Giving founders brutally honest feedback

22:17So it's kind of been like one of these things where like wealthy people feel like they need to be like the patron and like steward, like, you know, like and be the steward of like making fun of stuff that deserves to be made fun of. And that's pretty cool. But last year, they did something very interesting, very purple Kali. They brought back the print magazine and they went really hard on the print magazine. and within a year, they already have 53 ,000 paying subscribers. I think it costs$10 a month and they're expecting from that something like$6 million in revenue this year. Last year, they did less than$2 million in revenue.

22:52So a print magazine 3X their revenue and I think that is so cool. I think I've talked about magazines on this podcast a couple times, but I think magazines are incredibly interesting. Do you subscribe to any? you know i've been playing with this so there's a a couple people that are doing this so i currently have a arena subscription colossus so uh awesome patrick o'shaughnessy awesome who has a podcast basically sort of like expanding his media empire whatever whatever you want to call it with long form journalism like old school print magazine you know oh we did a feature story on this person and it's like beautiful photography, really long form stuff.

23:38And it's good. I like, I like the quality of the product on that side, but I don't subscribe to the physical thing. I think they have one. Yes, they do. It's new. I think it's only on edition number three, but it's, but it's new. So you just subscribed to two. Is that right? You anymore? I mean, that's a lot. Two, two is way over the, Oh, the, the Vegas over line of what they thought I had here for a magazine subscription. I subscribed to two actually, uh, Popeye magazine, which is a Japanese magazine actually. And it's called, it's like, I think the tagline does it. It's kind of a gay translation.

24:07It's city boy life. But it's like, it's sort of like GQ for Japan where they talk about like clothing and coffee and like urban culture, which I love. And interestingly, I don't know if all Japanese magazines are like this, but it reads backwards. So it doesn't like, you don't fold it like this. It's like upside down. So you like go to the left. And that's kind of interesting. And then the second one is Thrasher Magazine, which is like a skateboard thing that I had when I was a kid that I love. But I just think that magazines are so interesting. And so can I tell you what I would do? I thought about doing this.

24:39I read the biography of JFK Jr. That was John Kennedy's son. And he actually had a magazine in the 80s. And I went and bought the first edition. This is what Sidney Crawford. It's a very famous magazine cover. It's what Sidney Crawford dresses George Washington. And it was cool and everything. But what I would do, I would call it a newsletter, not a magazine. And I would literally do it on white paper that is stapled together with like 10 or 20 sheets and put into an envelope. And I think that I can do something. I've thought about doing this. I think someone could create some type of wealth or like for high net worth people or for tech companies and sell it for around$1 ,000 a year and only do four to eight additions per year.

25:24and if I did it on wealthy people, it would all be getting like tips and tactics and strategies and stories on what high net worth people are doing. Or if I did it on tech companies, I would sell it to the tech company and I would list as many names of the tech companies and explaining what they're doing in a particular industry as like a roundup, sort of like a high school newspaper. Yeah, that's interesting. So you're just saying physical sort of takes you into a new category. Physical, so yeah. So I guess I didn't like round that out, but like the purple cow here is no digital, only physical.

25:56I think nostalgia is like a thing. I think you and I have talked about our own habits about how we're getting sick of digital. I think everyone is experiencing that. And I think that someone could actually build a great business. I think what a lot of people do though is they tend to go flashy, shiny, premium. And I would argue you should go the opposite. You should go like homemade mom and pop, almost like a punk rock zine, what it used to be. exactly what you're pulling out right there if you put it in a folder like that. So this, I think I've showed you this before, but my guy Diego basically delivers me these.

26:30I don't know if you can see, there's like tabs on the side, right? So he basically prints out this thing and it's a collection of like the best things to read. So it might be like, oh yeah, Howard Marks put out a new memo this week. It's like, we should read that. We should really digest it. We should slow down and read that. Don't make it just Chrome tab number, you know, 93. Oh, that's open alongside Twitter and a bunch of other dopamine, you know, fast food dispensing. You know, like Chrome is basically like, you know, that Coca-Cola freestyle machine. That's what basically my internet browser is.

27:04That's what my phone is. Unlimited options. It's unlimited options of syrup and water, you know, like syrup, water, and bubbles. And that's not really what I want to be having. And this is like when somebody gets a coconut and they just chop off the top, they put a straw in it and they're like here you go and you're drinking out of a coconut and so he delivers these to me basically like once a month so like you know for example in the last one it was brent b shore had wrote an annual letter about his um private equity fund and it was basically like the performance of the fund so he knew i'd find that interesting like oh what have they invested in how how's that fund actually doing is you know are they doing really well are they okay what's what's going on and then he also has like his like you know he gets his like warm Buffett on in that where he's like very philosophical about life or the markets or whatever in there.

27:49He knows I enjoy reading that. I think you can charge a lot for that. He'll put in like a science thing. So it'll be like, oh yeah, these guys are working on... There's a lot of people out there trying to study the genes for short sleep. So there's some people like Trump and I think Clinton before this. People who genetically only need five to six hours of sleep. And what an advantage, basically, to have three extra hours a day, but still be at full energy. And that there's people actually trying to figure out the way we did Ozempic and we were able to limit your need for food, make you not need more food.

28:25Could we make you not need as much sleep if we studied this? Like, oh, that's fascinating. So I'm reading, there's like a science thing in there. A briefing. It's a brief. And if I just productize that thing that he's already giving me, it's basically what you're talking about. It's all in the curation. It would have to be somebody who is like, I trust or knows my taste or is genuinely. Because if the first thing I open, if it's like, meh, I'm out. I'm out on this altogether. But you can tell a story as to why something should be important. So for example, the sleep thing, that's not inherently important.

29:01But you think it's important because of X, Y, and Z. And you tell that story about why it's important. And what I would do is in the first page, I would put directions on how to read. which is if you have children it's after your kids go to bed at 8 p.m what don't turn the tv on and sit there and read this in your living room if you don't have kids like this is don't go out and on a thursday read this for one hour and your life will be better like you give like these like really intimate instructions to make someone feel good and i think that this could be a hit um i sent you a link to my friend i think i've talked about this before but uh nev box so my friend neville Medora, he did this thing years ago where he sent people three boxes and he called them three important copyright, copywriting lessons that you need to know.

29:43And it was literally just a UPS box with three envelopes in there that had a paper, like a printed paper. And it was awesome. So should we just do this as MFM? Like basically me and you curate like, you know, two to three things each that we think is whatever with our little editorial note on top of why, you know, the you know, of like why I think this is worth paying attention to. It could be awesome. So, you know, a thousand fans who are willing to pay a thousand dollars a year to have like proper info diet, right? You know, like I pay a lot of money to have a proper diet of what food goes in my body.

30:19And I know people that go to an extreme, they'll go straight farm to table. They have their favorite ranches that they source meat from and they'll get vegetables from certain areas at certain seasons. And like people have realized it matters what you put in changes, whatever, you know, what's going to happen inside your body. but our minds were just like, no, no, go ahead. Pour like social media sludge right on top. Yeah, go ahead. Just top me off. It's okay if it overflows. I'll just, this is fine. There's all these good analogies for how to sell it. Like there's a lot of like ammo here to like sell this.

30:48I don't know. This would actually be kind of fun to do. You know, I think this would be fun. It would be fun. You know, I, this is something I like. I get these binders every month. Like this, one of the best things in my life is getting that. And so I guess like, why would I not just share a version of that with other people? It doesn't hurt me to share that with other people. In fact, it would help me, I think, because I think these are cool ideas or cool things worth sharing. So let me tell you the second one. You're the son of immigrants, so I don't know if this experience is going to hit the same.

31:16But in the Midwest, in Missouri, where I was raised, one of the greatest things that I got to experience as a kid was getting milk delivered to my home once a week in a glass bottle. Did you ever experience this as a kid? Never, never. Okay, so there's this company called Oberweiss. It was called Oberweiss Dairy. So Oberweiss was started as a dairy farm in 1915, I think in Missouri or Indiana, but it was very Midwestern. And they eventually started, they sold their own milk to like their little small town and expanded and expanded and expanded. And it's mostly regional in Missouri and Illinois.

31:56So I think they have them in Chicago and St. Louis. but as a kid, this is where we would get our milk. We would also get our lemonade from there and our ice cream. That was like their thing. And it felt amazing. Well, this company kept growing and growing and growing. Started in 1915. It was now on its fourth generation of family ownership. And peak revenue, I think in 2020 or 21, was$120 million in revenue. So it was good top line revenue, but it's a hard business. It's low margin. And because of a bunch of silly decisions that the management had made in 2024, it went bankrupt. And a guy who we talked about in the podcast, his name was Hoffman.

32:37And in fact, one of the early podcasts was pre-pandemic back when we were in the office, he ended up buying the company. And I think he bought the company for$21 million. Plus, I think he said he was going to invest another$15 million into it. who's Hoffman? Who's this guy? David Hoffman, maybe? Is it David? Yeah, I think it's David. He started a recruitment agency that after 20 years was making so much money that he started buying businesses. He bought like a boat cruise business, which is basically like, what are those like things in San Francisco that are like Swan? Like, what are they called?

33:12Where they like, boat cruise, it's not like a real cruise, it's like a, like a tour in the bay type of like, like, and then he bought like, blue collar businesses like that, I believe. And he eventually Oberweiss, which David Hoffman, he's based in St. Louis. So for all St. Louis folks, this is like an interesting brand. But I saw that they went bankrupt and I saw that he bought it. And I thought it was very fascinating. And the reason I think it's fascinating is I think Oberweiss, milk delivery, I think that could be a thing. I think that you could do, you could absolutely make this a wonderful business that people our age, so in our 30s and 40s, people who have children grew up with something like this.

33:53And it's not part of the experience that you and I have at all anymore. You know, we probably just go to Costco or get something like Instacarted or something like that. But I actually think that oat milk, almond milks, I think those non-dairy milks, I actually think those are like turning downward right now. And dairy is up, which it like took a hit over the last decade. And glass and nostalgia. and I would have an entire campaign around something like making it now, like it used to be made way back when, when it was made better. Like I would lean super hard into that. And then I would upsell with better eggs, better for you, all types of products, eggs, whatever, hopefully higher margin things.

34:32But I think the milk delivery business, and when I was thinking of like nostalgic things, I think that could be really fascinating. Where does that land with you? Less good. partially because I'm like, because when I'm looking at their thing, they have like, they have the dairy delivery, but then they're like breakfast and snacks and dinner and desserts and juices. No, that's not what you do. That's not how you do it. They expand it into everything, but I can see why you would need to, right? Like how much money could you really make just delivering only milk, right? Or only like core dairy, milk and eggs.

35:04Like it just doesn't seem, doesn't seem like it's big enough. Doesn't seem like there's enough, you know, average order value basically to make the whole like logistics worth it. I do think that just building a premier dairy brand, so not like the home delivery part, but being like, yo, okay, all of you guys went anti-dairy. Got it, cool. But if you like rich, good dairy, we got you. And so like, you know, when I go to the grocery store, there's these brands, I don't even know if they do anything differently, right? Like Alexander is like, oh, we have like 6 % milk. I'm like, I don't even know what 6 % is, but like, give me that.

35:43What is that? Three times better than 2%. And then they put it in a different shaped bottle. And then there's like, what's the other ones? Like Strauss Farms or whatever. Like there's these, it's just, you know, like, like every category packaging. But like, I think just tripling down on like rich dairy and like actual high quality dairy. I just feel like the grocery store is, um, like there's still shelves that need that sort of, that need that sort of stuff. But the trick is, if you actually are operating a farm, it's very different than the kind of like DTC repackagers of stuff, you know what I mean?

36:20And so if you actually have a story about your farm and where you're at and why it's better and like all that stuff, whether it's for beef, whether it's for chicken. I think somebody came on the podcast, they pitched us this for chicken. They're like, you should just make, the world needs like a better chicken brand. and like what is the what's the like Snake River Farms for chicken type of thing. I think there's there's that for dairy and for chicken for beef for all these staples, you know. Did you see what Cracker Barrel did? So they changed their logo, right? Is that the more than that? More than that.

36:50They made the inside look like a Chipotle. So like overnight or they've been doing that for a long time and people just started paying attention. You know, I haven't been to a Cracker Barrel in a very long time. But I didn't even Is the Cracker Barrel a restaurant? I thought it might be like home goods. Like is... No, man. Is it like a hybrid? Cracker Barrel, it's like my... When we take... It's our road trip, Dustin. It's like when we take road trips, it's where we stop. But it's basically a... So it's a huge chain. It's publicly traded, billions of dollars. And it's a restaurant that has like chicken and dumplings as like their famous thing.

37:24But it's definitely like disgusting. Chicken and dumplings? Like Asian dumplings? Or what do you mean chicken and dumplings? Brother, no. It's basically like bisquit. you know remember bisquick like it's like basically biscuits and gravy sort of it's sort of like biscuits and gravy and they uh but then they have like a huge store where you can buy like crap you don't need and just junk so you can buy like suckers is part store part restaurant yeah it's like half more like gift shop it's like it's like borderline gift shop on the edge of store uh but but like and restaurant yeah that's what it's like the idea is like they always have a wait because they're crowded and you just go in there and you buy like tchotchkes basically like the optics of it i'm not saying what the reality is the optics are that this young like 40 something 30 year old woman who's now the ceo she appears as though she's like a yuppie new yorker which is the exact opposite of who the clientele is of cracker barrel it looks like she just kind of came in and like behaved in such a way where she's out of touch with the average cracker barrel the average crack she's out of touch with the average cracker who goes a cracker barrel yeah

38:36a lot of barrel no cracker yeah she does not own like one pair of overalls so like it I'm not again I don't know the reality I'm just saying that's what it looks like and there the stock just like crashed after she made this announcement and but there is something about that where it's like dude don't don't fix this stuff it's supposed to look disgusting that's a feature that's not a bug it's supposed to look like a filthy restaurant right right worse is better here um all right what do you got all right so before this podcast i spent probably the last hour reading a profile on alpha school and what's the name joe lamont dude we were on that early but we didn't have a lot of information on them and and they explained why joe lamont hadn't done the interview in 25 years so there's more info out now about alpha so so what i basically this isn't like, this is, we're now treading in the waters of the unknown a little bit because it's a little bit mysterious, plus there's just, it's new, plus you haven't been there in person, plus who knows.

39:39Well, say who Joe is. All right, so Joe Lamont is basically like a software entrepreneur who's super, super successful, like$10 billion net worth type of situation. He dropped out of college his senior year at Stanford, I believe. He starts Trilogy Software. Trilogy Software was basically like an enterprise sales system. of some kind. I still don't entirely know what they did after all my research. It's like before my time. It's like, all right, cool. Like, like the analogy that I think I heard is like, if you're an airplane company, and you need to buy lots of parts to build your airplane, it would help you decide which components to purchase.

40:15That's, that's the best I could tell. But it became huge. And he it was basically like him and Microsoft were like recruiting the best talent him, Microsoft and Dell. They were he was the type of he was when he was like 28. He was on the Forbes list of richest Americans. Exactly. So he was the youngest guy on the Forbes list, Forbes 400. He was worth like$500 million at that stage. He then also creates a private equity firm called, I think, ESW Capital or something like that. And basically starts buying small software companies that are cash flow-y type companies. And then, similar to Constellation Software, basically bought like hundreds of these companies.

40:53And then, you know, that's now a big deal. which I think I think I think he's he has a lot of mystery because allegedly one of the tactics is that he would buy dying software companies fire everyone outsource it to India and just acknowledge that it was dying and not invest in it and hire the cheapest people which is not inherently wrong but it's not maybe the thing that you want to brag about all the time software hospice yeah okay so so whatever he's obviously mega mega successful again worth sort of like tens of billions of dollars one of the richest guys in the world He, recently, his thing that he got obsessed with is called Alpha School.

41:32So the story here is that, from what I can understand, there's a woman who used to work for Trilogy Software. She and her husband, I think her name is Mackenzie Price, they create a school first for their own kids. and they kind of are like inspired, they're kind of motivated because of the following problem, which I agree with the problem statement entirely. So, you know, if you look at the world's greatest, you know, the greatest people that have accomplished things in the world. So whether it's like, you know, Mozart or Beethoven, they're composing symphonies at age five, right? Or it's Alexander the Great.

42:12He like conquered most of the world by the time he was 22, started at 16. there's many, many, many examples of people who at a very young age were capable of doing a lot. And so there was a central question of like, why don't we have more Alexanders? Not like conquerors per se, but people who had a young age are able to do a lot. And if you look at Einstein, you look at Alexander, you look at like Marcus Aurelius, one of the things about a lot of these sort of great achievers is that the way they learned was not in a traditional school, but was through direct one-on-one tutoring from a sort of wise mentor.

42:45So like Socrates, Plato, that lineage of one-on-one tutoring. Like apprenticeship? A little bit like apprenticeship. They're not working for the person. They're just daily study, daily tutoring, one-on-one with a master. And there's all these studies that have happened over the years of what is the best way to teach. I think we would all agree we would love education to be more effective. We'd all love to improve education. It's like super high leverage. if you can educate people better, you know, the world prospers. So how do you do it? And for a long time, there's been this thing called the Two Sigma Problem.

43:22Have you seen this Bloom's Two Sigma Problem? According to Wikipedia, it's the Two Sigma Problem. This one-on-one mentorship, about 90 % of tutored students attained a level of achievement reached by only the highest 20%. So basically, you are almost guaranteed to be in the top 20 % if you use this one-on-one tutoring methodology. Correct. And so for a long time, it's been the case. All right. Now, what's changed? AI has changed. So now with AI, the idea is any kid with a tablet, an iPad, you know, whatever, can have a tutor that is fully designing custom lessons plans on the fly for each student, perfectly tailored to their current levels of expertise.

44:05So there's other parts of learning science. For example, you want to not pass people until they have mastery of a concept because otherwise they have a shaky foundation. So the problem with traditional school is you pass if you get a C. A C is about 70 % or better. Well, what they've shown is that if you get a person to 70 % or 72%, basically their rate of learning as they progress will always decrease because 70 % was actually a bit of a shaky foundation. They didn't actually understand it. So when they tried to learn the next thing and the next thing, it was too wobbly of a foundation and it collapses.

44:40Whereas if you get them to 90 % mastery of subject, they'll do really well. So one thing is like classrooms today, it's taught to get everybody to at least 70 to move forward. But the problem is you actually want people at 90 to move forward in terms of percentage. The second part is like, you know, you want people to be tested at a level that is, you know, not so easy that it's boring. it's not challenging enough, but not so challenging that it's too hard. I don't even understand I'm drowning, right? And so finding that like, you know, that peak middle zone where I'm being tested enough, but not pushed so far that I'm going to, you know, go over the cliff, that would be great.

45:18But you can't do that in a classroom because every kid's at a different spot. So, you know, you just sort of, you sort of keep everybody comfortable. Now, that means that the smartest kids are not challenged. And it means that the kids that are the furthest back are just utterly confused. So you're kind of going for this like average. You teach sort of the average and lowest common denominator. I'm just like oversimplifying everything, but this is the complaint of normal school. Okay, so what is Alpha School doing? Basically, it's a school in Austin where K through eight, you go and you do two hours on an iPad.

45:52And the idea is that your two hours on an iPad with your AI tutor will teach you not only everything you needed to know for whatever grade level you're in, but you'll learn double that. So you basically are doing, you learn double, but in only two hours. Okay, so that's the promise. And then what do you do the rest of the day? They basically just have like random life skill workshops. So go rock climbing. Hey, build a piece of IKEA furniture. So they say life skill means public speaking, entrepreneurship, outdoor education. These experiences build grit, creativity, and adaptability. Yeah. And so like, for example, they did this thing where, and they called the teachers guides.

46:35So the guides were like, they had a group of second graders and they go, all right, let's come up with five impossible things. Impossible for a second grader to do. So the first one was to run a 5K in under 35 minutes, I think it was. So it was like, run a 5K in under 35 minutes. So it was like, can your second grader even run a 5K? Like most second graders could not even run a 5K. That's a pretty long run for a second grader. Second grader is a seven-year-old. And so they asked all the students, do you think you could do it? Nobody raised their hand. They asked all the parents, do you think your kid could do it?

47:11Nobody raised their hand. And so that became one of the missions, one of the workshops, one of the impossible missions. We're going to train a seven-year-old how to run a 5K? That was it? So what they did was, the first day, they just walked the 5K. They said, all right, you've completed it. You at least know that you can go the distance. The distance is a manageable distance. And so they did that for like a couple of days. Then they just said, all right, cool. We're going to try to run the first quarter mile or for the first quarter of it. And then we're going to walk the rest. Great. They did that for a couple of days.

47:45Then they did half of it running, walk the rest, set three quarters of it running, then walk the rest until they could run the whole thing. By the end of the couple months, not only did one second grader do it, every single second grader did it. And some of them did it in under 30 minutes. And basically they were like, here's the, you know, so they had these like five impossible, you know, like challenges. They made them want to do it. And the reason they're able to do this is because they're doing all their learning in just a two hour window so they can spend the rest of their time doing things that are, you know, interesting life type stuff for themselves.

48:16Well, and they're teaching them how to like break down a problem, 35 minutes. So we'll start small and build up confidence. Yeah, I mean, I see. That's amazing. I totally see the value. Seems kind of amazing, right? Now here's some more just things that are just fascinating about this. So Joe Lamont pulled out a billion dollars from his companies to invest in AlphaSchool. He then said, this is the best product I've ever built by far, better than anything I've ever done at Trilogy, better than anything I've ever done since. This is so much, and it's this app that he's building called TimeBack. And so it's basically like a custom AI tool that basically you are on your iPad, you're learning, or your little tablet laptop, you're learning, and it is doing two things.

49:01One, there's a little waste meter in the corner. So just because the camera's watching you and recording the screen at all times. So it sees if the kid just leaves, just like gets up and goes. Dude, which is what he used at his companies. It's what he used at Trilogy, right? Like at his, or when he would like buy these companies, he was known for having like pretty extreme street monitoring, monitoring, productivity monitoring stuff like controversially extreme, right? That's awesome. This is so cool. I didn't realize I saw the article. And I started reading about his I wanted to know about the business stuff.

49:32And the article was like, Joe's not going to talk to you about business stuff. He he doesn't want to talk about trilogy EWS. He doesn't want to talk about any of that. But he will talk about alpha school. And I was like, well, shit, that's like what I want to know. And so when it started getting the school stuff, I was like, I don't know if I want to read that. But this sounds so much cooler than I thought. I didn't realize how big this was going to be. And I'm on their website and my kid isn't school age yet. But I'm thinking I would absolutely want them to go to this. Would you send them yours?

50:01Dude, I wish this was around us. So I'll just give you like my little side stories here. All right, just like personal life experiences. So my kids were home this summer and it was our first summer break. Like my daughter is, she just did what they call TK. like pre-K. So she just finished that. She's going to be a kindergartner this year. And my son was about to be a pre-K student. And then we have a baby who's small. But I had this mission. I was like, okay, three things I'm going to do this summer. We're going to take two epic trips with their cousins. Because I was like, that was always like core memory for me.

50:33Yeah. I'm going to teach them to swim. Because they love to do it. It's summer anyways. Plus it's like a good life skill to have. And, you know, I haven't like taken the time to like actually teach them to swim. But I can do that. and then I'm going to teach them to read because I noticed I was like, all of the schools we send them to, school is a very generous word for what's actually happening. It's by and large babysitting, daycare. And I think this is true generally for most schools, even through high school, college, that's a big aspect of what school is. But when they're little, it's very much that.

51:10I would ask them what they learned. It's like, well, they mostly just played and then they'll learn like one thing, but like, you know, they can't do math or they can't read. And I'm like, are they teaching you that? They're like, no, no, no. They're just doing letters. I'm like, but you know the letters. You know all the letters. You could write already. And they're like, yeah, but you know, they're just teaching at that pace. If I want you to learn anything, I'm gonna have to do it outside of this. So I discovered this app called Mentava. Mentava. Go to mentava.com. Now this is a learning app that was so expensive.

51:40I was just actually offended by the price when I saw it. I don't know if you've ever downloaded apps for iPad for kids stuff, but it's usually like, I don't know,$5 to unlock the thing. Maybe it's like$7 a month if it's really good. Oh my gosh, I just saw it. This is a$500 a month per kid. So I'm paying$1 ,000 a month for this app. But this app has a very simple promise, which is we could teach any three to five-year-old to read if they just spend, I don't know, 15 minutes a day doing this thing for a couple months. Dude, talk about value pricing. Your old boss, Emmett Shear, he's an investor.

52:18Emmett is. You got to ask for that discount code. So I was like, wow, this is incredibly expensive, but I'm incredibly intrigued. So I get my kids on it. They've been doing it all summer. And sure enough, it actually is pretty effective. And I would say the app itself is incredibly janky. It's like the polish is janky. The animations are janky. like everything's janky. It's not like the best app, but the core idea, which is like, it's a simple value problem. I can teach your kids how to read if they do this thing for like 10 to 15 minutes a day. And like, they just broke down reading. Because if you think about what is reading, I think there's like 45 different like sounds you need to be able to make.

52:54So it's like 45 sound combinations, which is like, you know, you have to learn that like, you know, A is ah and B is buh. And then you have to learn that like CK is k together. You have to learn like those sound, So first they teach them all the building blocks, and then they show them how they work when they're put together in words. And sure enough, both my kids are starting to read. And I'm just like, you don't get cartoons or anything else until you do your reading today. Really, very simple trade. And they like doing it. It's kind of a game, and they enjoy doing it. And by the way, the investors, if you go to their investor page, it's like literally everyone who's been on this podcast.

53:28Every investor has been on our podcast. Yeah, I know. It's$500 because he's comparing it. I don't know. They wanted it to be is the real answer. It doesn't need to be$500, but they're comparing it to like tutoring, human tutoring. So they're like, oh, it's five times cheaper than a human tutor. It's like, okay, cool. But it's also 500 times more than, you know, a normal learning app on the iPad, which is my frame of reference coming into this. But I've now seen the value of this type of like personalized learning. Because let's say they're playing this game. If they don't understand that, you know, SH is sound, if they fail, like if they get get it wrong three times, they lose that little game level, it knows that, okay, you just don't understand SH, so you don't just replay that level, you hop back three levels and I'll reteach you that building block to make sure that you understand it.

54:18And I'm going to get you to repeat it, you know, in these I'm going to use five different games as space repetition to teach you these same few concepts. But it makes me nervous to have my kid on an iPad. Not, I mean, sure, maybe, it's a personal thing, but my kids are on devices all the time. I've let go of that rope. That rope is like, you know, what is it? That horse is out of the barn already. So now it's just a question of like, how bad is it? What are you doing with your time there? And so, okay, bringing back to Alpha School, what are you saying? I believe that they're going to be able to do this.

54:54I believe that they're going to be able to, if somebody actually with like, the guy took a billion dollars out and he has I think a 300 person like AI lab that he's building, his own little open AI that he's building to basically like custom train these models, build applications on top of them. And I think this is an insane thing that's going to happen. And I think it's going to take over is my like my unhedged, my unhedged true belief is that something like this is going to exist. And this is the best bet I've seen so far. I don't think it's going to take over. I think it's going to be a massive success.

55:28I see like so many reasons why someone would protest this, which like there's what we've talked about, going the opposite of AI and technology. There's a massive contingency of people that will go to that category. One of our good friends sends their kids to a new thing that I've never heard of called nature school. Have you heard of nature school? My sister runs a nature school. And I don't entirely know what it means other than you're outside and it involves nature. I guess that's it. But there's like an entire contingency of people that want to go that route. but I do think that Alpha School will be a massive hit and I am interested in like when I was reading it just while we were even talking I'm like I'm open to this this sounds very intriguing does it help you get into college or are they like anti-college or they didn't get to that point yet?

56:13No it does they're high school they go all the way up through high school and they're like yep our high school students like crush the SAT and ACT compared to basically they use these like pretty standardized metrics called MAP about like basically how much you learn so let's say it's like you do a test and it's let's say the average third grader is at like a 100 score in math. Well, by the end of a normal semester of school, they would have gone up seven points. But without the school, they go up 15 points. Well, but of course that compounds because they did that in a shorter amount of time. Plus then when they enter the next level, they'll grow again.

56:51So they're growing like by a bigger amount and at a faster rate. And so, you know, obviously that compounds the longer you would do it. Dude, you know how like, you know, I don't know if this is true, but the story is like Magic Johnson became a billionaire not through basketball, but through like franchising McDonald's. You said you wanted to open up a school. Like you could be the biggest franchise. Well, I don't even know if you have to franchise. I think you just literally license the technology. Yeah, similar. Yeah, it's just do I want to do it for young kids versus like college? You know, like I'm more interested in college, but because young kids have their own set of problems.

57:22You know, it's really complicated. Well, yeah, but I mean, like that's super rewarding. Running my company, Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses. And I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets, emails, and clunky tools that do not talk to each other. It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape. So here's my take. Custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient. It's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business. And that's why you need to know about a no-code platform called Bubble. With Bubble, you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements on a screen.

58:01No coding required. By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including Hampton. And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in ZeroCode. They're the top Bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugin creator for the platform. They can build anything, custom portals, SaaS products, and they do it about 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional development. ZeroCode is also all about AI business automation, transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones. So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to zerocode.com.

58:35That's zero code as in the word zero and then code Q-O-D-E. Again, code is with a Q. And tell them that Sam sent you. I feel like you and I, so we're both in our mid-30s, it sort of feels like one of the last eras in which high school was the same way that it was for like the trailing 50 years and that now the current high it's radically different so i remember when i remember i think i was a sophomore in high school when an iphone came out and if the teachers didn't even know to ban it because no one no one even had one and i think facebook came out when i was i think in high school or maybe like in eighth grade and so none of these problems were particularly like problems like online bullying wasn't a thing and it when i see what high schoolers are like now i do not envy them the the the way that children are going to be raised from uh like five to 18 years old it's significantly different than how the trailing let's say probably 60 or 70 years uh were raised and i think that we don't give them enough credit because i think that the systems that they have to go through now is significantly more difficult.

59:48And I'm very eager to see how like some rat, like if you told me about the school 12 years ago, we would have said, you're insane. What are you talking about? Like, you know what I mean? And so I'm very eager to see how parents are gonna deal with not being able to empathize with what their children are going through. Do you know what I mean? Like we all had the same thing going to high school. Our parent, when we had, well, being an immigrant, maybe it was slightly different, but it was like your parents could kind of guide you on how to act. But now it's way different. I think for me, it already was different.

1:00:19You know, my parents had an arranged marriage, right? So like, imagine like their relatability to like the dating scene and high school, you know, do they understand any of that stuff? Like not really, right? Did they understand like, you know, they grew up in India. So it's like everything was different for how we were growing up. So I guess like that is just sort of the immigrant experience. I don't know. You just sort of do your best to hang on. Check out these two pictures I just texted you. I want to tell you about one more example of this like, alternative schooling. Okay. So, um, you just sent me a photo of, it looks like a warehouse.

1:00:50Someone's building something and then it's a bunch of kids just hanging out on a field, right? Yeah. So the first picture of the warehouse. So this is basically my brother-in-law, Sanjeev, who was on the podcast recently. When I went to visit him in Vegas this summer, I'm like, okay, great. And he's been in just commercial real estate for a long time. He's a builder and he's been doing that. He was tremendously successful. And he's like, yeah, you know, I did something that's kind of crazy. And I go, what? He goes, so I just bought this building in downtown Las Vegas, like a$10 million building.

1:01:22And I'm going to, he goes, basically he had this experience with his oldest son where he was like, you know, my son, he's really smart, but he's bored at school. Cause again, like he already knows the stuff they're teaching. And so he just, he just disengages cause it's like not that interesting. And he really loves baseball. He's on like the national, he got picked for like the national team of his age. And he's like, but because he's at school for, you know, like eight hours a day, by the time he gets off school and it's time for baseball practice, he's like kind of tired. He just does it for an hour or two and then he like comes home and he wants to just chill, eat, play video games and go to sleep.

1:01:59And so he's like, we are going to homeschool him this year. But he's like, instead of homeschooling where he's just sitting at our house, you know, he just rolls out of bed and it's like, hey, I'm at school now, whatever. And they're like, We're busy parents. What are we going to teach? How do we do this? He basically created a WeWork for kids to homeschool. So check this out. So what he's doing is called the Grind Academy or something in Las Vegas. It's basically a sports prep school where you homeschool your... So the kids are homeschooling. So they go to this... The idea would be that they would go to the school.

1:02:31They'd spend, I don't know, two to four hours a day on the education using Alpha School type of software. right so there's they're all doing they're all doing their their curriculum you know on their computer or their ipad there's a teacher sitting there who's there to help in case you don't understand something there's like a tutor available that will help you get unstuck and then when you're done with your work or like you know but when you start your day you go there you do like a morning condition like a morning workout so you get like a morning workout in then you do your school stuff you grab your smoothie your protein shake you go upstairs you do your school stuff and then you have your afternoon skill specific sports specific training I mean, you're getting like two-a-day stuff.

1:03:09He got like pro coaches and like top level, like strength and conditioning coaches to come in and be like doing this for kids. It's like IMG, is that what it's called? Yeah, so he's basically building IMG, but just as a private school for like, you know, middle schoolers, like youth sport, you know, youth athletes. And I was like, this is a crazy move. And he's like, I would never do this because he'd actually been in the gym business. He had built an 82 store chain. So he's already been in the gym business for it. And he's like done well in that, but also knows all the pains of scaling a gym.

1:03:38He's like, you know, I didn't just want to like create a gym for kids or create a gym at all. He's like, but you know, for my kids, he's like, I just got tired of like, the stuff they're learning in school was too slow, too boring, and too not relevant to like what's going on in the world today. He's like, you know, I would rather them come in here, they would learn their math, their reading, their writing, and then take like a workshop on starting a YouTube channel or a podcast or, you know, learn like, you know, what's going on with AI? Like what's going on with drone tech? How do you, what is that stuff?

1:04:04How do you learn about that? like where the future is going, like marketing classes, business classes, like open up a lemonade stand. He's like, I don't know, there's other ways you can learn outside of just this, you know, like the traditional sort of school model. And so he's like, dude, I think that model's dead. And so he's created his own private school. And the two photos I sent you, that's in 30 days. So I went there and I was like, oh, wow, this is like a kind of a raw building. And he's like, yeah, I'm opening up in 30 days. And I was like, what? Does he have anyone who's enrolled? Yeah, so 40 kids are enrolled right now.

1:04:35How much does it cost? I don't know how much it costs exactly. I think the first cohort is like, you know, whatever, like more like five to seven grand a year. But it'll get up to like, you know, once he has the full school built out, rolling, and he's like kind of proven his model, it'll be closer to like a$20 ,000 a year, you know, basically prep program. This is crazy. This is crazy. Is that insane? My kids aren't there yet. This is overwhelming. like this whole idea of like guides i've heard this so many times ramon sent his kid to a school where they had a guide right and i found it very i'm not open to things very easily but there could be a better way because like the current way is a great it's very this is this is a very scary thing because it's it's your it's your children and it's a very overwhelming to like learn about all this and i don't know what the right way is but there has to be a better way You're visibly stressed out right now.

1:05:32Yeah, I'm stressed out. Does it stress you out? Because obviously you care about this more. But like your A, B, test it. You should send one kid one way and one kid to the other way. Just test it. But yes, it's like a super important thing. But first of all, like none of these things are permanent, right? Like our friend who sent their kid to like one of these alternatives, you just took him out like after a semester if he didn't feel like it was working for him, right? Yeah, it's not the end of the world. And we have a kid, we have a buddy who went to one of these schools, and I asked him, I go, hey, are you, he was in eighth grade, are you going to ask any girls out?

1:06:06And he's like, they're all non-binary, so they're not. And I was like, oh, my God, man, I'm so happy I don't have to deal with this. This is a very stressful situation. I found it very stressful. I was like, oh, well, I don't have any advice. I'm sorry. I don't know what to sell you. Dude, the bar is so low. once you realize like the like once you just go sit in the the current like status quo you're like okay what's my real risk here like my real risk is so low because this current experience you know it's not like i'm trading something that's really good for something that might be better it's something that is pretty dissatisfying and it's like well do you want to try something that could be better that sort of logically makes more sense dude i went to uh Have you ever been around Catholic stuff?

1:06:56Have you hung out with a nun? No, dude. I went to Catholic school. Is that something people do if they're not Catholic? Well, you don't even see them anymore. They're rare. I went to Catholic school. I had nuns teaching me. And they were the convent. And it was Sister Mary, Sister Teresa. Yeah, they were all like Sister Mary, Sister Teresa, Sister Catherine. And they would hit me if I misbehaved. um and yeah that's a pretty that's a much more radical experiment it's like that's not radical that's just how it's been done it's it's it's not radical in the sense that it's not new yeah it's not that it's new i guess what i'm saying is like dude i loved it i would do it acceptable then i think this should be acceptable you know i went oh i agree i went to an all boys college prep school like a high school uh catholic school it sounds fancier than it is it was it was a very blue collar was it called exeter or something like that no no no no it was called St.

1:07:49Louis University High School. It was an all boys school. And it was fantastic. I loved it. I can't say enough good things. I enjoyed my experience so much. And I would have I was a jerk. I was a jerk in high school. And I would have a teacher kind of get in my face and yell at me if I did something wrong. And it was exactly what I needed. I loved that strict disciplinary experience. And it and it had a big impact on me. So I my the reason I don't have too much empathy for wanting to change is because I enjoyed my experience. Had I gone to a public school, I think it would have been a lot different.

1:08:20I can't imagine a public school with five or 6 ,000 kids. I feel like I'm so intimidated of the idea of that. Right. I mean, I went to a high school in Houston, Texas that was like that, 4 ,000 kids. I remember if you just walked into the bathroom, there was like an ear piercing parlor basically. Was it really? They would just give piercings in the bathroom. It was just insane. Dude, it sounds like prison. There was It's like, yeah, there was scheduled fights of like which, like there's just scheduled fights. It's like, oh, these guys are going to fight these guys today. And it's like, that was just like a pretty week.

1:08:51It's like UFC 202. It's like, all right, it's happening this week. Dude, my experience was so harmonious. Halfway through high school, my parents shipped me off to China. We all moved to Beijing and I finished high school in the International School of Beijing. And now I'm in a 150-person expat only international school. So I could have had like two totally different experiences. Was the second one good? Oh, it was amazing. Best thing that happened to me was to have that. Yeah. Why? Well, first I needed a fresh start. It was Chinese kids or Americans? No, it was mostly like it was a mix because like you had to have a foreign passport to attend.

1:09:30Got it. You couldn't be a Chinese local and attend no matter how much money you had. You had to have enough money where you had dual, you had a passport of Singapore or somewhere else to come. so a lot of the kids were Asian because maybe it was like Korea, Japan, whatever. A lot of, you know, Australians, you know, Europeans, Americans, whatever. And it was, I mean, it was great for me only because like a change of environment, even if the environment is not better, is great just because it gives you a blank, like a clean slate. That's also probably intimidating. You know, to just be like, oh, okay, cool.

1:10:00Like socially, I was like this before, but now I can be different. You know, like sports wise, here's what I was doing before. Here's what I'm doing now. You know, whatever. You could do it all there. plus I don't know like it was just a better school overall like there was just no like I don't know I don't know I don't know how to explain it it was just like a higher quality everything the food was higher quality the teachers were higher quality the classes were higher quality well yeah you were with a bunch of it was a rich kid school it was a rich kid school like what do you what do you want it's gonna be it's gonna be that you know and all the companies pay for it so the parents don't usually pay for it like when the company moves you they're like all right we're taking your kids out of like you know american public school or whatever we'll have to give you an equivalent of an english schooling experience over there so the companies pay for it that's pretty sick i would i've dreamed of like moving away for a year or two with my with my children i think that'd be awesome that's pretty badass i would highly highly highly recommend it i think it's one of the best things anybody can do is china's not on the list china's on the list china's down that's not on the list but you know like paris is pretty dope or something like that.

1:11:06What did Scott Galloway said? America's the best place to make money. Europe's the best place to spend it. So that sounds pretty good. Exactly. All right, that's it. That's it. All right, that was a great pod. Someone in the comments said, Sam and Sean, we're so, we like these guests and all that stuff, but we just want brainstorming. We just want old school ideas, old school episodes. That's what this episode was. Hope you enjoyed it. All right, that's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off On the road, less travel, never looking back My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast.

1:11:43It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with Billion Dollar Moves, she wants to look at Unicorn founders and funders. and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like My First Million, check out Billion Dollar Moves.

1:12:19It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again, Billion Dollar Moves.