DDC hearing aids. I think that's actually going to be a big deal and they were profitable. I mean I'm just turning you on. Yeah. They were only once and again. Oh my God. How far out? How far away from the coast of they live in limbo? I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
All right, we're here steps miss here before we talk about Steph Smith and all our ideas. We have two things. Sean you, what? Yeah, I gotta come clean. I have a like, a very late disclaimer. I have to give so ugh, a few episodes ago, maybe like four or five episodes ago, we had talked about a business idea. That was like a children's play Space. Basically, you go there and you like yeah, it's just a place to play. You pay a membership fee and you go play with all these cool toys inside. Anyway,
Is I was like oh it turns out like interesting business, it's a franchise thing. Blah, blah blah anyways. My didn't you, you just went there, you didn't know anything about it even though they're been went there. My business partner went there. He was telling me about it and he's like, yeah. Like you know, I was talking to the guy and here's their occupancy, here's their if that's true then here's what they would be making. Well I went and looked at the website and before and after and basically meetings like bookings to like inquire about a franchised, got booked out for like four and a half months after the pod.
God, I just want to say, I have no idea if this is a good business or not, that was a estimate. That was a single experience. It was a hey, this that's kind of cool. Huh, that could make money. I do not endorse this. I don't know if it's good or bad. I can't say either way. And I really hope that a bunch of people didn't go by franchises of this thing thinking that that I was vouching for this. So I just had to say that cuz I saw all those meetings get booked and I got a little nervous. I was like oh wait this is not a can't cosine. This I can't vouch for this.
Your direction. And I just needed to say that upfront to please don't mortgage the house and go buy a franchise of this thing today. Reach out to, you know, they didn't know I don't think they knew well I don't have any what happened? That I'm fmo fact while at the second thing is so we have like these sources wherever like I'm about to talk about something help related or like I don't know. In your case is different in that example the franchise related or real estate related, we have like three or four buddies, who will like Tex and be like, hey we're thinking about talking about this. What's your opinion?
You on X, Y and Z. And I'll kind of give us some insight, one of those guys, his name's Adam Bornstein. I met Adam because he was like, you basically ran a lot of Tim Ferriss is stuff. And one time he had this conference called 212, he invited me to go and they would rent out like the Four Seasons and one time I checked into my room and it was so big, I called down to the front desk. And I was like, hey who do I share this room with is that it was a 4,000 square foot, Four Seasons Penthouse the presidential suite that had like a 16-person dining.
Able a movie theater. And that's how I met Adam. Is he invited me to come to his event? And so I've always asked them for health stuff. Well, he just had a book come out. It's called, you can't screw this up. I'm trying to think of the best way to summarize it, but it's basically strap. This thing went down is basically Ryan. Holiday James. Clear. Tim Ferriss like that style of writing and like that. Like, I don't know simple hacks but that's kind of a bad word but I don't mean it that way. But like these simple hacks on, how you can create healthier diet habits? So the book is called, you can't screw this up. He also
So worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger and that's who got, he got to write the forward. So I just wanna give a shout out to Adam. He's a friend of the pot so I want to give him a shout out. But Stephen Smith, what's good? Nice to see you.
Good to be here.
One of the all-time all-time favorite guests. This is I think appearance number six. So if you love this one, go go. Listen to the other five that stuff's done. Step is great because she brings a dossier. I can't even call it a document. It should be on google.com because it is a
Fifteen page document of Trends ideas small. Like you know observations that might you know, half ideas that might become something which makes you essentially the perfect, MFM guest. And you're also cooled fun to hang out with. So thank you for coming
back. Yeah good to be here. Every time I come on I get way more nervous than any other appearance because you guys have people like that.
Sean. Do you know how I met stuff? No, it's tell me the story. I will forever. Take credit for step Smith's career.
Here. It does nothing to do with how
hard she works. I do
no matter how hard she works, no matter how smart she is, it's calling me. I've done a couple of. So basically she had this blog, it still is it Step Smith that I owe? Hmm. Yeah, it was a really good blog and she had this headline and the headline was to be great, just be good. Consistently is that it's tough. Basically, what was it? What is it? Exactly.
Yeah, it's like how to be great question Mark just be great. Repeatedly
be good repeatedly.
Yes, be good. And I was like idea under, I was like Steph, this is the best headline I've ever read. This is a really good headline, like we're launching this thing called Trends. Do you want to join us? And she was like, maybe I was like look, come work for us for a couple years and I have a feeling you're going to like go and leave us and that's totally cool. And come to like a tour of Duty. Now, it's been about a year and a half and be a years since she's left. She's Andreessen, Horowitz, one of the biggest VC firms in the world. All right, there's this amazing book called getting everything you can.
Out of all you've got, I read it a few years ago and it changed my life. And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have. Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller who I'm going to see about a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book than the things that I learned in this book. It's called how to make money with what you already have. It's an incredible episode talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book, The Host.
Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently. But over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said you have to check out dr. Miller, he's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of how spots podcast Network. You can check it out. Business Made Simple podcasts. It's where he coaches you and how to build your business like an airplane where the cockpit is your leadership. The body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing. The left engine is your sales. You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called business Made Simple with Donald Miller. How is that going?
It's going great. Yeah, we just hired a producer which is nice because for a while I was kind of hacking it together myself. But yeah I feel like the podcast finally is taking it off and we're trying a bunch of different formats. It's actually like I feel like I'm easing into it, I'm finally having fun like when I listen to my first million you can tell you guys talk about it's like the best job in the world. I'm finally easing into that which is nice.
What's it like working there? I mean when I think about working there I think of like like the TV show billions you know. Like it's just like fun shit all the time. But is it just
Normal company bullshit. I mean it just like is it more normal but job that I think or is it as spectacular? As I would
imagine. I mean, it's kind of both because day-to-day, it's totally normal because you're just doing your job. You're just doing work. Do you go into an office or you? Remove, I'm remote. They do have offices. I go in every so often just because I started working remotely a year into my career and so for the last like eight years or so I've never had an office and so it's like a novelty for me. Everyone else is feeling sick of the office and I'm
Echo. Candy bar, you're like, oh you just sit here all day? Wow,
you can't leave this box,
I know it's crazy. I'm like, look all but well like how special
I think the way Sam talks about like, when his wife Sarah worked at Facebook and he's like, and they'll be when you work at a place, you just sort of get used to everything and you kind of optimized for convenience. And so like oh the All Hands meetings on I can either go down to the cafeteria, listen to it or they have like a streaming option because there's places all around the world. Like all right, whatever I just dream it for my dad's death. That's easier.
My salad here and there was like no you need to go sit front row with a pen and pad. And what he says, any questions you need to like jump out of your chair and ask him a question every single week until he invites us over for dinner. Like that was basically saying like master plan until you're his best friend, kind of? Yeah. You should be doing the same thing like what's the point of working at Andreessen Horowitz? Unless you're just like at the office every day, just waiting for some like awesome Marc Andreessen moment to happen or just like you're there when he just yells.
Is that somebody and it just goes off or like you know they're doing a blood you know like the the 12 year olds coming to give them blood and like you're like yes this is the weirdest I came here for is like like every it's like every movie ever where there's like the big boss at the conference table and it's like, who, what channel is put this together, then the managers like oh, one of my guys, bring your guy here. Let me talk to that person or like Marc Andreessen is gonna say, like, you know, who thought to do this. The number on this is blank and blank, and you say, actually sir, it's
Six four, seven three. What did you say? It's six, four seven three because this come with me, it's like, for six weeks. I've been leaving crumbs in the kitchen to see if anybody would clean it up. And finally, somebody dance, let's pull up the security footage. It was Steve Smith. You're providing the fanfic. This is what I think is gonna happen if you just gotta be there. I can't believe you're not there every day. You should be everybody in the office. The real upside of your job is not your salary. It's that you can go hang out with some of the smartest people in the world, but you got to do the hangout.
Part. Not the like just one wrong calls.
Then we got a hover. Yeah, you got your right? I got a hover around the office just like, you do on the internet, you gotta work.
Gotta be able to figure out if you told like a 21 year old you, that you would be in this position and you'd like would you just stay home and it's Gonna Do Your Own Thing or would you like Kobe there and hang out and lurk and like you know just be serendipitous about like what's gonna happen you know the 21 year old you would be like Oh I'm definitely going in. I'm going to meet these people. I'm going to see what's up but I think it's easy later.
To be like casual about it.
Yeah, I gotta Embrace. I feel like Sam, if you're in the office like go up to someone grabbing a snack and be like, hey, what's up? How's it going? And I'm like so awkward. I'm like, we don't romantic
comedy bumping into everybody and dropping all the papers that you're holding. And then being like, let's clean this up together. Like not even for the romance. Just to like you create a little like intersection between you and these people. Yeah, I when I was at twitch where we got acquired, I literally I even told people there openly I
Like, I'm not here to do my job. I was like, I'm gonna find whatever the most interesting things are happening here. And I'm just going to go be in those meetings at do that. Like you're not going to network, right? Like, and it worked amazingly like your friends with Emmett. Yeah me and Emmett yoga. I got to I was like this is the most interesting guy in this building. So anytime it's like you need to go talk to, you know, Jerry on the fourth
floor. Nah, they're just gonna hang out and Emmett. So I'm just going to
stay in the meeting like we do the meeting with him. It everybody gets up and leaves and I'm just going to stay there on my laptop next.
Walks in. I'm still there. I'm
just gonna hang out and see what happens, like, No One's Gonna say anything. Or I remember when ninja got poached to like the top streamer on, Twitch got poached and then there was like, I know their secret meetings happening about like what should we do? Should we like counter offer or what? Is this, like, a codered moment? And there's only, but I wasn't in those. So I just wrote up a plan and I sent it to like the three top Executives was like, here's the plan for Ninja. I know, I'm not even on the team but then they're like, attend this meeting tonight at 8 p.m. and I was like, I'm
I mean I got into the cool shit my just like not doing my job. And that's that's my recommendation to you if you're gonna be around these like 9,000 IQ people, that's the real upside of your job. Don't do your actual job, do the job of hanging, baby of, speaking of which Step are they actually do? You think that the talent there are they actually significantly smarter than any other, like, pretty decent tech company?
I would say yes, I would say I've worked at, I mean, not that many companies,
but as a direct shot at you, Sam, he's just not evenly.
You and Market, careful. Seth, like at
least 55 companies, where I've been a full-time employee and I would say yes.
It's like my favorite job was a lot of checkers and now I'm playing chess. What the fuck do knows? Jesus is know about newsletter? Well, you guys have something gets bigger. This, you were like I get nervous for this more than anything else I'm curious. Do you feel nervous when you are in one of these? Like a 16z like whatever meetings? Like are you like oh these are these are like little people. I used to follow on Twitter and
shit like that. Now I'm in this room.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's an element to where I don't represent the company running this podcast, but in a way, the podcast is like an asset to the firm and I'm like, they hired. I mean, I'm glad they did, but they hired a 29 year old who like candidly feels a little out of place. Amongst these people who have been, you know, like Marc Andreessen basically like invented the Internet, like he created the first browser or the wide-scale browser and so I'm like, I do feel sometimes a little out of place but I feel like
Urine. I'm getting used to it.
I think you should give yourself more credit, you're cooler than everybody. I've met at a 6 and C so, you know, I think I think they're lucky to have you as
far as I'm concerned. Going to bring in one of those Nick grain name tags that says cooler than you. Shawn thinks I'm cooler than everyone here.
Exactly, this is why I knew she was a good hire because I was like in my head I was like oh she doesn't just realize how good she is. This is a deal.
She doesn't know yet, except where do you want to go from here?
Let's just start with the first idea. So, this one I think is really interesting, because right now, I think a lot of people listening know that there's this issue with commercial, real estate, all these Office Buildings, you know, are up for sale were, at least. People are leaving and like the
highest level of being down of like vacancy, ever basically, especially in cities like San Francisco.
Well, I think there's like 35 percent vacancy and going up as soon as peoples Lisa's roll off, as soon as they can get out of their lease. Oh, they will. So it's like, yeah, it's just, it's a disaster. Thanks for what is this thing? So a
lot of people think, okay, well then let's go change let's swap those that commercial real estate for homes apartments, Etc. That makes sense. But I think there's this huge opportunity for fractional real estate. So click one of where it says, see here, click one of those and tell me
What you see?
All right. Sure. You want to go. I'm just cry. I'll just grab it. So it looks something called Temple immersive and it basically looks like a yoga class of some kind. It's like dimly lit candles. Looks like a hot yoga class but then on the roof is this like crazy visual where it looks like you're in the forest and the whole thing just looks super
cool. Where do you think this is? Like what is this building?
I mean I have no idea this look so I mean it looks like the lobby of an office building in a way it's like huge but they make it look like a
temple.
So, this is a club and I during the night, a night club. So I mean, this is just one example, obviously of where real estate is used from what Saturday's Friday, Saturday Sunday, that's it from like 7:00 p.m. to 2 a.m. and then throughout the week, it's not used at all. And so, the thing that I found, fascinating, I went to this called Temple immersive in San Francisco. And I talked to the woman, they just opened up and I was like, how did you find this? Like, did you reach out to wonder clubs and they
They were like, no the club reached out to us. Like I guess it makes sense, but this club has just all this real estate that's being unused. And I was just thinking about what other I guess one this could be applied elsewhere, right? Like in any cities, someone can go contact bunch of clubs, link them up with yoga studios, Pilates studios, Etc. But then I was also thinking, what else? Could this real estate be used for? And another Trend that's been taking off is Rage rooms because heard of Rage rooms. No, but I
Smash it
right. Yeah, yeah. There's there's one in SF as well but basically people are angry is a reason their
jobs. Yeah. It's called like the razor buildable Green Market. Street Market is the rage room. Yeah. CVS is due to Rebrand. Alright, everyone. So really quick, a few weeks ago, the founder of
HubSpot has seems dark Mass, she came out of the pot, he's a fan. Favor of the party comes on every couple of months and we love them. You guys love them. And he told us about this new project that he had, it was called chat spot. It's pretty amazing. It's an AI powered tool within HubSpot. It does everything you could just use your words and talk to it and we'll pull all these amazing reports. They'll tell you about your leads, it can forecast Revenue all in seconds, it's amazing. So if you're running a business that requires more leads, that requires creating new landing pages where you have to make tons of blog posts.
With the pull different reports, we have a CRM, you have to check out HubSpot there, the sponsor of the Pod and you can check it out and used our meshes new tool called chat spot. It's amazing. I've been using it for my own business at Hampton and we love it so check it out. HubSpot.com okay. What is this rage room
shit so people will literally go and yeah like Sean said you just smash it. So like they'll give you a bunch of plates. I'll give you like old electronics, they'll give you stuff. And I think, depending on what you choose, you pay a different amount.
And you just get a session in this like empty room and you just get to smash stuff which you just don't get to do in normal life. And so I was thinking I was like, you know, not just a yoga studio but a lot of this real estate like go convert like a club during the week to like I rage room.
People gave have them. I always thought like these little things were, it wouldn't be that interesting. But we have this member of Hampton and he's tweeting about it. His name to Raleigh Williams. I was just going to bring him home. Yep, dude. So he
He I think he's in Utah and he created it's like, I don't know, I thought it escape room was like a brand, but I think it's also like the style and so he created like a version of escape room. And what does he do? Sean doesn't, he's sold it for about thirty million dollars, you've created a business, she sold her for 26 million dollars. And what he says is basically he's at a law firm and he doesn't love his job, and he's like, okay, should I do something else? Like, what should I do? He reads an article that's talks about the
Lucrative Escape rooms were. This is back in 2015 when he escaped him to really like just sort of like the new trend, it was the new new like Froyo basically. So he looks it up. He finds out how much money these make and he's like, okay, I think this is a good business, but I don't have enough money to go build it out. But in the true entrepreneurial Spirit, it doesn't let the lack of resources. Stop him, he becomes resourceful. He's like, all right, can I build an escape room inside? This like abandoned bus. So he goes by that buys, this 1984 Bluebird bus and he
The inside into an escape room and now he's got an escape room on Wheels. He could drive it up to company's offices and do the corporate off-site right there. And so, it wasn't perfect in the sense that like, if it was a hot day or a cold day, it kind of suck to be inside of it. But, other than that, it was like this, like, super efficient, since you haven't allowed him to get real like cash flow going. I think he said, like, the bus itself was making like five or ten Grand a month of like, you know, free cash flow and so he starts opening up more and so he builds out
His first real one, he opens, you know, five six more, whatever, then he starts adding to the back of it. So there's like, real estate. So he's getting the real estate with the escape room and he's getting more space, and he created a trampoline park in an axe throwing things. So, basically just like this kind of, like, out of home, entertainment is what we call like this category. And so he just bundles these together and over that period of like 2015 to 2020 ish, he's built this thing up and he starts selling them off. So he's selling
Knopf. You know in chunks of pieces and he basically said that he made 26 million dollars doing this. I think through a combination of the sale plus the distributions along the way. But I might be wrong. Maybe it's both. He said he had let's see he spent 10 million building these out and over the over the years. There's about 20 million in distributions from, that's crazy. So, you know, kind of an amazing outcome. An amazing return for this guy.
Yeah, this yeah. I didn't think that these would be good and then I like met him and I started learning about him. He's a nice to two people. Should go follow him on Twitter. How do you, how do you know? I just don't through Twitter. I saw some like I've been going back and forth with them a little bit and then he listens to the Pod. So, you know, you had reached out at some point step talk about this pay transparency thing. This interests me a
lot. Yeah. So in the last couple of years, there's been a bunch of laws that have changed across States. I think Colorado is maybe the most well-known.
Known where companies have to depending on the state disclose certain aspects of a job related to pay, right? So it might be arranged that a specific job requires also things like even if you're in a job you can request your band and you know why you're paid a certain amount and how you compare it to others across the company. And so that's changing. It's still changing. It's like very much in flux. I think there's at least a dozen states that now.
Um, require you to share those pay ranges for example. But this one girl, Hannah Williams. She's 26. So super young, quit her job. She's making like a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a year and then in the last year has just been doing the kind of man or in this case, woman on the street and all she does, is she goes up and she just ask people. Hey, what do you do? How much do you make? But her social accounts have blown up. So she has over a million followers on Tick. Tock again, in a year.
We're 450,000 on Instagram and she's on other channels as well. And so, an article was written about her in January and she had already made six hundred thousand dollars since her switch. And so I'm sure she's made way more. Now, with the accounts being the size they are but this is one of the cases we've talked about this before. When there's like regulation change, there's like a rule change a Line in the Sand is drawn and then that has implications in this one's so far ranging, right? Because it impacts.
Any job Within These given States?
So if you go to her profile, she's doing a really good job. So you go to our profile and Tick-Tock and you click that link that says Stan. So check this out. So here's how she's making money. So the top link is indeed link where it says, get a job as a nurse. And so she's getting affiliate thing, then she has a market research guide, which is learn how you should do learn, how much you should be making. And I guess that's so she can collect emails, but then, click attend and attend La in NYC workshops. So she partnered with
It'll one to do local of like seminars at their Banks like because some of their banks have cafes and then she also has, I think, I believe it's a subscription database, where you can see individual salary data packed with contextual information. This home is awesome. Also shot. This is how you doing Sam. I invested in Stan's a good good use of Stan here for the putting a link in the bio that lets you. Let you make a bunch of money. Yeah, this is cool.
We've talked about levels that I fly on the Pod before which is a similar concept which is a crowdsourcing salary info. So you can if you're an engineer at Facebook, you can go find out. Am I getting paid? What other L for juniors? Get paid, or should I be working at Google and what? I get paid if I was over there I think they're doing an awesome job of this. When we had mentioned this on the Pod, somebody did this for doctors, they were like we I think we had said you should somebody should do this for nurses and doctors and then they were like, Hey we're Med students and so they went and did this for doctors and created a database. I think they got acquired by
Bye levels actually, after after hearing it on the Pod and then taking action on it. So, definitely think that there's opportunity here and I like saying, what do you call it regulatory inflections regular board like to use aviation's inflections, is the I word the inflections, which is anytime there's like a law change. There's, well, there's like multiple infections. So there's like a tech and flexion, which is like uber exist because everyone now has an iPhone or and you have GPS in your phone. Then there's like cultural inflections which
Like teens feel comfortable filming themselves and then there's regulatory inflections. Which is this drug is now legal or this patent is about to expire or you now in Colorado have to disclose your salary band. Therefore, opens up new opportunities. So this is there's another one you have here, that's
what I was gonna say the so you guys have talked about hearing aids on the Pod before. So as of October, the FDA relaxed, their rule, which basically meant hearing aids could be sold over the
counter, which is benefit that they're not rolled over the
Connor. It's fucking bullshit. Like it's been bothering me so much for that. And glucose monitors, I'm amazed that they're not sold over the counter. I've been trying to get a hearing aid and they make me go to all these appointments and I miss them. It has some really yes.
Another fun fact around hearing aids, which I feel like is inter related to the fact that they can, I visit now already that they can be sold over the counter as if this coming October they can. Okay? So it they already can but apparently, 99% of hearing aids or custom hearing
Kids are 3D printed already and so there's a few companies that basically on this Market currently. But the reason I love this is because 3D printing is the epitome of like Tech hype cycle, started in the 80s, then got way over hyped, wasn't ready, everyone thought it was dead, but it's like come back in these really Niche places like uring AIDS. We talked to people on Trends a while ago, that were using 3D printing for, like, dental implants. Yep, things like that. And so I feel like it's
something that actually is like overlooked because people were like, 3D printing
stead. Wait, what do you Shawn? You said. Yep, as if, you know, you know, people doing this for teeth. Yeah. One of my best friend's, one of my best friend from college. He's at that. He's a surgeon and he's a ENT surgeon. So your nose throat and what he I was like, well he was in med school. So this is like over the past like you know, eight years or whatever. These been, the guys has been in school forever and I was like, how's it going? He's like, oh yeah, it's fine but like I'm having a the most fun because now I run Dukes
D printing facility. A, my 3D printing, like, just like for engineering, like you making toys. What are you doing? He's like, no, like the medical 3D printing. And I was like, wait, I thought many, I thought 3D printing is like not even a thing for normal, Chet. You guys are already using it in medicine. He's like dude, I am I surgically implanted part of a skull that I 3D printed the other day like, you know, we take your jaw shape and then we're able to like, create like the perfect shape that we needed for this implant this. The surgical process and I was like,
Wow, I had no idea and they're doing this with a like basically. It's interesting some technologies take forever to get into medicine because it's like the high-stakes pot and for some medicine is the only justification for putting in the time and the money that it takes to get the technology to work and I think that's kind of where we're 3D printing. Has gone where it's like it started as like this hobbyist thing. But then the real commercialization so far has happened on the the medical side.
I think the same things happening kind of Envy are people trying to redo the hobby thing for a long time? But one of the better more commercial use cases of VR is, you know, dr. Training flight, you know, pilot training things like, you know, imagining structure. Yeah, exactly. Anything where you need to sort of visualize and plan something, you it's worth the money to develop a really high-quality VR simulation because it's cheaper than doing a real real prototype of it. They might annoying. I didn't know you.
Oh, I didn't know you had the side of you. I got friends and I got friends in hospitals as they say. Well, you're idiot of course, of course you do. You're the odd man out but you know, you're shelling web, 34 years turns out you're a practical guys. Well, put the blockchain and your brain baby. Yeah, dude, the do this, whilst I also, for this hearing anything, I met these guys that were doing seven million a month in sales on their hearing aid, brand that I had never heard of, and I was like, oh, huh?
Maybe this makes a lot of sense actually like DDC hearing aids. I think that's actually gonna be a big deal. Was it bootstrapped? They I don't know if they're fully but chef but like, yeah. They're not like Venture act, it's like, but they may be strapped. And then like their Uncle game some money to keep it scaling it. That's, that's the same, like that sort of vibe and they're profitable. I mean, I'm just turning you on. Yeah. They were only once and again.
How far away from the coast of they live. Let's let's do this. Let's do dis jobs in the future. I think this is a good one. Yeah, and I also love that you're branding their steps list. Well done. Wait, wait
until you had to, I love Sarah's list but yeah, this all comes from. I guess, two things, one. People think AI is taking all of our jobs. I personally don't fully agree with that. We don't need to dive into.
That, well, let's see if it. What's the official stance at a 16-0 right now? Is there like a bunny? Do they just like, is there like a poster? Where it said, like web three is future. They just like, put an X over. They just wrote a, I
will say, is we even on this pot of talked about different jobs that don't quite exist? Or maybe are starting to exist? I've talked about Chief automation.
Officers. Shawn, you've talked about this idea of like a mental Fitness coach and I guess this idea of stuffs list is partially. I want to share a few ideas today but I also want to hear from the listeners like what are the jobs that you think are? As you know, some people might say little more antifragile but also that again, like, don't quite exist yet or early, the types of things we would have talked about in terms
this, that you have here. Because I think this, that actually makes it clear that these aren't just like that.
Like, oh cute, things on The Fringe. It's like, no, this is the future.
Yeah, so apparently 85% of employment growth in the last 80 years came from new jobs. So, AKA between 1940 and today, 85 percent of employment, growth came from jobs that did not exist in 1940, did they not exist? Because like a, I didn't exist, or did they not exist because it's, by newcomer new businesses, like new businesses that are being a job title. Didn't exist is what you're saying. Yep.
So even you know, simple examples of this that I think anyone can recognize from even the last few decades before. 2008 2009 the idea of a social media manager did not exist. The idea of a ux designer did not exist and those are jobs that truly like what tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people now do these jobs and so there's going to be versions of this. I think it's a little more brain wracking to figure out in the age of AI because you can always
I was asked like oh well is this going to disappear in three years instead of 30? But I think actually there's maybe like Frameworks to think about this. So for example, I think drones are kind of hitting that we talked about 3D printing hitting that stage where a lot of consumers, own drones but a lot of companies are also starting to use drones and so like what within that that industry could exist, it could be like drone technicians, there's a lot of drones. People are going to need to fix those drums is
Are like drone traffic control, there's air craft traffic control. So why wouldn't there be right safety?
Inspector charging
installation bubble? Exactly. Exactly. And so my question for you guys is like anything on your
radar like well let's start with the ones you talked about before. So you said it quickly but I think it's worth repeating because you were on I don't know a year ago when you said it so Chief automation officer would you said that at that time this was kind of like definitely pre a I being like a thing that every talking about
What does a chief automation officer do it? Why did you think that was a cool job like a job in the future?
Yeah, so I mean a lot of companies will have a CTO. The CTO typically though is so wrapped up on like, what's our infrastructure is, you know, cyber security. What's our, how are we tackling that and are we keeping our, you know, our company, save our data safe, what they often aren't focused on and maybe some people would argue this is the role of the CEO. Oh, but is how do I actually
Really take the technology that exists today like Ai and enable every single person within my company to understand how to up level their jobs, right? So like to become 3x, more productive because most of those people unfortunately either aren't plugged into the technology. Don't have the like excitement to actually implement it within their job or honestly. It's just one of those. Like, you don't know what you don't
know. Stephen. Can I give you? Let me give you a compliment.
I remember that pod that we did, where you talked about that at Hampton, the first higher we made was an automation X. Really the very first hire his name's Grant. All he does is automate stuff. So he's basically a zapier plus are table expert. Yeah. And because one of our values, our early on was we want to grow to be big but we don't want to have to hired loads of people. So let's right away, start automating stuff and it was because of that conversation. So the very first higher we made was an automation expert. That's awesome. And you know what?
What it is. Fucking awesome. It is awesome. Neck is not typically like you have to create new things. It's that they're basically you're bridging a gap, usually, a duct tape, but unless there's a process, we're doing that's kind of tedious manual, repetitive, or low value, add but needs to be done. And then there's tools that could do that. If you knew they existed in, you knew how to pipe them together and Stitch them together so that they actually work and what this person does. And I do this at our company almost by accident, which is like,
Our e-commerce companies like I just discovered yesterday, there's somebody who's just has to like spend hours a week just like Square cropping photos so that they look better and Shopify from what the photographer gives them and I was like what you do this for, how many pictures and then yeah, it sucks. And I was like, you know, there's this tool that will just bulk you bulk upload and it'll do that and then it'll put them it'll pipe it to you here in stock. And you can see, you know, we'll use a different tool to pipe it into slack and you'll see if there's one that's off because you
Just kind of skim this with your eyes and then you'll just be able to fix the one-off. That's not good. But 98 percent of them will just be done. Well, the first time automatically by this one tool, and they're like, oh shit. That's like you know, thank you. That's saves me, a bunch of time and now I could go do things that are actually going to drive a little more growth versus just like some bullshit that had to be done. And how many of those are there in every company? There's a ton of those antennae and the problem, the problem is Sean is even let's say that hypothetically, you only have 10 people
All even though that you've been ten people for three years, just 10 people has created enough habit, that even getting it automation persons in now, it's going to be like man where do I start? So doing it with 10,000 people is like an impossible pass. That's why we were like let's get this right away, let's just right away.
There's a ratio like a for every 10 employees you have? You have one Chief automate or not Chief automation officer but someone who knows how to automate. You just pair them with teams and you literally do user interviews.
As they sit down. They say, hey let me shadow you for a day. Let me just see what you do. And then, from there, I bet, anyone myself included, who tries to automate, what I can, they would just pick up so many things of like, why are you doing that at all? So I think you should also
have this for team collaboration of you guys have read this book. Five, dysfunctions of a team. Yeah. By Patrick something, I don't know who's it's a great book. Honest, I love that book. I think other people like a narrative dry other people. I think don't really. Like, it's kind of, like,
Fiction. It's a it's a business advice book but it's written as a fictional story which is cool because that's not usually how those are written. As basically describes like there's a company, you know, whatever Acme ink, and they go to this like team off-site and they're trying to figure something out and then you have these like for personalities or five personalities, whatever. And, and it shows the like different ways that a team can be dysfunctional. And once I worked in a bigger like it, I've worked in kind of like two person teams. That's what I'm in now. Well, I think
Think the takeaway of the, or the the, you forgot the part where it says the point. The reason the books called that is successful teams, all look different. But every dysfunctional company with the same, and here's the five things that they all have exactly. And you kind of identify them, but he identifies it and the way the books written this kind of cool, I think it's a sort of like, it's a, here's a situation. They have two people who both have kind of like valid perspectives or one person doesn't realize that the thing that they're saying is causing the other people to feel a certain way and causing all these second order effects,
Anyways, it's a good book for like management, I guess. But what I have, I guess, my real takeaway is like, I've been in a bunch of companies where they do these like this, like shit builds up and they're like, we need an executive coach, we need a team off-site. We need to like break down all the scar tissue that's being built and like dysfunction. That's in the team and resentment, that's in the team. And what all these things are not allowing us to perform at our best. I actually think that companies should embed this in the company. So I think there should be somebody that floats around
That's basically like the the chicken billions, who's like, the team psychologist or whatever. It's sort of like that. But instead of one-on-one, what's her name or be? I love that lady. Yeah, I stopped watching the show after season one so I forgot. But she's awesome. She's Wendy room. Yeah. So basically instead of that, it's somebody who just sits in meetings and takes notes, and every week they just deliver like Sam, do you know that you do this and you say this and that that's making these pure. Did you notice that that makes these people
Feel this way and it then when they walk out of the room, you know, they're not going to go do the thing. You want in the way you want, because of the way you said it, or this person just didn't have that information and they were put on the spot. Maybe you should put in a process that gets the information and a dashboard that everybody sees beforehand or whatever, right? Like somebody that identifies dysfunction because let's say for every 10 people you hire if you can make that team, 10 percent more efficient you've basically created one extra employee without that payroll and so
I
think that the numbers would, the ROI would be there if you had this but I'm surprised. This doesn't exist. So I think that's a kind of a job in the future is basically like a collaboration expert. So somebody that like is a good internal, you know, Compass team Compass to figure out like you know, where are you like that word, Doula, you got to use the word Doula here. Yeah, I guess I'll just keep these Abdullah as a guy and pissing everybody off
Sam. What do you think any jobs that stand out to you?
What are you guys hiring for?
I don't fucking know, but nothing that like some of the ones that are like bullshit that you see out there and then I see their titles and I'm like, oh you don't you're not actually good at that is community manager. Like, Community manager is like a title that I actually don't think most people know how to make community. So that's kind of like a nonsense one. We, there's one from the podcast that we've talked about like, we have like a podcast producer Ben Wilson right now and we have, you know, people will have like social media manager. They have like all these
Different functions. But what I told the team was like I think we just need like a band manager basically like yeah, if podcasts are as they gets more success with their kind of like a band. You have the talent there, the face, they get on stage they perform and there's all the shit that needs to be done. Like whether it's like we're going on tour, we want to sell merge. We want to like develop this cult following of fans that just love us because we just do dope shit. That like is fanservice fan love. Then you have the recording stuff that's got to get done. And you kind of just need somebody who's like a hybrid.
Rid of a business manager or an agent as well as like somebody who's kind of have got the community building skills of a community manager and that's what a band manager is for bands. And I think that you're going to see this more for your podcast and YouTubers is like it is a role that sort of like the the band manager like the note boys and whatever they have that it's like but most others don't have it underneath them.
Hell, yeah, for sure, what are the, what are the, what's the, what are the lists that you have here had remote and then cyber actuary what are those?
So had a remote is kind of similar to the thing that you mentioned Sean but it's like, there's so much dysfunction at companies, especially the ones that transition from being non remote to remote just copy and paste it a bunch of things from the office. They don't actually know how to build a remote organization from the ground up, how to do things asynchronously. And so, it's kind of crazy when you think about how macro is shift, that is
Like thousands of people to be doing things all one way. This is switching to a totally new way and to have no, like, expertise from someone to actually guide that. So, that's the idea of head of like, and some companies already have that, like, Get Loud, what
work officer rwo. What would they do? It's like, well, people like I know in our company it's like, well first they have to, it's kind of like it, there's like well they need to have like a good home set up Sam. You've talked about this, like we need to not look like dog shit on camera when either internally or with our clients and our customers like
Like how do we make sure every he's got like a good zoom setup. Okay. Secondly, like how do we create some best practices around remote working and how to like, you know, do stuff that's different. Now that we're not all in the office, I could just like, look each other and talk to each other real quick and how do we set boundaries for different time zones? How do we plan meeting? You know, like all of that I think is definitely in
occasion based pay. I mean, isn't this crazy like to your idea with Hampton Sam of the nice background, the same companies that had these really strict.
Clothing rules. Like you have to show up in a suit and you have to look this way are letting people sit with their MacBook under their chin with like, yes, background behind them showing up to their business meetings, trying to win a client and it's like, where's your digital suit? You don't like what? They don't care. They don't even think about that because it's so outside of their field of view but that's just one example and I think
you guys do that and a 16 seed because like what I imagine a 16-0 like that's a khaki pants. That's a khaki pants type of place.
Well, I don't think we have a
clothing code but we do
like Lululemon's ABC. Pants is like the official pants of Mantua Valley.
Yeah, here's something that a 16z does do that. I never liked put together as related to this but like their design team will create every quarter. These beautiful Zoom backgrounds, that the company uses and they actually look good. You know, I feel like a lot of Zoom backgrounds are like the company's logo kind of
Like photoshopped in the background and just like look around and they again they refresh them every quarter. Everyone has access to them. So there's that least that visual consistency but I don't know if we have a clothing code
but I hope some of your bosses and employees listen to this. And I just want them to hear me say this. It is me and Shawn. Making fun of you guys. Not Steph. Just fly
out there. That was awesome.
It's like on TV with. I put the camera on me, but the camera on me.
You look down the barrel and use it to deliver something like wrestling promo. That's what I thought you were about to do,
but I'm trying to cover it was arson is like, look at me and he's like, you're great. Yeah.
No One Believes In. You more than me. Well, I had a friend that lived in China and I used to, like, text him all the time and then be like, dude, your government sucks. What's going on with that. And that I would reply with, by the way, whoever is reading this, it is me see.
Don't disappear my friend invest in the cool, Zoom backgrounds and stuff. You know, they got the, I think what like 700 million and management fees is there's this medicine. He's gotta go somewhere. So I'm glad they put them to good
use. Yeah but I mean just to summarize on the head of remote thing. Think about I think maybe the easiest way to think about it is there's all these macro Tech Trends right? Like remote work. AI automation.
In cybersecurity, right? Like the idea of it like Chief security officer didn't exist, like 10 years ago, right? Because that just became such an important, I guess concept within especially Tech firms. What does so
and what's this food engineer one?
Well, I wanted to ask you guys about this because yeah, we never talked about the Hannah. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, so funny, I know, but I still think the concept of like a food engineer will exist. I think this one's a little
further out. So give this talk.
Sean. Yeah. So a lot of people know David Friedberg now because he's on the all in pods so you kind of got a lot more popular famous, but this awesome guy used to work at Google created this thing called production board, which is his like, kind of incubator startup Studio, whatever, and they build things that are kind of like hard tech. So it's like things that interface with the real world they have like Hardware, they're making food or making, you know, biological substances or whatever. Like they're, they're creating real world things and I
Had this company called Kanna that he created that was basically like the coke freestyle machine in your kitchen. So you would have this device just an espresso machine. The sits on your countertop that can make like a thousand different drinks. Exactly to your specification using basically like the equivalent of a printer cartridge. So it's like you put in this cartridge that's got all these like micro flavors and then you hook it up to your water supply and it's like, it just takes water. It makes it cold hot or bubbly and then it pipes in the exact dose of flavor to create
Ever drink you wanted. You want tea here, you can make hot tea. You want sparkling water that's like flavored like you know Blackberry boom done and so it was awesome idea. There is it won't be good for this sort of like the world and way because a lot of the supply chain is basically spent bottling water or soda, putting it in hands, putting it on shelves, putting a cardboard around it, transporting it to the store, transporting it to your house. Then transcending the trash to the dump, I was like, dude, what if we just
took the water supply everybody already has to their home and we let you make whatever. Drink you want, very cool idea. And then out of nowhere just suddenly got canceled and they were like yeah. Unfortunately, to scale up, we needed a lot of money and, you know, in this funding environment, we couldn't do it. That's a bullshit. Excuse who can't raise. I mean,
I mean they've got like that top Tech podcast. Yeah, in the world. Yeah, they also may be an interesting way of framing that idea was also it was it came from the idea that
Done research. And they had realized that basically every drink out there, whether it was T, whether it was wine, whether it was beer. And if I press Add Water, like not just 95% water, but even the chemicals that go into it. I don't remember the number but it was something like there's only three like 30 or so flavors that you need to basically generate every taste. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe something for, yeah, we
should get him honor. I treated him. Well, I want to know what really like that what really happened? Like there's a scandal but like tell me more because clearly he could sneeze and raised Thirty million dollars for an idea. So, like,
Yeah, I'm surprised. If it wasn't like it must have been that gonna sneeze. His knees will be lovely flavor. I feel like he must not have believed. Meaning like the team must have realized it's not feasible or something like that. They must have proven that the thing is not feasible or not economic in some way for them to not be able to raise money because just on the concept I feel like they could have raised more money so I think you know, that's a that's interesting, what went wrong? But he said that he was going to send us one and then like his assistant,
Someone at the company was talking to us and they just quit, remember not send us what they were like. We want you guys. Basically, their idea was like, if you could make any drink flavor on the spot, okay, there what happens to drink Brands. And his idea was, I drink Brands become software, so they just come Brandon, yeah, we would create a drink flavor, you know, Sam's, you know, Almighty root beer or whatever. And it would just be like a specific dosage of flavors and that somebody could just buy it for a dollar on their own, can a machine? And it would just
Like dispense the drink and we would make money for every one of those like Flavor. So basically every one of those drinks sold that was the the kind of the concepts they wanted us to make one and they were like, come down to our facilities. We never got around to doing it and now it's gone. Did you guys see the freestyle machine for condiments? Yes I did. See this dude sign me. Side me
up dude. This stuff is it's have you been to like Hot Pot in Asia where they have the sauce
bars? No tell that
as well. If you go to hot pot and Taiwan
On like they're literally there will be
lots like a, like a style of food or like a.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like so basically you get a big pot of hot water. They give you broth of a certain sort and then you basically go shopping on this wall and you pick oh I want some like some noodles. I want some like beef whatever and you pick it out and then you basically cook your own soup but as part of that they have rice and other things and they had they typically have this huge sauce bar of like maybe like 20 to 30 different things like garlic.
Like were Ginger soy sauce, like ponzu sauce, whatever, and you make your own sauce and so when I saw this coming, I was like this is genius because like this is exist in Asia but only in these like hot pot. Okay?
She's right. Yeah, I kind of love this. I really do want the future food to be a lot more. Interesting. I think I think it's going to be you have so in your jobs that you got food engineer, I got that one cyber actuary. What does that one mean? If you have explained that one,
Yeah, so basically I mean a lot of people even if we relate this back to a I are worried that like you know there's just going to be a lot more. Cyber quote-unquote crime, right? People like replicating your voice like getting your bank details and I think so this idea of being a cyber actuary is basically actuaries assess risk for anything right. How risky is it for us to deploy? You know, this celebrities voice in this way. How risky is it for us to? I don't know like open source.
Our new LM like there's going to be all these implications of things. I guess becoming a lot more online if they aren't already. And so this idea of a cyber actuary is like there's already a ton of actuaries that figure out how much Insurance should cost in. You know, the typical world like if you buy a flight and I think there's just like this huge white space around risk, that people have not calculated
yet. Did I tell you guys about Eden data now? So I
Met him because he's joined handed his name's Taylor and he I don't know if he was playing up to my ego stuff, but he told me he created this because of an article that one of us wrote on Trends, I don't know if that's true or not but he launched this thing called Eden data and and just two years it's now doing like six or seven million dollars in revenue. And basically, what they do is, if you are a smallish startup, so like 50 to 100 people, you have to have a certain type of compliance in order to sell software to Enterprise companies.
He's and so the service that he provides is in this is like an over simplification but there's basically like a 50 to 100 Point checklist of all the things that you need to do. And a lot of these startups that can't afford a full-time Chief security officer and so instead they pay eaten data, eight or seven or eight or ten thousand dollars a month. And he's got a team of outsourced. People overseas who goes to your website and goes through your entire like the checklist and make sure that all 50 or 100 things are done and they have like templates to do it.
And then they stay on top of it and they monitor it in case any changes have to happen. So now you, when you go and Pitch like this Enterprise company to sell your software and even though you're a small start-up, you've already done all the stuff that needs to get done and and I think it's I think it's only two years in, I think he's gonna do eight million in Revenue this year and it's like a service. That's its subscriptions, it's like a subscription consultancy almost and he's killing. It's a crazy company with huge
margins. Damn, I have it, pulled up your digital security
sidekick.
Yeah, when I see companies like this, I think like I'm in the wrong we talking to somebody that was doing this. So I wanted to do this for rich people. It was like just to overall security audit for rich people and like everything, like your house security, your bank account security or crypto security like just somebody who's going to come in and try to like just poke holes in your stuff. And at a certain dollar amount of net worth, like it definitely makes sense and you're not the expert and you have more to lose than you have.
You know, then the cost of the service, I have a lot more to lose like a symmetric downside basically. And I think I've reached out to make tons of people, I've reached out to tons of people are doing it in. The problem that I saw is that a lot of them for something like, they're all like ex-military, guys, too. And so, like, I remember I was talking to pop, I was like, pop after the show is like what do you do for security? Like can you walk me through it goes? All I got this guy named Chad, we need this, this and this and then I talked to Chad and it's a little bit mom-and-pop. Yeah, there it's not like just like I can just
Log in and you could just tell me what to do or it can just get done. You know there's no like plaid or whatever that other software where you like users login with your bank accounts and it just does what you need to do. It was very much a manual process and it was like 15 grand and like this person's going to do this and so I do actually agree with you. I think there's a star. I do think this is like a fragmented that's a fragmented service and I think that one great company can can write and do all the all the stuff you need to get some of these other random Trends you have.
I mentioned the one, I wrote don't mention because I got something that's base so that Dimension that one. But do do some of these other ones? I'll start with that mouth tape.
Yeah, so mouth tape, I first heard about this, like, six months ago because some guy on Twitter was like I tape my mouth shut every night for the last six months when it's a best thing I've ever
done the hot, dude. The hostage deep guy will not suck ready, everything aggressive with it. We have this guy who's got a company, he called hostage tape and it's just
Tape for your mouth and he told me, he's gonna launch it and like this is dumb. And then six months later, he's like five hundred thousand dollars in sales. Yeah, I'm like great and that he's like a year later, two million dollars in sales and he's like, just rubbing it into my
face. I don't think he's an official sponsor but Andrew huberman has been talking about it and we in my household we like to call him father Drew as a joke but if father Drew promote something in this day and age yeah he's
like Oprah in a way where like if he says Bro Science. Oh pray if he says
Good. He's going to just going to get he's like,
yeah, so that's what I mean these are just like, I don't know where this goes. I don't know what opportunity there is other than going and ceilings mouth tape maybe rebranding it but that's one Trend.
This guy's companies called hostage tape at. Like I saw was like oh this is the worst thing ever, like is awful, what do you do? But he's proving us around. Was your last idea member wasn't it called hostage? Yeah a hostage ssf, right? Kidnap you and just please don't feed you for four weeks.
Partner, this guy's crazy. So whatever kudos to him.
Yeah, but I guess we didn't even mention. Do you guys, understand what's good about math tape? Like
what makes you breathe through your nose and breathe in through? Your nose is better for you then breathe through your
mouth. Okay, speaking of health benefits, another Trend that I would love to see take off because then I would have called it is Luchini beans. So like
health
But you've been talking about this being forever.
The last year, I just got, I went into, I don't know all the American Girls. This players like real high protein Bean. Yeah. So it's
got, did you been talking about those to be forever? You keep telling me about this being, I've been out with you a bunch of times.
You look at this, more protein than chickpeas 2% or two times more fiber than edamame. 80 percent fewer calories in almonds. 60 percent fewer carbs and pistachios 35 grams per serving. Obviously they cherry pick this data and compare
To like the best option for them. But these beans I think they're like originally from Italy or they're popular there but I just have seen this over and over and over someone who traveled a lot. We're like edamame edamame was not popular in North America 20 30 years ago like no one knew what it was right. It came from Asia and so now when you go to restaurants it's like a very sure.
How would you like to invest in the next episode
Sam? Do you remember when Bobby at hustle? Khan would go around. Pitching people yolk and he's like his picture show. No water.
No, I thought it was hot dog. Water is tuna water. Dude. The have you guys had chickpea pasta? Of course, I don't like, it makes you fart, like crazy makes you. It just I'll give you the number 37, like it.
40% of a calories is almonds but 70% more gas. It's like that's the loop pdbs you know pitch. Okay. So you've been calling this for a little while. I see every this seems like a good like d to C product idea, to be honest
there's like one company doing it.
This one by. Am I ever?
Yeah. Brah me. They also do I think the chickpea pasta, but I just think maybe there's something in the supply chain or like how hard it is to, you know, procure this stuff. But to me there,
They're pretty cheap. They taste really
good. You eat them plain.
Well, they at least this company will do flavored version so they'll do like rosemary garlic,
or does it give you gas? I don't think so. You couldn't even a beach baddest. So you can you can admit I don't think I'm gonna buy some like this idea. Yeah I'm going to try these out and see.
I feel about it by the way, this is a type of product that when we say on MFM there's going to be 13 people that start this for six weeks and then yeah, nobody six months later we'll be doing it for whatever reason. It's like and in the same people that tell us they're going to come back in eight weeks and they're going to say, actually what I think about this I yeah, it's like if my DM history, has four different ideas from you that you were pitching me for investment. Like it's
probably not going to work out but no forever,
that's exactly.
Let's do it. Can we do one more around these Advent calendars? Because I feel like that's another case. Where like I've I don't know someone in the community is going to jump up Shawn.
Do you even know what admin though? Is this some like Catholic shit. What is this? Oh yeah this is this is as Catholic as Catholic again. So every
Is out of it out of its in December. So so we Catholics I'm Catholic are you Catholic stuff? No, Steven. Sorry the cameras. Yeah, you're not one of us but it's okay. The we have lent which is like 40 days and that was when like Jesus like walk around in the desert you're not supposed to eat meat and shit like that and then we have Advent which is the 30 days leading up to Christmas.
And oftentimes, there's an advent calendar where it tells a story about like, what Mary, and Joseph, Jesus parents, like what they did, like, with the donkey in the mule and how they got, like, all these gifts from people. Whatever it tells that story and each day you open up the calendar. It's like the kids favorite thing. There's a piece of chocolate in the calendar.
Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the Advent calendars. Like, at some point, it was a religious thing than capitalism got involved. And then, you know, every day kids are opening a little chocolate. I swear my whole life, and I thought
The Advent calendar, was this little calendars that are like you peel it and there's like, peel the calendar for each
day. Oh yeah. I've been walking
around because that's what an advocate is good for a lot, a long time, my whole life. I would say this one, you like peel back. It's always chocolate inside. That's the idea. Usual. That's that
was get it like Target or whatever. And yeah, it's like a couple dollars, but it's like the most simple. You know, you buy it for your kids. So what's your idea here? Said, the better advent
calendar.
Five minute. Abs, yeah,
so this comes from. I gotta give this guy not mazaki, Paul
Crown here, he didn't sound like a Catholic.
No, no, no. This is it. I don't think this has to do with religion, but I actually got this for Cal this past year, because here's the thing I've been calendars. Yeah, I guess it was tied to religion but they happen around the holidays. And so people are scrambling to figure out last minute, like, what should I get my family as a
That's kind of thoughtful, but fun, and a lot of people get Advent calendars, but they get these like shitty versions that are like, you know, expired, milk chocolate, from the year before. What Paul did is he created this socket calendar. And so if you click,
that's the best way to celebrate Jesus. Birth to.
He, he created the socket calendar where basically every day for the month of December, or you can use it after you open your little Advent calendar. But it's not little, it's like
it's like the size of a printer kind of thing. And you get this like special sake that he has hand-picked from Japan. This is partially like his job, his existing business and he sells them for 300 bucks and every year he sells 500 of them which he caps and you do the math that's like a hundred fifty thousand dollars. Just from that one, one drop for him and he doesn't get that much traffic. Like if you look at his existing site it's like two thousand visits per month.
So, not something he would, typically be able to make much money from, but that's one example that just got me thinking, especially since we're like, What, six months ahead of Christmas, what Advent calendars is the my first million Community. What are you going to make? That is way cooler than the expired. Milk chocolate? I mean, I've seen some stuff like hot sauce calendars Lego calendars, but it's got to be something that, like, someone can open either for 12 days because some people do the 12 Days of Christmas.
Or all of December.
I this is actually cool. Yeah, I've actually think this is a, this is really this is really cute and cool and awesome. You have a picture of this person who has a binder full of condiments, like individual Pizza packets. And I see your vision here, this is actually cool. I see I smell your stepping in, and I think it's awesome. Well, miss it. So
the Tweet you're talking about Sam is this girl.
Nicole, Nicole who says her tweet? Just says organize my sauces and it's like do you guys remember, you know, if you collected playing cards back in the day or coins? They had those binders. Yeah. It with the little I don't even know what they're called but this tweet got four hundred and sixty-eight thousand likes. I think is probably one of the most popular sweets of all time and it's just her organizing her sauces from around the world.
So these are not for use. This is
like collections
that one is for a collection. I feel like the Advent calendar year, it would be for use.
Yeah. Wow. This is crazy. What I like about you stuff is like you find things that I would just scroll by, but you're pretty good at. Finding interesting things and applying them like connecting to like five other things. Yeah, when I showed up a something and I think this is stupid, you write that thing down and make it sound scary. It's amazing.
I waste my time here, waiting and Evernote that
Is just full of random internet
but but what you do something that's different is you actually remember it? So I like bookmarked so much stuff and then I just like, forget all about it, you actually remember it and then you like it's just the difference between like good and great. In terms of like whatever the skillset is that we have. You like actually are organized that the you know, what makes someone good versus great is like being organized. You are very, very, very organized with the stuff and that actually helps your like thought process. I would think. When are you doing?
Are you just going to bail and start creating some of this stuff?
I feel like you started this Trans Am. So before I joined the hustle, I was working at a company and in my last year at that company. I said and I must have been what 20 for something, 20. Yeah around that. I was like next. This is the last job. I will have right like after this I'll go and do my own thing but then ever since then, I just kept keep getting offered really cool stuff that I do. I get to more money. Well I get to be paid.
I go research Trends and go down these internet rabbit holes that I'd be doing anyway. Okay great oh we got acquired now, I'm at HubSpot and I get to build this like cool Creator program. Okay,
great and more money.
Now I'm ready. 16z I got to talk to interesting people like more money.
I got to be this interesting person with more money in my pocket. It was amazing. Yeah, you're letting this sepsis sitting there. She's like, how can I get
The things that are in there, make account to my bank account, where she's three years old. And she says, this thing where she goes, this is my best day ever. Like, and I'm like, she might actually be told the truth. This might have been like the best. This is the one. That's how I feel, whatever her she gets a raise at ACC. This is my Best Day Ever. Guys are like, we're step you and I were talking about like how much money like
You've had like, you're like, we were going through an exercise of like at 20. We had this at 23, you've had a nice run, you've had a very nice run
a very, very nice run compared to where I came from. So, yeah. Like you were saying earlier Sean, it's like 21 year old me would have said, yeah. Like, this is where you'll be. That's how much you'll make these are, like the opportunities you'll have. Yeah,
it's pretty. Why are you even 30? No. Oh my God. What would, what would turn around? You're old. You say, like, what would their reaction be?
Well, it's funny because I
I feel like I still have.
Like throughout my whole life because I didn't grow up very wealthy. It's a very like money orientation, not that I need that much. But just like, oh my gosh, like, you have that much money like go buy a car like go buy. Nice clothes go, you know, go like use the money that you've always wanted but never had. But it's funny because now that I have more money, I'm still like just as cheap as I ever was, I don't know if that's tough ever leaves you Sean. Do you know that stuff's have time? You Taiwanese Taiwanese my mom's from Taiwan. Yeah. You know that? No, I didn't know.
Super special her what you told me, they had our old company when someone found that out and I was like, yeah, yeah, I could see that there was like, people like Steph, why are you lying to us? You're
Canadian. I've had, some will Canadians. Not
I know that was the joke there. Like, quit lying. Yeah. Why are you lying about being
Taiwanese? Jordan was like there. So there's a huge Spectrum. I don't know why, like, what it is about the way I look, but some people when they hear that, I'm happy,
Asian are like, oh yeah, of course, like I knew that and then other people are truly shocked. Jordan was one of those and he went to Sam or no, he asked me and he was like, does Sam know this,
your secret's safe, the way you look. It's just like, what is their level of exposure to different faces versus anything to do with you? Yeah. Yeah, by the way, this your this thing about being cheap I read I was reading the story.
About this guy who made a bunch of money and they're like, what was your first purchase he goes. I hired a consultant to help me spend money and he goes you know, I had learned over 25 years, how to make money, it took me a long time to learn how to make money. And I was just very honest with myself that I have no idea how to spend money and I could shorten that learning curve. If I get a coach to help me spend money, what was this coach called a wife? I'll be here. All night.
I was gonna say, isn't that? Like, for me?
I feel like he talks about that all the time, right? Like, you gotta learn to spend. It's like it takes reps.
What was the coach actually called? I mean, I don't know. It's just like, I don't know, it's actual job title, but, you know, us spending consultant, let's call it, I've nothing. But what do they like, teach you how to do? I think it's I don't know. I mean, he didn't go into details on exactly what the guy said. But let's just pretend for a minute that he did. I would imagine he does two things. One is figures out where your psychology screwed up.
Money because everybody's got like this. It's like you know, people like body dysmorphia. I think everybody has bank account dysmorphia to like, you know, you think you need more money than you need. You, even when you have money you still act like you don't have money and like you, it's like all these like weird stuff. It's like, dude, you're fit now. Why do you still think you're fat? Like, you know, you have to sort of, like, retrain yourself to see something different in the mirror. I think that's part of it, like, just, just talking to figure out what are the ways. Your brain is a little screwed up about money, let's identify that first. Some people spend too much some people do.
Spend at all. And then I think the second thing would be like, alright what do you really want? So let's try to outline your like dream lifestyle or your, you know, the things you really want identify those and then let's calculate like, okay, how much those cost could you afford those? Now, I can't even afford a step in that direction and like, giving you the encouragement to pull the trigger on the things that you actually want or setting certain rules, like, you have to spend this much per month. What are you going to spend it on and like also on the protect your downside. So it's like hey we're going to set aside this
Amount of money. So that you're like, safety, reflex is satisfied. Like, we agree that logical by all logic. This amount of money being here. Untouched means you're safe. Okay, cool. So now we can talk about this other spending part without triggering your like fight or flight mode around your fear of financial safety. I suppose. This. Where was this article? Yeah, I want to look this up. I need one of these things. Yeah, you should look it up. I don't know. I don't know if this exists, maybe it's time for the future.
I don't know if his recent episodes are the same but for me, it's early podcast episodes would do those feel good, talk you like millionaires, who are fretting about a dollar blueberries at Whole Foods. Or like I remember one episode where this guy was like, I think I got at least ten million dollars and was picking up like a stroller on the side of the road. Things like that, where it's like clearly like yeah, you haven't upgraded your thinking or your mindset to where you are.
Dude, I just made $400 selling use gym equipment.
Went from from like, from some stuff. I'm not using. And I'm like, this is so my best day everywhere box. Yeah. It's like, I feel more happy about that. $400. And I do making much larger sums. Yeah. And the best part is that I paid $300 for it five years ago. Now, I got four dollars and it's like the best high. I read this thing that was like this guy timer, who created, he's got this company called causal and it's like this Excel.
Competitor. But he read his blog post. I really liked where he was like he's trying to figure out in a nerdy way how to decide if you should buy something or not. And so he's like, he's like, well, I break everything down into kind of like I don't remember the exact message, but it was something like this was like the frequency of like how frequently my going to get the benefit of this and then like, what's the like magnitude of the benefit and so he's like something that's
It doesn't have to be a big shift but it's going to happen all the time are like 10 times a day or something like that. Like, you know, like I bought a phone case. That just feels better in my hand. It was like a great purchase because like the hand feel of my phone is something, I'm touching my phone all the time, and just making that feel a little smoother. A little better was like, dude, what was that case called by the way? I'm looking very good. Let me feel funny. Oh, yeah. We know how much it
cost ya. Is it gonna be a plug for
you guys Mo as I think, is the name of it. But it's got this like,
This is not like plastic feel. So this field right here is like it's almost like the feel of a basketball. It's like a like a like a attraction kind of like feel because I was like, I hate the plastic feel of cases like as I think that feels cheap and and I don't enjoy it, I didn't want the leather ones either so I was like, what else is there and found that and so he identifies like if you're going to do it, if it's going to be frequent then the magnitude needs to be lasting. It's going to be in frequent than the magnitude.
The Joy. It brings going to need to be high and you can multiply those two together to figure out like the value of that item. And then you sort of say, okay, that's the value to me. And what's the price to me? And you sort of use that to figure out, you know, where should you, where should you spend for snot and what people mostly get wrong in that is they under count frequency so like a better pillow or something like that is great because you're going to sleep on it every single night versus yeah. Nice. Bat Louis Vuitton bag, that's going to sit in your closet, like my wife about a Louis Vuitton bag and she literally never
Except she doesn't want to get messed up. It's like, wow, that's the, you know, most expensive, you know, six thousand dollar thing that just sits in a closet for no, reason versus things that you get joy out of all the time. And so I bet if you guys looked like what's the best purchase you made or your your most satisfied with this year, it's probably something that you interact with somewhat frequently or it was like a one-off life-changing experience that was just like crazy magnitude.
Yeah. What was that article called? I want to I want to let me be clear. I need some good money therapy in my
life, money therapist. That's the
title. Yeah, yeah. I need some good money to a yes I'm a dark hole but Steph appreciate you doing this, you're always coming with fire your Twitter, your a Twitter person still right, step one,
person's Seth Smith IO is the handle and if you want to support my day job, go listen to the, a 16-0 podcast. We're doing some cool stuff there.
That's just what it's called. A 16z podcast, right? Yes.
All right, we appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to be like all days or less travel never looking back.
All right everyone, my first million episode Dawn. However I've got good news. You see we have another podcast and by we I mean the HubSpot podcast Network, it's called marketing Against the Grain. One of the hosts, his name is Kip and he's the CMO of HubSpot, you know, twenty billion dollar company. So he kind of knows what he's talking about and they talked all about what's going on in the world of marketing. And they give really really cool behind-the-scenes information and stories. I'm actually on one of the podcast, if you search marketing against their grain sampar, you'll find it, I go like really, really, really
Depth about how I research different business ideas, but he's has a ton of really, really cool guess, check it out, marketing against the grain.
