$10M Business ideas w/ The Most Interesting Guy In Tech

0:00 We call you the most interesting man in tech. And I stand by it. One of the reasons you're great is because you made money in all these random ways that I wouldn't have even ever thought to. You've got a$450 million fund bounce. He also started Thistle, a food delivery business that's like doing over$100 million a year. You're an SF, running around like rich people, weirdos. What's hot? What are the kids into? Everyone. I'm tired. And everyone's got their dealer. I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I was like, so like how do you plan to be legit with this whole thing? And he basically pulls up a picture of the like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy is like, yeah, we're pretty sure we're gonna be able to get some things through. Say it with me. Crony capitalism. One of my best friends is comp

0:44 Completely jacked and he does not really work out. He does EMS. It's gonna go viral because it's gonna be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need. Dude, I'd rather take drugs. This is the only podcast where you're gonna get AI Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean the the range is incredible. We're gonna get canceled for this episode. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, let's travel next to the game. So one of the reasons you're great is because You made money in all these Random ways that I wouldn't have even ever thought to you like created a domain auction thing and made millions of dollars that way. I think you did like a fee fighters thing as you involve the card fee fighters thing. Yeah.

1:27 Credit card processing. You've got a four hundred fifty million dollar fund now and you're probably you know, if anything is in fintech, I go to you as basically like hey, gut check, is this smart or is this dumb?'Cause it's easy to fool me, it's hard to fool you. He also started thistle. Yeah. Yeah, he just started a helped start a uh a food delivery business that's like doing over a hundred million dollars a year. So all these different spaces. The guy got married in the metaverse that a taco about whatever the hell that means. We call you the most interesting man in tech. And I stand by and I have yet to meet a more interesting man in tech. Welcome. Shield back for round three or four.

1:59 So happy to be back. Um, also I gotta tell you, since the last time I was on So many things have happened as a result of me being on. Like what? Okay, so

2:08 I was hiring a chief of staff. And A bunch of people applied, but one person applied and the person who got the job, my current chief of staff. Is a huge fan of MFM. And she was debating leaving her current thing, which w which was paying her a lot more money.

2:23 Her her previous thing. And Then she was like Fuck it. I got the opportunity to work with this guy who was on MFM. I'm gonna take it. And so she my chief of staff joined because of MFM.

2:35 That's a lot of pressure for you. I hate when people say that when they're gonna like they're like, I'm willing to take this big pay cut to work for you. I'm like It's a lot of pressure. Last time I was on I talked about wanting to get better at like photography and video with AI. And this guy Jacob reached out and he was like, I can help you. And we went out for like

2:56 hours in New York shooting He he showed me all this cool stuff. And then I mean I Your audience must be like the nicest people. out there because

3:07 Also, like recently I went back and looked at the YouTube comments, usually a Cesspool. But your guys are so nice. Everybody that listens to your podcast Is super nice. Nobody was like That guy has a big nose or whatever whatever people would say on YouTube comments. Everyone was like

3:23 Just Talking me up, talking you guys up. It's great. Alright, the bots will work and keep paying them. We got I we wanted to brainstorm with you. So we asked you to bring some ideas, businesses that you think are interesting would be cool to start. I think we said Ten million dollar ideas, which I don't even know really what that means, but here we are.

3:42 She'll brought five ideas. Let's run through some of the ideas and then I want to talk about some Oh actually, wait, wait, before we go to the ideas. You had a great thing on there's this idea of this fifty year mortgage. And you're my finance guy, you're my fin tech guy. Yeah. Fifty year mortgage. Trump is like, You know what? More years the better. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? I I don't really follow the news, so uh I I mean Trump. Sure so

4:05 So right now Uh, thirty year mortgage is generally the maximum in United States. So you pay off a home over thirty years. Trump wants to address the affordability crisis, which is a real problem. And it said, What we should do is extend mortgages to fifty. So you have fifty years to pay it off instead of thirty years.

4:22 I think it's a terrible idea because Basically what happens is you give people more money, so the monthly the month the amount that they pay monthly goes down a little bit. But actually you're not earning equity in the home. After

4:36 Like The average length of time that somebody our age stays in their home is relatively low. And by that time they'll earn no equity in the home. Or almost no. I I think the average person spends something like six or seven years right now. It's not a lot. Yeah, I think that's right. Six and a half years. And then a thirty year mortgage, I think the way it's set up right now, something like the first fifteen years is just interest. Is that right?

4:59 It's not just interest but you're earning you're not You're not earning that much equity. And so here you'd be earning less. But the thing is actually switching from thirty to fifty It doesn't change the payments. That much.

5:10 And the real problem is the thirty year mortgage kind of worked well for And America back then, which was like You bought a house in your upper twenties. And then you retired. Five sixty ish.

5:23 And you owned your home outright. So even today For when people retire, the median American when they retire. Almost eighty percent of their net worth. Is the equity in their home.

5:36 So Yeah, you your home is your retirement plan, right? Your home is retirement plan? And and part of that is for Americans You can't spend it.

5:45 Like if you could spend it, you would spend that money, but because it's in your home, you can't spend it. So I I don't think the fifty year mortgage really solves anything. And actually probably what it does is drives asset prices higher. So Japan did this in the eighties. They They had a bunch of problems, like interest rates were zero.

6:03 And asset prices went through the roof at one point. A single property In Tokyo. was worth more than all of the real estate in California. Like it was an insane bubble. And part of that was they extended mortgage times to fifty years. And actually some people got a hundred year mortgage. So like your grandkids are on the hook for the problem that you buy.

6:26 And asset prices went through the roof and then Leverage is nasty when it collapsed when prices drop a little bit. You're You're pretty screwed. So Home prices have actually gone down.

6:37 So much so that they're still half of what they were in nineteen eighty nine. In Japan. In Japan. Yeah. But did you say one property was worth more than which property? So okay, so it was the land Value. under the Imperial Palace.

6:53 And so that's It's about a half. A half square mile. of space in Tokyo. So okay, so maybe maybe maybe a bad idea. Yeah, I uh from what I understand, because

7:05 When rates drop here. Basically the sellers just raise the price'cause they're like, Oh, you're you're buying not really on the whole price. It's like what do I owe per month and what can I qualify for? If I can qu if my monthly payment is X. I can afford that. Yeah, exactly. So what happens is when your monthly payment goes down, whether it's because you stretch the payments over fifty years or the rates go down.

7:27 What happens is the sellers just can justify a higher price and it didn't affect anything. You just end up paying more because I think In a thirty year mortgage I think you pay whatever the home price is plus something like what is it, fifty percent or something is'cause the interest compounds over thirty years. And if it's fifty years, you're gonna basically pay almost double the the the the list price of the home because you pay so much more in interest. Yeah, exactly. So I think the solution like we do have an affordability crisis, no question.

7:56 But the solution is not to induce demand. Because if you induce demand what happens, you have the same fixed amount of properties, you're just making prices go up. So the solution is creating more supply, like making it easier to permit. Like

8:11 All this kind of reform to build more housing, make it Make it cheaper to build housing. I was listening to this person who had a different take on affordability. He was like, Are things less affordable today than they were in the sixties? He goes, Look. Here's the deal. In the nineteen sixties, your version of a family vacation was a road trip to a state park once a year.

8:31 Okay. You never traveled. You didn't go on a plane. You lived in a eighteen hundred square foot home in Dayton, Ohio. Okay. Like you had a crappy car, you didn't eat out, and you never took vacation. Now young people today, they want more things, which is totally fine. They want uh to go international once a year. They want to go on these cool trips. They want fancy phones. A new home, even the the the average home nowadays, is a new home with two ACs and a a a beautiful build with a really nice kitchen and a really nice bathroom. And they're like Is it more is it are things less affordable or do people just want more stuff? And uh it was like it was like an interesting take where I was like, That's okay. That actually does have a good point because even when I grew up I didn't go this isn't like a oh, I was so poor, but like I didn't go on a plane until I was eighteen years old. Like we never we didn't take like vacations like I do now. We didn't

9:17 Uh I remember like The A C was broken one summer and we just like left the windows open. Uh like Or like it was a lot of shared rooms, like bunk beds. There'd be like two or three kids in a room. Now each kid needs their own room. Like you said, Sam, like fourteen hundred, fifteen hundred square feet was like a nice Size house. And now that's not the case.

9:35 Have you guys ever seen the TV show The Wonder Years? Yeah. Uh and it's like, yeah, one father, the husband, could provide for the whole family, but he was angry all the time. He worked at a factory where he got like black lug. Uh And like he was like borderline and alcoholic and he was like grumpy all the time. They didn't go anywhere. And when they did, like the car broke down. Uh like times were different. Yeah, I I think So

10:01 Taking the other side though, I think we shouldn't be telling people like you shouldn't want these things. I think we should I'm not saying that. I'm just joking, but yes. Yeah. So I I think I think we should make stuff cheaper. And I think we can do that. making the cost, the inputs cheaper. I I think it's all possible, but I I hate demand side. Adjustments.

10:21 Uh the way you said that is so so uh made it so simple to me, which was If you make uh if all you do is increase demand and the supply stays the same, you're not gonna make things cheaper. You're gonna make things more expensive. Uh it's like yeah, that that obviously makes sense. All right. So a lot of people watch it, listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And really a lot of people who are listening, they have a full time job and they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, All right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And

10:55 Again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends. Luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it. The side hustle idea.

11:09 database. It's a list of a hundred Pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through them. They're awesome. And it gives you How to start them, how to grow'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link. Click it, check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think. Okay, so

11:30 A lot of these are based on like what's going on in my life today. So I am trying to redo my backyard. And I redid it like ten years ago and it's like kind of a shithole now. I wanna add pavers, I wanna add like a nice uh maybe a waterfall, something like that. And so

11:47 I've been reaching out to all these landscapers, uh all these backyard specialists. And the process sucks. It takes them forever to get back to me. And then they come here, all they do is measure. And like I knew the measurements to begin with.

12:00 And scheduling that on my schedule and their schedule. Sucks and they're coming from like an hour away sometimes just to do this like Ten minute thing.

12:10 And then once they take the measurements They're super busy. They don't get back to me for a week. And so then I'm like, can I really trust this guy? And I was talking to a to a guy, um

12:20 So build a company in this space and said like One of the things that's really important to them is just getting back to you quickly. And if they get back to you quickly, you're way more likely to purchase from them. And this this is a fairly large purchase, let's let's say fifty thousand dollars. And so I was thinking

12:34 There's gotta be a better way. And you could solve this with AI, it in in part. So all I could do is give them my address and they know what my back yard looks like. Like they can get the measurements from satellite imagery. And they could actually give me

12:49 A design. Like they could they could either not show up at all. Or when they show up, they could have an iPad with a bunch of sample designs of my place. How amazing would that be? And

13:01 The idea for this came to me from a buddy of mine. Who has a company called Deep Lawn. All they do Is they help. Lawn companies

13:11 Quote. And so The lawn company you put in the address. It looks at satellite imagery. Uses some AI to determine how much grass you have, comes up with a square footage.

13:22 It knows what you charge. And it instantly gives them a quote. And they charge like a couple dollars. Per quote. But there's so many lawn care companies, so many lawn out there that it's actually pretty good business.

13:33 And it's simple. This is actually like one step beyond that. It's not just giving you a simple quote, but it's giving you a bunch of designs. And stuff like that. And I think

13:44 I think it's very doable. And it would solve a problem that I have. If these guys used it. So it's really interesting you say that. Ben had told me about a business that's very, very similar in the roofing space. Yeah. Uh so if you go to roofer.com, so it's R O O S. R dot com.

13:59 And the guy's doing the same thing. It's just the quote part. So basically I g I guess the way that roofing works is If you wanna get a roof or repair or whatever it is, the guy will come out. So you got to do the same thing you said, schedule it, comes out. Just gonna check out the roof today. Gonna gonna get in and give you a quote. And the the roofers hate doing this step'cause anyway, they make no money in the quoting process, but they need to get the job. They gotta go all the way up the roof. They gotta schedule it. They can only do so many in a week. And so what this guy was doing, I don't remember I don't remember exactly the met m the method, but I know what he was doing, which was

14:28 He's like, hey, he would go to the roofers and say, Hey, anytime you need a quote done. I'll do the quote for you. You know, you just pay me like a small amount basically to to go do this quote for you. And I think he was using either drones or imagery in some ways. I think it was drones. The drone would fly by It would auto do the quote for you. So you would have a way faster quote, which increases your odds of getting the job.

14:49 You didn't have to go do it yourself. They can scale so they can do way more quotes per week than the than the roofer could have done themselves. And it takes off like you know one part of the sales funnel that they really hated doing. Um and I think this business is doing really well. I think he's bootstrapping this. I'm not I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is this business is doing really well. Last time I heard the numbers for it. Yeah, and I think you could do the same thing for like pools, decks.

15:10 Purgola is like Playgrounds. Uh Fences. Outdoor kitchens, like all all this kind of stuff.

15:17 would be fairly easy to do. So you could build you could build this in one niche and then go into all the others. You guys remember the um there was like Two or three tech guys that like left their like seemingly great tech companies, I think, and like started bathroom remodel businesses. I think the first one was this was this guy named Roger. So Roger was like previously like uh I think he started Zinga or something like that. He w he founded Mafia Wars, which was part of Zinga. Okay. Sorry, I'm in the ballpark. You're in the ballpark.

15:47 Um, okay, and then but like Gigster was like a like a s you know, raised by raised money from prominent investors and then he left to start Made dot com, which was basically like a You know how like the best barbers, you go and you sit down on the chair and they're like, What do you want? And you're like, Oh, just do like a little here I don't know, just like Yeah. Give me like the Justin Bieber. The grape barbers are like there's option one, option two, option three, option four. Here's the menu. Which one do you want? You're like, Give me that one, give me the four.

16:13 He did that for bathrooms. And it like killed it. And then the second guy was this guy I think named Luke, one of the co founders of Casper. He left Casper and he's start a I think I think

16:26 Bathrooms and kitchen, but it's called block. Block renovation. Was it just and it was was it both of them or just bathrooms? Same thing. It was bathrooms. Uh maybe now they expand into kitchens. And by the way, I don't know how these businesses have all done now, but like Super interesting where it was like, Hey Here's four you can pick off the menu. You want your bathroom to look like this, this, this, or this. And it was like

16:44 Running Facebook ads. We talked about this years ago on the Wad. Running Facebook ads for people who want to upgrade their bathroom, which is not how they were how any other construction company was selling to customers. So you had this new channel. And they're requiring customers to do these like expensive bathroom renovations using this like kind of pick off the menu model, which I thought was pretty fascinating. I think it's interesting, but it's it's so complex. And

17:08 Things can go wrong and get bad reviews based on your partner or whatever. I feel like it's a very complicated business. I don't know why I n I think Roger sold made to like Home Depot. I don't know how I don't know how good of a business it was. What I like about this one is it's really software. Like you just have to sell these folks. And you're not on the hook for anything else.

17:26 And it can be a pretty lean team. I think you can easily do ten million of revenue in this business. Right. I love I love this because you know, I hate when people want to start a marketing agency because you're signing up to be a genius every month. Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm gonna be and and every business really cares how their marketing is going. And they're gonna be on the you're gonna be on your ass and you gotta continually be fighting versus things like compliance. It's like nobody wants nobody cares how their compliance is going as long as it's not a problem. So similarly here, like

17:54 Roofing. It's like Doing the quote. is very different than the emotional purchase of a new bathroom that's gonna go in our master bath that's like I really care how the grout was done or whatever. I don't even know what that word is. I just used it. Did that work? I don't know. Yeah, you're there. Um so so so you know you wanna sell things ideally that people don't have extreme like preference and um emotional attachment to'cause you're

18:16 the the bar for delivery is so much higher than it is for boring things that they don't really care about. So you know, I I I like the I like the example you gave better and also the fact that you could do it for If you could do it for roofing, you can do it for lawns, you could do it for pools, you could do it's a blueprints. Anybody can go do these businesses. Yeah, exactly. Is the i is the stereotype true of Indian guys that they don't like being handy? That's like saying Do white men not like to jump? Like no, we it's not that we don't like being handy. We're just not handy, okay? Like the all the all the blood rushes to our brains. There's just nothing left in the limbs. My dad likes being handy, but

18:50 Like I've looked at he he owns some apartment buildings. And I've looked at reviews. And people are like Whenever I need a problem, there's like Mr. McGyver who's like trying to solve it with like he doesn't have the right tools or anything, but he like Create some crazy way to solve some problem. The Indian handyman comes to your house when you have a problem and just convinces you that it's okay and you need to compromise and life is not about getting what you want. Yeah, it'll be fine. And now look at you guys now, just talking about like uh you know, like uh bathroom remodeled startups. No, but this one works. This is an Indian friendly business.

19:23 It's satellite images. Exactly. Price quoting. And then you hand it to a strong guy who's gonna be able to go do the do the manly stuff. Exactly. Strong idea with number one. That's number one. And then number two. is maybe an offshoot on that. Like you could start with number one and go into number two, but Every let's use this back backyard guys. So every service business runs the same workflows. Like you get a call or an online whatever. Thumbtack. Um, so you have to answer calls, you schedule jobs.

19:52 Then you dispatch a crew. You follow up. And you respond with an with an estimate and then You know. You schedule the job and then you asked for reviews.

20:04 And I think All of that stuff. A lot of that stuff is super automatable. And I think the big unlock is actually AI voice. Like

20:13 I think a lot of people are sleeping on how good AI voice is already today. And how useful it would be for something like this. Actually Yesterday or the day before? Bill Ackman posted something about Elon Musk and he was like I'm not sure if this was AI or not.

20:29 And like the three of us are like Are you fucking kidding me? It's obviously AI. What was it? It was a fake video about Elon Musk. And it was so obviously fake, it like didn't have his mannerisms. Or anything. And it was like

20:42 Talking slowly. It was kind of his voice kind of not. But the fact that Bill Aquan, I don't know how he old how old he is, maybe he's sixty. Yeah. couldn't tell or he was like, I'm not sure if this is AI. So that means that AI voice is already good enough. If Bill Ackman's fooled by this video

20:58 Then like a lot of people are fooled by A AI voice. So Already These service providers should have should be having AI voice do the work for them. And I think it's already good enough. It's just gonna get better in the next year.

21:12 So I think instead of a contractor hiring an office manager You give them an AI office manager for like a few hundred bucks a month. And It's actually You you might think of it as a as a money saving thing, but it's actually not

21:26 It's more than that. It's like You have super fast response time, people responding round the clock. Like I whenever What when I decided to do this back yet back yard remodel

21:36 Was like A Sunday afternoon. And nobody's responding to me then, but like the first person to respond is way more likely to get the job than the next person and the person after that. So like

21:47 You respond super fast. There's no missed calls. You text to follow up, like it does all that stuff for you. In a super easy app. Man, so we have uh Alex Hermosy comes on uh to the pot a bunch in and he's one of our buddies.

22:02 He's got the he like runs these like seminars or these like events that you can go to that look really cool. And we're I wanted to see like how good his sales funnel was. And so I went to like sign up to like a call and like as I clicked like confirm calendar, I get a phone call from a guy. And his name's Xavier. And I'm like, Xavier? He's like, Hey Sam, what's up? I just saw you book to call. I just want to like confirm a couple of details with you and make sure we're good. And if you want, I can like move the appointment up, whatever. And I go, I don't believe this is you. He goes,

22:29 It's a real person. And I was like, FaceTime me right now. He's like, Well, we don't have face I go, Well, you you know my number, FaceTime me. Like, I know you have an iPhone. And so he FaceTimes me while he's talking to me, and it was him. It was totally him. And uh like it kinda like got me bought into this idea of calling leads like within minutes. Within minutes.

22:48 And like there's been so many times where I bought Yelp or been on Yelp and I'm like literally the first person that will respond to my car wash like request is coming to my house right now. I don't care how much it costs, the first person. Exactly. Sheil, what do you think is gonna be the challenge of uh'cause I've seen a I f this idea makes so much sense to me.

23:05 And there's you know, there's a couple of them out there. What do you think is gonna be the key if you're the founder, you're running a business like this. What do you think you need to do to win? What would you do in your maybe go to market or like how would you how would you take this idea that I think a lot of people are gonna have, but how would you end up being the winner? What do you think what do you think would make the difference between winning and fourth place? Yeah. So It's too bad that AI robocalling is illegal. 'Cause what I would probably do suddenly I would just have my voice agent

23:35 Call each of these people. Right. Right. So may maybe you can do it where like I don't know what the legality of this is, but like Maybe you do it where

23:45 You call your AI voice agent calls in. And you're on the call. And It it maybe it's fine then. And the AI vo voice agent is so good that you convince them, so you just call each of these people and

23:59 Convince them. But Their agent is so good, like don't you want to try this? Try it for free. I'll just send you leads right now.

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24:35 Uh I wanna ask you so you have like two or three more ideas on here that are actually really good. One that is like like the has the least amount of information on it. I actually have a question about it. Let's do it. Um So you put on here something about peptides because everyone because everyone in SF is doing it. And this is me just like wanting to get information. So your uh uh peptides um basically Uh the it's a category of drugs, whatever we could talk about it. But like oftentimes people use peptides and TRT and uh

25:06 H G H like interchangeably. Or in the same ballpark. Um, are you saying that all the nerves in SF are now in testosterone? Or peptides. Everyone is on peptides. And everyone's got their dealer. So so the way this works is like The peptides are

25:23 Like These Amino acids that Tell your brain. To to repair or regulate something.

25:31 They're like precursors to protein or something like that, where yeah, you can like So it's really good for a bunch of things that your body can do and regulate. So like healing, body composition, like give you more energy. Control your appetite. Those are GLP ones. The problem is the problem with this business idea is

25:50 They're not legal. Or they're they're legal for research purposes. They're not approved for the uh applications that people are using them for. That's right. So I don't know where the opportunity is here.

26:02 But It's like really complicated to use them. And like In San Francisco everyone's doing it. So you have friends who are doing it and they're like, Oh, I got this peptide and it's been so great for me or whatever. And of course, like there are challenges in it not being FDA approved, but I think for the most part, these are things that

26:21 people have been using for years and and have some sense of efficacy on But um you know, people are getting Os uh semi-glutide, like Osempic, and uh and other Osempic like Things. Uh via peptides.

26:35 And so A lot of people right now, longevity's a huge opportunity. You've seen like function help and superpower and others do really well there. So there's a ton of Ton of interest, but

26:45 The experience I've had with peptides is confusing and sketchy. So I actually haven't I haven't tried them yet. But I have tons of friends who are talking about it. So I feel like there's some educational opportunity. There's some like Dosing guidance, safety

27:01 Some high trust supply chain and coaching. Opportunity in this space. But I don't know what it is and the F D A approval thing obviously is a big problem. Uh, interesting. So you're saying maybe right now because the legality and the approval part of selling the things directly is Sketch. Yeah. You would build the biggest, most trusted information source.

27:22 So that when the time comes that this becomes more clear. You either become the highest value affiliate or you could yourself could start to to deal some pe deal peptides. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Have you guys heard of peptides or you have friends on'em?

27:38 I heard of it because Sam, like five years ago, before peptides was really a thing, told me he his Achilles hurt. And then he was on some Reddit forum and got a vial of something and injected it into his body and I was like, Bro, what are you doing? You know Just taking drugs off the internet? And he's like it's amazing. I feel like Wolverine. Yeah. B P one fifty seven, baby. My people love B one fifty seven. Somebody told me about it. My daughter who was just born, that's her middle name. BP 157. Uh like I love that stuff. Um so yeah, look, like I've always been like into this type of stuff, and if you listen to the podcast,

28:15 You know, I'm gonna kinda brag a little bit here, but like semi glutide oh is epic. Yeah. When it when it got popular, we were that was old news to us on this podcast. We had been talking about it. All right, I had already overdosed on it. I could have told you all about it. Um and then when I and so I was into this stuff in San Francisco. And then I uh moved to Austin and that's when I really got my fix, man. Like every jack guy ever was like showing me all the cool stuff that they're doing. And not a lot of the stuff was like like It's not like a s I don't know actually the definition of a steroids, but it wasn't like an anabolic like um make your muscles huge, but there was like BP one fifty seven for when I hurt my Achilles, someone was like tr you should try this or you should try it your shoulder. And there's all these like

28:54 um weird peptides and weird things that were go were around longevity, not like how do I look like Triple H like, you know, in wrestling. Like not like how do I look huge, but how to like live a long time. And so yeah, I've been fascinated by all this stuff. And I think that um I think there's a lot of really interesting stuff and I and I still test a lot of the stuff. And I got a guy. I text them. I got a guy, I text them, and I Venmo him. It's incredibly shady. However, Sean and I invested in a company called Hone. Honey's first

29:22 Well, I forget what they're originally called. Peak? Peak health or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, I don't even remember. But they were originally just TRT. Now they do everything. And we get their monthly updates and this is like the chart is like you want the chart to look this way. And I think that they're they're doing a really good job of not looking like um, you know, for a long time. Actually we talked about CRT clinics, Sean and I you and I did, and it was like Dude, the biggest TRT clinic is like this guy based out of Vegas and he's got these like stores and you go to the store to get your TRT and they have like lazy boy leather sofas and like Monday night football lawn and it's like it was like the lamest, like unmost untrusty word thing. And so hone is actually a good example of Uh they do they also do female stuff too. I don't know what type of drugs.

30:01 women take, but they sell women drugs as well. Um and they've done a much better job of It's not like Spanish where there's like a male and female pronunciation of the verb. Yeah. What are we talking about? I don't know. Whatever you guys take, uh whatever you're into, I guess there's a little bit of everything for everyone. This is the only podcast where you're gonna get AI. T R T H a Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean the the range is incredible. Um Dude, uh I looked at this peptide business recently.

30:33 'Cause same thing I'm like, okay, clearly there's demand, right? But the Yeah, how do you do this legally and what's the good way to do this? And um I can't say who was doing this, but On the pitch I was like so like How do you plan to be like legit with this whole thing'cause it's unclear what the what the legality is gonna be of this.

30:51 And he basically pulls up a picture of like It's like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. He's like, Yeah, we're pretty sure we're gonna be able to get some things through that will make it. Oh wow, okay. That's like probably one of the best slides I've ever seen in a deck. Yeah, this is pulls out a card from his wall, he goes I have an answer right here. You're like, Sir, that's a get out of jail free card from the game of Monopoly. That doesn't work. And so I was like, I think actually, yeah, being we're really close with Bobby Kennedy would be like a perfectly reasonable part of your business plan right now. So so is that really what he said? Literally, yeah. They were like, Hey, we th they're Pro this, it's gonna pass, and we're like in a we're gonna do everything the right way. One thing they pointed out rightfully, so is that everybody who's in this space right now.

31:36 You know, like the early kind of crypto community. Like kind of mid stage crypto community where everyone's just trying to get a quick buck. And they're gonna go like foul. And like you could just be Coinbase. Right. And you could just be like, Hey, we're just gonna do things the right way. And we trust that over time this will become more and more

31:53 Uh you know, mainstream But we're just gonna do things the right way from the beginning. And like what Coinbase did where like, you know, all the other crypto you know, exchanges sort of fell off. is I think a a valid strategy in this case. They're like, say it with me.

32:07 Crony capitalism. Oh, dude. This is this is a Good topic. Because There's so much of it.

32:14 And actually like I have never In the past, I'd never seen anybody pitch Like a a core part of their pitch as being I'm close to administration.

32:25 I've heard so many pitches about that now, which Which is kinda sad, honestly. But like slide thirteen, we know a guy. And then it's just like what Why is this in your deck? Totally. Actually like I've been searching And ChatGBT will not answer me.

32:42 A bunch of questions I have. Because it says peptides are not medically cleared, like we can't answer this question. So like One of my main sources of information is gone. Right.

32:53 Um by the way, again a little Can we do a little bit of a Politics uh tangent real quick. Earmuffs if this bothers you, but T Sam, I just thought you'd find this entertaining. Did you see The Trump thing about um do you know who C Z is? Do you know who C Z is from Binance Binance guy. Didn't he like pardon him, but

33:09 Trump. Definitely doesn't know who that guy is. So he pardoned him and then he gets interviewed. So the guy was in jail, I think, for four months or something like that. And this guy owned like the biggest Asian uh crypto exchange and was like in

33:22 Whatever. It was i in in in hot water for money laundering and wire for all a bunch of stuff where it's like You know, bad people are sort of using your exchange to to to do money laundering or something. And they they asked him, they were like but you pardoned this guy and then he bought like two billion dollars of your Son's cryptocurrency. Like, don't you see how that seems bad like why did you pardon him? He's like Here's here's the thing. You wanna know what? You wanna know?

33:47 I don't know who he is. And I was like, wow, the audacity. It was just the audacity of saying, I don't even know who he is. Don't know anything about the guy. And he pardon him. I just thought that was one of the most crazy things I've ever Totally. It's like This man is this man has no fear. He's not afraid of anything. He is he does not fear anything if he's gonna say it. And uh the what was the guy from Nicola? Uh Trevor Milton.

34:14 He pardoned that guy too. The What the hell, man. And then they looked into it and they're like, Oh That guy donated. Yeah, it's a get out of jail not for free car. Yeah. Get out of jail at this fixed price. Yeah, that was insane. The price is actually very low. It was like a couple million dollars. Uh and did he really say that word for word? He was like, I don't know.

34:37 You're not you're not ugly, you're just poor. It's like you're not it's like you're not um you're not a criminal. You're just boring you can get out for g if you got ac access to a couple million dollars. Well there's that um there's that joke. I forget who where where it originally came from. They're like look if you own the bank like fifty grand That's a big deal. That's a that's really bad for you. Um, but if you own the bank, if you owe the bank five hundred million dollars, that's really bad for the bank. That's the bank's problem. Yeah. The other one that was crazy was that George Santos I just thought it was so funny. Like

35:10 This this like a congressperson who like lied about everything. Like he would have a different college that he went from each time you talked to him. He said he was Jewish. And then he was like Jewish. Kind of Jewish. Oh here where I live, there was a like a New York Congressman or something like that. Like kind of a or the local side I don't even remember what it was. Not that important. But he was like He was he was a gay Brazilian guy. I think he's Brazilian. And yeah, he had the audacity to t to tell people that he was Jewish. And they're like George Santos, I don't think you're Jewish. He goes, Oh, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jewish. Like and like hanging out with like Jewish people. Honestly, it's an all timer. It's an all timer. And then like he had so much audacity, like

35:56 He claimed that his mom died in nine eleven, but like there are very good records of who died in nine eleven. And he he he like lived in Brazil at the time. There was no chance that that was possible. He just Anyway it pretty pretty incredible. All right. Your mouth can come off politics. Uh all right, so What else you got? Oh the circus the surrogacy thing or the EMS thing. Those are all quite a little bit. Okay, let's do the circus one. So okay, so personal note.

36:22 My wife and I we're like old. I'm I'm I'm forty three, my wife's forty. And uh my wife has a genetic condition that we need to screen against and Um being pregnant can trigger this condition that she has. So Our doctors have said if you can avoid pregnancy

36:37 You should do so. And we were like, Okay, we can afford it. Let's do it. So We started going down the surrogacy path. And for those of you who don't know, surrogacy is when Uh another mother, another person

36:50 carries your child. And so you you transfer your embryo To that person. And then they carry your child. And

36:58 It's growing Uh Very substantially. So like This wasn't really a thing. Not that long ago.

37:05 And then actually New York only legalized it five years ago. So it's still Growing very rapidly. It's obviously Extremely common in the gay community because that's the only way they can have kids. Uh you know. Their own their own children. And it's

37:19 It's actually a very complicated thing how it works. There are a bunch of surrogacy agencies out there. And the surrogacy agencies They have a a number of

37:30 Women that they work with. Carriers. And and then They try to match you. But the way it works is

37:37 They can only introduce you to to people that are in their platform. So Imagine if it was like and it's it's a matching. Like There are a bunch of things that we care about, there's a bunch of things that she cares about. We ultimately found a great match and she's she's wonderful. We love her.

37:53 And how much is it? And how much does the woman get? Yeah, so It costs. Roughly. Hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand dollars.

38:02 Okay. And it goes. To her plus the agency takes a cut. Is that how it works? Agency takes a cut. She gets a certain amount. So I think in our case She gets seventy five thousand dollars, roughly.

38:15 um something in that ballpark. There are a bunch of there are a bunch of things that Yeah, there's a base fee and then a monthly fee and travel and time off work and all sorts of childcare, all sorts of stuff that's embedded in that. And then there are a bunch of there's like legal fees and then of course there are medical fees for like actually doing the transfer and her health care and her insurance that we pay for. And do you get to hang out with her? Or is it like do you see her on a monthly bas like do chef ins or

38:41 Yeah, so we we hung out with her like so We're in San Francisco, she's in Las Vegas area. We've hung out with her. She's she's come to our house. We like her, we text with her. Um

38:52 You know When the transfer happened. We sent her stuff. Like we you know, we've we know what her family life is like, all sorts of stuff. The thing I didn't realize going into this is

39:04 There are a bunch of things that you might care about or that somebody might care about. That Are important in making this match. So like I thought

39:13 Like I didn't really know What I would care about. But We've talked to people who care about like what do they eat. Are they eating only organic?

39:22 I met a Hindu person who said their surrogate can't eat beef during the time of pregnancy. People obviously care about Um Would they abort if medically

39:31 Important. Are they okay carrying twins? Would they have a C section? And then there are all sorts of other stuff like Do you want to have a relationship with this person? Like we really like our surrogate. Like we we we chat check in with her all the time and she texts us back. But anyway, there are all these things that you want to match on, but the way it works is like

39:49 Іч аженсі only has a few folks that you can talk to and and make that match. And It would make a lot more sense if you had a like a dating app like eHarmony. Here are the things I care about. Here are the things they care about. So it makes sense for it to be a larger thing.

40:07 Imagine if you were buying a home. And your real estate agent. Could only show you homes that they had listed. That's kind of what it is today. I think there's an opportunity in making this much more common.

40:20 I think people don't realise how many medical challenges people have and that being the reason they're not able to carry and not not able to have kids. I think if people knew that Some of the stigma about this would go away. And you'd have more people who want to be surrogates, want to be carriers.

40:36 So I think there's an opportunity to create A company that does this for people and and is a much broader agency than what's out there today. And sort of does this matching process. brings people on

40:48 Um, sort of recruits carriers. That's really the the challenge right now is there are not enough carriers. So I think you have to create more carriers and to do that you sort of market, you offer them a higher Portion of the payment.

41:02 So like I think by automating some of this stuff, instead of it being a manual process where Like our agency you know, the ladies going like word of mouth to f find new carriers. I think you can automate a lot of that process. And um And create an awesome business.

41:18 But I don't think this is gonna be a billion dollar company. Like I think There are maybe five to ten thousand births in the United States. Every year. Uh from

41:27 Surrogacy. And I think that'll probably expand, but I don't think you can build a billion dollar company here. I think you can build I think you can do something great for the world. And you know, run a company as well. How do they recruit these women now? That's such a strange way to recruit someone. Like it's a great question. I don't know.

41:45 Um But I think what they do is there are all these communities credit Facebook, et cetera. Where people are posting. And um

41:53 You go there and people and a lot of the H Agencies are there just recruiting. Can I go full full crazy here? Yeah. Surrogacy M L M. Yeah. I think an M L M has solved the marketing challenge of how do you recruit other women to go like kind of do this thing for money.

42:08 And this is just the like premium. Why sell makeup and candles? When you could have a downline. generating, you know, a hundred thousand dollars a pop. Right. Like that's a it's a it's a Premium MLM. Man, I've had I it's so crazy. I've got so many friends doing this. When I was a little kid, like

42:25 Or mm in my earlier twenties, like the only thing I knew about surrogacy was that Amy Puller movie where she you know, she's like the surrogate. She's the surrogate for Tina Fe and she like eats Big Max and it's like can we change her to be healthy? And like that was like the that that was the the just of the movie. But I didn't know anything about this. And now I think I probably know five or six or seven friends. that are have done it this way. It's a pretty wild experience. It's also like Science is amazing. It's one of these things where I learned about this and I'm like, this is just absolutely insane. I can't this exists.

42:55 So Sheil, if you said there's ten thousand surrogate births a year roughly, you think that's ballpark, right? Yeah. It's growing fast. I think it's growing like ten percent a year, but let's just say ten thousand. So if it was a hundred thousand average spend per surrogate Cerge. That's a billion a year of sort of revenue generated across all the different um agencies today.

43:16 But yeah, but note that most of that goes to So right. You know, w if you y you're a venture investor, right? Like How do you describe to somebody who's not A V C

43:29 The appeal of the sort of niche, weird marketplace that behavior that seems a little fringe today. But oh my God, wait, people spend how much money watching people break open Pokemon card decks and whatnot as a twelve billion dollar company now watching people open Pokemon card packs live on the internet? What do you mean? Right? There's like There's an appeal to this. How do you describe that that kind of phenomenon and what and where the And the upside of the of the sort of the fringe.

43:56 Yeah, so I think whatnot's a great Great one because it started out as a Collectible marketplace for Funko Pop Toys. And if you told me that a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop toys would five years later be worth I think it's like twelve billion dollars or something.

44:11 I would say you're crazy. But You start somewhere and like you dominate that niche. I think in this case, I don't think it's a venture opportunity and I I also think

44:21 Venture capital incentivizes growth. And that might incentivise the wrong thing in this in this space. So I probably wouldn't want it to be a venture opportunity, but I think it is a good opportunity for somebody to build a business. So me and Tyler, the CEO of Beehive, came up with a little challenge for you. It's the newsletter challenge. Now, if you know me, you know that I'm a big fan of newsletters. I got my own newsletter. I also had a business that was a newsletter business that was amazing. I wrote this newsletter about crypto, we grew it to quarter million subscribers, and we ended up selling it after a year for millions of dollars. And I want you to be able to do the same thing in your business. So we're doing a challenge. 10 grand is on the line.

44:58 Plus, me and Tyler will actually be in your corner as growth advisors. You just need to go to bhy.com slash MFM and you either start a new newsletter or you move your current newsletter over there and five finalists will get picked to pitch me and Tyler sort of like Shark Tank and the winner gets 10 grand. So go to bhyive.com slash MFM. That's bhy.com slash mfm to enter the challenge today. Can I ask you about one more thing you have here? Because This is on the long list of things I thought were so stupid when I first heard about this and people seem to love it and it's you know, what do I know? Sean, have you heard of EMS? Is that a

45:30 Like Of ambulance? Is that is that what EMS is? That's another EMS. Electronic muscle stimulation. Okay, tell me about it. Is this like the thing where you get six pack abs by putting the electrode on your thing and you watch TV?

45:43 Yes. So okay. Here here's the thing. So y you gotta try it, first of all. But

45:50 Yeah. Uh Mm. My one of my best friends in the world. Dude, I'd rather take drugs. Yeah, okay, fair. So so one of my best friends in the world

46:01 completely and utterly jacked. And he was not five years ago. And he Does not really work out. He does EMS.

46:11 So what it is is He has this little machine that he bought for thirty five dollars on Amazon. Look for tens, T E N S and E M S. Oh, d we have one of those. That's for like during contractions. My wife used the tens machine. Yeah. So he puts those all over his body.

46:28 And he like jacks it up. I hate the feeling of it, so I don't do it. But I have seen it work for him so well. That this is something. And so recently I was in New York a couple weeks ago.

46:41 And I went to a workout facility where They have it set up like on a thing that you wear. And part of the problem is it needs direct skin contact. So It's annoying to put on and off. If it was easier to put on and off.

46:55 I would be doing this thing. When I went to a facility Where they had this thing and they like You put a shirt on that has these electrodes on it. And they spray water on it, so it makes

47:05 It Touches your skin, basically. And It's an amazing workout. Like it was one of my favorite workouts ever. And it was fifteen minutes.

47:14 I know it sounds like total bullshit. Wait, so you do with this one, you do work out while it's happening? You do a little bit of a work out, but it's it's working you out a lot more. Because of the stimulation in your body. Wait, wait, so let's go to the case study of your friend.

47:29 Your friend five years ago. Not exactly. Tell me his name. I'm gonna go to his dear. He's gonna love Okay, so uh Sam, pull up a picture. Ari, get a picture. Let's get a screen. Do we get do we got a shirtless pick? I can send you guys a pick. So He's Jack now, and you're saying that the in between there wasn't like a crossfit phase and then this. It was really just this over a period of time.

47:55 Plus diet, I assume. Not much changed his diet. He's diabetic, so he's kinda limited in what he can eat. He's he hasn't changed his diet. But He attributes it all. Two

48:06 This. So okay, so where's the opportunity? I think So this gym thing that I did in New York. It was amazing and I looked for one here in San Francisco. I I I couldn't find I couldn't find one in a cursory search.

48:18 But I think you basically build a berry's a VMS where like You have a workout routine. And it's really fun, and there's a class. People put on this thing and they they're used to it and And they get jacked and people see them getting jacked.

48:31 And I think the way you do it is like you start with somebody like me who's like Not In great shape, a little flubby. And then I go through this and like you show the evolution. And uh and then people are into it and people like I gotta try this.

48:45 Yeah, this has the the viral factor of being weird, right? Like of people hating on it, right? Like if I posted this and I was like, This is all you need, you're gonna get all the comments about like, dude, just do it, blah, blah, blah. You know, like And so it's gonna go viral because it's gonna be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need. Yeah. So the problem with the thirty five dollar product, so he bought it for me. And I the problem is you have to like

49:10 Do these sticky things you have to put on your body. And it just like Takes time. What he does is his primary workout Is

49:18 He flies a lot for work. And when he's on the plane, he's doing it the whole time. And that's his primary workout.

49:26 Yeah. Did you put this through the X ray machine and they're like, What the hell are you gonna do? It's a little thing. It's like the s size of a phone. It's nothing. Oh oh but so this thing you linked, this catalyst thing, this is the Full body suit. You go there and you exercise, or what is this? Yeah, that's that's the full body suit that's basically

49:44 This but already in a suit form. All right, I think I may have to try this. Sam, what do you think? As a as an actual fit person, what what do you think of this? This you might not be the market, actually. I love shortcuts though. Like You know, we like if s I think we had someone in the pods be like

50:00 Well, I don't get why people hate on get rich quick schemes. Getting rich qu quick is the best way to get rich. So like if I can get like more fit without doing anything, I'm I'm on board. Is there actually data that backs this up? I think it's pretty lame, but if I can hear the story about his friend. Yeah, no, it's a good data.

50:20 So I think there is data on Catalyst. Um, people use it. I think the question is whether these thirty five dollar machines work. And I only have my one friend as a data point.

50:32 And the the funny thing is like We've all seen it work for him. And yet None of us others in the friend group have done it. And the reason for that is it's annoying.

50:42 Like to put these things on. And it's painful. And he's willing to s like every plane ride, he's willing to just do it the whole plane ride. And I'm not, but When I did this workout c he took me to this workout class in New York two weeks ago.

50:56 And when I went to that workout class, I was like, this is actually really fun. And I know I'm getting a great workout. Like you feel the next couple of days it was like the good kind of hurt after a great workout. So I was like I know this is working. But how come I haven't heard more about this? So I think there's an opportunity in building a product and this like Berry style workout.

51:16 where like you teach people how to do it. Dude, this looks pretty sick. The vests like look like uh like like armor, like body armor. Yeah, they look like a navy seal. Yeah. Except for I don't know what this tank is here. That that's a little bit suspicious. I don't really fully understand What all the pieces are, but dude, if people are buying six thousand dollar Six thousand dollar cold plunges at their home. And you know, five to ten thousand dollar saunas at their home and red light therapy. I my brother in law's got a l got a red light therapy bed in his house and his kids are doing it'cause it's like

51:47 Good for their sports, whatever recovery, whatever this is. Like There's really no end to the kind of wellness. you know, rabbit hole, right? And there's always people who are gonna look for the next edge. It's not too dissimilar to a reformers machine in a Pilates class, right? Like it's a tool That gets you more leverage on, you know, your your hour of exercise.

52:08 Although this makes me want to make fun of it, it also makes me want to secretly do it. These guys, I actually was looking up. These guys I think they emailed me this catalyst guys asking if I wanted to test this out. And uh I don't know if I replied, but if they're listening to you, to be an influencer? Was this during the Sam fitness influencer era? It could have been. That was a great era. I think I influenced literally dozens of people.

52:28 Does six weeks count as an era, though? Well, you know. It's a season. It uh that was you transitioned to the dad dad influencer pretty quickly and uh the content shifted. Once I became a kid once I had a kid, I wanted to quit posting shirtless photos online, but just so you know, it's still there. It doesn't go away. It's still there. And so catalysts. I I'd totally try this thing. Yeah, this looks cool. I like to make fun of these things, but uh suit me up, baby. There's an announcement on their site of like, Hey, I know a lot of you have had a very, very bad experience, but there's a new owner and we're gonna, you know, do it right this time. So you know, maybe it's been a little rump bumpy road. Yeah, I'm I'm in a bunch of like These longevity groups.

53:07 in San Francisco and what's up and People are all People who were like trying to buy the company. Can you can l me wait that's actually okay. Uh you're an SF, you're kinda running around like a bunch of like rich people, weirdos, successful people, like this really cool combination of people. What are the kids into? Like uh like this longevity stuff, what else is interesting uh to them? What like, you know, I don't live in San Francisco anymore, Sean lives uh a little bit outside of the SF now.

53:33 before when we were there, it was the best place to see what's going to happen in a handful of years because there's all these weirdos doing cool stuff like sharing their couch on a on a website and now Airbnb's a thing. Uh or sharing their car. What what are some other interesting stuff that the the oddballs are into? Yeah, I think there's so I think we talked about a lot of them, peptides. Nobody's drinking. Um, you know, I think this Brian Johnson has done Wonders for a lot of folks.

53:57 uh in just changing how they think about life. Not necessarily all good, like I don't think drinking is absolutely terrible, but I I think probably people should drink less than they do. One interesting one. Uh that I did not like a new business like as

54:12 As crazy as Airbnb and Uber were. I think Prediction marketplaces are a good one. It's obviously not just the San Francisco thing. But it's the kind of business that like I probably would not have funded when these companies got funded. I would say like this is never gonna work. It's gonna be highly illegal.

54:29 But the fact that you're the difference between a prediction market and so it prediction market, does that just mean like guessing who's gonna win president or who's gonna win the mayor? Yeah. So so one of my pushbacks was initially was It's only going to be used for elections. Because Yeah, that's obviously something that everybody is thinking about and and wants to wants to bet on. But actually they use it for so many other things too, like

54:53 their their political outcomes all the time. People are using it. It's basically like a proxy for sports betting. you can do all sorts of secondary derivative products on top of equity investing. There are markets for everything. I think There are a lot of questions in my mind about

55:09 why it's legal and like Can you influence the outcome of something that you're betting on? Like You know, is if there's a marketplace on whether how many companies B T V would invest in in the next year. I'd be you know, I'd be Betting on that while while participating as well.

55:26 But I think there's no question that there's a huge opportunity in this space. Did you see the uh Coinbase earnings call thing? Yeah, that was fucking hilarious. What happened? Did you see this? So so there's a there was a prediction market. on Polymarket for um

55:41 The Coinbase earnings calls like oh the Q three earnings call. Will Bri will Brian Armstrong say any of these words or how many times he'll say these words. Oh my gosh. And And then at the very end of the call. I think it was probably Yeah, so it was low. It was single digit thousands. It was like a very l small thing, but his team passed him a note and he goes, Oh, before we hang up here, I just would like to say

56:03 Web three, crypto, blockchain, bitcoin, ethereum. Thank you very much. And he just basically he's like uh you know, just for all the prediction markets out there, you know, here we go. And he just hit all the words. He just said seven words and then laughed and then basically like they hung up the call. And I thought that was so funny. But of course it's not that funny when like there's all these like sports things going on right now where in the UFC if you're like a nobody UFC guy you get like twenty five grand for fighting.

56:30 And they're like flagged a bunch of They they flagged a bunch of fights where they're like, This is very suspicious because there was like, you know, eighty grand on the line for a fight that the guy would only earn twenty five thousand dollars and they're being investigated. So yeah, there's gonna be a lot of downsides. But So like the average tech nerd like when I was in San Francisco, it was like a joke. Like it was like The Giants play here? Where are the Giants? Like no one knew about like

56:51 You know, like wasn't like particularly popular. I know Sean was into basketball, but like basketball or any sport wasn't particularly like Yeah. um that popular Are the young tech guys caring about gambling for sports or is it all other stuff?

57:06 It's a lot of other stuff. I think sports is interesting and I think will be one of the key markets in the prediction space. But I think there are all sorts of other things. Like Like gambling on or you know.

57:18 Predicting Equity outcomes. Uh Uh are interesting too. I I I look through those things all the time. I'm just curious.

57:25 And it's It's also uncanny how right they are and how ahead of the curve they are in some of these things. Can I ask you about one more thing? Um You made a very interesting statement. We said what are three strong opinions that you have for life? And you're number one.

57:40 opinion is I I think books are a waste of time. For me, I think books are based at time. So I haven't this is I haven't read a book in like fifteen years. And I think

57:55 It's very very contrarian opinion. But I think like I have so many friends that are authors that I talk to. That are just like Trying to get the words out.

58:04 But if you like listen to a podcast It's like One podcast by that author. Is at least eighty percent Of the value of the book.

58:14 And so Is it worth spending another five hours Reading To get the additional twenty percent in my mind, no. So that's my

58:22 That's my provocative statement. It is the first thing I do when there's a book I'm interested in. I go to YouTube and I just look for a talk by the author. And if they're not interesting in the first fifteen minutes of that YouTube video, the book is definitely not gonna be interesting. The book will probably have more, you know, it's not gonna be fully sufficient, but if you can't do if you can't give a good talk, you probably don't have a good book. Let me give a a different opinion that's related. So I read a lot like in terms of quantity.

58:47 And I was rereading a book that I read when I was younger. Uh, I think it was like Robert Chaudini's influence. You know, it's all about persw persuasion. And I was like I've read all these other books on business and whatever. I should have just reread this same book. every six or three months and not read any other book on this topic. And I would have been significantly further ahead. And so my opinion that I'm telling young people when it comes to reading, I'm like pick like the two or three like classics or the greats of it and master it. Know it word for word and master it and don't read uh a lot.

59:19 Just read the same thing over and over and over again. If you want to read for fun, read for fun. But Just do the same thing over and over again for your educational books. What were the other uh three You said you had three. I think I had two. The other one was uh just reach out to the owner. So this is Lately a few things have happened. Like I'm booking um

59:38 It's my wife's fortieth birthday. And we're we booked a trip for like forty of our friends. And I was having some trouble with the the cruise it's it's a a virgin voyages.

59:51 And I was having some trouble, so I just reached out to the CEO. I just From the CEO's email and I reached out to him and I was like, Hey Uh

59:59 You know. If I were you, I'd want to know. Troubles like You're a smart guy. You want to build a great brand. I've had experience with you. With your brand that was not great.

1:00:08 Let me tell you about it. And um he responded so favorably. He was like, Thank you so much for telling me. Here's what I'm doing about it. And It just re made me realize that I should be doing that more often. So actually we did that recently with our fertility clinic. Same thing. Like had a bad experience. I reached out to the the like the guy who founded the clinic.

1:00:26 And Yeah, obviously you shouldn't do it for everything. But in some cases These people want you to have a great experience with their brand.

1:00:36 And they w they don't often know. Until things get Like until you write a bad review, they don't know. So it's just important to let them know earlier on. It doesn't have to be the owner, but in my case it was.

1:00:47 What is and Did you get a discount? Um I didn't get a discount, but I got like really Uh like White glove service where they're like everything I want, they respond immediately.

1:00:58 And I'm I'm not trying to be a dick about it and like get something that I don't deserve, but It it worked out quite well. Right. But it wouldn't say no to you making it right either. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If you want to give me a discount, I'll I'll take it. Uh Steel, you're great, man. Thanks for coming on. Uh as always.

1:01:16 So always super fun having you on. Super fun to chat with you guys. This is great. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the roadless travel, never looking back. Hey let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Robert. He was the founding CEO of HubSpot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy's smart. And he sits down every week with Different sales leaders from cool companies like Clavio and Vanta and OpenAI. And he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as you know, head of sales or chief revenue officer. If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or a head of sales that's looking to level up in your career, I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast.

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