The Best One Yet - 🌿 “Canna-Babes” — Marijuana’s female surge. Scout’s electric zombie truck. The world’s AI chatbot factory.

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

We broke the Grass Ceiling… For the 1st time ever, women buy more cannabis than men.Scout Motors is back from the dead… and solved the #1 issue for electric cars.The next trending term in AI you��ve got to know? It’s “Agents”... and 1 company makes ‘em.Plus, we’re looking for the best business-themed Halloween costume. A Frappuccino Phantom, Abercrombie & Freak, or Founder Mode Mummy? Tell us your idea in the comments.$NOW $TLRY $F—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, October 28th. And today's pod is the best one yet this. This pod is a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Jack, I got hit by a puck.

What? At the Rangers game, a puck flew into the stands. I got hit right in the chest. Did you see it coming? Not in time, man. Not in time. I would take off my cute top and show you, but I got a bruise, but I don't want to mess my hair. Which side did it hit you on?

Jack, you know, a lot of people say that I saved a lot. of people. Did you toss your body? Do you sacrifice yourself? I saved a few kids. Let's just leave it at that. Yet these three fantastic stories for today's team boy, Jack.

What do we got on the show? For our first story, it's a shocker. For the first time ever, women are bigger cannabis users than men. Canna babes are beating canna bros. But that shouldn't be a shocker, actually, because we're living in the she economy. The she economy.

Second story, what are we got? Volkswagen just created a zombie electric car. It's called Scout. and it's back from the dead. The Scout electric truck solves the biggest problem in electric vehicles. Range anxiety. And our third and final story. There's a $200 billion tech company that you've never heard of.

And their business involves AI, ice hockey, and a very excited CEO. Ice hockey. You got a second reference already into the show. What do you take in side hustle money from the NHL man? Not too shabby. I'm still in pain. But yet he's before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix of stories.

Love the mix today, Jack. It's the costume countdown. You've got outfit paralysis. Happy Halloween week, Yetis. This weekend, you trot on 12 different wigs. Last weekend, you bought a casket over a Costco. But you still cannot decide what to wear this Halloween. So Jack and I, we got your backs.

Jack and I whipped up the best business-themed Halloween costumes of the year. Jack, what do we got? It's an annual T-boy tradition. We're going to kick it off with a Frappuccino Fanta. Frappuccino Phantom, because Starbucks is barely alive these days. Or you could dress up as a sneaker reaper because Nike's business got buried this year. How about this one, Nick? Why don't you dress up as a sexy VR headset?

Jack, I guess you would call that an Apple Vision ho. Yeties, how about a brat Jerome Powell costume? Or a demure robot taxi? But Jack, we got to pause the pod. We can't forget about couples business costumes this Halloween. He dresses up as founder mode, mummy. She dresses up as manager mode mommy. I like this, Jack, because one person in the couple can micromanage the other person in the couple.

And that's okay, because the other person in the couple delegated to the other person in the company. Founder mode, manager mode, mummies make it happen. But of course, you could just wear what your roommate is wearing, Jack. That would be a zucking. Or you don't wear a costume at all. It got lost in the trade war. But most of all, remember to dress your puppy as a little barina. Because Chipotle's portions, they're just too little these days.

Yet is this week is our annual T-boy Halloween pop biz. costume challenge. We want to hear your best business-themed costume ideas, and we want to hear them right now. Share your ideas with us on Instagram or at X at T-BoyPod and drop them in the comments too. Leave a comment. We want to see your costume. We got to whip it up to get it on the pod. And whatever costume you wear, just remember to cover your assets. Happy Halle Week, Jack. Let's hit our G-Stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is not.

I'm a jack nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea boy city on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor. Our first story.

For the first time in history, women now buy more pot than men do. Cannabababes is what we're calling them, and they're driving the cannabis industry, which actually reveals something even bigger about our economy. All right, Jack, let's go back a decade. I want you to picture in your head the average marijuana spoker from your high school, who you got. What are we saying? From high school?

I'm going to have to go back two decades, man. But there are about six guys named Adam. Who I'm picturing right now. Yeah, it was a vibe. Yeah, and he's Cheech and Chong, Harold and Kumar, dazed and confused. Every teen pot movie, it's about guys. But here's the news. Reuters data.

shows that women make up more than 50% of cannabis users in the United States. It's not the glass ceiling, it's the grass ceiling. And this year, cannabis companies are noticing. So they're pivoting from cana bros to canna babes. They're pivoting from six dudes from a high school named Adam to half the population. Yet he's when Jack and I heard that the pot industry is turning pink, we got curious about what's going on with cannabis. So we nosedived into the numbers.

Now, Jack, New York's first legal cannabis dispense. They notice that the average purchase by a woman was $91, but the average purchased by a man was $89. So women are buying more when they buy weed than men. And a survey of Americans, age 19 to 30, shows that 44% of women use cannabis while just 40% of men use cannabis. So a higher percentage of women smoke or use cannabis than men do, and when they do use, they spend more. Interestingly, too, the data suggests that legalization has resulted in fewer men smoking pot. That was wild. Starting in 2021, the percentage of men smoking shrank while the percentage of women smoking increased.

It's like the visual of it being legal made it less bad boys, so the boys stopped trying to be such bad boys. They didn't do it anymore. And the legalization made women more likely to use, which makes a lot more sense. Well, now, brands are finally launching specifically for women, for example, the new Queen of Bud marijuana. on a strains. And there's more. Women are actually by far the top buyer of tinctures and topicals that include cannabis. Women aren't smoking cannabis. Women are wearing cannabis. They're also twice as likely to purchase CBD-infused beverages as men are. TILRA, the $1 billion cannabis company, controls half the cannabis beverage market. And Jack, what's their latest product?

They just launched a canned cannabis beverage product specifically for women. Women, they're drinking cannabis and skincare and cannabis. Edibles? Yeah, those are more popular with women too. are pivoting that in the female direction. Jack, what's on the menu for girl dinner tonight? Uh, bread, cheese, and three CBD gummies. But the grass ceiling getting cracked reveals something even bigger. And that bigger is our takeaway.

So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in the American economy? We've already been living in a she economy. Yet is, the fact that women now outnumber men as cannabis buyers, that's huge. But it actually reveals a larger reality about this economy that few realized the extent of. Get this, besties.

According to a Harvard business review, 80% of purchase decisions in the United States are made by women. Both for individuals and for families, women control the purse strings and the budgets. Women are the real consumer deciders of the U.S. economy. It's not even close. So even if you don't think you're selling to a woman, you're actually always selling to a woman. You always are selling to a woman. because even if it's behind the scenes, women make 80% of the decisions to push by.

Cannabis is just a late arrival to this reality. We're already living in the Sheeconomy. For our second story, Scout Motors is the first ever zombie electric car. They brought back a 60-year-old brand from the dead. And the wildest part? This EV has a gas tank fanny pack. Has a gas tank fanny back. And we've got to tell you about this.

I love that image. Can't get it out of my head. Yeties, Jack and I have told you, we launched a new show. It's called The Best Idea Yet. And on a future episode, we actually cover a viral car from the car industry. Our research for that episode showed us something wild. Get this. In the 1940s, there were 135 car companies in America. Not the Detroit Big Three. The big 135. Oh, and one of those 135 car companies, it was Indiana's Scout Motors. Scout Motors. It was actually made by a tractor company. The Scout was a rugged SUV with a cult following for 20 years. From 1960 to 1980, Scout looked a lot like a vintage Ford Bronco. Would you say that,

Jack? The Beach Boys would hit up Malibu to go surfing. They'd put the surfboards in the back of the Scout. Perfect visual, exactly what I'm picturing, Jack. And here's the news. Volkswagen bought the Scout brand from the Cemetery of Brands. It is resurrecting it today. They unveiled all the details last week. This new car from Scout, it's got a bench for the front seat. You can put three people up there. It's kind of a throwback vibe. I kind of like this. I love putting three people in the front seat. It was like my old grand wagon here I told you about. Also, they gave this old brand some new shock therapy, electric shock therapy. Because the Scout SUV and the Scout pickup truck are both electric. They're both electric and they'll cost you 52 grand after incentives. But the wildest part

of these two new Scout electric cars? What is it, Jack? It solves the number one problem facing the electric car industry. Range anxiety. The reason your father-in-law won't buy an electric car? What is it, Jack? He's worried about running out of batteries on Interstate 95. Whenever you talk to your uncle about an electric car, there's like some scenario where he's like in the desert and like can't get water and the car runs out of batteries.

Spoiler, Jack and I both have electric cars. Never happened. But Scout found an innovative solution to range anxiety. This is the first electric car with a built-in gas pass. powered generator. A gas powered generator. Jack, can you sprinkle on a little more context, please? Your house may have a generator in case the power goes out. Well, so does this car. It does. The scout, it has a 350 mile battery range, which is really solid range. But if you're worried the battery is going to hit zero on that epic road trip, boom, they've got a gas tank they built into the

chassis as well. Yeah, they basically gave this car a gas tank fanny pack and they stuck it on the car. So if you're on a road trip and there's no charger around and you're low, you can just pull over to any gas station, fill it up, and that will give the car another 150 miles of range. You just stick the gas nozzle in this gas fanny pack on your electric car and there you go. So this is basically like a plug-in hybrid car, but in reverse. Because 90% of the time you're going to go electric only on this car, whereas with a plug-in hybrid, it's only like 30% or 20% of the time. You probably won't even use gas with this new scout car on a day-to-day basis because you plug in at home every day. What this basically is, is a road trip insurance policy. Exactly.

That's the point. But we prefer fanny pack. You like fanny packs. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at scout? This is a business concept to keep in mind. The Skydivers dilemma. If you're doing something dangerous, let someone else go first. Sometimes the first mover shows us what not.

to do with innovation. In this case, it was Ford. Ford made a courageous but dangerous move with their electric pickup truck and electric Mustang SUV. Jack, a legacy car company investing billions of dollars hoping customers are going to go fully electric? That was risky. It was risky, man. But after five years, that dangerous and risky move by Ford hasn't worked out as well as they hoped. No, it hasn't. So Scout, they've learned from that mistake. And that's why they're focusing on the stubborn number one issue of electric cars range anxiety. For most people, you don't want to suddenly go from fully gas-powered car to fully electric overnight. So Scout addresses that. Their battery gives you a clean conscious while the gas tank gives you a clear mind. Yeties, with skydiving, it's better to be

the second person to jump out of the plane, not the first. Trust us in that one. And if you're launching a risky new product, it helps to go second to. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final Service Now is the no-name software company that has the longest streak. Wall Street has ever seen, Jack, what's the streak? 49 straight quarters of 20% revenue growth. And this company is behind the next trendy term you got to know in artificial intelligence. But Nick, we like to keep track of signals that CEOs are feeling good. You and I, we track grammar as a way to figure out what's going on in an economy, right, Jack?

That's what we do. And the new barometer for CEO enthusiasm is the word excited. Here's out on this one, Yetis. The Service Now earnings report. Jack and I listened to the call. And the CEO said the word exciting three times. He said excited six times. And he said the word super excited.

Two times. Why is he so excited? Because his company has 49 straight quarters of 20% sales growth. 49 straight. Sit down, stand up and just take up. and just take our money, man. For 12 straight years, they've had great growth every quarter.

12 years, Yetis, this is one of the greatest Wall Street streaks of all time. The stock has gone from 25 bucks to nearly a thousand bucks a share. This might be the only $200 billion market cap company that you've never heard of. And yet, they're worth 40 lifts. And here's the insight that started ServiceNow's track to glory.

Now this company's service now, they focus on automating, but they don't focus on automating big things, they focus on automating a lot of little things. Because over 21 years of doing their business, those little things add up. And now 85% of Fortune 500 companies pay this company to save them human time. Service Now sends in a SWAT team of consultants to identify the manual processes that are happening and then automates them. Now, since no one really understands what consultants do, including consultants themselves, Jack and I found the perfect visual

case study of what they actually do. The NHL, the hockey league, it's a client of service now. Hockey, ice hockey is the perfect way for us to demonstrate what they actually do. Jack, why don't you take it from here? The NHL used to manually count that there were enough pucks ready for each game at all times. Now here's the key. In a hockey game, they use cold pucks. You don't want a warm, lukewarm puck is going to bounce around or melt the ice. No, you got to have a cold puck and it's got to be ready in case, I don't know, a puck goes into the stands and hits a fan. I know, and since it's cold, that fans bruise, the swelling is going to stay down because it's like an ice pack. I don't know, Jack, I could barely breathe. But still,

they need fresh cold pucks at a hockey game and they used to have to count them before every game. But does that require a manual human being to go down to the puck case and count them? Well, service now has now automated that puck process and they can now ensure that every arena across the National Hockey League has 12 frozen pucks ready at all times in real time. Early as takeaway? Uh, frozen hockey puck's is the coolest thing about hockey that I know. I'm so glad I could share it with you, Jack. Really hurt when that one hit me in the face. Now in the past, Service Now was all about automation, but their future is about something different. It's about AI assistance. And you need to know that. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in tech? The new AI

word to know is agent. Yeti's chatbots have generated AI. buzz, but agents will generate AI returns and will explain. In November of 2022, chat GPT was introduced, and we haven't stopped talking about it since. But here's the problem. ChatGBTGPT has been horribly unprofitable as a product. Its parent company lost $5 billion last year. AI chatbots like ChatGPT, they showed the power of AI to think like a human. But AI agents show the power of AI to work like a human. Palantir, Salesforce, and ServiceNow, they're all focused on selling their clients agents that can do tasks without supervision. Because AI agents can cut costs and increase revenue. So they are crucial for these big AI investments to actually pay off. Yet is chatbots

were the tech term of last year. Agents are the tech term of next year. Because chatbots generated AI buzz, but agents will generate AI returns. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us to kick off Hollow Week? For the first time ever, women are consuming more cannabis than men. The bigger reality? We live in a chic economy. Women make 80% of the purchase decisions. For our second story, it's Scout. Their new electric pickup and SUV solves the range anxiety problem with a gas tank fanny pack.

And here was their business strategy, skydiving. It's best to let someone else jump out of the plan first. And our third and final story. Service now automates for 85% of America's biggest companies and is now worth $200 billion. Their newest business, it's the AI buzzword you need to know. Agents. But Yeties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today.

First, the Washington Post editorial board will not issue a presidential endorsement this year. In fact, the board will stop making presidential endorsements in the future. Now, interestingly, the Washington Post only began making presidential endorsements 50 years ago, beginning with President Jimmy Carter. But the reason they're stopping now, according to reports, Jeff Bezos made the decision, probably because he doesn't want to risk a retaliation from Trump if Trump wins. Which is the same situation as happened at the Los Angeles Times, too. Second, South Korea K-pop stocks had their best day of the year last week. Because Bruno Mars did a collab song with the K-pop star, Roseh. It was called APT, and this thing just took off.

Well, interestingly, three of the largest K-pop record producers in Korea have publicly traded stocks. So after this new collab song hit number one in the charts, K-pop stocks popped 30% last week. And finally, the city of Prague has officially banned Pub Crawls. That's right, the Czech Capital drew over 7 million tourists last year, and 150% of them drank beer. The new ban on pub crawls is from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. So if you pub crawl in Prague, you're going to get a fine of up to $4,000. It's all part of Europe's over-tourism pushback,

where if you want to go and hang out there, they basically say, not possible. Glad this didn't exist when we were studying abroad, by the way. The seven-story club, if you know, you know. Now, time for the best fact yet.

This one sent in by Savannah Westwood from lovely Orlando, Florida. Happy belated world pasta day, by the way. Yeah, it was a great day. It was this past weekend. Il Giorno di Pasta Internationale. Great day.

great Jay Jack. Celebrating pastas from Agniallati to Ziti. I do find it fascinating the insane number of pastas that exist in this world. Well, Jack, that happens to be today's fact, which is a trivia question. How many pasta shapes actually do exist in the world? I feel like there's a fun pasta poster with all the different varieties that I should have. It feels like you're dragging your feet. You're not giving us an answer here, Jack. Every time I go to a fancy Italian restaurant with you, there's like four pastas on the menu. I have to look up. Yeah, and you can't pronounce any of them. have a discussion afterwards, but the answer to how many pastas are recognized by the state of Italy is 600 different pastas. No. Yeah, sit down, stand up, and sit in that lasagna, Jack.

I love how there's tortellini and tortelloni. And everyone thinks ravioli, but you can also just get a single raviola, although my favorite jack is carameli, which, like, taste and looks like a candy. You know, some people call pasta macaroni. Like, the whole encompassing word for pasta, They call it macaroni. I'm like, no. Macaroni is a specific type of pasta. You're supposed to be Italian-American. I hope my mother-in-law is not listening.

Let's go on. I think this fits in your educated but not culture situation. I don't say there's someone else. I think we're learning more and more about you as this fact goes on about pasta. Yetis, you look fantastic for the hollow week. And Jack and I want to know what is the best business costume. What do you got for us? Maybe you're Brett Jerome Powell.

Or maybe you're a friend. Rappuccino Phantom. Either way, drop a name in the comments or hit us up on Instagram. We want to hear it. Send us your ideas. We'll name the winner on Halloween. And that winner will be the best one yet. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. If you know, you know. And before we go, a congratulations to Yeti Sanket and Agarie in Eindhoven, Netherlands, who's celebrating five years working at Tesla. Happy birthday to Crystal Mendoza in San Diego, California, who's celebrating just outside Boston. And Eric Manguya in Los Angeles, California, congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations on the birth of a beautiful daughter Adeline.

And happy anniversary to Mike and Cassandra Gersatus in St. Louis, Missouri, who've been together for five years. Not too shabby and Jeremy and Jersey's got a new job making beautiful things over at Pinterest. Congratulations to Grant Smith, who just got an A license for skydiving. Okay, Grant, you can jump out of the plane before we do. And a happy birthday to Maria Vasquez just outside Boston. Her WNBA team just won the championship. And to anyone else, celebrating something today, make it a T-boy.

Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Abercrombie and Fitch and Ford. Nick owns stock of Nike, and we both own stock of Chipotle. Jack, great take away!