Business Brainstorm: Ozempic Hotline, Klout 2.0 & Failed Churches

26:57If you want your kindergartner to get into school, you have to dress up, go to the interview, prep them, be like, hey, don't make a fool out of us. We've been preparing you for four years for this. Come on, perform, do the thing. And you send them in and they do an interview with them. Your four-year-old does an interview. Oh, I know this school. I used to play basketball and they have a sick basketball hoop overlooking the city. Yeah, yeah. It's at the top of Pack Heights. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's a wait list of parents dying to get in and they own the buildings. They own the real estate that they are, that they operate out of, which is why they have so much, uh, like so many, so much value and assets on the balance sheet.

27:36Cause they own like huge properties in the prime spots of San Francisco. um so and i looked at a bunch of these there's another one burks and another one there's a whole bunch of these that that exist and they range from like you could see okay 2020 2021 how much revenue they do okay they did 15 million or 20 million in revenue some are more profitable than others so hamlet is particularly profitable but the other ones would be like 15 to 20 million in revenue and 2 million in profit um still not bad not bad at all and they and they would have 25 million in assets on the books. And you can see who goes there because they have to list who donates.

28:12So you can see the donations from different families. Oh, that's the Facebook executive and this person is a famous author, a famous movie producer and whatever, right? How much do they donate? What's a big donation? The top donations are like low seven figures right now. But I think they did we're going to renovate the school and they raised$50 million to renovate the school. And that's donations outside of the tuition. So that's just Just please give us money so we can have a better building. And you get to, we'll name the library after you type of thing. Pretty insane. So there's a huge number of people because the public school system in San Francisco is not very good or considered to be not very good.

28:50I have no idea what it actually is, but that's the reputation it has. So I think there's an opportunity to do the following. So good for them. Now, what's the opportunity? The opportunity is if you were ambitious enough, you could look at a... And if you cared about this topic, if you cared about this topic, You really got to care about this shit because this is going to be. I don't know. Debatable. I think you have to care enough. I don't think you have to like be born to educate. I don't think you're, you know, you have to be whatever. Miss Doubtfire here. I think you have to be a smart person who is going to hold a standard just like you would for any other business.

29:25A man dressed as an elderly woman. You definitely don't have to be that. That's not that's not required. In fact, in fact, you can't be that. Probably. When I think about what the most ideal teacher is, it's Miss Doubtfire. So a 40 year old recently divorced man. And she'll take care of you both at the same time. So there's all these commercial real estate is that like an all time low in San Francisco. There's empty buildings everywhere. Why? Because remote work, it was too expensive. And now these companies are basically just trying to get out of their leases. So on one hand, you have huge office buildings that are going vacant.

30:02And on the other side, totally dead down there right now. No, it's not totally dead, but it's the lowest it's ever been. So, you know, buy low. If that's your strategy, this is a good time to do it. So I think you could buy one of these commercial or industrial buildings and convert it into a private elementary school. Now, we're going to need a couple of things. We're going to need a name and a differentiator. On the name side, I got a few to throw at you. You tell me which one you like. Well, let's just go look at a bunch of old shipwrecks. Bougiest names I found. Here we go. Would you like your child to attend Windsor Oaks?

30:35would you like your child to attend the prestigious carrington school that one's nice and the other one is oh yeah yeah our daughter got into thatcher darby and if your daughter gets into thatcher darby you feel pretty good right now so well are these famous like streets in england i just looked up expensive ass last names that was my google search and then i found a list of 100 and then i started pairing two together like windsor oakley and and and Thatcher Darby together. So I think I got some solid leads there. The other thing is we need a differentiator. And when I talk, so I have some friends who have kids that go to these schools.

31:12And I asked them, I said, what would you wish was different? And they're like, because I was like, you're paying a crazy price. I thought they would say something like price or teacher-student ratios. And they were like, no, no, no, look, these are all going to be expensive. And in fact, I'm fortunate. I did well. The number one thing I want to spend on is my kids' education. If there was a cheaper school, I don't think we would switch because we would feel like, well, are we really going to try to go for like a lesser education? I don't know. This school has a wait list. The price is not the problem.

31:41And I said, teacher-student ratio? They said, no, it's six teachers for every one kid. So on the 450 kids, they have 75 teachers to run this school that does$30 million a year. You did it the wrong way. Six students per one teacher? Correct, correct. Got it. Yeah, six teachers for one student would be insane. That'd be weird. That'd be a little bit weird. Yeah. We're surrounded. That'd be weird. so um the i said what's the biggest pain point they go you know what i hate to say this uh i consider myself a liberal person live and let live but there's like an agenda in these schools and the agenda is like very woke so you know like our kids in elementary school have like they're being taught um you know that there are like you know what is gender you could be a boy but you're a girl like i just don't want my like first grader to be thinking oh i could i'm a girl but i could be a boy like that and this is at public schools right this is that private schools oh and so they're like you know and you know there's just such a heavy in influence they said you know it's crazy in our elementary school there is um there are like uh clubs that are you know it sounds like what you would have at like maybe a very liberal college but it's like i don't feel like that has a place in elementary school just like kids be kids so the differentiator is going to be, hey, what happened to schools teaching math and science?

33:01Let's do that. That's what we're going to teach. We're not going to teach political stuff. We're not going to teach all these social issues. They're kids. Let them be kids. We're going to be a hardcore math, science, STEM education school. That's what this one is? No, that's what Thatcher Darby's going to be. I love it. Hardcore math, science, and we don't subscribe to all. We keep the politics out of the school. That's our only promise. You're here to learn and we're going to learn these topics. And we're not trying to shape your kids socially or politically in any way. You and I have a friend who's got a, well, he's just turned, he just became a teenager, 13.

33:38And I said, Hey, hey, Brian, how's school going? You know, it's about that age. You're, you're liking girls, I bet you, anyone you'll have a crush on? No, it's not really working out. Why not? He goes, they're all non-binary. And I was like, what? He goes, Yeah, there's only one that's heterosexual and is cis or something like that. But the rest are non-binary. And the girl I like is non-binary. So she said she can't be with me. And I was like, all right, well, that is a pain in the ass. I don't know what to say to that. Yeah, no advice. I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. So what do you want to have for lunch?

34:15Like, it sounds really challenging, honestly. Most of the times, generations will say like, oh, you have it so easy. I had it so much harder when I was your age. Right. not true here. I do not envy a 12 or 15 year old and, and, and that at that age, right. And I, I don't know if it's better or worse, not really saying that, but I do think there should be options in the market for what you want. Some, some people really, really do want their kid to be, um, exposed to a whole bunch of different issues and be a well-rounded human being and well-versed in a bunch of different issues. And other people are like, I know, I don't really want my kid thinking about that.

34:51I just really want them to have a good education, learning about math, science, reading, writing, those things. And I'd like the school to do that. And I will handle the kind of like the outside of that curriculum type of education. I'm not saying one of the worst, but I think it's going to be different. Where well-roundedness goes to die. Or something like that. Hardcore science machines. What we create. We don't like standardized testing we love it yeah so yeah you've got something here diversity here is javascript all right that's cool but that's crazy that school makes that much money yeah who would have thought i didn't really think about like ever like oh you could create a school that that school if it's doing you know you know any of those schools those are basically like somewhere between 50 and 200 million dollar assets if you were to sell them maybe more if they one of them has 100 million dollars in assets on this balance sheet.

35:53Like these are these are very big businesses that are just one location, brick and mortar schools with 400 customers. That's kind of amazing. Did I ever tell you about the time I was a telemarketer? No. So at my high school, if you needed some money, the best job was to be a telemarketer. And what were we selling? for what? Yeah. What were we selling? You ask we are begging for money. And so what they would do is you'd get paid$10 an hour, but you'd get a commission and you'd get pizza. And I worked that job for a year, three nights a week. And what they would do is every time you'd sit down at your desk in the evening, they pay commission, salary and pizza.

36:40Dear diary. Yeah, that was the thing. It was like 16. That was the thing. We had dinner. It was they had soda and pizza and you'd sit down at your desk. I worked there from like 3pm to like 8pm. You sit down at your desk and you have a phone and then you just have a box of note cards. And on the note cards, it says how much the person donated previously, what their resume is, so where they worked and what their age is. And what you would do after this is a little trick of the trade, you find the oldest person there who's got the best career or who has previously donated the most amount of money.

37:12And you line those up and you just start calling them and you say, you know, Hey, Mr. Hey, Hey, Mr. Smith, this is a Sam at SLU, your alma mater. I know you graduated here in 1956. But look, things are going great here. But we need some money in order to build this thing or that thing. Can I count you down for a$5 ,000 donation? You did$3 ,000 two years ago, but times have changed, my friend, we got to step it up. Like, you want to be a man for others or not? Now's the time. And like, We had these scripts that we had to sell these guys on giving us money to build something. And I would bring in, I don't remember the exact numbers, but like tens of thousands of dollars a month in donations from these alumni.

37:51And that was my job, just to call these guys constantly. And we would do, I don't know, maybe 100 calls or something like that a night, just trying to get this money. And you would get like, if you brought in five grand, boom, you got$100. Like, that's what we did. And it was the greatest racket on it. I don't remember exactly. No, we weren't making it because the money had to go to the school. Was this legal or was there a janitor overseeing you? What was going on here? Who was running this program? I can't believe the history teacher. Yeah, it was the history teacher. That was like his side job.

38:19His side hustle was running the boiler room. You know, he was the Jordan Belford. And I was like the little the little scrum or the little scrub. Just like, you know, smiling and dialing. He's like, you guys want some crackers? Yeah, crackers are for closers. get your ass on the phone man get your ass on the phone par yeah you like walk behind you like Sam is that a work call can you please can you please hang that up your finger's broken why aren't you dial in par but that's what I did it was awesome I mean don't you have that doesn't Duke people call you and usually what they do is now what they do is once you get old enough they hire your friends to be the person so like if we went to Duke together I'm gonna call Sean and be like hey Sean how do they do that yeah so like my high school now i'll get texts from people who i was acquainted acquainted with and i'm friends with and here's the kicker they'll say shit like hey i know i follow you on social i know you're doing real well how about we cut you down for 5 000 and i heard you got a baby on the way you know that maybe yeah like so it's like do i flex right now like because i'm entirely driven by making my high school friends or my high school classmates like i want to be a big shot to them that's right because you know i got made fun of that's all that's all i care about is is is bringing it back to them but i gotta give five grand to this fucking school they get me all the time it's been working so effectively but that's how these telemarketing things work you don't get calls from duke asking to give money hey it's duke lose my number barking up the wrong tree never happening can't believe i gave you the money i gave you the first place yeah man it's like a pretty funny uh thing but that's how i have a multi-billion dollar endowment you gotta lose my number you're not calling me for money that's not gonna happen if my high school or something called me all right maybe i hope they don't but you know i i wouldn't really feel as aggressively upset as i do if duke calls if your number could also be a country's gdp if your endowment could be confused with like a Caribbean country's GDP.

40:26Yeah, we're out. Like you should not call me.

40:33That's too funny. All right, you want to do a couple more? What do you got? Yeah, I got some good ones. All right, let me give you a quick... By the way, what is Duke's endowment? It's in the, I don't know, multi-billions. Duke endowment size. 12 billion. Is it really 12 billion? And Duke's not even like a probably top 20. Don't you dare say mid-level. Don't you dare say mid-level Ivy. It's a mid-major. It's definitely a mid-major. It's not even a good school. I mean, is Duke top 20? It's top 20 for sure, right? Yeah, it is. But is it top 20, you think, in terms of endowment? Yeah, I think so.

41:08I think so. That is insane. Billions of dollars in endowment. They could basically just run the school off the investment income. Oh, yeah, totally. I'm surprised that more people I'm surprised that anyone gives to these to these schools I don't understand at all alright so the top yeah it's in the top 20 so Harvard number one is 40 billion Yale two at 30 Texas 30 Stanford 27 and then at the bottom of the top 20 is Cornell with 7 million that's insane that is insane that's that's ridiculous yeah I don't know why those guys would be calling you but I bet they do they need your$50 well did I tell you about one of the really smart ideas was this thing called I forgot the name of the parent company Ben see if you can find it they made this thing called Tower View Venture so one of the big streets at Duke Campus is Tower View and it's like the name of some magazine there or something like that it's like a reference to something we remember from school and it's basically Tower View Venture we're raising money for a venture fund to invest in alumni from Duke it's like oh yeah Duke has really smart people so you know we're going to invest those companies they've had these winners before cameo and blah blah blah and blah blah blah and they basically do this they spin this up for every single top school it's called i think alumni ventures and they just spin up small funds for every single school and um and then they just run ads and call you to try to get you to donate i try to get you to invest in their fund and they're like cool we're just going to have like like like tower ventures they have uh i guess started in 2019 there's uh you know it's on fund five now for for the duke one and like i don't know how big these funds are but like even if they're like 10 million 10 million dollar funds or 20 million dollar funds you take two percent every year of management fees and 20 percent of carry across this times 50 other schools it's like a pretty genius way to like pull on the heart straight of so it's a real business but there's are they does the school give them permission to use their name well they don't use the name they say we're tower view ventures and we're investing in duke alumni so they're not saying oh my god but it made they very much make it dude that's shady though the colors match it's like here's all your school colors everything is like uh uh you know based off that that's a scheme that's a that's a hardcore scheme right you could do that for belmont well i mean like like a a fifty thousand fun ain't gonna go far do you think you're belmont's most successful alumni from your year yeah yeah uh no i got beat you know who it was who florida georgia line what you know that florida georgia line that band no you've never heard of florida georgia territory that was annexed dude the florida florida georgia line it's like if you go to your spotify right now and like you look in the top 100 songs i bet most years they have one or two songs they were in your year 20 yeah you know that song cruise like even nelly made an appearance i mean you're just dude do you know who nelly is would you like to pants me right now in front of everybody no i don't know who any of these people are i know nelly but yeah it's like mike posner was in my year and uh you know no florida do you know morgan wallen do you know who that is he's the shit love that guy they're more famous than morgan wallen oh wow so i'm not not not to you but they put they helped put Morgan Wallen on the map because Morgan Wallen appeared on one of their songs.

44:36Anyway, they're like a Morgan Wallen famous band. So they might be number one. I think I might be number two. But you know what? They never fucking call me. I got mad at them because here's let me explain why I got mad at them. My mom was going to come and watch me graduate, but I didn't finish school on time. And I asked the teachers or whatever. I was like, can you just give me a fake diploma and just let me come on stage and not tell her and I'll finish it at another point. And they're like, no, it's a tradition. You have to. We have to literally hand to your diploma there. I'm like, just give me an empty folder.

45:04I literally just want to be there on stage. Just let me have that empty folder. And they wouldn't let me do it. And so forever I'll, I hate Belmont because they wouldn't let me just walk on the stage and just let me shake that guy's hand and turn the fucking stupid beret thing to the side and they wouldn't do it. So I will always be mad at Belmont for that reason. Wow. What an L for them. All right. I got a couple more. So let me see where I want to go. Okay. Can I just rapid fire for you some ideas. Go. We don't even have to discuss them. Okay. Exporting, you know, my import-export framework, my import framework and export framework is if you're at a company and you wish something, you're like, dude, we would totally pay for this.

45:44That's a business idea you would want to import. You're better off going and starting that business because there's probably a hundred other businesses like you that would pay for that. Or export is we built this for ourselves and it's so useful. you're better off leaving the company and then rebuilding that on the outside of the walls and selling it to other companies so here's what slack did um yeah exactly slack is a good example of this um uh so paul graham tweeted this out the other day that like yc has its own directory internally about investors where any startup founder can go look up any investor and read their reviews or kind of like what's the scoop on this person have they done anything effed up are they really helpful?

46:23What's their, you know, what do we know about this person? And he's like, this is one of the best products that YC has. And I'm like, why is that a product only YC has? This should be a product that anybody has. So I think somebody should export this out. And it's like Yelp for investors, where investors have a reputation on this, in this app. And it's all you can only write about them if you had, you know, like, let's say a verified interaction with them or something like that. Dude, that's great. I think I wish I could have that for a variety of vendors. The things that people ask for most at Hampton is like, hey, who's a good lawyer?

46:58Who's a good accountant? Who's this? Who's that? It's incredibly challenging to find reviews on vendors, including investors. It's super hard to start these types of businesses, but I think the startup community is so insulated that you could actually overcome the chicken and egg problem through brute force because there's not that many investors and you can quickly see who's worked with them just by looking at their portfolio and you could cold email them and be like, give me the scoop. And I think you could manually collect the data to get this going. All right, here's another one. Teacher's pet is what I'm calling this.

47:27So this is my first AI idea for you here. So you're aware of teachers pay teachers, which is a marketplace. It's like Etsy, but instead of buying and selling handcrafted goods, you buy and sell lesson plans, quizzes, things that teachers need. Teachers pay teachers. Have you ever heard of this? We talked about it a while ago, right? It's a big business. So it was doing like 80 million dollars a year in revenue that's like their take not the gmv that's their their take and it gets like 20 million visits a month during school years um 300 teachers on this network have made a million dollars or more um by selling lessons or selling quizzes or selling classroom materials to other teachers so and like their new profile pictures like fuck them kids like i'm i'm i'm a creator so like these marketplaces are big and marketplaces for for the most part are pretty unassailable.

48:20It's very hard to go compete with something that has a network effect. I think AI is one of these things that might be able to crack some network effects. I think AI could crack this one. I think you could train AI to crawl and learn from all of the materials on this network. You can just go buy all the materials on this for probably less than$500 ,000. Then you could use that as your training data. You could train AI to basically become chat GPT for teachers. Any teacher should be able to come to this And instead of going through and finding what's a good geography lesson plan and then going and buying it for$14, you just go ask this thing.

48:56Hey, I need a geography lesson plan for fourth grade. Make it fun and interesting. And it should just create one for you. So I think if you create this, you can have a$20 a month subscription just for teachers to create lesson plans using AI or quizzes or teaching materials or whatever. Teacher's pet. That's a good name, too. You have one more? I'm big on providing a name with some of these ideas. I think that really turns it from like a, I don't know, to like, where's the application form for Thatcher Darby? Like, how do I get in? What's this? You just have this funny phrase. It's for some reason funny to me.

49:34You call it an Ozempic on-ramp and then an Ozempic off-ramp. Yeah. So these aren't fully baked ideas, but I'll just spitball them with you. So when I was thinking about this, you know. You want to surf on waves. if you're starting a business. So what's a wave you could surf right now? Ozempic. I think Ozempic is like, if video is a mega trend, guess what? Fat loss is a mega trend. Obesity is a mega trend too. Have you tried it yet? No, no, I haven't tried it. But I know a lot of people that want to be on it or get off of it or are on it. I got a guy. I got a guy. I could refer him. No, no. It's expensive though.

50:11It's expensive. Yeah, I'm not interested, but I know a lot of people are. So I guess the question is, what could you build around this Ozempic megatrend? So my brain goes to on-ramps and off-ramps. How do you sell something to people that makes it easier to get it or help people get off of it? So for getting it, if you go Google just like, I don't know, like how do I take Ozempic or like getting Ozempic near me? You get a bunch of like kind of like sponsored links for like telehealth services that are going to try to like, you know, sign up for this. here's the pills basically what i think somebody should do is i think somebody should go old school with it i think somebody needs to create a ozempic hotline and what's the ozempic hotline so the ozempic hotline is old school infomercial shit so you're going to run ads on linear tv on fox news you're gonna be the my pillow guy you're just gonna be everywhere that like people who are like you know 40 to 60 are are clicking and uh or watching and you're just going to show people's transformations and ozempic and be like call in now to you know get a free consultation are you eligible what are the upsides what are the downsides how much does it cost where can you find it so confusing we are going to make it easy we're going to give you a free consult and you basically just become a lead gen provider for people who are trying to buy ozempic but i think you got to do like 1-800 like god abs or something like that right like 1-800 you know but that goes against all your principles since you hate which principles uh as i like to say what values well we could find them somewhere deep in that closet uh but i i believe one or two of those principles be it besides which is coming out of left field the fact that you said that you don't want to kill animals to eat that that that's that's such a uh curveball coming from you but i think the other one was i think you hate pharmaceuticals no uh no i don't hate pharmaceuticals i don't personally take i don't personally uh try to take a lot of stuff i try not to be dependent on anything um you know as a general rule like caffeine i don't drink coffee i don't do i don't do a lot of stuff like that um you know people take like you know i don't you you love stuff you're like oh i'm i need nicotine i need this i love carbonated water zin diet coke yeah so i'm i try not to be on any of that stuff but um but people are this is a business opportunity i'm not doing this i'm saying somebody could create a phone-based way to educate people and help onboard people or uh the other side you could figure out an off-ramp so so a lot of people want to stop this either it's too expensive or they're having side effects or or they just feel like they got the weight loss they had they don't want to keep taking this forever how do you off ramp and uh i don't know the answer to that but that's well i'll tell you the place to go look what's the answer you just don't take it nothing bad happens you just don't take it yeah but i I don't, I don't, I don't regain a bunch of weight right away or have like any sort of like, I don't know, nothing, nothing that's this effective has no cost when you stop.

53:13I don't believe that. Yeah. So basically the, the, when the, the study that they did was they took two or 3000 people, they had them do it for six months. And then after six months, they had half the people quit taking it. And what they found was, uh, at the end of the 12 month study, uh, the people who took it the whole time lost, um, something like a third of their body weight. So like a 300 pound person was 200 pounds. And then the people who quit taking it, they went from 200 pounds back up to like 230 or something like that. So they gained weight back, but they weren't nearly as fat as they were when they started.

53:45So they, but they did gain weight, but so yeah, an off ramp is fine, but I don't think you have like a withdrawals. Like that's not going to kill you. You're just going to like, be like, Oh, I'm hungry. Like I want to eat again. Yeah. And maybe it's just like peer groups or something. I don't know. Is there something you could provide to this large group of people that all have now like one they're going through this one new experience and i don't know there's got to be auxiliary things around it that's so that's a that's a place i would look for business ideas um all right i got it i got another one for you i heard something the other day that just really caught my attention i think it's a cool idea but it's being done in the wrong way so let's listen to some podcast um and the guy who was talking and it was like yeah i did mind sport and blah blah And he started talking about Mindsport.

54:31And I was like, Mindsport? What a great name. What is that? And he was a really smart guy. And he was talking about game theory and blah, blah, blah. And I looked it up. And Mindsport is essentially the Nerd Olympics. So Mindsport is a place that you go if you're uber smart. And you compete with people in those games. And so those games can range from chess to poker to sellers of Catan or Go or whatever. Or like Rubik's Cube. Yeah. like you know if i was like let's just put it this way sam if i was to tell you um you know that this i could solve this cube in the next you know 90 seconds you might not think i'm a genius but you probably don't think i'm an idiot would that be fair are you gonna solve that right now is that gonna be part of the show because that would be great i wish i could solve this i have never even gotten close i don't know what the hell you're supposed to do with this thing I treat it like a fidget spinner just move it and I'm like ooh that's cool I got two blues and three yellows that's awesome good for me I pat myself on the back and I move on

55:37so there's the Mind Sports Olympiad you're in the special Mind Sports Olympiad I'm in the Mind Jog the mind's not moving that fast so basically you go to this thing and you compete in all these games or you can be in your game, but you can also compete in the Pentamind Championship, which is where you're going to play five of these games. And I'm like, oh my God. I'm not even smart enough to know what Pentamind means. Coachella for nerds. And I was like, this is amazing. And I just, I cannot tell you, Sampar, how all in I am on the Mindsport Olympiad. I want to go. I want to watch it live. Like I watched the Spelling Bee live on ESPN.

56:19I want to watch the Hard Knocks documentary about like, you know, following five of these people behind the scenes and watching them stress out about this. I want to adopt one of the kids in this and just have them be like, you know, my 17 year old child. Um, and most of all, I want to hire all these kids. This is so awesome. You're grooming them. I think they have a complete wrong business model. This is not a tournament with prize money. And thanks to our sponsors, Wendy's. No, no, no, no, no. You've got this It's all wrong. This is a recruiting event for the elite minds under 25 years old. And I was like, this is bait to bring together the smartest nerds.

56:59In five years, these kids are not going to be playing professional settlers of Catan. They're going to be starting companies or working inside companies. And guess where I want them to work? My companies. And so I think that you should take this idea, create a version of this. But it needs to be a elite recruiting service slash job fair slash demo day for nerds. and you need to basically when they attend they need to basically somehow like sign over the rights for you to like send them job offers for the next five years or like you know get to invest in them or something like that because i can't think of a more valuable talent pool than the mind sport olympics and i actually think you could do this for gamers in general i love investing one of my secrets of investing is i invest in former competitive gamers um you know people who were elite level at you know starcraft or things like that those people just tend to do really really well at whatever next game you throw in front in front of them and once you throw the money game in front of them guess what they solve it they figure it out um so there's this listen there's this thing called the world memory championships have you heard of this no sign me up and if yeah and so they've been doing this since 1990 1991 and there's a different game so basically we're just going to give you thousands of numbers and you have five minutes and you have to tell us in order the numbers.

58:21And the record for that is 600 numbers and they only had five minutes to do it. The one hour number is the same thing except you have one hour to do it. And the guy who won that did 4 ,600 numbers in a row. He remembered that. And so they do these 10 different games. And in the same way that the UFC used to be a bunch of thugs fighting. It was like barbarians. But now it's like the it's like it's half WWE and WWF where it's like, you know, you slept with my wife. Now I'm going to beat you up. And it's other half like your movement. Yeah, your movement is magical. Look at his movement. So smooth.

58:58This is peak physical performance. We need we need Dana White, you know, or a visit man to buy the world memory championships. And we got to make that great because I'm looking up the guy who won it. Alex Mullen. He's a he's a kid or no, he's or I guess when he won it, he was 28. you know what he does for work now he's an x-ray person at a hospital x-ray tech x-ray tech why is this guy not working for like brain is hippo compliant what are we talking about yeah yeah why is this guy not working for like you know black rock or blackstone just like rain man in his way to like you know corporate buyouts i'm saying baby undervalued assets these are these are hidden gems uh i'm not all in on memory because i think memory is like the pleb version of the Olympiad.

59:43These other guys are strategists, but memory is... Any rube can do memory, really. Dude, I can't even remember seven numbers, let alone 600. I can remember two-thirds of any phone number. That's all I can. All right. Yeah, so that's one idea. Okay, I got a couple other for you. Let me hit you with one more, maybe. But we were out of time here, but I'm going to go into overtime here and give you one more. Let's do one around churches. Okay, so... Something you know a lot about. Another area that I'm completely unversed in, but I know that other people do it. Michael Girdley tweeted this out the other day.

1:00:27He said, 3 ,500 churches are closing every year. I said, oh, what's that about? What is that? It's a big number. And it's not exactly right, actually. Like what happens is 4 ,000 churches closed last year, but like another 3 ,000 open or 2 ,000 opened or something like that. It's like a net change of 1 ,500 churches, but towards the negative. And there are a bunch of stats about this. So in traditional churches, so the Christian churches, attendance is down 65 % in the last 20 years, 65%. And what happens is when the pews are empty, there's less donations, so then these churches end up having to close down.

1:01:07And there's a trend. basically they call them like are you christian are you jewish are you muslim what are you and there's a there's a group called the nuns they're just none i don't know why they're calling them nuns instead of like sort of like atheists or whatever like wait nuns like n-u-n or n-o-n-e yeah that's all that's that's also confusing when you said nuns that's like a bunch of ladies in like hobbits honestly big slip up on their part yeah they could be the zeros they did survey them And for Gen Z, I guess 45 % would count as none of the above, essentially, for religion. And this guy who studies churches or whatever said that of the 350 ,000 Christian congregations in the United States, one third are vulnerable on the brink of collapse, basically.

1:01:52One third are in the red zone and over the next 10 years will likely close. That's a huge number. And what are the opportunities? So I think that there's, I think you could approach this from multiple angles. So again, not a specific idea, but I do think you could look at this when you hear a stat like that, that's just, that's just one that gets your attention. Like when Jeff Bezos heard the stat that like, you know, the internet is growing at 12 ,000 % a year, he's like, ah, I better go start Amazon. And basically I think you could do that around, around stats like this. so how are these churches going to close down um that in itself the sort of the vulture business or the cleanup at the funeral business for churches i think it's kind of interesting how are they how forget saving it might help them help them die with grace in my neighborhood uh one block from my house inst louis they turned a church into a condo right yeah exactly so then i found there's this group called niagara consulting group and they're basically like we help you restructure your church.

1:02:51What do they mean by that? It's basically, look, there's a lot of developers that are chomping at the bit to turn this into luxury condos. Like, we help you try to succeed, but if you don't, we'll get you an offer from one of these developers to turn this into luxury condos. And I was like, oh, interesting. But in a lot of places, they can't even do that because it's like, you know, like low-income areas that they just sit there empty. So I think there's a lot of opportunity to figure out how to deal with this. I think there's opportunity. If I'm a company like Calm, could I take$50 million and just buy physical locations across the country in one year through these searches and just have a weekly service for meditation and whatever?

1:03:33Even to have just local chapters, basically franchisees that are going to run them. So I think there's something to be done here, whether it's trying to save them, trying to help them fail gracefully, figuring out what's a what's a pivot you could do for a lot of these i saw you just put a zillow link in here what you got so that's uh that's 10 doors down from my childhood home where my mom and dad still live um beautiful it's a church that they turned into a seven eight thousand square foot house and as a house it doesn't look that cool but as like a meditation area like it does look cool as an airbnb fantastic you know yeah but look it's 1.2 million dollars and it's an 8 000 square foot i mean it's inst louis missouri where i'm from which isn't that nice but they this company renovated this church into like a livable house and then i met these other guys who turned one into a skate park they turned an old church into a skate park um and so it's like it is pretty fascinating because a lot of these buildings are kind of cool but to have like the church of calm that's kind of dope and then if you're going to help them i think this is gonna be a side hustle so like church near us they actually have like awesome events all the time and i love to take our kids to it because it's like they just put on great events wholesome fun events for for families and kids but it's so hard to even know what the hell like literally the only way i know is if i drive by they have a little sign they put like in the front like a for sale sign but it'll be like we're doing something this saturday it's gonna have popcorn and bouncy house like oh i'm in but i only catch it driving by i'm like these guys just don't know social media and um i had to call him to be like hey if i'm like an indian dude who's not a member of the church can i still come get the free popcorn like you know what's the deal around this are you like your doors yeah they're gonna have like a color swatch yeah like i'm in like you're not white enough exactly like do you need to have recognized me you know like oh how does this work and so i couldn't even get a hold of them because i was like they just have they have like one old Facebook page with like, you know, an event from 2014.

1:05:37And I'm like, dude, churches need better social media. And I was like, I think you could just create like done, done for you social media services for churches. If you wanted to get like a 10 to$20 ,000 a month side hustle, I think you could just do that just by going to every single church, just walk in and be like, Hey, your social media is not very good. I can make it look like this. And then you basically go on shepherd, you hire somebody for$800 a month. And that person is going to manage 20 churches, social media is for you because all the churches do, Hey, it's the same schedule. It's every Sunday, um, same templates.

1:06:10You just need their color, their name, and you need to know like what's going on for them. Like, you know, just manage all of their Instagram and, um, you know, like social media accounts for them. So I think that's one that like, it's not that nobody's doing that, but there's plenty of churches that are not on board with And if you just wanted to go sign up a bunch of clients for$300 to$400 a month, you could do that. Did you do remember this? So have you heard of a Hillsong? Like when I is like Hillsong Church. Yeah. When I was living in Tennessee, I've been an atheist forever. But I was like, a lot of cute girls are going to this.

1:06:46I guess I guess that's the price. That's the price I got to pay. So I'll go to this thing. So I went to this thing to like meet some people. And that's how I kind of learned about it. But for in the later 2000s, there was this guy who somehow infiltrated Justin Bieber's camp and he like became Justin Bieber's mentor, Carl Lentz. And there's a new Netflix show about him. But basically, he's like he's like he's like a smoking hot guy. Like, you know, he looks basically like Justin Bieber in his 40s. Like he looked great. I don't describe most men as babes, but he's a babe. Well, he's a babe. I mean, like objectively, like, you know, like.

1:07:25You're either seven foot tall or you're not. Like, he's seven feet tall. He's tall. I think I messaged you once about him, and you were like, dude, he's got the thing. Like, you know, like the diagonal lines that just point to your crotch? It's like an ab line that you only have if you're super ripped. He's got those. What kind of pastor has those? Yeah, if you're a pastor and you have that V, it's bad news. And as one could just look at his V and guess, he did some, I don't know if he did any illegal things. I don't even, frankly, I didn't watch the documentary. I don't know. I don't think it was rape.

1:07:56He just cheated on his wife. Yeah, they just had sex with just everyone. As one with all the power in the V might do. He's also super charismatic, super good looking, has like a huge following from being on stage in front of 10 ,000 people every week or whatever. He's a mega celebrity. He was. Yeah, he's a mega celebrity, but he made Hillsong cool. I even went to one of those things because this girl I was trying to date was like, come to this thing. I love the music. Their music is great. Yeah. So I went to that thing just to be with this girl and it wasn't worth it. It didn't work out.

1:08:37But yeah, that's how I learned about some of this religion stuff. Dude, where I'm from in St. Louis, all the Catholic churches are dying, man. All the Catholic schools are going by the wayside. One of the more useful things that I learned when I moved to Silicon Valley was a new way of looking at businesses that I hadn't really ever heard before outside of Silicon Valley, which is most products are actually a bundle, not a product. Most things are a bundle. And once you can identify what's in the bundle, you could figure out how to unbundle that service and make something better. So for example, Peter Thiel went on a spree where he was talking about how universities are a bubble, how the university system is overrated.

1:09:15He was going to launch the Thiel Fellowship, which would pay you$200 ,000 to drop out of school and do something useful with your life. and that's where Figma came from, and that's where Oyo Rooms came from. That's where Vitalik, the creator of Ethereum, was it? He was a Teal Fellow. I think there's been$10 billion companies so far have come from it. Actually, a very impressive track record. And so one of the things he said was that they're like, how can you, you know, it was sort of like taboo to say like, you know, who says like anything against school, right? Like everybody's message is basically stay in school, kids.

1:09:48And he's saying, drop out of school, kids. And so they're like, how dare you? and he's like well the university is a bundle he's like it's partially um education so there are there is education it's partially um socialization so you know you go there to learn how to like party and be with other kids and date and get drunk and all that stuff it's partly um babysitting so it's basically my kid's not old enough they're not mature enough to get to the real world yet like four years over here let them simmer a little bit then they'll be ready. He's like, it's partly insurance, which is like a societal insurance.

1:10:23Like, uh, look, I don't care what you do. Just get a degree, get a college degree. Cause that label, that stamp is going to be whatever he's like, it's partly, um, accreditation. So like, I don't care if you're the top student at Harvard, but if you got into Harvard, that's a signal that strong enough for me as an employer to know that you're smart, right? Like if I, if I know you went to Harvard, it's a signaling thing. So he's like, you're actually buying all of these things when you buy into university when you pay the crazy cost of university. And we have to ask ourselves, what part of that bundle is actually important?

1:10:52What part of the bundle is failing? Is there actually a weak part of the bundle that could be unbundled? And so what he did was he switched the accreditation one. He's like, cool. What if I created something? I have a brand, Peter Thiel. I invest in Facebook. I created PayPal. What if I handpicked 40 of the most promising college kids and paid them 200 grand to leave school. Now, instead of having just some normal school badge, which is good, you get the teal hand-picked badge, which is even more elite. So I'm going to unbundle the university, give you a more elite badge, and then I'm going to get rid of all the rest.

1:11:28I don't care about the socialization. I don't care about the rest. I'm going to be 10x better at this badge. And YC is 10x better at university in certain things than in others. That's brilliant, yeah. So the question is, what is the church bundle? The church bundle is a combination of lecture for learning, community, a place to gather and congregate every week. It's just a peaceful place. Like I like going to church. I used to go to church not for like, I kind of like the sermon, but I just love the feeling of being inside of a church. The aura of inside of a church was just very peaceful and grounding to me.

1:12:03So it's a peaceful place. It's also therapy slash confession. So a place to get things off your chest. and kind of with that is like being absolved of your sins like just getting a clean slate I feel less guilty there's music so some people go for the music vibe some people go for the food like Indian temples all have free food I don't know if churches have that or not but like Indian temples like a lot of people I know go because they actually like love the meal but it's plus a good thing you show your loyalty to God and so if you take this bundle of a bunch of things also dating I put this on there like I know a bunch of people that like they kind of want to meet someone who has maybe their values or is like you know like yeah it's like matches in some way and they're like oh this is better than going and trying to approach someone in a bar where it's noisy and I'm getting rejected like oh what if I I this is a new sort of like social scene where I can go approach somebody all right so I think one big so the small version of this idea is like social media for churches the medium version of this is like restructure these churches into condos or figure out some lead gen where you Maybe you help them as they wind down to sell off assets or something.

1:13:11The big version of this idea is figure out how you're going to replace the value that churches gave people, but you can do it in a new way. And so like, for example, could you create a new brand in these same venues that's around, I don't know, like manifestation or some shit like that or meditation or yoga? Like, could you create a yoga franchise that only operates out of churches and some blend of like religion and churches, right? Sorry, religion and yoga. and like i think those are the big ideas which is replace the function of one of the like be 10x better on one of those bundles like 10x better on food or music or the sermon or um absolving you of your sins like you know do do try to be better at 10x better one of those and then use the physical locations of churches to like build that new franchise that's a very that was a good that was a good speech you did good on that one thank you we're gonna now we're gonna have a bunch of we're gonna have a bunch of soul cycles uh on the altar uh which is a lot cooler than how it is now but that was a good that was a very compelling argument thank you i sort of ventured into drunk ideas territory there but i know like you know a little bit yeah that was a good one that was a good one uh i'll let you that's that's the winner or dribble the dribble shit is the is the winner alright there we go that's it that's the idea episode you know what to do do they just get all these ideas for free Sam well they don't have to pay money but it's not for free so they don't have to pull their wallet but what do they have to do I think what they gotta do is go to YouTube go to your podcast app search my first million and you gotta click subscribe you gotta click that button for us cause we're out here churning out million dollar ideas billion dollar ideas side hustle ideas for you.

1:14:58On a Labor Day, no less. I mean, there's only one right move. There's only one way to pay us back, and that's what it is. Go subscribe to the channel. That is called the Gentleman's Agreement. We're not going to go check. We're not going to verify this, all right? It's an honor code. This is a Gentleman's Agreement. We did it. We did our part. Now you do yours. That's all. All right. Thank you. That's the five.

1:15:26I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

1:15:36Hey, 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.

1:16:06If 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 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.