The Best One Yet - 📅 “Year in Review 2025” — Maxxing, Robots, & Kale Collar Workers

Starting point is 00:00:00 Yetis, Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy studio before our year-in-review episode. We've only been on sale for our live show for less than two weeks. That's it. And the Yetis have already snapped up over half of the tickets. 54% of the tickets sold. Austin is pretty much sold out. New York, now or never, grab those tickets, baby. So this would be a great holiday gift for somebody.

Starting point is 00:00:22 We got links in the episode description to our first four cities of the IPO tour are in-person offering. So besties in 2026, we can't wait. to see you live. Grab your tickets now. Jack, let's hit the show. All right, Jack, here we go. Three, two. This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, December 22nd. And today's year in review episode is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yeties, let's be real. The three biggest forces in business this year, Trump, AI, and affordability. For more on that, look at every single newsletter podcast and social media post from every single day of this entire year. Breaking news, Trump and Sam Altman dominate

Starting point is 00:01:04 the inflation headlines. We're not going to cover Trump's takeover of the term sheet, AIs takeover of the markets, or the K-shaped economy. No, besties instead, Jack and I found the three biggest pop biz themes of 2025. The ones that made business news your business this year. So Jack, the three stories for today's show, what do we got on the T-boy? For our first story, the consumer trend of the year was Protein Max. Protein maxing. But Jack and I noticed that in this economy, everything is maxing. For our second story, 2025 is the year that robots got promoted. From Waymo Highway cars to Amazon warehouse bots to the human-sized robots that are doing your laundry, robots got promoted.

Starting point is 00:01:45 And our third and final story, the final theme of the year is kale collard workers. Cale collared workers. We all practice duponomics and learned to thrive in the thrift economy. But yet is, before we hit that wonderful mix. I mean, what a mix to end the year on. Love the mix, Jack. You can't remember everything that happened this year? No, it can't, Jack. What do you think?

Starting point is 00:02:04 Let's whip up the entire business year in 60 seconds. I like what you're thinking, and let's start now. Stocks hit all-time highs. An all-time high number of times. You survived the great matcha shortage. But your MX fee hit $895 bucks. Chipotle became a Ludi Vitan luxury. And Coldplay became a kiss cam.

Starting point is 00:02:23 We saw the Sydney-Sweeney stock surge while electric cars got unplugged. Bitcoin had bromantum, hitting 125K. But then Bitcoin had no momentum and fell 30%. Opening eyes started the year looking green. But ended the year with the code red. We had Harvard major grade inflation. And your email had exclamation inflation.

Starting point is 00:02:42 Mini soap wrappers became a big business. While Warner Brothers became someone's little brothers. We got the rise of mugs. Oggs for men. And ath ski gear for women. Warren Buffa announced his retirement. Jeff Bezos announced his unretirement. And Tom Brady cloned his dog.

Starting point is 00:02:58 This year we brought back the dire wolf from extinction. Yeah, but the penny became extinct. This year, we got tariff from Wakanda to Westeros. And Elon's favorite child, SpaceX, announced plans to IPO to the moon. Plus, this year, this pod had two IBOs. We did. Initial baby offerings. We both had kids.

Starting point is 00:03:18 Jack had a son named Oakley. I had a daughter named Selena. But Jack, in all this business craziness this year, there was only one certainty, you know, What it was? Cha-ching button? No, Jack. It said nothing beat a Jet 2 holiday. Darling, hold my hands.

Starting point is 00:03:34 Let's sit our three themes of the year, Jack. 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 an norm. That's it. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list.

Starting point is 00:03:54 If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show. So first, a quick word from our sponsor. For our first pop biz theme of 2025, it's a consumer trend, protein maxing. Businesses sprinkled protein on anything. But we noticed that maxing actually applies to everything this year. Yeah, ladies, if you didn't need a dozen grams of protein two times a dozen days daily, then your muscles might spontaneously liquefy. Yeah, I just saw Jimbrough say that on TikTok.

Starting point is 00:04:38 So it must be true. And no company captured that protein max in trend more than David Barr. David Barr, the protein bar startup hit a $750 million valuation this year, less than two years after it launched. Besties, in the age of Ozempic and fitness, this gold-plated protein bar, David, will give you more abs than a Renaissance sculpture. David Barr is so into protein, they started selling individually wrapped codfish fillets just to prove their devotion to the cause.

Starting point is 00:05:07 Yeah, post-Pilates, you whip up a David Bar, protein fish. But we also got the Kardashian clan involved. Chloe Cloud protein popcorn. That's right. And Jack Costco started selling 12 packs of canned protein water too. And Starbucks said the word protein 19 times in their earnings call. Starbucks, Broista is real trying to make foam protein cream a thing. But zooming out, it wasn't just protein that got maxed in 2025. No, Jack and I noticed that the term maxing actually captures the entire 2025 macro situation. Early in the early, the year we had office maxing. Bankers and tech workers were at their desk around the clock, working on weekends, trying to get to the next fundraise. 9-96. And you had valuation maxing.

Starting point is 00:05:49 SpaceX and OpenAI became the most valuable private companies in the history of business. And crucially, this whole maxing trend actually started at the top, in the White House with the trade war. You see, Besties Trump's Liberation Day tariffs eventually hit 145% for China. What would you call that, Jack? Financial maxing? Yeah, policy maxing. I like it. Everyone got tariffed. Even a remote, uninhabited island with just penguins on it got tariffs. We're talking maximalist trade policies, maximalist communication strategies, maximalist starting points with every negotiation. That strategy trickled down to the whole economy this year.

Starting point is 00:06:25 And yeties, that tariff maxing actually brought in maximum tariff revenue as well. And we're apparently about to see maximum tax returns too. So, Jack, let me go minimalist on this and add up all the maximalist. we got here. So we started the year with protein maxing codfish. We continued the year with trade war maxing penguins. And we're ending the year with everything maxing, our takeaway. Hey, yeah, don't you want to point out the conflict of interest? Your son's name is Max? Yeah, I was going to say that for the disclosures at the end of the pod, Jack. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are maxing and everything in this economy? The result of

Starting point is 00:06:59 everything maxing is the casino economy. Yeties, the most maxed industry we saw this year? gambling. Ten years ago, gambling was legal in just Vegas. Then sports betting became legal in half the states. But today, prediction markets are legal everywhere. Call she and Polly Market, the top two prediction startups each past $10 billion valuations this year. And Robin Hood stock hit an all-time high this year after launching prediction markets in their app. Earnings calls. They now have prediction markets on whether a CEO will mention specific words. When Michigan's head football coach got fired, immediately a prediction market got created about who would replace him. We even saw multiple pro athletes get in trouble for insider trading

Starting point is 00:07:40 sports style. In 2025, investing, betting, and predicting all got mixed up together to the max. So the result betsy's was the casino economy, and we'll see how it plays out next year. For our second pop business theme of 2025, robots got promoted. Robotaxies, robofactories, and humanoid robots went from thing of the future to thing of right now. Now, Jack, if we're going to tell the story, you want to sprinkle on a little bit of personal context for us over there? So I went to business and public policy school in 2016. Yeah. And one of the reasons I chose Michigan is because I was pumped about self-driving cars.

Starting point is 00:08:20 Yeah, this sounds like a good LinkedIn post. Why don't you continue, Jack? Like Ann Arbor, it was right in Detroit's backyard. It seemed then that our autonomous Robotaxy future was right around the corner. Exciting times. But besties, just like every Uber and Lyft ride that you hail, the industry's ETA for self-driving was way off. Yeah, the estimate was way off on that. By about nine years. Yeah, well, nine years after Jack first arrived at the University of Michigan, in 2025, self-driving cars

Starting point is 00:08:48 finally went mainstream. Waymo is in five U.S. cities with 20 more cities announced for next year. Tesla is in two cities with robotaxis, and Zook's also in two cities right now. And according to Google, their waymos are way more safer, aren't they? Yeah, it turns out waymoes are involved in 90% fewer accidents than human-driven cars. We just got the data last month. Nick and I have a legendary prediction about self-driving that is in next week's CNN interview, which is publishing on Christmas Eve, by the way, on CNN, but it comes to our pod next week. Okay, but Jack, in the meantime, kind of ironic that the most recent robot story that we did was the bankruptcy of I-Robot. I know. It's a booming industry, but the OG robot company went bankrupt this year.

Starting point is 00:09:33 Yeah, so RIP to the Rumba, but besties, for every other business, robots are booming right now, especially the blue collar bots. In October, Nick and I covered the bombshell report in the New York Times about Amazon's master plan. Amazon going all in on robotics. Now, Amazon already has one million robots rolling around their warehouses and dish and packages in their distribution network. Okay, Jack, but Amazon is reportedly planning to replace 600,000 human warehouse workers by 2033 with robots. That's the New York Times scoop that was pretty freaky sounding. But it ain't just Amazon, Jack, remember Tesla's drive-in diner in lovely Los Angeles?

Starting point is 00:10:16 We covered over the summer? It's got a kitchen operated by humanoid robots that are serving French fries and burgers. And Jack, why has Palantir stock 10xed in the last two years? In part because of robotics. Palantir's tech helps defense companies replace human-operated fighter jets and submarines with autonomous ones. So there are enterprise robots. There are B2B bots.

Starting point is 00:10:35 every day we hustling bots. Doing the work for corporations or government agencies. They're all doing that already. But Nick, what about robots we can use? You're talking Butler robots, Jack? Here, I got you. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the robot economy?

Starting point is 00:10:52 Home robots still can't pass the laundry test. Yeties, Jack and I actually cover two non-Tesla humanoid robot companies just this year, Figure AI and OneX Technologies. But it's funny, those two companies plus Tesla, they all make humanoid robots that look exactly the same. They look just like the robots from the movie I Robot. Yeah. But with blank faces instead of like a face that's looking at you. We see, Will Smith. Well, each of these companies promises to do work around the house with the robots

Starting point is 00:11:20 that we don't want to do, the dishes, the cleaning, the laundry. And if they could, Nick, that'd be a huge quality of life booster for people who can afford one. Yeah. But unfortunately, they can't yet. Homebots could unlock precious hours of the day for all of us who are time poor. The hours you spend cleaning those dishes and drying those dryer racks could be spent playing with your kids, learning a new instrument, launching a new side hustle. Jack prefers the sacks, but besties were just not there yet. From our research this year,

Starting point is 00:11:50 home robots just don't have the dexterity to pass the laundry test quite yet. That's a theme we'll have to save for 2026 or beyond. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final pop biz theme of the, the year, it's slop bowls and kale collar workers. What did career anxious and budget pinch millennials do this year? We traded down so that we could live it up. Yeti's full disclosure, this is Nick, that is Jack, and we both own shares of Chipotle. We're long-term investors, actually. We are. We loved the build-your-own bull innovation of fast casual. So basically we put our

Starting point is 00:12:29 money where our mouth is on that one. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. Now, we later interviewed the co-founder of Sweet Green and I, Jack, used to own stock of Kava for at least a while. this year. Big hummus craving, but those three fast casual chains have all stopped growing. In fact, they started shrinking in 2025. Stocks in Chipotle, Kava, and Sweet Green fell by 37, 50, and 78% this year. Like broiled broccoli, like spinach and a saute pan. It all just shrank. And why did this happen? Well, not because they're slop balls, which Jack and I consider to be a derogatory term, by the way. I don't like that term. I don't agree with that term. I'm still a fan of eating fast casual. Jack's actually offended by that term. The reason is because these bowls are expensive.

Starting point is 00:13:15 And anxious white collar workers don't need to pay 18 bucks for your daily lunch. That's why we call the customers of these fast casual restaurants kale collar workers. And fascinatingly, according to our T-Boy data, many of you are in fact kale collar workers. Kale collar workers, your 20 to 40-somethings living in cities, working in office buildings, your computer most of the day. You order an efficient salad most days for lunch, you might even have named your daughter, Kale. Perhaps. Or you will. Now, unfortunately, if you're a Kale call worker, you're also anxious about the future and your job because of AI. That's right. You're afraid your company has taken corporate OZempic and is about to trim the head count by 10%. Plus,

Starting point is 00:13:54 your taxes, your rent, your babysitter prices, they're all higher than ever. There's a reason affordability is now a section on every politician's campaign website. And for the same reason, You're probably finding lower-priced choices for various things in your life right now. We're talking microchanges, like cutting some streaming subscriptions or bumming your buddy's Netflix password again. Or driving to the local ski resort instead of flying to Colorado like you used to. Or buying a used car instead of a new car. And brown bagging leftovers to work instead of buying Chipotle, sweet green, or cova balls.

Starting point is 00:14:25 Best, he's added all up in Zillennials in this knowledge economy, aka the kale collar workers, are trading down on everything. Makes a lot of sense. Nick and I are doing it too. But we're trading up on other things. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies listening to this pot? It wasn't just lunch choices. Kale collar workers turned to the thrift economy.

Starting point is 00:14:45 Yeah, it is. In this economy, prices are still way up, even if inflation has remained calm. We've adapted to the inflation era by looking at what we have and asking what do we really need. Like buying and selling clothes on Threatup, whose secondhand clothing stock is up 500% this year. And we've also done it by embracing dupes more often. Lower-priced versions of high-end things have totally gone mainstream. Plus, Jack, you got the white label phenomenon. Trader Joe's Kirkland-branded products.

Starting point is 00:15:11 They are the rage because they're lower-priced. And T.J. Max? Yeah, it stocks at an all-time high again. It's now worth seven times more than Lulu Lemon. Basties, in 2025, Americans fully embraced Duponomics and the thrift economy. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the end of 2025? Protein maxing was a trend that became everything, maxing across the whole economy. And the result of everything maxing, it's the casino economy. For our second story, robots got promoted in 2025. This was the year robotaxies and business

Starting point is 00:15:46 robotics finally arrived. But home robots still can't pass the laundry test. At our third and final story, slot bowls got spiked in the stock market because kale collar workers are feeling the squeeze. The winners of this trend, it's the dupes and the thriftinomics. Now time for the best fact yet. This one whipped up by Jack and me, and it's the term of the year. What is it, Jack? We're not Webster's dictionary. We're not Miriam or Oxford either. And we're definitely not Dictionary.com. But flooding the zone is what 2025 was all about. Yeah, flooding the zone was the term of the year. Again, this one started in the White House, but trickled down to Silicon Valley and the rest of business. Remember, Sam Altman flooded the zone with a whole bunch of product launches this year.

Starting point is 00:16:29 And each of those new products flooded the zone with AI Slop. AI musicians flooded Spotify with a much AI country music. And one audio startup flooded the zone with 5,000 AI podcast per week. Now, Jack, we should also point out some positive context here. I don't feel like I'm drowning in slop quite yet. My music, the things I watch on TV, my feeds, it's all human made from what I can tell. But technically, the floodgates for sloppification are open now. And we promise this pod will be slop free in 2026. And 27? Yeah, and beyond. No slopping on the pod. Yeties, you have looked fantastic this year. Jack, I know you just got a haircut.

Starting point is 00:17:11 You were glowing over there, too, man. I don't know, dude. I'm not too happy with this haircut. I know you don't like this one, but... Don't look at me on YouTube. But besties, we love being with you all year. And we would also love if you could H-Y-H-T-B-O-I over the holidays while you're with your family and friends.

Starting point is 00:17:28 The way we grow is when you tell your friends. And so if you got a buddy looking for a new podcast, morning routine, New Year's resolution kind of thing, this show should be sent to them. Nothing pairs better with a bowl of morning oatmeal than the best one yet. So, Yetis, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Anything else I'm missing Nick? And good luck with that Jet 2 holiday. Jack and I, I'll see you in the new year.

Starting point is 00:17:53 And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti, Daisy Gonzalez down in lovely Jefferson, Georgia. And happy birthday to Elle Sheffron, who's turning 21 in Boko, Rotone, Florida. Have a blast, and Roi Diall down in Louisiana is celebrating the best birthday yet. Happy 12th birthday to Dario in beautiful Dearborn Michigan. And Samantha Arteaga is turning 34 years old in Everett, Washington. Happy birthday Samantha. Happy birthday to Nick Copperood, who's turning 29 in Chicago. And Atlas Samuel, happy third birthday partying down in Miami.

Starting point is 00:18:30 Tea Boy City on your Atlas. Welcome to Miami. And a big shout out to our buddy Vinnie Sabatino in Naples, Florida, who just finished his eighth race from half marathons to Spartans. I think that's like four marathons, Jack. And Yule Ruiz just graduated from FIUUES with a full-time offer from UBS.

Starting point is 00:18:48 Congrats Yulee. Great math on that marathon calculation, by the way. And Monty Den, happy 60th birthday over in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Make it a tea boy. And a happy new year birthday to Ubbyshake in Boston, Massachusetts. Just as I've had Boston.

Starting point is 00:19:03 And if you want to get a shout out on this pod in the new year, just tap the link on our episode description, and we'll get you on the show. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix, Nick on stock of Lou Lemon,

Starting point is 00:19:16 and we both on stock of Chipotle and Robin Hood, as well as some Bitcoin. Bitcoin, then Ben.

The Best One Yet - 📅 “Year in Review 2025” — Maxxing, Robots, & Kale Collar Workers

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