The Best One Yet - 🤶 “Mariah Carey Economics” — Oldies music valuations. Nuclear Fusion’s power. QuickBooks’ small biz secret.

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” just hit number 1 on the Billboard top 100 chart (again) — So we’re looking at the Economics of Mariah Carey. Nuclear Fusion just had a technological breakthrough that could save the planet someday… and you’re the main investor in it. And the 1 winner in the FTX crypto downfall is: QuickBooks.$SPOT $INTUFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. It's Thursday, the new Friday, December 15th. And today's pod is just the best one yet. It's our second to last pod before a two-week break. All right. So, Jack, are we going to see a Santa Stock surge? I hope so.

Are we going to see a Hanukkah Hop? You know it. Are we going to get ourselves a reindeer rally over in the markets? You know what, Nick? Let's ask Briah. That's a good idea. Jack. What's our first story?

All I want for Christmas is you just hit number one on the Billboard charts again. So Jack and I are looking at the economics of Mariah Carey. For our second story, the one shocking winner of the FTX downfall, shocker. QuickBooks. QuickBooks. Turns out QuickBooks is the biggest business in small business. And our third and final story, we're looking at nuclear fusion because we just had the biggest technological breakthrough since the sun. Because you invested in nuclear fusion.

And you didn't even know it. Collectively, us, we all invested in fusion. invested, you invested, Jack invested, office invested. But Yeties, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. I love this mix? Great mix, Jack. Up at the North Pole, inflation is hitting hard right now. Jack, Santa's supply chain is in pain. Nick, the elves, they're demanding a cost of living increase this year. I heard Mrs. Claus is shifting to all cash. So we got to ask, what is the cost of the 12 days of Christmas? Jack and I got to ask, what's the price for that partridge in a pear tree? Well, our buddies in Pittsburgh.

over at PNC Bank, they do an annual budget for the 12 days of Christmas. Basically, their own CPI, a Christmas price index. For example, let's skip over to the eighth day. Eight maids of milking, this year is 58 bucks. Yeah, milk. It's actually the cheapest part of the whole song. Unless you ask the maids for oat milk, Nick. Yeah, and make sure it's not organic oat milk.

They're going to be angry. How about two turtle doves? Ah, Jack, that's going to be a tad more for those two turtle doves, my friend. $600 this year for those two birds. Can we talk about five golden rings? What are we paying for that? This is a pricey part because the price of gold is up 39% compared to last year. Jack, pulling out the whiteboard here, it is $1,200 for each 14-carat ring.

But the worst day of Christmas by far, the priciest day of Christmas? The most expensive day you are going to spend this entire holiday season. What is it, Jack? Ten lords a leapin. Get this. It's $13,980 for 10 dudes to dance for you. You just hired the cast of Riverdance. How about the partridge in the pear tree, man?

We almost forgot. Well, we already mentioned bird prices are down. On the other hand, Jack, fertilizer prices are up. Yeties, if you sing the whole song 12 days of Christmas, it mentions 364 different gifts. That's going to cost you $197,000. $197 grand is the cost of the 12 days of Christmas. And that doesn't even include the wrapping paper. Or the batters.

In this economy? In this economy. Jack, let's in our three-first. French hands. completely changed after 1994. Okay, Jack, all I want for Christmas is you to sing Mariah Carey to me and maybe a box of popcorn. No, you don't. You don't want me to sing it to. No, it's okay.

Trust me, you don't. The Queen of Christmas, 1994, great year. Mariah wrote the anthem for the holidays. Call Liam Neeson from Love Actually. This song is number one in 2022 again. Actually, call Liam Neeson because I want one of his turtlenecks. Those look warm and cozy jack. In Love, actually, you really see his soft side, don't you?

Yeah, you really do. Yeties, you can't go to a grocery store these days without hearing all I want for Christmas is you. It's all you're going to hear. Apparently, retail workers hate hearing that song because it's all they hear all December. Apparently, it's worse than the total agony of being in love, isn't it, Jack? The kid says that, right? Liam Neeson's kid. The kid says that.

So Yeties, you're in IL-6, you're buying egg-nog and then boom, Mariah Carey starts yelling. I won't even wish for snow. According to The Economist magazine, Mariah Carey has made $72 million with that one song she penned. One song. We're not even going to play you a clip because Mariah has more lawyers than backup dancers. Yeah. And she makes $2.5 million every year in royalties when we start playing that song in December. Mariah, she says she doesn't want a lot this Christmas. But Jack, she's getting a lot for Christmas, man. She's getting a lot. Every time the chorus plays, Mariah gets a yacht. And here's the best part. She wrote it at 15.

minutes. No. Yes. No. Yes. Now yet he's Jack and I were curious about this music. So we jumped in T-boy style and we noticed all I want for Christmas has been a top 10 song every year for 25 straight years. That is completely unprecedented and that reflects a major change in the music industry. And here it is. Before streaming, Billboard charts reflected album sales, physical album sales. New albums dominated the charts every year. Yeah, they did. And an album almost never made it two years in a row onto the charts. But fast forward a few years,

streaming has forced Billboard to measure actual listens, not just album sales. In the past, Mariah would have made big money at 1994, the year the song came out. But honestly, not many people would have bought a physical 1994 album 30 years later, like today. But with streaming, like today, you play songs from 30 years ago, all the time. In fact, they dominate your playlist. And so what does that mean about the old

songs, Jack? It means the old songs make the billboard charts. Yeah. And the old songs are more valuable than ever. All right. So you and I have said before, where there are eyeballs, there are dollar signs? Jack, where there are earlobes? Are there also dollar signs? I would go with ear drums, but yeah. Yeah. So to sum this up, Jack, love actually is all around us? So Jack, what's the takeaway for Liam Neeson and Spotify and all our buddies? in the music industry. Because of streaming, music just hit its highest valuation since Mozart. Yeti, songs have never been easier to listen to because of the streaming platforms like

Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora. And songs make money every time you stream them, even years after those songs have been made. Okay, so if you combine both those factors, that massively extends the money-making life of every single song. And those two factors have meant a massive upward. shift in the value of old music in particular. Yeah, can we talk about David Bowie, Shakira, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nix, Bob Dylan, what have they been up to lately? Each of them sold the music rights to their back catalogs for over $100 million. Over $100 million for each of those

music catalogs. Mariah has not sold the rights to her back catalog. No, she hasn't. But one song alone is worth $2.5 million every December in good hard cash flow. Bestie's streaming. changed your listening habit, but it transformed music's valuations. For our second story, there is only one winner of the FTX crypto drama, and that winner is it's QuickBooks? QuickBooks. Yeah, because the least sexy businesses are often the most profitable ones. Oh, Yeties, let's go back to, I don't know, yesterday, we told you about the arrest of the former

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Well, on Tuesday, his replacement, who does not think highly of Sam Bankman Fried, he told Congress just how disorganized the company was that he took over. No, yet this is where things got kind of funny. There was one little detail he said yesterday that had a big impact. He told Congress that Sam Bankman Fried ran FTX's books using QuickBooks. FTX used QuickBooks as their accounting software. QuickBooks.

The $32 billion crypto giant uses the. same accounting software as your local delicatessen does. We're talking Jane's Jelly Donuts down the street. They're using QuickBooks. That's who's using QuickBooks. We use QuickBooks. We use QuickBooks. We're not a $32 billion global cryptocurrency exchange.

It's a small business basic software. Honestly, FTX depending on QuickBooks is like if Fort Knox depended on plastic zip ties to like defend their vault. So yet he's Jack and I heard that one line and we got curious. So we decided to jump in T-boy style. QuickBooks is actually the crown jewel of a publicly traded fintech giant known as Intuit. Into it's a fintech company that owns credit karma, turbotax, mint. They basically, they know what you spend every month, basically.

They do. But QuickBooks is their only business-facing product. And Jack and I discovered that QuickBooks is one yapin' profit puppy. Wow, it really is. Yeti's small businesses and entrepreneurs, they link their bank accounts and their spending accounts to QuickBooks. and that software manages their money and keeps the books. Yeah, QuickBooks focuses on small businesses,

but the numbers for QuickBooks are huge. We were shocked to see that it makes $3.5 billion of profits every year. Sit down, stand up, sit back down again. That is over half of their parent company into its total profits. And Intuit is worth $120 billion, which means QuickBooks alone is worth over $60 billion. $60 billion. Yeti's QuickBooks, this small business software is worth more than Ford GM Chipotle or Hilton combined.

Not combined. No, it's not combined. But it is worth more than all of them individually. That's crazy. It's like Rudy. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at QuickBooks? The least sexy businesses can have the hottest profits. Yet is accounting. The accounting industry. The recording of financial information. It's not the most glamorous industry. We love accounting. The balancing of the bucks. We've got friends who are accounted. They're fantastic. But the industry, not as exciting.

Yeah. And yet, QuickBooks, this one boring software program is worth 15 lifts. In fact, QuickBooks, we noticed, basically has a monopoly on all the mom and pop shops around your streets. 80% of small businesses use QuickBooks to balance their bucks. Four out of five cookie stores in Utah, they're crunching their numbers with QuickBooks. QuickBooks got so dominant. 80% of the market. because accounting software just isn't a sexy industry.

They're our brightest visionaries. They aren't re-envisioning T-charts and balance sheets, Jack. No, they're not. They're just letting QuickBooks dominate the industry. There's no Steve Jobs of accounting, so QuickBooks doesn't have to face as much competition. Which means they can charge whatever they want. And that is why the least sexy businesses are often the most profitable.

Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. You can do just about anything from your phone, but some industries, they've just been slow to move. The finance industry was slow to move from phone to computer and then from computer to app. Robin Hood wasn't. It's the Silicon Valley-based brokerage that's been updating app since it was born in 2015. Using the Robin Hood app for your stocks and crypto is almost as easy as downloading it. So you can invest to your pace on your terms by downloading the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock.

That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y limitations. Stocks are offered by Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC. Crypto offered through Robin Hood. All investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned by or part of Robinhood and we are not employees of Robin Hood. For our third and final story, the same kind of energy that powers, you know, the sun just happened here on Earth.

The sleeper venture investment right now. It's not what you think. It's fusion energy. All right, Jack, I'm sorry. One second. Let me just whip out, you know. theory of relativity on us. What's going on over in the physics world? Well, atoms are tiny. I mean atoms. Yes. Not Adam. Good point. T not D. This news, though, is huge. A government lab in California

just pulled off the world's first ever fusion reaction. And how would you describe this fusion reaction, Jack? Oh, it's pretty simple, actually. It's simple. Okay. You shoot 192 lasers at a tiny ball of gold, uranium, and diamonds. No big deal, no big deal. And what's the goal of this action? Jack. Trigger a fusion reaction. Yeah, Yeties, they're not trying to split an atom. They're trying to merge the atoms. Splitting atoms releases a whole bunch of energy. Anyone can split the atom. But merging an atom releases way more energy. So much more energy, like sun level energy, right? Nuclear fusion was like the fantasy of Albert Einstein. It does power the sun. Yeah, that's what the Sun does. We're talking about a limitless, carbon-free, perfect electricity. That is fusion. Fusion is also

the plot of Spider-Man, too. That's a good point. Toby McGuire. That bad guy was really on to something there, Jack. With the bionic arms coming out of his back. Rachel, where's the energy? All right, different superhero, but same idea. You know what we're talking about. Yeties, guess what? For the first time in human and Earth history, researchers at the Department of Energy just did fusion. It just did fusion. And it turns out nuclear fusion is the sleeper venture investment of the whole decade. This is what fascinated Jack and me. Five billion dollars of private capital has been invested in nuclear fusion startups without that much press about this. For instance, Commonwealth fusion systems raised $1.8 billion last year from Bill Gates and Tiger, a venture capital

firm, to do fusion. TA.E, another startup that raised $1.2 billion and has 400 people working on emerging fusion atoms. And those startups are pretty pumped right now. Yeah, they are. Because experts are calling this breakthrough a right brother's moment for fusion. Yetis, forget flight, forget TikTok. We are entering the age of fusion. Now, it's going to take decades more of research and development to like commercialize this. We're going to need more lasers. We're going to need better lasers. We're going to need sharks. More sharks with lasers attach to their heads. That's right. But eventually, nuclear fusion could be the basis of a new limitless energy system. It's a hail-marry solution. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the fusion industry? So which venture

capitalist made this breakthrough happen? Who did it, Jack? We the people did it. Yeah, he's the best part about this humanity breakthrough? It wasn't a patented or secret technology. This was a public technology. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory pulled off this fusion success. It's a government-owned lab with government researchers and taxpayer-funded buntz and burners. That's why this is our success, because the U.S. government, in fact, has led so many of the biggest shifts in technology in the past. We're talking nuclear power, GPS, the whole darn internet funded first by taxpayer dollars. Barcodes, baby formula, the MRI machine, funded first by your tax dollars.

And now here we are one step closer to a new fleet of power plants that could save us from climate change. Because we the people fund the biggest technological breakthroughs. Up up the takeaways for us for the new Friday. All I want for Christmas is way more valuable thanks to streaming. Streaming. It's made the music industry. It's most valuable since Mozart. For our second story, QuickBooks got six seconds of fame during the FTX hearings. The least sexy businesses can be the most profitable ones.

Our third and final story is that government researchers just scored a breakthrough in fusion energy. And Jack, which Silicon Valley venture capitalist really brought us this world-changing Breakthrough. You and me, our buddy Timmy, slamming Sam. Let's bring him in. Every other American taxpayer. We the people. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Melanie Brooke from lovely Portland, Oregon. San Francisco. Recording here right now. I'm looking over at the bay. San Francisco is kind of a techie city. Yeah, it is. So ipso facto techie city. It's a young city. But how young is San Francisco? Get this. San Francisco has. more puppies than babies.

So it's young, but it doesn't have youths. We literally have more Chihuahuas than children here in San Francisco. The people in San Francisco are so young, I guess kids just aren't in the picture yet. Yides, if you're living in San Francisco right now, odds are you're not a kid, you're a cockapoo. There are even more dogs in San Francisco than there are people under the age of 18. Honestly, it's because of puppy. People ultimately prioritize puppies. Yeah.

Yeties, you'll look fantastic today. And if you haven't yet, you can drop down and give us a five-star rating right here on Spotify app. We are this close to 9,000 reviews, which means... Yes. 9,000 push-ups. We'll do 9,000 push-ups combined. Eventually. Allegedly.

Jack and I, we'll see you tomorrow. And before we go, happy birthday to Yeti Daniela Dominguez in Mexico City, who's listened to 3,832 minutes of this podcast. That's every minute of 2022. And a happy birthday to Roland Hamway, turning 13 on the way to school in Viro Beach, Florida. And happy birthday to C. Powell from Canapolis, North Carolina. And Jackie Medina is turning 22 down in Escondido, California.

Happy early birthday to Nick Copperod in Chicago. Doing logistics. And Melania Mote, happy birthday in Bonita Springs, Florida. Happy birthday to Carri Canwella. celebrating today in the Philippines. And congratulations to Tori Chung, who's getting a new puppy, not in San Francisco, but in Oregon. Because puppy. And congratulations to Tasha Blair for finishing business school.

And a couple of Yetis who T-Boy together, Carrie Carter and Melanie Guzman, are getting married in Antigua this weekend. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Ford and Nick and I both own stock of Apple. Chipotle, Spotify, and Robin Hood. Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. Jack, rule number one about a kitchen renovation,

tell your friends about your kitchen renovation. We know the cabinets are expensive. Well, in the pandemic, a lot of companies renovated their businesses focusing on apps and digital. Robin Hood didn't have to. It was built digital from the start. Robin Hood's mobile first and intuitive design

makes investing a little easier for every stage of your investing journey. Whether you want to trade options, ETFs, or stocks through Robin Hood Financial, or buy some Bitcoin on Robin Hood crypto, you can do all that right on the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash TBOI.

Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned by or part of Robin Hood. We are not employees of Robin Hood. It's hard to leave Delta because they've upgraded me to first class. I keep operating. United States, Delaware accidentally.

It's hard to leave Delta because they actually let me on the flight and bump me into steerage class under the belly of the plane. Dude, I have this little window of like two statuses. Yeah. One of them is going to end. You're a man torn between two statuses.

It's a very relatable problem. You've, you're kind of, I mean, Jack, you're kind of like got two relationships going on right now. Do they know about each other? Well, United knows about Delta. I don't know if Delta knows about United. How are you going to tell Delta about United? I'm going to ghost them.

Look, Delta. It's not you. It's me. It's not you. It's the perks.