My First Million: The Reddit Revolt, Turpentine, & Shaan's Latest Business Venture

So so that was the other thing that sparked drama.

Now you got leaked phone calls.

You got the CEO calling a guy crazy.

He said she said.

And so that raised the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing.

As the thing on Reddit, small things can turn into big things.

That's like part of the beauty of Reddit.

And that's what was happening here, dude.

First of all, your energy is going to me site.

This is a this is a great story.

We'll just wait because I have a little more for you here.

All right, ready? This is the part that that's the background.

OK, now let me give you some foreground, right?

Let me give you a little future future play here.

OK, some four play, like a little four play.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like days off.

All right, what's up?

We're here.

Dude, have you seen this Reddit revolt that's happening?

Are you aware of this?

I am aware of it.

And is it going to matter really?

So basically what happened is there's this app called Apollo, right?

Apollo. Yep.

Here's kind of the I would say the zoomed out version of the story.

So what's happening today is if you go to Reddit right now,

the whole site is down, so they broke all of Reddit.

What they were trying to do was just a bunch of subreddit.

So these communities on Reddit were trying to protest some new Reddit policies.

So it started with a few of them that said, you know what?

We disagree with this policy change that's going on.

You know, we're going to do this 48 hour blackout.

We're going to go private.

We're going to go dark.

And they called it Reddit.

Go this summer, it's going dark.

And more and more started joining to the point where 7000 subreddits,

including some of the biggest ones on there, like r slash funny and r slash picks

and stuff like that.

And I believe that's 30 percent of Reddit.

That's what I read.

Yeah, it's basically it's a huge amount.

Like, you know, there's there's a couple of cool websites that you can go to.

In fact, we should go to to one of them right now.

So go to this site.

So it's red dark.

So red dark dot untone dot UK.

Very strange site.

But you can see in real time, this thing's almost like this.

This tool is even almost broken because so many are going dark at the same time.

And Ben, if you could share your screen.

So it says 7,240 out of 7,806.

That's like 90 percent or something, right?

740 out of 7806, 93 percent of subreddits have gone dark,

which is just an insane number.

And if you do it, you could if you click the large thing, there's like a live feed.

It'll be like animals with jobs has just gone private.

Five thousand members.

Music music hoarder has gone private.

Five thousand members.

Crusty windows has gone private and you just see like in real time.

And I've been watching this since yesterday.

It's crazy when I when I opened this up yesterday, it was at 2000.

And now it's basically all of them.

It's 7000 out of 7,200 out of 7,800.

So almost every subreddit has decided to join this protest.

And so you say, well, what's the policy?

What's so bad?

And what happened is Reddit wants to IPO.

So Reddit wants to go public in the future.

Reddit is not currently profitable.

They make about, I don't know, somewhere between four hundred,

five hundred million dollars a year, roughly, and they're still not profitable.

And these apps that other people had made called third party apps were just used

to like you could browse Reddit and they built like special features into them

that made them maybe easier to use for certain types of people, power users

or moderators, things like that.

So that's why people love Apollo is because they had some power user

features that were great for moderators.

And the Reddit made the mistake of not they thought they were picking on Apollo.

But in fact, they were pissing off moderators.

And that was a really, really big issue.

And I'll tell you why in a second.

So Reddit goes and says, hey, look, we can't keep giving these third party

apps full access to Reddit.

This has a couple of problems.

First, they're hitting our servers with a bunch of requests that costs us.

He said what the CEO said was tens of millions per year in server requests.

The second thing is those server requests are now serving Reddit content

onto someone else's app.

So that person could monetize their app and Reddit doesn't get a piece of that.

So they were like, all right, we want to cut costs.

We want to increase revenue.

And they had a third problem, which was they didn't want their data

going to all these different places because basically open AI and chat

GPT had the scraped Reddit.

Reddit was like one of the key sources to make chat GPT so good.

And Reddit kind of was asleep when they did the first scrape.

But now they're like, oh, no, no, no, no.

If any other AI company wants our data, you're going to pay us a huge amount

of money for it.

So to do that, they needed to basically pay all the data.

They needed the data only to live inside their own walls.

So they up their API pricing.

They basically said for every server request you do, it's now going to be

whatever, 10 cents and a fake number.

But the result was that an app like Apollo, which is made by basically

this one dude who made it as a passion project at a college, he would have

to pay 20 something million dollars a year just to maintain Apollo.

And so he's like, dude, that's unfeasible.

He's like, I have 50,000 paying users.

They pay me 10 bucks a year.

So he's like, I make 500k on this.

Now I have to, my costs are going to, in 30 days, my costs are going to go

to 2 million a month.

And he's like, that obviously kills my app and it kills not just my app,

all of all the third party apps.

And Reddit's answer was basically like shrug, like, you know, all right,

well, sucks to be you.

And then the way that they kind of responded.

Well, so wait, hold on.

I want to ask you a question about how the word got out.

But first, we have to get background here, which is even though, so I just

looked it up, Reddit is like the ninth most popular website in America.

And even it's like, you know, it's like when someone says, no one knows

as they use it, well, it's like, you know, no one goes to that restaurant anymore.

It's too crowded, it's kind of like that.

So Reddit is basically a, I don't even know how to describe it, basically

100,000 plus forums all on one website.

And the reason why this matters is because each forum, which is called a

subreddit, and there's basically a subreddit on any topic you can ever imagine.

In most viral news in America or viral memes, start at Reddit.

And it's subreddits are forums that are owned by volunteers.

So someone comes up with one and they create it and they run it and then they

run it and I didn't realize how much autonomy they are giving given.

And the reason why this is important is now like this has happened before.

Apparently Reddit fired one woman named Victoria like eight years ago.

And she was a community moderator and everyone loved her.

And so all these other subreddit forum leaders like did the same thing.

But where they shut it down a little bit.

Now by the way, the result of that was the CEO got fired.

They got to back then they got 200,000 people to sign a petition saying

Ellen Powell needs to get fired.

And so she stepped down like, I don't know, a week later or days later after that happened.

So they, you know, they do wield a lot of power.

They yield a ton of power.

So but here's what's crazy.

Hey, Reddit doesn't make it that much money for how large it is.

It's if you look at the top 30 websites in America, I bet you.

I'm not research this, but I would make a bet that it's on the very, very low end

of revenue or even value created per user per user.

And part of it's because people are anonymous and redditors are typically

horrible with clicking ads and things like that.

And the other part of it is that they're kind of in a weird way.

This guy, Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohini, and they created this company, Reddit,

and it's amazing and their users own the platform a little bit.

And that's what we're seeing here is these people basically set their channels

or set their subreddits to private so you can't access them.

So that's what's happening.

My question to you is when this guy will come Apollo, when Apollo guy

announced that he was going to shut down his app, how did he get word out

that it happened and how did all these people rally around this?

Well, again, the people that use his app were power users.

And so when he said, hey, guys, you know, here's what's going on.

And it actually happened in multiple steps.

So the reason this got so much heat is because it happened in multiple stages.

He said they announced that they were going to update their pricing.

He's like, hey, we're going to have to keep an eye out for this, but I'm optimistic.

Like I'm sure Reddit's not going to they're not going to like just do

something that doesn't make any sense.

And Reddit's like, for sure, for sure.

We're obviously going to take this and take everybody's needs into account.

But we will have to update the pricing.

And he's like, you know what?

That's reasonable.

I can't wait to hear back what you guys have in mind.

That was like post one.

And he shared that.

But where did he share that?

He shared it on subreddit, on Reddit, and maybe in the Apollo subreddit plus some others.

And so like the mods subreddit, because again, a lot of moderators like Apollo

and because it helps them do their job faster because these guys are subreddit

owners make money.

No, they make nothing.

So Reddit has this huge fleet of the moderators that are in the dark one.

I think right now there's 28 million moderators.

I think that was the number that are that are like participating in this.

Some insane number.

Let me see.

I had a subreddit.

It was called like apartment hacks.

And I was like trying to get people in it and it very quickly got like a thousand people.

But I quit working on it.

So I got the number 28,000 moderators on the 7000 subreddits

so that are participating in the in the in the blackout, basically.

So these moderators basically are constantly fighting spam.

So when you have a site that's as popular as Reddit, there's a huge amount

of people that are trying to get you to buy their crap, that are trying to get you

to subscribe to their only fans that are trying to get you to click this link

and install this virus and or just doing clickbait.

Like just making it where they post something super outrageous

just to get clicks and engagement upvotes and a big battle in the comments.

But then it kind of turns off people who were there for like, you know,

they wanted they wanted the entertainment without it getting ruined,

without the party getting ruined.

And so the moderators were the people that were keeping this house party working

where it's like, yeah, we want people to come here and have fun, but no,

dude, you can't bring 17 kegs in here.

No, you can't just come here and fly or your own party inside my house.

Like, no, no, you can't do all that crap.

And they're fighting this constantly and they do it as a giant unpaid thing.

Now, what they pointed out during this protest very reasonably was that,

dude, red is one of the only networks that's all run by unpaid volunteer moderators.

So, for example, Facebook has a huge moderation program.

They spent about 200 or 300 million dollars a year just on moderate content

moderation, Twitter spends a bunch of money in content moderation.

And so content moderation can be a very big cost center.

And so the moderators are like, hey, you're trying to save $10 million

by shutting off these third party apps.

Have you thought about what happens when we stop doing all this free work?

And like, now you have to pay for content moderation or this whole site goes to shit.

Like, what's going to happen then?

Maybe you should listen to us.

And so that's where this has escalated to.

But just to finish the story, so he goes, he says up front, OK,

Reddit announces change, it's going to affect us, but hopefully it's all good.

And some people in the comments will like, dude, you're being naive.

These corporations are like just like Twitter killed all the third party clients.

Reddit's going to do the same.

These guys want to go public.

They're going to want to own all they're going to want to own the user

experience for all all all users of Reddit.

They're going to kill you.

And he's like, no, no, no, no, they've they said like, you know,

they said they're going to be fair.

OK, a couple months later, it comes out and they're like, here's the pricing.

It kills you.

And it takes into effect in 30 days.

And he's like, what?

Like, first of all, ridiculous pricing.

Say, well, 30 days, like I couldn't possibly try to like change my app

to maybe make less requests to your server.

Like, I couldn't do anything in 30 days.

Like, you're just going to kill my whole business.

And I took yearly subscription.

So I'm not only in my app going to die, I'm going to have to refund like

two hundred fifty K to people who paid for a year's subscription

because my app's no longer going to work.

So he was in a world of trouble.

So he contacts Reddit and he does a call with the team from Reddit

and he records the call.

And after the call, what state is he in?

You can you're allowed to do that in some states, but not in every state.

Did he do it the right way?

Do it in Neckbeard Nation.

It's all good, baby.

It's it's all legal.

You're the little guy fighting the big guy.

You can do whatever you want.

And so so he at first, he doesn't do anything with it.

Then Reddit comes out and says, this guy's crazy.

He's making outlandish claims.

He tried to extort us for he asked for ten million dollars

in order to like keep supporting the app.

We can't do business with this crazy guy.

And they basically like kind of like just, you know, slandered him a little bit.

And he's like, what are you talking about?

That's not what I said.

And what do you what did I say?

That was so outrageous.

And he's like, here's the recording.

People can listen to it themselves and decide.

Oh, man, did you listen to it?

I haven't listened to the whole thing.

But there's a part in there where he's like, look, like, OK, I'm reasonable.

Yeah, he sounds reasonable.

And he's basically like, look, you know, obviously,

I'd love to just keep going independent.

But you guys are saying it's too expensive to raise pricing.

That makes it untenable for me.

But people like this app and they're going to be upset when this app goes down.

He's like, you know, you guys bought alien blue back in the day

and you made that the Reddit app.

Like, have you considered just buying this app so that you can like you don't

have to pay for all these extra it's not some external part of you.

That one's that you guys can own it.

But at least it lives on and like it's a win-win solution potentially for for all of us.

Didn't he price?

And so he was like, you know, he said something like, you're saying this

cost you this will cost me 20 million a year.

You're saying this costs you tens of millions a year.

Like you could buy the whole thing for $10 million.

And that's, you know, six months of my operating costs.

And, you know, like it could work out that way.

And Steve Huffman on the call is like, look, like, you know, I don't

I don't appreciate the threat type of thing.

He says something about like, that's a threat.

And he goes, wait, what's a what's a threat?

What do you mean?

Because the guy said something like he goes,

you know, if you don't want all that, like all this noise about this,

like you could just do this.

And he kind of took it as a threat, like, oh, you're threatening.

You're going to make a bunch of noise if we don't pay you $10 million.

He goes, no, no, no, I'm saying we have like that.

You're saying I'm making too many API calls.

So if you don't want all this server noise for the API requests,

you could just own it and just use your internal systems to do it instead.

And he's like, oh, sorry, like, OK, my bad.

I didn't realize you're talking about API requests.

Like I apologize.

I didn't mean to like say that you were threatening us.

And he was like, OK, no problem.

Like I just want to like glad we're clear on that.

Then later he comes out and says he threatened us.

He's like, dude, even on the call, you apologized saying, saying, sorry,

I misunderstood you.

And then you took that out of context and tried to make me sound like a guy

who's trying to profit out of this or like trying to make unreasonable requests.

So anyways, that so so that was the other thing that sparked drama.

Now you got leaked phone calls.

You got the CEO calling a guy crazy.

He said she said.

And so that raised the profile of what was otherwise kind of a small thing.

As the thing on Reddit, small things could turn into big things.

That's like part of the beauty of Reddit.

And that's what was happening here, dude.

First of all, your energy is giving me sight.

This is a this is a great story.

Well, just wait, because I have a little more for you here.

All right, ready? This is the part that that's the background.

OK. Now, let me give you some foreground, right?

Let me give you a little future future play here.

OK, so play for play.

So Reddit may have forgot, but this is how Reddit started.

So Reddit started because of the popular forum site of the day, dig.

Made this big update and everybody hated it and dig said, screw you guys,

this is better.

And they said, see you.

And they went to this little site called Reddit and Reddit blew up.

But that's how Reddit became what it is, is that the dig fumbled the ball,

released this anti, you know, this anti user update.

And they were sticking it to the man.

Yeah, they stuck it to the man.

Well, who's to say that doesn't happen again?

So I have a little proposal.

Somebody should run with this idea.

I bought this domain and I think somebody should do this.

If not, you know, this is what I would do if I was if I was a little

little younger and hungrier than I am today.

So here's what I think somebody should do.

I think now is the perfect time.

The younger you, the equally conniving just a little bit more ambitious.

You just my T levels were a little higher back then.

Yeah, I'm a mellowed out dad now.

You know, my daughter paints my toenails.

I can't be doing all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, if you if you woke up at 10 a.m.

this morning and you wear a hoodie all the time,

you know, this is for you.

Netbeer Nation, this is the call out.

But I did.

OK, so I want you to just check out this little website here.

So, Sam, I don't know if you know what the CEO Steve's

handle is on on Reddit.

Do you know what his username is?

I used to. Yeah.

If you said it, I would remember it dark dark something.

Spaz. So SP easy.

And so I don't know.

I woke up this morning 6 a.m.

And I just looked at GoDaddy and I just saw that spazless.com was available.

I thought, huh, one cent for spazless.com.

So I bought it and I said, what's spazless?

I think it's it's Reddit without spaz.

Would you like Reddit without Steve?

Well, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to make a Reddit

as very, very, very, very, very similar.

Look into this website, but with one difference.

There's there's no Steve.

There's no corporation that's going to do.

The tagline needs to be same, same, but different.

Same, same, but different. Exactly.

Same, same, but different. Exactly.

So here's Ben threw this up while while we were talking

because I gave him a rant this morning.

I was like, dude, here's someone should do it.

I think he just bought he told me right before we went on there.

He says, I'm going to buy the domain.

I'm going to put it up.

So he goes, it says, I love Reddit.

I just don't like don't like spaz.

So I'm going to create a newsletter.

New Reddit. It's called spazless.

It's Reddit without Steve.

Here's the master plan.

It'll be very, very, very similar website to Reddit.

It's going to be a nonprofit and any revenue that it makes

will get funneled back into the communities or moderators.

Because this blackout, like this, this 48 hour protest that they said,

it's cool. It's going to get headlines,

but Reddit really doesn't care.

They're going to lose about three million dollars

by being down for two days.

And then they're just going to move on with life.

And the protestors made a big error,

which is they said how long they would protest for.

They said, the pain will stop at 48 hours.

So all of Reddit has to do is just ignore it for 48 hours.

They're going to keep doing what they want.

So when your voice doesn't work, you got to exit.

And here's it. Here's a little little exit boat for you.

It's basically Reddit without the bullshit.

And there's a little email sign up box.

So if a million people sign up, then who knows?

Maybe we can create something here.

And so, you know, why do this as a nonprofit?

Your voice already rich.

We don't need to we don't need to make a profit on this.

We just create this for fun because it's fun to to see something burn down.

I don't even have a problem with Steve Heffern, by the way.

I think he's, you know, smart guy.

I think he's he's fair in his opinion.

But also this is the Internet and in the Internet,

you really got to know who you're pissing off.

And I think he's pissed off too many people with this move.

I can't believe that nobody's making the alternative to this.

The people that are trying to make alternatives,

they're all trying to do it so different.

You don't want to do different.

It needs to look almost exactly the same.

Change the shade of red by like two hex,

you know, like little hex color over to the right.

And then it needs to be the same site with the same structure.

Everything is the same, except for who decides what happened.

So how the money flows.

And if you just change that, you could do this as a nonprofit thing.

And I think it would be very entertaining.

In lieu of your morning cup of coffee this morning, you had a cup of rage.

And I and I and I dig it, dude.

First of all, a few beautiful things.

Neckbeard nation.

That was nice, right?

That's our new.

That's our that's our fan base.

So we hired this woman to help us with some t-shirts if she's listening.

Dude, this lady, by the way.

Hilarious, hilarious thing you did.

So this woman, this woman sent me this beautiful, beautiful thing.

What does she do?

So you get something in the mail?

I get this thing in the mail and it's like this beautiful, like 10 or 20 page

outline, it's clever.

It says what she's going to do for us to make t-shirts.

Or is it beautiful?

It looks like a giant PowerPoint deck that we just printed out because she

knows, like, yeah, he might not click the link.

So let me just print the PowerPoint out on white and black, you know, paper

and just put it in an envelope for him.

It's beautiful.

Like when you see like a neckbeard guy doing very neckbeard thing where you're

like, I'm just happy this exists.

This is a beautiful display in that sense.

It's beautiful.

It wasn't physically beautiful, but it was very, it was, it was very clever.

And she said, you can reach me at myfirstthought at gmail.com or something

like that, or right.

Yeah.

T H O T thought, which stands for that hoe over there.

And or she said, you can just DM me on my first thought.

And so I talked to her and I was like, this is awesome.

Let's do something.

We'll work together.

It worked.

I email her with you on the line and I go, I think I said, dear thought or

dear thought.

And she was like, great.

I mean, by the way, uh, you should look up what that means.

And I was like, I know what it means.

I thought that you wanted to be called.

Yeah.

You said it first to me.

That was your Twitter handle.

I don't, I'm not trying to disrespect you.

But you said it, not me.

I'm just, I'm just playing the game here.

By the way, the funniest thing is you go, all right, thought, let's do this.

Yes.

And she was like, I don't think you know what thought means.

Otherwise you wouldn't have called me that.

She goes, LMAO at big address.

That was my first thought in your email.

Urban dictionary below for your amusement.

Yeah.

And I immediately replied.

I was like, I'm sorry.

I thought, I thought, I thought this was a shtick.

I, you're right.

I'll call you your real name, my apologies.

So we didn't get off to the doctor, a great start right away.

All right, thought, let's do this.

So dear thought, we're going to this is why we only have four female listeners

because of this type of behavior.

I was trying to, I, you know, I was trying to relate.

I was trying to like show that I read.

Yeah, it didn't work out well.

Yeah.

It's like when you hear, hear someone call their friend, they're like,

oh, Nicky, and you're like, what's up, Nicky?

And they're like, it's Nicholas.

And you're like, oh, OK, just because he Nicholas got it.

Sorry.

I was just I was in LA this weekend and I went to like the LA tech week thing.

And we went to this event and there was like 300 people and I'm not exaggerating.

I had 30 people of like the 300 people come up to me and like say, like,

hey, love MFM, I'm a total man.

And so two episodes ago or one episode ago,

Sean came up with this idea of this total man.

We got a lot of flak for it.

I don't know if you saw it, but people loved it in general.

And I had literally 20 or 30 people like in a row come up,

be like, dude, I'm the total man.

By the way, you're doing it wrong.

It's not total man with like a space in between because then it's like,

yo, I'm I'm the total man.

It's I'm a total man.

It's like one word.

It's like it's a it's a thing.

You're now it's a different type of noun.

You got you got, you know, mammals.

You got humans and you got total man.

That is just like a separate species.

Yeah, get rid of the space.

It's cleaner. I got you.

Yeah, we're going to do it.

And so total man, that that's a hit.

I think neckbeard nation with you being the mayor.

I mean, that you being the president, that that's that's our new.

That's the new thing that we did it.

We got a new thing.

Yeah, totally agree.

Question, which side are you on?

I think I'm team breaded on this one, but they screwed up.

They shouldn't have done it this way in the first place.

You know, they're a venture capital company.

They've got hundreds of employees, probably thousands at this point.

They they fumbled the bag here, not on the PR press or PR front, which they did.

But like letting this get out of hand the way it has in the first place.

I mean, you've got to you got to pay the bills.

Why are they what are they doing?

Letting people build build this stuff on their land.

Right. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I get where they're coming from.

I think they like many tech companies fumbled the communication and execution.

But I'm also horrid at that.

So, you know, I would have done this twice as bad if I was in their position

because I'm always like I'm a very much rip the bandit off type of person

and also like because I'm very far on the spectrum of not easily offended.

Like it takes a lot to make me feel like mad or upset.

I severely underestimate how easily I can make other people mad or upset.

And so I get their position.

I think, you know, most likely unless unless bezels becomes a thing,

they're just going to be like, cool, nice protest.

We hear you. We'll take you into account in the future.

Continue using Reddit, you know, like life will just go on

and nothing bad will happen from this unless literally somebody seizes the narrative.

That's the thing.

There's a narrative right now and somebody could come in

if they could surf that momentum on the narrative.

That's hard, though. We are the thing.

That's hard. Uber had the same thing.

Do you remember when it was trending to lead Uber?

Like, I think these things come and go like this happened in the crypto world.

Crypto world is like the most like ruthless.

It's like just like night fighting in the streets.

And so OpenSea had some policy issue or some change.

Do you remember what it was?

It was like fee change or something.

Well, why did you get people to get mad at OpenSea when they

I forget what it was. They changed something.

Yeah, they changed like the royalty take rate or something.

Worst podcasting etiquette ever to ask the guy in the room

who's sitting like 10 feet behind you with no mic or headphones to ask

his opinion. Have you seen Joe Rogan?

Rogan doesn't anyone can do it.

So basically OpenSea, which was the big NFT marketplace,

by far the dominant 100 percent market share type of thing,

changed something in the policy.

People didn't like it.

And literally like in like a 48 hour period,

somebody spun up a competitor and they did what was called a vampire attack,

which was they in crypto, you could do this thing where you could be like,

OK, who are all the wallets that use OpenSea?

I could find them.

They're all public that I can airdrop them tokens that say

if you come over to our platform and claim them, create your account here,

you get free tokens and people like token might be worth something.

And so they just like they basically like vampire tech.

They just suck the blood out of one network to another.

And this happened several times in crypto where they basically tried to do this.

Now, it's not always 100 percent successful,

but to go from you didn't even exist to like a million to two million users

with like a shot at a if you deliver a dope user experience, you know,

this can work, you know, that's like better than nothing.

And so in crypto, this has happened a couple of times.

A couple of the like DeFi tools have had this happen where, oh,

we don't like your policy.

We're going to fork your source code, rename it,

and we're going to incentivize all the major players on yours to come over here

and get like a bonus token if they if they come claim their thing here,

which builds the momentum in the narrative.

Well, I don't I mean, like your energy, I don't know how to like one up you here.

You know, like they say when you're like supposed to like meet people,

you're supposed to match their energy to like make them feel comfortable.

I don't know what to say.

I feel like I feel like I feel like we're going to a monster truck rally

like Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, like your grave digger right now.

Now I'm just in the stands trying to keep up with earplugs.

You know what I mean?

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.

That's so on point.

How do you even remember or know that?

That's like their radio ads, right?

Monster Jam.

Have you been to a monster truck rally in the last 700 days?

Is the Pope Catholic? Of course I have.

Yeah, I've gone to monster truck all the time.

I've gone like five or six times.

They do backflip.

So I'm not not going to go see a big ass truck to a backflip.

All right, let me talk to you about something that you actually are

no more than me about, I think, because you're friends with them.

Yeah. And then I want to talk about that's a lot of stuff.

OK, and then I want to talk about

I want to talk about the second thing about Milk Road and nothing.

And we'll leave time for that.

So Turpentine is that what's called a turpentine?

Turpentine. I think time. Yeah.

So basically, there's a guy named Eric Tornberg.

He's been in the game for a while.

He's just done a bunch of stuff on the Internet, including founding a company

called On Deck.

He launched this new thing called Turpentine.

It was very nice.

He gave us a little shout out.

But basically, what I believe it to be is just a podcast network

for business content, particularly some type of like start up the related stuff.

So there's like one on media. Yeah. Yeah.

There's one on media.

I think there's one on on FinTech, a few other things.

And he announced it.

Have you seen this? What what am I missing?

Yeah, I've seen this.

So Eric Tornberg is behind this.

Eric's awesome guy.

Did he talk to you about this before he did it?

Because I feel like if I was going to do something like this,

you're my phone a friend, right?

No, you didn't talk to me.

You're my phone a friend on that.

I've never talked to him.

Oh, you never. So you don't know each other that well.

OK, got you.

Because he's in our friend group, I guess.

OK, so I'm curious what your take is on this,

because I think you know a lot about this.

I have a strong opinion, but I want you to explain it.

I mean, I think you said it.

Well, he's trying to create like what I would say

the easiest analog is like the ringer.

So the ringer was started by Bill Simmons.

So kind of like famous notable guy

in the in the sports journalism landscape, basically was like,

I'm going to create a network of sports podcasts.

I'll have my show. I have this guy do NBA.

I'll have this guy do NFL.

I'll have this guy do, you know, pop culture.

I'll have this guy do whatever.

And so they created a network of podcasts,

ended up selling it to Spotify for a few hundred million dollars,

two hundred, two hundred something million dollars.

And really, that was mostly because Bill

had the number one sports podcast,

and he's like very influential in Spotify.

I had a strategy there.

So Eric's trying to do that for tech.

So he's like, how do I be the ringer?

How do I be barstool but for the tech industry?

Can I basically create like intellectual, entertaining,

but also highly intellectual conversations

about things that people care about in tech?

And then he's looking for shows.

So like basically, if we were, you know,

not the badasses that we were, we could be like,

hey, let's join Turpentine.

We're going to get their back office.

We're going to get them helping us sell ads.

We're going to get like, you know, help with production.

And we'll get cross promoted amongst, you know,

their network.

It's very similar to like work week,

which we've talked about on here before,

or groups doing this kind of with like newsletters.

And Turpentine is trying to do this with podcasts

plus newsletters, plus other things.

That's kind of the thing.

His tagline is where experts talk.

So it's a network of podcasts covering tech,

business culture, and trends that are driving the future.

And he's got, I think three or four shows right now.

Oh, looks like maybe five.

Three that he's doing.

And then a couple that other people are doing,

but they're all like very like fanciful fancy,

like the cognitive revolution, you know,

media empires moment of Zen.

And so they're, they're kind of like,

I would say Hybrow compared to what most podcasts are.

Yeah. So here's my opinion.

I don't think anyone that you mentioned

or anyone out there is really doing it perfectly,

but this is beautifully done.

You go to his website.

It looks awesome.

I thought you were going to be anti.

You're pretty anti most media things.

So I'm surprised you're-

No, I, oh no, it's going to come.

It's going to come.

Oh, you're doing, you're doing that sandwich thing?

Yeah.

My bad.

I stopped you with the bread.

Yeah.

Sandwiches always have, it's not, it's not-

Love your logo.

Hate everything else.

Like a sandwich is not-

Meat cheese bread.

It's bread meat cheese bread.

Okay.

It begins and it ends with that.

No, I do like it.

So here's the thing about these companies.

I think if he doesn't raise money,

I think it's awesome.

I think so long as he doesn't raise money,

I think this could be really, really cool.

I think owning this outright is amazing.

I think that's really cool.

I think when I go to his website,

I think he borderline, like if it was done

a little bit the other way, it would be really douchey.

But the way that he's done it, it's actually quite awesome.

Like for example, he quotes Pablo Picasso.

And you know, that can go either way.

That can go either way.

He went the right way.

I think when you go to the website,

I think the name is nice.

It's all like pretty slick.

It's upscale.

It actually looks really good.

I think that if you did that a little bit differently,

it would not work.

But what's the quote for Pablo Picasso on there?

Do you see it?

Yeah, it says, when art critics get together,

they talk about form and structure and meaning.

When artists get together,

they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

Cool. I think that's cool.

I think it's cool.

And it's got a nice little picture of Pablo.

I think it's awesome.

Yeah.

Dude, for my next company,

I'm going to get a quote from Benny Blanco.

What's he going to say?

I don't know.

He got Pablo Picasso.

I'm going to get Benny Blanco on the other side.

We can do Bugs Bunny next too.

I mean, I think it's good, man.

I think it's good branding.

So my opinion is, I think it's cool if you own it.

I think it's cool if...

So I don't know if you know this.

You probably don't because who cares.

But Business Insider's writer, the writers are on strike.

Do you know that?

Well, a lot of...

Isn't Hollywood also on strike right now?

I think they're totally unrelated

other than maybe they inspired each other.

I think there was a contract up

and Insider formed a union or something like that.

And they are protesting.

And they're doing this thing called a digital pick line.

I guess it's called a digital picket line

where they're telling all the customers

not to click on Business Insider links now.

Which is great.

I mean, someone who follows a Business Insider journalist

is probably not also someone reading Business Insider,

I would imagine.

So I don't know if that's gonna go well.

But if you have to...

So if you're gonna start a media company,

I think you have to be incredibly careful

not to hire folks who will unionize.

I think that is actually an existential crisis

to a lot of media companies right now.

And I think that that's like a real...

So here's the takeaways.

I think A, it's awesome.

So you're gonna do this.

I think it's cool.

I think you should own the whole thing.

B, look out for union types.

C, him going B to B, that's 100% the way to go.

And I wanna give you an example.

But is this B to B?

I don't think this is B to B.

What makes you say this is B to B?

Well, I don't know.

I think he has probably going for like

high end customers more so than B to B, right?

Yeah, but your ad sales people can spin that nicely

to Salesforce.

Like it's not like true crime.

You know what I mean?

It's borderline.

I think he's a decent cousins with the B to B.

Real B to B, it's close.

But let me give you an example of a real B to B one.

B to B ish.

B to B ish.

Yeah, it's Bish.

Have you heard, by the way, did you see that guy

who's getting in trouble?

His name is George Santos.

He's like clearly, I think he's like from South America,

but he was, I'm gonna butcher it,

but he was some type of elected official on a long island.

And he's getting in trouble because he did

a bunch of fraudish stuff.

But one thing that's funny is he told everyone

he was Jewish and he goes, well, I didn't say I was Jewish.

I said I was Jewish-ish.

Like I'm friends with the Jews.

I was Jewish-ish.

Like, you know, like I'm buddies with them.

Have you not seen them?

All time, all time, excuse.

He like stole $500,000, so he's actually a crook,

but like the funniest part, he goes, I'm Jewish-ish.

And you look at him and he's like from Brazil

or something like what?

So that's pretty funny.

But anyway, I think that instead of going B2B-ish,

gotta go all the way.

Have you heard of aging media?

No.

Okay, so type in aging media.

It started by this guy named John.

John's a member of Hampton,

but everything I'm actually about to say,

I just kind of stole from a similar web,

but I have heard some rumors about them.

But basically, if you go to aging media, what's the-

You mean on his Hampton application where he had to write

his revenue, profits, names of all his children

and social security number?

You may have some info on this.

He's into me.

I just clicked similar web on their site, no info.

So I know you ain't getting shit from similar web right now.

Oh yeah, yeah, so here's why.

Here's, I'm gonna explain it to you.

You gotta be a pro.

They have a, no, listen, aging media

is their like corporate website.

So what's it say?

They have like their brands like senior housing news,

hospice news, skilled nursing news,

that sort of thing.

So what's the meta tag on there?

Is it like a nursing home profession?

Yeah, media for the senior care industry.

Yeah, so click like one of their websites

and you can go to similar web.

Each website only has something like 50,000 visits,

I believe.

It's like, it's like not a lot,

but they're doing something like 12 or $11 million a year

revenue and like three or $4 million a year in profit.

And this is a B2B, hardcore B2B site.

They make their money through lead gen.

So basically I imagine they'll do like a webinar

or something and if you like are in the nursing home industry

you give them information, they also have ads.

And I think, I don't know if they have podcasts

but they do have newsletters on their site.

This is a hardcore B2B.

This is yeah.

And I love it.

I love it.

I love this.

You just did this guy such a disservice

by sickening four, four to 40 copycats on them.

If I talk about how good of a business this is on here.

Well, no, so look.

Listen to this podcast.

So like if Sam or Sean say the N word,

I don't mean the N word.

I mean, newsletters.

If they say that this is a good newsletter business,

the instant copycats, bro,

they saw what you did with the hustle.

They saw what I did with Millcrown.

They're instantly looking for a new newsletter to close.

No, I apologize.

And on behalf of whoever this guy is,

I'm sorry.

I dm them on in the Hampton.

I go, hey, don't tell me anything,

but just can I talk about your company?

And I said, here's what I see on similar web.

He didn't know what he was saying yes to.

No, I got permission.

I go, here's what I see on similar web.

This is what I'm going to say.

Are you cool with it?

And he gave me a thumbs up,

like literally a thumbs up emoji.

That's how I roll.

I get that emoji.

We're good.

That's a hardcore B2B media company.

So anyway, my point with the serpentine thing,

I think it's cool.

I like it.

I think it's cool.

I hope he pulls it off.

I've thought about doing this idea actually in the past.

I ruled it out for a bunch of reasons,

but that doesn't mean somebody else can't do it.

I think it'd be great to do.

It takes a lot of energy.

I'm totally with you that I hope he didn't raise money.

In his tweet thing announcing it,

he didn't say like so happy to have Mark Andreessen

investing in this.

So I think there is,

I think there's probably a good chance he raised money,

but he didn't raise, okay.

He didn't raise money.

So I hope he is taking it that way.

Well, he probably learned from his other company on deck.

Like that's another company where I think they raised

a hundred plus million, I forget,

but I think the valuation was $500 million.

So I don't know how much they raised,

but I imagine it was the nine figures.

That's another company where it's like,

that could be cool if you don't raise money.

Basically, screwing up your cap table is like

one of the only mistakes in business

that you can't really make up for.

Speaking of screwing up your money,

can I tell you what I did post Milk Road

with the money that we made?

Well, I do know that you sent me a text.

I would have to go look at when that came and you said,

I've sold all my equities.

I think it's gonna go,

I think the market's going down.

And since then, it's double.

It's about double, a lot of the,

so I know you did that with your money.

So what else did you do?

So I tell you about my next best decision.

Yeah, what else did you do besides

not make money off your money?

For the record, for the record,

I've actually, I would be about even from where I was

with my equities on that.

Cause I kept, well, I kept a portion of it,

but I also, the stuff I sold has not doubled.

You just look at HubSpot stock

cause you're like, I got HubSpot.

So you're like, HubSpot is the market.

HubSpot is not the market exactly.

So I'll tell you that.

So let me, let me tell you about what I did.

So we got this money.

So for sell Milk Road, now there's cash in a bank account.

Got a couple options.

So it's like, do we just buy treasury bills,

make 4% on that?

What bank did you use?

What bank did I use?

What do you mean?

Use a Chase or one of the other ones that got screwed up.

Security breach.

There's no upside in the answer to this question.

Did you use one of the ones?

Were you using one of the ones that got screwed up?

No, no, no, no.

I didn't use Silicon Valley Bank.

No.

So money's sitting there.

I was like, could buy treasury bills?

No, that's too boring.

Could do what Sam does.

I could just index into the stock market.

It's reasonable, but like, you know,

I think it seems like we're coming off

of a 13 year old bull market.

Don't really need to put this,

the full amount in right now.

Let me just kind of wait and see what happens there.

Is there something that can do better than the 8%

that I might be able to get on that?

I thought, well, should I just invest it

in a new company?

We start, I don't know.

Maybe if we have a great idea, we'll do that,

but let me just, let me not do that.

And so I started doing this process where I was like,

can I, I worked backwards for basically like,

can I get 30% a year compounding?

And 30% of year sounds like a high number,

but we have a few friends who have done it.

And the way that they've done it

has been through buying private companies.

So they buy businesses and they own them.

Andrew Wilkinson, I think is the one that most people

who listen to this pod will know

because he's been on a bunch of times

and talked about this,

how they built Tiny from a few million dollars

into, you know, 500 million dollars by doing this

sort of 30, 40% compounding over time.

Did you read the Tiny annual report?

We'll have to talk about it next time.

Yeah, I read his annual letter.

Yeah.

So, and we have a few other friends

that have been doing this as well

that are less public about it.

So I said, okay, well, let me do that.

I said, but I don't want to buy these companies

and operate them.

So I thought, what if I bought 30% stakes?

So it's sort of like, can I buy a minority position

in companies so that they keep running them?

But I give them capital.

So basically like the founder oftentimes was like,

not taking a lot off the table

or they were kind of always worried like,

should I put this in my pocket and spend this?

Well, I don't know, what if the company needs it?

Even if for profit, well, they were kind of worried about that.

So I said, here, let me give us some money.

And then could I help them grow?

And so I went through this exercise.

I don't think I've told you about any of these,

but I talked to about 25 companies in the last,

I want to say six months.

Dude, every company that you talk to DMs me

and they say something of a variety of,

I was talking to Sean and now we're not talking anymore.

But they like messaged me to like talk to you

and I just ignore it.

Yeah.

You're like the wingman who refuses to wing.

You don't have to tell me which companies

I already know probably half of them.

My funnel was this.

I was just doing a review of this.

I thought it was kind of interesting.

So talk to about 24 companies, I think, got serious,

like did diligence.

I would say talk to means like,

talk to means like I was interested.

You know, obviously we looked at it a little bit more

than that, but talk to was like,

oh, this could be interesting.

Well, you could kind of squint and see a possibility.

Then got into kind of like more serious talks

that either negotiated numbers or diligence

with about nine, got to a LOI stage with three or four

and ended up doing one deal.

And the last, I want to say six months post sale.

And so this ranged from everything from,

so newsletter businesses, only fans, businesses,

journal apps, virtual events, bookkeeping companies,

merch companies, and then a bunch of random stuff

that I know nothing about that were like,

oh, that sounds interesting.

Like some company that like does something called

laser peening on machines to make the parts last longer

and their clients are like Boeing and stuff like that.

Or autism clinics that seem to make a ton of money,

but I'm like, okay, I don't really know

how I would add any value to this.

And in each one, I was like, all right,

can I find a good operator where I can acquire

minority stake of the business at a good deal

and I could help them grow.

And ideally they're the category winner for what they do.

And so that was kind of like my process.

Before I tell you about the deal that we ended up doing,

I want to hear any thoughts or questions on my approach here

because there's a bunch of learnings.

Yeah, there's no way you're gonna get 30% for that long,

right? Do you actually think that's possible?

What do you mean for that long?

That long means what?

I don't know anything about markets.

I haven't read like a warm Buffett biography,

but like what's he compounded at every year?

Oh, yeah, he's been at 20% for like 50 years or something.

Okay, but if you got a project, 10 years that you go.

He's putting billions and billions of dollars to work

and that's very different.

Right, okay, I think that's smart.

Do you think you're gonna enjoy this?

I think you'll enjoy it, right?

I'm not sure.

So this was a test basically to see like,

is this fun to do?

It's definitely fun on the learning side.

Now that we made the first acquisition

or the first like kind of, I would say not acquisition,

like kind of minority investment.

And it's different than startups.

Like we've done startup investing.

Startup investing is very, very different.

Startup investing is you look at a business,

you're trying to figure out is this,

are these three dudes in this bedroom

gonna be able to build like a multi-billion dollar company?

Right, like is this husband and wife couple

gonna be able to pull off this gargantuan exit?

And like kind of right now,

they have usually nothing, just an idea, product,

maybe a little bit of traction.

It's way more of a lottery.

It's a lottery and you put in $100,000

and then you do that with 40 companies

and you know that 38 of the companies

are gonna be kind of like just a write-off

or a cost of doing business.

And two or three of those 30 or 40 companies

are going to be your winners,

but hopefully they're winning

at 100 extra, 1,000 extra more returns.

And so it's very lottery like,

and you spend very little time with them.

So you're not like, they don't want you advising them.

You answer questions when they call,

you can proactively nudge them a little bit,

but you're mostly hands-off, I would say is angel investing.

Whereas if you buy 15, 20, 25, 30% of a business,

you're a little more involved.

You know, you're a little more active.

These businesses are not like all or nothing businesses.

They're like, oh, it's already a good business.

It's profitable and it's already growing.

So the question is, can we accelerate the growth?

Right?

So like the one business we bought is,

I don't know, super profitable.

It makes millions of dollars a year in profits.

It's a, you know, more than 50% margins.

And, you know, we were able to buy a piece of that.

And I think that that's just so different

than every startup investment I had ever done.

You know, it's probably not gonna become

a multi-billion dollar business.

I would almost guarantee that,

but it doesn't need to.

It's not supposed to.

It's a cash flow business.

And so-

Isn't it funny how you have mocked me

for like the last eight years

about my slow and steady approach.

And now you're, you know, look,

you're still at first it was like laughing at 8%.

I'm going for 10X every year or whatever.

Right.

Now it's coming down.

Now 30% is really attractive, which I agree.

That is really attractive.

Before you know it, you're gonna say,

No dude, that's not true.

Even in a startup fund,

even when you have your winners

that become billion dollar companies,

the overall fund, like a great fund

is doing 30% IRR or 20% IRR.

Look, I'm just saying you're getting more boring.

It's still the same.

You're getting more boring.

No, it's down, I don't know.

I reject that.

I reject that premise.

I would say that.

Bro, you used to make a live streaming app

and now you're looking at a company

that sells parts to Boeing.

But cash flow is always interesting.

It's always been interesting.

And now it's more interesting than it was in the past.

I really didn't have a lot of exposure

to these types of business.

I lived in San Francisco.

You say cash flow and people think you're talking about

like a leaky faucet.

Like nobody knows what the hell that means.

And so once I started doing this podcast,

we got a lot more exposure to,

like most of the people who listen to this podcast

are entrepreneurs all around the world.

And so when they reach out about their business,

it's like, oh, it's Guy in Minnesota

with this marketing agency that does this per year

or this person sells parts

and this person does whatever.

They're rolling up bookkeeping services.

And so you learn about different types of businesses

more through this.

And so I've been getting my MBA

on non-Silicon Valley businesses for the past two years.

Look, the cool thing is that we research stuff.

And like, if I really dive deep into a topic,

I'll research it for eight hours.

And that's not enough to make it an investment,

but it's enough that I say to myself,

oh, wow, this space is really intriguing.

I could see myself doing this.

You're doing that, but instead of eight hours,

you're doing weeks.

And so it's oddly in the similar vein a bit.

Of course, you have to do more due diligence

and actually look at the numbers

and get to know the people.

But yeah, it's like getting used to the space.

So the most interesting thing is what happened

between the four deals that we signed LOIs on

and the one that we closed.

And I'll try to do this without giving away any info

about the companies that we didn't do the deal with.

I can talk about the one we did,

but I can't talk about the one we didn't.

But the things I, the reasons that,

the mistakes that we were making along the way.

Here's trap number one that we already experienced.

I can fix him.

Like the classic girlfriend mistake, like, yeah,

he sucks, but maybe I could fix him.

It's basically like, maybe I can fix this business.

And when you do this minority investing,

you're not the majority.

You're not going to be able to fix anything.

And so that was, you know, trap number one

was getting really far down the road with a business

that I thought had a ton of potential.

But for finally realizing,

I'm not going to be the one to fix it.

And fixing it is the wrong approach

to doing, going into a business like this.

That was mistake one.

Mistake two was I can totally,

I can totally see this working,

but working at a small scale.

And so you have to remember basically like,

as you play the game, it's kind of like,

this is how I felt about you, like your Airbnb,

which is like, you do one Airbnb.

That's, you basically can't do one Airbnb.

You can only do one as a test

to see if you want to do a bunch.

One Airbnb is like a bunch of headache

without the size of the prize being big enough.

And so we had looked at one business that was like,

yeah, this could be-

Which is what I have, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, we all make this mistake.

But I think you were at least looking at it the right way

where you were like, maybe I could do a bunch of these.

You talk to people that had 50 of these in their portfolio.

And you have to do one to know if you want to do 50.

And so we got really far down the road with this one

that like, if it all worked,

it's like, dude, we could be making $200,000 a year off this.

It's like, wait, what are we doing?

What are we doing this?

Like, yeah, it's a great deal

and it's highly likely to work,

but it's highly likely to be very small

and like not worth the mind share of even doing this.

And so we pulled out on that one.

The one that we did was basically a company,

people probably know.

So it was in a cat.

So this one was not company first-

Are you gonna name it?

Yeah, I can name it now, it's official.

So we first looked at the category.

So I was super bullish on companies

that let you hire internationally.

So specifically like,

how to hire in the Philippines and Latin.

And you know-

Why were you interested in that?

Like kind of scar tissue.

Like, dude, you came to my office.

I remember you came to my office in San Francisco

when I was doing Bebo and you were like,

what's your burn rate?

Which again, it's like a question

nobody asks somebody else out loud.

It's like, you know, that's like asking somebody,

it's asking a woman their weight,

like ask a founder their burn rate.

Let's see how they feel.

Yeah, in my head, I was like, that's bubbly.

You had a bubbly burn, man.

And I was like, three million a year.

And that's what we were,

we were basically a startup that was burning

three million a year, pre-product market fit.

Cause that's what it cost.

We had, we basically had a team of engineers

so we had like, you know, I don't know.

10 to 12-

What's that a month?

10 to 12 and 12 and 12 and 12 years.

It's like 250,000 a month.

I think we were doing like 240,000 a month in burn.

So you get like-

And that's net burns.

Does that mean no, does that assume no revenue?

We had revenue from one of our projects,

but like, no, I was just saying like the overall bill.

So, so we basically, you hire 10 people

that are 200,000 each.

You're doing two million plus you pay rent,

plus you have your cloud bills,

plus you have whatever else.

And so that was really expensive.

And those were all Silicon Valley engineers.

And they were below market sales.

Those people, if they were working for us for 200K,

they could have been making 400 or 500K at Facebook,

but they wanted to be a part of a startup.

So I did that and it was very stressful

to have a very high burn rate for a company.

Like I just didn't like it,

but I didn't know any better at the time.

And then afterwards, as I get a little more savvy,

like with our e-com biz,

we'll do probably somewhere like a little under 20 million

this year in revenue, we're profitable

because 65% of our team is overseas.

So we have our data analysis person, Argentina,

our designer, India, our customer service, Philippines,

are the person who's running our whole wholesale channel,

like built it from scratch, it did not exist.

And now it's like a new revenue unit in the Philippines.

And we did the same thing with Milk Road.

We were profitable with Milk Road from day one.

Like I remember coming to your office at the hustle

and you had like, I don't know,

15 people running around there in San Francisco

and like that's a bunch of San Francisco issues.

They have to go home and pay $6,000 rent.

So you got to pay them money.

And for us, we had one person in the US for Milk Road

and we had everybody else in the Philippines.

And so it was again, lean, mean, profitable machine.

And I was like, oh, not just is this cost savings.

Like if you hire some of the Philippines,

they're basically 10 times cheaper than the US.

So like, you know, you can hire somebody in the Philippines

for $1,000 a month, so 12,000 in a year.

That same person in the US will cost you 80 to 120K.

And these are skilled people.

Like in Latin, like the guy we have doing our data stuff,

he's like, you know, got his MBA.

Like these are highly educated, highly, you know,

he's like a wizard with like, you know,

Power BI and Looker and all these like data tools

that I couldn't even start to use.

Do you get to know?

Yeah, yeah, of course.

I'm talking to him all the time.

The one good thing is, especially with the Philippines,

this sounds terrible, but I'm gonna say it anyways

because it's honest.

I hate managing people and I love hiring people

to the Philippines because they need so little management.

Like I...

Why does that sound horrible?

What did I miss there?

Cause I think what people want is for you to be like,

I'm a good manager and I talk to my people

and I'm like, dude, it's fucking great.

I only talk like, for example, my assistant,

I only talked to her on Fridays.

People are like, well, that's kind of mean or like,

it's great.

They don't want one-on-ones and like career trajectory

coaching and they don't want like,

like the same thing, like in San Francisco,

I had, let's say I have eight direct reports.

That's eight weekly one-on-ones I had to do.

Well, dude, I've had...

That's essentially eight hours out of the 160 hours a week

that I have that I'm like, you know,

I'm spending doing basically like touchy-feely stuff,

which is fine.

I understand it, but it's really nice

when you don't have to do that

cause it's not the baseline expectation.

There's a bunch of roles where you don't want

someone who's entirely ambitious, like with an assistant.

It's like, you don't want someone that's like,

no, I don't want to give you all these other opportunities.

I want you to be great at this thing and not bail.

Like I don't, this is what I need.

This is the tool that I need and I want you to be that.

I don't want to have to promote you tons and tons of tons.

I've hired a couple of people for like our hold code

basically and they're, they're cool.

They're, they live in San Francisco.

They're awesome.

They're super motivated to work with me.

I'm like, great, what do you want?

Like I want to be you.

And I'm like, wait, what?

And then I'm like, cool.

Like, you know, someday they're like, yeah,

but I'm also spinning up my own news

that are my own podcast, my own investment arm.

Like, I'm like, okay, well, like that's great.

You could do that, but you,

that makes for kind of a shitty person to hire onto my team.

Because like part of being on this team

is being down for our mission,

not like your own mission necessarily.

And I totally get, if you want to go do your own mission,

but you got to go do that on your own.

You don't get, you don't get to have both,

you know, at the same exact time.

You could do one and get mentored for a bit

and then go do your own,

but you can't do them at the exact same time.

And so it has been very nice to have people that are just like,

like literally like our management style is they log in,

they say, log in, here's what I'm doing today.

If you have any adjustments needed, you say something.

If not, you just don't say anything.

At the end, they say, login off.

Here's what I got done today.

Here's everything I did.

Here's the files.

Here's the info, login off.

So how much are you spending now on these folks?

I mean, dude, I have like in my own companies,

probably almost 15 to 20 people that are international now.

And so...

And what's the average salary?

It ranges.

So like on the low end, 800,

I think about it monthly,

because that's like when I push payroll,

that's what it says.

So like, you know, 800 a month would be the low end.

And that's, I don't say most common.

So that's a customer support, personal assistant,

things like that could be that low.

And then the higher rolls will be like 2,500 to 3,000.

And then there's one guy who's just amazing

and I've promoted him up twice now.

Now he gets paid like a U.S. employee

because he makes the impact of somebody

who's like driving a ton of growth.

So I'm like, oh, great, like you keep getting rewarded.

You're, at some point you break through

where if you're driving growth,

you get rewarded for driving growth.

And you also, I got an email,

you have a course on this now too.

I have a course on the personal assistant side.

Yeah, I just created that.

It's not even a course actually.

It's just, I don't like, I don't go and teach it.

It's just a system.

It's like, yo, basically the best hire I made this year

was I hired my personal assistant.

And I had thought, okay, personal assistant is,

you know, personal assistant's like for rich people,

for like mega, it's like for Jeff Bezos.

It's like mega busy, mega rich.

And I also was like,

I don't want to have to tell somebody what to do all the time.

Like that sounds like it's own pain in the ass

to come up with shit to do.

And then I heard a few friends talk about theirs

and I was like, maybe I'm wrong.

Let me open my mind to the possibility

that I'm wrong about this.

Three people tell me, three people that I trust

tell me that it's like been a huge game changer for them.

Let me try it.

Dude, send it to me.

I want to use it.

I want to use it.

So I basically created the whole thing last week

and I was like, here's my system.

So for example, like here's my email system.

Like I used to be terrible with email

and now my email system is like super organized

on top of shit.

Here's exactly what I do.

Here's the exact scope of work.

Here's how it works.

I just texted Ben.

I said, send it to me.

Yeah, and so, and by the way,

there's like a funny offer we did with it,

but I'll explain the company that we ended up investing in.

So I looked at all the ways you could do this.

I've done all of them.

So you can hire, if you want to hire somebody in actually,

you basically have three options.

You hire direct.

So you hire somebody on like a job board,

Upwork, online job, something like that.

Upside, it's basically free.

You just pay the software subscription

like under 99 bucks a month.

So, you know, you pay $1,000 for the year

to be a pro member on there.

Downside, you have to do all the hiring, vetting,

training, sifting through candidates yourself.

Like you put up,

hey, I need a customer support person or a personal assistant.

You're going to get 200 applications

and like good luck trying to find somebody good.

You could also go on the high end

and use like a managed service.

So this is things like growth assistant or Athena.

They're great.

They do the, they do the vetting for you,

but there's this huge upcharge.

So those guys charge you three grand a month

for somebody that actually costs $800 a month.

So you're paying,

you're paying three X the price or more

every single month forever.

And so-

How big are those companies?

How big is Athena?

I heard they're huge.

They're big.

And they're big because this is like a huge ARR thing

for them and people don't really know about it.

People don't really realize

like you didn't have to pay triple the price

every single month.

And so that's like, you know, one path.

And they're, but they're good at what they do.

I've tried them.

I've tried a bunch of these.

The one I liked the best

was the one we ended up investing in, which is Shepherd.

So people have probably heard of Shepherd before.

I think the URL support shepherd.com.

What I liked Shepherd was, it's kind of best of both.

So they do the like filtering screening,

background checks, all that stuff.

So basically you just say, I want a personal assistant.

They present you three great candidates.

So they present you five great candidates for you.

And they're filtered, they're checked.

And they're basically like, these are the best of the best.

So they save you a shit ton of time,

which is like, as any business owner, you kind of need that.

And the other side,

you don't have to pay the monthly up charge.

So they'll say, great, here's, you know,

you can make the hire directly.

And all you pay is the one-time finders fee

for us having found you the candidate.

And so it ends up being, you know,

10 to 20 times cheaper than these other ones in the long run

because you just paid, you know, the one-time finders fee.

So I liked that model the best.

I was like, long term, I think this is the most sustainable.

Cause if I'm making in my business, like I did,

15 hires internationally,

I don't want to be paying like this bloated cost

every month from there on out.

Oh, nor do I want to do that, all that work myself.

So that was the business we ended up investing in.

Super excited about it.

The branding on their website.

So it's supportchepper.com.

Yeah.

You have to be one of the testimonials.

You need a testee on there.

But it looks good.

It's cute branding.

So Marshall Haas is the guy who started it.

I've known Marshall since 2012, maybe.

He's the type of guy who whenever he does something,

it's awesome.

It looks cool.

So like, if you follow him on Instagram, on Twitter.

He's got showmanship.

He's got showmanship.

He's got the juice.

He's got the juice.

So whenever, like for example,

I think he just bought a new house

and I'm like following the bill of the house.

He also like, he likes cars.

So like, I saw him like redecorate his garage.

He owns like a boutique hotel.

He did this like e-commerce thing that was like,

super simple and actually was like a really good,

like, you know, a successful e-commerce business

that was just like, it was like a phone case.

And like, you know, it was just that.

And like when COVID came out,

they came out with this little like hook thing,

like your captain hook.

I was like, you can use this to open doors

without having to touch the knob, like a peasant.

I was like, dude, this guy's great.

He just makes these like simple little businesses

and he runs all, the reason he did this is,

he ran his businesses using international hiring

as his like workforce.

So then he partnered with this guy in the Philippines,

opened up a office on the ground there

with a bunch of recruiters to do all the vetting

locally on the ground.

Is he going to the Philippines?

His business partner lives there

and has the office open there.

So that's like how you,

you got to commit if you're gonna do these types of things.

And so he basically partnered with the guy who was doing that

and that's how they created Shepherd.

And it started off just like, you know, solving their own itch,

but turns out like a lot of people have this itch.

And so, and myself included.

So if he, I found, I've not used it, but I will.

I will use it.

I would like to use,

I'm literally, I just texted Ben,

I really actually want your course.

I want to figure out how you do this.

Cause I want this and maybe I'll use these guys,

but if his business is going so well,

why would he sell a portion to you?

Like my head is, I'm greedy.

I'm like, get the fuck out of here.

Because I mean, obviously we're gonna drive him a little bit

or a lot of it of traffic in the pod will.

Is that the only reason why he would do this?

Yeah, basically they don't spend any money on marketing

at all.

And so the way that it spreads is just word of mouth,

people coming back,

and then the other one is like entrepreneurs

who have an audience saying the word.

So they first did this with Nick Huber.

And Nick drove, Nick has drove them a ton of business

because Nick uses it for all of his businesses.

And so when he talks about it,

they get a bunch of, they get a bunch of traffic.

So I think he saw the success of that.

And basically, you know, we have a large audience now,

like through Twitter, through this pod,

through other things.

And so there's obviously a benefit of,

I don't know, like the brand association,

like as well as like, you know,

the ability to reach, you know, reach a large audience

that I think was appealing to him.

But I bought in, I didn't get free shares.

Like I bought into the equity pool,

but I agree with you, when you have a really good business,

you're always hesitant.

It has to be like the right fit.

And so I think the other benefit was he listens to the pod.

And so he's seeing, you know, if you listen to this,

you know how we think and you can agree to be like,

this person's great or this person's an idiot.

You know, if you want to,

if you would want to do business with them,

if you listen to the pod regularly,

you have a very good idea.

There's no hiding our personalities on this.

Do they have a MFM like coupon code or coupon coupon?

So if you go to my website,

if you go to SeanPurri.com slash remote assistant,

basically here's what I got them to do,

which is better than a coupon thing.

So I was like, all right,

if you want to do the personal assistant thing,

the way I did, I was like, all right,

here's my systems, 250 bucks,

you get the whole like all the templates,

all the thing or whatever.

But I was like, I only want to make money

from people who don't take action.

And so here's how it works.

Basically, if you just buy the course

and you don't actually hire an assistant,

I keep your money.

But if you actually go to Shepard

and you hire your assistant,

then Shepard will give you two X the money back.

So basically you pay 250, you'll get $500

if you actually take the action and go hire.

And I was like, that's kind of a no brainer offer.

I was like, Marshall, we got to do this.

Like do this where if people want their own assistant

and they actually like take the action

and go forward with it,

pay them back not just what they paid for the system,

pay them double.

Because like I bet a bunch of people

are just not going to take action, but who cares?

Like I want the people who will take action

to be rewarded for doing so.

And so that's a pretty sweet deal.

Basically it's like you essentially get my system for free

plus you make an extra $250

if you actually go forward with it and make your hire.

So first I want, if you're into this shit,

I have no stake in this by the way,

but go to support Shepard.

I do want them to sign up because here's what I want.

I want you to report back.

And I want to hear if this whole influencer

buys company's thing actually is good.

I want the results to be reported back in like a month.

And so I am curious to see like what the demand is.

I bet it's going to be quite good.

Number two, what I'm curious to see is if you like this.

I don't know if you're going to like it or not.

I could see it going 50-50 either way.

So far, how do you feel?

I mean, look, if this deal works,

then there's like the greatest thing on earth.

Well, this one is a no brainer, right?

But that's not the hard part.

This is already a system.

This is already a successful company.

I'm already religious about hiring internationally.

Anyways, personally in my own businesses,

it's like I didn't have to be convinced

that this is a good idea.

Like I already knew this is a good idea.

The question was, am I going to start my own of these

or should I invest in one that's already working

that I like, that I use?

And I was like, okay, cool.

Let me just do the second one.

That seems like way less work to do that.

So I think this one is kind of a no brainer

in that it's kind of a proven business.

I am a genuine believer in it.

And whether we actually drive extra traffic to them or not,

I think it's sort of like, I don't know.

Like obviously for them, they want that.

And I would like that too.

But for me, it was already a working business.

What percentage, is that too much to ask or to review?

Yeah, I want to close that here

because I think it's their business.

I don't want to give that away too much,

but you know, it's a good chunk.

I think, do you think they'll ever sell the company

or do you make your money just through dividends?

Yeah, just dividends.

Like it's a profitable business.

It just pays out dividends.

Like I got our first dividend check yesterday.

It was awesome.

You did? You got one already?

Yeah, it was fantastic.

This is going to be your seized candy, maybe.

I mean, if this works out, that's exciting.

I'm curious to see if you're going to like this

because on one hand, I can actually see you loving this

because you get to spend time seeing how things work

and you get to use your skill set,

which is content to tell people about it.

Like this segment that we just did,

I'm actually interested.

I want to keep talking about this

just because I want to hear the story behind it.

I think that's interesting.

And so it's kind of a win-win in that regard.

But I'm curious if you're going to enjoy

all the due diligence.

Like when I talked to Andrew Wilkinson,

he actually, I don't think does

a lot of the due diligence.

He's got a team to do that.

If you are able to pull that off,

I think you'll be in a win situation.

So as long as you like doing that.

Yeah, I'm going to try it with two or three.

This one I knew was a slam dunk

because I'm just like, just a total believer in it.

What's going to be interesting is what happens with

ones that aren't like perfectly in my zone of like,

I get it, I used it, I believe in it.

It's like, this one was like bullseye.

I don't expect every business to be exactly bullseye.

So the question is, what happens when it's not exactly?

Is it still fun?

Do I still believe?

Am I still willing to talk about it?

Like this one I'm willing to talk about

because I'm like, I literally wouldn't have

my Econ business work the way it does

or Milk Road worked the way it did

if I didn't use this strategy.

So I'm like, I could talk about that.

Now what happens when it's like one degree separated

from that?

Am I still going to want to tell a story on it?

Maybe it's not even that interesting of a story.

I'm not going to do it.

Like I'm not going to come on this podcast

and bore everybody with like a story that's not that great.

So I can't commit to that yet,

but I don't know if somebody wants me to buy

a minority stake in their business,

hit me up, let's see, let's see what happens.

I'm gonna try two or three of these and see how it goes.

Was there anything that you learned looking at the 24

other than what you said about the like fix me shit?

Like, was there anything, any other revelations,

not necessarily about what they had wrong with them

or, but maybe what they had right with them,

any commonalities between the winners?

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I would say that the businesses that I was most interested in

were ones that had a clear sales model, I would say.

So they knew how they were gonna get their customers now

and in the future.

And I don't want to say moat

because it's like you're just trying to be Warren Buffett.

Like it's not like, it's not that they had a moat,

either recurring revenue or they had something

that was like, they're actually the category leader,

they're the go-to leader and that there's some reason why

they're not just gonna get copied into oblivion

by everybody else.

Maybe it's, maybe they have an operational advantage.

Maybe they-

What's shepherds?

I mean, I think branding is actually,

that separates them here.

I think they look cool.

Is there anything else?

Yeah, I think shepherds, real advantage is that they're,

they picked a business model

that's actually more customer friendly, like I said.

So like, if your two other options are,

spend a bunch of time, have a bunch of uncertainty,

hire somebody unvetted and you save a little bit of money

or pay a three X monthly upcharge.

Like you're kind of nuts to do the three X monthly upcharge

for a long period of time,

especially if you're gonna hire multiple roles

and eventually in your company,

like it's just not a sustainable path.

So to me, support shepherds' choice on the business model,

separated them from the current competitors.

Now somebody else could try to do it,

but what are they gonna have to do?

They're gonna have to go set up boots on the ground

in the Philippines and in LADAM

and really be good at recruiting recruiters

who are then gonna recruit the talent

to actually deliver on these roles

and hire high quality people.

Because they don't really,

like the money's not made in your first hire.

The money's made when you're like,

you see the light and you come back to them

for your next six hires.

Like what I did with Ecom is like,

I started with customer support and I was like,

cool, I need somebody who could do inventory forecasting.

People in the US really expensive for that.

I need 140K for that, that role here.

Could I find somebody overseas

that could do inventory forecasting?

Can I find somebody that can run our Amazon ads?

Can I find somebody who could do wholesale as a channel?

Like can I find people that do influencer?

Like you start to be like, oh wait,

this isn't just about what it used to be,

which was like VA's equals low cost labor.

Now it's like, dude, they're pretty talented people

that could do these things.

They got three or four years of experience

doing that at another company.

And so you're able to just pluck from the remote talent pool

versus just your local talent pool.

Dude, I'm excited to see how this turns out.

At Hampton, do you guys have any overseas people yet or no?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

We have like the guy who made our website is overseas

and he's on staff.

We have our accounting folks who like,

they're called Fuel Finance, they're overseas.

If you go to, like we have this whole backend thing built

where people can log in.

It was built by a guy in Hong Kong.

Yeah, we have a ton of overseas and Marshall's a member.

And so we're gonna actually thinking about starting

to use them for some data analytics stuff.

So yeah, it's all a lot of overseas stuff.

When I was using for, are you coming?

A lot of people use agencies.

I'll hire an agency and then they like, they're like,

great, let's add, can you add these three people to Slack

and all of the names?

And you can tell by their names.

Yeah.

And I'm just like, so like for example, design pickle.

I think it's like a $10 million a year business

to basically like design unlimited designer on demand.

We tried them out for a little bit.

Every single designers in the Philippines.

Then I hired this email marketing guy.

I was like, oh yeah, just do our email marketing and flows.

He's based in Colorado.

Every employee's in the Philippines.

So I was like, okay, that's another one.

I hired a website, a web dev shop.

Got owners in the US, entire team is in India.

You know, another one that did the entire thing in Ukraine.

And it's like, it's so funny that people are basically,

this is now a business model is basically like,

owner in the US does sales, fulfillment all done by,

and they're good.

I'm not even saying this like a bad thing.

They're talented, but I'm like, wow,

this is a whole business blueprint,

a template that they could use to basically like,

make the margins work for their business.

When are you gonna go there?

When are you going?

When's the Philippines?

Yeah, when's neck beer nation going to the Philippines?

We should host the next live pod there.

Do we have a following there?

I have no idea.

Unfortunately, I don't think we do.

I don't think they give a shit.

Dude, you gotta go there.

I've been to the Philippines.

It's awesome.

Very hot.

I've never been, I'll go.

Tonight and tomorrow, I'm taking a 15 hour road trip

in my Tesla.

My first time doing it.

We're gonna see if I love it or hate it.

So I'm gonna report back on Wednesday.

15 hour, you said?

It normally takes 12,

but you have three hours for charging.

Dude, I did a charging road trip was horrible.

Where are you going from?

Where are you going to?

What's the distance?

Austin to St. Louis.

Okay.

I'm gonna visit my family.

Where'd you get the X or the Y?

Which one are you doing?

X, long distance, 350 miles.

Is it a new one?

Because the thing I screwed up was the one I rented

on Turro was like five years old

and it just needed charging every 90 minutes.

It was an awful experience.

Well, how fast did you go?

I mean, it's like highway, right?

So you're going like, whatever, 75 miles an hour.

I mean, I speed usually.

So I mean, I'll go 85 or 90.

So we'll see what's gonna happen.

It crushes the battery.

Absolutely crushed the battery.

At least that one that I had, it absolutely crushed it.

We had a tar, we did a seven hour ride.

You have self driving.

We had self driving for 18 hours

because we had to charge so many times.

And by the way, you know, the charging thing,

it's not like, you can't just like charge.

Like there's like certain chargers that are fast

and some that are slow, you know?

Like don't you just use the thing on the screen

that like tells you what to do?

Or like tells you where the screen tells you

where the chargers are.

But I'm saying some of the charging stations

and some of the spots are fast chargers and some are slow.

Like there's a, like it's like a gas pump

where one will fill it up in twice the speed as the other.

So make sure when you do it, you know that.

So you go only to the fast chargers and none of the slow.

Like you had to be like, I wanted to go watch a movie

so that I could do this slow charge.

No, I use, there's this app called a better route.

I think it's called this guy.

Like has built this whole like thing

just on routing out people's electric charges.

And so I'm going to use that, but my wife's,

my wife's flying and I was like, I'm driving.

I want to drive.

I want to see what it's like.

And so I'm driving and I'm going to report back on Wednesday

to see how it feels.

I did it, so I'm going to leave tonight.

So I'll get a few hours in and then tomorrow,

that way I can, like I plan my life around this pod

because I was like, we record 11 my time.

Like I can't arrive that morning.

Otherwise I'll be like tired.

I won't have time to research.

So I have to plan it so I get there Tuesday night

but I need a full night's rest

so I can like wake up and like research and shit.

Do you plan your life around this pod?

Oh yeah, to an extent, right?

Like, you know, this is the one unmissable appointment

on my calendar.

Everything else is flexible.

This is the one non-flexible thing.

It's no days off.

I think, I mean, we've recorded on.

We missed Christmas.

So I guess we can't really say that right now.

Well, wasn't there like an issue?

Yeah, we had a sound issue.

But we were like, no days off.

People were like, you missed the last.

Yeah, it was like a technical error.

But we've done like whatever the most recent holiday is,

we were recording whatever.

I think we've done Christmas Eve before.

We were always record.

Big thanks to everybody who listens.

This is a fun thing for us to do.

Thank you for listening.

Yeah, this is like one of the dope parts of our life.

And I think it's attracted a bunch of,

like, I mean, neck bear nation, right?

So it's attracted a bunch of people

whose brain is weird in the way our brain is weird.

And I think that's a lot of fun.

I want to end with this.

So I was at this, I'll tell you a very, very, very quick story.

I was at this LA tech meetup.

First of all, our fans are, that sounds weird,

but our listeners, they come in all shapes and sizes, man.

All colors, all, I like, I love it.

Like, I am like-

What does that mean?

What are you trying to say there?

Dude, like I had this guy that looked like

he was seven feet tall guy, like basketball player.

And I thought he was like a famous guy.

And he comes up and goes,

total man, and he gave me like, you know,

like the black guy handshake of like,

whatever that is.

Dude, if you're a seven foot black guy,

you are a total man.

Like, you didn't even need to say it, bro.

We know.

Yeah.

He gave me like that, that handshake,

you know what I'm saying?

And then I had this like 55 year old woman

who was with her kid at the airport saying, what's up?

And I just want to say,

first of all, if you're a fan, thank you.

And second of all, I can tell like walking by

if someone listens or not,

because if they're wearing like Lululemon ABC pants

or like, if they look like they go to like Columbia

like university and they like make eye contact

with you in a particular way, I can tell.

And I would love for you to come and say, what's up?

So long as it's like a quick like, what's up?

Total man.

Like you can say something.

By the way, here's the etiquette.

You come over, you fist pound, not handshake or hug.

So let's do nucks.

That's the way we do it.

We're not trying to get too much,

we're not trying to be pumped to pump with anybody.

And so give me the nucks.

You can say, you can reference it.

You can know small boy stuff.

Total man.

You could use any of the, any of the isms that you want.

That just means I know you and I'm like,

I'll give you the head nod back.

Like, yep, you're one of us.

Take the selfie together.

And then, and then we kind of, you know,

we keep the shell rolling from there.

But here's the shake that I need to announce to people.

And they, and we got to put this in every episode

because oftentimes if they see me with my wife,

they'll say, what's up?

They see me with like my in-laws

or up to eat with friends.

They won't say what's up.

And every once in a while they will.

And it makes me feel so cool.

Oh my God, yeah.

So the more people I'm with,

the more I need you to be over the top with it.

Yes, please.

My wife doesn't listen to this podcast.

She never heard a single episode.

So she doesn't think this is cool.

She thinks this is me playing video games

up in the bedroom right now.

So only when she sees someone come up in person

and then even, you know, I was with her mom there

and they were like, wow, what?

My dad was there.

And he's like, he, my dad literally goes,

he must have thought you're someone else.

You do.

We are famous enough that like our friends

and family actually understand.

And so if you see us out there,

please come and say hi.

But technically, if we're with friends,

you have to do it.

That will make my day.

And that was the short thing.

I was on to eat and like three different guys.

And when I was on to eat,

I was with my coworkers, said what's up.

And I played it off like, oh, man, I can't go anywhere.

You know what I mean?

Like, and in my head, I'm like, I hope there's a four.

I hope there's a four.

And my coworkers were like, does this happen all the time?

And I'm like, oh, you gotta say the most embarrassing

version of this.

So when we were selling the Milk Road,

I went to meet up with the guy who bought it, Kendall,

at a coffee shop.

And we're at the coffee shop for a bit.

And I see someone kind of like looking,

like I think they recognize you, but I'm not sure.

And I'm like, come over, just come over right now.

Because he doesn't listen to the pie guys.

And I'm trying to do this deal.

And I'm like, I think it would help

if he felt like I'm a big deal.

I was like, I think that'd be a little nice.

Yeah, yes.

Guy doesn't come over, right?

So we go outside, we say, I say bye,

he starts walking away and the guy comes over

and he's like, Sean.

And I'm like, yeah, he goes, hey, man, big fan.

Kendall, come back.

I literally go, I was like, oh, Kendall,

I want you to be my house.

I was like, hey, have you met Kendall?

And he goes like, no.

And I was like, Kendall, yeah, this guy just,

he listens to the pie.

I just wanted you to, I didn't even make sense.

And I was like, I forced it so bad, dude.

So bad.

Validate me, please.

Validate me.

Take a cool moment and make it the most lame.

Was me being like, hey, wait, you didn't hear

that he recognized me.

Come here.

Have you guys met?

He's like, no, of course not.

Oh my God.

I said that before.

I'm like, hey, say what you said again,

but you're doing in front of my laws.

That's not fun.

So I just, this is a public service announcement.

If you think you know us or you think it's us,

even if you only think it's kind of us,

just take a chance and say what's up.

And feel free to be over at the top.

Like, you know, it's awesome.

We love it.

It makes me feel good.

And it more so makes me look cool,

which is what I care about more than anything.

So anyway, that's awesome.

That's the pod.

Good episode.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off.

On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.