their business off the ground and I met up with them. And uh they asked me these questions and it was like

0:34 It w it was a set of mistakes that I think Everybody makes. And so I think it's worth talking about. So I want to talk about What the three things these guys said. Then I wanna tell you about This business that's really fascinating. So that's a small business. Then there's a huge business that's fascinating me right now.

0:50 It's so new. And interesting that like I just kinda want to talk about it with you. And the last days I have like a um A marketing principle, a little framework. That I saw a a great example that I saw and I wanna share that as well. So I got three things for you.

1:04 All right, I have a couple uh things for you as well. Maybe we'll go back and forth. You wanna start with your favorite one? Yeah. All right. So I went to Utah. Last week to do a podcast with um This guy Ryan Smith, he owns the Utah Jazz and he's like He started Qualtrics.

1:19 Um, and so anyways, that's gonna come out. It's a good good it's a good episode. He's a crazy dude. While I was there. And one of the reasons that happened was Ryan plays pickup basketball at six in the morning.

1:32 And there's a guy who's in his regular run he's been doing that for like Sixteen years with the same group of guys in Utah. Very like honestly aspirational thing. I was like, Oh man, I kinda want that. That sounds Kind of great to have. One of the guys in the run had DM me like two years ago and he was like, Hey

1:48 I play pick of basketball with this guy, Ryan Smith. I told him the podcast is great and he should come on. And he's like, if you guys come to Morning Basketball, I'll do the podcast. And we're like, done, we'll be there. We we play basketball, we do the podcast, all this good stuff. He tours us around the stadium and all this crazy stuff. We're just hanging out. We're just getting a uh a

2:05 Like a meal before we head to the airport. And so I invite those guys who the guy who put in the good word. I was like, Hey, you know, we should come hang out. Um, you know, you kinda made this whole thing happen in a way. Like he probably wouldn't have done it. Had you not You know, told him, Hey, this is su this is something worth doing.

2:20 Come hang out. And so he comes and he um he starts telling me about his business. He's got this business called mobile emissions. So the idea is like you know how you have to get like your smog check? You have to get like an emissions check for your car every year. They do it at your house? They'll come to you.

2:35 That's the idea. Okay, great. So normally you go to some like Dump of a mechanic place and you wait in line or whatever, your book appointment, you go, these guys will come to you for like fifty or sixty bucks. Okay, cool. And so I'm like, How's the business going? He tells me how it's going, it's going great, you know, blah blah blah.

2:51 And then he ca he he's he basically says three things that like I just thought were such such typical Traps that Every founder falls into, myself included. That's you know, if you spot it, you got it. That's how I even noticed oh that's that trap. I've been in there before. My I got some scars on my ankles from stepping into that one.

3:09 So the first one is um You know, he's asking about growth. And naturally, Sam, when somebody asks you like, you know, what do you think we should do to grow this thing? What's your first question? I'm just curious if you have the same first question I do. What have you tried? What's worked? What's like the one thing that's actually going well and what's like the ten other things that you've tried that aren't going well and stop doing them and start doing the the one thing. Exactly. So it was b basically it's like, where are the customers coming from today? Let's start with that. Okay. So how do you get customers today?

3:34 And then they said, Oh, you know, Google search results. And I was like, Oh, so Google Ads and he goes, No, no, like just Google search results. I go, Oh, like why aren't you doing Google ads for when somebody searches like Smog check near me or whatever, right? Emissions. Testing near me.

3:50 And he's like, Oh, we tried that, it didn't work. Yeah, so we're really thinking about Yeah, we're thinking about this and this and this and like fancy new cool thing. And you're like, Well tell me about the try. Exactly. So I'm like tell me like I was like, that's interesting. It didn't work. What what what part didn't work? Tell me more. What was the data?

4:07 And then suddenly Cat's got the tongue. Don't know the don't know the data. Don't know what happened. Oh, it turns out actually what the what it actually had happened was Google gives you like a couple hundred bucks of free Google ad credits. Yeah. Yeah. They had spent it, they didn't have tracking set up. And then like anecdotally, they were like, oh, I think we got like lower quality leads like

4:26 Some people were like the price is too expensive. So you know, it didn't really work. What was the Roaz on it? I don't really know. We I mean you know, we didn't have it set up properly. And so it's like damn, you have written off What's probably the most obvious growth channel. With this n internal narrative of we tried that, it didn't work.

4:44 And then It didn't work is like I'm a sentence I'm very skeptical of now. I think'cause I think so few people truly try things. To the point where they got a definitive answer.

4:56 And the answer was clear and they actually had iterated on it and tried it enough times to really know. That that was like let's say trap number one. Looking for the new fancy whatever thing. When the obvious thing hasn't been done properly yet. I make that mistake all the time. I I I've made it previously like um with the hustle, we grew via Facebook ads and I got really lucky. The very first so

5:20 So the hustle was my daily newsletter. In year one, it was uh zero to one hundred thousand, year two was a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand, year three was like five hundred to a million. And at at the end of year one, we had a little bit of a plateau and I said, Let's try Facebook ads. We know how much we make per subscriber. Let's just spend a little bit of money. And the first ad that I made on Facebook, we ended up spending collectively something like eight or ten million dollars over the lifetime of the company. And that trained my brain

5:48 that I I I still struggle to break it, which is if it doesn't work in the first couple of tries, it just it won't work. And the reality is, and I've since have I have examples of where this is uh true. You really need to do like potentially fifty to a hundred reps. If you're talking about an ad, it could literally be your hundredth ad that like changes everything. Because this one ad that we ran.

6:10 It converted l I think we acquired a customer for a dollar fifty, everything else was three dollars. It was literally two times better, which is a big deal. It changes the the the business. So I understand exactly what you're saying. And by the way, there's a fix for this trap of thinking. Which is um you you also can't just stubbornly do things forever either, right? So that's not the answer. Write down. So When you write down

6:32 What actually happened. You'll realize how flimsy of a grasp you have. Or how flimsy the attempt was. 'Cause uh and the way I do it is almost like the Socratic method. Like I by the way, I literally do this is not a uh

6:46 It's not like a metaphor. I open up a Google Doc. And then it's basically me and then there's like smarter, wiser wiser, older me, right? Sparter wise they're older than me basically ask the question, I put that in bold, and then my answer I unbold and I just type right underneath. And I just advise myself. Because I have the full context. I'm sitting right here. I have infinite time

7:04 To do this for myself. So let me go ahead and ask myself a question. So I'll be like What's already working? Cool. Can you do more of that? What would it mean if you did more of that? Is there a way to double doing just the same, like, you know, without finding a new thing? Could you do you think you could double with just that?

7:19 Or okay, what's the next most likely thing to work? And then you answer, Oh, maybe it's Google Ads. Cool. Did you try them? Yeah, like Yeah, we did. Was it a real try? What happened?

7:29 And then you sort of write it down and you have to go look up the data and you have to do and you basically Writing um Is sort of like an a it's it's like an exposing function. Writing forces clear thinking. It forces cleaning and it just highlights sloppy thinking because you can't fill in the gaps. You can't just say like It didn't really work. If you just sit there, you're like, Well if I read this, I'd be like, What does that mean?

7:50 You know, like Just provide the actual answer instead of this like hand wavy way of saying it. And so anyways, that's the the force of those. All right, so that's truck number one. Chapter number two. So I was like, Okay, so what's next for you guys?

8:02 Which by the way was a trick question because already we had already figured out like what's next for them is to do Google Ads properly. Alright, so A lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like seventeen or eighteen million dollars in revenue. I started it.

8:26 With like Three hundred dollars. My current company, Hampton, does over ten million in revenue. Started it with actually no money, maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it, Correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code.

8:58 Or click the link in the description. Now back to the show. Second trap was Not dog fooding your own product. So One of the great like simple tests with everybody when you

9:11 If you be the founder. You could spend like forty five minutes talking about the business, but the better way to do it is take out your phone or your laptop. Right then and just sh mystery shop the product. And so I just I was like, Yeah, like um I was like, Yeah, you guys should do Google Ads. So I was just checking, does anyone run Google Ads for that same search? Nobody was running it.

9:29 And then I was like Jazz, you said all your traffic comes from organic. You're not even on the first Like you're not even in the f top section of Google. Like you're like, you know, in the middle. And I was like, but this top section, it's not SEO. It's like, you know, like the Google like business results, like where it's like a Gives you like a map and a phone number to call of like

9:47 Business that things you're trying to do. I see him there. I see him there. And I was like, but they were like, you know, even there they were like lower and they didn't have as many like reviews. I was like also Like it seems like your value prop is that like You save people a bunch of time. You don't really write that there. And I was like, then I go to your website and then I see this.

10:05 And I was like You gotta w walk through your product from the eyes of a user. And face the pain. And uh we used to use user testing dot com for this, but there's a bunch of different ways to do it. User testing.com is very good, user testing.com. You basically pay some I don't know what it is now, but like let's say it was like Ten to twenty bucks a test.

10:23 And basically it just sends a user to the user goes to your site and it screen records what they're doing and they're talking they have to talk out loud while using it. Didn't your mom do that for a long time and they gave her stock in the company when it went public? Yeah. That's why I'm like a hundred grand off this company.'Cause she she started as a tester, then became a Like a monitor of the testers, like a quality control.

10:44 And like she got like a stock grant and then the company ended up going public. Kind of amazing. That was like, you know, I got my m my parents on I got my mom on that and I got my dad to Airbnb's house and like that's become their like Last fifteen years of retirement is doing this awesome. You know. That's so I love that story. So anyways, face the pain. I think most entrepreneurs don't actually face the pain. They think the problem is elsewhere. Like the problem is most likely

11:07 right there on your site in your core flow that users are going through where you're just not clear enough. Or you're not compelling enough. Or you're not visible enough. And it's like one of those three problems. If you just say how do I become more visible?

11:20 How do I make my proposition more compelling, like more juicy? And then how to make it more clear. And so I just thought like That was like thing two thing two. And thing three was They were like, should we expand? We're only in two counties right now. Should we expand to like a third, a fourth? We can get into this one. Or should we like focus on like fixing the funnel, like the core first?

11:39 Right. And I think this is like the constant debate that people have. Um And My uh You know, obviously my advice was like fix like make the system work and then replicate it is like always gonna work better than spread yourself out. Make your system more complex.

11:54 And not really while it's not really working very efficiently. Um, I think it's like typically it. But I would say there are so many of these fork in the road decisions of like do we go left or right? Entrepreneurship. And I think there's a simple heuristic, which is um

12:08 Which one seems easier? To you. Like uh meaning like which one is a h uh lower perceived pain or difficulty? Because if you think there's two equal options But one ha one feels like it's less pain.

12:22 It's actually a worse option. It's just being boosted by the fact that You're trying to avoid pain a little bit. And uh and so therefore it's like It's become a fifty fifty, but it's not truly a fifty fifty.

12:33 One of my favorite quotes that I I heard um when Char or when Charlie Munger died, um I went and researched a bunch of his stuff and he had a quote that I I actually think about almost all the time. Which is um A smart man does first what a dumb man does last. And I've made that decision. incorrectly so many times, which is I'll do it this easy time this one time and then eventually I'll do this. Or like I can't start this way because you need scale, you need this, you need that.

13:02 Uh so like an example would be like had I known what I know now about Hampton. I only would have done New York in real life and then very slowly scaled from city to city to city. But that's not fun. That's not fun because I can't scale quickly. And there's just been so many examples of where I've taken I I mean, everyone does it, where I've taken the easy route first when I should have taken the hard route first.

13:26 Um, one of my favorite books when I was in high school, I ran uh cross country track and field and I and I ran in college and I was and I was pretty decent. And there was a book that changed my life. It was called Train Hard, Win Easy. That's the same phrase where I think about that all the time. Train hard, win easy. Yes, yeah, exactly. I think you know Most people will realize That your judgment ultimately your your personal judgment, the judge in your head with the gavel who's deciding

13:53 Go left or go right. Go up or go down. Start or continue start or stop. All those micro decisions are Obviously become your destiny. And The question is how do you make that dish decision making function better?

14:06 And I don't think most people will invest in making their decision making function better. Don't invest in a lot of other things. But they don't invest a lot in that. And I think there's like a f a few like kind of short list of To the

14:20 That you should be doing regularly, exercises you should be doing regularly to work out that decision making muscle. And you know, one of'em is basically the the thing we talked about earlier, writing. Another one is understanding your biases. So like I bias towards things. That sound easy or sound fun or sound cool to others.

14:39 And so therefore those are getting like overweighted in my in my decision making versus these other things. And so there's just a few few ways you can make better decisions. Another another one, by the way. I if you can can't tell them a little bit under the weather or have been for sick for about a week now. And dude making decisions when you're sick Just my entire thought process when I'm sick is probably

15:01 I don't know, five times worse than my thought process when I'm healthy and I'm feeling active and energized and like Anything is possible. And I'm the same guy. I didn't Read any new books. I didn't like nothing changed. Except for

15:16 My actual energy levels, my fatigue levels. And I'm a totally different person. So I literally abstained. From making like Any decisions to space. Exactly. Exactly. It's like I can't make any decisions while I'm sick.

15:34 I didn't know. Fatigue makes cowards of us all is like the you know what they say in like you know, in in fighting Uh huh. I I think there's that. I I think and and that's another one where I I had the realization I was like, Man, okay, today I'm on the extreme end of the spectrum. It's very obvious, right? Like If I'm this sick I already my mind s my my mood, my mindset is in such a shitty state.

15:53 That like This is not a good time to be making good decisions. This is not a time where I'm gonna make good decisions. It's not a time when I'm gonna have to be like super creative or productive or any of those things. Okay, that's extreme. But on a day to day basis, like

16:06 I don't really do as good of a job as I should. Of first getting into a gate great state of mind. before then going and trying to perform. Whatever the performance is, whether it's being a good dad or being a good CEO or being a good anything. And I was like

16:20 And I'm in probably the top point one percent of people who think about s this. Most people don't even have the word state in their vocabulary. And I like to practice this for years with the Tony Robbins stuff. Like that's sort of a thing for me and I still am like, I don't know, pretty average at it. No, I don't think you're average at it. I definitely don't think you're average. I actually think you're great at it. Um there's a book called The triple package. And the author um claims to have analyzed um incredibly successful groups of people, ultra successful people.

16:47 And she narrows it down to three reasons, uh, as to what or three things they all have in common. The first is a CP uh superiority complex. So they feel that they are born to be better. You know, you there's a lot of people listening to this podcast and you look around at your job that you hate and you think, I I was destined to do something greater than this. I I I I have it inside of me. I'm special, I can do it. That's trait one. The second trait is conversely or very um interestingly In infurity complex in the sense of um

17:16 I am not good enough. I'm not where I need to be. I am shit. I need to improve. And that creates urgency and that creates like a fear, which is actually quite good, of like I have to work to be better uh in order to get to where I think I'm destined to go. And the third one. Impulse. Can you control your urges and your impulse? And an example of this is like when you wake up at six AM and you said you're gonna go to the gym.

17:39 It's like your I think the story you have to tell yourself is like my emotions don't dictate whether I go or not. The alarm the alarm clock dictates whether I go or not. And it's the same thing with making business. I've made so many decisions impulsively. It sounds like you're trying to prevent yourself from making a decision while being emotion emotional. And that ability to put the gas pedal on and off. and control your impulses a bit is incredibly valuable. I would agree with all three of those.

18:05 And I I would just say like even I don't know. The bigger picture takeaway for me is Man, this seems like a underinvestea for myself, but in jet generally at large. is One of the most important things that it doesn't seem like is talked or taught anywhere.

18:20 Yeah, just a reflection. I think um Chris spar uh what what's Chris sparling? Uh sparling. Yeah. Sparling. He said something to you which you told me. Which was amazing, which is uh someone was telling him a story and he's like, Well, but at least I I learned X, Y, and Z about my company going out of business and Chris looks at him very sternly and goes Are you sure that's the right lesson that you should take away from this situation? Uh did you learn the right thing? And so constantly What did I learn? What's the right thing that I learned here? Okay, what'd you learn?

18:50 Uh oh w well, it it's like oh that didn't seem like you've actually had any clarity of thought around that. And then w then a lot of times the things they learn is like I learned, you know, you really can't trust people. It's like, Whoa that's the takeaway you had of this whole thing? Like Yeah, that's the wrong takeaway. You know, like how how many times do people actually have the right takeaway? Becoming very skeptical of this thing that we all nod and agree with, like, yeah, well, you learned, you know. It's like no, you probably didn't learn actually. Actually, in my experience, most people who think that they learned at the end of the thing didn't really learn, or if they learned, they learned some

19:22 You know, the wrong the wrong wrong lesson that's probably not even gonna help them. They do not actually have the right takeaway from the situation. Once you realize that. It's sort of like you know like a a red pill moment. Can I tell you uh a couple f businesses that are fascinating to me right now, and I think I think you're gonna get a kick out of the first one. All right, let's go. So I'm interested. So you actually posted something. You said I don't like running

19:45 I don't care about running. Don't follow running. But there's a story right here in this picture that I wanna talk about. And what was it? It was Cameron Haynes, his son Turn it true it. Is a beast right now. He basically is running marathons at a wicked fast pace, like two hours and thirty minutes, which for anyone who runs marathons, that that's He's that's A, that's fast. B, he's like two hundred and twenty pounds, he's like huge. And C, he's doing it in blue jeans. Is that right?

20:09 That's exactly right. There's a guy who's running Long races, marathons, ultra marathons. He's running'em fast and he's running'em wearing Yep. Like jeans. Not shorts. Not not jean shorts. Like full jeans. And so the re and you're like that right there is a purple cow. And Purple Cow is a book by Seth Godin, and it's one of many books that basically say the same thing, which is like in order to stand out, you have to have it's better to be different than it is better.

20:34 And I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I've been thinking about about that a lot lately lately because we had a guest on And he said something like if you split test everything, you're just gonna have porn. And it was basically I think it was George Mack. Uh and uh it was like this idea that like I don't even know if he said that, but that's great. I think I I he either tweeted it or he said it to us. And you just run an infinite number of A V A B tests, you end up with Pornhub. That that that's gotta be it actually. That's so true. Yeah, if you slit dust everything, it just ends up in porn. But and at and at one at at some point you need to take a stand and you wanna be different and you have to stand out. And it doesn't make sense why you're doing that. Uh, but it's just cool and t the market tends to adjust and like recognize that that is badass. You know, there's uh a billion examples that we could go on what that means.

21:21 But let me give you two that interest me right now. The first. So you're familiar with The Onion, right? The uh the comedy news website. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. Okay. So the Onion was founded in nineteen eighty eight. And it's kinda funny. It's gone through so many different owners. I think it was started at University of Wisconsin as just like a newsletter. So it was originally founded as a funny

21:41 newsletter that made fun of uh like campus life. And Over the years, it's become like a popular magazine and then now a digital magazine where uh they make fun of shit and it's hilarious. And very f like it's kind of interesting that it's been owned by like a variety of people. Uh I think in like two thousand and three, some rich fun hedge fund guy bought it and then they were sold and bought again in two thousand and thirteen. I think if you remember like Geo Media, it was called. They own like Gawker, like a bull crap media company. uh bought it and it wasn't working out. And then eventually in two thousand twenty four, Jeff Lawson, the founder of Twilio, bought it.

22:18 So it's kinda been like one of these things where like wealthy people feel like they need to be like the patron and like steward of Like, you know, like and be the steward of like making fun of stuff that deserves to be made fun of and then that's pretty cool. But Last year they did something very interesting, very purple cali.

22:34 They brought back the the print magazine. And they went really hard on the print magazine. And within a year They already have fifty three thousand paying subscribers. I think it costs ten dollars a month. And they're expecting from that something like six million dollars in revenue this year. Last year they did less than two million dollars in revenue. So A print magazine three X of their revenue.

22:55 And I think that is so cool. I think I've talked about magazines on this podcast a couple of times. But I think magazines are incredibly interesting. Have do you subscribe to any? You know, I've been playing with this, so there's a

23:10 A couple people that are doing this. So I currently have a arena subscription Colossus. So uh awesome. Patrick O'Shaughnessy. Awesome. Who has a podcast basically sort of like expanding His media Empire, whatever whatever you want to call it.

23:27 Uh with long form journalism Like old school print magazine, you know. And it's like beautiful photography, really long form uh stuff. And it's good. I like I I I like the quality of the product on that side. But I don't I don't Subscribe to the physical thing. I I I think they have one.

23:45 Yes, they do. It's new. I think it's only on edition number three, but it's but it's new. So you just subscribe to two, is that right? You any more? I mean that's a lot. Two two is Way over the oh the the Vegas overline of what they thought I had here, uh for magazine subscription. I subscribe to two actually. Uh Popeye magazine, which is a Japanese magazine, actually, and it's called it's like I think the ta the tagline does it It's kind of a gay translation. It's city boy life. But it's like it's sort of like GQ for Japan, where they talk about like clothing and coffee and like urban culture.

24:17 Gotcha. Which I love. And interestingly, I don't know if all Japanese magazines are like this, but it you it it reads backwards. So it doesn't like You don't fold it like this, it's like upside down. So you like f go to the left. And that's and that's kind of interesting. And then the second one is Thrasher Magazine, which is like a skateboard thing that I had when I was a kid that I love. But I just think that magazines are so interesting. And so can I tell you what I would do?

24:38 I thought about doing this. I read the biography of J F K Jr. That was John Kennedy's son and I he actually had a magazine in the eighties and I went and bought the first edition. This is what Sidney Crawford. It was a very it's a very famous uh magazine covert with Sidney Crawford dresses George Washington and it was cool and everything. But what I would do I would call it a newsletter, not in a magazine. And I would literally do it on white paper.

25:01 That is stapled together with like Ten or twenty sheets. And put into an envelope. And I think that I can do something. I've thought about doing this. I think someone could create some type of wealth or Like for all high net worth people.

25:16 Or for tech companies and sell it for around a thousand dollars a year and only do four to eight editions per year. And if I did it on wealthy people, it would all be getting like tips and tactics and strategies and stories on what high net worth people are are doing. Or if I did it on tech companies, I would sell it to the tech company and I would list as many names of the tech companies and explaining what they're doing in a particular industry. as like a round up, sort of like a high school newspaper.

25:43 Yeah, that's interesting. So w you you're just saying physical Sort of take you into a new category. Physical so yeah, so uh I guess I didn't like round that out, but like the purple cow here is no no digital. Only physical. I think nostalgia is like a thing. I think you and I have talked about our own habits about how we're getting sick of Digital. I think everyone is experiencing that. And I think that if someone can actually build a great business, I think what a lot of people do though is they tend to go.

26:11 Flashy, shiny, premium. And I would argue you should go the opposite. You should go like Homemade mom and pop. Almost like a punk rock asine, what it used to be. Exactly what you're pulling out right there. If you put it in a folder like that.

26:25 So this I I I think I've showed you this before, but my guy Diego basically delivers me these I don't know if you can see there's like tabs on the side, right? So he basically prints out this thing. And it's A collection of like The best

26:39 Things to read. So it might be like oh yeah, Howard Marks put out a new memo. This week. It's like w we should read that. We should really digest. We should slow down and read that. Don't make it just chrome tab Number you know, ninety three. Oh, that's open alongside Twitter and a bunch of other dopamine, you know.

26:56 Fast food dispens. Yeah, like Chrome is basically like you know that Coca Cola freestyle machine? That's what basically my my internet browser is. That's what my phone is. There's unlimited options of syrup.

27:09 And water, you know, like Syrup water in bubbles. And that's not really what I wanna be having. And this is like When somebody gets a coconut and they just sh chop off the top. They give put a straw on it and they're like, Here you go.

27:21 And you're drinking out of a coconut. And so he delivers these to me basically like once a month. So like you know, for example in the last one it was Brent B Shore had wrote an annual letter about his um private equity fund and it was basically like the performance of the fund.

27:34 So he knew I'd find that interesting, like oh what have they invested in how how's that fund actually doing? You know, are they doing really well? Are they okay? What what's going on? And then he also has like his like, you know He gets his like war and buffet on and that where he's like very philosophical about life or the markets or whatever, you know, in there. It's uh he knows I enjoy reading that. I think you can charge a lot for that.

27:53 He'll put in like a a science thing. So it'll be like oh yeah, these guys are working on uh Ever a lot of people out there trying to study the um The jeans for s for short sleep. So there's some people like Trump and

28:06 Uh, I think Clinton before this like people who genetically only need five to six hours of sleep. And what an advantage, basically to to you know have three extra hours a day. But still be at full energy. And that there's people actually trying to figure out like

28:20 The way we did Ozempik. And we were able to limit your need for food. Make make you not need more food. Could we make you not need As much sleep. If we studied this, like Oh, that's fascinating. So I'm reading, you know, there's like a science thing in there.

28:33 A briefing. It's a brief. And like if I just productize that thing that he's already giving me, it's basically what you're talking about, right? It's all in the curation, right? It's like you have to it would have to be somebody who is like I trust or knows my taste or you know, like i is is genuinely'cause if The first thing I open, if it's like

28:50 Meh I'm I'm out. I'm out on this altogether, you know? But you can tell a story as to why something should be important. So for example, like the the the sleep thing, that's not like inherently important. But you think it's important because of X, Y, and Z. And you tell that story about why it's important. And what I would do is it or in the first page, I would put directions on how to read. Which is If you have children

29:12 It's after your kids go to bed at eight PM. What, don't turn the T V on and sit there and read this in your living room. If you don't have kids like This is don't go out and on a Thursday read this. for one hour and your life will be better. Like you give like these like really intimate instructions to make someone feel good. And I think that this could be a hit.

29:30 Um, I sent you a link to my friend, I think I've talked about this before, but uh Nev Box. So my friend Neville Madora, he did this thing years ago where he sent people three boxes and he called them three important copyright copyrighting lessons that you need to know. And it was literally just a UPS box with three envelopes in there that had uh paper, like uh printed paper and it was awesome. So should we should we just do this as M FM? Like basically me and you Curate.

29:57 Like you know, two to three things each that we think is whatever with our little editorial note on top of why, you know, the sticky note of like why I think this is worth Paying attention to It could be awesome. So you know, th if a thousand fans who are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year to have like Proper info diet.

30:13 Right. I pay a lot of money to have a proper diet of what food goes in my bot. And I know people that go to an extreme. They'll go straight farm to table. They have their favorite ranches that they source meat from and they'll get vegetables from certain areas at certain seasons and like People have realized like it it matters what you put in changes whatever, you know, what's gonna happen inside your body.

30:34 But our minds were just like, No, no, go ahead, pour like social media sludge right on right on top. Yeah, go ahead. Just top top me off. It's okay if it overflows. I'll just do it and put it. There's all these good analogies for how to sell it. Like there's a lot of like ammo here to like sell this. Oh done, this would actually be kind of fun to do, you know? I think this would be fun. You know, I This is something I like I get these binders every month. Like this one of the best things in my life is getting that.

30:58 And so I guess like why would I not just share A version of that. with other people. It doesn't hurt me to share that with other people. In fact it would help me, I think, because I think these are cool ideas or cool cool things worth sharing. So let me tell you the second one. You're the son of immigrants, so I don't know if this is gonna hit if this experience is gonna hit the same. But in the Midwest in Missouri, where I was raised

31:19 One of the greatest things uh like that I got to experience as a kid. Was getting milk. Delivered to my home. Uh once a week. In a glass bottle. Did you ever experience this as a kid?

31:31 Never. Never. Okay, so there's this company called Oberweiss. It was called Oberweiss Dairy. So Oberweiss was started as a dairy farm in nineteen fifteen, I think in Missouri or Indiana, but it was very midwestern. And they eventually started um they sold their own milk to like their little small town and it expanded, expanded and expanded.

31:53 And it's mostly regional in Missouri and Illinois. So I think they have'em in Chicago and St. Louis. But as a kid Uh, this is where we would get our milk. We would also get our lemonade from there and our ice cream. That was like their their thing. And it felt amazing. Well, this company kept growing and growing and growing. Started in nineteen fifteen. It was now on its fourth generation of family ownership and

32:17 Peak. Revenue I think in two thousand twenty or twenty one. was a hundred and twenty million in revenue. So it was good top line revenue, but it's a hard business. It's it's low margin. And because of a bunch of silly decisions that the management had made. In two thousand twenty four

32:32 It went bankrupt. And a guy who we talked about in the podcast, his name was Hoffman, and in fact one of the early podcasts was pre-pandemic back in when we were in the office. He ended up buying the company and I think he bought the company for twenty one million dollars plus I think he said he was gonna invest another fifteen million dollars into it. Who's Hoffman? Who's this guy?

32:52 David Hoffman, maybe? Is it David. Yeah, I think it's David. Um, he started a recruitment agency that after twenty years was making so much money that he started buying businesses. He bought like A boat cruise business, which is basically like um What are those like things in San Francisco that are like swan?

33:10 Like if uh what are they called? Were they like Boat cruise, it's not like a real cruise, it's like a like a tour in the bay type of like uh like and then he bought like uh blue collar businesses like that, I believe. And he eventually uh Oberweiss, which David Hoffman, he's based in Saint Louis. So for all Saint Louis folks, this is like An interesting brand.

33:32 But I saw that they went bankrupt and I saw that he bought it. And I thought it was very fascinating. And I the reason I think it's fascinating is I think over white milk delivery. I think that could be a thing. I think that you could do you could absolutely make this a wonderful business that people our age, so um in our thirties and and forties, people who have children grew up with something like this, and it's not part of the experience that you and I have at all anymore. you know, we probably just go to Costco or get something like Instacarded or something like that. But

34:01 I actually think that oat milk, almond milk, I think those non dairy milks, I actually think those are like trending downward right now and dairy is up, which it like took a hit over the last decade. And glass. And nostalgia. And I would have an entire campaign around something like

34:18 Making it now like it used to be made way back when, when it was made better. Like I would lean super hard into that. And I then I would upsell with better eggs, better for you, all types of products, eggs, whatever, hopefully higher margin things. But I think I think the milk delivery business and a uh when I was thinking of like uh nostalgic things, I think that could be really fascinating. Where's that land with you? Less good. Um

34:44 Partially because I'm like 'Cause when I'm looking at their thing, they have like They have the dairy delivery, but then they're like breakfast and snacks and dinner and desserts and juices. That's not what you do. That's not true. Expand it into everything. But I can see why you would need to, right? Like what how much money could you really make Just delivering only milk, right? Or only like core dairy di milk and eggs. Like it's just doesn't seem Doesn't seem like it's big enough. Doesn't seem like there's enough uh

35:10 you know, average order value basically to make the whole like logistics worth it. I do think that just building A premier dairy brand? So not like the home delivery part. But being like

35:22 Yo, okay, all of you guys went anti-dairy. Got it. Cool. But if you like rich good dairy We got you.

35:31 And so like, you know, when I go to the grocery store There's these brands, I I don't even know if they do anything differently, right? Like Alexander is like oh we have like Six percent. Milk. I'm like, I don't even know what six percent is, but like, give me that. What is that? Three times better than two percent. And then they put it in a different shape bottle and then there's like

35:48 What's the other ones? Like Strauss Farms or whatever, like There's these it's just b you know, like like every category packaging, but like I think just Tripling down on like rich dairy and like actual high quality dairy.

36:02 I just feel like the grocery store is um Like there's still shelves that need that sort of uh that that need that sort of stuff. And but the the trick is If you actually are operating a farm. It's very different than the kind of like D to C

36:18 D to C repackagers of stuff, you know what I mean? And so if you actually have a story about your, you know, your farm and where you're at and why it's better and like all that stuff, whether it's for For beef. Whether it's for chicken. Uh I think someone somebody came on the podcast that pitch was us for chicken. They're like you should just make

36:33 D the world needs like a better chicken brand. And um like what is the What's the like Snake River Farms for Chicken type of thing? Um I think there's there's that for dairy and for chicken and for beef, for all these staples, you know? Did you see what Cracker Barrel did?

36:47 So they changed their logo, right? Is that the More than that. More than that. They made the inside look like a chip. Chipotle. So like overnight or they've been doing that for a long time and people just start paying attention. You know I haven't been to a cracker barrel in a very long time. Uh But it's like I didn't even is the Cracker Burler a restaurant? I thought it might be like home goods. Like it is No.

37:08 Cracker Barrel, it's like my when we take it's our road trip, uh Destin. It's like when we take road trips, it's where we stop. But it's basically a um So it's a huge chain, it's publicly traded, billions of dollars. And it's a um It's a restaurant that has like chicken and dumplings is like their famous thing. Um but it's definitely like disgusting. Chicken and dumplings, like Asian dumplings. Brother, no. It's like like it's basically like bisquit. You know, remember bisquick? Chicken biscuits and gravy, sort of. It's sort of like biscuits and gravy.

37:39 And they uh but then they have like a huge store where you can buy like crap you don't need and just junk. So you can buy like stickers. Yeah, it's like half it m more like gift shop. It's like it's like borderline gift shop. on the edge of store. Uh but but like and restaurant. Yeah, that's right. So it's like the idea is like They always have a wait because they're crowded and you just go in there and you buy like Totchkies. uh basically like the optics of it. I'm not saying what the reality is

38:07 The optics are that this young, like forty something, thirty year old woman who's now the CEO, she appears as though she's like a yuppie New Yorker. Which is the exact opposite of who the clientele is of Cracker Barrel. It looks like she just kinda came in and like uh behaved in such a way where She's out of touch with the average cracker barrel. She's out of touch with the average cracker who goes a cracker barrel. Lotta barrel, no cracker. Yeah, she does not own like one pair of overalls. Uh so like it it it it it it it appear I'm not again, I don't know the reality. I'm just saying that's what it looks like. And there the stock just like crashed after she made this announcement. And uh

38:52 But there is something about that where it's like, dude Don't Don't fix this stuff. It's supposed to look disgusting. That's a feature. That's not a bug. It's supposed to look like a filthy restaurant. Right, right. Worse is better here. Um All right, what do you got?

39:06 Alright, so Before this podcast I spent probably the last hour Reading a profile on Alpha School and What's the name of Joe Lamont? Dude, we were on that early, but we didn't have a lot of inf information on'em and and they explained why Joe Lamont hadn't done an interview in twenty five years.

39:23 So there's more Info out now about Alpha. This is We're now treading in the waters of the unknown a little bit,'cause it's a little bit mysterious. Plus there's just it's new.

39:36 Plus you haven't been there in person, plus who knows. Well say who Joe is. All right. So Joe Lamont is basically like a software entrepreneur who's super, super successful, like ten billion dollar net worth type of type of situation. Uh, he dropped out of college his senior year at Stanford, I believe. He starts trilogy software. Trilogy software was basically like an enterprise sales system of some kind. I still don't entirely know what they did after re all by research on it. It's like before my time. It's like all right, cool. Like Like the analogy that I think I heard is like if you're an airplane company and you need to buy lots of parts to build your airplane, it would help you decide which

40:13 components to purchase. That that's that's the best I I could tell. But it became huge and he it was basically like Him and Microsoft were like recruiting the best talent. Him, Microsoft, and Dell. They were he was the type of guy he was when he was like twenty eight, he was on the Forbes list of richest Americans. Exactly. So he was the youngest guy on the Forbes list, Forbes four hundred. He was worth like five hundred million dollars at that stage. He then also creates

40:37 Uh private equity firm. Called I think ESW Capital or something like that. And basically starts buying small so small software companies. Uh uh that are cash flow y type companies and then Similar to constellation software.

40:50 basically bought like hundreds of these uh companies and then you know that's now a big deal. Which I think I think I think he's he has a lot of mystery because allegedly one of the tactics is that he would buy dying software companies, fire everyone, outsource it to India And just acknowledge that it was dying and not invest in it and hire the cheapest people. Which it's not inherently wrong, but it's not maybe the thing that you want to brag about all the time when it's software hospice. Yeah. So whatever. He's he's Obviously mega mega successful.

41:21 Um again worth sort of like tens of billions of dollars. One of the richest guys in the world. He um Recently his thing that he got obsessed with is called Alpha School. So the story here is that um

41:35 From what I can understand. There's a woman who used to work for Trilogy Software. She and her husband, um I think her name's McKenzie Pryson, uh they create A school first for their own kids. Um, and they kind of are like inspire they're kind of motivated because of the f following problem, which I agree with the the problem statement entirely.

41:56 So uh you know, if you look at the world's greatest, you know, the greatest people that that um That have accomplished things in the world. So whether it's like you know, m Mozart or Beethoven, they're composing symphonies at age five, right? Or it's Alexander the Great. He like conquered most of the world.

42:14 By the time he was twenty two, started at sixteen. There's many, many, many examples of people who at a very young age were capable of a do of doing a lot. And so you know there was a central question of like, why don't we have more Alexanders? Not like conquerors per se, but people who at a young age are able to do a lot. And if you look at Einstein, and you look at Alexander, you look at like Marcus Aurelius.

42:36 One of the things about a lot of these sort of great achievers is that the way they learned was not in a traditional school, but was through direct one on one tutoring from a sort of wise mentor. So like Socrates, Plato, you know, that that sort of that that lineage of One on one tutoring. Like a like a like apprenticeship. A little bit like apprenticeship, but they're not working for the person. They're just daily study, daily tutoring.

42:59 One on one with a master. And um, there's all these studies that have happened over the years of what is the best way to teach. You know, like I think we would all agree we would love education to be. more effective. We'd all love to improve education. It's like super high leverage. If you can educate people better. You know.

43:15 The world prospers. So How do you do it? And for a long time there's been this thing called the two sigma problem. Have you seen this Bloom's two sigma problem? According to Wikipedia. It's um

43:25 The two sigma problem, this one on one mentorship, about ninety percent of tutored Tutored students. attained a level of achievement reached by only the highest twenty percent. So basically, um you are almost guaranteed to be in the top twenty percent if you use this one on one tutoring methodology. Correct.

43:43 And so for a long time it's been the case. All right now. What's changed? AI has changed. So now with AI the idea is Any kid with a tablet An iPad, you know, whatever. Can have a Tutor.

43:56 That is fully Designing custom lessons plans on the fly. For each Student. perfectly tailored to their current current levels of expertise. So there's other there's other parts of learning science, you know, for example

44:09 You wanna not Pass people until they have mastery of a concept because otherwise they don't have a sh they have a shaky foundation. So the problem with traditional school is You pass if you get a C. A C is about you know, seventy percent. Or better. Well

44:22 What they've shown is that you if you get a person to seventy percent or seventy two percent Basically their s rate of learning as they progress will always like decrease because Seventy percent was actually a bit of a shaky foundation. They didn't actually understand it. So when they tried to learn the next thing and the next thing It was too wobbly of a foundation and it collapses.

44:40 Whereas if you get them to ninety percent. Mastery of subject. They'll do really well. So one thing is like classrooms today. It's taught to get everybody to seven you know, at least seventy to move forward. But the problem is you actually want people at ninety to move forward in terms of percentage.

44:55 The second part is like, you know, you want people to be tested at a level that is You know, not so easy that it's boring. It's too not challenging enough. But not so challenging that it's too hard. I don't even understand. I'm drowning. Right. And so finding that like you know that peak

45:10 Middle zone where I'm being tested enough. But not s push so far that I'm gonna You know, go over the cliff. That would be great.

45:19 But you can't do that in a classroom because every kid's at a different spot. So, you know, you just sort of You you sort of keep everybody comfortable. Now that means that the smartest kids are not challenged. And it m means that the kids that are the furthest back are just utterly confused. So you're kind of going for this like average. Um you you teach sort of the average of the lowest common denominator.

45:38 I'm just like oversimplifying everything, but this is the This is the complaint of normal school. Okay, so what is Alpha School doing? Basically it's a school in Austin. Where K through eight. You go and you do two hours on an iPad.

45:52 And the idea is that you're two hours on an iPad with your AI tutor. We'll teach you Not only everything you needed to know. As that for whatever grade level you're in. But you'll learn double that.

46:03 So you basically are doing You learn double. But in only two hours. Okay, so that's the that's the promise. And then what do you do the rest of the day? They basically just have like random life skill workshops. So

46:15 Go rock climbing. Hey. Build a piece of IKEA furniture. So they say um life skill means Public speaking, entrepreneurship, outdoor education. These experiences build grit, creativity, and adaptability. Yeah. And so like for example

46:31 They uh they did this thing where where and they they called the teachers guides. So the guides were like they had a a group of second graders and they go, All right. Let's come up with five impossible things. Impossible. For a second grader to do. So the first one was

46:46 To run a five K In under thirty five minutes, I think it was? So it's like run a five K in under thirty five minutes. So it's like Can your second grader even run a five K? Like most Sengards could not even run a five K.

46:59 I mean it's a that's a pretty long run for a second grader. Second grader, you know, is seven year old. Um And so they asked all the students, Do you think you could do it? Nobody raised their hand. They asked all the parents, do you think they can your kid can do it? Nobody raised their hand. And so that became one of the missions, one of the workshops, one of the impossible missions. We're gonna train like a uh a seven a seven year old how to run a five K. That was it.

47:22 So what they did was The first day, they just walked the five K. They said, All right, you've You've completed it. You f you at least know that you can go the distance. The distance is is a manageable distance.

47:34 And so they did that for like a couple days. Then then then they just said, All right, cool, we're gonna We're gonna try to run the first quarter mile. Or for the first quarter of it. And then we're gonna walk the rest. Great. They did that for a couple of days. Then they then they did half half of it running. Walk the rest, set three quarters of it running, then walk the rest.

47:51 Until they could run the whole thing. By the end of the um Like couple months. Not only did one second grader do it, every single second grader did it. And some of them did it in under thirty minutes. And they were basically they were like, Here's the you know, so they had these like five impossible, you know, like challenges. They they made them want to do it.

48:07 And the reason they're able to do this is because They're doing all their learning in just a two hour window so they can spend the rest of their time doing things that are Yeah, interesting life life type stuff for themselves. Well, and they're teaching them how to like break down a problem thirty five minutes. So we'll start small and Those of confidence. Yeah. I mean I see I I that's amazing. I totally see the value.

48:24 Seems kind of amazing, right? Just things that are just fascinating about this. So Joe Lamont pulled out a billion dollars from his companies. To invest in Alpha School.

48:36 He then said this is the best product I've ever built by far. Better than anything I ever did in a trilogy Better than anything I've ever done since. This is so much fun. app that he's building called Time Back. And so it it's basically like a custom

48:51 A I tool. That basically you are On your your iPad you're learning. And or your your little your tablet uh laptop you're learning and it is doing two things. One, there's a little waste meter in the corner. So just'cause the camera's watching you and recording the screen at all times.

49:08 So it sees if the kid just leaves, just like gets up and it's what he used at his companies. It's what he used at Trilogy, right? Like at his uh or when he would like buy these companies. He was known for having like pretty extreme uh monitoring productivity monitoring to stuff. Like controversially Extreme, right? That's awesome. This is so cool. I didn't real I saw the article. And I started reading about his I wanted to know about the business stuff and the article was like, Joe's not gonna talk to you about business stuff. He uh he doesn't want to talk about trilogy, EWS, he doesn't want to talk about any of that, but he will talk about Alpha School and I was like

49:42 Well shit. That's like what I want to know. Um, and so when it started getting the school stuff, I I was like, uh, I don't know if I want to read that. But this sounds so much cooler than I thought. I didn't realize how big it this was going to be. And I'm on their website And my kid isn't school age yet. But I'm thinking I would absolutely want them to go to this. Uh uh would you send them Yours? Dude, I wish this was around us.

50:03 Because um So I I'll just give you like my little side side stories here. All right, just like personal personal life experiences. So my kids were home this summer. And it was our first summer break, like my daughter is uh she just did What they call T K, like pre K.

50:16 So she just finished that she's gonna be a kindergartner this year? And my son was about to be a pre uh pre K student. And then we have a baby. Small. But I had this mission, I was like, Okay, three things I'm gonna do this summer. We're gonna take uh

50:29 Two epic trips with their cousins. 'Cause I was like, that was always like core memory for me. Yeah. I'm gonna teach him to swim? 'Cause they love just they love to do it. It's summer anyways, plus it's like a good life skill to have.

50:40 And uh you know, I I haven't like taken the time to like actually teach them to swim, but I can do that. And then I'm gonna teach'em to read. Uh because this I'd notice I was like All of the like schools we send them to, like School is

50:53 A very generous word for what's actually happening, right? Like it's a It's by and large babysitting. Take care. And I think this is true, you know, for generally for most schools, like, you know, even through high school, college, like there's a lot that's a big aspect of what school is.

51:07 Uh but when they're little, it's very much that. Like uh Yeah. I would ask them kinda like what they learned. It's like, Well, they mostly just like played and then they'll learn like one thing, but like, you know, they can't do math or they can't read. And I'm like, Are they Teaching you that? They're like, no, no, no, they're just doing letters. I'm like, but you know the letters. You know, all the letters you could write already.

51:23 And they're like, Yeah, but you know So just teaching at that pace. If I want you to learn anything, I'm gonna have to do it outside of this. So I Discover this app called Mentava. Men Tava.

51:35 Go to mentava.com. Now this is a learning app. That was so expensive, I was just actually offended by the price when I saw it. I don't know if you've ever like downloaded apps for iPad for kids stuff, but it's usually like I don't know. Five dollars to unlock the thing. Maybe it's like a s

51:50 Seven dollars a month. You know, if it's like really good, like you know education. A$500 a month per kid. So it's I'm paying a thousand dollars a month for this app. And what does but this app has a very simple promise, which is

52:05 We could teach any three to five year old to read. If they just spend I don't know. fifteen minutes a day doing this thing for a couple of months. Dude, talk about value pricing. Your old boss, Emmett Shear, he's a investor. Emmet is, you got to ask for that discount code. So I was like, wow, this is uh incredibly expensive, but I'm incredibly.

52:24 So I um I get my kids on it. They've been doing it all summer. And uh sure enough, it actually is pretty effective. And like I would say the app itself is incredibly janky. The it's like the polish is janky, the animations are janky, like everything's janky. It's not like the best app.

52:40 But the core idea, which is like It's a simple value problem. I can teach your kids how to read if they do this thing for like ten to fifteen minutes a day. And like they just broke down reading.'Cause if you think about what is reading, I think there's like Forty five different like sounds you need to be able to make. So it's like forty five sound combinations.

52:57 Uh which is like you know You have to learn that like, you know, A is ah and B is B. And then you have to learn that like C K is Together.

53:05 You have to learn like those sound for so first they teach them all the building blocks. And then they show them how they they work when they're put together in words. And like sure enough, m both my kids are starting to read and I'm just like you can't You don't get cartoons or anything else until you do your reading today. Right. Really very simple trade. And they like doing it. It's kind of a game and they they enjoy doing it. And by the way, the investors, if you go to their investor page, it's like Uh like literally everyone who's been on this pod like every investor has been on our podcast. Yeah, I know.

53:31 Uh, but it's five hundred dollars because he's comparing it. I don't know, they wanted it to be is the real answer. It doesn't need to be five hundred dollars. But they're comparing it to like uh tutoring, human tutoring. So they're like oh it's five times cheaper than a hu a human tutor. It's like okay, cool, but it's Also five hundred times more than, you know. A normal learning app on the iPad, which is my frame of reference coming into this.

53:52 But I I've now seen the value of this type of like personalized learning. Because in let's say they're go they're playing this game. If they don't understand that um You know, S H is sh sound. If they fail, like if they get the get it wrong three times, they lose that little game level. it knows that okay, you just don't understand SH. So don't you don't just replay that level, you hop back three levels.

54:15 And I'll reteach you that building block. to make sure that you understand it. And I'm gonna get you to repeat it, you know, in these full I'm gonna use five different games. as space repetition to teach you these same, you know, same few few concepts. But it makes me nervous to have my kid on an iPad.

54:30 No, I I I mean sure, maybe uh it's a personal personal thing, but um Dude, my kids are on devices all the time. I've l I've that that I've let go of that rope. That that rope is like, you know What is it that like that horse is out of the barn already? So now it's just a question of like, how bad is it? You know, uh w what are you doing with your time there? And so what it okay, bringing back to Alpha School, what are you saying? I believe that they're gonna be able to do this. I believe that they're gonna be able to if somebody actually

54:57 With like The guy took a billion dollars out and he has I think a three hundred person Like AI lab. that he's building his own little open AI.

55:07 that he's building to basically like custom train these models, build applications on top of them. And I think this is an insane thing that's going to happen and I think it's going to take over. Is my my like My unhedged By hun unhedged true belief.

55:21 Is that something like this is gonna exist and this is the best bet I've seen so far. I don't think it's gonna take over. I think it's gonna be a massive success. I see like so many reasons why someone would protest this. Um, which like There's what we've talked about going the opposite of AI and technology. There's a massive contingency of people that will go into that category. One of our good friends

55:43 sends their k their kids to a new thing that I've never heard of called Nature School. Have you heard of Nature School? My sister runs a nature school. And I don't entirely know what it means other than you're outside and it involves nature. I I guess that's it. But there's uh but there's like an entire contingency of people that want to go that route. But I do think that Alpha School will be a massive hit. And I am interested in s like when I was reading it just while we were been talking, I'm like I'm open to this. This sounds very intriguing. Does it help you get into college or do are they like anti college or they didn't get to that point yet? No, it does. They're high school. They have a high they go all the way up through high school and they're like, Yep, our high school students like crush the SAT and A C T compared to it they're like

56:21 Basically they use these like um Pretty standardized metrics called map. about like basically how much you learn. So let's say the y it's like uh You do a test and it's supposed to be the average third grader is at like A one hundred score in

56:35 Math. Well, by the end of a normal semester of school They would have gone up seven points. But with Alpha School, they go up fifteen points. Well then of well but of course that compounds'cause they did that

56:46 in you know, shorter amount of time, plus then when they enter the next level. They'll grow again. So they're growing. Like by a bigger amount and at a faster rate. And so you know, obviously that compounds the longer you would do it. Dude, you know how like you don't I don't know if this is true, but the story is like Magic Johnson became a billionaire not through basketball, but through like franchising McDonalds.

57:05 You said you wanted to open up a school. Like you could be the biggest franchise. Well, I don't even know if you have to franchise it. I think you just l literally license the technology. Yeah. Similar. Yeah. It's just do I want to do it for young kids versus like college. You know, like I'm more interested in college, but Because young kids have their own set of problems.

57:22 You know what's really complicated. Well, yeah. Um but it uh I mean Like that's super rewarding. Running my company Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses. And I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets. Emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other.

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58:47 You and I So we're both in our mid uh thirties. It sort of feels like one of the last eras in which high school was the same way that it was for like the trailing fifty years. And that now the current high s it's radically different. So I remember when I remember I think I was a sophomore in high school when the iPhone came out. And if you the teachers didn't even know to ban it because no one no one even had one. And I think Facebook came out when I was

59:12 I think in high school or maybe like in eighth grade. And so none of these problems were particularly like problems. Like online bowling wasn't a thing. And Yeah.

59:23 When I see what high schoolers are like now, I do not envy them. Uh i the the the way that children are going to be raised from Uh like five to eighteen years old. It's significantly. Different than how the trailing let's say

59:38 Probably sixty or seventy years. uh were raised. And I think that we don't give them enough credit because I think that the systems that they have to go through now is significantly more difficult. And I'm very eager to see how like Uh some rat like if you told me about the school

59:54 twelve years ago, we would have said you're insane. What are you talking about? Like, you know what I mean? And so I'm very eager to see how parents are gonna deal with not being able to um empathize with what their children are going through. Do you know what I mean? Like we all had the same thing going to high school. Our parent when we had well, m being an immigrant, maybe it was slightly different, but it was like uh your parents could kinda guide you on what to how to act. But now it's way different.

1:00:17 I think for me it w already was different. You know, my parents had an arranged marriage, right? So like Imagine like their relatability to like The dating scene and high school prom you know, like do they do they understand any of that stuff? Like not really, right? Um, did they understand like

1:00:32 You know, they grew up in India. So it's like Everything was different for how we were growing up. So I guess like that is just sort of the immigrant experience. I don't know, you just sort of do your best to hang on. Um, check out these two pictures I just texted you. I want to tell you about one more example of this, like Alternative schooling. Okay, so um

1:00:48 You just sent me a photo of it looks like a warehouse. Someone's building something and then it's a bunch of kids Just hanging on a field, right? Yeah, so the first picture of the wear out. So this is basically my brother in law. Uh Sanjeev, who was on the podcast recently. When I went to visit him in Vegas this summer.

1:01:03 I'm like great and he's been in just commercial real estate for a long time and he's a builder. And he's been doing that. He's tremendously successful. And He's like, Yeah, you know, I did something that's kinda crazy. And I go, What? He goes

1:01:15 So I just bought this building in downtown Las Vegas. Um Like a ten million dollar building. And I'm gonna He goes i he basically had this experience with his oldest son where he was like

1:01:28 You know, my son He's really smart, but he's bored at school. 'Cause again, like he already knows the stuff they're teaching. And is so he just he just disengages'cause it's like not that interesting. And he really loves baseball. He's on like the national. He got picked for like the national team of his age.

1:01:45 And he's like But because he's at school for you know, like eight hours a day by the time he gets off school and it's time for baseball practice. He's like kinda tired. He just does it for an hour or two and then he like comes home and he wants to just chill, eat, play video games and go to sleep. And so he's like we are gonna home school him this year, but he's like

1:02:03 Instead of home schooling where he's just sitting in our house. Uh, you know, he just rolls out of bed and it's like, Hey, I'm at school now, whatever and like we're busy parents. What are we gonna teach? How do we do this? He basically created like a we work for kids to home school. So check this out. So what he's doing is called the Grind Academy or something in Las Vegas. Basically a sports prep school. Where you home school your so the kids are well the kids are home schooling, so they go to this

1:02:28 They go to the the idea would be that they would go to the school They'd spend, I don't know, two to four hours A day on like the education using like alpha school type of software. Right. So there's they're all doing the they're all doing their their curriculum, you know, on their computer or their iPad. There's a teacher sitting there who's there to help in case you don't understand something.

1:02:47 There's like a tutor available that will help you unblock get unstuck. And then when you're done with your work or like you know, but when you start your day, you go there. You do like a morning condition like a morning workout. So you get like a a morning workout in. Then you do your school stuff. You you grab your smoothie, your protein shake, you go upstairs, you do your school stuff. And then you have your afternoon skill specific, sports specific training.

1:03:08 You're getting like two a day stuff. You got like pro coaches and like Top level like strength and conditioning coaches to come in and be like doing this for kids. It's like IMG. Is that what it's called? Yeah. So he's basically building IMG. But just as a private school for like you know middle schoolers. Like youth, you know, youth. And I was like

1:03:25 This is a crazy move. I would never do this. 'Cause he'd actually been in the gym business. He had built an eighty two store chain. So he's already been in the gym business for and he's like done well in that, but also knows all the pains of scaling a gym. He's like, you know I I didn't just want to like s create a gym for kids or create a gym at all.

1:03:42 He's like, but you know, for my kids, he's like, I just got tired of like The stuff they're learning in school was too slow, too boring, and too not relevant to like what's going on in the world today. He's like You know, I would rather them come in here, they would learn their math, their reading, their writing. And then take like a workshop on starting a YouTube channel or a podcast. Or, you know, learn like, you know, what's going on with AI. Like what what's going on with drone tech? How do you do what is that stuff? How do you how do you learn about that? Like where the future is going. Like

1:04:07 Marketing classes, business classes, like Open up a lemonade stand. He's like, I don't know, there's other ways you can learn. Outside of just this uh You know, like the the traditional sort of school model. And so he's like, dude, I think that model's dead. And so he's created his own private school. And the two photos sent you, that's in thirty days. So

1:04:22 I went there and I was like Oh wow, this is like a kind of a raw building. And he's like, Yeah, I'm opening up in thirty days. And I was like what?

1:04:30 Does he have anyone who's enrolled? Yeah, so forty kids are enrolled right now. How much does it cost? Uh it's I don't know how much it costs exactly. I think the first cohort is like a you know, whatever, like More like five to seven grand a year. Um, but it'll get up to like you know, when it when he once he has the full school built out, rolling

1:04:49 And he's like kind of proven his model. Um it'll be closer to like a twenty thousand dollar a year, you know. Basically prep program. This is crazy. This is crazy. Is that is that insane?

1:05:00 Yeah, my kids aren't there yet. This is overwhelming like this whole idea of like guides. I've heard this so many times. Ramon sent his kid to a school Where they had a guide. Right. I found it very I'm not open to things very easily.

1:05:16 But There could be a better'cause like the current way is a great it's very this is a this is um A very scary thing because it's it's your it's your children and it's uh very overwhelming to like learn about all this and I don't know what the right way is, but there has to be a better way to do it. I'm visibly stressed out right now. Yeah, I'm stressed out about art. Does it stress you out? Because obviously you care about this more. But like your A B test it you should send one kid one way and one kid to the other way. Just it just test it. But

1:05:43 But it yes. It's an imp it's like a super important thing. But first of all, like none of these things are permanent, right? Like our friend who sent their kid to like one of these alternatives, he just took him out like after a semester if he didn't like he didn't feel like it was working for him, right? It's it's yeah, it's not the end of the world. I uh one we have a kid, uh we have a buddy who went to one of these schools and I asked him, I go, Hey, are you uh he was in eighth grade, are you gonna ask any girls out? And he's like They're all nine b nonbinary, so uh they're not it. I was like, Oh my God, man, I'm so happy I don't have to deal with this. This is a very stressful

1:06:16 A very special situation. I found it very special. I was like, Oh well I don't have any advice. I'm sorry. Like I I don't know what to tell ya. Dude, the the bar is so low. Once you realize like the like Once you just go sit in the the current like

1:06:32 Status quo. You're like, okay, what's my real risk here? Like my real risk is so low because This current experience, you know, it's not like I'm trading something that's really good for something that might be better. It's something that is

1:06:46 Pretty dissatisfying and it's like well Do you want to try something that could be better that sort of logically makes more sense? Dude, I went to uh do have you y you have you ever been around Catholic stuff? Have you like hung out with a nun? No, dude. I went I went to Catholic school. I went well, you like see you don't even see'em anymore. They're like rare. I went to Catholic school. I had nuns teaching me And like they were the convent and like it was Sister Mary, Sister Teresa. Yeah. They're all like Sister Mary, Sister Teresa, Sister Catherine.

1:07:17 And um they would hit me if I misbehaved. Um and that's a pretty that's m a much more radical experiment. It's like we're gonna be. That's not radical. That's just how it's been done. It's it's it's not radical in the sense that it's not new. Yeah. It's not that it's new. I guess what I'm saying is like Dude, I loved it. I went to an all boys. Acceptable, then I think this should be acceptable, you know. I w Oh, I agree. I went to an all boys college prep school, like a high school uh Catholic school. It sounds fancier than it is. It was It was like a very blue collar. Was it called her or something like that? No, no, no, no. It was called St. Louis University High School. It was an all boys' school.

1:07:52 And uh it was fantastic. I loved it. I can't say enough good things. I enjoyed my experience so much. And I would have I was a jerk. I was a jerk in high school and I would have a teacher kinda get in my face and yell at me if I did something wrong. And it was exactly what I needed. I loved that strict disciplinary uh experience. And it and it had a big impact on me. So I my the reason I don't have too much empathy for

1:08:15 Wanting to change is because I enjoyed my experience. Had I gone to a public school, I think it would have been a lot different. I can't imagine a public school with five or six thousand kids. Uh that I feel like I would I'm so intimidated of that of the idea of that. Right. I mean I went fr I went to a high school in Houston, Texas that was like that four thousand kids I remember like if you just walked into the bathroom, there was like an ear piercing parlor basically with door in there. They would just get piercing in the bathroom. It was insane. Dude, it sounds like prison. There was like yeah, there was scheduled fights of like which Like there's just scheduled fights. It's like oh these guys are gonna fight these guys today. And it's like that was just like a pretty weak UFC two o two oh two. It's like all right, it's happening this week.

1:08:55 Dude, my experience was so harmonious. Halfway through high school My parents ship me off to China and we all moved to Beijing and I finished high school. In the International School of Beijing. And now I'm in a Hundred fifty percent expat only. I'm international school.

1:09:12 Did they could have had like two totally different experiences, you know, was the second one good? Oh, it was amazing. Best thing that happened to me was to to have that. Yeah. Why? Well, first I needed a fresh start. It was Chinese kids or or Americans? No, it was mostly like it was a mix'cause like you You you had to have a foreign passport to attend. You couldn't be a Chinese local in a ten, no matter how much money you had.

1:09:33 You had to have enough money where you had dual You had a passport of Singapore or somewhere else to come. So a lot of the kids were Asian'cause then maybe it was like Korea, Japan, whatever. A lot of you know. Australians, you know, Europeans, Americans, whatever.

1:09:46 And um It was I mean it was great for me only because like a change of environment Even if the environment is not better is great just because it Gives you.

1:09:56 Like blank like a clean slant. You know, to to just be like, Oh, okay, cool. Like socially I was like this before, but now I could be different. Yeah, like Sports wise, here's what I was doing before, here's what I'm doing now. You know, whatever, you could you could do it all there. Uh plus I don't know, like

1:10:10 It was just a better school overall. Like there was just no Like I don't know. I don't know it w I don't know how to explain it. It was just like a higher quality everything. The food was higher quality. The teachers were higher quality. The classes were higher quality. It was a rich kid's school. Like what do you w what do you want? It's gonna be It's gonna be that, you know?

1:10:31 All the companies pay for it. So the parents don't usually pay for it. Like When the company moves you They're like, all right, we're taking your kids out of like, you know, American public school or whatever. will have to give you an equivalent of an English schooling experience over there. So the companies pay for it. That's pretty sick. I would

1:10:47 I've I've dreamed of like m moving away for a year or two with my with my children. I think that would be awesome. That's pretty badass. I would highly, highly, highly recommend it. I think it's one of the best things anybody could do is go China's not on the list. China's on the l China's on the uh that's on the list.

1:11:03 But you know, like Paris is pretty dope or something like that. Um what it's Scott Galloway said, America's the best place to make money, Europe's the best place to spend it. So that that that sounds pretty good. Um All right, that's it. That's it. All right. That was a great pod. Someone in the comments said, um Sam and Sean. We're so uh we like these guests and all that stuff, but we just want

1:11:23 Brainstorming. We just want old school ideas, old school episodes. That's what this episode was. Hope you enjoyed it. Alright, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I'll put my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion dollar moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist, and with billion dollar moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders, and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated. long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like my first million,

1:12:17 Check out billion dollar moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again. Billion dollar moves.

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