The Best One Yet - 🟢 “Who’s the green text?” — Apple’s iMessage bullying. MrBeast’s burger strategy. Restoration Hardware’s private hotel.

Episode Date: September 12, 2022

If you’ve ever had that guilty feeling of being the green text on an iPhone text chain, then this pod is for you: Apple and Google are battling over message bullying. MrBeast is officially the world’s top YouTube creator, but now he’s pivoting to hamburgers. And Restoration Hardware just launched a hotel for its fancy furniture — But do not call it a hotel.$AAPL $GOOG $RH $MCDFollow 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, September 12th, and today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. Let's go. T-B-O-I. Jack, I got to ask you, though, did you have a Porsche weekend or a Porsche weekend?

Porsche. You want to have a Porsche weekend yet? That's the kind of weekend you want to have. You want to pronounce like it's on the Autobahn. You want to round up. So, Jack, what's our first story for the Porsche T-boy? The biggest drama right now is playing out in your text messages. Android Green versus Apple, Blue, Blue,

I message, Jack, who you got? For our second story, Forbes just named Mr. Beast, the number one creator in the world. And yet, the YouTube star's biggest focus right now is on hamburgers. Our third and final story is Restoration Hardware. They just opened their first ever hotel. But Jackie, uh, do not call it a hotel. No, don't. They won't let you.

But it's a hotel. Before we hit that wonderful mix, though. The perfect mix to kick off a week. I love this mix, man. It's been hard keeping up with the Kardashians these days. She is a reality star. She's a Renaissance man. Once famous for being famous, Kim is now on an Elan spree of successful business ventures. She is the Da Vinci of capitalism, putting that out there.

Yes, she is still the nucleus of that popular reality TV show. But then she whipped up a $3 billion underwear startup. And then she applied her own KKW, a billion dollar makeup startup. And then she passed the baby bar exam. She had legal vibes. Fourth time's a charm. Now she can take the regular bar in California to become a lawyer. She even got someone who was wrongfully convicted off death row, not too shabby.

But now Kim Kardashian is pivoting into finance. No joke. The public figure? Yeah, she's doing private equity next. Here's the news. Kim Kardashian and a former partner at the Carlisle Group are launching their own PE firm. Forget the body suits. Kim's going full white collar on us.

This is a legitimate investment firm, Nick. It's like less Kardashian. She and clan, more credit to fault swaps. Less Kanye, more Carl Icahn. That's how you leverage a buyout, baby. Let's hit our three stories. Fifteen years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm.

They had an idea that caused the cultural was, but the best is a norm. 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. Start the show.

For our first story, there is a major green color drama in the battle for your text messages. You know it. I know it. We've all seen it. Apple is text shaming Android users in the app that you use the most. All right, Jack. Big week. A lot of texting going on. Talk to you about your group text chain for fantasy football. What's happening? First week of fantasy football, Bill scored 17 points the bill's defense. Everyone knows who the funny guy is in that text chain though, right? I mean, maybe buddy Timmy. It's Steve Harden, actually. And everyone also knows who doesn't have an iPhone in that text chain. Yeah, because Yeti's around 2013, Apple decided to brand Android text messages as the color green. Yes, Apple decided to make Android users have a

digital scarlet letter. Apple was like looking less Harry Potter, more Drackel Malfoy with that decision. And according to the Wall Street Journal, kids feel ostracized socially because of these green text messages. This is the thing in high school these days. It's real. It's proof. you can't afford the price your iPhone in some situations and you might feel embarrassed. Like if you're not wearing pink, you can't sit with us. If you're not messaging blue, you can't text with us. And guess what? Perfect timing.

Because last week at the Code Conference, the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, was confronted on this issue. He was basically asked by someone in the audience, hey, will you let Androiders like participate in I message and stop being shamed? Can you share what Tim Cook actually said on stage to that shaming question? Well, the person was talking specifically about his mom, and Tim Cook said, why don't you just buy your mom an iPhone? Excuse me, Tim Cook just went full Regina George on us. Now, Apple has been resisting, treating all messages equally because it actually helps them sell more iPhones. Yeah, get this, besties. According to Apple's internal emails revealed in court, they actually like the

current mean girls situation. Apple knows that people don't want the embarrassment of those green text messages. No, they don't. So they know people are pressured to pull. hony up a thousand bucks to join club Apple with an iPhone. Boom, that's one reason why 74% of U.S. teens own an iPhone compared to just 40% of the overall population over the age of 24. The young kids, they feel the peer pressure a bit more. Oh, do you all the rules. So, Eddie's Apple looks like the bully here.

Jack Apple is a bully. I know. They're being a bully here. You don't have to do this green thing, which means for the first time, Google, a trillion-dollar company is the underdog. Apple's just being mean out there and Google's like, you know what?

We're going to roll with this situation. Google is relishing its current situation. Its first ever underdog status. Okay, this is what Jack and I found fascinating about the story. Over our vacations, Jack and I noticed on TikTok, there was a paid ad from Google dealing with this exact situation. I screened recorded it and sent it to Nick. It was like, Nick, Google paid TikTok money to have an ad that shames Apple

for what they're doing with their green text message. I stood up, sat down, and then sat back down again in my beach chair when I saw this thing. It was a snarky ad from Google. And it basically said, hey, Apple, hey, everybody, let's get Apple to treat all text messages equally. Basically, Google was shaming Apple for shaming Google people for having Android devices. And it's not just those TikTok ads. We also saw on Google.com, Google has an ad there, shaming Apple. Shame, shame, shame, seriously.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Apple? Apple and over at Google. Apple has transformed the most basic app into your most important app. Okay, Yeti, stick with us on this one. Messaging, yeah, it's your most basic, functional utility, you commoditized app, but it's also your most used. You may use TikTok more technically, but you can live without TikTok. You can't live without your iMessage app.

Well, slowly, subtly, Apple has actually done a whole bunch to advance our expectations of what a messaging app is actually capable of. They really have. They let you reply directly to a message. They let you tap a reaction. They let you send a emoji video of your face as a singing panda bear if you want. And you can add and remove people from a text chain. And soon you can actually delete the text messages you sent on iMessage. You can edit too. And it's all synced across all your Apple devices.

So you can text from your laptop mid-conversation. Which Jack and I do, give or take a thousand million times a day. Because of all those advancements, Apple has turned basic text messaging into a brand. I messaging. Apple is not treating Android users nicely. But it's treating I message users really nicely. For our second story, Mr. Beast is a YouTube star, but he sold $100 million worth of hamburgers. Mr. Beast's burger joint has YouTubeified your food.

Okay, Jack, we're going to paraphrase Bruno Mars on this thing. We? Yeah, we are. It ain't official unless it's in Forbes, baby. Well, Forbes magazine just claimed that Mr. Beast is number one in the creator space. The number is back this up because Mr. Beast, he's a YouTube star. Jack, how many subscribers does he have these days? 104 million on YouTube. If he were a country, he'd be the 13th biggest country, like bigger than Germany, France, South Africa.

According to Forbes, he brought him $54 million last year as an online creator. That's like LeBron money. That is LeBron money and this guy's just doing YouTube videos. He's not Duncan. He rose to fame by like bootstrapping. He gave away cash and put it on video and publish it on YouTube. It all started very small. Like he gave a pizza delivery guy and a $100 tip and then videotaped his reaction.

But in a recent video, it opened like this. I created Squid Game in real life. He gave way $500 million. He did. He did that. He literally did that. No one died, but he gave away a lot of money for Squid Game. Yeah.

And when he hit 100 million subscribers or, recently. Oh, this was wild. He bought an island and then gave away the island to the winner of this fire building contest that he did on the beach of that island. Meanwhile, Jack and I are doing birthday shoutouts at the end of the podcast. That's the most we can do. In the meantime, Mr. Beast has taken that online fame and he's done kind of a shocking pivot in the last year. He launched Real Life Burgers. Yeah. Mr. Beast Burgers. But then here's the wildest part. Mr. Beast Burgers is putting up serious numbers too. It's been in business for a year now. And it's brought in a hundred million dollars in revenue, it just sold its millionth burger.

Okay, and the signature burger, Jack, can you describe this thing for us? It's a beast style smash burger with onions, brown mustard, and pickles. Interesting. I'm not a smash burger fan. That Nopa burger we mentioned, I like a thick burger. I like a thick burger. Smash burgers are consistent, though. If you're grilling at home, like, you can't really mess that up. You can mess up a Nopa burger. Yeah, consistently not as good as a thicker burger. But, Jack, we should, we should sprinkle on a little context here before we go further into Mr. Beast burger. Exhibit A. The Burger King.

Yes, let's look at Burger King and compare that to Mr. Beast Burger. Burger King did $10 billion, $10 billion in U.S. sales last year. So Burger King is about a hundred times larger than Mr. Beastberg. But Burger King's been doing this for 68 years. Mr. Beast has been doing it for one. And to sprinkle on a little more context, Mr. Beast is selling product on the same sales magnitude right now as ShakeShack, White Castle, and In-N-Out Burger. In fact, Mr. Beast is sold in more places.

Then Shake Shack, White Castle, and In-N-Out Burger, combined. And it has zero marketing budget. Mr. Beast has not paid any ads, no TV commercials. It doesn't even have drive-thru. Take that, Wendy's your move. And how did this YouTuber pull this off? Mr. Beast figured out how to scale physical food like a YouTube shorts video. That was the key.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy, Mr. Beast? Mr. Beast decentralized the food chain. Okay, Yeties. Basically, what Mr. Beast did is he applied the air. Airbnb sharing concept, but to kitchens. This burger chain is the ghost kitchen concept we've talked about before, but kicked up like eight notches. Okay, definition of a ghost kitchen. What do we got, Jack? It's a faceless kitchen that makes food just for delivery via delivery apps. Well, here's the interesting part. Mr. Beast lets any restaurant apply to cook its signature burger and join its decentralized

ghost kitchen at an entirely new scale. If you go to Mr. Beastburger.com, you're going to see an invitation to any restaurant owner that has spare burger flipping space to join this like army of Mr. Beast's burger company. And then Mr. B sends you the simple recipe and the ingredients so you can make the burgers and then you can deliver the burgers. Now, there is some risk to this business model because first of all, the quality of the burger is definitely going to vary. Yeah. There's no oversight as to the quality of the burger and any kitchen can join. Mr. Bees isn't there nitpicking the flipping technique on these guys. But there's some reward to this business model too. Yes, because in just 12 months, Mr. Beast cooked in 2,000 different kitchens on two different continents bringing in

$100 million. It's kind of democratic. 2,000 restaurants are joining in this success story. Jack, remember decentralized finance like we had with crypto? Yeah, I do. This is decentralized burger. This isn't D-5. This is D-Boo. Yeah. This is the YouTubeification of food. 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, heavily. 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 Crypt. You can do it all on the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing in Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to Robinhood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinood.com slash T-B-L-Y. 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 to kick off the week restoration hardware, the furniture store, just opened their very first hotel. But the first thing the website says is, this is not a hotel. It's our house and you are a guest. All right, Jack, I didn't tell you this when I visited you, but honestly, when I stayed at your

house, the mattress was great, I kind of wanted to sleep on the restoration hardware cloud couch. I wanted to sleep on your cloud couch. Well, it's actually now in Wilders Playroom. Yeties, that cloud couch? Yeah, it's made by restoration hardware, a $7 billion publicly traded fancy furniture retailer. Great floor lamps for your second home or your third yacht. Yeah.

Now, restoration hardware thrived during the pandemic as you. were pimping out your patio. The stock jumped 800%. But now that you're actually leaving your home, it's a different story. The stock's fallen 60%. Giving up half those gains. Well, just last week, Restoration Hardware announced their earnings a billion dollars in revenue on sconces and side tables, basically. But the highlight from last quarter was the opening of their new hotel. Their new hotel, because they restored some 1887 old New York City loft down in the meatpacking district. It's got Corinthian columns. It's got herringbone floors.

Okay, this thing basically looks like the set of season six of succession. It really does. But here's what Jack and I found fascinating about the story. Restoration Hardware opened their first hotel, but they won't call it a hotel. In fact, they say this is not a hotel. This is an overnight hospitality experience. Yeah, and this isn't a podcast. It's a recorded audio experience.

Can we roll with that, please, Jack. So, okay, if this isn't a hotel, is this supposed to be a showroom so that people can, you know, try out restoration hardware goods overnight? Can we test drive the $8,000 restoration hardware armchair before we buy it at their hotel? No. Restoration hardware says this isn't a showroom. In fact, the rooms won't even feature restoration hardware branded furniture. Okay, but this has a restaurant, right? It looks like it has a restaurant.

Yes, but it's not called the restaurant. They call it a dining room because remember, this is their home. Right. Well, it looks like it has a bar. remember seeing pictures that they had a bar too. It's called the Champaign and Caviar Room, Nick. Okay, Yetis, get this. You can't book this like a hotel room.

No, they'll tell you that the room is $3,500 a night, but you have to ask permission, and they can decide yes or no whether to let you stay. And you can't take photos around this place like you could at a typical hotel. No social media posting allowed. You can't even party in the rooms like you'd party in a regular hotel.

Strict two people per room and strict two bad. bathrooms per bedroom as well. Literally, the description of this thing starts and ends with two words, your privacy. It's not clear what Restoration Hardware is trying to do with this thing. No, it's not. But it is clear that it seems like the Fight Club.

Right, it is. First rule of Restoration Hardware Hotel. Don't talk about Restoration Hardware Hotel. Yeties, we've told you how companies make investments in joy. This appears to be an investment in intrigue. Perfectly put, Jack. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Restore? Arturation Hardware, the Furniture Company.

This story is not about a hotel, a sconce, a floor lamp, or a couch. It's about privacy. It's about a pivot to privacy. Yet he's privacy. It has long been a crucial element of tech and the digital world. But now we're noticing a trend. A broad pivot to privacy in the physical world, too. For example, last month, Jack and I were telling you about the surge in private jet travel.

Private jet companies are popping up. We also told you about Soho Club, which keeps growing to more and more cities, offering private dining. and private co-working. Okay, Restoration Hardware, they are still a publicly traded $7 billion furniture company, but they're pioneering a private hotel. That's what this is.

It's a private hotel. This is exactly as a couple Harvard Business School professors put it. The 20th century buzzword was safety. The 21st century buzzword is privacy. Basties prepare for more luxury companies pulling off this pivot to privacy. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us

to kick off the week? Google is shaming. Apple for shaming Android users with the green texts. But Apple has turned your most basic app into your most important app. For our second story, Mr. Beast rose to fame between YouTube videos. Now he's between burger buns. Yeah, he's decentralized the burger. It's deba. He's debaued. Our third and final story, Restoration Hardware just launched a private hotel that they call their house. Then they might invite you over to be a guest because privacy is the new big pivot. Now time for the best fact yet. This one sent in by Westwood from lovely Orlando Florida.

Florida, we've all seen it on the license plates. It's the sunshine state. It is the sunshine state, but like we don't want to go dark here. It really kind of should be the lightning state. Yes, because Florida gets statistically more thunderstorms than anywhere on Earth. On average, Florida has 3,500 cloud-to-ground lightning flashes per day meteorologists. Every summer in Florida, you get 8 a.m., 9 a.m. 10 a.m. isolated thunderstorm a.m.

Jack, we got a. Low pressure system moving into a high pressure system over here outside Miami. This storm's going to pass. Give it 30 minutes. Yeties, 1.2 million lightning flashes per year. That's how much lightning Florida is getting. They're called bolts, Nick. They're called bolts. Maryland does crab cakes.

Florida does thunder. Yeties, you look fantastic today. And remember, we want you to not have a Porsche week, not have a Porsche week. We want you to have a Porsche week. Celebrate the Porsche's, Nick and I'll see. tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, congratulations to Yeti, David Liu, who is on his way to Stanford GSB. And Eric and Michelle Carlson, congrats on getting married in the lovely mountains at Colorado. And happy birthday to Abyshak Arvin from Fort Worth, Texas. And Ellie Smith, last year of

her 20s over in Minneapolis. And happy birthday to Nish, Shretta, and Kathmandu, Nepal. And Augie Widmer, happy birthday over in Boulder, Colorado. And happy birthday to Maximum. Atyenza, who's having a Pete and Cat birthday in Virginia. And a happy 15th birthday to Neville Shaw in Vero Beach, Florida. And Johnny R. is celebrating a big birthday in Denver, Colorado. And a happy birthday to Daniel Veronese, Penteagua. And a big 30 celebration to Jessica Lamb on the Lower East Side, for NYC. This is Jack. I own stock of Restoration Hardware.

Nick owned stock of ShakeShack, and we both own stock of Apple and Robin Hood. 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 doll lane 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's 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.

Robind 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 Robinhood. You know, I meant to tell you, with the headset and the collared shirt, you kind of look like an NFL, assistant coach. Like a coach, assistant coach. What's his name, Gruden? Gruden. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, what's the play-by-fly over there?

You're like, you do the thing that all the coaches do, it's unnecessary. You're like, you talk the play behind like a play card. You know, you put like your board up above your face. I don't want anyone to see

if we're going to run, not pass. 42, hook and ladder, drive. Hook nine, hook nine. You're like, second story, second story.