The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - I Built a $250K Tool During the Super Bowl without Coding.⏐Holdco Bros Discuss! Ep. #137

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

HoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, Nik and I talk about GPT Operator, Nik shares his insights on preparing for AI agents with standard operating procedures, treating them like new employees. I recount building a tool with Replit for a friend, potentially adding seven figures in value. I also share insights from spending seven hours with a West Texas oil billionaire, emphasizing long-term thinking and valuing the thought process over correct answers. Learn more about Nik here: http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnikLinks and Resources:https://replit.com https://www.cursor.com Share your ideas with us:[e-mail]@cofounders.comTimestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Introduction to Operator Usage01:27 Experimenting with Multiple AI Tools04:44 Preparing for AI Agents08:04 Building a High-Value AI Tool13:56 Insights from a Billionaire17:18 The Shared Office Dynamic17:59 Overqualified Team Members18:38 Engaging and Direct Leadership19:50 First Impressions and Office Culture22:12 Action-Oriented Decision Making23:36 Open Communication and Transparency27:34 Long-Term Vision and Thinking29:07 Validating Through Thought Processes32:35 Encouraging Action and Sharing33:37 Different Paths to Success

Something that he can charge 250 grand a year for, a tool that I built with software that cost $20 a month. By the time I left his house for the Super Bowl, I was fiddling with it for like an hour and a half. I just built a tool that made me seven figures in an hour and a half. Bye. Everything I learned while trapped in a small office with a West Texas oil billionaire. He said to me, Chris, what if I paid you X amount of dollars a year to work here? Like completely took me off guard. 300,000 year?

$700,000? Stop me, Chris. A million dollars a year? Chris? One thing on Operator I wanted to ask you. You had a video. I haven't watched the video, but it was like operators pushing operators. So I had asked you about this first.

And I was like, can you have an operator operating an operator? And at first you're like, no, we can't do that. But then I saw you had a video that it was like, no, you can do that. So can you do it? Mm-hmm. So. Oh, my friend, you are so dirty. I haven't asked Operator to operate operator.

But I have asked Operator to log into my chat GPT account and use chat GPT. It worked. But this, I'm going to give you my login to chat GPT. And I want you to see if you can use operator to use my operator. Oh, that's going to be so cool.

I'll try it on my own account first. I don't think it will work. But dude, that's a perfect lead in. So one thing I'm going to do here soon is there's a bunch of, you know, AI enabled app builders. Cursor, replet, bolt.

There's a bunch of them. I can't even remember them all. I want, this is what I'm going to do. I know I can have six operator tabs open at once. So I'm going to take six cursors and replets of the world and take one idea. Like, I want you to make me a calorie counter app, a web app that counts calories where I can upload a picture of food and it will tell me how many calories. That's a thing.

I know AI can do this. There's a bunch of apps that do that. Okay. I'm going to tell it to give the same prompt to all six at the same time run concurrently. And I'm going to tell it to work through all the bugs and see which one can build this app for me without any intervention for me whatsoever. That makes sense? It does make sense. The only thing I'm like thinking of is right now with operator, it's asynchronous.

It's like a human, right? Like they've got to go individually one by one. So are you saying it would go to Replit, tell Replit, do X, Y, Z things. And then while replet's running in the background, it would go to the next tab and say, I'm what they call an idiot. Can you explain it to me? Yes, I'm saying I've already tested this and you can have six operators running in six different tabs at the same time.

So I'm going to take one prompt to operator and it's going to say, you know, go to cursor and here's the prompt, build this app. And then I'll just paste that same prompt and swap out cursor with bolt, with replet, with all the others and have it just go all six at once. And then compare them. Yeah. Yeah. And then see which one does the best, which one needs the least amount of intervention

to build that app. Oh, interesting. Then I learn multiple things. Then I learn which of those six platforms I like the best. And I learn which of those six platforms works the nicest with operator. If you haven't used a replica, like you get like it is your babysitting it the whole time. You don't just say build an app and it builds an app. It breaks and it breaks and then it fixes something and then it goes back and it breaks it again.

But like you'll get there. You will get there. But how well does operator massage it? Dude, I know we're getting ahead of ourselves here. How cool would it be though? So you do that. You build the six. They're all open to different tabs.

It produces them. And then you have six more tabs. The same six tabs. Cool. Now you have the app. It's the same prompt. I want you to execute these tasks on this app. and tell me about your user experience

or like give me how long it took to do X, Y, Z things. So then you're getting qualitative analysis as well from operator to tell you which one of these apps performs better with speed, with quality, responsiveness, UI, like whatever you want to test it on. And then you'll have a data set

that you can look at and compare that's not just you going and using it and saying like, oh, which one do I like the best, but like operator giving you actual data to tell you which one's the best. That would be super interesting. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. It's meta, bro.

Am I on ayahuasca right now? Oh my gosh, dude. It's freaking better. So I had an idea this week. I wrote it down to myself and I want to just tell it to you to get your opinion on it. I've been thinking a lot about this stuff we both have. And in particular, particular, it's like, how do I use agents? How do I prepare for agents? Some people will prepare,

some people won't prepare. And I wrote this post. I haven't posted it yet, but I wrote this down. And I want to just read it to you. Hopefully it's not too boring. And then get your opinion. Ready? Okay. So right now people are using AI to essentially make better decisions. They're using it as a teacher, general counsel, a sounding board, a mentor. It's effectively a better version of Google. But soon it's going to change. It's going to change from being a a tool to an extension of you, an employee, a representative, an agent making decisions on your behalf, right? We know that. So anyways, I've been thinking a lot about how you get ready for it. And I think implementing an agent is going to look a lot like onboarding an employee.

You're going to need SOPs. And so an SOP, standard operating procedure, how does this work, right? What do you do? What is the function? What is the process, et cetera? You're going to need an orientation process. You're going to need onboarding. And you're going to need continued. continuing oversight. So, like, in my mind, the best way to prepare for these agents is to create the onboarding as if it was a human employee. Like, don't think of it as, oh, I got an agent now, like, just do your thing. That's how they're going to be trained. They're going to be trained on like SOPs from the last 10, 20 years, right? Yeah. That's the language it speaks. Exactly. And if you have employees now or you have processes now, document them, because that's how

you're going to get the agent up to speed. Like, think of it as a human employee that's going to be taking a function. It's not just going to know. Like, yes, it's very smart. But you can take the smartest person in the world, plop them into a health care company in the billing department and be like, all right, bill for me now. They're not going to know what to do. They don't know what system to go to, what the EMR is, how to log in, who the provider

is, what they pay, what they bill, how to apply it. Like, they don't know. They have to be trained on that stuff. So I think this framework for me was a blipel moment. treat these processes as SOPs, document them, and then you're going to treat an agent just the same way you would treat a new employee. You're going to have to train them. So have these things ready. What do you think? Absolutely. 100% agree. That makes sense. Right. Give me 14 of them right now.

Well, and what's fun is like you and I have been doing that, right? We've been creating our custom our own custom GPTs. We have been creating our own SOPs. Like we're getting to the point now where it's like, oh, we understand. It's not a set it and forget it type of thing. We have to train the system, the LLM on what it's supposed to do. So like I think it just makes natural sense to us now. But for most people, it's not. And I think they need to reframe, oh, this isn't just a computer that just figures it out. It's a new employee. Train the employee. And like you said, when we're using operator right now, it's like, I got to double check it. You got to try. to break it. Did it actually do what you said it was going to do? Like you've got to do oversight.

You've got to see how it's performing. It's not just, oh, cool, it's going to sit there and be perfect forever. Like, you're going to have to still oversee it in some capacity. Yeah. Dude, I've got another use case that I meant to talk about for Replit, something that I did the other day. You ready? Okay. Yeah. So we have a mutual friend. I'm not going to name him to protect his identity. So we went over there to watch the Super Bowl. So we're saying, and he says, hey, I want to show me something on Repplet. Bring your MacBook. So I bring my MacBook. We're sitting down and watching the Super Bowl. It's not really good game anyway, right? What? It's like it's like the king, inviting the court jester like, entertain me. Show me something cool. That was it. That was it.

So funny. So he has a professional service business and he helps companies that are requiring other companies. Okay. He had 4.4 gigabytes of financial data from one of his customers, mostly spreadsheets 1.4 million rows of spreadsheet data financial data okay and it was in tablo it's a lot part of it was in table it's in excel it's all over the place and he wants to ask questions to this data so we talked about GPT for sheets on previous episodes where you can plug a formula into a sheet drag it down that's cool but what do you do with 4.4 gigabytes of spreadsheets all for one company all financial data a company with multiple subsidiaries lots of stuff going on how can you just say like which of my subsidiaries had the highest profit margin in July 2022.

How can you find that with one prompt, right? So I said, you wanted me to build that? And he says, Chris, if you can build this, this company is about to go to market. I think they're going to sell for 14 times EBTA. I think that if they have this tool, they are AI enabled and they'll be able to sell for 14 and a half times EBITA, which represents seven figures of additional value created, which means I can charge them for this tool, $250,000 a year.

Okay? So I'm like, hey, you shouldn't have told me this because that means I'm going to charge you about $200 grand a year for this. The second, he said, Chris, if you can build me this, you shut off and you just started building. By the time he was done with that sentence because there were so many qualifiers,

you're like, oh, this thing? Just turned around the MacBook. Oh, this? Basically, yes. So I go to Replit. And I type in the, I'm like, this is what I want. I got four from four gigabytes. So it gives me an interface.

Okay, with like an upload button for spreadsheets. And I'm like, okay, but these spreadsheets are in box, which is like Dropbox, right? They're on the cloud. It was this fast. I said, can you put like, I just want to put in a box link. Boom. It added another field for just uploading a box link. Interesting.

Okay. So then I just start testing it. It doesn't work. It keeps breaking. It's not searching. I upload the data. It recognizes the data. It shows me load all the rows.

but then it's only pulling from a sample size of the rows. So it's not answering my question. So then I take a random spreadsheet from my computer that has 14,000 rows. I upload that and I say, what's on row 132? It doesn't give it to me, but Replit tells me it's only looking at the first 14 rows. So then I have Replit fix it so it searches all the rows. And then I ask it the same prompt. And it works.

It gives me the email address that's in that exact cell. So then I say, what percentage of the cells in column G, are this value. And it breaks. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. And then it works. It tells me because you iterated to it.

Yeah, I just kept getting there. And I'm not doing any coding. I'm just, this is just English language, basic reasoning, okay? And then I go to the spreadsheet and I crunch, I start a pivot table. Point 13%.

It's exactly right. So then by the time I left his house for the Super Bowl. I was fiddling with it for like an hour and a half. It was uploading all 4.4 gigabytes of data and answering questions about this spreadsheet, something that adds seven figures are valued to his customer,

something that he can charge 250 grand a year for, a tool that I built with software that cost $20 a month. You don't even know who won the game. Because you know why, Chris? You know why? Because you want the game of life, bro. Oh, I'm sorry.

Oh, I'm sorry. This is literally the Nick Huber to be except for you. Full Huber. I'm sorry, you guys are watching the game. I just built a tool that made me seven figures in an hour and a half. Bye. I actually was

I'm out of here funny because I actually was doing those things but I was also watching the game you could do both you can have both that's right I never so I haven't messed with replet I'm retarded is it a plug-in like are you doing it separate like where

are you actually doing these things oh my gosh I knew that you were going to put the hands to the face I'm like even though I knew it was coming do this brother a favor and edit this out So we can just go to replet.com and look and have his own question answered in 0.4 seconds. It's like a chat GPT interface. You do it all within Replit. Oh, you do it within, okay.

Cool. I'm up to speed. Yeah. But then if you do this brother of favor. But if it needs to use Open AIs API, it will ask you for your API credentials and then it will remember them forever. First of all, that's freaking amazing. Is he paying you?

it's funny because his wife was like he was telling his wife and she's like oh you're paying him right you're paying him what are you paying him he's good a very very quick comment here isn't it crazy because i am this type of person isn't it crazy that the second i say oh yeah and if it needs your API key you can just give it your API key that's going to turn 90% of people who would have done this off like oh API okay that's too complicated for i'm not a coder right like we're not either and i've i've overcome that but there's you know a million other things that kind of get in the way but the stuff is easy and it's solvable but just that little thing weeds out 90% of people that would have otherwise used this so i know i know i know all right so i want to tell a

story about a billionaire and i don't want to feel like that type of guy that talks about his billionaire friends i just want to preface this with i don't know billionaires i don't know them i don't know i don't have rich friends. Okay. I don't. Apparently you do. Apparently you do. I've talked to two billionaires in my entire life. One that I'm about to tell a story about. I'm going to keep him anonymous because he wanted to be kept anonymous. I'm going to change some of the details to protect his identity. But it made me think of this legendary Sam Parr tweet from February 19th, 2021. Okay. Okay. I just pulled it up. February in Texas, 2021, there was an apocalyptic snowstorm that knocked out the power and locked everyone inside. So he got reading for this tweet, but he knew what he was doing. It says,

I was just trapped in a snowstorm in a two-bedroom apartment, 72 hours with one of the most powerful venture capitalists in the world. How's that for a hook? He said, this person, Andrew Chen, is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. I asked him how to get rich through angel investing. Here's what he told me. So that became a meme, right? Like people, people would mean that and say, I was trapped in an apartment with and it was hilarious, right? So I'm just thinking of tweet as I tell this story. So here's my hook. Are you ready for it? Permission to make fun of you. Permission to not make fun of you. Enough to be funny, but not enough to hurt my feelings. You know where that balances, right? I'm easily offended, right? I'm not saying anything you don't

already know, right? All right. Go ahead. Hook. If you offend me too much, I'll shut down emotionally and we'll head it to this out and we'll never talk again. I love this. So this is, here's the hook. You ready? Mm-hmm. Everything I learned while being trapped in a stodgy office building with a West Texas oil billionaire. Okay. Can you say it again? You started it in the middle there.

It's not going to be good enough. We got to say it again. You're right. You're right. Yeah. Here's everything I learned while trapped in a small office with a West Texas oil billionaire. It's perfect. It's perfect.

On a January Wednesday afternoon for seven hours. Oh, my gosh. It's so good. All right. You ready? Okay. So this guy saw it. me on Twitter and he wanted to talk to me about social media and AI. So I drove to his office.

It was a long drive. I spent seven hours with him and two of his employees. And honestly, Nick, it blew my mind. It blew my mind a little bit. It blew your mind. Yes. It did. Some of the things I witnessed were stereotypical and you probably heard about on other business podcasts. Some of it really surprised me. So here, what was my nickname on our mission? What did you call me? Kernner the learner, Kerner the discerner, Kerner the observer as well. Kerner the observer, yes.

That's right. That's right. So here's what I observed. First of all, his monitor was like a 48-inch TV right in front of his face. Really? Yeah, it was big.

Okay, so we know he's 74. Okay, keep going. We're going to whittle this down. He shared an office with one of his key employees who is a buyer. His title is by he doesn't have a title. Most of his employees don't have LinkedIn profiles. They're not like out and about.

They just work for this company. They're very loyal. They have great culture. But they don't like no one has a title at this company. Okay. So video is cool, but you know what's better? Long form audio via podcast and my newsletter. TKOPod.com.

Go there to subscribe for free to my newsletter. It's one email a week, very tactical. And then go to my audio podcast. Three episodes a week, stuff like this. You're going to love it. All free. No sleazy sales. bitch tkopod.com. So he shares a room, he shares an office with this person. Yeah. And his title is

technically buyer, like a purchaser. Interesting. But it's like his key right hand man. Okay. So he did. Okay. But the billionaire doesn't have his own office. It's like he doesn't have the corner office. It's a nice. It's a nice corner office. Sure. A modest. It's not huge. No putting green. Very modest. No fancy furniture. But it's shared. The point is it's shared. It's shared. They're back to back. They're literally back. to back to back. To quote Twitter, there's a lesson there. To quote Elon, let that sink in. No, but there has to, yeah, anyways, okay. Filed away. Keep going. His title is buyer, but he's way overqualified. That wasn't another pattern from the day. It was like everyone was way overqualified

for what they were doing with this company. They were just very smart for their title at least. Got it. Okay. Okay. His assistant is a lawyer, like a proper lawyer. She went to law school, sharp as attack, very direct, professional. Wasn't just a yes woman. Her office was right next to his and they were just talking all day in person. Okay. So that was interesting. She wasn't just like an administrative assistant.

They're talking all day like she's in the same room or they're at separate rooms. No. She's next door, but she's in and out of the office all day long. Cool. Okay. This gentleman solicited advice from everyone around him. Okay. not only like the smart people or the sea level people, his buyer, his assistant, me, anyone.

He wanted truth or advice anywhere he could get it, but he was not afraid to tell them, that's a bad idea. I don't like that idea. Or that's a brilliant idea. Not in a rude way, just in a very direct way. What are your thoughts on that? I love it. I think it makes a ton of sense. I think it makes a ton of sense, especially for people who have gotten to that level. There's an interview I saw with a guy who was an executive at Facebook. He said the same thing about Mark Zuckerberg. He's like going into a meeting with Mark, he wants the feedback. He will take any feedback from anybody. He will tell you if he thinks your idea sucks, he'll push back on you, but he's open to having his mind changed. And I think that the most successful people,

especially in that stratosphere, everybody's trying to dethrone them. They have to be open to feedback because otherwise they're going to get taken out. So it doesn't surprise me because I've heard about it, but it also does surprise me because you don't think of like billionaire, no at alls as like asking questions of the janitor. I think it's awesome. Like when I first walked in, I got there five minutes early, 755. Every single person in the office was already there and working at 755, which that, that alone was interesting to me. I walked in and this gentleman was standing right inside the door with another gentleman and they were looking at new packaging options. I walk in the door and they're like, Chris, oh, thanks for coming. Nice to meet you. Hey,

look at this packaging with us. What do you think? Do you like this one or this one? Does the lid fit right? How does it look? If you were a customer, what would you think if you picked this up in you? And like, this was like how I met them. I'd never met them in person ever. Yeah, and they immediately, and I don't know about packaging. I've never had a consumer package good before. I'm not like a packaging expert, but he genuinely wanted my feedback. I'm like, hmm. So set us off on the right foot. So he was instantly engaging, instantly charismatic. instantly. Yeah, but there were no pleasantries. He was nice, shook my hand, nice to meet you. I'm so-and-so, here's so-and-so. What do you think of this packaging? Like, we just get right into it.

Was it like intimidating or was it like, oh, this is my friend's dad from college and we're meeting for the first time? It was extremely welcoming. That's awesome. It just put you at home immediately. Okay. Okay. So then we're in this office and immediately we just start riffing on ideas. And it was very much like ADD laced. Just there was there was a whiteboard. We were whiteboarding. He was whiteboarding. But he wanted advice from everyone and we were just all over the place.

And I'd ask a question like, well, what do you pay for this? Look it up. And he'd ask the other guy to look it up. They'd look it up. And then we'd spend an hour talking about that one question. And I'm like, I thought we were talking about this. Like, this is me. Are you me?

Like we're ADD all over the place. You know? That was a big takeaway from me. It was like he just wanted advice from everyone. But and he would respectfully tell you that doesn't work. because X, Y, or Z. I don't like that idea, but not in an offensive way. That was the culture of everyone there, which is very direct, but professional. I think I'm very good at the former and not great at the latter. I love getting advice. I love questioning. I love like finding the right

answer. When it comes time to like you make the decision or you give direct feedback, I don't know if I'm as good. I mean, I'm trying to be better, but I wonder, like those two things are I think rare skills to have at the same time. Yeah, I agree. Another thing is they would come up with an idea, an action item. Let's do this. He would do it immediately. He would stand up from his desk, have his assistant sit down and type the email for him. He would just watch her type. And they're like, and he wasn't really reading. She was just like to type it out. And then she'd like edit it. And then she's like, yeah, you're good. Good. She'd send. They'd swap places he'd sit back down. No way, really. Yeah. Yeah. Have you ever seen?

And like Trump with his assistance, they'll tweet for him. It's pretty funny. So like she'll be sitting here like this, like, do to do to do to do like typing out. And then she'll like turn the phone and show him. And it's, you know, in the grandpa text, it's like this big, all caps because that's just like the way he tweets. And then he'll be like, yeah, that's good. Change this part. And then like, you know, she sends it off.

As Twitter would say, there's a lesson there. No, that's interesting. She writes it for me. Yeah. I'm going to recap really quickly. Gregorius, very welcoming. Very likable. Curious, but like genuinely curious. Soliciting feedback.

Action oriented. Direct with his feedback. Firm decisions. Next steps done right away. Like nothing's hanging over. Yeah, let's circle back on that. Or let's drill down on that later. Like, no, it's like, okay, cool.

We're not, do it. Like moves it off of his plate quick. the way he handled phone calls was super interesting. And remember my boss, Danny? The pest control business owner. Danny Galini? Yes, Danny Galini. He would always answer the phone with, go ahead.

Like, just let's freaking get into it. And then at the end, he would end it with, let me go. Let me go. Right. Like, I'm done with this conversation. I swear on my life, this guy, he answered the phone. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Right. as if it was like a walking talkie. Yeah. And just straight to the point and like people would like over describe things to him. And he would just interrupt him like, tell me exactly what I need to know. What do I need to know? Okay. So that was interesting.

Always on speakerphone. Maybe because he can hear better. Maybe because he wanted the people in the room to hear it. Right. Dude. Yes. And he's like created this environment where no secrets was like, dude, like secrets cost him money. All right.

Cool. Everybody's going to hear. Great. What did you guys think of that? Let's make a decision straight to the ball. I love that. I love that. It's funny you say no secrets because at one point he said to me, Chris, what if I paid you

X amount of dollars a year to work here? Like completely took me off guard? 200,000 here? 300,000 here? Stop me, Chris. Chris, $900,000. A million dollars a year? Chris?

It was surely an amount of money much more than either of the people in the room make. And how easily do I get awkward, Nick? exceptionally easily. I get awkward probably more than anyone you've ever met in your life, right? I wanted to die. I wanted to jump out of the window because I'm like, I, what? We're talking salary net? We're negotiating salary in front of these.

What? Yeah. And he's like, no, I probably couldn't pay you that much because then everyone would get jealous and they would resent you. And I'm thinking like, why does anyone have to know? Why? Why can't we just? He's like, the autistic guy is just like, because you get it, right?

Because then your wife would be attracted to me. If you came in the office, you're like, whoa, what? I don't. Well, and then he would look to the other people like, what do you think? What do you think? Yeah. And they were just like, I'm like, are we talking about this openly? What is happening here?

Yeah. And then I'd like, I literally said out loud. I'm like, oh, this is awkward. And he's like, what is it? Chris? Is it a heck yes or a heck no? Is it a heck yes or a heck no? And I'm like, what I have to move here?

And he's like, oh, he's actually considering it? that was a joke okay you think we would ever pay you that so very very open let me ask you this i've noticed myself doing this in the last year in particular i find myself cutting people off i'm not trying to be rude but it's like i see where you're going with this okay cool like i don't let me save us both in time yeah like let's just cut to it and i still struggle with it because i don't want people to think that i'm rude or mean or douche you know what i mean but at the same time it's like okay cool can we can we hurry this along did you see yourself in him when he would do that a hundred percent yeah it's weird right i wouldn't have thought this like even even two years ago

i wouldn't have thought this but like recently i could definitely see yeah i wonder if when either he's always been that way or if if when he was our age he would kind of pussyfoot around it and hesitate and now that he's older he's just like i don't give a crap like we're going to save time here i'm going I know where you're going. He's probably like, look, either you're going to like me or you're not going to like me. I can't waste my time on it. But he's going to be super welcoming, engaging, gregarious. So you know, like quickly you trust him.

Like he doesn't mean it to be rude. That's the way I'm starting to feel about it. It's like, look, you're going to get to know me. You know that I'm not trying to be rude. I like you. Right. But let's just get to the heart of the matter. I think Michael Gurley has this like a one page that he gives people that work with him.

And it just gets like all of that out of the way. And I really like that. Because then it's like, then they know on day one that you're not being rude. That's just how you are. And I like that idea. He kept referring to 175 years the whole time. And I would be like, why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?

Why don't you? You could definitely raise these prices. And he's like, Chris, I want this business to be around in 175 years. Right. So your idea is great for the next five years. But I'm not worried about that. He starts referencing all these companies that have, he's like, Sears was amazing. Sears was amazing.

They should have been around for 175 years, but they made this one mistake. And so they're not. He's like, they could have done this. And I guarantee you they'd still be around. But they did. Did he give his rationale for a Y 175? That's like a very specific number. Maybe he wants to get to 2,200 and we're like, I don't know.

Interesting. But just that's like, that's the framework is just a long term thinker. Generation. Very long term thinker. Yeah. A lot of the Warren Buffett is like that. Elon Musk is like, like if you look at these guys who have billion. of dollars. They're looking at long time horizons. I mean, Musk's trying to go to Mars. Warren Buffett is

92 and he's still investing as if he's got a 40-year time horizon. So they're not necessarily trying to make decisions for this next quarter. They're trying to make decisions for the long term. And I do think it changes at some point. When you're getting started, it's like, I know, I've got to make the decision for tomorrow. Like, I got to figure this out now. And then you get to a certain level that I think you're financially able to make decisions that are long term as opposed to like just these short term flips. Yeah, say yes to everything until you can afford to say no to everything. He kept wanting to know how I think because I think like everything he knew about me was publicly facing. But he kept asking me these questions that were kind of tests. They were tests

in a way. Like at one point he had me stand up to the whiteboard and he asked me this super complicated get a question about his his ranch and his deer lease and like how he tags these deer and how he asked the guys that work on his ranch if we kill all the deer with the red tags how many deer would be laughed over and it was kind of like it was a math question on its surface but really it was a how do you think question below the surface it was really interesting and sometimes I would answer in a smart way but the wrong way like he was talking about like an issue they were having with a vendor. And he's like, now, why do you think we can't ask our vendor to price us according to this other customer of theirs? And I was like, well, because then they would

eventually find out it, and it would piss that customer off. And it would risk what the vendor has with their customer. And he's like, that's actually genius. And I'm, that's crazy. You thought of that. But that's not at all what I'm getting at. I'm like, oh, thank you. Did you say genius? There were like three or four times when he asked me these questions to test, not if I knew the answer, but what follow-up questions would I ask to help get to the right answer? And he didn't even care if I got to the right answer or not. Anyway, so in general, it was it was an amazing experience, really enlightening day. And I learned a ton. I like that idea of like seeing how people think.

So you and I, I'll tell you offline, but you and I have a mutual friend who has a friend that he claims is worth. $800 million. And for a myriad of reasons, I don't believe him. The reasons don't matter why I don't believe them, but they were there. And like we were talking about it. And there's like, there's two ways that you can sort of validate somebody, I think, over time. Way number one is the hard facts. Oh, they fly private.

I met their chief of staff of this company. His personal chef was here. He let me stay at several of his houses, right? Those are facts that you can do. The other way that I think you can validate is just by talking to them, many conversations over an extended period of time. And you just get a feel for how they think what kind of decisions they would make. And that can get you to trust and validate those things.

Right. It's like, oh, yeah, he's a freaking genius when it comes to business. He's coached me on a couple of things, whatever. And that's where I think this billionaire that was talking to you, it's that second thing, right? It's like, how do you think, how do you answer this question? he's validating you by quickly trying to get to the spot that most people spend months getting to because they're just like getting to know somebody. He's trying to elicit that quickly by asking these series of questions.

I think that's a really interesting way to sort of think about validating somebody. How do you quickly get them to give you the information you need? Yeah, I agree. Isn't it funny? Like even three years ago, the conversations that you and I are having are the same. And I would say like the quality of our intellect and curiosity is pretty much the same. But now like the people that we're talking to and the opportunities we've had is like it's so different. Like in the ability to effectuate change by using our skills and like things that were better than anybody else in the world at is pretty, it's pretty incredible.

Anyways, that was like my thought after listening to you. No, that's good. And a framework that I just thought of while you were saying that is like, one thing that we're doing with this podcast either overtly or subtly is encouraging people to go out and do cool stuff right just just start something do something build something sell something do something epic and cool if you do that it's almost silly it's almost stupid I would say to not tell the internet what you're doing you know what I'm saying like I get it I on one hand I get it like content is a beast it's It can be stressful. It could be addicting in a very bad way. But it just opens up. Like if you're opportunistic, which you probably are if you're listening to this,

then you can be even more opportunistic by simply telling people about what you're doing. If you're doing something cool. Like this guy invited me over because of an interview he saw of mine that wasn't even on my podcast. He hadn't even seen any of my content. It was someone else's content. Oh, that's crazy. One piece of content. That's super random.

Right? I like, one, it's not all, the other thing is like, it's not all going to look the same. You and I are going to look very differently. You are much better than I am at storytelling, at figuring out the hook, at figuring out the interesting angle, at being brief, right? Like, I talk too much. So your ability to grow an audience is much better than, I'm not saying that I won't get better.

I'm not saying I won't grow an audience, whatever. You're just like, you've built this skill set up over time and you have this natural ability. You're better than me at this. So your opportunity with content is different, right? I'm kind of getting, you're doing really cool stuff now and now like just continue to feed into your stuff. My path may be a little different. I'm thinking now about doing cool things, maybe raising some money, maybe getting back into

healthcare, still continuing to do content, but like using those things that I'm doing as a way to feed the content. And then that is an opportunity for me to continue to share. But those are two very different things, the paths that we're laying out there. And neither one of them is right or wrong for a. anybody. They're just right or wrong for specific people. And that's what's so cool to me is you can use this in any way that you want. You just need to figure out how you build trust at scale and then how it works for you moving forward. You've got to figure out what you do. You've got to figure out what you

do. All right. All right. It's good. I love you too. All right. What do you think? Please share it with a friend and we'll see you next time on the Kerner office.