The Best One Yet - ⚰️ “The Death Industry” — T-Swift’s casket startup. NYC Salary Transparency. Twitter’s wild weekend.

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

A coffin startup made a 2-minute cameo in a Taylor Swift video… because death is also a Profit Puppy. New York City just enacted its first pay transparency law (so, yeah, we basically know how much money you make). And the wildest place in business right now is Twitter Headquarters: “Finish this new tweet thing in 72 hours or you’re fired.”$HI $MATW $TSLAFollow 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 Tuesday, T-Boo Tuesday, November 1st, and today's pod is the best one yet. I don't even know what I'm doing over here. I'm so excited. I don't know, but I like it. But Jack, before we hit the pod, do you want to apologize to the trick-or-treaters out there? Excuse me?

I think you know what I'm talking about from yesterday's pod. Ah, Snickers. Yeah, Snickers. Let's just get it out there. Let's just get it out there, man. The best friend of my childhood is not owned by Hershey's Corporation. Yeties yesterday we said Snickers is owned by Hershey. Turns out it's owned by Mars.

I just got beat up by a couple of M&Ms for that mistake. There is no Snickers ride over at the Hershey Park. Let's just put it that way. Jack, what's our first story for the T-boy? Did you notice that funny thing in T-Swift's latest music video? It's a coffin startup. A coffin startup's. Yeti's coffins and caskets.

We got to talk about the death economy. For our second story, New York City just enacted the biggest salary transparency law. in the country. Get this. In the Big Apple, everyone now knows how much you get paid. And our third and final story is the wildest place in business right now. The third floor of Twitter H-Q. Build a new Twitter

in 72 hours, or you're fired. But Yeties, before we hit that fantastic mix. Jack, can I just say, a absolutely wild mix. I love this mix, man. Nick, do you wait in line or do you wait online? It's a good question, Jack. Different terms for the exact same thing. Wishing you were somewhere else.

Yetis, get this. It turns out we spend, on average, six months of all our lives waiting online. That's 182 full days in your lifetime where you're just standing next to people moving a few steps every few minutes. Jack, that is half a year of your life. We could have been potting together. Instead, we are stating in line, waiting for a latte. But one week from today, waiting in line is actually an honor and a privilege. Yet he's one week from today.

It is your American right and patriotic duty to wait online. Because this line is the voting line. Basties, one week from today are the midterm elections. One week from today, we the people get to stand in line and cast our vote. Now, we should sprinkle on a little context here. Full disclosure, Jack? Yeah. Nick and I were skipping the line.

Yeah, we did our ballots early. We did an absentee ballot situation. Yeah, we didn't like splurge on some Disney skip the line past that your uncle has. Yeah, it is if you got an earlier absentee ballot situation, you may want to just do it. Yeah, just do it. But if you do wait until next Tuesday, you're going to be standing in line. Now we know how you're going to feel. It's going to be long and delayed and painful and you maybe probably have to pee.

You're definitely going to have to pee. You absolutely are going to have to pee. But no line on which you will wait will have more of an impact on other people than this line. Jack, no other line is waded in from C to shining C like this line. The voting line. One week from today, it's go time, baby. And you know what? Yeah, Jack.

Eddie's who tag us on Insta waiting in line, we're going to share them on our account. Hey, besties. If you tag us with one of those cheesy I voted stickers, you know what? We'll put you in our Instagram story. This is the only line we get to stand. Jack, let's hit on three stories. We've seen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dawn. They had an idea that caused a cultural 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. For our first story, the winner of Taylor Swift's brand new Midnight's album is... A coffin startup? So we just jumped in T-boy style into the death economy. Okay, Yetis, if you haven't yet, get involved.

Jump into Taylor Swift's anti-hero. How many views does this thing have, Jack? On YouTube, it has 42 million views. Oh, it's me. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me. Wow. This is also her 11th album, by the way, that has reached number one.

But Jack, the real winner of that one music video, It wasn't really T Swift, was it? It was Titan's profit puppy is on the screen in this music video for two whole minutes. It's me. Hi, I'm a coffin startup and I won this music video. It's me. Titan, it's a directed consumer coffin startup. It cuts the funeral home middleman out of the equation.

It does. It's like a Casper mattress, but for a really long sleep. For your longest sleep. It's funny. The direct-to-consumer industry began with mattresses. kind of ends with mattresses too in a different way. Titan describes its product less like a coffin though and more like a restoration hardware sofa.

All right. He's get this. Jack and I jumped in T-boy style. Here's how they describe it. A $1,000 and over-series coffin with the rose gold finish, a sunburst interior, and an adjustable bed. Sales quintupled for Titan in the past year because during the pandemic, people could buy anything online and they tried it out. He tested the limits.

If you can buy a five-foot-tall fig tree succulent online, why can't Can you buy a coffin shack? A fig tree's not a succulent, back. Well, Jack, if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Now, yet he's here's for Jack and I find fascinating about this coffin startup. The most recession proof of all industries? What is it, Jack? It's not McDonald's, not booze, or bankruptcy lawyers.

It is death. It's death. The only certainty in life is literally death. Death has the most predictable demand of all industries. Yeah, there's like no certainty, Jack, that we're going to buy a Costco hot dog or like an Irme's Supremium handbag next week. But there is certainty that we're all going to perish. Yeah, there is.

A majority of us, it turns out, we end up in a casket. We don't even get cremated. So let's turn over to Titans caskets. They're disrupting an industry that's also old as death. Yeah, it turns out coffins are a $20 billion a year industry generating huge profits because it's dominated by two players. Two companies control 80% of the American coffin market, and they're both publicly traded companies.

All right, Jack, what's the first coffin? legend over here. Hillingbrand, the $3 billion company based in Indiana. And number two, who we got, Jack? Matthews, a Pennsylvania company who's also a hundred years old doing the coffin business. Pumping out coffins for longer than a century. Because, like, look, if we all die, the odds are one out of two of these is going to lay us to rest. But these two never die. No, they don't. These two companies just generate profits for eternity. Okay, so Jack, let's sprinkle on some final context here. We've got two monopolistic companies in an industry that's 100 years old. It's a duopoly that's never

die. It feels like it's ripe for disruption. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the death industry? Where there's mystery, there's margin. Yet he's not only his death recession proof, but the death industry is also a profit puppy. Funeral home

financials are very funky because they're mysteriously indirect and you as the customer have no idea what's going on. Those two old coffin companies, they sell to a funeral home at a wholesale price. And that funeral home then sells to at a 3 to 5x markup at a retail price. And you, the grief-ridden family member, pays a median $7.8,000 per coffin in this country,

according to Bloomberg. I mean, Jack, even if your cat died, you're not going to negotiate the price of that cat pet coffin. No, you're mourning. Well, just by cutting out that funeral home middleman, Titan says it can offer 75% lower prices on those caskets. What the living really need is cut out the mystery of casket buying. Because where there's mystery, there's margin. And where there's margin, there could be disruption. For our second story, New York City just became the leader in pay transparency.

Employers don't want this? No, they don't. Which is why employees want this. Oh, Jack, we talk about the juiciest of juicy office gossip these days. What's number one? Are Carol and Chris from accounting a couple? They're like a thing? Are they a thing?

The second juiciest thing in the office is, who can, clog the toilet on the seventh floor. And the third, juiciest piece of office gossip. What is it, Jack? How much is everyone getting paid? It is so awkward. Yeties, the Big Apple is now taking that top secret HR info, and they're making it public. A new line, defective today in the five boroughs of New York,

requires that any company who posts a job also posts the base salary range with that job. From Gooey Sushi on the Lower East side to Goldman Sachs, if you're a New York company, with more than four workers, you got to show pay range in that job posting. Even if the jobs are remote or hybrid. Yeah. Show me the money. Or else you're going to have to pay a $250,000 fine. So I don't want to see any more competitive pay and generous benefits.

Jack, you don't have to worry. You will never again see commensurate with experience on that job posting. Renumeration. Don't say remuneration ever. Don't even know what that means. Only hard numbers. That's what you're going to see on the job postings. Yet he's paid.

is the greatest social corporate stigma of our lives. Besties, think about it. Your friends know how much you pay in rent. They know how much you just splurged on dinner. And yet, no one has any idea how much you get paid. Unless you're really open about that kind of thing. Either way, here is the theory driving the new pay transparency phenomenon. The more transparent pay is, the more fair it is.

So it's already been well documented that men are just more likely to negotiate a salary than women are. It just happens more often. It's also well documented that there's a big pay discrepancy. between white people and people of color, also partially because of the negotiation thing. Ipso facto, it's often the negotiating skills that end up determining someone's pay, often more than anything. When pay should be more determined by skills and work ethic. And when salaries aren't posted and like hidden in a black box, it's the better connected people who end up getting the inside scoop. The inside scoop on how much pay potential there is here.

Now you know that information is power. It's just like a fundamental rule. So posting pay and making it public should make it more fair for all applicants. And get this, Yeti's. New York City is just the start because there's already momentum growing around the pay transparency movement. Colorado has it already. California's getting it soon. It's like Domino's following. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who know how much we're all getting paid?

The transition is hard, but the data shows the destination is worth it. Yeti's employees just don't want pay info to be public. And Jack, how do we know that? Because they hide it. Yeah, they fight it. They fight really hard to keep it hidden. But some individual companies have adopted pay transparency already. And here is what those first movers saw.

They saw that the hardest part is the transition. Exactly. Going from no transparency to all transparency overnight. And that transition leads to some awkward conversation. HR teams are going to get a lot of emails from frustrated employees who suddenly realize they think they're underpaid. Jack, there may be a little resentment between Carol and Chris over an accounting. They may be a thing, but,

now there's some resentment. So if the hardest part is the transition, the easier part ends up being the destination. Data from those first movers show that hiring improves once you implement pay transparency. Yeah, and people are more likely to apply for jobs if they see what the salaries are in the job post. Job board saw a 30% jump in applications for roles that show pay. So yet he's pay transparency. It hits at our number one most uncomfortable social corporate stigma. Unless you're that person that's really open to this kind of thing. But it turns out the transition is harder than the destination. Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. A lot of Yetis don't realize how much prep work goes into this pod. We spend hours every morning jumping in T-boy style to earnings reports, CEO tweets, breaking news,

heaven. Jack and I are toggling tabs like you toggled IM Convo's in 2004. Having eight tabs open can be stressful. You don't need that, especially when invest. Robin Hood offers it all in one app. Whether you want to trade options, ETFs, or stocks through Robin Hood Financial, or you want to buy some Bitcoin on Robin Hood Crypto. You can do it all on the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing in Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's robinood.com slash TBOY.

Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned or part of Robin Hood. We are not employees of Robin Hood. For our third and final story, the most action-packed place in business. this right now isn't Wall Street. It's Twitter headquarters, third floor under Elon Musk. Pressure creates diamonds. But pressure can also break the thing. Okay. Now, Yeties. Jack and I should point out, Elon Musk has only owned Twitter for two full business days, but technically he's

owned Twitter for five full Elon days. Yeah. A lot can happen in five full Elon days. All right. First, the night Elon took over, he dismissed the CEO and other top Twitter executive. That was kind of expected. though, it's widely reported that Elon is urgently laying off another 25% of the workforce. Now, the timing's interesting here because this would be laying people off right before they're owed their guaranteed bonuses. So fewer workers at Twitter, but Elon has filled those empty employee parking spots with Teslas.

With 50 Tesla cars. Literally the cars. Because Tesla employees have been summoned from Palo Alto over to San Francisco to, like, fix Twitter. Like a flock of Tesla showed up at the Twitter headquarters in downtown San Francisco. No joke. The cavalry arrived. Now, those Elon Tesla techies are combing through the

coding at Twitter as we pod right now. Get this. Elon apparently told an engineer to print the entire Twitter code like the whole app. To take the coding that's online and print it out physically to show how way too long that code is. He wanted to show how much waste

there was in Twitter's code, but he also created a whole bunch of wasted paper. Now yet he's here's where things get interesting. So Elon spent his first 120 hours of owning Twitter at Twitter headquarters. Since he spent time on Twitter, the app. Exactly, Jack. So first, Elon tweeted a link to a baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's home.

Then he deleted that tweet without explaining it. And then he started posting some polls on Twitter, which were specifically about what he should be doing at Twitter. So he's basically crowdsourcing ideas from Twitter. on how to improve Twitter. For example, he asked, should Twitter bring back Vine? Vine. Vine.

Twitter's version of TikTok that they invented like 10 years ago before TikTok was the thing. But then they shut it down. Which was too bad on the timing because TikTok's big. Like, obviously, yeah, they should bring back Vine. Another poll that they did. How much should Twitter charge people to get that verified blue checkmark?

Elon replied to that, tweeted poll. Interesting. So then on Sunday, he told the team of not fire our Twitter employees, you know what? We want you to build that paid blue checkmark verification ASAP. Right. He gave them one week to start a system on Twitter that would charge people up to 20 bucks a month to get a blue checkmark or to keep the one you already have.

And if that blue checkmark revenue source isn't built by November 7th, apparently they're all fired, according to reporting by the verge. Chaos and change. That is what is happening at Twitter. And honestly, it does kind of feel very much like the White House, immediately after the Trump election check. This feels like January 2017. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Twitter?

Pressure can create diamonds or it can shatter everything. Yet he's, Elon has had huge success at Tesla and SpaceX by putting immense pressure on the staff. Crazy deadlines, sleeping on the floor at the factory, big public ultimatums. That's what Elon does. And honestly, Elon has created some of the most valuable diamonds in the world through that pressure. But building physical things isn't the same as building a digital town square. So the way Elon's Twitter could fail is through defections because of that pressure. Some advertisers have already defected from using Twitter going forward.

Big chunk of Hollywood has deleted their accounts defecting Twitter. Employees could say, I'm not sleeping at Twitter HQ for this guy. I'm quitting. So the thrilling part about following this whole story is that Elon's pressure could create another diamond, or it could shatter. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? One of Titans' coffins got a two-minute cameo in a Taylor Swift video. Where there's mystery, there's margin. And where there's margin, there could be disruption. For our second story, starting today, all jobs posted in New York City must show the pay rain.

Pay transparency. It looks like the transition's tough, but the destination is worth it. Our third and final story, a lot is happening at Twitter. And Elon is applying a ton of pressure. Which could create another diamond or it could shatter it. Now, time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by legendary Yeti, Savannah Westwood from lovely Orlando. Last week, we covered Chipotle's earnings report.

We did. Inevitably, we covered avocado prices. Guac is still extra, yada, yada, yada. Now it's extra extra. But Savannah wants to point out a common misconception. Yeti's avocado. When you're looking at that food pyramid, don't put it as a veggie because it is a fruit. It's a fruit, baby.

to call it millennial butter, right? We did. We did. So it's actually neither a dairy nor a veggie. It's a fruit. The real misconception is that it's a dairy. Technically, Yetis, the avocado is considered a single seeded berry. Just like peaches, plums, and cherries. Yeah. And avocados got a bunch of meat and a big pit. One seed, all berries, still extra.

Yeties, even if you are shaking off that kit cat hangover and you got Reese's all up in your mouth, you look fantastic. Even if you had a great Snickers faux pa, like me in the pod yesterday. You still look great. Jack and I want you to H-Y-H-T-B-O-I, and we'll see you tomorrow. Have you had the best one yet? If you know, you know.

And before we go, happy birthday to Casey Anderson over in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And happy birthday to Juan Jose Okaris in Portland, Oregon. And Yusufusufus over in the United Arab Emirates has got a birthday, living large, over in Dubai. Happy 50th birthday to Ronica Gie Graves, who's celebrating a Disney World, hopefully, with one of those cut the line passes. And a turkey leg. And Ziod Mamba,

happy birthday in Jersey City, New Jersey. Happy 32nd to Paul the Silver Fox Lowe in Quincy Mass. Just south of Boston. And David Huong, turning 32. Happy birthday, but he's at a fancy business dinner tonight, Jack. Oh.

And no one at the dinner knows it's his birthday, so hopefully they now know it's his birthday. Hopefully it's the Olive Garden and the whole staff comes over and sink. And just a thank you and shout out to Yeti Grand Weeks from Utah who made a T-boy Jack O'Lander. like an artist.

He didn't carve that thing. No, he didn't. But he painted the hell out of it. It's the new Mona Lisa. It's a T-boy punk. This is Jack. I own stock of Disney and Nick and I both own stock

of Tripotle and Robin Hood. And Twitter stock doesn't exist anymore. Now, a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. A lot of you listen to our show while you're driving. Two hands on the wheel. Keep it 10 and 2.

You might be cruising, Chris. No rush. Stay in the right lane. Or you might be Dahlene from Duncan, dotting from lane to lane. And there are different drivers on the road. They're different investors too. Maybe you're cruising down the long-term lane with stock investing,

or maybe you're a more advanced full-speed trader. Well, the Robin Hood app helps put you in the driver seat wherever you're at in your investing journey. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robinood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y. 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, and we are not employees of Robin Hood. I just wasn't super articulate and I'm a little self-conscious that my words won't be

heard. That's no problem. Like I didn't say Taylor Swift well. I should just say T Swift. I should just say T. Swift. It made the sentence really hard to say Taylor Swift's newest. Hi, I'm the problem. It's me.