My First Million - The $70M/yr Sports Bar + Sleepy Industries Worth $100M

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Episode 628: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) break down the business behind the sports bar Cosm and the massive trend coming to out-of-home entertainment.  — Show Notes:  (0:00) Cosm’s playground virality (10:38) The Tesla of home appliances (18:13) $100M sleepy industries (23:11) The rise and fall (and rise?) of Weight Watchers (40:42) "What story is the data telling me?" (48:54) What certainty level is needed to make a decision (53:49) Confidence vs certainty (57:22) Shaan's monthly impact grid — Links: • Cosm - https://www.cosm.com/ • Impulse Labs - https://www.impulselabs.com/ • Rivian - https://rivian.com/ • Brick - https://getbrick.app/ • June Oven - https://juneoven.com/ • Shark Ninja - https://sharkninja.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

All right, so we got to talk about this. This business is really, really cool. It's a product I want to use, and I think it's a business that could be kind of big. Revolutionary, maybe. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel.

Yeah, you probably saw this because it's been going viral over and over and over again. And I always look for products that have this playground virality, meaning anytime somebody shows you that you're using it or they share a picture of it, it immediately sparks a big reaction. And so I saw, I'm going to share these three posts. So there's like, check these out. The first one is this Reddit post. And so I go on Reddit and I see this post and it's in the R slash damn, that's interesting subreddit, which is one of my favorite subredits. And it's basically a video of somebody inside this venue. And it's like a sports bar meets IMAX. So you're sitting there, you've got a beer, you're just hanging out with your friends, but there's a giant screen.

It's almost a dome that's over you where it looks like your front row at a football game in this case. And they're cheering and their crowds went crazy, but it looks like you're in the stadium, but you're not in the stadium. You're just in a bar. And this is called Cosm, or as I'm calling it, the mini sphere. Some people have probably heard, you've probably seen the sphere in Las Vegas, this giant huge dome that's, you know, in the middle of Las Vegas. And it's this insane. $2.3 billion project that is, you know, just remarkable. It looks like, it's kind of cool. It's like one of those things where it's like humans built the pyramids and then we built the sphere. It's like it's Marvel of engineering and technology. Well, the Cosm is basically a mini

sphere. So it's like a 2000, you know, seat venue that you can use for sports games and all this stuff. And now they got a couple of them popping up. I think this is really cool. I think it rides on a bunch of big trends. So it's, you know, out-of-home entertainment, I think is a big deal. I think people are looking for places to congregate, to drink, to eat, and to enjoy themselves. And movie theaters are sort of stale. Like, I think streaming has sort of kicked movie theater's ass in a way. And now this is the out-of-home way of punching back. This thing, I think, is going to be a much better way to watch live events and live sports than sitting at home. Yeah. So basically, if you're listening,

If you see the photos, it's as if they build this massive, it's not even a bar. It looks like, it looks like a science center. It's like a huge building that they're building just for this thing. And you go in and it's like as you ever go as a kid to the science center where it has the, I was it called Omnamax? Yeah, like a planetarium where a screens all above you. That's basically what it is. But they had to raise $250 million to build this because it's like a massive. No, no, they just raised that.

So they just raised that a few months ago. They built the first two without, or they built the first one, at least, without that, because that was in July. Who funded that? So the story of this is there's a guy who's behind it. And he started one of the biggest real estate property management software companies, I think called Real Page. The guy's name is Wynn. Oh, yeah. Something like Wynn.

So he has this thing called Real Page. Real Page got bought by Thomas Bravo for like $10 billion. This guy made a couple billion dollars out of it. He then starts his own kind of, by the way, you might. be confusing the name. Steve Wynn is the guy from Las Vegas, the casino guy. Yeah, I think this guy's name is also W-I-N-N, but it's W-I-N. Yeah. So, oh, that's a different Steve Wynn that is behind this one. And so

he's got this venture capital firm, Maryself Capital. So he basically, what he did was actually pretty interesting. So you said, it's like a planetarium. No, no. It is a planetarium. Do you know the backstory of this? No, I, no. So he went and bought three companies. So he bought the companies that make the science planetarium things for every, you know, museum or whatever like, you know, science place. So they, he bought that company.

Then he bought another company that, you know, did the LED screen part of that. Then he bought another company that was like the like cameras and technology part of it. So it's a roll up of three or four companies now at this point that he did. And because of that, they have, you know, they're basically the monopoly on, I mean, it's not a monopoly as and nobody else can do it. But they're the biggest player in developing this.

type of technology, these types of screens. What he did was realize, hey, this is cool, but it doesn't have to just be for the planetarium. You could use this for sports. If you send your own video crew to go film like the sort of court side or field side seats at these different venues. And so they're basically a full stack thing. So they have the rights with the leagues, like UFC, for example, they have the rights with the UFC. They have the rights with certain football leagues. And they go, they send a full production crew. there. So it's not just what you're, it's not just what you see on TV, but bigger. It's its own thing. And so they have like crews that are almost like VR where you see like they're right there by the end zone.

And then as the guy crosses, the camera's turning with them. And then they have a live production team that's basically cutting between the different cameras that they have to show what's going to be on that huge screen. And so that's how they actually made this. That's the backstory of how they did this. That's amazing. I did not realize that that's how it started. I really want to go to one of these. I've had a friend who, his name's Hat. I think you know Hat. He went to the one in Dallas and he sent me a video of it. I did not have a friend named Hat.

Who is our friend named Hat? He, he messaged us about it. He hosted the Dallas MFFM media. Okay, gotcha. Friendly, you're friendly with a guy named Hat. And he sent me a video and he was like, hey, I'm in Houston. And it was of some sports games, some sport game. And I was like, that game's not in Houston.

And he's like, no, no, no, this is a screen. Like, I'm not here right now. This is a screen. and I genuinely thought he was there. And so, like, I would pay, as soon as UFC is on this, I'm going to be paying money. It is this weekend, actually.

So this weekend's sphere, the fight card they're having at the sphere, I believe is going to be shown in the cosmos. So they basically have a mix of things. It's not just sports. So they're sports, but then they got Cirque to So-Lay. And so if you want to go see O,

but you want to see, oh, like in the best seat that ever existed, plus the backstage, plus follow one of the performers, plus in the air, you can go watch, oh, at this thing. And so I was doing the math on this. And I don't have the exact numbers here. But here's the rough math on a venue like this.

So they have general admission, which is kind of like standing room only. Literally, there's people just sitting on the floor. And those are $22. So super cheap. And they're going to make the money on those people through, you know, beer and French fries or whatever. Then they have the like booths or tables type of thing, which is each seat there is kind of like between 50 and $200. bucks depending on the day and the event. And they can fit, you know, a thousand general admission and a thousand, you know, premium

people into this thing. But they have shows all the time because they have like the Circtos-Lay thing. They have this like art exhibit thing. They have an orbital thing that's space. Then they have sports. And so they have 64 events this month, barely in the next coming month. And I don't know what, I don't know how, you know, what the occupancy is like, but it's pretty easy to see that this thing is probably somewhere between, you know,

four to six million a month in revenue right now, not counting all the alcohol sales. So that might be double over there. So I would say low end, maybe three to four million on tickets and then double that once you factor in all the food and alcohol purchases. I talked to this guy the other day for MoneyWise, we did this podcast with him. And he basically made something like $25 million. He owned a tech company. He sold it. He got $25 million in cash. He still owns $25 million in equity in the business.

And he's based out of Canada inside of a 2000-person town. And he sold the business, made his money, whatever, and he still has his office in that small town. And he said in the small town of 2,000 people, he employs roughly 50 of them. And he owns the fanciest office building on the main street. And they have barbecues and shit like that every week where the community come and hang out, whatever. and it made me sad that I make money on the internet and that I make money remotely with the remote staff because it's hard to see the magic that you're working so hard to create

or hopefully your output is magic where you create products and services that people love and it made me really bummed and I was like I want to get into like more physical stuff or to be able to like physically see my creation even if it's just like employees in an office and when I see products like chasm it seems trivial like oh we're just doing it's just like a place where people can drink beers and watch sport but it's more than that. To see this as your output of like I'm creating something that is physical

that I can go and see and be proud of while people are watching and enjoying it, I am envious of that as someone who does mostly digital stuff. It's not just that they can watch sport and drink beer, but they can watch sport drink beer in front of a huge screen. A big ass screen. No, I know what you mean. I

would feel that way, but I've done a restaurant. I have an e-commerce thing that has physical products. And I've also done some events. And every time I've done any of those things, I hate it. I'm like, oh my God, this would be so much easier. I would enjoy my life so much more. I am so much happier sitting behind a computer on my laptop in my boxers. I told you, the Peter Levels photo of him sitting on a couch with his neck scrunched in the worst posture. No shirt, boxers, laptop on.

That to me is the Jordan logo. Dude, that is somebody dunking from the free throw line of life. And that's what I want. I don't want any of this shit where I have to like have a brick and mortar venue. I know it sounds romantic, but no. Look, you're in luck. That's the perfect segue to today's sponsor. Because look, if you like to create content, doing what you and I do of having a podcast, it's kind of hard because you have to have like a schedule all the time and you got to go and perform. Doing video is even worse because video is like impossible to edit and it's just a pain in the ass. Writing is without a doubt. the best in terms of having the best lifestyle

because you can just write late at night. You don't have to be dressed. You can do it in your bed, whatever. It's also the best because it might be, a newsletter might be, one of the most profitable creator outlets. I think there is in terms of like CPM and willingness to people to buy subscriptions.

Can we tell the story of when you were doing the hustle, I remember you had a blog and you were doing these viral blog posts that were these like a guy's, you know, microdosing LSD. You like paid some, some dude like 200 bucks to microdose LSD. another guy was living on Soylent for 30 days straight and like documenting it every day.

And these posts were getting millions of views. And then you came into my office. You were like, yeah, I'm switching to a newsletter. I was like, newsletter. That's like old. What do you mean? What are you talking about? You were way ahead of the curve and you told me you were like, yeah, I think these things make like 50 bucks per thousand impressions, like $50 CPM.

And I was like no way, dude, a YouTube video, a YouTube ads got to be higher. Like YouTube, a YouTube creator is making like $4 CPM. Why would a newsletter make $50 CPM? And you were absolutely right. Of course, you know, six years later, I started a newsletter company doing the same exact model for the same exact reason and ended up, you know, selling it, you know, just the same way you did. It is amazing how well that business model works.

And if you're going to do a newsletter, where should you do it? You should do a Beehive, of course. And we're going to give that plug. But I want to give you the math behind the thing you just talked about, which was basically let's say that when I was doing those news. are those blogs, let's just say that like one or two went viral and I would get like 250,000 visitors that month or 200,000 businesses that month, I made like a thousand dollars. Let's say I had a newsletter that had a hundred thousand subscribers and I wrote to them daily.

That's five grand a day that I would make if I could get $50 CPM, which I was. Exactly. So it's like the math was like, so I literally went from like $5,000 to $300,000 per month. And in one, you have to pray to the viral gods to go viral. in the other, you basically just, you told me you called it your pirate ship. You're like, I'm a pirate. This is our pirate ship. And every new email subscriber is a little wind in our sales.

And I love that metaphor. And I think it's the same way that I know a ton of people who are on Beehive that have like a newsletter with 10,000, 12,000, 22,000, 32,000 readers that are, it's great. They get to put out to the world their thoughts, their ideas. And they get paid to do it. I think it's an amazing thing. So check it out. If you're looking for a place to do a newsletter, Behive.com.

It's B-E-E-H-I-I-E-H-I-E. I-I-V, the worst thing about him is the spelling of the domain. Everything else is flawless. Can I tell you something that's going to sound stupid and ridiculous, but I think it's true and it's going to make a lot of money? Stupid and ridiculous, but I think it's true. It's going to make a lot of money. Damn, dude, you just do a personality test?

That was awesome. Describe yourself. Is that your bio? Yeah, there's people who are like, EFG, whatever. I'm like an ID, O-I-D. The new Myers-Briggs, dude. That was awesome. I-D-I-O-T.

What are you? Oh, you had an M-O-R-W-A-L-H. Listen to this. So, you know how, like, let me think, what's the best way to phrase this? Because we're coming from a moron's perspective. All right. There's something that I think has not been, like, touched on forever, or at least in the startup world and it bothers me. And the reason why it bothers me is because Tesla, when that came

about, that was like, oh my God, this is like the craziest thing ever known, and whatever touches, but it has worked. And now Rivian, and there's other now car startups. Same with SpaceX. SpaceX, when they started, it was like, this is ridiculous. You can't make a hardware company that goes to space. That's ridiculous. Now we have Android. We have a bunch of other stuff like that. And they're getting funding and they're proving that like, this is a good idea. There's a category of products inside your home, you probably have used this product today that it boggles my mind why there's no innovation. So to put this in perspective, I believe, all right, so there's about 15 million cars sold per year. There's about 13 million units of this product sold per year. Basically, everyone in America has them.

They cost thousands of dollars. The lifespan of these products is like five years. And that is the washer and dryer. It boggles my mind while we have not seen more innovation with the washer and dryer. And yes, I'm going to say, I say washer because with an R, that's a weird Midwestern accent. I'm going to get that out of the way because people are going to make fun of me. But what's been killing me is, and I've said this for years, that there's not a good two-and-one washer and dryer. So this company called LG, they came out with this like washer and dryer the other day,

that it's a two-and-one washer and dryer. And it was on the Wall Street Journal. And there's videos on YouTube talking about this washer and dryer. These nerds like me who are like into this technology, they're like going bananas that this technology has actually is actually coming to fruition, which basically being the main critique of the washer and dryer and one is that it was really hard to create a. So when you have a washer, that means it has to be water sealed. But when you have something that's water sealed, it's hard to increase the temperature. So how do you put heat in there to dry your clothing? And that technology is actually really hard.

But these guys have actually like they're slowly getting around to where it's actually working. and it's amazing how big some of these businesses are that sell just mostly washer and dryer. So if you look at Whirlpool, I believe, Whirlpool is publicly traded. Last year, they had $22 billion in sales, and about half of that revenue was from washer and dryers. And what's crazy to me is that that's compared to Rivian,

which is a venture startup. Now, I think it's publicly traded, $2 billion a year in sales. Right. And so, like, it's crazy to me that a lot of these sexier industries in the hardware space, cars, rockets, self-defense, are getting funded and are popular. But the washer and dryer in particular,

I'm making a prediction that in the next 10 years, maybe 15, we're going to see a lot of movement in the space, and I think the appetite is big. And I'll give you another example. There's this company called Impulse Labs. Have you heard of Impulse Labs? No, I've never heard of them. So Impulse Labs, and you can make the same case

that I made for washer and dryer, so you can make that case for ovens or stove tops. But if you look at stove tops, the majority of homes in America have electric stove tops. And electric stove tops are a huge pain in the ass because the way they work, I believe, is that there's basically only one temperature. And so it's like an on or an off. And so when you use an electric stove top, even though you put it on high, that just means that it's going to self-regulate to where it's going to stay on for a certain amount of time

and then turn off for a few seconds and then turn back on and then turn back off to a point where it's high. Then with medium, it's going to turn off for longer. and then you don't know what I mean. It's going to like try and stay at that same time. That's actually like makes a huge difference in your cooking if you're into like cooking nice meals. And it's a huge pain in the ass. And so these guys called Impulse Labs, they have built this technology to where you have a battery that's charging all of the time. And that battery, when you want to use your stove, it like turbocharges your stove top. So it keeps the heat at a steady temperature and it gets hot really, really fast.

And so they've launched these new stove tops. And when I hear their argument about how. big this business can be, I kind of have bought into like, I think this actually can work. Now, the downside is that you have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars potentially. But when you're thinking about stovetops and washer and dryers, these are actually really, really big markets. Right. Like this similar size of car companies, but are drastically underfunded, potentially have less competition than a lot of these other industries because there's not a lot of startups attacking this. Well, I think this is pretty interesting.

interesting, but I'm going to poke a few holes in your argument. There's many, but this argument that I've presented, it's like, we're going to call this string cheese. Swiss cheese. I think it's the way you're looking for. You're Swiss. No, it's string cheese. There's only, there's ways around it.

I'll peel back some holes in this. In the string cheese here. Let's keep the analogy going. So the problem with the kind of rockets and or cars, and let's just take cars here, example. I think the reason that Rivian and Tesla have so much, had so much heat when they came out, even though they weren't selling that many units was people see that they're, first of all,

cars are much more expensive than washers and dryers. So that's the first thing. Oh, yeah, that's true. Multiple of maybe 10x higher price per unit. So yes, they sell the same number of units,

but at least 10x higher, maybe 20x higher in a lot of cases. On top of that, you buy multiple of them. So like, I don't know when you get, like, I haven't replaced a washer and dryer in five years since I've been living in a place.

Well, have you lived in one home for one place? Probably not for more like five years. But I don't know. Is that the shelf life of these things? You have to replace them after five years? Ish. Okay, gotcha.

The other part of it that I think is hard is with Tesla and Rivian, I think the thesis is that all cars eventually go electric. So you basically take the entire fleet of cars and you say, these are all going to have to switch to electric and that the traditional car makers are not going to be, these guys will figure out how to ramp production before the traditional car makers figure out how to go electric. And I don't know if that's proven out to be true or not.

I mean, Tesla has obviously beaten the traditional carmakers, and I think Tesla's worth more than all of the other next five carmakers combined type of thing. It's ridiculous. Whereas I don't think the two and one necessarily, maybe it's true, that two and one basically replaces all combos. I'm not sure. The last thing I would say is that a lot of these have switching costs. So, for example, the stove top, even if I like it, I'm not going to rip out my stove to do this.

It's only going to be, let's say, new builds that are going to put something like this. like this stove top, whereas with a car, the switching cost is lower because I can always get a second car. I can trade cars. It's not the same as like ripping up my kitchen in order to get these. So I think that's the hard part about some of these is you have a lot of capital and a lot of difficulty, but some pay out, you know, 10 or 100 X. And that's why the funding goes to the space companies, goes to the military, you know, weapons companies and goes to the car companies before it's going to go to some of these.

that being said, I have the June thing. I have the June oven. And I got to say, it's good, but it's complete overkill. And so I think the hard part of this is like, like, I don't know if you've ever used it, but there's a camera inside of it. So you put a bagel inside. And it just says, wait, wait, wait, I got it. Bagel.

And I'm like, yeah, cool. Still got to push toast. Like the fact that this camera was in here that recognized the bagel is like a cool demo, but ultimately, like not that important of a feature compared to, you know, just like not being $1,000, right? I think that you know it's like $1,000 or more. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not super convinced on these. But I do like where your head's at, which is what are these sleepy industries that need innovation, where size is there, sleepiness is there, but the innovation is super low. That in general is a good place to go if you're really determined and can make some shit

happen. You know who kicks ass in one of these places? Shark Ninja. Have you heard of Shark Ninja? Like they make Ninja and Shark. It's two different brands, but under one company, Shark Ninja. I believe it's a bootstrap company. Started in 1994. It got bought and went public. But within six years, they were doing $100 million in revenue. Within the year eight, they were doing $250 million in revenue. Based out of Boston, American company, the products that they make, amazing. They have made some of the best products. So, like, their vacuum, is amazing. I own the creamy,

which is like the greatest thing ever. They helped innovate and create the air fryer. Some of these appliance businesses have been shockingly good and surprisingly bootstrapped. Well, you know my favorite one of these that's like not as hard to do, but also kind of a sleepy industry is

hex clad. Do you have hexclad? Do you have any of their pans? I'm thinking about buying some. So commits me why I should buy them. Well, dude, I don't know. I think one of the things here is like a customer has like a different like awareness and sophistication level. So I don't actually know what would make a great pan. I'm sure there's people out there who are like,

no, no, only cast iron or only this type of pan or it's all marketing, whatever. But I'm in the bucket. That's like the fat part of the bell curve where it's like, yeah, marketing just kind of works on me.

I saw that Gordon Ramsey invested $100 million into Hexclad, which is a stunning amount of money. And I let me make sure. How does Gordon Ramsey have $100,000? Yeah, as I said that allowed, let me make sure that I have this right. So I guess it's his studio. So Studio Ramsey Global, a partnership between Fox and Gordon Ramsey is investing $100 million in Hexclet. So not him personally, let's say, but him and his venture studio or whatever, his venture, venture firm.

Their website is beautiful. And I want to buy Hexclad right now because of their website. So I bought it. The pans are pretty good. I don't know, again, if they're the best pans ever, but they're good. And the branding is great. The visual of it. So like the pan itself has little hexagons as the bottom of it.

So it's like instantly recognizable product. Like when I look in my cabinet, I have like all my generic pans. And then I can literally just see the difference of a hexclad pan and it's like ties to the name. And then you have Gordon Ramsey as the influencer behind this. And it's just pants, dude. It's like a sleepy industry that everybody needs.

It's a high value, high AOV product. And these guys crush. They do hundreds of millions in revenue. new. And they're sold in Costco. They have like amazing distribution. I think they're one of the biggest Shopify stores overall. And it was such a non like, I don't want to disparage them by calling a non-innovation, but it's not rockets and it's not electric cars, right? It's like non-stick pans. But it is, it is very well done. And I'm very impressed with their execution. And it's a great business. Were they just, was it just to get a person? Here's what it says. In 2013, the two

co-founders, Danny and Cole. They had worked for a now defunct cookware company and decided they wanted to start their own. So they started working on it. They dabbled with a couple of products. They started selling in 2016. 2017, they get a deal with Costco and the business has doubled almost every year since 2017. They're one of the top Shopify sellers in the world. They have one of the biggest Black Fridays of any, they said, I have never heard of anyone who's sold more than us on Black Friday, which I think is just pretty dope. It's a very, very well done product. They make you feel elite, you know, by buying this pan, whether the pan is, is elite or not. It's sort of secondary. It's an amazing example of just like what brand, marketing, and influence can do for you.

Speaking of food and cooking, do you have any plans for the holidays? Because I've got some, I got an idea for you. Okay. You're inviting me over or what's happening right now? That's even better. This is even better. Are you free? I'm free. All right. I've got like a little, like, eight week little project for you. If you're interested, you know, it's no big deal. It's just a little small. It's like a it's like the equivalent of like a super Lego. Okay, go for it. Weight Watchers. Do me a favor.

And Google Weight Watchers stock right now. Okay. What's their market cap at? Oh, geez, 58 million. What happened? Oprah. What happened? That's what happened. Oprah left. Oprah's gone. Are you serious? That would cause this? Well, and they lost $110 million last year and the business

declined by 10%. What happened? What happened? I think those epic hit him. Well, let me make an argument as to why Weight Watchers is going to start selling Oz Epic and why Sean is going to own 10% of the company. So listen, that's your little, your eight-week project, your holiday project. So Weight Watchers was started, I think, in the 60s. And the way it started was there was this housewife in New York City and she was a little overweight

and she got a bunch of dieting tips on how to lose weight. And then she created like an eight-person support group where she got her friends to give her $2 per meeting. And they met once a week. And it helped everyone lose weight. They were held accountable and they loved it. She did it for about a year. And then eventually this one man and his wife, or his wife was like,

hey, you should, you'll lose weight. You go to this woman's support group, I bet she'll lose weight. And this guy was a businessman. And he was like, hey, we should definitely make this a thing. Like, her name was Gene. He was like, hey, Jean, this should be like a business. This was amazing.

I actually, like, lost weight. And it changed my life a little bit. And so they come up with this idea to franchise the business. And they launched it in 1963. And by 1968, they had a million members, each paying a monthly fee in order to attend a local meeting that was based off of their dieting advice. But a local meeting where you would go once a week or once a month in order to have your support group. And then by 1968, they sold the business for $350 million. They sold it for $71 million then, which is something like $400 million in today's money.

oddly they sold to Heinz Heinz ketchup which is like the maker of a lot of foods that are the opposite of what Weight Watchers would suggest but anyway they do their thing and then Oprah comes into play and so Oprah comes into play and when she comes into play the stock

takes off to where like she buys a bunch of the stock and then within like weeks or something like that she has tripled her money and it booms and it takes off well over the last handful of years her weight watchers plan has been shedding her weight to watch watch her stock and she's been losing a bunch for stock and selling it, and now it's plummeted. And so the stock is horrible. And so my opinion

is if I'm Weight Watchers, I think I'm just going to start selling OZempe. That's what I'm going to become. If I have millions and millions of members who are subscribed to me for weight loss tips, if I needed to, you know, just only care about money, my new game is, well, by the way, They have 3.8 million paying subscribers. The name of my game is, hey, for an additional $300 or $400 or $500 a month, we really can guarantee that you're going to lose weight. They're definitely going in this direction. So I didn't realize this, but do you know who the CEO of Weight Watchers is?

No, who? Her name is Seema Sestani. And the reason that name sounds familiar is because she was formerly the CEO of Mirkat. Do you remember Mirkat, the like live streaming app? What? Yeah. So she worked with Ben Ruvin, and when they turned into House Party, they ended up getting acquired. SEMA and ends up now being the CEO of Weight Watchers.

And she recently wrote an email to the team. So this is a couple months ago. And it says, team, as the week draws to a close, I want to take a moment to address some of the breathless media coverage. I'm sure you guys have seen. And basically it says, hey, we're in a good cash position. We have strong liquidity. the work we do matters, our business is healthy. And it says, we've repositioned the company to grow with a clear differentiator.

We're going to offer a full spectrum of weight care from behavioral, which is the thing what they've been doing, to clinical. And clinical being the sale of essentially semi-glutide type products is where they're going with it. So I think it's kind of interesting what you're saying, because I don't know what the, what is the price of a Weight Watchers subscription? If you don't have insurance, semi-glutide is somewhere between

$500 to $1,000 per month. Per month, exactly. And so, like, let's... If your insurance, and your insurance will cover it if you have diabetes or if you're obese. And I think, isn't there, like, government proposal to, like, make, like, I don't know, free OZempic to everybody? Like, isn't there, like, some proposal that's, like, going to cover it in,

that the government would somehow cover this? Well, the OZEPIC issue is basically highlighting an issue with the health care system. And just so, it's funny that OZEPIC is, like, the straw that's breaking the cables back. But they're like, dude, in Europe, this drug is $5. In America, it's $1,000. What the hell? What's going on?

I also think like, Novo Nordisk, which is like the company that makes OZempic, they're not only, I think they are now the most valuable company in Europe, but on top of that, I think they spend more on lobbying than like any other company right now. And so they are pushing very hard for U.S. lobbying, which is insane. So Weight Watcher's subscription is $9.99 a month right now for the first. nine months. And if you just take the idea that they're going to go from making $100 a year per paying customer to, you know, even a fraction of the audience decides, yes, I'd like to push a button and start to get Ozzympic or start to get whatever their generic version is going

to be called, you know, they're going to jump to $5,000 or $10,000 a year for those customers, right? So if you believe that they have the right distribution and they have the end customer relationship, they might be swapping out, you know, training wheels for Harley Davidson. in terms of business models. And the business is quite large. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of money. But last year, they did 900 million in revenue and had a $100 million loss. So those are huge numbers.

But their market cap as of today is $60 million. And so I don't care, but it's going to be fun to watch because there might be a roller coaster here. And it's over here, by the way, the one of the reasons the business is not doing great. So by the way, your project for me was to what, to take us MPEC or to buy the stock? because I might do both. I might double down and do both. Maybe a little bow. What I, okay, so when Oprah did it, so the estimates are that she made a quarter of a billion dollars over 10 years of owning and then selling the stock.

So basically, she announced that she was like, you know, part of Weight Watchers. The stock doubled in a matter of days. And so in February of this past year, 24, the stock went down by 25% just when she announced like, all right, it's ran its course. I did my thing. I'm out. I'm no longer involved. I think Sean Perry is going to be the new Oprah.

I think that, look, for $2 million, you can own 4% of this company. Did I math that right? Or close to 4%. I think, and then just announcing it, we're going to sit through a good old-fashioned pumping dump. Whoa, whoa. You just got us flagged by some agencies out here. They're listening to podcasts now. You know we're big in the SEC right now, right?

This podcast is going viral there. I'm joking, by the way. But I do think that a $60 million market cap for a business that has these large of numbers, even if it is a massive loss and a reputable brand. I'm just reading about them on the fly here while you talking about this. But it looks like they made $100 million deal to buy Sequence, which is a telehealth business that lets you do virtual prescriptions for patients who want weight loss drugs and that they will start doing the semi-glut ted stuff soon.

So we'll see. Yeah, I just thought this was interesting. I want to put it on record that we've discussed this because maybe this could be like this could be like one of those big opportunities because $60 million for a brand that's so reputable in some circles but like everyone knows what that means. That's like pretty amazing to me. Okay, I like it.

Sam's stockpicks. By the way, any stock pick I have, just don't listen to anything that I ever give advice about regarding the stocks. Like it's horrible. What's that guy? There's a guy who does this YouTube channel called Good work. I think he's part of Morning Brew. And he put out this video that I thought had the best,

the best YouTube title that I've seen. I know. Is it Zid? No, no, not the Zin one. His Zin one was also, was also great. The Zen one was, is Zin going to kill me and the boys? And now, the new one is, can this extremely loud man make you rich? And it's a picture

of Jim Kramer who's like, you know, shilling some, uh, some stock. I thought it was awesome. Dude, there are videos, uh, he's the best. Like I Dan, he's the absolute best.

I want our YouTube team to just look at these titles and thumbnails. This is what winning looks like. This is what we need to do. I'm just going to read you some of their other titles. So his other title. So Saudi Arabia going sickle mode on its sci-fi city state. And it's the picture of that giant wall that Saudi Arabia's building.

Helping a fourth grader explain her loser dad's stupid hedge fund job, L.O.L. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I'm a big fan of this guy. He's really good. Austin's one of my best friends, the founder or the CEO of Morning Brew, and I give him a hard time for a long time because they've, Morning Brew has not been able to like hire interesting talent. And hiring and retaining and developing talent on a media as a media company, that's really, really, really hard. You've got to find interesting people, which is hard.

And then the most interesting creative people are typically also the biggest pain in the asses to work with and to retain. him. This guy, and a few others, actually, but this guy is a really good example of how a media company finds talent and nurtures it and makes him huge. Yeah, he's doing amazing. Good job. What is his name, by the way? I don't know this guy's name, but Dan, too me. Dan, you're doing a great job. So I moved to this new city. It's called Westport, Connecticut. It's a 35,000 person town. And I've been reading all these books about like biographies of politicians and stuff lately. So I thought, I don't really know anything about politics. I'm going to see what I can, if I, if getting involved is even interesting. So I just emailed the mayor, which, like, I didn't know if that was a thing or not,

but I just found her email and I emailed her and now we're going to go get lunch together. What'd you say? I said in a small circle of the internet, a very tiny corner. I'm a little bit popular and I'm not sure what that means to you, if anything, but I'm just trying to like make myself look a little bit important to you. And I would love to hang out and introduce myself with no agenda. And that's all I said. And she said, absolutely. And so what's the plan here? What are you going to do? I don't know. Yeah. I got to figure out how to be conniving and how to take over a town. I don't have a plan yet. But I just thought it was interesting. Are you going to like binge like two seasons of house of cards or something and just start to get yourself in the mindset? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just going to like come with like armed guards that just take over. Like it's, I'm going to do a coup. It's going to be a coup. I'm the mayor now. I don't know. I just, I think local politics are like a really interesting way to actually have real impact. But it kind of just seems fun. And so I didn't know that you could email a mayor and they would reply.

But it did. It reminds me of when we got to college, my buddy, Dan, that you're given like a school ID, right, a school email address. So his was, I don't know, like DNC6 at Duke. at edu. And so the first thing he did, which I would have never thought to do, but he's a weirdo and a genius. And so he goes, he emails DNC 7 or DNC 4 and DNC 5. And he's like, fellas, I'm here. I don't know who you are. I don't know what does the initial stand for for you. But I'm here to carry the torch, the legacy. What do you guys do? And like one of them's a banker somewhere. And it's like,

could have led to like, you know, like an internship basically just by sending out a random email being like, hey, I'm the new guy in town that has the same, you know, I'm the next in the alpha-numeric sequence here for us. And did they become friends? I don't know. I feel like he just would open up all these doors and just look inside, be like, what's in this closet, right? When someone comes into your house, they're like, oh, what's this over here? That's what he does. Have you seen people do that with their phone number? They change one number and their phone number and they text them and say that their phone number comes. Yeah, exactly. You said something a few weeks ago that had an impact on me, and I've been meaning to bring this up to you, but I had to test this out.

So you told me that there's been a few weekends where Friday to Sunday, you did phoneless. And I thought that's a great idea. The problem is that I'm an addict of all types of sorts. And just like everyone else, getting rid of my phone is like really hard. So I looked for a solution and I found this thing. This isn't a sponsor thing. I've never talked to these guys. I just think it's cool.

Have you seen this? It's called brick. Yeah, I've DM these guys. They're young guys. Do you know who? Did you look them up? Yeah. So I looked them up.

So let me explain what this product is, but I think it's only $49. So for people listening on your headphones and not looking at a screen, I just showed a brick. It's like a 2 inch by 2 inch square that's made out of plastic, just like 3D printed plastic. And the way it works is you download their app and you say which apps are allowed. So in my case, I think I've allowed texting, phone calling, and email. And basically, I use this brick and I touch my phone with it.

and it bans or makes every app of my phone, except for the ones that I've allowed, it makes it so I can't use them unless I touch this brick again. And there's an emergency button within the app, but only three times can I click, like emergency override and I could override, like if I'm away from this brick. But if I leave this brick at home,

I can only use the apps that I've allowed on my phone. Shockingly good. This works. I like it. I love it. And I think these kids who started it, I think they started when they were like 20 year old college kids. Is that right? Yeah, something like that. And I think this business might be amazing. You know, it's only 50 bucks. It's hard to make a lot of money on $50. But what's interesting is

that we build all this technology to like get, we want new, we want more convenient, we want better. And then after a while you get used to this life and it gets better and more efficient and more addicting and you want to create things now that will undo all of that. And so I've been testing, leaving my phone at home. I've been testing, but that's a little bit inconvenient sometimes because what if there's like a real emergency? So do I have to buy like a dumb phone? But then to buy a dumb phone, I need a whole different cell phone plan. It's like a safe for the pantry. You like put your snack in it and then you lock it. It's like this can only be open at 7 p.m. Yeah, well, one and one time I broke it to get to my phone. Like it's fucked up how bad I am. And so this brick so far, I think is the best solution I have found.

That's cool. Yeah, I looked into this because I was curious about it. I think it's a really cool idea. I like the design of it too, by the way. I like the name of it, how it just bricks your phone. I love how bricked up you are about this whole thing. So I think it's a great, I think it's a great product. I don't use it personally, but I have thought about doing the kind of dumb phone, smartphone thing. And this does seem better than having two phones. But I would lose this brick for sure. So what is it? So if I lose this brick, I can just through my own phone, just put it in the emergency, be like, hey, I need my phone back. Yeah, but only like three or five times. I forget the number. But after a certain number, then the app, like the brick doesn't work and you've got to go buy a whole new one. It's like a nicotine patch for cell phones. Yeah, and it's awesome.

That's exactly what it is. And I think it's actually pretty good. And it's cheap enough that I'm going to just like start gifting these out. It's a great passive aggressive gift, right? Yeah, it's like getting your appellate out, I guess. Hey, asshole. Here's something you need. Yeah, but these are awesome.

By the way, I think it's a, is it called NPC? Is that the technology that they use for this? NFC, I think. NFC, sorry, which is like, it's like a very, very, very tiny chip. And then the rest is just like 3D printed plastic. And so there are like interesting ways to make this fun. Like you can 3D print anything and just touch your phone. And so, like for example, if you have a music event or not a music event,

like a small club or something at your home, like if you have like an event, If you have an event, something where it's like a book club or you have 10 people coming, you just touch your thing. Everyone touch the thing and that bricks your phone. Like there are as like a bunch of cool ways to make this one. Wait, so that can brick anybody's phone or just your phone. If you, if you have the app, I think it can break anyone's phone. Okay. Well, there's a next level to this. Of course, of course. But it's actually quite cool. And then you have you seen the things where you go into comedy shows and you put your phone in one of these like airtight bags? Yeah, I hate those things, but I understand. I hate them too. They're at, the local school that I live at, they're starting to do that for the school. So you have to leave your phone in these bags. Yeah, my four-year-old is in TK. And she's told me her friend has a phone. She's like, yeah, she showed me. It's a real phone in her bag. It's hers. And I have so many questions and I'm like, we're like friends with the parents. I'm like, do I just text the parents? Be like, yo, you got your kid a phone? Or do I just text the kid and be like, is this a real phone? What's going on? That's insane. Can I finish with just a pro,

tip, a Life Pro tip, a little framework, a little bit of value here at the end. I feel like we gave some dessert, and now it's time for a quick vegetable. All right. All right. So I have a friend who is named Stan, and Stan is a Silicon Valley OG. And what's interesting about Stan is that for many years, Mark Zuckerberg personally tried to recruit Stan. And he always said, no, no, no, no.

And Zach just kept reaching out, kept trying to recruit him. And eventually got Stan to join Facebook. and he ended up running Messenger, the multi-billion user product inside of Facebook. What does a recruitment from Zuck look like? So he's, you know, he's not,

he's just not wanted to kiss and tell, so he didn't give too many details and brag about it too much. But I got the sense that not only was he recruited, but he had reached out to him many times across the years and eventually made him an offer, you know, too good he couldn't refuse. And so he joins.

And I asked Dan and I go, Stan, what are you like, why are you, so good? And I was like, no, no, bad question. Let me ask a better question. Like, what are you doing differently than the average person here in Silicon Valley who has maybe the same skill set as you, but isn't having the same result as you? Are you asking why Zuck wanted him or why he's had success throughout his entire career? I knew Zuck wanted him. I didn't ask

why he Zuck wanted him? I didn't ask him specifically. I said, why does somebody who, why are you having more success than the average person who has the same skill set as you? Like, is it that you're just working 10 times harder? Are you 10 times smarter than somebody? Or do you know something? Or do something. And he told me one thing that I thought was interesting. He said a few things, but the one that stood out. This was many years ago, by the way. So this still sticks with me. Is he said, you know, in Silicon Valley, we're big on being data driven and data, data, data, and data is awesome. But he goes, what I found is that most people, when they look at data, they already have a story in their head about what they think happens or what we need to do.

And then they simply just search for data that's going to confirm that story. Or they just like squeeze the data until it fits that cookie cutter story that they want. It goes, I'm different because I just do one thing different. I look at the data and I ask a simple question, what story is the data telling me? And what story is the data telling me is a much better question. For example, we were just looking at the Weight Watcher stock and I was like, what happened? And you go, Oprah. I was like, Oprah, what happened?

And you go, Oprah happened. But if you actually look, like the stock falls off a cliff as soon as like the OZempect trends. started, right? Like, that was the date. Oprah left, I think, in like 2014 or something. She left like a long time ago, but the stock really fell off a cliff when OZepic took off. And the data is telling us that something happened in early 2023 that really hurt Weight Watcher stock. And then you go look at what actually happened. And I've, I just felt this in one of my companies, too, where we, in my ecom stores, like, we've been beating every month forecast. And then August was the first month we didn't beat. And I asked the team, I said, what happened? And my CMO will give one answer.

And our chief product officer will give another answer. And then the website guy will give a different answer. And how am I supposed to figure out what answer? And the way I figure it out is I tried, I just told them, I said, post the data first and then tell me the story. Because what always happens is they tell me the story. And then they'll go find some data that might some cherry pick a bit of data that might support that, but they'll leave out a bunch of other data. Well, it's like, you ever played those things where it's like find a word and like it's like the puzzles in the New York Times like find find this word? It's like if I already know I'm looking for this word.

Yeah, where it's like if I know I'm looking for this word, I think I can find it. But if you tell me that I got to find a variety of words, I might find those first. Exactly. Exactly. And so what we did, I just flipped it. I just said before you give me your your idea of what happened wrong, can you first just show me the picture of the data? Like the full set of the data of what happened. And then it should tell us a story. So then we just started asking the question, what story is the data telling us?

And I think that that is just a much better way to approach data decision making. And I think that is a great hack that this guy who's had amazing success in his career says, you know, this is one thing I do differently that I think it leads to a different result. Because every time I do that, you know, it's like, how do you be right more often? One way is just remove a bunch of your bad habits. bad biases that's causing you to make bad decisions. And I think this is a good habit that would lead you to make better decisions.

So I wanted to share that. That's kind of a weird. That's if for you to think, for him to think why am I so successful? Not weird. Weird's the right word. That's a very particular. Well, I specifically ask, what are you doing differently? Not why are you so successful, but what do you do that's different than the average person

who's got the same skill set as you? What is it that you do differently? So, for example, I know, Sam, you're a great writer. I could be like, you know, why are you a great writer? And you might say, well, I practiced a bunch or I read or I naturally have a gift for it. A different question is, what do you do differently than other people who also write blog post or write newsletters? What would your answer be? I potentially am significantly more honest than most people.

And I explain all of the bad sides and the good sides upfront in a particular story, which makes people like and trust me more. So, like, I try to be the opposite of sensational. Yeah, you wrote an email to the mayor, and you said, your honest thing was, in a small corner of the internet, I'm popular, I don't know if that matters to you, but I'm trying to impress you because I don't know if that worked,

but I'd like to say that I say that to impress you. Nobody would say in the email. I say that to impress you. Obviously, they do that to impress them, but nobody says that out loud. I think your gift is that you are, willing to say the honest part out loud and that that endears people to you and that makes it more likable and that makes it more distinct and that makes it stand out versus, you know,

reasons that other people, their writing might stand out. So I think that's a, it's a great example of like that question of what do you, what is it that you actually do that's different versus how do I become successful or, you know, how did you become successful? Like people have different, they'll give you a different answer depending on the question. And I guess what I'm saying is, He's calling him weird is not the right word because that sounds negative. What I mean is that's such a particular and unexpected answer of like, oh, you just look at the data and you're like not judgmental about it versus coming to it with an emotion or a story to prove. So it's like you're like you're black and white about different information and you're not coming with an agenda. It's a weirdly specific answer.

I agree. The caveat is this was like 10 years ago when he told me this. And also, I bet if I asked him the same question today, he would give me a different answer. Maybe that was just top of mind because of what was going on that day in his world or what he had noticed recently. Why did you, well, why did you just remember this now? Because I saw the problem pop up in my own company where I was like, oh, this is hard. I can't get to the truth because everybody already has a pre-baked answer. And then when I told them, hey, can we figure out what went wrong?

They say, yeah, yeah, I'm going to go figure it out. But really, it's just, oh, wow, they never changed the answer when I just, said, hey, what went wrong? And they say, can somebody dive in and they come back with the same answer every time? It's like, wow, what's the point of diving in? If you already had the answer, and then when you dive in, you simply just go find one or two cherry-picked data points that support that. And then if I go look and I say, well, is that really true? Because what about this? And it kind of violates the narrative. So it's more like, maybe you're right, but that doesn't explain all of this or correct. And then they're like, oh, yeah, that's true. And so I need, I needed

I need my own team doing it. And I think in general, if more people did this, they would be more successful, myself included. I'm guilty of this as well, where I have an immediate reaction of what we should be doing or what's bad about what we're doing or what's not working. And then I try to find data or examples that support it versus first looking at the actual data and feedback

and then saying, what story is this telling me? When you go through that, how often do you question if you are right or wrong? or put differently, what level of certainty is your average big monthly decision? That's a great question. What percent certainty is my average monthly decision? In the situations where I have data, because there's two types of decisions. There's data where there's decisions where we have information and there's decisions that will actually go create information, meaning we're only going to know this by trying this and that will gather more

information. Here's what I mean. Every month or quarter or so, a business that is in the $5 million, 10 million, 20, like some range where it's like, all right, this like definitely is working, but I don't know if it's going to be massive, medium, or it could even go out of business eventually, but like there's something here. So for those types of businesses, every quarter or month, there's a decision that can potentially change the trajectory entirely.

or not impact anything at all. And I've noticed that, like, it's like monthly or quarterly. And I asked myself wondering, like, before I was very certain, certain, like, if I do this, I'm going to do this, or we're going to figure it out. Now I'm actually realizing the decisions I make during those periods can actually be very impactful, both in a negative and a bad way. Like, you can make a decision today that you pay for in 18 or 24 months. And so I used to be very confident.

Now I'm less confident of, like, I think this. but I want everyone to know, I don't know anything. Right, right. And so what I'm asking for you is, are you, how do you come to these decisions with high certainty or low certainty? I don't really think about it like that. If I had to answer that part, it would probably be high certainty for the next phase, the next chunk, meaning I know that I've looked at what the options are and what the

information we have is. And of those two things, and once I take those, you know, I have the menu of options and I got the, the information that we have, I can make the right decision for this. moment. That doesn't mean it's going to end up being right. It means given what I had, that had to be the right decision. There was no, there was a only other suboptimal decisions from there. But there's still some probability that that's not going to be true, but I couldn't have known that because I just didn't have the information. I think I've done a good job of hitting the ball into the net where I look back, because I do this often, I look back and I say,

could I have known this? Or did I already know? Did I actually know deep down? And I ignored it. Or did I know, could I have known, but I rushed. And I have cut those down a lot, mostly, honestly, because I work with Ben and I talk things out loud. And when I'm talking out loud, I can literally hear, like, I can litigate against my point. I can hear the holes in my argument, right? And I'm comfortable enough with him to be like to be saying it out loud and not feel stupid to mid sentence, be like, but actually, I think that doesn't matter at all. Or, but actually, that might not even be true. I might just be saying that. or I'll stop midway and just say, but honestly,

of all those things, the most important thing I said was this. And that actually wipes out all the other shit. And so never mind. Let's go for a no instead of a yes. And I'll just edit it midair because he makes me feel comfortable enough and we have enough trust built up or it's only about getting it right. There is 0% about appearing right,

which in my other companies before, I think it was much, much more tied to having to feel like I needed to, maintain some appearance of being smart and in charge and knowing things and I wouldn't litigate my own thoughts. I would not cross-examine them enough

and I think that led to a lot of bad decisions before. And the reason I'm bringing that up is I'm feeling this is similar thing as I get a little bit older and sometimes have more success and sometimes not. What I'm learning is that there's a million different ways to get done, to get different things done

and they're like for example we saw go viral this founder mode thing and everyone loved it. And maybe that is right for certain people. I could point to many examples of successes that are not. It's the exact opposite. It violates exactly what that person is saying is the law. And as I grow and start getting to somebody's decisions,

I'm learning a little bit. It's more becoming, I don't know anything. Let's just do it feels good. And so I guess it's like surrendering to like the world of like, I know nothing. Right. So, you know, you're kind of,

it back to where you were when you were 18 years old of like, I don't know the right way, whereas when you're a little bit younger, you read all these books. Like, according to the startup, what's that startup book about LEED MVP? Lean startup. According to the lean startup, we have to do this, this, and this. And so you just do that. And sometimes it works. But there's just, there's so many different ways to make the same thing work. Because of that, I want to get some of these decisions, I'm significantly less confident in having the right answer, but I'm kind of okay with it. Well, I think there's a difference in confidence and certain. So I'm definitely less certain. That doesn't,

necessarily mean I'm less confident, meaning I can be confident that this is the right decision to make, but I can agree that, hey, there's low, low certainty here that this is going to work or that this is correct. One of the things that's helped me is to figure out some words to describe this, because what I found was that one of the big leaks was that I was miscommunicating my own certainty to others, meaning I talk in a very confident way or I'll say, let's do this. And even though in my mind, I'm like, let's do this. And then we'll know by next Friday, or we'll try it three times and they will know after three times whether this was the right path or the wrong path. But I want to go try it three times, right? I want to go give it three weeks or I want to go give

it three months. I know that for certain, but that was coming across to other people like, this is the way and this is the right answer. And then they got very, they got a lot of whiplash when that would change. And I'm like, why are you getting whiplash? We were looking for, we wanted to try it to know if this was the correct path or not. And turns out we're going to turn. And so I found that I use this phrase a lot now, which is let's turn over another card, which is like a poker term, right? So it's like, in poker, you operate with you, you have your hand. First, you have your two cards.

You just know, is it, should I fold here or is it worth seeing the flop? So I'll say that. Let's see the flop here. What's see the flop is, let's take the call with the person. Let's take the meeting. Let's make the prototype. Let's draft the thing. Let's write down, let's write down the plan.

And then let's see after that if we want to do it or not. And then sometimes we'll say, you know what? Let's turn over another card, which means let's get to the next. milestone of information to get to a point where we will have more certainty of whether this is the correct thing to do or not. And that language at least taught kind of like my little team, which is, they know now how much, like, yes, we are doing this. We're committed to doing this step, but we're not committed to doing the next thousand steps because we're going to turn over another card and we're going to find out some more information. We're going to find out, right?

Oh, we think this guy's really great. Should we hire him? Let's turn over another card. Let's do some reference checks and let's give him the project. We don't need to debate more. We've already debated as much as we need to, given the information we have. At this point, it's about getting more information. And the other thing that's helped a lot is be specific about what information. So often Ben will hit me with a like, well, let's see or like, yeah, I just want to look into it more. Like I want to try it out.

And then we'll just pause, be like, cool, what specific information do you think you lack right now? Like if we don't have enough information to make a decision, what is the information we need? And then you often realize you're like, and actually it's just I didn't feel confident enough to make a decision right now. I don't even really know what I'm looking for. So even if I spend another few weeks thinking about this or exploring this, I'm going to do it half-hazardly because I don't have clarity on even what I'm looking for. I don't know what question I'm trying to answer here.

So therefore, probably going to still be as uncertain three weeks from now as I am today. But when you kind of try to pin down, like, well, what do we really need to make this decision? Or what extra information do we need to know? you might be able to make the decision that afternoon. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm become old, but like I thoroughly enjoy it. Like these are the things I think about lately. It's just like, am I making the right decision? You know, like what's that one smart dude say?

A life unexamined is a worthless life. What's that dude's name, Socrates? And so I'm like examining like some of my decisions and things like that. Anyway, I can talk about those stuff all day, but it gets pretty nerdy, I think. I have another little exercise for you. I do this thing. It's on the wall over here.

You can't see it. But I take every month and I just make a box. So it's like a 12 box grid. And in it, we'll look back and we'll say, okay, last six months. A 12 box grid. So it's like January, February. Each month is a box. Okay.

So I just make it like a calendar looking thing. And then what we do is we just go and we look and we just say, what's the one thing we did? Like, what were the things we did that month that were the, the like big, the things that actually made an impact. So we worked, you know, 24 days out of the month or whatever. We did so many things. But like when you zoom out and you just look back, you're like, what were the things that actually mattered that month?

Similarly, we'll say, and in that could be a decision. It could be, you know, a product you launched or a thing you did. It could be a buy, sell decision. It could be a hiring, firing decision. It could be whatever, right? But it's all big font. So it's like, it's got to be something you can read from like, you know, 10 feet away, meaning you can't just write in there your entire to-do list.

And when we do that, it's amazing because every month has like an embarrassingly low number of things that actually mattered, like one to three. And everything else was just the cost of doing business. Everything else was just the noise that it took to get to those one to three things that even mattered in a month. And when you do that, you start to, but the good thing about going back, and looking at it is the more you go back and look at it, the more that in the moment you start to realize, like, oh, this is probably going to be the thing for the month that actually matters.

Let me really like focus and get this part right, because it's probably going to make up for like all the rest of the random activity, the random motion that I've been doing this month. Because you start to see patterns of like what even could make it into this box. And, you know, those are the things that matter. Okay, this month, this seems like it's probably going to be the thing that we'll end up writing in the box for the month. And you never write it before?

Well, I don't know before exactly, right? Like, I just, on a given day, I kind of know what I'm focusing on. In a given week, I kind of know what would make for a good week. But when I zoom out, it's like, you know, the decision to invest in X or the decision to bring on this person, this trip that we took that had those five meetings in person that would not have been the same over Zoom. you know, spending that two days with that person who we think is like just awesome value add to our life. So it's such a fun, awesome person and going deep with that person rather than keeping it surface level. Like little things like that or it's the decision to stop working on X project was the main thing we did that month. And that was huge because had we not done that,

we wouldn't have had the time and the bandwidth to do this thing the next month. So it's usually things of that at that level. That's pretty good. I'm going to start doing that. Is that it? Is that the pod? Are we doing a Sarah's list on Wednesday? Yeah, next episode we're going to do Sarah's list. I got I got probably six or seven companies right now that I think are good contenders for it. And if you don't know, Sarah's list, we'll do the teaser here. Sam's wife, Sarah blew my mind. Me and Sam were entrepreneurs. We're taking maximum risk. We're living off of nothing. You know, like Sam was paying himself like 20 grand a year or something like that at the time.

and I just looked at what we were doing, which was this kind of like, one in 20 shot of success, mostly eating shit every day, had to be innovative, had to take high risk. And then we looked at Sarah, who joined,

I think Airbnb and Facebook, companies that were like, I could have told you in my sleep, that those were winners. And she joined as like employee 400 or 1,000 or something like that, like not even betting on it when it was the first 10 employees. And the basic math was that if you get, get a job that's, let's just say, I don't know her number, so I'm just going to make this up.

You get a job where you're making, let's call it, $150,000 a year base salary, and then they give you a stock option grant. That's going to give you $40,000 a year of stock on top of that. So you get, let's say, a $200,000-ish stock package that if that company just basically four-xes, five-xes in a four-year time span, you've made a million dollars without taking any of the risk that we were taking as entrepreneurs. And she did it multiple times. She did that multiple times. And we realized, wow, there is a set of companies that are like, they're past the point of like, they're going out of business. They're out of the death trap of or, you know, like the

highly likely to die, you know, area. These are great businesses that will just keep growing, keep compounding. You could join them today as employee 500. And you will become a millionaire without doing any of the entrepreneurial stuff. If you could just identify the kind of like 10 companies a year that fit that mold. And so we take a stab at identifying those 10 companies. And that's what we call Sarah's list. And that episode, we're going to record Wednesday. So I got to prepare for it.

I got a couple. But it's really hard. This is actually a hard list to make because I don't want to like, you're not exactly giving advice, but some people take it as such. So I want to make sure that it's good. Well, we've also done the look back at the last time we did it. And I think our hit rate, we'll do it again. We'll go look at, we'll go look at an.

update. See, what was the hit rate of the ones we did last time? We do not proclaim to be, you know, that these are all going to work. No way, right? That's not, that's not it. And the hit rate's good because we pick things that are obvious and they get big. And it's like, duh. It's all relative to the current valuation of the company, right? So, oh, yeah, that was already a billion dollar company. Cool. It's six now. So it's six-x, right. Your $200,000 stock package is six-x now. All right, that's today's pod. We'll talk to you Wednesday. I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.