5 Conversations that broke our frames this week

23:24And what did it make you feel like? Well, he kind of points out, he's like, you know, there's some things that you don't choose, like where you're born, right? Things like that. But then there's, after that, it's a lot of what you start to choose to do. And even little things like, you know, language is a network. So, you know, if you're in China right now, like choosing to join the English network is actually like a really powerful decision you can make that's gonna like completely change the trajectory of your life, being able to do that. If you start to look at things, English is not just a language, it's a network.

23:55It's a network of people who all can communicate with each other using certain syllables and words and vowels and phrases, right? Money is a network, right? So joining the Bitcoin network early on turned out to be a really profitable decision because you picked, hey, we're a bunch of people who all believe that this thing is going to be valuable network, right? So it just made me more aware of that. It made me, you know, why did I host that dinner in San Francisco? Partly because James was like, yeah, one of the big mistakes I made earlier in my career was I got successful and I kind of siloed myself.

24:23I kind of just wanted to do my own thing on the edge of the network. He's like, it was great for creativity because I was just in my bunker just doing my thing. But it was terrible because he's like, you know, I turned down that lunch meeting with Travis when he was starting Uber. And I, you know, I was too egotistical to take that job at Facebook early on when Mark was trying to recruit me because I just thought, like, I'm going to be off in my own land, creating my own little castle over here. And he's like, again, fun for creativity and for learning, but a little bit foolish to how extreme I was with that.

24:54And so for me, for example, I moved 45 minutes out of San Francisco. That reduced a lot of the serendipitous meetings that I could have in the network of people that I like to be around. Interesting, ambitious people. Would you move closer then? Well, I don't think I'll move closer because the family network's out here. And it's just better. The school that we're in and all that stuff is better out here. But I'm like, yeah, I could definitely drive to SF twice a month and host a dinner, do a couple of live podcasts with people there. That'll be great. And that's not that much of an effort, but just to stay, just to keep one, almost like in the diagram, right?

25:28One line connected to the white hot center of the network. Yeah. And I mean, you live near BART, right? I do. But BART's a network I don't want to be a part of. You're opting out of that one? Yeah, I'm opting out of that one. All right. I have another person. So basically, I don't speak at conferences unless my wife wants to come with me, if Neville wants to join and do it with me. And if Nick Gray will attend. Those three things have to happen. You know, I need my entourage. All three or one of the three? All three. All three have to happen. All three have to happen. That's your like, I only green Skittles.

26:03That's your rider? That's my rider. Is Sarah's got to, the reason I don't like traveling, but I like to travel if it's for a conference because I love going somewhere and the first two days are conferences. The next few days are fun because you meet someone at the event who's going to tell you cool shit to do. and also I just like doing some of my friends and so I went and spoke at this thing called the newsletter conference which was pretty wild because like 15 of my ex-employees were speakers and are all like many of them are millionaires or making a whole lot of money doing newsletter stuff and that like made me feel proud but I met James Altucher you know who James Altucher is?

26:39Yeah he's been on the podcast he's a what is his like he's an author like what's his like title in life? I think James might be the craziest person that I've met in the last six months. So if you Google James Altucher, you're going to see that he's like, the thing that sticks out is his hair. He's got this like crazy haircut. And in real life, he sort of looks like a rock star. Like he kind of like, like he's not trying, but he looks so different that he looks super cool and awesome. And so James is the type of guy who, well, he's got the story. I don't know his full background, but he's like created a startup, made a bunch of money, blew it all on stocks or bad investments, did another startup, made a bunch of money, lost it all.

27:21And now I think he's on like mountain three. And he has a thing called Choose Yourself Financial. It started out just as a newsletter where he would just write about his interesting opinions and things like that. He sold a portion or all of it to Agora. Agora is a large newsletter business that makes something like$1 or$2 billion a year in revenue. I don't like their company. I think that they have like 15 or 20. It's basically, it started in the 80s as one newsletter. Now they have like 20 and they acquire other people's newsletters. And I think they do a lot of nefarious stuff. So I'm not trying to promote those guys, but now they're not all bad.

27:57And he sold to them. And now he's their highest or one of their highest earning newsletters. And his newsletter, Choose Yourself Financial, did 130 million in revenue last year. And it's like crazy. The numbers are crazy, very profitable. And he said all this on stage. Everything I'm saying is public. And so I hung out with him and his wife, and we had a great time. And he said one thing to me. He said it in passing, and I was like, the record skipped. He was like, yeah, I love DoorDash because I don't leave my house for three or six weeks at a time. And if I need a pen, they just bring me a pen.

28:31And I was like, what? Did you just say that you don't leave your house for three to six weeks at a time? And he told me, he's like, yeah, like sometimes I just get so into something that I literally will not step foot outside for like four weeks at a time. And so he, but he, but he said like five other things like that where he just was so fascinating. And it was proof that, you know how like, I think it was in the Peter Thiel, what's his book called? Zero to one. Zero to one. he said there's like a graph where it's like a bar chart or something like that where it's like extreme success means that you're likely going to have extreme personality traits and those extreme personality traits like come off as weird or undesirable in many settings you know you could be like elon which means you're going to be kind of mean sometimes you could be like albert einstein which means you're like forgetful all the time and like wear two different socks or whatever like he like has these examples james is that guy he very much has the like brilliant but forgetful and quirky scientist vibe to him and it was just wild seeing him just have normal conversations because his opinion and the way he looked at things was 100 fresh and different from how i looked at the most like normal things for example when he said he didn't leave his house i was like that's horrible he's like he was shocked that i was criticizing him and which is pretty funny because he should live his life and be happy.

29:57And that made him happy. And it was like, or in the green room, he was playing chess the whole time with Steph Smith, who was also there. I was like, you guys know each other? And they're like, well, we've never actually met, but we play chess constantly together online. And he meets a lot of his friends playing chess online. And there was just so many little tidbits about this guy that made him so fascinating to me. And by the way, if you know Agora, You know, they're famous for these like long form sales pages and like incredibly aggressive advertising. Do you remember in like 2020 or 2019, James's face was everywhere?

30:33Yeah. He was like, I hate that. I hated it. I hated it. I hate our landing pages. I hate how long they are. I hate how they look too aggressive. And he was like, I tried to write differently and like make my own landing pages. None of them could ever convert nearly as good as like the crazy shit that they would write. So did he make a ton of money off that Agora thing? yeah yeah all right or uh maybe the yes and also i i think the answer is is and is still and is still okay gotcha um all right i like that one james uh i have another one that's less weird but more um side questy so shiel shiel monat who came on the podcast uh recently you You can see his episode.

31:20The numbers crushed. Yeah, he did. He did really well. We, so he was at the dinner too. And S.H.I.E.L.D. tells these stories and you're just kind of like, if you just listen to the stories, you'd be like, wow, this guy is fascinating. You would never know his day job because S.H.I.E.L.D. is an epic side quester. So his day job is he's a VC. He invests in fintech companies. That's his job. And there's a lot of that. The weird thing is that if you listen to him, he's like, oh yeah, I'm, I'm taking like courses or like whatever. I'm getting certified to be a travel agent now so I can access all these travel discounts.

31:56And he's been doing that. He's like, yeah, I actually looked at buying the ambassadorship position for like being an ambassador of a country because it has these perks. He's like, basically like your friend who's like really good with credit card points, but for everything, including credit card points, by the way, I think on the podcast, he gave us like a pretty good credit card point tip, but he just has like all these epic side quests he's gone down over and over again. He's like, yeah, I got married in the metaverse and like Taco Bell sponsored it. Oh, and hey, guess what else I did? You know, I started this auction company to go and buy and sell like the domain endings like.app and.photography.

32:34Like that was his business. It's like, these aren't even normal. Even his businesses aren't normal businesses. They're just weird side quests that made money. I think his side, Thistle, his, is that it? Yeah, Thistle was another one. He's like, oh yeah. Like, um, so the story he told on the thing was, he was like, I was interested in this like food delivery space. It got really hot sprig, et cetera. I was ordering from all of them, but I just thought there's no way this thing's making money. So then as a side quest, I signed up and became a driver for a month and I drove around and it was, it was amazing.

33:04I met all these people and I learned the model and I realized that this thing's never going to make money. And he's, he was right. Sprig went out of business. So did all the others that were doing it. And he's like, but we could do this other thing, thistle. And I got my friend to do it. And now thistle is like i forgot what he said what did he say on the podcast like an absurd number i think it's a hundred million plus uh over a hundred hundred million plus of revenue and i was like wow this guy is just always on side quest so for example he was talking about he's like um he's like oh yeah uh mr beast posted this video about like i i'm on this abandoned uh island or whatever like this this abandoned island i'm the only one here and there's nothing here blah blah blah and then she was like hold on i've been to that island but but without the video like and he's like no wait that's not abandoned there's like a there's a bar like three minutes away from where he is and there's this motel so he tweeted about this and then jimmy calls him and he's like hey man like what are you talking about like that is an abandoned island he's like no it's not it's three minutes away from a bar like he's like no technically it's abandoned if you look at xyz and i was like this guy just constantly gets himself into situations wait Jimmy called him because Jimmy like felt his integrity was under attack.

34:14Yeah. And he was like, did you give Jimmy my number? I was like, no, I didn't even, I didn't even know this happened. And, and shielded back down. He was like, no, it's not, it's not an abandoned Island. Or were they both right? He's like, where are you? He's like, look at it. Three minutes away. There's a place. There's a pub. It's like, it's not abandoned. And I think technically maybe there was something where it's like the, the, like the border or like, I don't know. I don't know what this, I didn't get into the details. obviously I don't give a shit. But I just thought it was amazing that there's people that just do things for their own amusement.

34:44And I'll bring this home with a little TikTok I saw. And it was the TikTok was, there's like this TikTok had gone viral. And I'm glad it went viral because it means that other people are similarly really attracted to people who just do shit for their own amusement and really for no other reason. So the TikTok that went viral was like, I forgot the name of the dance, but it was basically like, shout out to my boy, Willie. for spending all of our bachelor party weekend trying to learn this dance. And I guess there's like some dance and he's like this awkward looking white guy. And there's like two black friends trying to show him how to do this dance.

35:18And it's just like everywhere they went during the bachelor party, he's just practicing this dance just to like see if he can learn it in a weekend. And like he starts off really bad. And by the end, he's actually like pretty good at the end of the weekend. And then they cut to the wedding and he's doing the same dance just for fun on his own on the side of the dance floor. Like not part of a performance, just like just doing his thing over there. And I respect that. I think I respect that more than I respect like someone's achievements in life. I kind of respect people that value their own amusement as the highest order bit.

35:52And I think Sheil is an example of that. Like the shit he does, he's not doing it because there's some outcome he's seeking. He's just amused by it and therefore like follows it. And he ends up in these situations that at the end become really good stories. But I don't think that's why he's doing it. I think, you know, we've done close to 700 of these episodes. Sheil would be in my top 10 of people who I admire most. I think that Sheil... Did you... Like, people... I don't even know if we mentioned this one. Do you know that Sheil's in a Justin Bieber music video? Of course he is. Why wouldn't he be in a Justin Bieber music video?

36:25How did that happen? Like, I was watching from the outside. So I think the way it happened was during COVID, an online version of Bachelor, like The Bachelor. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched this. It was great. And what was it exactly? It was, was this during COVID? It was Bachelor on Zoom. I think it was called The Zoom Bachelor or something like that. Yeah. It was Sheil, The Bachelor, and there was a bunch of women that would pop up and then he would like eliminate, give out roses and eliminate them and then he'd pick someone in the end, they went on a date or something. And somehow, I could be confusing all the stories, but somehow this, it was a hit.

36:59It was awesome. and then he then there's a video of him where he's turned around like this and it looks like he's making out with someone like this in the video yeah so he i think he is i'm watching this all from outside i think he posted that video and then he turns around and he smiles and he looks so happy and that clip made it into a justin bieber music video and if you go and watch the music video his clip shield's clip is the best clip oh i have it i have it it's there what what was it called like love yourself was it love yourself and he's like it looks like he's making out with someone but play it play that clip and like watch that oh my god this is so funny it turns around he's got a huge mustache for some reason and he's just teasing do you know another crazy thing about him by the way you know the podcast startup on gimlet media i think he created that yeah yeah Yeah, I think he did.

37:58He had his hands in it. Maybe we'll say that. He just has had, he's had so many weird things happen to him. Let me tell you another one. Another person who I think is doing their own thing. So my buddy Furkan, who you know, he's also been on the podcast. So Furkan and I try to, we were co-founders. We tried to start a bunch of companies together for like, you know, six or seven years. I know Furkan super well. One of the things about Furkan is that he is, he's just a grinder. And it doesn't matter how successful or wealthy he's gotten. I mean, his last company, AppLovin, is like a$100 billion company.

38:31And it's absurd. Why is it taking off so much, by the way? Like AppLovin, for years, it was sort of a joke because when you would drive in San Francisco, they had billboards where they were trying to recruit engineers. And the name AppLovin came out right... We still associated it with McLovin. and it was like, is this a real company? You know what I mean? And now it's one of the most valuable companies in the world. Yeah, exactly. So he's been, so Furkan has been early into a bunch of like tech things, right? He's basically like a hacker's hacker. So he was really into crypto before crypto was cool.

39:12Like I remember literally being at the office and he was like not paying attention because he was buying into the Ethereum ICO at like, you know, 17 cents or something like that. I was like, Ethereum, like literally like dorkiest fucking name, never going to work. So I didn't buy because your boy's a genius. And that's why I'm a podcaster now. And he's a billionaire. And so... Is Furkan a billionaire now or... I don't know. I don't know if he is or is it. But something, he started a$100 billion company. I don't know. He's not like three zip codes away. Maybe he's two. I don't know. He's getting close.

39:40So he got into crypto early on. And then when Web3 happened, remember when Web3 happened and everybody was like, like piling into Web3. And Furkan was building a company in that space. Literally, this company is called Third Web. And he was just really into the actual like technology behind it. He's like, oh, I think I can make these tools easier to use for developers and blah, blah, blah, blah. Dude, one time he like did a talk on, remember the Raspberry? Raspberry Pi, yeah. Yeah. And like he like one time spent like 45 minutes explaining to me all about it. And he knew everything about it. Yeah.

40:11Yeah. He knows everything about everything. So he's, and the second thing he got really into was VR. So he bought me an Oculus just because he was like, I don't want to tell you about this and like hope that you go try it out here. Here's the new Oculus headset. Go home and put this on. OK, that's that's that's not a friend you need. And so I go home and I put it on. I'm blown away. And I'm like, wow, this thing's getting really good. And then I think he bought me like another one when it got better. And then I started buying them and I'm like paying attention to VR. But, you know, I'm like every other lemming out there.

40:41It's like I pay attention when shit gets hot. And Furkan, the reason why Furkan is so great is because he doesn't pay attention when things get hot. He's like in the hardcore nerd bucket where he's like, I pay attention because it's interesting to me. I don't care if it's popular or not. I don't care if it's hot or not. I don't care if it's here or not. I want to be on this train the whole time. And so he was telling me about his, so he's got this lab called Effing. And he was telling me first about ThirdWeb, how it was growing and how it had real revenues now. I was like, oh, wow, that's great.

41:09Then he's telling me about VR. and like Sam, like how many people do you know that are interested in VR right now? Like everybody who is interested in tech is interested in AI. Where's your Oculus sitting right now? Dude, where's the biggest pile of dust in my room? I think it's back there. Yeah, it's gone. Same. My, I mean like I did what everyone did. They got it. This is awesome. This is going to change the world. It's going to change everything. I don't know where the charger is. It's in my drawer somewhere. Yeah. Let's go back to scrolling on my phone. Yeah. and he didn't do that. He's like, he would tell me like we would hang out and he's like, I'm working in VR today.

41:46Once a week, I go co-work in VR. I'm like, what? And so guess what? His interest in VR, there's not, it's not popular right now. In fact, they went to a VR conference and this VR conference was like, you know, crickets basically and he sends... Is VR the new ocean? It's the old ocean. That's the problem. It doesn't even have the new tag and so our buddy Hubert who works with him goes there and he wears a t-shirt all black that just says I invest in VR huge on the front he's like dude it was like being the only girl at like a like a prom or something like that there was like everybody was interested in him because he's in he's like the only guy left investing in VR and he's like dude it's actually kind of working he goes you know if you look at the top 15 apps like the top 15 apps in all of the Oculus store these three guys over here own three of the top 15 he's like they're printing money right now like this thing is amazing Yeah, it's not like, it's not the hot thing right now, but like, I don't know, if you can make$10 million as like a small team building these apps and you're the frontline of this and you're the only people who are like specializing this technology, like good things are gonna happen.

42:55So it just kind of reminded me of like, you know, all the money is made either and being sort of right on time, but timing is super hard. And so the same way that Warren Buffett was like, don't try to time the market, focus on your time in market. Furkan is doing the tech, the engineering version of time in market, where once he's interested in something and he believes in it, he doesn't let his interests go in and out based off of popular sentiment or VCs or exits or anything like that. It's just based on, is the tech getting better or not? And I think that's just such a strong thing that's gonna help them be super, super successful.

43:32To all the young people listening who are looking for a thing to do, I feel like that story is maybe, a life-altering... This is a very good premise. And I'm on board with this premise. I do think VR... It's actually... And it's not... This isn't a secret. Mark Zuckerberg, who has a really good ratio of getting things right, has said this is the thing. And also, do you know who also loves VR? Sheil. Sheil posts videos of his... Or not... It's not VR, but the... Spectacles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or what's it called? The Ray-Bans? Ray-Bans, yeah. He loves those Ray-Bans. and it's very clear how there's like, you know, that's all in the same ballpark of VR and how this can all work.

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45:18That was what I was going to bring up next. So I love those two. I have them. I bought some for my sister just like for her birthday recently. And I think that it's a great product. It's actually like, do you have them, by the way? No, I'll go buy them right now. What do they do? Like, what's the point? The first, the very first easy thing is they're basically AirPods. AirPods. So people don't really realize this at worst case scenario, you just bought a pair of AirPods that you're probably not going to lose. So the audio from the, like the glasses, the, the, the part that goes behind your ear, it's not in your ear, but you can hear like music, podcasts, whatever, super easily.

45:50Um, so the audio is the, the AirPod type of feature is great. And then the camera, right? Like hands or camera, if you have a kid, like for kids, this thing is incredible because I wear them to like my daughter's like soccer games or whatever. and like, you know, the moment passes so quickly with kids. And if you're fumbling, get out of your pockets, unlock face ID, nope, nope, type in my password, get the camera app open, it's over by then, right? And you're now looking through your phone at life versus your glasses. That's where you're already looking. It's on your head, it's on a swivel. All you do, literally, if something's going on or something's interesting, you just tap the thing and it starts recording.

46:25And the video looks great, by the way. It's really, really good. So for if you're traveling, if you're out and about, if you've got kids, if you're at a sports thing, if you're at a concert, this thing is amazing. And so to me, these are the future. I think Meta knows this. They're like investing in it very heavily. I think it's interesting because it's kind of uncontested right now. Like maybe Apple will get in the game. Maybe if they still have like the juice to do it. Snapchat seems to have fallen out. The famous, like, I forgot what the thing was called. Magic Leap. Those guys died or are dying.

46:57And the humane pin died, right? Like all that stuff is kind of dead. And I think Facebook has this sort of uncontested right now. And the thing I was going to say, though, is I remember when I was in San Francisco, this company called Leap Motion got bought. Do you remember Leap Motion? Yes. Did they did that become a video game or like part of a video game? They got bought by Facebook. And what they were doing was they were they were like it was like this thing you wore on your wrist. And then you could just move your hands and do like hand gestures to control a computer. Essentially, they never really found product market fit because guess what?

47:28Not a lot of people want to sit in front of their desktop and like hand gesture like the minority report. Like replacing the mouse and keyboard wasn't like super sick, I guess. Yeah, but it's pretty sweet if you have some physical disability, which I mean, there's a lot of like amazing applications, I would imagine. Maybe, but you still got to use your hand, your arm, right? So it's like, you know, same thing as I guess a mouse really. But the team that was working on it was like cutting edge at this kind of like gesture control. And guess what? Like being the best team in the world at gesture control or another example of this was, they got bought for, I think, 100 million plus.

48:01Another company that got bought for 100 million plus that never hit product market fit was the company that was working on face masks. So before, remember when Snapchat came out with those face filters? It was super hot, like the dog face filter. Bitmoji? No, it was called Masquerade was the name of the company. And so Masquerade, I think it was like a European company. It was just a small company. and again got bought for like$100 million plus. And then Facebook bought another company that was doing a very similar thing. Or maybe I'm mixing up who bought Masquerade. But I guess my point is being at the leading edge of just the tech, you get two shots to win.

48:35If you make the breakthrough app that actually does get product market fit, then you get to win in the billions. If you're just the most hardcore tech team at building like good functionality and like working on these new platforms, your team of 10 really strong engineers, if you could actually build a strong team, your floor becomes like a 50 to$100 million company. I don't think most people realize this. I think most people think starting a company is really risky. Yes, but there are less risky versions of this. And right now, if you were working on the Meta Ray-Bans platform, which like today, there's no app store for it.

49:11There's nothing, but guess what? There's gonna be, right? Like that form factor is for sure going to exist. And there's for sure gonna be apps that are built on it. And so if I was a pretty hardcore tech team, or if I worked at one of these big companies, like let's say I was at Facebook or I was at Snap Spectacles and I was on that team, the smartest thing you could do is spin out with your five smartest friends and be like, hey guys, the floor of this company is a 50 to$100 million company. And the ceiling is like a billion dollar company or 2 billion or whatever it is. And all we're going to do is we're just going to live at the cutting edge of this.

49:40And we just have to survive five years. We have, we need time in market. Like we just have to survive five to five years in order to like be there. and we're going to just work out all the kinks about the spatial recognition, about getting gesture control correct, about all these little tech problems that you need to do to make things great. Because either you're going to do it and crack the app or they were going to buy you because you've solved a bunch of gnarly problems. There was, I'm reading this book called Digital Gold. It's about the, have you, you know that? It's a, that book, it's about Bitcoin and the founding and like the early community and things like that.

50:13I don't think I've read that one. It's great. There's not actually that many books written about like the early characters, which is why I wanted to read it because we had Nick Bilton on and we did American Kingpin about Silk Road. I was like, these stories are really fun. And now like I know of a lot of the early characters of Bitcoin and like them talking about going to their first conference. And on the first conference, there was like 50 people there and it was like a shitty restaurant and just like all these like stories of like, yeah, like this checks all the boxes of like early like crowd of just nerds who are regarded as freaks and no one takes them seriously.

50:48And then one legitimate financier is like, okay, there's something here. And then another one. And then another one. And then there's a controversy. But they overcome it. And then it fits all the stereotypes of these types of stories. And what you're describing is that same thing. It's like a group of weirdos. What did we say about... I had some guy pitch me a company that I thought was really stupid and now it's huge. It was like, this product is dumb. Oh my God, people are using this. They're dumb. Oh my God, everyone's using this. I'm dumb. You know what I mean? And like, it's like, that's like how you go through.

51:22That's like the process of some of these things. And like when you're talking about these metaglasses, you're talking about VR, you're talking about oceans. I'm like, oh my God, there's like a story here, a story there. Like it's the same pattern over and over again. And it's a really fun pattern. Speaking of crypto, I have three crypto things for you real quick. Number one, James on the podcast tells a story about, because he wrote this blog post a long time ago. He tells a story about how his friend thought he was Satoshi. And the reason why is because. How flattering. I know, by the way. What's up with my friends, dude?

51:56Who, me? Not even a long shot? You think I'm Satoshi? No. I could never. What an honor, though. But the thing that he was saying was he wrote this blog post. It's on his blog still. It's called One Currency to Rule Them All. It was about one world currency, about creating a digital world currency. And he tells a story on the podcast about why he was interested in that, how he was interested in that, and what happened. So he was like, him, I forgot who it was. It was him. It was Philip Rosedale who started Second Life, which, by the way, like still to this, you know, basically Second Life to this day is probably the best execution of a metaverse.

52:36Like they had like millions and millions of players. They lived their lives in there. They formed relationships and marriages. They had like, they have their own currency in there. Like - Is it its own thing still? I don't know if Second Life has officially like died. I don't know if it's still going. I'm not sure. But like at the time they had Linden bucks or whatever, Linden dollars. And it was like a whole thing. So him and Philip Rosedale were like interested in this. And then it was, there's a famous VC. I'm forgetting the name now, but he tells a story about a famous VC. And they used to meet once a week and they would talk about like, okay, how are we going to build this world currency?

53:07And they were like, here's what it needs to do. and like all the things that bitcoin eventually did they're like they're like it needs to have um it needs to have this it needs to have this and what they did was they went to the lobby conference which if you know is like this 100 150 person conference and they you i went to the last year of the lobby conference it was awesome it was all internet ogs it was so cool so they were at one i guess and their their little breakout conversation was about this they're like hey i think there's something, there's a need for this. And he bought the domain blue.com, B-L-U-E.com.

53:39He was going to launch it. It was going to be called blue. And like, you know, the dollar is green and this currency was going to be blue. And they had the whole thing sort of like planned out, I guess. But they were like, they couldn't figure out how do we, if this ever becomes a thing, like the target on our back is going to be too crazy. Like we can't do this. And the problem was they were like, we've already talked about it at lobby. And he's like, once we realized this, this thing would need an immaculate conception that it would need to be totally anonymous or pseudonymous, like a start and nobody could know who did it.

54:11They're like, we blew it. We said it at the lobby conference. There's 14 other people now who have heard us be interested in this. And when the white paper came out years later, Philip called him and was like, dude, I can't believe you. You cut me out. No way. He's like, have you seen Bitcoin? He's like, yeah. He's like, that's you, right? He's like, no, it's not me. He's like, I thought it was you. If it was either of the two of us, it'd be you. You're way more technical. He's like, no, it's not me. Who the hell is this? How cool is that? That is awesome. That is one of the greatest stories I've heard.

54:43It's weird that multiple groups of people start working on the same thing independently at the same time, isn't it? And they had the same conclusion that it had to be an anonymous creator. Yeah, exactly. And you know what? The other crazy thing, you saw this Jack Dorsey, like, is Jack Dorsey the same thing? Dude, that was the stupidest thing, man. Like there was some compelling evidence, but then what they did was they completely like spoiled the broth by putting in there. Jack loves wearing Japanese clothing, like as like examples of why he is Satoshi. Do you know what I mean? It was ridiculous.

55:14I didn't think that was that bad. What's wrong with that? There was like multiple pieces of compelling. It's supposed to be compelling evidence that says like Jack wore a who is Satoshi t-shirt to the to the Olympics. Like it was just like ridiculous stuff. No, I thought it was ridiculous. You didn't think it was ridiculous? First I did, because I was like, Jack Dorsey? No way. You know, then there's this deck, right? Do you read the deck? There's this actual full slide deck about it. There was a bunch of good points. There was a bunch of good points. There was a bunch of good points about it.

55:47Things I didn't know. I did not know that Jack was like in those early cypherpunk communities back when he was like 15 years old or something like that. You know what I mean? Like he was actually in that. whoever started this thing was likely in that really small community of about, I don't know, 1500 people that were on those early mailing lists. Well, he was, and he, and he was, I didn't know that. So that was kind of new information. Okay. Interesting. Um, other things that I didn't know. So there was like, um, there was like a lot of the timing things with when he was starting Twitter. And when he was like, basically the timing of when Satoshi was active and then when Twitter took off and then when he stopped, when he left Twitter and he was like, I'm excited about new things.

56:27And then all of a sudden, that was like, he tweeted like, someone needs to create this thing or that thing. And it was like right when Satoshi was creating that thing. There was all these weird coincidence in timeline. Exactly. But then there was other stuff where he was like, look at the code here. That sounds like Jack's favorite restaurant in San Francisco. Or Jack said he wants to be by the US Mint for his office, which Twitter was. Therefore, I just thought it was huge reaches. There are huge reaches, and I don't think it's true. But I thought, wow, this is a lot of stuff about Jack Dorsey that I didn't really realize.

57:04And like, you know, for example, you know, one of the, I think the biggest reaches of the thing where they would look at like strings of the transaction IDs or whatever. And it'd be like, see, this says D2MP, dude in two mint plaza. That was his address. You're right. All right. I don't think D, just because D2MP showed up in the middle of a string doesn't mean that he's saying, you know, one dude SF, one DSF. That's him. You know, it's like, those are the ones where it's like, okay, I don't think that stuff is true. It's like trying to like figure out if Tupac's still alive. Like, did you hear what that, he said, Shug shot me.

57:43Like he said it in the song. You know what I mean? But I would definitely go read this deck. The deck was very entertaining and it was presented in a very like serious way. And I just appreciate the seriousness that which somebody took this research. By the way, that two-minute plaza, that's where we were for the dinner. And so I was like, and it was the same day that the thing dropped. I was like, hey, this is, maybe I'm the creator. Maybe you're Satoshi. That should be the takeaway. That was my takeaway. I've got one more thing for you. Go to chisos.com. So C-H-S-I-C-H. Sorry. Start over. Chisos.com.

58:19All right. I spelled it all wrong and you still got there. Is it Chisos? Is it Spanish? Chisos. Boots. Do you see the boots? Incredible craftsmanship. I see cowboy boots. Yeah. So I own a pair of these boots. I have no stake in this company, nothing. I just think it's cool. And the founder is part of like, I recently became friends with him, but he's part of my friend group in Austin. He was like friends with Nick and I met him once or twice through Nick. His name is Will Roman. And this company - You bought a thousand dollar pair of cowboy boots? I think$500 or$600 pair a year, like a while ago.

58:57And this company, he owns the whole thing. And he was explaining to me at like, we were hanging out and I was like, dude, this is a good story. Can I talk about it? So he gave me permission. But the company does like low seven figures in revenue. And the way it started was he worked in tech, like at a normal tech company, quits his job, moves to Mexico to learn, because Mexico is where a lot of like great boots are made, like spends years there, like learning the craftsmanship. Like apprenticing? Yeah, apprenticing. He's like, I want to learn how boots are made and I want to make bespoke boots.

59:25That was his dream was to make bespoke boots. He's a Texas guy. He's like, he's kind of looks like a cowboy. And he quits his tech job, moves, learns how to make boots, creates this company called Chizos. And he was telling me the other day, he didn't say this, but I got this read on him that he's a little burnt out. He was like, the company's like growing 10 to 15 % a year. I own the whole thing. And he was explaining his vision. He was like, there's Chicovas, which are like kind of cheap, but they sell hundreds of millions of dollars for the boots. It's a startup. And then there's bespoke bootmakers who are just mom and pop stores.

59:55He's like, I want to be a little bit closer. I want to be closer to bespoke than to Kova. I don't want to be cheap. I need the highest quality and I refuse to sacrifice that quality. But I want to build this into a huge company. And I was like, do you spend on marketing? Do you do this? And he's like, no, we don't do anything. I just make the greatest boots. And I Google the boot name, Chizzo's Boots, and Reddit and all these other companies or all these other forums are talking about this is the best boot on earth. And I see all this and it starts formulating in my brain. I'm like, this is it, my friend.

1:00:23You have it. The hard part is done. Surely there's some type of nerds out there that could help make this company big. But I thought I'd bring this to you because I criticized the D2C world a bit when, well, I have that criticism often about this world and how there's not enough emphasis on product creation and story and things like this. And it's mostly just arbitrage. And I came across to this. And I was like, that's an example of something that I think, I don't know anything about this world, but I think could be blown up and be made pretty huge. Yeah, this is really cool. By the way, great branding by this guy.

1:00:57So like, dude, he has everything good. Go to their website. It's very clean. And like this, like sawed in half video. Like what I like about this is a, I love that story of moving to Mexico to like apprentice and actually like learn the craft. And I just kind of want that to be like a TV show. But the second thing is, um, sometimes the people who are really good at making the product can't show it. There's a little story. So Ben's brother bought into a restaurant or like helped co-found a restaurant, um, where they live in, in Phoenix. So we go there for lunch and we're there and it's his brother.

1:01:33And it's, and I was like, so why'd you do this? He's like, well, the chef is amazing. He's, he's like, you know, recognized as like one of the best chefs. So he's this great chef. He's like, I just really believe in this guy's product. And I thought we could turn it into a business. He's like, the problem is when you partner with these artists, sometimes they don't A, know anything about how to like convey that or show that. And B, they just won't compromise like price or quality or whatever. There's uncompromising. He's like, bro, like we need to make this. Like we're so expensive compared to everybody else.

1:02:01Like that's, but nobody really is like, we're so expensive and that's hurting our business. And I was talking to him and he's like, he's like, for example, he holds up these tortillas. He's like, you know, these tortillas, like these tortillas cost this much. I forgot what it was like, whatever. Let's call it. Let's pretend it was two bucks. It's$2 a tortilla. Most people get their tortillas like 20 cents. And I was like, well, why? And he's like, because he demands that every morning we get fresh tortillas that are trucked in from Mexico. And I was like, wow. That's awesome. Why don't you tell anybody that?

1:02:32And he's like, what? I'm like, yeah, you should like tell people that we truck our tortillas in fresh from Mexico every morning. I'd gladly pay$2 if I knew that. Your problem isn't that the chef is not willing to compromise and cut costs. Your problem is that you're not marketing this in a way that actually tells the story of why this food tastes better than anyone else and why this is fresher, why this is more authentic, why this is better, why this is higher priced. And so that became like a little, like one of our core things in my little team, me, Ben, Diego, we talk about this all the time.

1:03:04We go, we call it the tortilla principle. It's like, when we look at businesses that we're either going to buy or our own businesses, it's like, where are we trucking in tortillas fresh from Mexico? And are we doing a good job of telling that story? And almost always the answer is no. Like the things you do in your business that are like the blood, sweat, and tears to do something great, you take for granted because they just seem like table stakes for you. And you're not even telling the world about why you do that or what you do there, why you're different than anybody else, why you've gone the extra mile there.

1:03:33Yeah, Joe Sugarman, one of my favorite copywriters, he was like, I used to sell so many of these particular watches. I forget which company. It was Casio, maybe. And they were like, we... And he was like, we make this out of this aluminum. Or they were... Casio was explaining to Joe Sugarman, the copywriter, how they make their watch. Because he was like, tell me everything so I learn. And he was like, yo, we use the space-grade aluminum to make this watch. And he was like, wait, so this aluminum is strong enough for spaceships? He's like, yeah, but every watch company ever uses the exact same stuff.

1:04:03He's like, so? And then this quartz movement is special for this reason. But again, every company uses that. He's like, space-age aluminum? Precise quartz movement? And that is what sold a lot of Casio watches. And Casio, the makers, it's called the knowledge complex. When you know too much about it, you think that that's not interesting. and Joe Sugarman, an outsider, a copywriter, was like, no, this is so interesting. And that's what someone needs to do. Google Will Roman, that's the founder. But dude, look at his website. You started your story with, this guy worked in tech, had an everyday job, wasn't perfect, quit his job, moved to Mexico for three years to learn the art of bootmaking.

1:04:47Guess what? Not on his website. I know. Three years of life, three years of marketing collateral that he's not using, right? Like that's a thousand days of his life that he's not putting on the website. Like even if you click down the more tab, you're right, it's like more, our story. You go to our story, it's like true small business. Hi, I'm Will. I'm a hardworking guy, passionate about craftsmanship. Guess what? Everybody says that. Guess what everybody hasn't done? Moved to Mexico for three years and apprenticed in this boot factory. I was like, Will, do you use Reddit? He goes, I don't really know how to work it.

1:05:19I go, let me show you something. If you Google what's the most, if Google comfortable cowboy boot Reddit, the top post someone asked that and chizos the top line it says this is the most comfortable boot i've ever worn and there's 117 comments agreeing with that top post and he's like oh that's awesome he like saw that i was like are you insane man this is it you have it this guy doesn't have a tiktok is that right i don't think so does he not know that like every niche nostalgic profession is now like the coolest kid on TikTok. Like if you plant like beets or something like that, if you have a beet farm.

1:05:58Dude, there's like Victorian porn where it's like people like wearing like, you know, like old doll dresses. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's like the weirder, the better. And the more physical real world, the better. Go look at epic gardening, right? Like if he wants to do this, like go, go teach people about this, go show them the process, show them how the factory looks like, show them cutting a boot in a half like stuff like that i think would be would be just fire on on tiktok and i i only brought it up because i the story was amazing i also want to go on record as like this might be like another like of our like uh feather in the caps where we called it moment because i do love their boots it's so good and i love meeting people who 80 of the work is done this other part a lot of people can help you and get it done um and and i don't know maybe not that 80 of the work is done because like actually 80 % of the work is the marketing and like operations, but it's, they did the one hard thing that others aren't really, really willing to do.

1:06:52Yeah. That's what I mean. Like, it's like a great product. Like the product is good. We did this in my sushi restaurant. So the restaurant that we started, we started as an online, a virtual restaurant, right? It's before DoorDash and Uber Eats, but we like create a website. We would drive people to the website and you would order sushi and like, we would make it in a commissary kitchen and we'd deliver it to you in like under 20 minutes. And so we had our menu and we go and we'd meet with Dan Ariely. Do you know who that is? The author. Yeah. He wrote this book called Predictably Irrational. So he's a behavioral economist and he just happened, he was a teacher at Duke.

1:07:22We were Duke students. So we get in with him and like normally companies pay him whatever, six figure, seven figure contracts to like consult with them. He's willing to meet with us because we're just like three, you know, dumb asses that were like in like at school. And we go, Dan, we want to like drive more sales you're the guy what should we do it's show me your menu we look we show him the menu he goes oh okay you want to you want to make more money um you want more people to buy from you raise your prices you go what he goes uh we go but like you know we thought we could make it more accessible more affordable that was the whole pitch we won the business plan competition by telling people we're going to make sushi more accessible more affordable he goes yeah but when somebody looks at this they just see cheap sushi um so guess what people don't want which is the worst sushi she's the worst type of sushi exactly so he's like that's not what you want he goes and so we and by the because we were the reason i bring this up we were an online restaurant so we could literally a b test now we didn't have the tooling we weren't like smart enough to even know what an a b test was i didn't even know the phrase but we would literally switch it by day so we would do day one we would show menu a day two we would show menu b then we would look at the number at the end of the day, be like, how do we do?

1:08:31And so we raised prices and not only did revenue go up, but conversion rate went up. So we actually converted more customers and more money per customer. It's like, oh shit. Okay. Dan, what else can we do? He goes, sushi and the wine industry. I forgot the name he had for it, but he goes, they create their own language around their products. And we go, but that's why it's so inaccessible. I don't understand what any of that stuff means. He goes, exactly. And if you do know what it means, you feel smart and you feel like an insider and we were like what and he goes so we tested three three models of language so we had what we had before which was what we thought the accessible version right uh the philadelphia roll salmon and cream cheese wrapped up tastes great right that was like literally how we used to write and then we had the next one which was language he's like so same joe sugarman principle he's like um do you freeze your salmon and we're like no awesome fresh never frozen atlantic hand you can caught salmon or something like that right same roll same salmon more words boom conversion rate up like oh god it works this is true and then we we just kept doing the same thing with the whole menu and it showed me two things one man restaurants should really a b test their menus and i don't think they do a good enough job of this and b uh you can like the same thing can be sold just with better words, with better marketing and dramatically change your business.

1:09:57It's not like just something you slap on at the end and that's good enough. It's like, no, you will get this like multiplier on success based on how well you do this one thing. It's not just like a 10 % improvement. It was like a 2X, 3X type of improvements you could get by stacking these on top of each other. What was your cute way of explaining cream cheese? um i don't know i think we might have just not even not even mentioned it just put it at the end and a smooth you know the other stuff yeah whatever yeah i remember like and the funny thing was with salmon it was like we were so excited about fresh never frozen salmon and it was like our calling card not like those other guys just frozen frozen salmon um and we used to go even further we don't we don't even have a freezer in our restaurant that's how fresh this is and then we like met uh the chef and he was like you need to freeze a salmon it kills the bacteria we're like oh shit sorry whoops well and also flash frozen salmon to kill all of all of the bugs and like all like have you ever seen the documentaries when they when the japanese catch the salmon that they're going to use they drop it into the boat that has it like it's a freezer like they freeze them like you know it's flash frozen yeah so like i remember like learning about i'm like oh shit everything i've been told to is a lie yeah um all right that's it that was a good pod what do you think yeah i mean this was a good uh it's a good catch-up it's fun to hang out fun to talk and i feel like i don't know if other people feel this way but just debriefing interesting people we met and the way their mind works or the little schemes they got into is kind of my favorite thing.

1:11:37Well, I stole it from you where I actually started writing. Like, I'll write notes right after I meet someone. Even if you don't refer back to it, it's pretty good. It's good. All right, that's it. That's the pod.

1:11:58Hey,

1:12:02let'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, you know, 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.

1:12:32If 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 N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.