My First Million - #90 - How a Newsletter Generates $2m With Only 5,000 Subscribers

Episode Date: July 8, 2020

Joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. This episode Shaan and Sam talk: leadership in turbulent times, the business of roof racks, a newsletter generating $2m, the opportunities in eCommerce, employee surveillance and the rift between Silicon Valley and the media.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How's the suburbs? It's good. Actually, I've said good now twice, and it's because my brother-in-law taught me this thing that I've been doing in my head. You know who Jaka Willink is, the guy who's like on Joe Rogan's podcast? Yeah, yeah, the Navy SEAL. Yeah, and I actually don't listen to him or whatever. My brother-in-law is, like, obsessed with him,

and he buys his book and, like, listens to his podcast or whatever, and I just, like, overheard it. And this guy, he said this guy's, he's, like, hardcore about everything, and his thing is, like, discipline equals. freedom. He's like a David Gaghan's guy. Yeah, he's just like, you know, torture yourself, and that's what makes you strong, and that's what sets you free, and that's how you get what you want to do. Like, get what you want. And so, you know, anytime something goes wrong, like, it'll be like, you know, your business failed. And he'll just be like, good, start a new one. Or like, you know,

faster to start the winner. Or he'll be like, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always like, I'm going to make this into something good. Flat tire. Good. Time to walk. And it's just like, that's this like voice in my head now. It's cheesy as hell, but it's actually quite effective to just immediately correct any thought to the, like to the positive, to the empowering. And it's like, got fired. Good. I'm free.

Okay, I get it. I'm down with that. Have you read David Gagin's book? No, I actually don't like these guys. No, read David Gagins. Gaggis is cool. I mean, he's like cringe sometimes, but he's cool. grew up in an abusive household and overcame a lot.

And, you know, he's definitely a good dude and an inspiration. He overdoes it, obviously. But these guys are good. I know. I've already done so much sort of motivation porn that now I need something else. It's like, I don't want to hear that you were like, you know, an orphan who had, you know, no food and you crawled your way to success. It's like, I want somebody who was doing all right and how they're doing great. Or like, you know, they're not having to do it great.

They're doing pretty good. Let me tell you a good book. Let me tell you a book that I think of that is doing that for me. But how is it actually? What? Living in the suburbs? Yeah. Yeah, it's fantastic.

It's amazing. I swim every day. That's like that alone, that one thing, I say that. And like, no one gives a shit because it doesn't sound that interesting or new or novel. But for me, I went from not going in the pool and swimming every day to doing it. And it's like a combination of meditation, a massage and a workout. And it's amazing. and a shower. It's great. It's everything I want. Great, because maybe I'll do it. I'll join you.

Okay, you want to hear. Wait, are you back in SF? I'm in my house in San Francisco. It looks messy because I've moved everything. So, okay, you should come over then. Come over for the next podcast. We'll hang out here. We'll swim and then we'll do the podcast live. Okay, I'm down. I'm in San Francisco now, but I've packed everything up. I leave August 1st. I'm going to go to, what's the place, Park City for a week because like I said, I wanted to hang out in Utah. And then I'm going to go to St. Louis for two weeks. And then I'm going to go to New York. I sound bougie saying this. I'm going to stay in the Hamptons for a couple weeks. And then I'm going to rent a place in Brooklyn for a little while. And then maybe I'll go to Asheville, North Carolina. And then maybe back here. I don't know. All right. I like it. Let's talk about this book real quick that I started reading. So, okay, and it relates to what you're talking about a little bit. So I'm, I love history. I'm a history buff, and I started reading leadership in turbulent times. It's by this wonderful woman named Doris something. She wrote the book by Abraham Lincoln.

What's it called? Oh, yeah, it's like alliance of enemies or some shit like that. Something like that. And it's great. I haven't read that one, but everyone talks about that one being great. Anyway, it's good because when I get, I'm like you where I'm like, oh, I don't want to hear about all this motivational stuff, but this stuff actually is motivational.

Imagine being Abraham Lincoln and like born without electricity, And like, now I'm going to go and I'm going to, like, free the slaves or Lewis and Clark. And, like, I'm going to, like, go. You tweeted about this today. I did. Because when you think about it, I'm like, ugh, I can't decide between living in the suburbs or not. And I'm like, fucking Lewis and Clark. Like, door dash isn't loading.

God, door dash. And then you're like, Lewis and Clark walked across like the fucking ocean and mapped the whole thing and, like, had no electricity. It's like, should I raise funding or not? Or how much should I pay myself? all this bullshit. It's like, dude, these guys, like, were the first white Americans, and they, like, discovered this whole area for three years. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is easy.

This is an easy conversation. I'm not going to discuss what time I should record the podcast. Okay, but this book, what's the book about? Is it about Abraham Lincoln or is it about something? Yeah, so it's called Leadership in Turbulent Times. This woman is a historian. She's a wonderful writer. And it looks at FDR.

who had polio and had elite America through World War II, or the beginnings of World War II, Abraham Lincoln, who came from nothing and then emancipated the slaves, Teddy Roosevelt, whose mother and wife died in the same house on the same day, and his child was born. So in one day, in the same home, his wife died, his mother died, and his daughter was born. Oh, my God. Same day. And so he kind of led the Spanish-American War, I believe it was. And then who else is it about Linda B. Johnson, who had a takeover after JFK was assassinated. And so it talks about what the modern person can learn from leadership in turbulent times. All right. I like it. And you're done with it or you're in the middle?

I'm in the middle of it. But I just find this fascinating. Where does it rank, you know, one to ten? Because like a book can be interesting, but then there's like the life-changing books that you're like, no, you have to read that. And then this one is like, it sounds like this one is like, oh, it's a cool read. It's not a- It's a cool read so far, but I wouldn't say it's the book, but what is life-changing is learning about like men like Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. These guys were like true. Like I'm very patriotic and I love America and I love reading about these people who help shaped America because what makes America special to me is this optimistic mentality and this we can bond. We can get together and we can overcome this problem. And these guys just do that to the max.

I love it. Okay. I don't think I'm going to read it. but I like that you like it. I'll finish it and tell you. Yeah, I like that you like it and I'm not, I'm not in that world yet. By the way, you bought the happy body when I mentioned it last time. Have you continued doing that workout or diet as well? Yeah. It's not a diet necessarily. I just, I mean, I already did it. There is a like strict fruit plan. But that's what I'm saying. It's not that strict. Like it just says you just eat under a certain calories and eat healthy.

Yeah, sure. Then I do that. I mean, I lose weight. Like, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm 15% body fat probably. Are you, because you know they have that table that's like, for this height, you should be this weight, this much body fat, this muscle.

I'm five pounds over. Five pounds over. Okay, gotcha. Nice. I started. I weigh 198. Or no,

I'm, I weigh 198. I'm supposed to weigh 190. I started doing it like five days ago. And I like it. And it's so weird. It's not like a normal exercise program. It's like,

like literally my wife laughed at me. She's like, oh, like, I was doing it. And she really wanted me to just like hold the baby and like, do my ship. and then she was like mocking me talking to the baby she's like oh sorry daddy's doing a really

strenuous workout look at him because it's like it looks like you're doing absolutely nothing you're lifting pretty much zero weight no i mean it's like you literally start with like 10 pound weights and yeah but my back can't like can you do the can you like put your can you put your hands away above and squat down no not the squat part well but that's limited by like hamstrings and hips more than my like my back is fine it's my hips and hamstrings that's like anyways there's not a fitness podcast. It's like, hey, you want to hear about fitness from Sean, who doesn't, it's not fit? This is the podcast for you. But it's a cool book and you should check it out. And it's very unorthodox. That's what I kind of like about it. I hate doing anything that seems

mainstream. So this works for me. It gets me excited to do it. I love it. I've been doing it and it makes my back feel better. Okay, so we got to decide something. First on in the last podcast, at the very end, we were like, okay, interesting question. If you had to make a million bucks in the next two months and you could only start with, I think, like, 10 grand of, like, you only had 10 grand of budget. How would you do it? And we had said, we're going to come back on Monday with a bunch of good, we thought about it on the spot and it wasn't great. And we said, all right, we'll come back Monday and we'll think. And so it was July 4th this weekend. So I don't know, did you, did you think about it? Are we ready to talk about it or are we going to punt it one,

one episode and think about it. I'm not ready to talk about it, but yeah, I thought about it a lot. I thought about it as well. And I, Oh, is our next episode, the 100th episode? Okay, that would be a good special one. The thing is, it's going to be so much work. But I think I'm down. Oh, to actually go pull it off. Yeah, I think I could do it though.

Yeah, I think you could and should do it. Okay, so we're going to punt it one episode, let's say, so that we can come to the table with good answers. Because everything we talk about on here is off the cuff. Basically, during the week, we have this little Google spreadsheet that we, you know, if I'm out about and I see something or I'm talking to somebody or I'm meeting somebody and they say something interesting, I'll just toss it on that sheet. But don't do a ton of research.

And I don't know what you're going to talk about. You don't know what I'm going to talk about when we show up. So it's very off the cuff. But for this one, I want to have thought about it and I want to have research so that I can have good answers. Normally I laugh at people when they say like, oh, I don't want to tell you my idea. And I'm like, dude, shut up. Your idea is like, I've already thought of it or someone has thought of it.

Like, that's not a big deal. But in this case, it actually is true. So when we talk about it, we'll kind of have to be subliminal a little. Oh, I'm just going to say what I'm going to do and I'm going to do it. If somebody could beat me to it, you know, good on you. But most people are just going to enjoy their journey. All right, I have a bunch of other topics that are interesting that we can talk about. I want to tell you about some research that I've done that shocked me.

Okay, so let me pull it up because I didn't list it all in here. Okay, so car racks. You know car racks? No, what is that? Okay. So when you buy a car, most of the time, you have to do. do two things if you want to carry luggage on top of your car. First, you have to install the rack. Okay, gotcha. Then you have to install the thing that you want to carry stuff. So you could

want to basket and you could carry stuff in the basket. You could install luggage. You could install bike rack. So there's two components of this. Now, these racks cost $500 to $1,000 for a rack and then another $500 to $3,000 for the luggage. And so I started researching this and I thought it was crazy. And I found this crazy article that Berkeley, it's called Berkeley Lab. I guess it's funded by Berkeley University. So listen to this. In 2015, roof racks were responsible for about 1% of lightweight vehicle fuel consumption nationwide. That comes out to be about 100 million gallons of gasoline. So what happens when you put just the rack, not the cargo, just the small rack, is your gas efficiency, your fuel efficiency, goes down 5 to 25%.

So if you have a car that gets 25 miles a gallon, it goes down, what, 2.5 miles a gallon? And a lot of times people leave the racks on when they drive around. And I thought that was crazy. So let me tell you one more stat, which is the study calculated that the additional fuel consumption caused by roof racks is about six times larger than the anticipated fuel savings from fuel cell vehicles and 40% of the anticipated fuel savings from electric battery vehicles in 2014. That's crazy to me. And so when I read that, I was like, I want to buy the most fuel efficient car rack there is. And there weren't a lot of things out there. And let me tell you

about the company that I bought a car rack from, they're publicly traded. They mostly only sell car racks. And they do about... What's their name? It's called Thurrack. It's called Thurrack. tool t h ull it's a publicly traded company in what's sq switzerland they do about 700 million dollars in revenue with about 150 million dollars in profit pretty big business and only on car racks is that crazy that's really crazy so the market cap on here says 25 billion now is that's that's that's french frank or that's swiss frank divided by 10 about i think it's point 1-1 okay so 2.5 billion dollar market company for car roof racks. Car roof racks.

Mostly car roof racks. And the study that I read, they go, yeah, Americans are buying roof racks like crazy. Like it's growing at a really high rate. I believe it. And I didn't believe that. And then I started looking around and I'm like, oh my God, every freaking car has one. So when I go on Amazon, the racks look like they're like 70 to 200 bucks. So which ones are you talking about?

Well, I don't know what you're looking at. But because it's quite confusing because when you buy a rack, you have to buy the part that just attaches to the car. And then you got to buy the rack that attaches to the fittings. And then you got to buy the cargo part that goes to the rack. Right. It's incredibly expensive. I mean, I'm looking at right now.

So you just bought these? I bought it used on Craigslist. I got them used everything for $600. And what about when you buy it used, okay, you bought it on Craigslist. If you were going to go to a marketplace to buy this used, which marketplace would you go to? I went to Craigslist. But if it wasn't Craigslist, where would you go? Is there like a marketplace?

Okay. So you go to the kind of broad one. So there's no like, is there like a vertical marketplace for basically outdoorsy equipment like, you know, campers and surfboards and, you know, tents? Well, campers, yeah, campers have their own thing. A lot of what we talk about is unbundling these big marketplaces into vertically focused marketplaces. And so I'm sure there's already one for this, but I haven't heard of it because I'm not an outdoorsy type. Maybe. I definitely didn't see it.

But it wasn't a product that I wanted to ship. I wanted to go. Pick it up. I drove like half an hour away. and I picked it up because they're huge. I mean, this thing, it's like as big as a car roof. Right, right, right. So you wanted it to be local.

Okay, got it. But isn't that amazing that, A, I can't believe how I was shocked at how inefficient. This is the same thing. It's the hidden in plain sight. I see these on cars all the time. I never even once thought to myself because I'm not buying it, right? Like, who makes these? How much do they cost?

How much that company worth, right? But like, boom, billion dollar company hidden in plain sight, frigging roof racks of cars. And, you know, I'm curious how many, you know, D2C competitors they have already. There was a few Chinese knockoffs on Amazon, but I didn't want to buy it because Thule is like, so I bought a Volvo car, like a nice new Volvo car and they're not like luxury, but they're like quality, right?

And Thule is like probably the Volvo of car racks where it's not like the most expensive, but it's like hot you pay for quality. People spend for quality on outdoor stuff, like whether it's like REI gear or, you know, like that's just like a common. thing I see. It's not just that people spend on their hobby. It's like, specifically with outdoor stuff, they'll pay more for the rugged, sturdy, reliable thing. And I understand why. It makes total sense. Okay, I have another niche thing, unless you wanted to say any more about tool. I just thought that was crazy. Because A, I couldn't find one that was marketing it as, like,

the most fuel-efficient wreck. And I was amazed to how big these businesses were. I thought, like it was like something started in like Portland that was like had 30 employees. Right. All right. So I saw this tweet by this guy, Chris back. And I don't, I never met this guy. He seems legit. His bio is that he has three exits to Indeed, Zillow and No Tell.

So I don't know who this guy is exactly. He's a founder slash operator. He follows me. So I think he might listen to the podcast. So his handle is. He tweeted something that pissed me off the other day. I know who this guy is. His handle is Chris J.

Back, back with B.A. K-K-E. So he tweeted this, Anthony, that was really interesting. I wanted to shout it out. So he goes, he was like, you know, one of my favorite small business ideas is to pick a hobby that you spend too much money on, create a newsletter for that hobby, and then market it to other enthusiasts via Reddit, Twitter, Facebook. For example, the Ferrari market letter has 5,000 email subscribers and does $2 million in revenue

with a team of two. And I was like, what, like, that was crazy to me. I hadn't heard of this. And you're knee-deep in the newsletter world. Did you know about this one specifically? I know this whole thing won't surprise you, but did you know about this one? No, but I think what he's saying is a bit misleading. Well, I went to the Ferrari market letter.com.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I get it. He said, breakdown of someone who's knowledgeable about their business. They make 600 to 900,000 from 5 to 6,000 people who will pay about 100 to 200 bucks for online or print access. And then they make another million dollars a year, an annual member to member classified revenue. and then the remainder is from advertising. So the classified revenue, that's like sort of their little marketplace for enthusiasts to transact. And then about a million bucks is for people who want the sort of the online and print access to the content. So I thought that was pretty interesting.

I had never heard of this before and I thought that it was pretty significant for some really niche enthusiast hobby. Yeah, and you could do this for a variety of things. I mean, hell, you could just pick Porsche or Mercedes that, both have fanatical followings. Yeah, I buy it. I'm not even remotely surprised about this. If you go to the website, it says they're celebrating their 45th year. So it must be two guys that are like in their 60s or something or older and they just love Ferraris. So yeah, I buy it. Way simpler than you think. Yeah. And I bet, you know, the content is so niche that, you know, you just get this disproportionate engagement from people who are, you know, the more niche,

the more passion, generally speaking. So, so I think that's the, and then when it's Ferrari is your niche, well, then the money comes with it. And I'm a, I'm a huge fan of cars and vintage cars and things like that. There's a few people in this space. There's Hemming Motor News. So if you go to Hemings.com, it's a company that's been around for, since 1954. If you told me this business made $50 million. I would not be surprised. It's a classified site for vintage cars. Additionally, just if anyone who wants to watch a business get built in real time, you have to follow this. So one of my favorite YouTubers is a car blogger, Carsandbids.com. I'm following him building this. I think this is going to be quite large. Yeah, I like it. He's hiring for it. It's going to be pretty big.

So watch that. Cool. Your train. What else you got? Oh, okay. So I saw a choice. car and this is like e-commerce compared to retail it's only like 25% it's only 25 or 20% of all retail yeah and it's crazy when you think about that which by the way that used to be like six or seven percent like only a handful of years ago and I remember and this was like Amazon was here like it was and I remember seeing that and being like that's crazy that it's only six or seven percent penetration so now I guess you're saying it's like 20 percent 25 percent yeah I don't know how you measure that but ish. I think that e-commerce, like when I think of e-commerce, when I think of like what you and our friends do, I'm like, I respect it, but for me, that's not for me. I don't want to do

that. That's boring. But then I'm like, when you see that growth, you're like, that is pretty neat. So what do you think what that would look like at 50 or 60 percent? I mean, what do you think that's not being sold online? So a few things that are interesting to me is homes are not really being bought online. I've thought about this since 2012 when I worked at an apartment company. I was like, oh, someone's going to rent apartments online without seeing them once the BD mapping is a thing, which Matterport's doing that. Diamond rings. I bought an incredibly expensive diamond ring on Blue Nile.com. So diamonds are being sold. Cars are being sold. What else is, what's not being sold now that will? I think businesses are going to be bought and sold online.

Obviously, today, online businesses are, but, you know, brick and mortar sort of offline businesses like, you know, my uncle bought a liquor store, you know, and I was like, how did you do it? And he's like, well, you know, in the newspaper, you see an ad. And there are things like LoopNet out there that you can buy and sell, you know, businesses. But they're not as common and it's not as well developed as, you know, an online business marketplace would be. What else? I think more so than new shit being sold online, that's not online, is just more, more percentage, right? So it's like, okay, of the amount of groceries I used to order online, like online groceries was a thing, but now it's for a household like mine, we do it 50% of the time now.

We used to do it 5% of the time, right? We only used to do it when we're in a pinch, and now we'll do it, you know, generally, unless we really need to go grab something specific from somewhere. And so I think it's just going to be the market share of each individual, like, item is going to be more and more bought online, right? So clothes, and glasses, like these have been for sale online, but out of 20 people, maybe one was buying their glasses from Warby Parker. And 19 were still going to Costco or wherever and picking out frames, lens crafters or some shit.

And that number is going to go from one to five to eight to 12 to 20, you know, eventually. And so I think that that's more where the change is going to happen. It's just what percent of people buy X item online? Today, they're all like kind of single digits out of 20 and it'll be double digits out of 20. when it's over. Yeah, I'm still just kind of thinking about everything. I think that there, have you read about Blue Nile? I've read about Blue Nile and also there's another one, the name slips my mind, but

there's another diamond company like that online. But tell me about what you know about it. I don't know much besides the name. Okay, so Blue Nile was founded by this ex-McKinsey guy. Seems like a really interesting guy way under the radar. Blue Nile is, it's now owned by Bain Capital. It does, it went public. It did North and $500 million in sales.

This guy also helped start Moose Jaw, I believe. He also helped found as an advisor, chewy.com. So a lot of interesting companies. They were acquired by Bain. They did hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. Incredibly fascinating. You can buy a diamond ring on there up to probably a million dollars, and they refund you within two weeks if you don't like it.

And so I actually bought my engagement ring for Sarah on there, and I timed it. So when I proposed, she still had 10 days to, return it if she didn't like it. I timed it so that she could open up the package and get her ring from there. So why did you pick this versus somebody else? Is it cheaper? Is it better? What's better about it? It's interesting because when you go and buy a diamond ring, like everyone's like, oh, I got a guy, right? And like when you go to it, like, when you've got a guy, that means that like the selection probably isn't huge and you don't actually know like what's what. You don't know what's good. You don't know if

you're being sold to. And so because of the, because they're online, you have far more transparency about What quality is this? Is this company blue now reputable? You have more of a guarantee. You have a larger selection, things like that. Right. And what do you think about this like alt rings where, you know, people are like, some people are anti-diamonds because they're like,

hey, diamonds are not always ethically sourced, blah, blah, blah. We should do, you know, alternative rings that, you know, stand for something by using alternative materials, right? We've seen this with alt milks. We've seen it with alt beers. Are we going to see this with alt rings? What do you think? Maybe.

The difference between those. those things is that like you would only buy a special diamond if it were as convenient or as cheap or as good as another one like people who say they care about like is this ethically sourced. I don't actually think that that many people would let their wallets. Like if something costs $5,000 more, I don't think they would actually do that. So I don't think that it's like that cool of a thing. And I think that everyone says don't buy a big fancy diamond for your girlfriend or your, you know, say whatever.

and it's usually bullshit. You're like, oh, whatever. Whatever makes her happy, I'll do. Yeah, also they wear it every single day, which gets a lot of value. So I think it's a little different than buying like a jacket or like a shirt or whatever. I was going to buy one like a cheap, like,

I had a budget and then I talked to Rameet, my friend Rameet from I Will Teach to be Rich. He's those, dude, this is the whole point of having money is to make your loved ones happy. Whatever they want, just get it. And so my budget ended up six-xing. Okay. Well, what was it?

Tens of thousands of dollars. They say it's supposed to be, what, three months of salary? Three years salary. Three years of salary? I'm having three months of salary. Okay, I'm going to stick with months. I'm not trying to do three years. All right.

What do you got? Okay, a couple other random things. Okay, so I saw this article about this idea of productivity tracking by your employer. Okay, so everybody's going remote. and, you know, one of the reasons people didn't want to allow work from home was this question of like, are people really going to be working? Are they just going to open up their laptop and then go watch The Simpsons? And so some companies have started installing on their, like, employee laptops, you know, productivity trackers, which are really like spyware for, you know, it's your boss over your

shoulder at all times. And so there's a bunch of these that are out there. They all say that they're growing like crazy. So there's one called transparent business, which is, They said they grew 500 percent so far through COVID. There's one called Protoscore. I haven't looked into how big these businesses are or how they're doing, but they're sort of like, I never heard of them because I think it's not like this is very anti-Silican Valley where like I think if a tech company tried to do this, I think there would be like mass backlash.

And they basically, you know, they track your, you know, when were you online, when you're offline, when we're idle, when were you typing, when were your mouse moving, what websites did you visit, like all these types of things? And so I'm curious, what is your opinion of this? I want your opinion in two ways. One is as a boss who's going to have a widely wrote team, would you ever consider doing this? That's question one.

Question two is what do you think of these as like business spaces or ideas to build in? Okay. So I don't know how I feel. Let me tell you this. We talked about, I just pulled it up all you're talking about. We talked about Joe Lamont. You remember Joe Lamont?

Right. Joe Lamont, the guy in Austin who buys companies and then outsourcing a lot of his company thing? Trilogy Software. and trilogy capital. He's multi-billionaire likely. He owns dozens of different... Over Billy of the week, which is his number one thing. Yeah, that's his number one. That's what he's known for. And anyway, he buys companies and he outsources a lot of the simple programming work to India for $15 an hour. And he

developed software that tracks keystrokes and takes a picture of the person's screen every 10 minutes. Right. That's what this does as well. It does screenshots every X minutes. So what do I think of this? I don't know. I don't know. I will tell you that as a boss, like, that is one of my fear is that we're not like achieving, we're not getting done what we want to get done. What do you think about this? Like do you, I don't even know if you want to talk about this. Do you feel more productive as remote or not? Well, like, for example, I'm recording this on my non-Amazon laptop because I I assume that Amazon knows everything that's going on on my laptop. I just sort of assume that, you know,

that the employer can access anything that I do on my laptop. So I use my personal laptop for personal stuff. I use my work one for work stuff. I would not implement this at all because I think it backfires. So first is like the context. So there's this game of leverage, right? For most companies in America, the employer has all the leverage. When I talk to my cousins and aunts and they live in Texas or, you know,

Carolina or wherever, they're constantly worried that they're going to lose their job, get laid off, get, you know, in trouble by their boss. And like, you know, it's like, oh, I have this many vacation days. I have to give this much notice beforehand. I have to clock in at this time, I have to clock out at this time. And to them, the sort of Silicon Valley way of working where like literally we have an unlimited vacation policy, which is controversial, but like in theory, it means you can do whatever the hell you want. I can work whatever hours I want from wherever I want. If I want to change jobs, they're like, okay, you know, we just want to retain you as talent. So yeah, sure, if you want to switch, you know, how can I help? You know, if I say I want to go leave and start a startup,

I will have their backing because in tech companies, the leverage is with the employee, especially with engineers, but other employees as well. So the leverage here is way off, which is why companies here will do your laundry and, you know, feed you food and there's just perks war because the companies want to retain talent and it's so easy for talent to just at the snap of a finger go work for your competitor and earn more money and have a better job title you know you can hop around so easily here so i think in silicon valley this shit won't fly outside well hold on do you think that that leverage still exists remotely because it with with this environment i think it doesn't i think people don't want to get fired i think we have just switched to we are now an

employer company i don't think it's binary but i don't think it's binary but I think on the spectrum, it's definitely, the pendulum is swinging back the other way because now the pendulum, now the change is, oh, you're the Silicon Valley sort of like diva engineer who's not happy with their 500k a year salary. Well, guess what? Like, I can hire your replacement in Canada tomorrow because you're working remotely anyways. What do I care? I'm just going to hire the best talent. Now my talent pool is the whole world. So that's going to take power away from the sort of diva culture of Silicon Valley. Like today, literally in Slack, I had a conversation with somebody who goes, yeah, you know, after this next stock grant, I'm only going to be making 700K a year.

So it's fucked. I'm out. And I was like, wait, what? They really said that? Only here can they go? Can you say, I'm only making 700K a year. God, it's so fucked. I'm out.

Because it's all relative. They really think that they're like broke then? It's not that they were making more before with their stock grants. And now the company's not giving out a big fat stock grant anymore because like the company's more mature. It doesn't need you to do that anymore. Did anyone say anything to that person? I did. I was like, I was like, yeah, you know, sorry for your, sorry for your loss. And then I said, like, you know, only in Silicon Valley can you say my comp will just be 700K, it's fucked, I'm out. And so, you know, it was just like a joke, I guess. I don't know, it was crazy. Did they realize how douchy they sounded? Yeah, I mean, he was saying in a private, he wasn't trying to like, you know, flex or anything. But he, you know, yeah, it was, I think he realizes it because it's insane. It's, it's, If you say it out loud, it sounds insane.

But anyways, I guess my point is, I don't think in a situation where the talent has leverage, you can get away with stuff like this. I also don't think this is actually the best way to help people be productive. I think a better way would be to go to some like OKR system where you say, look, you're accountable for this key result and you've got to hit it. I don't care what hours you work. I don't care where you work from. I don't care what if you use Google Docs or if you use Microsoft Word,

I don't care about any of your how. You just have to deliver outcomes. and you're responsible for those outcomes. And if you're consistently hitting outcomes, cool. You get more freedom, more trust. And if you're consistently not hitting your outcomes, you're out of here and I'm going to get somebody in who is. So I think that's how you make sure that people work when they're remote

is you set the outcomes and then you measure are they hitting them consistently or not. I don't think screenshot on the screen is the way to do it. Let me ask you two questions. The first is, do you think that people in Silicon Valley are just pussies? Pussies, yes, but I think it's not what you mean. So when I say that, I mean, they don't have courage, courage to take risks to do what they believe in,

to do what they want, to do what they say they believe in. I often find discrepancies, a lot of discrepancies. But you're talking about for like, spoiled is kind of what you're talking about. Both. Okay, so tell me what you mean. You obviously do think that. Well, it's like I meet these nerds who like don't know anything, but they're like autistic and smart.

And I'm like, I fucking. love those people. Like one of my best friends is like this autistic kid who is like a genius and he's like my soulmate. Like I love him because he's like just like he's like well it's just like logically it makes sense to do this. I'm like fuck you speak to me. And then there's other people who are like we need to have a discussion about this. We all need to vote. You know like if we don't get a diversity coach in like we're quitting. If this is all this. It's like dude, you got to understand that like you are this is a J-O-B baby you got to like you have you don't really have that many rights other than the agreement that you guys you and your employer have had like you

don't get to vote on shit you know what I mean and that kind of and that frustrates me and it makes people soft yeah I definitely think that people are soft but and myself included because I don't go through hard times and so if you don't go through hard times you're going to get soft over time and the hard times are like super relative it's like like the guy who's like I'm only make it 700k a year I'm out of here like that's hard times to him or you know hard times for people would be like you know they took away the kombucha in the company fridge like this sucks like life got worse quality of life got worse and so I do think that Silicon Valley or I'll say tech companies in general have it so good we have it so good that it's easy to become spoiled

it's easy to lose sight of like what real work looks like, you know, or how hard work can be. I shouldn't say real work looks like. I should say how hard work can be because there's people out there who literally work in a sand mine and they just shovel sand all day. And like, that's part, that could be you if the genetic lottery worked out slightly differently if you were born somewhere else or with one different gene, you know? So I think that I would agree with you that Silicon Valley has gone very soft. think it makes very hard to lead a company because if you, like, I don't know, I don't know if you experience this at the hustle, but like, I'm guessing some of the things you mentioned or some of the

things you've heard, like, oh, we need a diversity coach or like, hey, we need to, like this month, you know, we need to install a third bathroom that is gender neutral or whatever the thing of the day is, right, whatever the new expectation of what the work environment should be. I need to be fully remote. I need unlimited vacation. I need, you know, career track progression, whatever it is. expectations rise. It does make it hard. And I think that the way that I'm going to solve this in the future is when I started my company, I was 23, which meant I didn't know, like, what I stood for or I did know, but my opinion

has evolved. And my opinion will continue to evolve. But now I a little bit more confidently know what I stand for, which is treat people fairly. Don't take a lot of bullshit. Like, just get done. Do what you're saying going to do. Just shut the fuck up.

Like, don't complain to me about meaningless stuff. Like talk to me about, like, how we can actually. actually make a difference. Like what I think are important things. And anyway, I think that I will make that clear early on what we stand for. Right. And then you'll attract hopefully the people who resonate with that and they want to work in that environment and you will deter people who do not want that environment. And then you wouldn't be happy and they wouldn't be happy. So I think that's part of it. But I think you're more old school than what's allowed now. So how are you going to adjust? Well, I don't think I am. I don't know if I am that. I just don't know if people are saying it.

Like, but for example, well, I'm going to, the way I'm going to adjust is I just have to face the pain. I'm doing it now. I just have to deal with the repercussions of people not agreeing with me. I'm like, I'm sorry, but tough. This is just how it is. So I got to deal with the fallout. But like what I stand for, I guess is like treat people fairly, be respectful, focus on making a lot of money and building a huge business. Whereas before it was like, we're going to change the way X.

It's like, no, dude, I just want to build a huge company. And I don't care like how we do it. as long as it's like ethical and legal, I want to build a big business. And I think like, so I'm just like unabashed. I'm not like nervous to say that. But nobody disagrees with that. So the controversial part will be when you're like, this is a J.O.B. baby. And like we got in like, yeah, shit's going to be hard and shut the fuck up.

You're not going to always agree, blah, blah, blah. Right. That's the part where like nobody, nobody disagrees with let's be legal, let's be ethical. Let's build a big business. Let's make a lot of money. Nobody would shake their head know at that. It's what tradeoffs are required to do that sometimes. Well, like, let me clarify.

When I say shut the fuck up, I didn't actually mean that. I mean, I listen to everyone. I'm like, all right, let's talk. What do you want to talk with that? I can vouch for that, yeah. There's a difference between listening and saying, I agree with you. Let's do it. Yeah, listen versus obey.

Right. And always listen. I rarely obey. Exactly. And so I'll have people. I'm like, look, we can have a discussion. I'm going to explain my opinion. And I welcome you to explain your opinion.

It doesn't mean we're going to agree, though, but we can like hash it out and try to change each other's minds. But at the end of the day, if I'm the decision maker, we're doing it my way. And sometimes someone else is a decision maker. It's like, I think you're fucking crazy. But I will follow your opinion. If you're the decision maker on that, it's your call. You took all the inputs.

And I've said that I trust your judgment after you take inputs. And as long as you keep taking inputs and you're operating with clear intent, I'm cool even if we, you know, Amazon has this value that I really like, which is called disagree and commit. And I think that that should be like, in every team I work on now, I'm going to be like, by the way, this is one of the values. is that we can disagree, but we can still need to be able to commit to going and doing the thing, even if you disagree.

And that doesn't mean always disagree and never listen. No, it just means disagree and commit sometimes. Okay, I like that. The other thing that I think is important there is like, I think some people in their job, they think that the company's job is to, or I say they act entitled in a way that makes me feel like they think the company's job is to make a happy workplace that all the employees are happy as the number one priority. And the thing is every person who runs a company would want that, of course.

But it is not the number one priority. Sometimes it's not even the number two priority. But it's usually somewhere in the top three, depending on what the season of the business is. And so for you, it's like, hey, the number one priority is to grow this into a really big business. Number two is to, let's say, I don't know, whatever it may be. And number three might be to get really great people

and give them a great environment to work in so that they're happy and they're able to feel like they're making progress personally and as in the projects. Right. And it's like, but it must be clear, it's number three. It's not number one. Now that I've worked at a larger tech company, it's very clear to me that many people feel like the number one priority should be to have a great workplace where employees are happy, sometimes at the cost of the other priorities.

Like they complain about stuff? Yeah, they complain about stuff, but it's more like, it's not, the complaint is very valid. It's the underlying angst of the complaint where it's like, oh, you're very upset that this hasn't been resolved because you think this should be resolved as the top priority. This should be like resolving this should be the top priority and whatever tradeoffs are necessary we make so that employees are happy and the workplace is happy. And it's like, well, sometimes we're going to do things that makes the workplace less happy or makes employees less happy temporarily because it's in service of this company objective that we have. Yeah, and I don't use the word happy with our team. I like to use the word fulfilled, which is like I definitely, like my logic is, or what I tell people and what I believe is I want to work on cool stuff that wins and succeeds,

and I don't want to do it with cool and interesting people. That doesn't mean because I'm not happy all the time. I hate what I have to do every once in a while, but I also hate like working out sometimes, but it's like I like looking good naked. So it's like, that's the challenge that you, that's the trade off you make, right? Which is like, you want to make $700,000 a year and provide for your family? That's great. We're going to do that.

That doesn't mean you're going to enjoy every second of it. Right. And so to me, it's not happy. It's a little bit more about fulfillment. And in other industries, that trade is very well known and understood by all parties. In consulting, in investment banking, this trade is understood. We know what's going on. All right, I'm going to be highly paid.

cool I'm going to have to work my ass off okay you're going to kind of treat me like a you know replaceable part and I have to I have to sort of hustle to stay cream of the crop yeah like I don't expect anything more than that whereas I think in tech companies there's so much abundance that that has changed but I don't know I should stop speaking out because we're both getting canceled like real quick you know in fact Dave point in way I think had a pretty interesting thing happened where somebody came out and was like the sketch you guys did a couple years ago was like racist. Well, he did. I think he also said the N-word. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't actually watch it. I don't know what it was. But there was, like, admittedly, it was not, like, not in good taste.

And so he comes out and he's, he does this video where he's like, you know, to all the haters who are trying to go through five-year-old footage and find stuff that we did wrong and try to cancel us, it's not going to work, baby. They've been trying to cancel me for 20 years. It's not going to work. That was a joke. Back then, that was, that was kosher. That now, that wouldn't be kosher, but we didn't do it now. We did it back then. And for you to be, and he was basically like,

you're a loser for trying to go dig this up. Like, you can't, I'm the Teflon, you can't cancel me. And then like two days later, he comes back and he's just like, I'm sorry.

You know, I said that. I was trying to address the haters and I was unapologetic to the haters, but I realized to my own employees, that was very callous. And to, you know,

my black employees who felt uncomfortable and felt like I didn't own up and apologize to it. I'm sorry. And so I thought that was a pretty interesting one where he sort of, broke character in a way and again had to service i don't think he broke character i think that what he meant was he goes i agree it was a dumb joke and i i i yeah that was really stupid of me but also fuck the

kids all people yeah i i guess maybe he maybe stayed in it but you know i i was surprised to see that and i think that that's the that's the wave that's the way things are going and i i think overall for the better i think it's holding more people accountable to not do fucked up stuff But sometimes I do feel like it goes too far and people have to sort of censor, watch themselves, apologize for 20-year-old things quite a bit. And I'm not sure that that's right either. Yeah, it is a confusing time. I think that your intent matters a lot, though.

We're talking about this cancel shit. So we might as well just wrap it up with this. Right. On Friday, okay, so there's a background, which is a lot of tech people, which, whatever, a lot of tech people, particularly Silicon Valley, San Francisco tech people, are really mad at media companies, including New York Times, for being anti-business, anti-tech. And it's been brewing. They're also angry because this one in VC named Biology, is that the same?

Yep. Tweeted in December about how Corona was going to be a huge thing. And people at Vox laughed at him, kind of laughed at him, and said, like, these rich VCs are not wearing masks and not meeting with Chinese people and are scared of this weird virus. aren't they crazy? Turns out Corona was real, so there's this animosity. Well, on Thursday, the CEO of Away Travel, Away, the suitcase company, did a Instagram thing where she explained how she thinks that tech media people are biased and love to create outrage in order to get more clicks. And a journalist named Taylor at the New York Times said, tweeted out something like the delusional CEO of Away is tweeting about how,

how bad the journalists are. She sounds incoherent and she's being crazy. She said something like that. A very prominent venture capitalists tweeted out the exact same thing right back to her, but replaced the name Away Travel CEO with Taylor, the journalist from New York Times. Right. He kind of mocked her basically saying. She had said like talking about something that she doesn't, she doesn't even know,

she doesn't even know about, right? when the Oasee I was talking about journalism, she's like, look at her rambling and being incoherent about something that she really doesn't know the first thing about. And he said the same thing about her, because she talks about tech all the time, and he was basically saying she doesn't know it. So she comes out and she's like, she's just like, you know,

what is this? Why do I keep getting attacked? First she quotes only half of it. So she doesn't show that he was mocking what she said. He was repeating the same words that she said about someone else. He was saying about her. she just took it out of context and made it look like he was just saying it about her out of the blue which wasn't true but she's like look at this i'm getting attacked for no reason this guy won't stop

and then she tweets ben horowitz which is like his former boss at andriesan horwitz and she's like can you please help here and she kind of like played the like victim in that that moment and i think she felt like the victim of like being bullied essentially then it escalated into this like weird thing on clubhouse which i listened to it i was there i wasn't there so what happened So there's a stupid app. It's not stupid, but it's kind of a circle jerk called Clubhouse where roughly 1,500 people are invited. And most of them are like elite, elitist people type people. I guess you could throw me in that category, even though I don't want to be that.

I mean, but maybe some people think I am. I was there. And Taylor and this biology guy a little bit got into it. She said something like, I don't feel safe here. And he goes, oh, you don't feel safe when a brown guy comes in, you're racist. And because biology is some type of brown. Indian or something. I don't know what he is, but he's not a white guy or he doesn't look like a white guy. So now that made it even worse. So it was wild. I think my take-

They're going back and forth. People picking sides. Half of people are like, this guy's a jerk and an asshole. And I'm sorry you had to deal with this, Taylor. And then the other half of the Twitter replies are dude, she gets what's coming to her and she's trying to play the victim. And she's the one who's been on the attack the whole time. And now she's trying to play the victim. My opinion is both are true. Both are true. Yeah. I totally. agree. Both are true. And then he went further. I don't know if you saw this part where he put out a thousand dollar bounty, uh, Bitcoin bounty. And he said, I'll give a thousand dollars to the best meme of the situation. And I'll give a thousand dollars to the best legal breakdown of was it,

because people recorded without consent, the clubhouse conversation, posted, leaked it online. She then referenced it and wrote about it and asked people to write about it. And so he was like, $1,000 for the legal breakdown of, can you, was this wiretack? Can you actually record these private conversations and use them for your journalistic purposes or not? And then she was like, oh, my God, that's ridiculous. And the whole situation is kind of ridiculous. So where do you fall on this? So, and then I'll add one more thing.

I got into the mix a little bit of it when Vice wrote an article and there, because the whole premise of this is biology says people, including the New York Times, media companies, purposely like outrage because it drives revenues and it drives clicks. And that is one premise of the argument of him against her. And a vice guy wrote about this saying the idea that clicks drives revenue is a fallacy. And I was and I got into it. I'm like, that's not true guys. Like I'm not saying that like who's wrong or who's right, except for that person who said that, you are wrong. Clicks do drive revenue.

It doesn't matter. I'm not going to say he's wrong right. Except for you, that's wrong. Yeah. I mean, that's just like, that's just factually incorrect. I mean, that's just like you're, you're just so wrong. I mean, your vice. You guys made $400 million last year off advertising revenue and you have someone on your team whose sole job it is to see which gets the most clicks and tell you to do more of that. I mean, you're just

wrong. And also outrage drives more subscriber revenue as well. So it doesn't matter what your business model is. So just let's not say that because you're, you're full of shit. But who's side of my own? So I think that they're both assholes. And I think that they're actually in the same group of people, which is like highly educated, very elite, coastal people who like to smell their own farts and don't give a fuck about middle America and are totally in their own bubble. I think they're both fucking wrong and they're both right. I think that the New York Times and people like that definitely are very anti-business and very anti-capitalism, even though they are in fact a tech company.

They are owned partially by a billionaire named Carlos Slim. Like they are what they claim to hate. So I think they're hypocritical and full of shit. I also think that biology, like, he's also like just egging her on. Like, she's definitely not racist. I don't think this woman's racist. Right. And to call her that is like stupid.

So I think that's dumb as well. Right. Yeah. He's definitely, I don't know what gaslighting means, but I think he's doing it. And he's definitely bullying her. And he's getting the internet to bully her. Yeah. And, you know, he can feel justified in doing it.

But he's definitely bullying her. And he just, you know, that's that. What do they say in the Big Lobowski? they go, you're not wrong. You're just an asshole. And that's how I feel about it. It's like, dude, you're definitely not wrong, but you are an asshole. Yeah.

And the other thing that he kind of argued for, which was that he's like, look, these are, this is called, he keeps going to corporate journalism. Because he's like, they make money based off of people reading their articles. They're trying to, for profit company. They're trying to pretend they're this unbiased, you know, citizen journalism. You know, they're trying to present this voice for the citizens and justice. And they're not. They're corporate journalism.

that's true, but he sort of says it in a way where there's like, there's no place for that. Like he's like, no, what we need is independent, what he calls personal media companies or something like that, PMCs. And we need personal media companies that will do that will report, you know, that will report things that are less biased, less attacking, less whatever. Well, in reality, it's going to be the same thing. And anybody who's a media company, whether you're personal or a company, you're going to be trying to get attention and you're going to be trying to monetize it. And then you're going to do what does both those things. Yeah. And what pisses me off, I think, is that people say, like, it is corporate journalism,

this and that. I'm like, yeah, it is. I don't think that's wrong, though, because at the end of the day, they forget that a company is just made up of people organized a certain thought. So whether they're corporate or they're on their own, like, it's the same person. And you're going to try and do the same stuff. Right. And that stuff, people act like this is new.

This is not new. We used to call this Hearst Media. they, Randolph Hearst, they say it was one of the first guys to do it in reality. Again, he wasn't the first guy to do it either. He's called it yellow journalism, which was outrage. Rupert Murdoch used to own, the way that he started in Australia, this is what he did, was bold headlines that would say outrageous stuff. And it started with the newsboy saying, read all about it,

World War II highest death toll ever, whatever. Like, guys, this is not like something new. This is, I hate when people act like this is like this new thing. It's not new at all. This is just human nature. It's like saying like racism is new or something. It's like this will always exist and has always existed. It's just a matter of how we're going to deal with it.

Right. Yeah, I totally agree. I think that's 100% accurate. I do find the whole thing entertaining. I love it too. This is the point, guys. Look, Sean. It's working again.

It's working. I love it. I had five topics that were like, you know, interesting little business ideas. But frankly, this is more interesting to me. and probably more interesting to some of the listeners, even if you hate listen, even if you're like, I hate listening about this.

Like there's a part of us that craves the gossip. And that's why it works. And here's my issue with this is, guys, why are we afraid to admit this? Like, why are we, like,

someone called you clickbait, someone called her clickbait or like she loved outrage. And in my head, I'm like, that's not bad. Like, I don't understand.

That doesn't have to be an answer. If I have an e-commerce store, I'm also buy bait, and if I have a sports team, I want to be fan bait. And like, yeah, the goal is to get people to use your product and to engage with you and to become your customers. Right. And I'm like, they seek outrage. I'm like, yeah, I seek outrage all the time.

That's why I watch like fucking the challenge on MTV or like watch YouTube, like watch fights on YouTube or like that's why I love boxing and UFC. It's like I love like people fighting. Like whenever I see like a car wreck on the side of the road, I slow down and stare. Like can we please just like act like this is human nature and this is, this doesn't. doesn't have to be bad. There's a place for it all. Yeah, and either side acting like they're above at all, they're both lying. That's why I always say they're just, they're two groups of the same people who just like to smell their own farts. Like these guys are all, they're all the elite of the elite and like I listened to that clubhouse. It was a bunch of injuries and horror

with venture capitalists or owners or wives of the owners like running the show. It's like, okay, like you're, I get what you're saying, but like you're, you're also. a lot of touch right right okay this is good uh sorry we didn't do more business if we got we got carried away but what you're going to do how about that suburban doorbell that's like a perfect sign-off that is a suburban doorbell all right i got to go sam i'll talk to you in a couple days