25 Years Of Founder WISDOM In 55 Minutes (ft. Jason Fried)

24:38And for us, that means - And by the way, I don't think you could change that. I think for a long time, I was like, why aren't these people taking risks? I got to force them. And I'm like, it's impossible. That's impossible to change. Even if you hire a great CEO to replace you with CEO, they just don't have that. They might be an incredible CEO, great executive executing things trains are on time incredible but there's that thing that's present in a founder simply because they were there from the beginning that they they have an extra ounce of it's not even that they're they're not better than they just have an extra ounce of latitude that allows them to take risks that nobody's going to say no to maybe if you have a board maybe someone's going to say no but they'll still give you more latitude than a hired hand basically in a sense.

25:25So my, my sense is the way I found to return to this sort of flow versus the, the ab is like, is to inject more risk, which for us means we're going to build a lot more products. Like this year, we're going to do four products. We're going to, we're going to begin. We're about to start working on two products simultaneously, which we've never done before. Um, we'd never built two things at the same time. And like this, there's a lot of stuff going on. We got different models. We got once, we got SAS, we got all these things. We're going to do multiple versions of multiple things and different business models.

25:58And we're really off balance in a really healthy way at the moment because we're doing a bunch of new stuff. And that gets me excited. Now, it makes some people internally nervous, understandably so. It's like, well, this is different now. We're kind of off balance a little bit and we're trying new things. But that's how I have to run the business. Otherwise, I will become bored. And at that point, it won't serve me or the business well if I'm in charge and I'm bored. That's not a good thing. For my professional life or for my main company, that's like the main nine to five thing. For Hampton, I do inject risk, but I have a CEO.

26:36And so I try to, I have to respect, I got to respect that relationship. And so on my nights and weekends, I created a new website for fun. I created this website called Sam's List. It's samslist.co. Nice. And the reason I did it was I tweeted out like who's got an accountant that they love because I just needed an accountant for something. I got like 300 replies. And I was like, wait, something's interesting here because this tweet got so many bookmarks. Like a lot of people bookmark it and someone was like, oh, I'm saving this for later to find an accountant. So I was like, this is interesting.

27:13So I spent a few months calling every accountant on the list, finding out how much they charged, what services they provide, what services they don't provide, who the ideal client is, who isn't the ideal client, whatever. And then I created a website called Sam's List, where I reviewed or I put all the information from all of my research for all these accountants, created this website. I think I got 8 ,000 people to come in the first week. And then I started figuring out how to monetize it. And so this month, the first month that's been live, it's May 22nd when we're filming this. I think it's done 20 ,000 this month.

27:48And the$20 ,000 that I've made from that is more dopamine than let's say a million dollars a month or$2 million a month that I've gotten from other things. It's a total rush and I love it. Why is it? Why do you think that's so exciting for you? It's a total rush because what It started... It's so fun. It's so fun for things that start as silly jokes. Like just stupid. The logo that we have is a calculator that has three numbers and a Q. And it looks like Clippy. It looks like Clippy from Microsoft waving at you. It looks like Mickey Mouse. And I just used chat GPT. I said, make a logo that looks like Clippy, but it's a calculator.

28:31And it's so fun to take silly, jokey stuff and turn it into real things that actually solve problems. And I find that to be almost like part trolling, part like shit eating grin, like scheming. Like I love that. Like, isn't it? Would it be hilarious if we made this a thing? And then actually seeing it become a thing I find to be so exciting. I also think that when you're when you have a silly idea, even if it's like a serious idea and you start seeing customers truly like it, that's a very invigorating feeling. It's the best. and we have this internal say we don't say it that much we've we i've said it before and we kind of try to feel it which is that cool wears off but useful never does and what you've made is something that's useful and that is one of the most beautiful things i think you can do for humanity is to make something useful um and and to have fun with it and to screw around and not like take it so seriously this is going back to the thing your your grip is loose on this You know, you're having fun with it.

29:32You ask ChatGPT to make a logo and you're goofing around and the name is just your name. It's like, it's just have some fun. And it's a reminder that that's what this should always feel like as much as possible. It is totally valuable to do hard things. Absolutely. But not everything should be hard. There should be plenty of easy things in your life too. Things that flow, things that you have fun doing, things that don't feel hard. You don't need to pile up and collect only hard things. And so while some of your business ideas might be harder to pull off for other reasons, this one is so lighthearted and easy.

30:07It's healthy. It's good for you. And you rediscover like why you do this sort of stuff. And it's also fun. I think there's something probably I'm guessing there's something probably in this that like you're like, I did this by myself. Yeah. That's like the feeling of accomplishment. And I, you know, I can still, I can still do something by myself, like really by myself. and that's useful is very rewarding and hard to come by sometimes when we all think we need to have partners and co-founders and teams and stuff to pull things off. Do you and your partner get along like beautifully? We get along really well.

30:41We're not like we're friends, but we don't see each other very often. We live in the same town and we don't see each other. I see them once every, I don't know, couple months. We're very good partners and we're friendly, but we just don't, we don't hang out like our families don't hang out. It's not that we wouldn't enjoy it. We just like, we just don't. There was a, there was a study where they looked at the most common reasons why couples get divorced. The most common reason was contempt. And the most common, the most common reason for divorce was contempt. The most common reason for staying together was you admired the other person.

31:14Oh, I hadn't heard that, but it resonates like resentment is just bad. And I think a lot of business partners resent each other, actually. You've been in business with others, I'm assuming? Yeah, I've had bad relationships. I'm currently in a very harmonious relationship with my co-founder, Joe, that I could see lasting a lifetime. What feels different about it? So when we first started together, we invested in startups together and we had a great time. And he previously helped me with my old company, The Hustle. I cold emailed him and he was like, hey, if you're in New York tomorrow, just stop by the office and we could talk.

31:48And I was like, yeah, I'll be there. And I flew out there and hung out with them. And that's how we became friends. And then we invested in startups together. And then I took a really formal conversation with them. I was like, Joe, I love working with you. Something I did with my wife early in our relationship when we were thinking like, hey, is this something that we want to make real and get married and have a family? And I sat down with my wife and I was like, let's just walk through our life values and what type of life do we want to have? And let's see if they align. And that's okay if things change eventually.

32:19But let's just see if the direction is similar. And so I sat down with Joe and we said, hey, let's just outline what sacrifices are you willing to make? What sacrifices are you not willing to make? What's a perfect day look like for you? What are you driven by? And for example, for me, I was like, I'm driven by ego. It bothers me that people think I'm not good enough. So I always want to prove that I'm as good as I think I am. Or I'm driven by money. uh i was like i work only 40 hours a week i don't really want to work more than that um i'm not willing to sacrifice traveling um i'm not i'm not gonna like get out of my house often if i have a family and he like named all of his things and we looked at the all the things and we're like how much money do you want to have how much money do i want to have we looked at all of the things and we're like uh for everything that is agreed upon awesome for everything that's not agreed upon do we think that that's like a deal breaker and we they weren't and we were like cool we like did a really good job of being very honest up front about our wishes.

33:17And now it's much easier to address any issues we have because it's like, hey, he'll be like, hey, we got to get this done. And I was like, yeah, but he'll be like, but you told me that you don't want to grind on a Saturday. So I'm not even going to ask you. It's all good. We agreed to this. Things like that. And that makes the relationship really nice is that we respect one another and we had those conversations super early on. Do you feel like the list or the conversations you had about that turn out to be true? Like, are those really the things that you guys share together? Or was that sort of what you imagined you would share?

33:57Yeah. For example, for the money, let's just do the money one. That's a really easy one. We actually shared each other's personal finances with each other. Interesting. Yeah. We were like super transparent. We're like, here's all of our finances. What matter? Like I would like to go here one day. Where would you like to go? It's like, all right, well, to go there, we're going to be like, let's say that my goal is less than your goal. Let's hit your goal then. And if we need to hit your goal, here's maybe what the numbers would need to look like. And here's what we'd have to make. So like that, you know, is that like something we both agree upon?

34:27Do you know what I mean? Like we were very transparent with each other. That's wild. I mean, this is, I know you and I were talking on Twitter a little bit about like how I'm super uncomfortable talking about money. And you're like sharing your personal finances with your founder and kind of, it's interesting. Wait, you don't do that with your partner? You don't do that with your partner? Like, well, you guys, your guys' finances are probably so tied together, but you know, they are tied together. I mean, yeah, basically all of our, you know, essentially the vast majority of our net worth is tied into our business.

34:53So we know what our distributions are and all that stuff. But yeah, we don't, I mean, we don't talk about that ever. But it's interesting. Like I also like you're Midwestern or I'm a Midwestern. Lesterner, I feel like my thing is like, don't talk about it. I don't know why it's ingrained in me. Were you like that at one point? And did you change? I was always open about it because I saw my family like that. And I was like, that's so unhelpful for me because you're not telling me, you're not giving me a roadmap. I don't have anything to strive for because I don't even know what's possible. My father owned a produce brokerage company, which it's like a small business, but they sell like, let's just say over the course of his 30 or 20 year career, he sold like$150 million worth of onions.

35:36But I'm like, how much is a lot of money? Is a lot of money like 50 grand a year or like$300 ,000 a year? I have no clue about this. And I always regretted that, that they weren't open with me. And so I was like, I'm just going to be open about it. It's so interesting. My folks never talked about money. I don't, still to this day, don't know if they're middle class, wealthy. I don't really know. You're kidding me. Do you really? You have no idea. That's weird. Do you support them? I have supported them. I gave them a big chunk of money at one point, but they regretfully took it. They didn't really want it.

36:10I don't think they need it. And I think I'm going to get it back when they pass. They're not going to use it. They've always been very frugal. We don't talk about it. My dad was an entrepreneur, worked for himself. Like a small business owner? He was a trader. So he's traded stocks on his own. He wasn't a broke. I think he started out as a broker for a little bit, but then he was on his own individual investor, basically. I think he did well for a while. I think he didn't do well for a while. I think that's a tough road in a lot of ways. He wasn't a day trader, but there wasn't anything we couldn't have.

36:40But we also didn't strive for anything that we couldn't afford. It just, I don't really know. Parents have always been careful with it. So I kind of absorbed that, like, just don't really talk about it. And it didn't limit me, though. It's not like, I just felt like we were, everything was sort of fine is how it felt to me. What are you going to do with your kids? I struggle with this. um like my parents never really talked about it we we don't talk about it but we certainly act differently than i than my parents did growing up you know we own a few homes um you know we have a couple nice things so you know so it's like it's it's it's kind of obvious that like we can afford things um and do things um but uh we just don't we haven't talked about it i think that's an incredibly Midwestern and an incredibly more traditional older set of values.

37:34My family had very Midwestern values. And I think a lot of those values are great. Hard work. Don't complain. Don't make people work for you. I remember going to a restaurant and we ordered a pizza and they brought us a chicken salad. And I'm like, we're not going to inconvenience you. Whatever. Just That's like the attitude. I've never sent a dish back in my life. Not in a million years. Never, ever. Not in a million years. Steal, whatever. It's fine. And so I actually think some of those values are great. I think there's many other values that are like, I don't like using this word because it's too loaded, but toxic, bad.

38:10There are a lot of values that are bad. For example, I think the stoicism that Midwesterners tend to have, that you definitely have, I think that it's gotten you to where you wanted to go in a traditional success perspective, but also like not being transparent with certain people i think i just don't want my family to be left wanting more when i'm gone in the sense of like i wish that they were more open with me for example i've not seen photos of my family really when they were younger or like i don't have any your parents you mean yeah my parents when my parents were young i'm like and i don't even know their grandparents's name i don't know i had to do 23 and me because i'm like i want to ask them what my heritage was, they would just go, we're white.

38:54I'm like, yeah, okay, but what flavor? Like, come on, I need some more. And so, or I had to do ancestry.com in order to understand like who my grandparents were, like, what are you guys hiding? And it turns out I found out that an uncle is actually, my grandmother was married previously. And I'm like, why didn't you guys tell me this? And they're like, oh, we didn't want to bring it up. You know, like little things, like little things like that. And I'm like, that's weird. Just like, just discuss it. Just tell me. Yeah, that's weird. So anyway, I think that is actually bad, though. And I pray that I don't fall into that into that trap.

39:26And so that's why with my family, I've been overly transparent with a lot of things. And I just think that that lightens lightens things up a little bit. I admire that, actually. And this is something I actually also admire about David. I'm sure you wouldn't mind me telling you this. David used to when we were in Chicago, when we had an office. He used to drive to work in incredibly fancy cars. My Midwestern sensibility is like, dude, don't do that. He's like, why not? My sense was like, it just sends a weird message. He's like, what's the message? Everyone here who works, they know we're doing well.

40:06Why would I hide that? I agree with you on that one, by the way. It's so funny because he's right, I think. Have you seen the big Lebowski? He goes, You're not wrong, dude. You're just an asshole. So in my mind, I'm like, but I still struggle with it just because of how I was raised and how I was brought up and the imagined messages. The whole point is I'm imagining that everyone's looking at that and going, what an asshole. It's like, most people probably don't care. They don't care. They know the score. They're fine with it. And if they're not, that's their problem. David's point is if they have a problem with me driving a nice car, that's their problem.

40:45It's not my problem. Like I've earned this. I enjoy this car. I buy this car because I like the car. I'm not going to hide the car. And he's right. But I just have a hard time with it still. Not anymore with him. This is like way back in the early, early years. But it still is something that's in there. There's a residual like struggle with that degree of honesty around money in a similar way that people like, you know, in a movie, like, who'd you vote for? Like, I don't talk about who I voted. Same. I think Chris Rock has a great bit on that. It's so funny. Like when I see someone with a political bumper sticker on their car, I'm like, you're insane.

41:21You're a crazy person. Yeah. And they're probably like, why? I like this guy or I like that guy or I like hers. Like, why am I have to hide my point of view? And they're right too. You know, so deep down, your point of view is healthier. I still have a hard time with it. Not and that's probably my problem or maybe it's not. I don't really know. I don't really know. It's very interesting. Do you want to change or do you not care? Well, I think the truth is my kids have, or at least my son who's older, my daughter's five. She doesn't recognize any of this stuff yet, but my son does. And my son's really into like, he seems to be into expensive things.

41:55He like has this craving for expensive things. So, I mean, he's got to know what's going on to some degree. He's not an idiot. do I want to sit them down and go hey son we've got this and we've got that and like that isn't how I would handle it it'd be more like I've worked hard here's what we have we have some things we're going to enjoy these things we share these things with friends this is not just our stuff and that's kind of how I how I treat for example the house thing when I renovate a nice old house and I make it better like it's our house but it's also all of our friends house that people are free to stay there as much as they want, visit as much as they want.

42:32I have this property in Wisconsin, this old farmhouse, 160 acres. It's a beautiful piece of land. I've been working on it for years. My friends use it more than I use it. I don't use it anymore. I'm not even around there. My friends can just go up there whenever they want and use it. So it's about like, we're fortunate, clearly fortunate and lucky. And a big part of this is you want to share these things. You're not fortunate if you hoard the things. Then there's something I think kind of wrong about it in my point of view. So share as much as you can share these experiences with other people.

43:02And, uh, and, and we're fortunate, you know, that's kind of how I sort of left it at this point. I don't know. We'll see. Um, the, the, the thing that I tell my friends and family, um, is I try to let them know I don't, I, and this is something that I couldn't grasp earlier on in my career. I refused to admit this one thing, which was luck is real and it has played such an important part of any type of financial uh uh like just meeting the woman who you spend your life with like just the fact that we are in the same place at the same time luck is such a bigger component than i ever would have been willing to admit years ago and i think and i think that what i'll explain to my children is like look i worked hard but i frankly didn't work harder than many other people that's right i'm smart but i'm not that much smarter if at all, than the average person.

43:54The truth is, is that I worked hard. I had a skill. But I got like 50 % of luck was like, was like part of that or maybe even more than 50%. Luck is such a huge, huge component. And I hope that I can put that on my family to realize that luck was real. It just happened to work out because some timing thing worked out. Like, let's say you started a business and you surged during COVID. You're like, dude, I just kicked ass because something I had nothing, which I did. Our business killed it during COVID. I'm like, I didn't know that was going to happen. That was just total luck. You know what I mean?

44:27Things like that. It's absolutely real. And I hope my family will understand that. 100 % with you. And I think it's way more than 50%. I mean, all the way back to you didn't choose your parents. You didn't choose anything. You didn't choose your mind. How'd you become the kind of person who is the way you are? There's a million inputs, a billion inputs that you don't know about. All the things. one of the, I don't, regret's too strong a word, but one of the things I regret most in my career is getting on stage at startup school. So this is like Y Combinator startup school. Years ago, I forget when I was invited to speak.

45:05I was only invited once because I was pretty anti raising money. Yeah. I was going to say, I thought you're like the opposite of their ethos. I was, but Paul was kind enough to ask me to come up on stage and give a talk. But you and Paul seem quite similar, to be honest. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I have a lot of admiration for his ability to put ideas together and think things through and what he's built. But he invited me on stage and there was a question from the audience about luck. Someone's like, do you believe in luck? I'm like, hell no. I don't believe in luck. Wow. And I was such a prick.

45:37How old were you? Early, mid-20s, mid-20s, I think it was. Wow. And I was just such a prick. but a young punk prick, you know, kind of like, and, and it's so embarrassing, but you know, like a lot of things are, you look back on like poetry you wrote in college, like, oh my God, I wrote that or whatever, like whatever it is, you know, and, and, and, you know, it's like, you just realize like that's part of growing up is, is, is totally misunderstanding the world and your position in it. And then hopefully, hopefully, uh, you get to the place in your, in your in your world where you're you develop a bit more and you have some self-reflection and you can call yourself out on the bullshit that you that you thought but also like that's who you were at the time and that's that's that all right let's take a quick break because i gotta tell you a story let me tell you that the first time i tried to run payroll for my team i was using a traditional bank and you know the type it's got a janky interface it's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours and i hit send and it froze they flagged transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes, and then they told me I got to visit my local branch.

46:44And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.

47:15Last thing I wanted to ask you about was this staying off versus staying up. You said, imagine all the things you felt you were falling behind on if you didn't learn about them last year. Would it really have mattered if you started today instead? Watch out for the trap of must know now. What's that mean? Right now, this is like in the AI world we're in right now. Every once in a while, like in my for you feed and Twitter, it's like 10 things you got to know, or you're falling behind. It's like, it's just like this, everyone's falling behind. Meanwhile, this thing is brand new and moving faster than any human can, can pay attention.

47:50Like I just keep seeing these stories about like, if you don't know this and they're doing that, and if you're not on top of this, it's like, no, probably doesn't matter that much. Um, and all the things that if you would have read that feed a year ago that you were supposed to know, uh, it wouldn't have mattered that much if you didn't. Most things, some things would be handy to know, but it probably wouldn't matter that much if you started now instead or waited a year in some cases. One of the things I was doing for a while, I'm not doing it anymore, but I should go back to doing it again. This is actually easier to do during the pandemic, was to go back.

48:23Today is May 22nd, 2024. It's to go back and all the podcast I listened to and listened to May 22nd, 2023. So listen to podcasts that are a year old. And during the pandemic, it was great because you hear all these experts talking about this and talking about that and everyone's so certain of everything. And you go back and listen, man, we are so wrong about so many things. And so many of the things we were worried about never happened anyway. And this political issue and that political issue, and if this guy gets in office, this is going to happen. If they get in office, this is going to happen.

48:54Turns out very, very few things actually happened. And it's really a nice exercise to go back and listen to old podcasts and old interviews of substance and realize that there's some stuff that was right, some stuff that was wrong. But man, the sense of urgency in these podcasts is so misplaced because most things don't need to happen right now. You don't need to be up on this right now. And you shouldn't feel bad about not being on the cutting edge of X, Y, or Z, especially an edge that is recutting itself and resharpening itself every few months. So that's what I'm saying. I try to stay a bit out of things.

49:32I don't want to be on the edge of things. I like what things settle in a little bit more before I really start to dig in. Do you read any biographies? A few. I've read a few. I really love the idea of biographies. I have a hard time reading long books. Yeah. And most biographies tend to be very long. I've got like a limit where it's like 500 pages or less. But I'll do a long one every once in a while. And I read a fair bit, not because I'm in a competition. It's just an hour a night is typically a book a week. And I read a lot of biographies. I like business biographies. I love history. So like a lot of the World War II leaders, a lot of the American titans of industry, a lot of just random people.

50:17I love biographies. And I have this process of what I do. I've got this spreadsheet where if I only read on Kindle and anytime I see something interesting, I highlight it. And at the end of the book, I'll create a timeline. Here's where they were born. Here's where they died. And then anything that I highlighted that happened in this year, that happened in this year. and then what I do is I go to this website called newspapers.com. Newspapers.com has archived pretty much every newspaper ever back until like the 1600s. And what I like to do is let's say I read this biography about Ted Turner. Ted Turner is the guy who started CNN.

50:58He was a fascinating guy to me. Or let's actually use the landowner in the United States. Yeah. And he's done a lot of fascinating things. And the reason why I use newspapers.com is I like to go back to my Kindle and my spreadsheet. And I see, all right, in this year, he decided that he wanted to buy land. I'm going to go read a newspaper article that wrote about him during that period. And I want to see what he said about his interests, why he's doing it. And did he say it? For example, maybe he'll say, one day, I hope to own 5 ,000 acres. Turns out he owns millions and millions and millions of acres.

51:33And so I like to read what the predictions were, as well as what the people were saying about the person at the time. So you don't get revisionist history. And what you notice when you do this is there's often times that you'll read a biography and you'll think this was obvious that this person was going to do this or who wouldn't have predicted that this was going to happen. And or here's another example. World War Two, Churchill was like basically he was like, the world's going to end. Like we are going to die. The world's over. We felt that way during COVID. But if you read a lot of history, there's been many times where we have felt this exact same feeling and we had this exact same prediction.

52:13I remember I recently read JFK's book and with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was like, the world's over. And I go into newspaper.com and I'll go and read what the predictions are. And what you notice is that people are wrong more than they're right. And so what you're saying about things moving too fast, I read Henry Ford's biography about cars, or a Henry Ford biography. And so I got interested in cars. And I went and read what people were saying in 1912, when the Model T was coming out. And the predictions are just ridiculous. And it's so funny that you don't, to reiterate on your point, you don't actually have to be that fast to pounce on certain things.

52:52It's really quite fascinating. And to put this in perspective, the Ford came out with the Model T, I think in 1912 or 1916. So the internet right now is something like 30 years old. So that is basically like, how old would you say the internet is? Or like the modern day internet? The commercial internet, yeah. Like 95, 96 is when like, you know, really Mozilla or Netscape kind of came out and really kind of made it happen. It's basically - It's older than that because it's a research thing. But yeah, commercially, yeah. 35 years, let's say. It's basically like a car company in 1940. Do you know what I mean?

53:27Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what's really fascinating is to like read all these biographies and use newspaper.com. It's one of my favorite things to use. And to see what are interesting predictions and how have they come true. Because I already know the answer, but I want to know what were they saying at the time. And so that's my version of what you do with 2023's podcast. I love that. I didn't know that site existed too. That's fascinating. There's an X account I follow called like Pessimists Archive or something like that. I love that one. It's a great one to follow. And just, you know, like, and the thing is, is the thing that's a little bit interesting about right now, the time we're in is that there's so many people saying so many things, all wearing the expert uniform.

54:10Some people are experts, like there are experts in this world, but many people act and play as one based on just their ability to communicate on platforms. And there's just so much certainty layered into their suggestions and requirements and requests and demands that it's just, it's very healthy to go. Every time you see that, every time there's like a, you must, I always back up and go, probably not. Like the more forward they are about being certain and right about something, sort of the less interested I am in the short term. And I'd rather just sort of stand back and see how it all plays out.

54:47And at the end of the day, you know, there's plenty of opportunity in a lot of different areas. You don't need to just pounce on everything as it's happening. And in many cases, it's best to wait a little bit and see how things settle out. I mean, I just think about like with AI, like all the companies that began to implement AI stuff early on and then open AI is just like wipe them out in a lot of ways for a lot of different reasons. And when you build other people's platforms, you're very, very much at risk of things changing, tectonic plates shifting very quickly. You might've been better off waiting and seeing how things shake out.

55:19So anyway, who knows? I wanted you to come on here and just talk because I've read your work for years. I've been a fan of yours for years. I've seen you do a bunch of interviews. And I just wanted someone told me this guy named Dylan just said, you should just ask people what's interesting to them. And that's what I wanted to do with you because you're an interesting person and I respect your opinion on so many things. And so I appreciate you just coming on and just riffing with me and just telling me what's intriguing to you. And it's been a lot of it's been very valuable for me just to see how you think and what what grabs your attention.

55:53Well, thanks for the invitation. It was it was really fun. And as I mentioned earlier, I just I want to make useful things. And hopefully this is a useful conversation for for us and for anyone listening. So thanks. Thanks for inviting me. It was a real pleasure. All right. That's the pod.

56:22Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

56:52If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.