My First Million: Virtual Study Halls, Absurd $ For Speeches, And Pushing the Boulder Uphill

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell.

And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Last year, I was pitched like three different of these.

When we did that vending machine pod, I had so many people reach out like, I'm doing like

smart vending machine things or something like that.

And a lot of them were like either tampons or like hygiene things or then they were like

healthy food.

And I looked at all the numbers and most all of them were horrible.

And the ones that were the best, they just sold Coke and M&M's.

Like just like normal, like everyone wanted to do this like one particular thing.

But it's like, man, America just wants Coke and M&M's.

And that like crushed it.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.

All right.

We're good.

We're live.

Dude, John, thanks for dressing up.

You look nice.

All right, so for those who can't see the YouTube video right now, Sam is like in some

kind of like, I don't even know where he's at.

He's in some kind of like LA playboy mansion podcast studio.

I don't even know what's going on.

Not a single wall is normal.

One of them's like a 3D texture.

One of them's got like a plant from, you know, the Amazon jungle and he's got like five people

there.

He's got like a movie crew.

Somebody just came and powdered his nose.

I don't know what's going on.

I'm still in my bedroom and I recently woke up.

So, you know, we got a little yin and yang going.

Why don't you explain what you're wearing, Sean?

I'll say a sleeveless hoodie.

No, what Sam calls shirtless.

If Sam sees a shoulder, he has like a minor panic attack.

It just, it's something.

We can't all dress like Arthur.

So I was hoping that if I came here, so I came here the other day to record a podcast

with this guy named Danny.

And I came here.

I go, I called Ben like right when I was there, FaceTime, I go, Ben, book this for like in

three days.

This is where we're going to record from now on.

And I was like, if, if we do this here, maybe it would inspire Sean to like record with

more than just one air pod in his iPhone and a plant in the background.

And maybe we can make something happen.

So hopefully I'm going to wear off on you and we'll, you'll do it right on your end

because I think we'll get more views on YouTube.

Finally.

Yeah.

The last time I felt this much peer pressure, I ended up, you know, on shrooms.

And so hopefully this just ends better, but I do feel the pressure now.

I will find, you know, I don't even, what is this place that you're at?

You give him a shout out.

What is the name of it?

It's called.

What's it called?

WF media.

WTF media.

I can't, that guy, you know, that guy, Danny, you were on his thing too.

He's been emailed me.

He used to work for me.

Oh, really?

Okay.

Cool.

Well, I came on his thing and I came here and it was awesome.

I think we paid a couple hundred bucks.

I don't remember to be here.

And I think this is the, actually the same studio that Andrew Schultz and Charlemagne,

I think record their thing.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's like pretty easy.

So I just, you know, rode my scooter here and, and did it just like Charlemagne the

God.

Yeah.

All right, let's, let's, uh, let's jump into some stuff.

You have some topics.

I got some topics.

Where do you want to start?

Did you see this email that I got from this, uh, listener?

No, where?

Okay.

So I forwarded it to you.

So basically, uh, we were talking about like adventurous shit last time and this guy emailed

me.

He goes, all right, uh, you, you wrote, you guys talked about like living an adventurous

life.

I wanted to write you and fill you in on what's going on.

I used to be 230 pounds and like pretty overweight, but then I started running and I, uh, started

listening to you guys the whole entire time while I'd run.

In fact, I did a 50 mile race and I only listened to MFM the entire time and I've lost a ton

of weight.

And now next week I'm doing a hundred mile race and I intend to listen to you guys the

whole time as well.

And I'm a 25 year old.

I used to work in banking at M&A.

I made like low six figures and it was a cool job, but I recently quit after listening to

you guys.

And now I own a bunch of vending machines and it's allowed me to make 10 grand a month

and, uh, do a bunch of running.

And he said, quote, do memorable things, which is what you guys talked about at the end of

the pod.

This is pretty amazing.

I forward it to you.

That's, that's a good story.

Right?

Yeah, dude.

That's my, my version of torture though, like having to run 50 miles while listening

to my voice in my head.

That would be like, that would be like, you know, worse than waterboarding for me personally.

But dude, props to this guy.

This is amazing.

Uh, you know, fitness got influenced by you listening to the pod got influenced by both

of us.

You know, did the vending machine side hustle that we had talked about got to the 10 K a

month and now he has the freedom he's thinking about doing short-term rentals.

I think this might be your best friend.

I think you might have just found an adult best friend.

Yeah.

This is my little brother, man.

I like this guy.

His name is Jack.

So I saw that email and I was like, we got to bring that up.

That's a good one.

He ended it with hashtag do things.

And I like that.

I like do things.

That's the serious version of no small boy stuff, which is the official motto of my first

million.

No, it's good.

I like that.

All right.

Where do you want to go?

Which one?

I have an idea that I saw recently.

I'm thinking about investing this, but it's kind of just like one of these really low

key doesn't even seem like a business things, but I think it's going to be kind of big.

So have you ever been on YouTube and seen this thumbnail of like this kind of anime

character wearing headphones and it says lo-fi chill beats study music?

Have you ever seen that?

They kill it.

They have they run it on live, like YouTube live, and there'll be hundreds of thousands

of people on it.

And I think like the other day, it like was paused for like a few minutes or something

like that.

And it was in the news, right?

It got banned.

And then it got unbanned after 133,000 people like signed a petition to be like, unbanned

this right now.

That's crazy.

But okay.

And what about it?

So let me tell you about it.

So lo-fi, basically the channel has 10 million subscribers.

It's one of the most like sort of longest watch time things on YouTube because people

will just sit there for hour hours studying and just having this as background music.

And they have a discord of 700,000 people.

They have their own.

What's there to talk about?

Well, it's just people that are chilling.

It's people that want us, people that are trying to study, they're trying to focus.

They just want to be in a group of other people doing the same thing.

It's like a virtual study hall.

So this is kind of like an emergent behavior.

It's just a thing that started happening.

It's not what YouTube was trying to do.

It wasn't, you know, some company that started right away.

It's just kind of like this thing that people wanted like, oh, you know, like I had this

when I was in college.

And somebody would, it's like, oh, hand him the aux plug because his music is good for

us to just chill, do nothing too.

It's not going to be distracting, that sort of thing.

And he would kind of be the DJ.

So this is like a thing now.

And I found, but, but it's still like kind of informal.

It's on YouTube.

It's not really like easy to use in that sense.

Like, you know, you don't know who these other people are.

You can't do a private room, that sort of stuff.

So there's a startup called Studyverse that is trying to do this and what they did was

they basically turned this into like its own experience.

So me and Ben use this now when we work.

We basically go into Studyverse and you go in and there's like a jukebox basically.

So you could just put on, yeah, like chill hip hop style music or chill electronic style

music or whatever.

And both people are hearing the same thing at the same time.

You could turn your camera on or off if you want to just be there, microphone on or off.

And you could like put your to-do list there and other people can see it.

And as you knock them out, it makes a little sound so you can see other people knocking

out their to-do list.

There's a little chat and you could just set the background so you could be like, let's

just give them, yeah, we're working remote.

We're like, I'm in this little home office here, nothing too grand, but you could just

set the scene like, no, what if we were by the beach or what if we were in space or wherever

you want.

So it's just a cool little product.

And they're going after this use case of virtual study hall.

People getting together to study, hang out or work, but it's really around studying,

I believe.

This is like a big deal.

There are millions of students every day who do this and they do it with strangers.

They're not necessarily hanging out with their friends, they some do, but a lot of people

just want to feel like, they don't want to feel kind of alone and bored when they study.

And so just having any other people chatting or they see their screen names, they see their

profile pictures, it just makes them feel less alone when they're doing it.

How does this make money?

And I think this is going to be big.

So the lo-fi thing on YouTube, I don't know if they just run ads, they just monetize that

way.

I'm not 100% sure.

I know they also have like, the music is their own music, they have lo-fi records.

So it's all copyright free, which is kind of cool, because that would be the other problem

if you try to do this commercially.

And but for these guys, I think they'll probably have some premium version or some upsell or

so.

I don't know what they'll do to make money.

The main thing right now is can they get to like a million students a day who are studying

with this thing?

Because like, at that point, it's pretty valuable to be the hub where a million students a day

are spending like multiple hours.

Basically, what Discord did, they're raising money now.

Yeah.

So, so I'm investing this thing.

You're doing it.

Yeah, I'm going to do it.

This gives me heavy like Twitch vibes in a way where I'm like, there's kind of a behavior

that doesn't really make sense until you start to think about the use case and like, yeah,

that would be fun, actually.

But there's thousands of them.

I just Googled it.

There's so many of them.

What, like virtual study halls?

Yeah.

Yeah, there are.

I don't think there's thousands of them.

There's one serious competitor that's like been around for a little while.

I forgot what it's called, but they have like, they're close to that point.

Yeah.

I think it's studied together.

I think that's the one.

They have a million people in their community.

And so, you know, these guys are trying to build like a better user experience than that.

So this, this could be studied together.

It says that there's 34,000 people concurrently online.

So at the hustle, we are getting, let's say that we are getting two or three million monthly

uniques.

Basically, that means that, which is like two to three million a month is pretty good.

If it's the right niche, you can make like, you know, a million a month off two to three

million people a month if it's the right one.

And at any given point, we would have 2,000 people online.

Like it really would never get, maybe occasionally it would get to 3,000 and 4,000, but virtually

never.

And the fact that this has 33,000, that's pretty insane.

Yeah.

That's right now.

I mean, I don't even know if school, I think it's like still summer for, for people that

they're not even like in school right now.

And if you are in high school or anything else, like you're, you're, you know, it's the middle

of the day.

You can't be doing this while you're at school.

So there's only going to be like college or summer school right now.

I bet this number could be three times as high for them during like kind of peak seasons.

Um, you know, definitely.

So, so I think that's kind of amazing.

And you know, like, you know, whether they sell, you know, like little emotes, like Discord

did, like Discord makes millions and millions of dollars off of just their, like their super

emoji that you can have.

Or, you know, yeah, that's Discord's business model is you pay $6 a month or something like

that for Discord Nitro.

And all it gives you is like your, your little, your group can have its own emoji, like you

can upload your own emoji and you could use the premium emoji that they have.

And uh, same thing with Twitch, like people subscribe for five or six bucks a month to

a, um, a Twitch channel.

And like, it's not like they couldn't just watch it for free.

They can watch it for free too.

They do it to get a little badge that says I'm, I'm a paid like patron of this person's

channel.

And secondly, they get to use the custom emoji of that channel.

That's really the only perks.

Like sometimes it's subscribed only chat, but, but that's not usually the case.

And so, um, so yeah, I think you could get pretty big with something like this.

But I think it's one of those like, uh, under the radar niches, most people don't even really

recognize that this is a niche.

So I think it was a cool idea.

I didn't see how it does.

We talked about it before.

Um, all right, let me run something by you because you, you just actually have been talking

about this.

So check this out.

So you know who Scott Galloway is?

Of course.

The, uh, professor.

Yeah, for those who don't know, there's a dude named Scott Galloway popular on Twitter

for making all these like tech takes and he gets made fun of for being wrong a lot, but

he takes a lot of swings.

So he's going to be wrong a lot.

But basically he started this company called L2, which I think he sold for like 200 million

bucks.

So he's like really successful already.

Whatever.

And he's got this new thing called section four, which I think it's just like courses.

But you check this out.

So New York Times said Mr. Galloway, who was already wealthy from selling two companies

and taking a third public also makes more than $5 million a year from speaking gigs.

He said largely from corporations and industry groups that pay him $50,000 a year or $50,000

for a virtual event and $250,000 for an international event.

I should be broken up.

He joked, which is pretty funny, but that's, that's a ridiculous amount of money for speaking.

That is huge.

How, how, how does that work?

Cause I know that you were talking about like it has to all be, it has to all work from

book sales, right, or for, you know, just like being a New York Times best seller.

Yeah.

I think it's like a combination.

It's like, you just, you're in people's face enough with like, you know, you, you sound

polished because, you know, they have a podcast.

They have a, he's got his blog, which is pretty famous.

He's got, he's been, he's been doing this for like, isn't doing this forever, dude.

I feel like this guy's been publishing content for like 10, 15 years at least, something

like that.

Isn't, isn't that right?

He's not like some, some new guy.

He's not, he's not just a guy.

I mean, he's, he's, he's, he's great.

You know, he's good and he's hilarious.

I listened, I was at a, when I was in Germany, he spoke, he was very good and like, I've

hung out with him.

He's a really nice guy and his shtick online.

I don't always agree with a lot of his takes and I think that sometimes he's unnecessarily

a hater, but without a doubt, incredibly entertaining when he, when he does talks, like he's got

a little bit of like a comedy shtick on there.

He's kind of like a little F U and he like says like hilarious jokes about him being

like old and like bald and stuff.

He's hilarious.

But, and this is that, but that's so much, $5 million a year from speaking is like the

equivalent of having like $50 million, $5 million a year of income is, is, is astronomical.

You know what I mean?

What is that?

It really is.

Well, just, it's true.

It's like, it's funny that it's a, it like, it's funny that you're absolutely right.

That is an absurd number to be making and speaking fees every year.

You're like a pretty good NBA player at that point.

Yeah, exactly.

But you're just like giving a presentation on, you're using PowerPoint.

And often by the way, it's the same presentation.

It's the same one.

You can do it for 15 years.

You know what I mean?

It's like in your free time a little bit.

This is crazy.

It, I just, I heard that number and I was like, I couldn't believe it at first because

it is, it's, it's an astronomical number.

How much does like David Blaine make?

Cause prof G is basically like inviting a magician to your conference.

It's like, oh, here's the entertainment.

We all know and love this guy, Scott Galloway.

He comes on and he kind of does his little routine and he entertains you.

And like that's the, that's what he's getting paid for is to be kind of like a name people

recognize adds legitimacy to the event and, um, and you know, provide some entertainment.

That's not like completely off the wall circus stuff.

It's like, well, this will be entertaining, but it's still relevant.

But here's the thing.

Here's the rub, his pod, it gets, it's two times the size of ours.

So we get like between, we get like in the hundred thousand, sometimes more or sometimes

a little less, uh, range per episode downloads per episode.

He's at 250,000.

So in my head or who is it?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That I don't know what it's called, but it's like him and Kara Swisher.

It's on, I don't even fucking know what it is.

Recode.

It was like recode or whatever.

Now something else.

And in my head, I'm thinking, I'll take half that, right?

I mean, we got to be doing this.

I'll do you one better.

I'll take a third of that.

I'll undercut Sam.

It's good.

All right.

I will, I will.

How often do you get asked to do this?

Whatever the hell you want.

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How often do you get asked to do it?

I don't get asked that often.

I don't get asked that often.

The number is always good whenever I do get asked, but I don't get asked that often.

And also, I'm not really that interested in doing this because, like, you know, for this,

you got to travel a bunch to do it.

I think to do it well, you got to travel a bunch.

I don't think people are going to pay that same amount for you.

Dude, but you wouldn't take your kids with you on, like, a trip somewhere?

Not right now.

You don't want to see Kansas City, bro?

Exactly.

Like, no, I do not want to, I do not want to take, the phrase take my kids somewhere

is, like, already, you know, the prices went up.

So, no, I wouldn't want to do that now.

But yeah, later in life, yeah, that'd be great.

So by the way, funny you mentioned Scott Galloway, there's a couple things people should know.

Number one, he's very entertaining, great at content.

Number two, his business takes are pretty awful for the most part.

He's been wrong, famously wrong many, many times.

In fact, somebody created the anti-professor Galloway index or something, what's that website

called?

Where it literally just says, anytime he says to buy or sell something, if you just did the

exact opposite, here's how you'd be doing.

It's like, he's down X percent, you know, S&P 500 is up Y percent, and this is up like

double the S&P 500, so you would have outperformed the market.

It's the website's bet against the professor, introducing the anti-Galloway index.

And what is the stats?

What does it say?

How has he done or how's the thing done against him?

So his worst prediction was that he said that, I think he said that Macy's was going to like

outperform Amazon.

So like not that good.

And then he also said that Tesla was a bad bet.

So like, I don't know, even know how to use it.

So let's see.

Since October 2019, tech companies that the professor has predicted would fail have outperformed

the S&P and seen a whopping 61% return.

So you would have made 61% exactly.

So that's really funny.

Whoever did that, I do appreciate that.

Last thing is, so I just talked to a guy yesterday about this course business.

So he's got this thing section four.

And I was like, dude, how much money does that make?

He goes, actually, I kind of like, I've been, you know, I'm in that same D, so I've been

doing research on it.

Here's what I think.

So here's what he thinks.

He goes, I think section four does like 14 million a year in revenue.

They've raised like $37 million.

Too much.

They just did some layoffs because, you know, yeah.

And he's basically like, you know, that's an average of $1,000 a year per learner, you

know, 30% discount, let's say it's $700 and he has 21,000 people, you know, paying, paying

to learn or something like that.

Maybe 2.1 is what that was supposed to be.

I'm not sure.

But, but yeah, that's kind of like, kind of crazy.

Then he was like, you know, also reforge.

You know, reforge, it was like the section four is basically like some marketing school.

Dude, I would guess that reforge is in like the 18 to 20 range.

For revenue?

Yeah.

Do you know how much money reforge has raised?

How much?

I have no idea.

If this guy is right, reforge has raised a total of $81 million, which is just kind of

absurd for what they're doing.

But they did acquire some other marketing training company, so maybe they've raised

a bunch of money just to buy something that had like established revenue and EBITDA.

So anyways, these little like marketing schools that people have created, like these can be

kind of big.

Like we should have, if we wanted to monetize MFM, this would have been the way to do it.

It's to just me and you create like our own marketing school.

I'm pretty sure with our audience and like what we actually, like we've actually done

this.

Like we've actually done marketing to grow our businesses successfully owned and exited

multiple businesses now brought multiple businesses to this, to this like seven, eight figure

and revenue point.

Like if anybody should be doing this, this should be us, not these guys, but who wants

to go do that?

I don't know.

So let me tell you about something that I question if I actually want to go do that,

but I hear the numbers and they're amazing.

So B2B media, so media companies that make content for other businesses.

I was talking to this guy the other day and check this out.

He's got this company called Aging Media, okay?

They make newsletters for nursing homes.

So I guess people who own nursing homes and people who own hospice care businesses.

And it's like, I think only three years old or four years old.

It's not a very old company, but he was telling me that this year they'll do around 10 million

in revenue and like three or four million in EBITDA and completely bootstrapped and

they have got 40 employees.

If you go to, it's called Aging Media, go to the website and look at their shit.

It is so simple, it's such a straightforward business.

And I see this stuff and I'm like, oh man, I could totally do this for X, Y, and Z.

And that's a small example.

There's a bigger example.

There's this company called Industry Dive.

Industry Dive was just acquired like a week ago, I think, or two weeks ago.

They were acquired for $500 million.

They do a hundred and, let's see, they were doing, where is it?

They were doing $110 million in revenue.

They're doing 110 million in revenue with 30% profit, 380 employees, 53 newsletters across

those 53 newsletters, 2.5 million subs and pretty straightforward.

Like not, not complicated, not necessarily easy, but not complicated and straightforward.

Their content, I think it's okay.

It's just like, it's basically just bullet points.

It's an email with bullet points of what's happening in the restaurant industry or whatever.

But these companies, the bar, I think, to be good is so low for B2B media because it

just like, you know, it just mostly all sucks.

They think that you have to write a certain way.

But in the way they monetize and make money is so much better than a consumer media company.

Because if you are a person who's selling software or whatever to a hospice care owner,

you only have a couple places to go to and one sale gets you, you know, hundreds of thousands

or maybe even millions in revenue, like a pretty huge number.

And so like these guys, basically what they do, they have ads on their site, but they

do webinars with a sponsor and like 15 people sign up for the webinar or the talk.

It's basically like a podcast just like this, but you got to enter your email to get in.

They give that email to the sponsor and that sponsor hopes to go and email the 10 people

that signed up and like hopefully they buy their shit and it's like 20 or 30 or $40,000

to charge for like getting those 10, 30, 50 leads.

It's crazy.

The bar is so low.

Yeah.

This thing is crazy.

They have their big like verticals or it's like they have waist dive.

Waste dive is for the waste management industry.

Then they'll have like pharmaceuticals and then they'll have finance and then they'll

have like, you know, these different things.

I think their biggest one, so marketing dive is 510,000 subscribers, biopharma dive, 275,000

subscribers, construction dive, 300,000 subscribers, HR dive, 450,000 subscribers, and then they

have just a bunch of others, right?

Utility dive, restaurant dive, retail dive is their biggest one, 700,000 subscribers.

It's pretty crazy.

This is not a media company really, like, you know, yes, they're a media company, but

like, the game isn't, are you good at making content?

The game is, are you really good at acquiring users and like acquiring subscribers in this

industry?

I don't think you have to be that good.

If you're, if you're like a DTC dork like you, like, you don't have to be that good

at this.

Like, because you're already pretty good at like trying to acquire a user for $2 so you

can make eight bucks.

Like you're probably better, more skilled.

You're just choosing like a less lucrative game.

And here's why this is interesting.

The guy who started industry dive, same Sean, he previously was the president of another

company called Fierce Markets and they did this exact same thing, but they did it starting

in 2005 or like 2002 and it was literally the same thing, but they just did a different,

like slightly different industries.

It had 1.2 million subs and it sold for hundreds of millions of dollars.

The reason why this is industry, interesting is it's the same shit over and over and over

again.

Like, have like a dartboard of like boring shit and they just like throw a couple darts

and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that one.

Yeah.

What is that one?

Yeah.

Like that's fun.

I mean, obviously I'm oversimplifying this, but it's incredibly fascinating to me because

the bar is so low to be, uh, successful.

Yeah.

One thing I have noticed though, like, so I agree with you.

This was, uh, one of those blueprints that's like a good blue, really good blueprints doesn't

take like genius doesn't take, um, ton of luck.

And so, you know, in that sense, it's a good, good blueprint to go after the downside is

now that this is like, this game, I think was really awesome.

Like over the last 10 years, I think over the next 10 years, that window is closing.

The same thing happened at D to C. Um, the same thing happened at drop shipping.

The same thing.

I think it's not wrong.

And then the blooper is easy.

I think that when the company sells for $500 million doing something, there's a bunch of

schnark sharks like you and I who hear about this, go study their, their blueprint and

you get 15 new like aggressive people who now know how big the prize is for something

like this and now have a blueprint to follow all doing the same thing.

I still think you could win and some, somebody will win, but it is, I would say 10 times

harder than it was over the last 10 years, in my opinion, because you're going to have

that set of people.

This is exactly what's going on in D to C, which is that cost of acquiring customers

are going up.

Why?

Because people realized, Oh, you could just do this with like, you know, pick a product,

run this, run this Facebook ad blueprint, use Shopify, use Clavio.

It's like the stack of like, I just need to do these six things.

There's so many more people doing that than this.

There's so many more people starting deodorant and like jewelry brands than there are this

boring shit.

Yeah, but for those, there's, there, you can have way more, right?

You can have how many jewelry brands can the market hold, it can hold the ton because people

are going to have a bunch.

Now, if let's say that the industry newsletter, a way to find out what's going on in your

industry, how many is somebody, if I'm in the waste management industry, how many of

those am I going to read every week?

I don't know.

Two?

One or two, right?

Probably one or two.

Okay.

Industry drive is one.

Now, everybody else is going to fight for two.

And then if you're not going to go for waste management, you're going to go for the next

best niche in the next bit.

Now, industry drive has already done 20 of these niches, 30 of these niches themselves.

Other people are going to keep going for more and more of these niches.

So you're going to get to the less valuable niches or the ones that are harder to acquire

subscribers for because you're all fighting for that same one or two spots.

And so I think that still somebody will win, but it is way harder than it was when the

word wasn't leaked that, oh, all of these industry newsletters can be that big.

That's crazy, right?

I think you're giving people too much credit.

I think that not that many people are going to get involved in this.

It's just so much cooler when you're 22 to like, what's that one kid who sells like

sex chocolate?

Like that's just so much more fascinating.

What's that called?

Tabs.

Tabs.

Chocolate that makes you horny.

That's so much cooler to like everyone in LA than any of this.

Yeah.

Do you get some of that included when you've rent the podcast through your space you're

in?

Because it seems like it should just be on the desk in front of you.

All right, let's do another thing.

Okay.

So I have one.

So here's another kind of like what I'll call boring idea hidden in plain sight, aunt

flow.

What do this company, aunt flow?

Wait, is it aunt or aunt?

Wait, you say aunt?

I say aunt, but it's also.

Okay.

Whatever.

All right.

But I understand.

Not the insect.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your mom's sister.

Yeah.

Exactly.

That time of the month.

It's the slang for that time of the month.

So what these guys are doing or these gals are doing, I don't know who's behind it.

What they do is they go to a school or a company and they say, hey, you know, your restrooms

need to be a little bit more female friendly here.

So why don't we install this little like case that's going to dispense tampons and you know,

other kind of like female menstrual cycle products, anything that you could think of

that goes in that, that, that category, we're going to install this dispenser and now you're

just, your place is going to be more welcoming for, you know, for, for, for females that

are attending your space.

So maybe girls at school or university or in your company, whatever it is.

And they just made it sexy.

So they, this, these kind of hygiene products already exist in bathrooms, but they're all

like, we all know what they look like.

They're that boring, you know, silver box that looks like, you know, if I open this

up, am I going to get tools or a circuit breaker or like, you know, what am I going to get

out of this thing?

It's hard to, hard to really say.

They just made it look good and feel good and like really nice packaging and design.

And it's like, it's like the Tesla of these things that are in the bathroom wall and they're

doing great.

So let me pull up their numbers.

So they have, I think 900, I don't know if I have all these numbers correct, but they

have 900 orgs that are, that are working with them.

And basically you pay 300 bucks to install the thing.

And then you pay like a $1,300 a year for a 10 pound refills or pad refills.

And so that's basically like $9,000 for a school with 20 bathrooms.

And think about that.

There's just a lot of high schools.

Like there are like, you know, I don't know, 15,000 high schools in the country.

That's just high schools in the U S, then you have colleges, then you have companies.

And they just made it like a sexy DTC product.

Like the logo looks cool, the box looks cool.

And now States are requiring some schools like in California, Colorado, Michigan, that

you have to offer products for this.

And they do this like, you know, for every 10 that we sell, we donate one to a menstruator

in need.

Like they have like a whole thing around it.

It's like kind of crazy.

I, uh, last year I was pitched like three different of these.

When we did that vending machine pod, I had so many people reach out like I'm doing like

smart vending machine things or something like that.

And a lot of them were, or like either tampons or like hygiene things or, or then they were

like healthy food.

And I looked at all the numbers and most all of them were horrible.

And the ones that were the best, they just sold Coke and M&Ms like just like normal.

Like everyone wanted to do this, like one particular thing, but it's like, man, America

just wants Coke and M&Ms.

And that like crushed it.

What are the numbers on this one?

On track for 10 million in 2022 in revenue.

So triple from last year, I don't know when they started, but they, you know, now they're

doing Princeton University, every Apple retail store, offices like Google, Netflix, Disney,

Twitter, quick and loans, a four year contract for all K through 12 girls bathrooms in Utah.

Like, why am I not investing in this?

This is such a defensible business.

Like once you get the contract, they're not going to have, again, they're not going to

have two of these at the bathroom.

And so like, if you're the brand that like looks good and you can like sprint into market,

something like this will get, I think to like 30, 40, 50 million in revenue.

Sure.

They raise money.

I need to chase this down.

Uh, yeah, they're, they're raising money or they're, they've already raised some money.

Did you, uh, you ever seen those dick pills at like the counter at 7-Eleven?

Can't say I had.

Yeah.

Surely you have.

Like it's like, uh, goat.

It's like toad.

I forget what it's called.

I don't go into 7-Eleven.

I don't leave the house.

I definitely don't walk into 7-Eleven.

Well, they're in these vending machines.

They like, it's like Viagra or something like that.

It's like some type of like, I actually have no idea what it is, but it's like a, it's

like an herbal supplement.

And it's like, your wife was telling me about this, gotta keep it on.

You could have that one and, uh, and, uh, you ever think who makes those and what are

their business meetings like?

You know what I mean?

Is it just like a bunch of dudes like serving monster energy drink, like sitting around

like, you know what I mean?

Have you seen that?

Uh, have you seen that meme?

The whole meeting is just done over Xbox live.

Yeah.

It's just like, yeah, it's just like, we'll be, uh, serving Mountain Dew and Monster in

order to like, get this meeting started.

I've always wondered what those things are like and how you could be proud making that

crap.

This is way better than that.

It's not the same thing, but I've been thinking a lot about that define a lot.

How much have you been thinking about this?

Well, like, like, you know, these, um, uh, so we talked about, uh, milk boys and like

the send it thing or what's it called full send and so many people reached out to me

after that.

They make money because they're sponsored by this crypto poker thing called row.

What's it called?

Roblet.

You know what I'm talking about?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I saw this video where they were talking about it and it does like tens of millions

a month in sales.

Like it's just like astronomical.

It's just huge.

And I was thinking, I was like, that's pretty cool, but I think that gambling, like I'm

okay that it exists, but it's just not for me.

You know?

It's like, what do I always say?

Like, uh, cornrows and sleeve tattoos.

It's cool that other people have it not for me.

And by the way, that's catching on.

I did a meeting with somebody and they, I was like, oh, nice tat.

They go, yeah, you know what Sam says, cornrows and sleeve tattoos.

It's not for him, but I respect it's right to exist, but you know, it ain't for me.

But these like, these, these businesses that do like, let's say gambling, I'm like, that's

kind of like, it's most likely a little bit shady.

It's definitely not legal in America, but there's definitely, it's related to shadiness.

Like it's in the same family.

And I just wouldn't be proud doing that on a, I wouldn't be proud doing that on a daily

basis.

You know what I mean?

Right.

And that's why I was thinking about this.

As somebody who spends a lot of time gambling, uh, and has, you know, never tell you in college

how we used to drive from North Carolina, where I went to school down to South Carolina

of three hour drive that we would board a riverboat casino that would, that would sail

into international waters, turn off the engines and then let us gamble for four hours and

then it would drive back.

And that's what I was doing as like a 20 year old, you know, I was playing poker once and

the guy next to me either fell asleep or died.

And I was like, Oh my God, like, what am I doing here?

Why am I hanging out with these low lives who are, this guy's like, this guy, you know,

like those people whose nails go so long, they start to like corkscrew.

Like this guy looked like that.

And I was like, this guy hasn't moved off this boat in like a century.

And I shouldn't be here, but I couldn't resist.

Sleep or dead?

I don't know.

I just left the table.

I was like, I don't, I'm not going to tap this guy and find out it's like Schrodinger's

box is the cat dead or not.

I didn't want to know.

So, so I just left, but yeah, lost a bunch of money doing that.

So I don't know.

I like gambling.

I think it's cool, but also for sure, like it's not a business I would start because

I feel like I don't want to start things where the end is me in a Netflix documentary.

It's like, what is the percent chance I have to like be on the run at some point in this

business venture?

I don't really want to flee the country.

I'm not looking to like, you know, find out that like, you know, we have a huge amount

of like, you know, child pornography or, you know, you know, money laundering on my, my

app.

It's like, dude, I'm not here for the stress.

Like I'm not, I'm not trying to do all that.

And I don't need to make like a trillion dollars in a year doing this.

Like the state guys, I told the story about them on the pod that they do like 40 million

a week in revenue.

No way.

Issued.

I think a, but how much is that?

What's that like net revenue versus gross?

This is their take.

They did an eight.

I heard they did an $800 million dividend to their, because they can't sell the business.

So I heard that they distributed like $800 million dollars and this could be, this could

be wrong, but I don't think it's wrong by like more than 30%.

So, so that's pretty crazy.

These, these things, these guys, these guys are printed cash.

These are the guys who bought that.

Like they didn't know who was behind it until some guy like a $36 million dollar home.

Yeah.

And they were like, how did this 26 year old afford this?

And they're like, oh, how, where's the source of your wealth?

He's like, I own steak.com.

Did people just be it?

Correct.

Did people just message you?

About what?

And they told you that number.

Whenever we talk about any of this crap, I get so many messages.

Yeah.

My same friend who told me, yeah, my same friend who told me about them in the first place

when I featured them on here, he was telling me about like, you know, their dividend and

stuff like that.

Rubet is also big.

Yeah.

These, these things are really big.

They're like a casino.

And so like you take one of the best business models in the world, a casino, and you strip

away the biggest costs of it, which are like, you know, the building, the giant building

and having all this labor, because all the games are digital and there's the casino

is digital.

And now all you have left is the marketing costs to acquire customers and you can acquire

customers from around the globe in their bedroom and they don't have to like fly to Vegas to

do it.

Right.

It's a kind of an amazing model.

And like it's pretty obvious why it's, why it's huge.

But yeah, you know, it's not for everybody.

All right.

What do you got?

Okay.

I got, I got another one.

I got a framework and then I have, actually I got two frameworks.

I got one framework for, I got a quick one and a long one.

I'll do the quick one first.

I realized this the other day, I was like, yeah, Brian Armstrong, the founder of Coinbase

went on Lex Freeman's podcast.

Yeah, that's good.

So like, what is, what is your startup advice?

What is your advice for starting a startup?

It's like, it's one of those questions that as, you know, as an entrepreneur, you kind

of hate because you're like, well, it's like saying, you know, like, what is a good life?

So, but he gave an answer.

He's in kind of broke it down.

He's like, well, there's like, there's like two separate eras, pre-product market fit

and post.

And I was like, that's, I agree with that a hundred percent.

Like the things, the way life is pre and post is like important, but like, they need, okay.

So for Lex, you got to define like, what is product market fit?

And like, it's kind of hard to define product market fit.

I don't know how you felt it for the hustle because you kind of went from events to like,

I feel like we never had it flashy blog posts to the newsletter.

You don't think the newsletter had it?

I mean, we got to, we have 2.5 million people a day reading.

So like, I guess that there, there's definitely something there, but like people, when my

friends talk about it, they're like, oh man, it just started working.

Like it never felt like, it felt like a slog the whole time.

It never felt like things were just working.

I mean, do you feel that way at the milk road?

It just seems like, like, I guess maybe technically there's a exponential growth because it's

growing like two or 300% a year, but it wasn't like, I can't keep up.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Yeah.

So I'll tell you the frameworks I've heard about this.

So one is Emmett, who's the founder of Twitch.

He said this once and I was like, oh, that sounds right.

He goes, in a startup, there's a big period where it just feels like you're pushing a

giant boulder up a hill and you're pushing and you're pushing and you're pushing.

And then there is a point, if it works, where all of a sudden you're not pushing anymore,

the boulder starts to roll down the other side of the hill.

And now you have the opposite problem.

You're running, chasing to try to catch up with it because it's rolling faster than you

can keep up with.

And this is what other people say too, like, you know, your customers are like demanding,

you know, you can't, you basically, you run out of inventory, people, it's flying off

the shelves.

Like these are the phrases people use to describe this feeling.

It's where it starts to feel like the market is pulling you rather than pushing.

And so I was like, okay, I've heard that.

I've experienced a little bit with our D2C brand where we would, but it's not like, it's

not like this magical Eden where it never feels that way.

It never feels hard again.

Like that's kind of how it sounds in my head.

It's like, oh, at some point I'll stop pushing and it'll start like rolling by itself and

I'll have to run and chase it.

It's like, it's kind of like starts and stops of that.

It's more like, like a mountain range where the hit you go up and then down and then you

climb the next mountain.

It's a little higher than down, then the next mountain and down, like that's how it feels

like.

So for example, with the, with their e-commerce company, okay, getting the product made and

getting it to market and getting people to first hear about our brand, that was pushing

the boulder up.

But then literally as soon as like, I remember it went viral and like a Facebook group, people

started sharing it and like enthusiasts of that category, they started sharing it.

And so we all of a sudden, I remember like the third day, we did like $3,000 in sales

without like spending anything on marketing and I was like, where did that come from?

That was awesome.

I didn't do anything.

And like people started buying it and by our second month, we ran out of inventory and

we had a full, our third month, our sales sucked because we just had no inventory.

So that was like what it felt like to pull.

But then to get the business to grow even more, well, that's, you know, like that magic,

you know, sort of slowed down and sure people were still telling their friends, but I wanted

to hit a bigger goals.

Now I had to push again.

So it's been kind of starts and stops with milk road.

I sit, I feel like the growth is pushing the boulder up a hill, but then I look at some

numbers like the number of organic people who like people who joined because they got

referred the thing.

It's like a really healthy percentage.

I'm like, okay, so that means people are liking it if they're sharing with friends and the

feedback like the replies we get are not just like, Oh, that was a good one today.

It's like, they like, they're using our own language and sense of humor.

It's like they want to be friends with us.

They're like, they're like, Oh, you know, the milk was so hot this morning.

They turned into butter and like, you know, it's like, who said, who like goes into a

product uses it that day and then comes up with a funny review just cause you kind of

want to be boys with the people who are making it.

Like that's, that shows that they really care in some way and we get like hundreds of those

a day.

So, so that shows me it's working, but still to grow and fill the revenue slots, like that

feels like a slog.

Like that doesn't feel easy.

That feels like very, very difficult.

So, so yeah, I don't have a good answer.

I've seen it firsthand with two different people.

So the first is I used to share this office called Founders Dojo, you know, you, it was

a Dave, Grosblad, a bunch of us when I was starting the company, the hustle and there

was these two guys that were like the most stereotypical like Silicon Valley nerds.

It was like a skinny Indian dude and then this white guy that looked like this jock.

He was like really good looking jock, but he was like the dorkiest dude ever and they

were partners and it was a hilarious combination.

And they created this technology that would basically, I have no idea why they wanted

to create this technology.

It's honestly kind of pointless, but basically it would crawl the internet and it would find

the most shared and most popular HD GIFs, GIFs, whatever on the internet that day.

And they built this thing and then they would spend hours making the search.

So if you just typed in one letter, it would auto fill with like things that you could

search like GIFs.

Like if you typed in like the word C would auto fill with cats and then like the search

would just pop up and I remember we'd be like staring at the computer with them just like

look how much faster it is.

And it was like, you can't even tell like, you know, how much faster it was from the

previous time, but they would like nerd it out over this and they launched this thing

and it did okay.

It did okay.

It did okay.

And then one day we get into the office and they've stayed there all night and they slept

underneath the table that their desk.

I remember and I remember like Dave had bought them pizza because like they were working the

whole time and we're like, what's going on, Raj?

Like why is this, why is this happening?

And their website was called the worst drug, which is pretty hilarious.

It's called the worst drug dot TV, I think.

Basically some porn guys got ahold of it and it like they, they somehow, I don't know how

it worked, but the most shared GIFs on the web are almost all porn.

And so they like disabled like the not safe for work feature and it was all porn and

we get to the office and they had this fancy setup like this, the huge monitor and it was

the highest deaf porn I've ever seen and you click like space and it would autofill with

like a new porn GIF and, and like that person like, I use this by the way.

I remember seeing it.

It went viral like in 2014 or something.

It was like somebody shared it in our IRC.

They're like, this is a crazy website and it was like full screen HD immediate like porn

and you're like, whoa, you touch any key and it just reloads another one instantaneously.

It was like, whoa, what's going on?

It was like, I remember before TikTok.

So basically there was like eight of us, eight guys and like, we were gathered around this

computer and at first we were like shocked.

It was like hardcore porn, like shock, shocking porn that would go viral or like people like

click on and like the whole porn thing, we got past it and then we were like, wow, that's

really high depth.

Look at that.

Like, oh, if you click space, like it really, it loads so fast and there were just eight

of us like gathered around us and Tim Westergine, I can see the hair on his thigh.

It was crazy.

It was disgusting.

And Tim Westergine and his assistant, I forget her name, but they, I was supposed to interview

them in preparation because they were speaking at HustleCon and I told them to come to the

office and they walked into the office.

Pandora.

Yeah.

The founder of Pandora.

They walk into the office and there's eight of us gathered around this screen just like

staring intensely at this porn like, wow, good, good job, Raj.

Like when you type and see it really auto fills like really quickly, like, you know, like

this is amazing.

And they walk in and they're like, oh, hey, what's going on?

You guys want to see something?

Check out this.

And they had like millions of people a day coming to the website overnight and they slept

there at the office for weeks trying to like, you know, do something with the server to

keep up with the traffic and like increase the speed just a little bit.

And eventually something happened where like someone in Romania offered to buy it and they

flew there and it turns out that it was like some gangsters and then they like all had

like guns on them and they came back and it was like a whole ordeal.

But that's the one time that I really saw product market fit work.

So I've heard stories like that.

Like when Instagram launched, it was kind of the same thing.

They like, they launched it.

They put it out in the wild, you know, first hour was pretty slow, whatever.

The guys kind of go to sleep.

They wake up and like, or like not even they go to sleep.

It was like late at night and it was early in the morning in Japan and the app had started

to go viral in Japan.

And so they were like, dude, what are all these like, why are there only pictures of

tea?

And it's like, oh, this is in Japan, people have a tea in the morning and they're taking

Instagram pictures of it.

And they had like 25,000 people downloaded that first or second day.

And the servers like, you know, basically melting and like, pretty quickly, the only

problem became how do we get more server capacity is like, oh, you stop thinking about features,

you stop thinking about the logo, you stop thinking about names, you stop thinking about

hiring is like, all I think about is like, how do I add more servers?

And so actually, I started to realize that there's this, there's a test, the simplest

test to product market fit, because people have tried to come up with these tests before.

In fact, there's a kind of famous Silicon Valley one, which is you survey your users,

this thing, which is if our product went away, if you could no longer use our product, how

would you feel very disappointed, somewhat disappointed or not disappointed?

And the idea was if 40% or more say very disappointed, you have product market fit, it sounds good

in theory.

It's sort of like, it's like astrology, it's like giving you a way to have this answer

to this like mystical question.

And Mark Andreessen said this thing, he goes, product market fit is like sex.

If you're asking if you have it, you're not having it.

And like, you know, I think that's more real, which is like, there isn't this 40% survey

number, you can't survey your way to finding out, you'll know, because it kind of hits

you like a punch in the face.

And so what I've seen is that the people who really have it, like their thing is going

to go supernova.

They only care about two things.

Those two things are, if it's a tech product, hiring more servers, and if it's any kind

of product, hiring customer support people.

And anytime I meet a founder now who's like, yeah, dude, I just really need, you know any

good like customer support people like, where do I find more support people?

Or like, Hey, do you know how I can get like AWS credits?

I'm like running up a crazy bill.

I'm like, let me invest first, and then also, yes, let me help you with that.

Because I know when that happens, that is the almost the truest sign of product market

fit.

It is the survey you don't need to go do with your customers.

When a founder stops thinking about features, stops thinking about like future plans and

marketing and, you know, company culture and everything else.

And they're like, dude, the shit is melting.

Michael Burt told me, I was like, how did you know when Bebo was working?

And he had struggled before that for three, three and a half years to like make something

work.

And so I asked him, I was like, you know, what was it like kind of before and like,

you know, when the turning point happened, like, did you, were you just feeling like

so good?

Once, once it clearly started to work, he was like, well, he kind of described the bolder

pushing up the hill thing.

He's like, well, before when I was like, I quit my job, we had two kids and a third

on the way, we had mortgaged our house and like, I had told my wife, give me six months

to try this.

And now I was three years in and I still hadn't figured out anything that worked.

But I felt like I was getting closer and closer.

He's like, that was hard.

I felt like I was pushing the bolder up the hill.

Then with Bebo, we, like I finally put together all the pieces.

I knew that social networking was a good product, like a good category.

Like this is before Facebook, like I knew that social networking was going to be big.

People were going to talk to other people on the internet.

They were going to have profiles and comment on each other's pages.

I just felt like that was true.

And then I knew how to grow it, which was like these viral, like kind of fill in your profile

quizzes and share it with your friends.

I knew how to grow it and like, so I, I, I launched the thing.

He goes in nine days.

We had a million users and he's like, back then a million users was like, so huge on

the internet.

He's like, he's like, you know, nine days later, none of them came back.

I had a retention problem, but he's like, I knew that I had like something that could

light fire.

So I turned it off and I started working on the retention to like, give you a reason

to come back every day.

He's like, I knew this is going to work.

He's like, and then when it worked, he's like, I didn't feel like this immense joy.

Like, yay, I finally overcame it.

He's like, I felt even more pressure.

He's like, dude, now this is actually, you finally did it.

Don't eff this up.

Like this can actually be valuable.

Don't mess this up.

He's like, that became a whole new level of pressure and like burden that I felt.

And he's like, I worked so hard.

And I think after they sold like what our four years in or something like that, I think

he had like major heart surgery like five months later because he had been like so working

so hard and under so much stress and pressure that whole time, I'm sure that could contribute

to something like that.

But when he described that, I was like, okay, so I've never felt that like I've never felt

anything that you just described.

That means I've never felt the like the violent version of product market fit when that like

a billion dollar company feels.

What did Brian, he didn't say what it feels.

He didn't define it as much.

He was just, he had said basically something along the lines of, you know, you're making

something that people want and, you know, there's like, you know, whatever true to ban

for.

You know, like that.

But I've been thinking about how do you know, because that's so general that you're going

to be optimistic and think you have it when you don't because God, it would feel so good

to have it.

And man, that really sucks to not have it.

So you're always kind of like squinting and looking for these like this evidence.

And what Brian said was he goes, he goes, my lucky thing was that I wasn't a big analyzer

or a big thinker.

I was just like, action produces information.

So I would just do a thing and I produce some information like, oh, people want this or

they don't want this or they want it, but there's something wrong with it.

Like the Bebo thing where, oh, they grew, but they didn't stick around.

Okay.

But that produced information.

That first nine days produced a lot of information.

And so he's like, okay, I built this wrong, but now I know what's wrong with it.

So let me do another round.

And like, he's like, action produces information.

So as a founder, like just focus on the action part and like it'll either hit for you or

it won't, but like action is really the only way you're going to get to it.

And like, you know, smart action, meaning you take action, then you sort of like accurately

assess what's working and what's not so that you're not taking blind action.

Have you ever thought about the logistics of that though?

So Coinbase, there was this article a couple of years ago written about them when they

were, when I think in 18 or 19, when like the first cycle was happening and they're

saying how like they've torn down walls at their office, like just because they don't

have enough space and like they, people needed to be in the same room to like shout at one

another and then they're like, we're also just taking meetings in the park.

I forget where their office was, but it was near where you and I lived in San Francisco.

And they'd be like, yeah, we're taking meetings in the park because there's just physically

not enough space.

And if you think about the logistics of it, you basically have this idea and the small

thing in 2015 or 16 or whatever.

And so right now they're at, I think 4,000 employees, which means they've probably hired

6 or 7,000 if you count for turnover.

And if there's, you know, 360 days in a year or whatever it is, 350 days a year, that's

like bait, you're basically adding 10 to 20 people a day in headcount every single day

for three years.

It's pretty wild.

That's wild, right?

In order to add 10 or 30 people a day, whatever you, and that's not even like that much compared

to like a Facebook or Google, but like that means that you got to talk to like a thousand

people a day.

Five times, 10 times more.

Yeah.

He says that in the thing he goes, we have, I think he said 3,000 people now he goes,

but, and he's like, I personally, I think was involved in the hiring of maybe the first

like, I forgot what he said, like 300 to 500, he's like, but then to hire those 300 or 500,

I had to talk to maybe 3,000 or 5,000 people.

So he's like, so I've done a lot of interviewing now and I have a good idea of like, I got

totally burnt out from it.

If you just like, all right, how are we going to get everyone a laptop or how do we like

make sure that everything breaks?

Everything breaks.

It's crazy.

Have you ever experienced that firsthand?

Not that.

I've heard stories, again, I've heard stories and that's how I know.

I didn't have brought a break, but even when I thought I had it and growth is happening,

I've only ever felt it one time with Blab when our servers kept melting down and it

wasn't during a period where we went from about zero to 2 million users in like a six

month period and like we just kept like our vendors servers were going down.

Then we're like, shit, what do we do?

Like, dude, how was talk box going down?

How was cloudflare, you know, going down?

What's going on here?

It was like, and we were also getting DDoS attacked and shit like that.

But basically, yeah, that's the only time I've sort of felt it.

But that was like, you know, a very brief window of time.

There's this guy, Dan Rose.

I don't know if you follow him on Twitter.

He was like a very number three guy, he was very early at Amazon, maybe like first 50

or 100 people.

I was like, yes, something like that, but he was early, early days like he was around

when the dot com bust happened.

All right, so 99, 2000, 2001 time period, then he went to Facebook and he was he ended

up being like the number three guy at Facebook behind Zuck and Cheryl.

And so anyways, he shares these war stories from back then he says these things that again,

you don't feel unless you're building one of these like, you know, thunder lizard type

companies that are just like these Godzilla's and he's like, yeah, at Amazon, he's like,

we used to just do meetings in the stairwell because it was just like we ran out of desk

space.

We started putting two people at every desk.

That didn't even work.

I was just working out of a stairwell for like a three month period.

Just imagine like, he's like, yeah, I just took my laptop and just sat there on the top

stair and I was just like, somebody would be walking by and be like, hey, hey, for that

thing we're launching tomorrow, like it can wait.

And then I just walk with him down the stairs while we talk and that was our meeting.

And so he shares these stories about like what it was like.

His Twitter is a good follow for sure.

Did I ever tell you about the Airbnb cafeteria?

No.

So when my wife works there and I used to go to the office because my office was right

next door to it for dinner time all the time, basically they had this beautiful office and

every office or meeting room is made to look like a popular Airbnb, like, you know, thing

you could rent.

And it's like this beautiful office, you know, Brian and Joe, they're like designers.

So everything and everything like in their office looks exactly like that.

And their cafeteria can, you know, seat three or feed 3,000 people or whatever.

How many people they have there and their whole shtick was every single item was made

there at the office.

So the Red Bull, they had like Airbnb bull, the ketchup, the mayonnaise made right there.

The trail mix, like they made, they made everything 100% except for the beer.

I think that's the only thing that they didn't make.

But besides that, if you consumed it, like they didn't have Doritos, you couldn't get

a Coke in that office.

It was all made right there on the spot.

And I remember thinking like this company, just that in itself is like a pretty amazing

feat.

And that's not even close to being like their thing.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's exactly that's like, that's not their thing logistics, you know, that's their version

of lunch.

Yeah.

It's just table stakes to get people to work there.

And I remember like thinking like, how on earth do you pull that off?

Because like just literally five years ago or maybe three years ago, I had interviewed

there and it was 200 people and it was like an OK office.

But that I remember seeing that and I was like, this is just amazing.

This is this is absolutely ridiculous.

I had the same experience.

I went to Zynga's office back when Zynga was like, you know, still Airbnb used to share

an office with them.

I believe, by the way, I went to that Zynga office as well.

And that office is crazy.

First you walk in and there's like a tunnel to enter.

Like you remember that tunnel, the light, the lit up tunnel.

So it's like you walk in and it's an LED tunnel.

So you feel like you're entering a special you feel like you're entering a spaceship

of some kind or like, you know, you're walking out into a stadium and then there's just dogs

everywhere.

I was like, oh, do people have allergies here?

How is this allowed?

It's like, oh, yeah, no, we're just is like this free free land.

And I met we met the chef.

This guy, Matt Matthew, I think is a do Trumbull was his name sounds like a chef name.

And so he was like, yeah, let me give you a tour.

And so he was the one who brought us into the office.

I was like, OK.

He's like, yeah, I'll give you like the kitchen tour.

And I was like, OK, cool.

This will take like, you know, two minutes and then we'll go see the other thing.

And like the kitchen tour took an hour because it was the exact same thing.

He goes, he goes, so this is our staff, he goes, everything that you eat here is made

on premise.

And I was like, OK.

He's like, see that?

Like, I was like, you guys have like a he's like, you want anything to drink?

I was like, yeah, I'll take like a sparkling water or whatever.

He's like, cool.

It's on tap here.

And it was their fizzy water.

I was like, you make your own fizzy water?

He's like, yeah, we make our own seltzers, ciders, beers.

They made everything he's like, yeah, this like, you know, the salad here, like we grow

all the like we have a micro farm on the roof.

That's crazy.

And so like this mushroom was grown here.

This like arugula is grown here.

It's all a circular system.

I was like, what?

And then he's like, I was like, but what about them?

You don't have like animals for like, you know, he's like, no, no, no, we do get animals

when we get the full animals.

So he opens up the walk in fridge and there's just cow cows hanging upside down, full cows.

And I was like, what is this?

And he's like, yeah, we break down the entire carcass and we like, you know, use every bit

of it for our things.

I was like, you and what army dude?

He's like, oh, we have 45 people in our chef.

That's crazy.

Executive.

I'm the executive chef and we have 45 people on our team.

I was like, you have, I don't have 45 people in my company.

You have 45 people on the lunch team.

And I was like, this is just absurd.

It was insane.

And I was like, wow, the arms race for like, you know, pampering tech things and like building

this like culture of your building something special was, you know, kind of amazing to

be honest.

It was really amazing.

I was blown away by that.

I have cows on my, at my ranch on my Airbnb property and I've, we have like 18 of them

or something like that.

And I've, and you know, they butcher them.

So they like, every year they send away like four or five.

And then I see the new ones being born.

And I thought it'd be cool to get a freezer out there and you like pay 20 bucks and you

get a steak and it'd be like, yeah, this cow is, you know, like the mother of the one

that you see right in front of the off like, like, you know, cause you can sit on the porch

and like watching the cows would come up to that's too sad for me.

And it was too sad for me.

I couldn't do it.

I need like distance from it.

I need to like ignorance is bliss for me when it comes to eating meat.

Yeah.

I didn't end up doing it cause I was like, this is just TMI.

I can't handle it because I like, I see these guys playing and like it's a gnome and they

get to know me.

I was like, oh, fuck.

Right.

I'm not nearly as tough as I thought.

I know.

All right.

Should we wrap it or cause they're like, are you paying by the minute now your surcharge

here, your studio?

Cause I'm free here in my studio.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Ben's still getting used to like the logistics of this.

So I'll just leave it at that, but I think, I think our time is up.

What do you think?

Are you inspired now to look better or you still don't give a shit?

I'm very inspired.

The inspiration isn't the problem, the, the skill to do it is the problem to like upgrade

my own space.

I'm not going to give, it's going to like do it.

Do you use that room for anything?

I use it for, for this and my wife works out of here too.

So, but, but we can use it for however long.

It's an office though, right?

It's like, well, like just like, it'll look like a CNN newsroom just have her in the background

like working.

Like it'll look fine to just make it look a little pretty, they'll put some of this crap

on there.

Dude, send them.

The door's open.

Ring the doorbell.

All right.

Well, I guess that's a pod.

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.