My First Million - The $150B dollar business hiding in plain sight

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Unsexy Business Ideas Database: https://clickhubspot.com/kpfm Episode 844: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk about how one of the richest families in America makes its money.  — Show Notes: (0:00) The Cargill family (13:15) projects vs empires (15:00) family meetings create family dynasties (22:55) Jevon's paradox (29:00) the story of Luddites (39:19) Where's the opportunity (49:00) the phrases we tell ourselves (52:00) The ice king — Links: • The Medici effect - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591391865  — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton (joinhampton.com): My community for founders. Average member does $25m/year. Many of the guests are members. Get after it...apply: http://joinhampton.com/mfm — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com  • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Shaan uses Mercury across all of his companies. you can too: http://mercury.com/  Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N.A., Members FDIC • I run all my newsletters on Beehiiv and you should too + we're giving away $10k to our favorite newsletter, check it out: beehiiv.com/mfm-challenge My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano /

When I googled this family, the words came up were silent dominance. Middlemen at planetary scale. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. All right, Sam, I have a billy of the week for you. An MFM classic. This is not just any billy of the week. This is one of the biggest billies in America,

one that I wasn't really that aware of. I think you will know more than me about. this, but I would say most people don't. Wait, can I guess? Let me read you, let me tell you three things about it. Then you could take a guess. Okay. All right, it is the largest private company in America for the last 40 years.

Mm-hmm. It is owned 88% by the family and has produced more billionaires in one family than any other company ever. They do more revenue than Goldman Sachs, Nike and Starbucks combined. Oh, is it Mars or Coke? You're in the right neighborhood. S. Daylater? Okay, you left the neighborhood briefly.

Come back to the other neighborhood of like rich redneck families of America. It is Cargill. Oh, yes. So the Cargill family. So I didn't really know anything about this family. Can I just tell you a little bit about their story and what they do?

Because this is a dominant business story of all time. Wait, first, tell me, why did this interest you? Why did this catch your attention? Remember when I was at your house and you were like, there's this closet here, by the way, that we found. There's this extra storage room that we didn't even know until we lived here for two months. That's how I felt finding out that one of the most wealthy families in America,

I don't know their story. That's how I felt. As the host of my first million, I just felt like I needed to write or wrong. Okay, I understand. And by the way, how did I find it? There was a Reddit thread that was, tell me about billion-dollar industries that I probably don't know about.

And it was like the first one was sand, and the second one was this, and the third one is this. Reinsurance. It's like, well, there's insurance companies, and then they buy insurance. That's called reinsurance, and then the reinsurance, guess what? They have reinsurance companies behind them. It's just insurance all the way down, baby. And so I was reading through this thread, and then one was Cargo. And I was like, oh, cargo.

So what they did, so the story is back in the day, as America was sort of getting its feet, and railroads had been had been started to get built. Farmers needed to offload their crops, their grain, and they needed to sell them. So they could either sell it individually, so the farm could try to sell individually to a buyer and figure out how to transport it there, or they could work with a middleman.

And so Cargill became the biggest middleman on the planet for basically just initially storing grain. So they would go right next to where the railroad is. They would build what's called a grain elevator, which is basically a giant storage facility for grain so that it wouldn't spoil very quickly. and the farmers could come drop it off. They would get like coat check.

They'd get an IOU that says, I will pay you when your grain sells, or they would just buy it at a flat rate, like wholesale, and be able to flip it. So you could choose as the farmer which one you wanted to do. This is what my father does for a living, by the way. Oh, so maybe you should have known. He does it with onions.

onions, but yes, my father's a broker. That's what he does. Does he store or he just calls one size of, hey, I got 75 bushels of... This, well, it's fresh produce. So the storage is like a day. But yes, there's a, yeah, there is a place where they sit for like 24 hours before a truck comes and gets it. Yeah, but yes.

And what's interesting to probably this for me from a business perspective is you always hear this idea of like, you don't want to be the middleman. Oh, you can always cut out the middleman. And in this case, the middleman became worth more than everybody else. And actually, if you look at many businesses, you know, there's many businesses where the middleman becomes a quite a valuable business. And so there's an interesting question of why. In this case, it's because the middleman was physically in the middle. They literally built the grain elevators that would store the shit right next to the railroad. And so you needed to transport it.

You needed to get to the railroad. Who else had it? Like, nobody else was going to build that. So anyways, they started doing that. They then go further and further and further. So, you know, at one point, they're like, hey, these shipping barges are so inefficient where we're shipping the grain when it's not traveling by rail. So we'll build our own shipyard, our own shipyard. our own ships. They end up producing ships for the U.S. Navy. They bought the biggest, like, meat,

like, poultry company. And now they control, like, a huge percentage of the meat industry, of the grain industry. And so they've built this, like, empire. And nobody really knows them. And basically, it's this family that owns this thing, 88% owned by the family. There's, like, 20 or something billionaires in the family now. They have this rule called the 80-20 rule. So 80% of all profits will get reinvested back in the business. 20 goes out as dividends to the family. and they hire for the last, you know, 20 years or so, they've had professional CEOs running the company. It's not like family run anymore.

And the profit per year, according to Wikipedia, I think it's like $5 or $6 billion. Yeah, that was like during like the kind of peak COVID stuff when, you know, when Ukraine was getting attacked and, you know, Ukraine produces a lot of grain. And so their price is spiked. I think it's like $3 billion in a normal year right now. Okay.

So, okay, so, you know, close to a billion dollars a year of profit that goes just straight to the family. and it's been doing that for like, whatever, 50 plus years. And so I want to tell you a little bit of something interesting. So first I was like, I was like, what do they actually do? Because, you know when these corporations get so big, so large, they just have their hand and everything. And you would see these comments like, you know, they're just everything on your plate.

Anything you eat in a package, cargo had a hand in it. They're controlling the food supply. The people think of like Monsanto style, like evil companies. And so just, I want to read you this paragraph. So imagine you eat a hamburger. Cargill probably sold the farmer the seed and the fertilizer to grow the grain. They bought the grain from the farmer and stored it at their grain elevator. They shipped it on their barge that they built in their ships that they built to a processing plant where it's processed into animal feed. And then they feed that to cattle who they then slaughter.

They then store the meat at their meatpacking plants. Sell the beef to the restaurant. By the way, the restaurant has to buy their salt. They sell like all of the salt to all of the fast food chain. in the country. And then the corn syrup that they processed out of the corn gets put into the ketchup, the soybean oil that's used for the fries, the starch that's used in the milkshake, that's all Cargill. And isn't it crazy how, like, one company can have a hand in so much of your day-to-day life? And when you think you're eating at some farm-to-table restaurant, you're really not escaping

them because they control the underlying ingredients that are used, the fertilizer, the seeds, the grains, like all of it that gets fed to the cows. it all comes, it all goes back to the source. And isn't that kind of incredible? And the family is so big and so profitable. They also own a thing called Garta Capital Partners, which is a $10 billion plus size hedge fund. Correct. Because they have to hedge commodities, you know, on behalf of the farmers and for themselves as well at this point. So they own like a little bit of everything, including mines because they need to get their own chemicals and minerals to make all of these things. This is incredible. No famous founder.

Their office was famously this like chateau-looking thing on a lake in the middle of nowhere. And like that was there. It's called the lake office if you Google it. And it's just quiet. You know, like how they say like money talks but wealth whispers. This is wealth whisper shit. You know what I mean? Like who's the founder?

What does it look like? Who's the CEO? What do they talk about? How come they're not on CNBC? Do they do podcasts? No, they don't do podcasts. You know what I mean? Like it is, it is true.

like quiet dominance. And actually it was part of their strategy for a long time was to be quiet about it just to not attract competition and to build this monopoly position in the logistics industry. This is cool. I've known, I've seen their logo and whenever I look at like the largest privately owned companies in America, it's always been there. I never understood what entirely they did because it's one of those things where you say what they do. And it sort of makes sense, but it's like a B to B thing. So like you don't entirely understand. exactly what it does. And they say, like, they sell chemicals. And I'm like, I don't know what that means. You know, that's so vague. But when you look at the numbers, they do $150 billion a year in

revenue. That's just so massive. And I bet you that they like own so many more things that you wouldn't even realize. Like, for example, like the Walmart family owns, like, have you heard of Rafa? It's like a cool bike D to C company. They own that. They own that. Like, they just like, they're just rich people, they're just like deal man. They just own shit. They just go to the website to buy one and then they just keep pushing plus on quantity until they own all of them. Like, we now have the shop.

That seems like something that this family would do is like you don't realize it. And then if you wanted to get like conspiratorial, which I have not done any research on it, I'm sure that there's like 10 or 20 really interesting conspiracies about how that either they're pulling the strings behind, you know, it's like the, there's something going on with this family, which I'm just. making it up. I have no idea. A journalist once described the family as secretive, inbred, and suspicious.

I'm in. Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all

available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you, our friends at HubSpot for sponsor this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. In 1980, they did a survey, and by then it was already a dominant company, and they did a survey, 94% of farmers had heard of Cargill, but only half of them knew what the company actually did. And then amongst politicians, lawyers, and journalists, who they call opinion leaders, 50% have heard of them, but only 10% understood what the business was. Because they have this sort of sprawling empire, like you described, people don't really fully understand what

they even do. You just sort of know that they're important. I had a friend who, I think it was Cargill that she went and worked at because they obviously make so much profit that they were trying to invest in like new seed related, agriculture related, D to C, like I think they invested, like we had talked about that one D to C milk company. Like they would look at things like that, like anything like interesting. And she said it was awesome working for him. She said it was a great company. Well, definitely there's a section called the Dark Side in my notes here. So let me just tell you some things from the dark side.

just to be fair here. When you have like global crop production, you're going to have this, which is like accusations of child labor, like in Brazil or in, you know, Ivory Coast and things like that. They're said to have better intelligence than the CIA. So they have basically they have a spy network around crops.

So like they know more about the state of crops in real time than the U.S. government does around the world because it's like life or death for their business. You know, with that. Again, if you're touching most of the food supply, then like anything bad that can happen and food is going to happen to you. People just generally feel like they're monopolistic. So, you know, do they care about worker safety, number one? Probably not. Probably not in the top three top three days that they care about. But they're Midwesterners. They're probably really sweet.

But it's crazy to go from like a single grain shed to now controlling 25% of the entire U.S. export market for grains. And it's like pretty crazy. So it started 160 years ago. You and I did a talk recently. And we were explaining some of our preferences. You were like, I like projects. I like starting something and then potentially selling it. But like I love the starting phase.

I love handing it off to someone. And then I love it potentially ending and starting something new. And I was saying how I love things that could potentially go for 50 to 100 years. Not that I've actually done that. I've actually done the same thing as you, projects starting and selling. And I'm so fascinated by companies that can laugh. this long and this one in particular is one that seems like they've kept it together pretty amazingly for 160 years that's crazy so they started before the civil war

and it's still around isn't that incredible and i just if i just find that so fascinating and like part of me is like well when i die like why do i care about legacy like we talk about legacy a lot and i was reading something the other end like why the or someone said they're like why do you care about your legacy. Like, who gives this shit? You're dead. And I was like, okay, yeah, I understand that perspective. Like, we can have the dichotomy of caring about that. And then also, like, how cool would it be that the thing that you can create can employ 160,000 people 150 years after you're gone? Like, I don't know. I think that's awesome. I think it's kind of romantic and exciting. It's kind of like two people can love running and one person is trying to run the 100 meter dash and the other person is running, you know,

one of these like ultramarathon 100 mile races. And they're both like, yeah, I love running. And that's what I do. And that's kind of like, in the business sense, there's different ways to approach it. There's what I call the projects approach, which is you kind of go in knowing like, hey, I'm going to have like five great at bats in my career.

And I hope each one is a really fun chapter. And I'm going to seek variety in those. It's sort of like being an author. You're like, all right, I got five years of research and writing and then a break and then I do it again. Exactly. And then there's other people that are brick by brick laying a foundation for an empire. And, you know, I respect both, but I know which one I want to do. And I think you know which one you want to do too. I think you want the empire. Yeah, I don't know if I'm going to have the grit to pull it off, but I for sure love the idea of the result. Do you think the people who do this, is it a temperament difference? Like they're wired differently, therefore, you know, fast, fast twitch, slow twitch muscle type shit where it's more of inherently who you are. Or do you feel like you might.

have the base wiring to do it, but you then need to adopt the systems, right? Like, for example, it's not like one guy ran this for 100 years. Now, he passed it to his son. His son kind of screws it up. Then the next son sort of saves it out of bankruptcy. And then by now, professional CEOs run it, but they've instilled values and systems and like ownership controls. But, you know, now the errors are marine biologists and they're doing other things. They're not running this company, but the company, the entity lasts. So which one, where do you think you might fail? Is it the wiring or the systems?

I think the wiring, you start off a certain way, but not always. For example, I think there's a lot of them that would have sold if they could have, but the opportunity just didn't present itself and they just said, screw it, I'll just keep going. And then I think what happens a lot of times is a few things. Like, if you had to build a business and you never thought about selling, there's a world where you would do some wacky stuff that would make the business incredibly profitable but incredibly not sellable.

Like you would acquire assets or businesses that don't. don't entirely make sense to one particular buyer. And then you get big enough to the point where you're like, this is a hodgepodge of stuff. And it works for us, but no one buyer would ever actually take this. So like, but then I also think that it comes down a lot to the family. And I think that there's something special around family meetings. We've had Rob Deirdrecht on here.

He talked about that. I actually follow some people on Instagram and they talk about like family meetings. Explain what you mean. What is what's a family meeting? So the way that I grew up is probably very similar to the way, potentially you grew up, but the way a lot of Americans grew up. which is your parents never talked to you about money. If you asked them, like, how much do you make?

They would say, like, that's none of your business. And there was very little transparency. And there was probably very little culture creation in terms of like, here's explicitly my expectations of you. Here's our family's culture. Here's our values. And what I've been learning about, and frankly, what I like is this idea of a family meeting

where you get the children and everyone in the same room, monthly, quarterly, annually, something like that. And in the same way, on a board meeting, you run a family meeting where you say, like, here's the values that we stand for. Here's how we did last quarter, last month, according to what we said we wanted to achieve. And what are the future? What would you guys like to do? Let's talk about this. And here's the money that we have to spend on whatever dreams and ideas that you have. And let's discuss if it fits within our family creedo and mission. And there's actually like a way to do that. And I aspire to do that with

my family. My family is like taking minutes, taking meeting minutes, a board observer. I just think there's something special about being explicit about stuff. I think that a lot of times when you're growing up, there's these things that you say, well, we never really talked about blank, but my feeling was this. But what I would like to experience is saying like, we are actually going to speak what we intend to do and how we will do it and what resources we have to get it done. And we'll have a conversation. And I think there's something very special about the families who pull that off.

Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's explicit versus implicit. So it's not even like, don't talk. about that. It's more just it didn't get said, right? And it doesn't get said not for malicious or secretive reasons. It's just we were busy. I don't know myself what, you know, it's like, I'm not sure I really know the answer to all these things. And it's easier just not even think about it, right? It's like if you ask somebody, what do you really want? Watch people just immediately just start to flounder. And it's such a simple question. Don't you think you should know what you really want?

when I'm meeting new people and I want to make them feel like I care about them. It sounds like I'm being nefarious. But I mean, like, I'm trying to like get to know someone. I'm like, hey, in the next six months, anything interesting you want to get done in life or career or family wise? And half the time people are like, I don't know. And it's like the conversation is them discovering it. And it's kind of exciting. Yeah, exactly.

So I think being explicit, I'm like you. I'm a over communicator. I'll take the negatives that come with that because I think the positives are so overwhelming. But how do you do it in a family is kind of interesting? I was at a friend's house, and he has this, like, crest on the wall. And he's like, oh, that's our, like, family crest. And I was like, oh, like, my family, we didn't have one. Like, I guess my ancestors dropped the ball.

He's like, no, like, we made this. I painted that, like, you know, five years ago. And we just decided, what are we all about? There's four quadrants on the crest. And we said, it's this, this, this, and this. And this is our sigil. That's our animal. I love that.

And I was like, you could just do that? you could just be a university? Like I could be Hogwarts right now? The hell? And I came home and I was like, shit, I'm going to start doing stuff like this. And so I actually haven't made the crest,

but I have done a few other things. Like I gave for each of my kids. They have like a way. Like I, like, it'd be like Sam's way. So for example, one of my kids, it's like one of them says,

try, try and figure it out. Oh, that's the Sam way. And I've said that so many times that now the great father moment is when he'll just be like, well, I just did it. I just did it the Sam way. And he's using it as shorthand

for like, I didn't give up. I tried it, until I figured it out. And my daughter has a different one. That's really beautiful. And then we have one that's like for like the idea of gifts. So I told them,

I was like, I was like, yeah, like everybody has like some gifts that you were given. And my son loves like Pokemon and things like this. So he kind of understands the idea that like super, you have a superpower. And like every character he watches in a show has like a special power.

I'm like, yeah, like, well, you have fun too. He's like, really, what's mine? And I'm like, well,

yours is that you're this. And I just get to declare, I give them a reputation to live up to. You know, one that they're today quite inconsistent in, but there's moments, and all I do is I just highlight those moments. I pretend the inconsistency don't exist, and I just keep reinforcing that until it's their identity. And I do that for each of them individually.

And then one of the downsides is like, I make one sound so good. I'm like, Dwight, can I just say that the other one has the same? Because then it feels less special. I have to give the other one equally those. But you can also do, you know, it's a little tricky. It's not perfect, but man, this shit works. It is really powerful. And so there's a version of that that's,

completely non-business related, but in creating this like family dynasty idea of how do you instill a culture first in the home before you ever try to go do it, you know, in the office. And I think the likelihood that anyone's children ever want to work in their business is very low. And so like if that even happens, I think, and they get along, that's like a miracle. And so what I've noticed, that is important. Also, creating long-term trust. So I talked about this a little bit with the Hearst organization, a Hearst company, which owns like GQ, is like a famous magazine they own, but they also own like a hundred businesses that you'd never even heard of, and they, including like, they own half of ESPN or whatever. And one of William Randolph-Hurst,

one of his great inventions was he created this trust within the family that was pretty ironclad and it was very long-term thinking. Trust like an actual legal trust or you mean trust like the feeling? Legal trust. So for example, for him, it was like, you cannot dispute this trust. and if you do dispute it, you're out of the will. And, like, the trust basically just says that, like, Hearst, I don't forget the exact number, but Hearst hypothetically will have eight board seats. Family members are always two. I think it was, like, you cannot argue with how much money you receive.

Money is given out equally. If you want more profits, you cannot argue about it. If you do argue about it, you're out. Like, things like that. Like, these things that were quite good in terms of, like, making it last for a long time. Same with John Rockefeller. He did that the same way. One of the great things about reading about John Rockefeller, he was this madman businessman.

Think of Jeff Bezos, a polite guy, but like a ruthless businessman. His son, John, also John, he was a great dad. He was a great dad and a great son, and they loved each other very much. And they showed a lot of mutual respect. And so what I'm noticing about a lot of this stuff, it's built on mutual respect. It's built about empowering and having these very explicit conversations. And that was a big takeaway from reading about him. Yeah, it's interesting.

You got to find these blueprints. It's kind of what I went back to when I was asking you about. like the long-term thing. Like you have to get to know your wiring to know where you're going to, you're going to naturally have things come easier to you that are difficult for others and other areas that are going to be difficult for you and you better figure out how you're going to work around it either by patching up those weaknesses or getting people around you who complement those.

And then you've got to learn the systems, you know, on top of it. Like what are the habits? What are the actual systems on top of that to get the results I want? But then there's like a wild card. Like, for example, I have a billionaire friend. whose son is a homeless drug addict. Like, they've tried numerous times to get this kid on the right path to the point where they're like, we're, we just got to let you figure it out.

And unfortunately, that might mean death. But, like, it's a very challenging, tragic situation. The family crest didn't help. Yeah. Like, it's pretty crazy. You can have, I think, what's the phrase, you're the happiest of your saddest kid? Yeah, yeah. You're only as happy as your saddest child, yeah.

Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written. and everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. I went on this rant about, like, phrases and why they're really important, the phrases we tell

herself. So, for example, like, using the phrase like, I might as well, where it's like, well, I've already eaten bad today. I might as well eat. It's like, no, you, that's just a convenient phrase. You should not might as well do that. Or, it is what it is, is my, is my favorite one. It is what it is, is the complete surrender of a power of agency, of anything. It is what it is. Just replace it with, just say, it is what I make of this. So then you say, all right, well, what am I going to make of this? You know, like, it is what it is. It is. It is crazy. Can I tell you about a phrase that you're unfortunately need to know about and you're going to see everywhere online? I also want to rebrand it. So this thing is called the Jevins paradox. Have you heard of the Jevins paradox?

It's not even a paradox. A paradox means like an example of the paradox is like in God heat a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it. Like this is more like like a what's that paradox called the retort's paradise? That's a paradox. This isn't even a paradox. It's just like like a like an economic like a principles. Okay, okay. Let me read the actual definition. An economic principle stating that as technology makes use of a resource more efficiently, the total consumption of that resource actually increases rather than decreases. Okay, so as something becomes more efficient, you would think you're using less of it because you're being more efficient, but in total, you use way more of it because the demand explodes. Okay, go ahead. And I'll give you a ton of examples. I want to re-brand it to Javon's paradox because

you put a little flavor. Yeah, well, because it was created by this guy named Jay James Jevin, who was a British guy, and I think that it'd be cool to have a wonderful economic principle be created by an American brother, so I wanted to be one of ours, not one of theirs. So right around the mid-1800s, James Watk raised this new thing. It's a new variation of the steam engine, which is basically the steam engine that, like, everyone came to love and know. James Jevin was basically this guy in the 1800s. He wrote a book in 1865 called The Cole Question.

And he basically says, I have a feeling that because of how amazing this new steam engine is, that Britain potentially is going to get rid of all of our cheap coal and we're going to have a problem. We're going to have a coal shortage because everyone else was like, what are you talking about? The steam engine makes things significantly more efficient. Therefore, like there's only a set amount of work needs to get done. Like, we're just going to use less coal. And he goes, no, brother, that ain't going to happen. We're going to use way more coal because everyone's going to want one of these steam engines.

And he was exactly right. And this is where things get really freaky, and this is actually what I want to talk about. It expands in a way that you cannot even comprehend. And so let me give you a really simple example. Eli Whitney, he was this guy from Yale, and he was like, I want to make it rich. I have this idea. So he goes down to the south of America. At the time, slaves would pick cotton.

And they would get cotton, and it would take them hours to separate the seed from the cotton, to the point where they could only produce about a pound a day of cotton that was usable, one person. And he comes up with this little handheld device where you can kind of like put cotton in there and kind of cranks it and it gets the seeds out to the point where one slave could produce 50 pounds of cotton. They made it 50 times more efficient. And so some people were kind of happy in a weird way.

They thought, okay, maybe this might mean slavery won't continue to grow and that's like we won't import more slaves. That's kind of good. The exact opposite happened. Over the next like 30, 40, 50 years, cotton got so cheap that in the south of America, particularly in Mississippi, where a lot of slavery eventually got really bad, they actually started calling it King Cotton instead of King George.

And so America's best export was cotton. And it got so strong that we had to import like eight to ten times more slaves than we currently had at the point, at that point, pre-Ely Whitney, in order to keep up with all this demand for cotton. And one could argue that the reason why slaves, slavery in America, last it as long as it did, was because of cotton and the demand. And that's one of the reasons why it was like our economic engine. And so this thing, this idea of this paradox, it's quite strong. And so the reason why it's relevant right now is because what's one product that AI is making significantly more efficient?

Code. Previously, code was very expensive to make. So you have to raise all this money from venture capital. You have to hire all these engineers. You've got to make stuff. and hopefully three, five, ten years that code is actually working and makes a profit. Well, Javon's paradox, it comes into play here because my opinion is this. A lot of people are saying that AI is going to put people out of work.

I think it is the exact opposite. I believe that code will get more cheap, therefore demand will increase a significant amount to the point that we can't even understand. For example, Gutenberg invented the printing press. When he invented the printing press, people were thinking, you know, maybe people will read like two times, three times, five times more books than they're reading now. And Gutenberg, this guy creates this printing press, I believe in the 1400s. And the offspring of that, like, on the extreme end, is this idea of the Kindle. One could even argue that, like, reading text on a page, like, on a computer screen is, like, a way further down.

But, like, it didn't make five times more books. It made, like, it's infinite. Like, it doesn't create, like, 10 times more. It's like it creates a whole new thing. What I have noticed, I've noticed this with the cotton gin. I've noticed this with the creation of the steam engine, which Benon went to create the railroads, which created a massive boom in America.

When technology makes a product that already has some demand more efficient, there is turmoil amongst those who are directly impacted. For example, have you ever heard of the Luddites? Yeah, people who don't adopt technology. Yeah, so now it's used as an insult. Back then, it wasn't. So the history of the Luddites is basically right around when in the Industrial Revolution, there was a machine invented that allowed people to weave cotton, sorry, wool into yarn much faster.

Previously, there was like 5 or 800,000 people in England who did this by hand and they were considered craftsmen. This new machine comes in. They get put out of business to the point. They create a fake character called Ned Ludd. And in England, this group of people go around smashing these new machines and it starts ruining the process of creating this new. like wall to the point. And they were like on behalf of Ned Ludd, right? Like, yeah, this, this, a person that you couldn't attack because he wasn't real. It was a fake person. And it was so serious that it was a capital punishment in England. So if you got caught breaking one of these machines, they would put you to death. And so this idea of like, uh, there was like

five or 800,000 people who are willing to risk their lives in order to ruin new technology. That's like the history of Luddites. But my point being is when there is a new creation, there is a subset of people that are screwed. For example, when switchboards went away in America, there in the 1970s, there was like 800,000 telephone operators, mostly women. They didn't exist. Those jobs didn't exist. But in general, more technology that creates a more efficient process, creates new jobs sometimes because of increased demand.

Sometimes, the other thing is that because there's new industries created that we can't even comprehend. And so my opinion, AI is actually going to create a net positive, not a net negative, which I previously thought. Hmm. First of all, excellent monologue. Highly informed, highly entertained. I enjoyed that. You told me you were reading about the Industrial Revolution because you were trying to figure out like history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. What happened in the past? What did we say? What did we think then? Does that sound like what we say and think now? And what actually happened? Yeah, like one that came out like 10 or 15 years ago that's now popular again that I read a while ago is called Americana. and it goes through breakthroughs in American capitalism.

So, like, different inventions. And you'll notice that people have the same fears consistently. So let me ask a different question. One of the most dangerous things in business is to think, well, this time it's different. Those are very dangerous words. This time it's different. However, it's also dangerous to say,

it'll be just like last time. You have to almost consider both possibilities. I'm not saying that, by the way. What I'm saying is that human nature is human nature, and there's something special about the 30 to 60 hour a week, work week that has happened for centuries and also time and time of again. There's this idea that I always come back to.

I used to be a beekeeper. And bees are really interesting. With bees, if you get one hive with one set of bees, you just stack that over and over and over again. Bees fill up space. They just fill up space. And the same way, whenever you've gotten a new home, anyone has experienced this.

They get to this new home. They previously only had a thousand square foot. They get to a 2,000 square foot. They say to themselves, I'm never going to fill this place. And then magically, over the next three years, they go, how do I have so much junk? That is a, like, the human need to expand,

to grow, to fill space is innate. It does not go away. And so that is what I'm saying is the same every single time. Not the how. I don't know how this is going to happen. That's sort of the point of my monologue is that I don't know, but I know it will happen. Yeah, and not to be too abstract.

here, but the one thing I don't get or the one thing I haven't figured out with that. I buy everything you said. All this is a new demand will get created. We'll want code in places we didn't have code. So yeah, it'll be more efficient to get code, but net net, you're going to have way more code, way more people creating code.

In this case, if AI is so good at doing things, like AI is a technology that basically is the technology of doing work, like generic work, human work. It's like basically a model of the brain. Like, who's to say that AI won't also fill those jobs? meaning like, yes, it creates all this demand, which creates new job opportunities, new industries, but who's to say the AI also isn't the one who supplies that demand also?

Because, you know, the printing press, these were more rigid technologies that could do one thing. AI is weird in that it's this like flexible, general thing that can do so many things. So who's to say it doesn't also become the supply? There's a few ways to look at this. The first is like you could say, well, is this going to be like hot water? So, for example, when hot water was invented,

this idea that you could like take showers every day, like a king, like that was incredible. And so hot water surged. And water heaters were put in every home in America. But you know what happened? We sort of figured out how much hot water we need. Like we don't actually need that much hot water today than we did like 50 years ago. So it took off and then it kind of got flat, right? But another example is electricity.

When electricity was invented, it basically became like a base unit of measurement for life. where if physics if it can exist in physics there's a way that you can uniquely use electricity to make it happen. I think potentially code is going to be like that where it's going to be a unit,

a measurement where you can find infinite ways to get done what you need to get done and I do not think that it's going to be like water where it's going to be like all right, we figure it out. We don't really need that much more hot water. Well, why are you seeing code instead of like intelligence? I'm just kind of working through this, to be honest.

Like I'm still like, but I was trying to think of like that's like a unit. Intelligence is I don't understand how to like quantify it. But now this is actually interesting to you potentially. There is always a point of turmoil with these new technologies. And I've been trying to actually break down. Is there like a formula that you can figure out will the economy boom? I think it will. I think that's inevitable.

But like how long will it take? So for example, the railroads came about. And that's and like there's like this weird chart. that if you look at how many railroad tracks were laid and how the average person's protein consumption went up. Because what the railroads did was they made America smaller, and it created towns that didn't exactly have to be where they were anymore.

And it created this massive booming economy. However, it took 50 years because we had to create railroads, which is a very labor-intensive thing. We had to create steel, which was entirely new invented. And so there's this equation where it's like the breadth of the technology,

meaning how many people does it impact, multiplied by the intensity of how it impacts you, multiplied by like the time of co-invention, and that equals like the length of turmoil that someone will go through. With ChatGBT, GBT, growing as fast as it has, there is a world where the tumultuous period is relatively short

compared to past breakthrough technologies. And if you knew the turmoil, either when, how, or how long, what would you do with it? Because you said there's like an opportunity. What's the opportunity? Like if you knew that like the, like, it's only going to take us three to five years to like figure this thing out to where we're humming again, you can make bets on that. Yeah.

Actually, you know, one of the kind of Jevins paradox plays over the last few years has been in video because what a lot of people thought is, hey, people are buying these GPUs. But each training run, each algorithmic improvement that the labs are making is going to make. you need less and less of these GPUs in order to train these models. And Jensen went on TV saying was he was like, you're right, the training is going to become more efficient, but the inference is going to go up by one million percent, or whatever, one, one million X. And people are like, one million X, and he's like one million X.

And it's kind of what you were saying at the beginning, which is that when these things do diffuse, the demand goes up, not by like some kind of easy to understand percentage or multiple, but like in a mind-boggling way. Where, you know, from the time of the printing press to now, like if you were trying to market size, how many people will create text and how many people will read text,

you couldn't have thought of Twitter, right? Twitter would have broken your brain. It didn't make any sense. But that's kind of what happens. And so he's been saying that about inference, which is like when you query AI, when you use AI to do something, you use inference.

and he's like, inference is going, people don't understand, like how much there, how big the inference need is going to be for the world. It's like, you know, mind-boggling. I think what's going to happen over the next six months is, and this is partially for listener, because I think you potentially might know this,

is I think the popular smart people, which I think we're relatively popular. I don't think I'm that smart. But I think the popular smart people, the narrative is going to change. It's not, and this is, and it's self-suffer, serving to have this narrative, particularly if you're a president or whatever.

But the narrative is going to change. This is going to be a massive net positive, and they're going to cite Javon's paradox, and they're going to excite everything that I've just said, which isn't particularly unique. And nothing I'm saying is unique. Dude, I see this all the time. It's like, yeah, this is going to be great for you. If you make it great for you, I think people are just sitting back as like the recipient of this. And it's like, is this hand going to slap me or is it going to put grapes in my mouth?

And it's like, well, it depends. Like, it depends what you do. Are you learning how to use this shit? Are you paying attention to what's going on? Are you thinking about how you can use this in your field? Are you talking to smart people? Are you moving where the puck is going or not? Like, I feel like people are so passive about like what's going to happen as if everything

is happening to you. And that none of this is happening potentially for you and that you have no agency to be generative and democratize this technology for yourself. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses.

We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why, I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife.

Very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need. in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fistfight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to Mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NAA members FDIC. The reason I was studying the Luddites is I think that same movement is already happening right now and it's going to continue to happen. You know,

you saw like at this recent college graduation speeches like Steve's or Solomon, I forget his first name, Solomon, the CEO of Goldman, was like talking about AI and everyone was booing. Yeah, people walked out, right? The reason I'm bringing this up is if you go back and study the Gilded Age, which that's one of my favorite arrows, as well as the Industrial Revolution, it's all just repeats itself. Everything's repeating itself.

It's like the, it's very, very, very similar over and over and over and over again. This is all quite predictable. Now, the time and the how is, who knows, but like the general trend, it's all been there, done that. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy to me that it's become like a high status thing to do to be anti-Data centers and AI and things like that. It's like really bizarre. But that's not fair. I don't think that's fair. I don't think we should dismiss it. I think they're stupid. I understand their sentiment. Can you imagine being 18 or 21 years old? First of all, if you're 21 years old, you fucking graduated high school during COVID. That sucks. Okay. The world changed dramatically over the last four years. the point where you were expecting to get a job at Deloitte or as a law clerk or whatever, and they're like, nah, we don't need you, dog. Like, there is anger, which I understand.

But I think that the way that they act is, you're asking me to put my mind in the mind of a loser, and I just can't do it. It's just not possible to do this. The loser think is just not acceptable in my mind, and I'm sorry, I just don't have the ability. Maybe you can. Maybe you can go in the mind of a loser, but I just, I think they're wrong, but I have empathy for it. I understand that feeling

and I think they're stupid. Dude, there was one point where like ATMs had just gotten invented and these people who were like the bank tellers. Bank tellers. It was like a big deal. That was like a big job. And they revolted.

They were like, F this, you're going to put us out of business, this or that. And do you know what happened? Way more banks went up. Way more banks were created or brand. like physical locations, way more. And so I just think if I'm telling these young people, I would say it might suck for a minute.

Dude, if you're young, you have no excuse. Okay, I can get it if you're like 65 and you're 75 years old or whatever, and you're like, oh my God, there's a lot of change. It's going to be really hard. I've been running my business. It's pretty difficult for me to reinvent right now. Like, I have a lot more understanding for that. If you're 18, 19, you didn't know anything anyways.

You know, hop on this train. This train is exciting. this training has like so much room to run. You know, you sort of have to look at the counterfactuals, right? So you might say, well, it's going to be harder than ever to get a job or this or that. It's also true that more people than ever are going to create new things. More people than ever are going to become successful. More people than ever are going to become millionaires out of this.

And so it's entirely possible to have that result if you choose, if you do the actions that will get you to that result. So I guess I just have very little empathy for like the younger folks. This should be easier, come more naturally for them. they have less invested and less sunk costs and less rigidity of the past to even like be tied down to. So I really understand that. And the other side is like, is this serving you? Like is that attitude serving you in any way?

Like forget arguing who's right and who's wrong. Like at some point you just have to ask, does this belief serve me or not? And I don't believe that that belief serves you. I also don't believe that you can control it. Just like Ned Ludd and the Luddites found out, it didn't matter how many windows you smashed this shit's happening. It's like getting mad at the weather. It's like it's going to rain whether you shake your fist of the sky or not. Like you have zero chance of slowing down AI. The AI freight train has left the station. It is happening. And so all you should really worry about is what you can control, which is your reaction and response to the new playing field. Trying to argue that the new playing field is bad is sort of stupid to me. It's like, again, like yelling at the weather. You don't get to, you don't get to, you don't get to. You don't get to. You don't. get to have a say in that side of things. The New York, who is it, the governor, the mayor, whoever was that was like, proudly, like,

we have banned data centers in New York state. They were, like, so happy about it. You know, politics is already very performative, but, like, man, taking so much smug pride in, like, banishing the technology that's going to create where all the growth is coming from in the economy is sort of, you know, silly. And one that's being popularized now is data centers use electricity and use water. And I actually have no idea if that's true or not true. But whenever I see these things, I'm like, we should actually learn if that's the reality.

Because I have a feeling that like the Super Bowl is significantly more inefficient than a data center. And yet we celebrate that. Anybody who has this feeling and you're like, man, Sean's really not empathizing with my, this guy's being a jerk about this. He doesn't understand how hard it is right now and for me. Just watch this clip. Just need to watch this clip of this guy with no legs completing the last man standing race, which is like this insane 26-hour fitness event.

And he's crawling, he's pulling his wheelchair through the mud, using his arms, finishing this race. And anybody who's got an, it is what it is attitude, go watch this on loop. This should be your commencement speech instead of, you know, just sitting there. smug and walking out of it because some guy said two letters you didn't like. I usually think of Sakajuwea and Lewis and Clark. That's mine.

In moments like this. I think, look, they walked across an unknown territory for two years with a three-month-old baby. They could do that, and that baby still lived. I can do this. That's what I need. Actually, that should be a service when you're in Disneyland as a dad, and it's like hour seven, and it's so hot. The kids are crying cranky after you spent a thousand taking them to the happiest place on earth and you're pushing the stroller and you've got the turkey leg dripping down your your arm the juice of that thing and you just hate your life you need you need the saccajuwea example yeah you're like look kids the story of moby dick is real these guys

floated across america on a raft for 90 days before they were discovered okay if they could do that we can get to macdonalds without crying can i tell you a very inspiring uh entrepreneurial story just to leave on a high note. Have you ever heard about the ice king? Frederick Tudor, you know this guy? Not personally. All right, so Frederick Tudor, so this guy's known as the Ice King.

This guy basically, he lives in the northeast of the U.S. So he lives near like Boston or something, where it gets cold. And Boston gets cold in the winter. There's tons of ice. And he realizes he learns that in South America, they never have snow, and they never had ice. And so he is this brilliant entrepreneurial idea.

He's like, I'm going to sell ice to the South Americans. And this is pre-refrigeration, pre-the-free the freezer being invented, right? So he basically goes out wherever there's like a frozen lake and he would get blocks of ice. And he would figure out how to transport it on boats to South America and go try to sell this stuff. And he was like, I will sell, I'm not selling ice, I'm selling winter. And people are like, how are you going to even transmelting? And he's like, so he starts getting in the, the lab and he uses wool to wrap that.

He realizes like, oh, I can cover it with sawdust. And sawdust will preserve this ice for like a little longer. And he would start the thing with like 200 pounds of ice. And by the end, he would have like, you know, 70 pounds left. But he would still sell that 70 pounds. And then when he got there, people didn't understand what to do with the ice. He would sell the ice. And then people would come back complaining being like, it melted, dude.

He's like, what are you talking about? That's what it does. It's ice. It's hot outside. They didn't get it. And he's like, okay, I just got on this boat. for like a month and brought them ice and they didn't want it.

I have to get them to want it. I have to build the desire in their mind. And so he goes and he figures out, what's the key product? What's my hero product here? He's like, I need to sell cold drinks on a hot day. So he goes to the bartenders

and he says, look, I'm going to chip you off a little ice here. This is free for you. But you need to start serving rum cold in a chilled drink. And so he gets the bartenders free ice. They start giving people ice out of the cold drinks. And guess what?

Once you've had cold drinks, cold rum, you never want to go back to that warm piss again. And so the demand starts to get built. People start to want ice. And this guy builds this amazing trade. He pioneers new methods of refrigeration and freezing in order to transport the ice and ultimately puts himself out of business because people realized, oh, wait, we can just freeze water and make ice ourselves. And then the ice trade kind of collapsed. But Frederick Tudor for a day was the man. I'm also always interested how you got interested in us. Because sometimes those stories are equally as good. So me and Diego, who's right over here five feet away from me, one of the things we do is we try to read as many books as we can.

And so he's been reading this book called the Medici Effect. So this was one of his stories. And I was like, wow, that's an incredible story. I'm happy you're reading books now. That's condescending, but I like it. I appreciate it. I did not say that. I mean, I said what I just said, but you previously said that you normally don't make it past a table of contents.

I don't know. I know. I don't know. I know. the book with great enthusiasm and I really don't even open them. I've actually, you'll appreciate this. I'm creating a bookshelf. So you'll see my office is going to change soon. So I'm creating a bookshelf that is like a trello board. So it's basically a progress bar bookshelf. So I have all the books I bought that's my ice box, my pipeline. And then a book moves into like the reading phase.

And then it moves physically into the completed phase. And then there's the Hall of Fame of like great books, which will be like the few, the rare, the ones I actually recommend to anybody else. it's sort of like one time Steph Smith's told me she invented a water bottle that reminds her to drink more water and I was like just chug the water just sit down and read the book Are you sure? My bookshelf not being a progress bar

has not been the thing holding me back that's what I've been telling myself so my old boss Emmett from Twitch he would tell me this because I have a tendency to do this where I will over architect a solution to something and I will convince myself that like this elaborate way will be the solution instead of the obvious

and so he would just listen to me talk and I would tell him for 15 minutes what I'm this great idea I have and then I'd be like, it's great right? And then he would say simply he'd go have you tried solving the problem? He's like have you tried actually just solving the problem

and then he would say things like the only way out is through, And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, yeah, I'm kind of an idiot. He goes, no, actually, he goes, I'm a partner at YC, and this is the most common advice I give to YC startups. They'll say exactly what they're planning to do, and then I'll ask them,

have you tried solving the problem? Then they'll be like, what? And it's his, like, shock value way of reminding you that, like, in many situations, the only way out is through, and you're trying to find a way around. There is no around. There's only through. I waste so much time, like, charging my AirPods,

looking for the holster to hold my iPhone. phone making sure that, like, this and I'm like, dude, you're just going for like a 30-minute run. I will buy, I will do, I did this other day. I was going for a run. I door-dashed, you know, the little arm plastic like blood pressure monitor where you put your phone? And I was like, well, I certainly couldn't run without my phone. So I guess I'll just wait 45 minutes for this thing to arrive. So you're 15-minute run. Four-hour, four-minute run. I was going to run half a mile. I do the same shit on the time.

It's one song. I could have just hummed it. What was it like, come my lady, come, come, my lady, you're my butterfly. Shots like, is this guy singing hubas steak to himself? Why do people listen to us? Why do they listen to us? That's a pod. 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, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Because if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast, and let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories

and hearing Q&A sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out. wherever you get your podcasts.