Newsletter Schemes, Copywriting Scams and Chaotic Singles

39:03I'm not clicking that. I know that shit straight to the FBI website, bro. The next phrase you hear is, come on in. Check yourself in. To the Folsom prison. Yeah, dude, my first one of my first internet companies was called bunk. And the premise was we would put these ads, we would, we put these ads so close to the next Airbnb. Well, it should have been Airbnb. And it should have been just Tinder for Tinder. But it basically the way it started was we would go and find online three and four bedroom apartments. And we would like, if it was a four bedroom apartment for four grand, we would say we have one bedroom available for$1 ,000.

39:38And we would get 500 people to apply. And then we would host a party and team up people to get that place as well as a bunch of other places because we're like oh you guys are all looking for similar budgets apparently so just like come and team up and get your own apartment and uh it worked it worked quite well and then a bunch of the people at the party started like hooking up with each other and we didn't catch the clue that we should have just made this a dating thing that's and then we launched this app we called it roommates and it was basically tinder for roommates and again we didn't catch the clue that people like I actually met a girl, two different girls on that app that I ended up dating in 2013 or 14.

40:16And again, we didn't catch the clue. We should have just done this for dating. It would have worked a lot better. Yeah, the dating game is changing. One thing that dating is always going to be a problem. It will never not be a pain point for people. And there's no such thing as solving dating. And anytime one thing gets popular, it creates the need for another. So Tinder created the need for something like Hinge. and now when you have sort of like tinder tinder and hinge generation i talk to people who are dating now and they're like oh you know what two worst things about those like about tinder and hinge is like you get either on tinder you just get bots like basically it's just girls trying to get you to like subscribe to their only fans like oh this really hot girl matched with me and she's interested in me she tells me to just click this link and then like follow that oh man this is just an upsell like there's a bot just upselling me basically the other one is people that um uh like because like we were joking about the poly thing but like people have a lot of different like i don't know preferences and kind of different situations there's like a lot more configurations than like i'm a boy who likes girls i'm a boy who likes boys right like that's kind of what we knew was like you know we were checkers not chess when it came to dating right there was only so many moves you could make you move forward and backwards that was it and so you're you're red or black that's that's the game yeah now it's like you know multi-colored chess and so the the way that my friend was telling me, he's like, oh, there's this one app.

41:40I think it was called Field or something like that. Maybe I got that wrong, but I think it's called Field. And he's like, I like it because people just super straight up. It's like the culture on that app is you got to be ultra direct. It's like, I am looking for, and you say the exact thing you're looking for and what you're into and what you're not into so that people know they're not going to meet somebody, oh, this person's really cool, but they want a completely different type of relationship configuration, gender configuration that I'm into. And so I think there's always a new need. You know how when you and I do meetups and every once in a while a line will form to say hi.

42:15It's like, hey, how are you? I was joking with my friend and she's like, you know, that's what it feels like to be a hot chick all the time. Like, you know, like when you and I will have like an MFM meetup and we walk in and you'll see like, oh, people like are staring at us like this guy's giving me energy like he wants to like me to open. I'll turn my hips a little bit and let him like, and give him like the, the, you know, like I'll open my hips. That's what it is. It's like wherever you put your junk, it's like, you'll be at a thing and you're like one-on-one with this other guy, but you feel this, it's all dudes.

42:44And you feel this other energy, you feel this other guy hovering. You're like, all right, I'll turn my hips a little. So this guy could get in on the combo. And that's basically what it feels like to be like a, a six out of 10 woman, like all the time, or maybe even lower, like just to be a woman all the time. It just, you just, whatever you want, it's yours dude just last thing on this do you remember like when i was in college the the game was like you would go to a bar or club or whatever and literally it was like a physical version of tinder it was like you just go up you guys just go behind the girl and just grind and if the girl like accepts the grind then then you're in it's like national geography it's like national geographic man you're like a bird flexing its feathers craziest that's the craziest thing that used to be normal.

43:30I don't know if that's still normal. That's the craziest thing that like I experienced in my life. Did you do that? I never did that. That was so uncomfortable. That was all anybody around me even knew. Like that was such an interesting thing. You just get rug burn on your junk. No, not a chance. I was too uncomfortable for that. You had a question on here that I actually was thinking about the other day. You have a question on here and I originally thought I wrote this, but I guess you did where it's what's an example of things today that our grandkids in 50 years will think is absolutely insane.

44:01I've been thinking about this because on TikTok and Instagram, the kids now... Grinding is my example. Grinding at the club is my first example. I don't know if they do that anymore or not. It didn't even take 50 years. It took me 15 and I already realized that was batshit crazy then. Well, you'll see these videos and they'll be of high school. So like the kids now will be like, check this out. This is a home video of the class of 2008 in high school. And you like see them walking around and like you see like the the stuff that we used to wear and you see like our razor flip phones and then like the kids reminisce like i can't believe they did this or that was so much better or this was so much worse you had a cool question on here about what do you think will be crazy yeah i think about this a lot what are things that 50 years from now like our grandkids will look at the way we live today and be like what the hell were you thinking right like um you know know there's past example like if you go way past it's like slavery wow i can't believe that was just like the way you guys did things or whatever right like you know riding horseback that's crazy that's how people got around or just like people just dying of like everything you know like early on early age like that's crazy that was so risky to have a kid like you know one out of what four or five kids would just die before they even hit 10 like that's that's really really rough i was reading this lewis and clark book and whenever they get sick on the trail they like give each other pills and they're like we're just going to give you diarrhea and you're going to shit out the sickness they call it a rush pill they go we're going to give you these pills and you're going to get tons of diarrhea and you're going to be healed and that was like the thing it was just we're just going to make you poop a ton yeah yeah we did that with four loco it was great it just changes shape all right so so you had you wrote some on here of more recent history so you said driving to places without google maps yeah i like these are things that we experienced the before and after, right?

45:50Like we're at that age where we experienced the paper map era, the asking people for directions era, just knowing how the interstate system of the United States works. Like my dad just kind of knew roughly what you do to Google Maps. Dude, I don't even know the highway. I live in Austin. I don't even know the highway, the big highway one mile away. I can't even tell you the name of it. Same. I don't even look up when I drive. I'm staring at the map. Go by feel. All right. Then you had landlines versus cell, like landlines being the only way to contact on one versus cell phones we we both experienced that um you wrote unsafe cars what do you mean by unsafe cars dude my first car was a 1992 mazda protege and we bought it for i got it for 900 for my mailman and when you look at that yeah but i was like i'll take well sometimes uh we'd have to wear we'd have to wear ties on uh we'd have to wear ties to school every once in a while and if Like my dad went to work too early and he wasn't there.

46:47My mailman would tie my tie. So like I got to know the mailman a little bit. Kind of weird. Bought it from, bought my car for$900. And if you see that car to a new, brand new, like Honda Civic, if you ever watch the videos of them running into each other, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. Like the safety. It's pretty wild how dangerous they are. So yeah, I think like these, like when we look at cars, when I look at cars from like the 80s and 90s, it's ridiculous how shitty they are. yeah that's crazy um so what are the ones that you think 50 years from now so we got a couple on here let's just go back and forth you do one i'll do one the first one is having and i've said this for a while but having like a growth on you having something growing in your body that's going to kill you that you could have figured out had you just gotten some type of scan a year earlier so i think that's gonna we're gonna look back and like dude so you just had this thing in your body and you didn't even know it'll be like so how did you know it's like well if you if you would feel a lump then you just go to the doctors like feel a lump yeah like if there's like a golf ball in you that's new all right let me go get it checked out that's literally state-of-the-art like i just described state-of-the-art procedure and half the time you're like yeah fuck it'll go away you know what i mean maybe it was that burger eight earlier yeah like go away it's probably a life foam it'll go away and so yeah i think that will be a thing how about yours um okay easy one i'll start easy mode driving yourself like it's pretty clear self-driving cars are like on the horizon the idea that like yeah back in my day we used to get a license when we were 16 years old and then yeah i just used to drive i used to just we used to have a steering wheel in the car and you just have to look where you're going and all the other cars were also holding steering wheels, looking where they were going.

48:33We tried not to crash. And if you're on a two-lane road, it's 80 miles an hour, the opposite way, with three feet of distance. Yeah, yeah. Well, they painted these lines. You just had to stay in the middle. You just had to keep awake and stay in the middle. Just keep looking. And they'll be like, what? That will sound completely barbaric, right? And it's like, did people not crash? Yeah, they sure did. Did they die? It's the leading cause of death. Yeah, some people get drunk before they did it. It'll sound just like, what were you guys thinking? And it'll just be like, well, we just didn't have the tech at the time.

49:07But when you have self-driving cars, cars are going to drive perfectly without you needing it. There won't even be a steering wheel in the car. Cars will become like entertainment pods. You'll just play video games or you'll sleep or you'll watch movies or you'll work. Cars will become a whole different thing very soon. And there's a clear before and after. another one is so different diets like we still debate we're like the atkins diet that's a thing oh no no you want to do the other thing where you got to eat lots of carbs you know carb whole grains that's that's what you have to do and to this day like we're still we're like well which one do you feel good on i don't know like just do whatever i've alternated carnivore and vegan twice yeah you are vegan to your you'll only consume vegans it's just constantly change And like, we don't know which one necessarily is better.

49:58You know, there's like really good arguments for both. And we aren't sure. And I think that that's pretty insane that who knows, you know, I don't know. Right. By the way, have you ever do know a lot of doctors? Do you know how many classes they take on nutrition? Typically, it's like it's like a class like they don't doctors don't study nutrition, which is pretty insane. Or at least like your average, like or exercise. Yeah, your average doctor doesn't exactly is doesn't really know too much about exercise and nutrition. And so I think that that's like something we're going to be like, I don't know, you just kind of like tried a bunch of different stuff.

50:29And like you'd read a bunch of blog posts on it and listen to podcasts. And like you just kind of guessed a little bit. Right. I think eating meat. So killing animals to eat their meat, I think will be seen like a genocide, like a slavery. I think it will be seen as completely barbaric and immoral 50 years from now. when we have the alternative, there will be an alternative, which is basically lab grown meat or synthetic food that will solve the kind of protein problems and taste, get the taste right. Um, and the cost, right. And at that, when that happens, as that shift happens, we'll just be like, yeah, people just, you just take the thing and you slaughter it, you just kill it and then you eat it.

51:14And they'd be like, you do it yourself. Like, no, no, no. Gross. I would never do that. They do it. And then they package it. And then we eat it. And they're like, what? Like, didn't you have a dog? It's like, yeah, I would never do that to a dog. It's like, but you would do it to this other animal? It's like, yeah. It's like, how did you guys decide? It's like, well, I guess I'm a cuteness. Like, I don't know. I don't really know how we decided what was completely illegal and immoral and would get you canceled versus like you eat it two times a day. Like, you know, the line is very thin between like cow and chicken and dog.

51:46Right. Like, it's not that it's not that clear why one. Yes. First, the other. No. Um, so I think that eating meat will become, will be seen as a, as basically like our generations, we just committed genocide on animals. I have 20 cows at my ranch. You knew that, right? That have cows out there. They're not yours, right? They're just stray or they're yours. They're my neighbor. They're my neighbor owns them and they are allowed to use my land to graze. Uh, and I don't pay taxes because of that or I pay less taxes, but basically, uh, you, I get to know them. So like, I, I know who they are. Like I know which ones are, which I know whose mom is who.

52:21and like it sucked our first week there that we bought the place uh like a four-month-year-old calf died or it was but a four-month-year-old calf is still like 600 pounds or whatever it was it was like a 600 pound baby and apparently it like swallowed a golf ball so my neighbor was like hey were you hitting golf balls i was like no dude i was like i just i just moved here i did wasn't me i don't know um like it's on instagram balls at the new ranch yeah and i was like dude Once you get to know me, you'll understand neither of us a golfer. I'm not a golfer. You know what I mean? And so and then I was like, hey, Jeff, this guy was like, what?

52:59Do I go and get like a shovel or something? He goes, oh, no, that son of a bitch is going to be gone in three days. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you'll see. And so I come back in three days and the whole body and carcass, everything was gone. The all the animals like the birds and hogs, they just ate it. It was completely gone. and the mother would go back to the spot where that calf was and would like mourn. And I was like, my heart was broken. I was like, I don't know if I could eat meat in the same way now. So I felt like devastated. And so since then, I've basically, I only eat red meat like once a month because the cows, like I get to know them and I'm like, I feel too sad.

53:34I can't do it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not that manly of a man. I can't do it. But you, you think that child birthing manually is going to be a thing of the past. Yeah. So when I was in LA, we had dinner with a person named Jessica Ma. You know who she is? Yeah, she's very impressive. She's super impressive. I think she did a company called Indonero. I don't know her very well. She was at this dinner, but she was on the other side of the table. So I didn't get to know her too much. She seemed very interesting. Indonero was like an accounting company that's still very successful. But I think it's so successful now that she just has tons of money and does more stuff.

54:06Yeah, it's a big one. I think she's out of that business now from what it sounded like. and we were like, what do you do? And she's like, oh, I basically invest and incubate like hard science businesses. And I think she's still only like 29. Yeah, yeah. She was very, very impressive. We should actually have her on. Sometimes you could just tell that people are playing a different game at a different level. So there's like same game, different level, different game, same level. And then there's different game, different level. I would put her in different game, different level. Yeah, you could talk to her.

54:39She's pretty brilliant. I'm within five minutes. You're like, oh, OK. I think she was I think her she started in dinero and accounting software company at 19. I don't know much about her, but she started. I just went to her LinkedIn, by the way, started her first six figure business when she was in middle school. Goddamn. Different game, different level. Yeah, I was I was I hadn't even grinded yet at that point.

55:08Yeah, that's crazy. anyways, so she's doing this thing. One of the things, so we were talking to her, but we were like, what are some of the crazy science things that you're funding? And then she would say things that were like, her thing was like novel, like she's trying to fund like a novel approach at like an existing thing. I don't want to butcher it, but something like that, which basically like what she called a bold science. So it's basically like someone taking a new scientific approach at an existing problem. So she'll go to universities and she'll find, research labs where they'll be like, this is the one researcher who's trying to do this thing, but this like completely other way than the general field is going.

55:49And she's like, cool. I want to fund that because those bold approaches when they work, work in a really big way. And so one of the things we talked about just somehow in the conversation came up was like, like birthing a child is like the natural way or whatever. Like, you know, woman carries baby nine months, goes to the labor, delivers baby. dad snips the umbilical cord. That's the process as we know it today. Wait, does the dad do it? They hear like, dad, you want to do it? Is that whatever to be offered? I'm not doing that. In the moment, they're going to be like, dad, come do this. And you're going to be like, what?

56:28No, I'm good. I'm holding her hand over here. I'm busy. And they'll be like, no, no, no, come, come do it. And then you're going to be like, ugh. And you're going to hold the thing and be like, I don't want to hurt this. This is going to hurt what is this yeah i'm not doing that man i don't even want to i won't even trim her toenails i'm not gonna touch that i don't want to touch that thing you're did you do it i did it yeah oh man i don't the peer pressure of six doctors and your wife who just like did a modern miracle did a like act of human bravery and courage and then you're like i don't feel comfortable doing this like dude i am not doing that wimp of the year like i've already told my wife i think i'm gonna pass out i'm taking a couple xanaxes in in the room i i this is on no that's too much for me man i don't know if i can do that i'm i'm i'm not one of that guys i'm not that guy i don't think my brother-in-law when my sister was uh having giving having birth giving birth whatever yeah he like yawned at some point and she just turned and looked at him like oh are you tired he was like no sorry it's just been like 70 hours he's like no it's just boring yeah it is honestly kind of boring but yeah anyways yeah you better be prepared you're gonna have to do it so anyways birthing a child so she was like yeah I think that's gonna be seen as like unnecessary sort of barbaric not like as like scientifically sound as like eventually we'll be able to kind of like almost like incubate the baby and just like deliver the baby through like essentially a machine that the baby will be sort of like grown and delivered that way have you met someone who's had a surrogate yeah I've met people who have a surrogate I have and they've acknowledged that they don't feel they didn't love the kid the same as the other one really pretty first of all did you ask of course I asked of course that's obviously the first thing you're going to ask when you're about it there's like a handful of questions there's a handful of questions which is A like obviously how much does that cost you're going to run you where do you find them and then like what did you do like what was the relationship like and then like my fourth question is like did they ever try to hold the baby hostage dude i could still imagine you being the worst possible surrogate because you would micromanage their lifestyle like hey it's my baby in there you better get up here on this treadmill but the surrogate can basically hold you hostage right because you'll do anything you'll do like well yeah whatever you want like i'm i i have to give you what you want because i will do anything for that kid but then the last the fifth question was like all right but like did you love the kid as much as the other ones and the answer was at first no definitely not i definitely didn't uh they got honest with me and i so i don't know if i believe this is going to be a thing um but yeah i feel like if there's the option it's kind of like the epidural um like so i think when we were in the hospital so my wife's insane and wants to only do natural birth and like feel all the pain for no reason but she's like you know she's like that's how i get down i'm like oh wow oh my god we are so i guess opposites do attract i've taken the life version of epidural to avoid pain you took the epidural

1:00:20so but the doctor had said 90 she's like 85 to 90 % of the patients in their hospital do the epidural because like, you know, it makes sense. Like if you can, you know, not feel that level of pain, it's easy to see why somebody would choose that. So, um, you know, if you just sort of extrapolate from there, you're like, cool, would you like to also not have the nine months of pregnancy like going on in your body? Um, if there was that option, like you really think people wouldn't take it. I think people would take it. Yeah. I think some people would, but I just don't, I don't know if it's, you know, look at the ozempic thing dude if you give people the magic pill the way out like people take that shit right like if you get the cost right that's a good point i do love people are going to avoid pain all right they're going to avoid discomfort and pain where they can i order doordash three times a day like you think that people aren't going to do this they're going to yeah you're right actually i love magic pills whenever i hear someone who's selling like a magical cure or a magic pill i'm i'm in probably won't work but tell me everything ozempic is a little bit of a magic pill when i when i was taking it it was quite magical did you take it no no i haven't taken it you should it's awesome i guess i'm also kind of crazy in that way where i'm like well then it wouldn't be as satisfying like i want to do this on my own yeah yeah but having abs is pretty sick so totally i totally agree two or three failed diets away from from breaking and going on a zempic um all right what else we got i want to tell you about this thing that when people read it they probably didn't have the same reaction as i did but i think they should so there's this guy it's called the greatest scam ever written and it's about a copywriter who ran this scam his name was patrice runner and so it started basically in the 90s where he originally saw this ad have you ever heard of this book called the lazy man's Way to Riches.

1:02:14Yes. So I don't remember when that originally came out, I think in the 60s. But the Lazy Man's Way to Riches is a really famous ad. It sold like three or four million copies of this book. And the ad is famous amongst copywriters because it was really successful. And a lot of the copywriting that we use now for the internet, they kind of originated from that ad. And this guy, Patrice Runner, he saw this ad and he was poor. And he was like, I don't want to be poor anymore. It's pretty amazing that this guy just convinced me to buy this book based off of just like, you know, 20 paragraphs of text.

1:02:50That's amazing. I want to learn how to do that. And so he did. And so he starts studying copywriting. And he reads a newspaper about this lady named like Madame Duval, Maria Duval was her name. And basically, there was a story about her and how there was a murder in the Caribbean, and how they couldn't find where the body is. And she was a psychic and she led the people to where the body was. And I don't know if that's actually true, if she actually did that, but it was in the newspaper that that happened. And so he contacted her. It was like, look, I want to create this psychic company and I want you to be the face.

1:03:25And I'm going to give you 5 % of profits forever. And you really don't even need to do anything other than like, let me use your face occasionally. And that's it. So she signs up for it. And he starts creating these ads where he would mail people these letters that looked like it was typed out. And it was from Maria Duvall. And it would use these amazing bits of copy. So the thing would say, the opening line was, if you've got a special bottle of bubbly that you've been saving for celebrating great news, now is the time to open it up. and that would be like the opening line and it was a nine page letter that he would send to people and he would say like you know send me uh forty dollars or fifty dollars and we will like uh you you'll have good luck it was basically like you send money and you get nothing and then eventually it was like oh you sent forty dollars we're going to keep sending you more letters and they would send like two letters a day sometimes so someone would oftentimes receive two letters and they would send an ad for some vitamin that you would need to take.

1:04:26And recipients, basically, it said, the recipients were urged to reply and enclose a check or money order for$50 to receive a mysterious bit of power and luck in order to attract money. And then also, after they accepted the money, they would get a document called A Guide to My New Life that included winning lottery numbers. And so this guy did this and he did it for so well that he was making$20 million a year doing this. And eventually the thing ran for 10 years and it made$250 million. And then the government swoops in and they're like, dude, this is fraud. And so now he's in jail and he's waiting sentencing, but he might get up to life in prison.

1:05:10so like he's looking at like at least like 20 years of prison for this and they were like why'd you do this he's like i was just so attracted to copywriting and with writing he told the reporter this is all from this uh an article from called the walrus it was a great article and they show you like what the ads look like but we'll talk about that in a second but he goes with writing you could get the attention of someone and at the end after just a few minutes that person sends you a check to get a project uh to get a product to an address or company that they've never heard of And when I read stories like this, that should be the takeaway, which is not like this criminal is bad.

1:05:44But how do I use this amazing copywriting stuff actually for good? And if you click on the article, you'll see the envelopes would have these amazing things like we're on the back of the envelope, it would say something like, after you've sealed this envelope, we will be the only one to have ever opened it. And it says, please leave the following blank. And it says, here's the day we received it. Here's the time that we received it. and the recipient, who's supposed to be Maria Duvall, would have to check the box in order to say, yep, I've opened it. And they put all these little strange tactics of getting someone to convince and believe what they were saying.

1:06:20It's incredibly fascinating. So it's called... The publication they did, an article on this guy, it's called The Walrus. It's really good because you should read this and think copywriting is amazing. This guy was a fraud, obviously, so that's bad. But whatever he did, do that for good shit. and it's awesome it's a really fascinating article about this guy but yeah now he's going to get sentenced to like it looks like 20 years of prison and you know who else did this this great copywriter uh great copywriter gary halbert you remember gary halbert so yeah why did he go to jail i didn't actually know it was tax tax something yeah tax and i think tax and also basically he would sell this product i think it was called a family uh what is it called a suit of arms what's it called a crest like a family crest he would sell this product whereas like you mail in like par and then you get mailed back like a crest i don't know if it's like a graphic but he just didn't fulfill the orders he just took the money and like bounced it was just like easy to do that too to just give him a crest like yeah he just took the money fiver he was just too early yeah and so he went to prison i think for like 10 years and that's where he wrote this really good book where it's like he wrote letters to his son on copywriting and that's called the letters from boron i guess boron was the name of the prison that he was in but these copywriters it's really cool how you're able to pull this shit off and you by the way people act like you can't do this anymore because people are smarter that's not true you 100 can still pull off all this but it's very fascinating uh i'm with you i think this is one way that we are very very similar where we both read these things and have the same sort of like unexpected reaction which is some blend of like excitement and admiration not for the crime but for the tools that led to the like you know it's the same way I love Ocean's Eleven it's like robbing a bank I like it I like what goes in to robbing that bank right it's like you shouldn't like the criminal in this case but you are attracted to the skill to the cleverness to the um to the guile that goes into doing something well every guy who saw leno dicaprio and wolf of wall street or catch me if you can was like hey mom can i can you give me one of your checks i want to see if i can actually change the numbers on it like everyone like you know what i mean like everyone who saw that was do the same thing or like everyone looked up like you know shrapford oakmont jordan belford's thing after they uh wolf of wall street movie like everyone that tried to cards or whatever right yeah right they're like oh i could counting cards how does that work i could do that you had a great bit of copy that i read on facebook the other day you go the more shirtless pictures i i post the more free protein i'm sent some asked me to some asked to pay me to post i've never done that and i don't intend to but here's some brands that i use blah blah blah there you go that's right we may be whores in the par household but we're certainly not

1:09:26i stole that from re gold so uh re gold that tv show entourage so every great copywriter does the same thing where you do this too you hear phrases you hear phrases and you store them and you just store them and so every single person who's good at writing you have a bank that you just we call it a swipe file but i remember even when i was in sixth grade watching entourage at sunday night at 9 p.m on hbo i remember hearing that i go that's mine i'm stealing that one and you just wait for that perfect opportunity to use those lines dude i have my my it's literally called you said you said phrases literally my sheet is called my note is called phrases um and i just have so many good ones here i love it because what people don't know is like phrases are really important so i'm working on this with hampton actually where we're trying to create like our mantra or like with every type of community it's basically a cult or sorority where you like you need like a phrase that summarizes it you need a crest you need a crest i need a like i need something and i've been like tinkering with phrases and it's so important to like nail a phrase and like there's so many like really good phrases um like for example i'm reading this book about martin luther king's assassination and he was assassinated uh while well basically he was at this protest where garbage workers black garbage workers were uh were wanted to be treated better and their phrase was just i am and it was underlined i am a man and like that like that one phrase is let's treat me like a you know i'm not i'm not a slave anymore i'm a man treat me like a man and so i just like all these phrases and i just like we'll see a phrase even though i remember writing that i am a man we are mostly men

1:11:09that's too touchy of a subject uh that's a whole nother thing but anyway i love these like beautiful phrases i love these beautiful phrases you got to collect them are you workshopping a couple right now you want to do a little live workshop so one that has gotten shut down but i love it which is ctc confidential confidentiality transparency and commitment so CTC and it's just you got a seat. So you miss one meeting your band. We've actually kicked three people out already because we've heard that they've communicated with outsiders of like some confidential information. But CTC is what I'm trying to which is what I'm trying to get stuck make a thing.

1:11:49Yeah, it's not becoming a thing as of late. But yeah, what else you got? Well, that's it. That's the only one that's hard at work over there. Dude, it's hard. can't be rushed it's hard coming up with the phrase like one of these phrases it's what are some ones that you're inspired by so you said the i am one what are some other ones that you think are are well done well this other one is is they're calling it core which is like commitment openness uh respect and uh one other thing i don't know what the e stands for but core and core is not sticking with me but i'm i'm trying to be open mind core is not sticking with me because four things to remember is a lot harder than three values then it's not like your uh it's like your values yes values it's not like your slogan so one thing i've been thinking about is no one uh nothing no one never where i was like that nothing no one ever never which is like is this confidential nothing no one never dude like yes like everything everything it's nothing no one ever never you can never talk about what's going on so i'm pulling around with nothing no one never i like that one yeah yeah yeah nice uh that one but that one did a little something for me i like that yeah did it get you going it got me going uh what are some other interesting ones i there's not like that many that are intriguing to me to be honest but i'm trying to figure out like how to do it it's really hard just creating that shit from scratch it's way harder than it looks uh or i'm just not talented but like are there any good ones that you like you know the one thing i heard about like on the value side that always stuck with me was a value is useless without acknowledging the trade-off.

1:13:27So most companies, when they do their values, they'll be like, respect, honor, integrity. Which is stupid, because what's the opposite? Of course. Yeah, you said nothing that's of interest. You've acknowledged no sacrifice in that. And it's just generic. And so it's not memorable. It's not memorable, it's not useful, because it's just an of course type of statement. Whereas, you know, Facebook did one that that stuck, which was move fast and break things. It's beautiful. And move fast and break things was so good. And the reason why was because it acknowledged the downside of moving fast. And sometimes you're going to break shit.

1:14:07And like they said, yeah, yes, we take that. We will we'll err on the side of that. We will take that trade off. And so I think that values are only useful when you acknowledge. when you, when you bake into it, the opinionated trade-off, right? Like the fact that, yep, there are pros and cons to this. And our opinion is that this is the pro that matters, right? And that we're down, we will live with this downside because that's what shows you what you value. Like for example, if you're somebody who's really high integrity, you're gonna um you're gonna let's say there's you know an opportunity to take you're gonna not take you're gonna have to sacrifice things that could go your way because your high integrity this is like michelle obama had one that that kind of was yes it's gotta it's gotta be like painfully truthful painfully true exactly so she did that when they go low we go high which is like kind of acknowledges that like you all they go low it hurts you want to hit them back but no we go high right when they go low we go high that's another example of one that's like i like i don't know when she said that but that's like more than five years ago i still remember that a lot of people repeated that kind of like to make fun of her but it was politics people make fun of everything but like i do think there was something in that that was like more real than just like we stand for respect it's like okay cool that doesn't mean anything to anybody when you say that it's like we're all numb to those sorts of things like subway eat fresh and we print grill marks onto our chicken because it's not really grilled like you know it's like all right well that's what they should really say looks fresh but it ain't we uh my high school had a great one that I've always remembered it was men we were in all boys school and it was men for others and they just did such a good job of like nailing that into our brains just you got to be a man for others there's like that could be a dating app too yeah

1:16:10you're right so I remember meant for others I like that but it's been really challenging so I guess I got to go find some more phrases but but uh yeah I gotta I gotta I gotta make that better do you have any that you use for any of your companies none of your was what was Milk Roads did Milk Road have one no but uh I don't think you need one at the beginning by the way at the beginning I don't think you need I think you do need certain north stars like you know when you started the hustle you were like um call it both bullshit free news yeah you were like this is like your no nonsense or no bullshit your your your smart friend telling you what happened in a no bullshit way that was a really good like north star guiding principle that you could just say okay cool so like we stole a version of that for the milk road because what would what ended up happening here's like a tactical way that that started to drift the top story and all the news news things would have been about like some arbitrary bullshit like some maybe it was like a regulatory thing or maybe it was like a kind of a boring regulatory thing or it was like some layer two blockchain on on like some layer two protocol on top of some like obscure blockchain did this thing and we would write about it and I would read it because at this point I was like the editor I really never was the writer for Milk Road but I would read and I would just call Ben and I'd be like dude what like are you interested in this he's like well not really but i mean it seemed to be like i mean it's a top story by other news outlets i was like cool but like if you weren't into it like i was like here's the test would you text me about this like would you text me and tell me about this and would i be interested this is already baked into you wouldn't even text me if you didn't know if you you would only text me if you knew i'd be interested so i was like let's just use that as the test like the litmus test is basically would you text me about this thing that happen.

1:18:04If I was like, yeah, what's new in crypto right now? Like if that's not the thing, then don't put it in the newsletter, even if other people are writing about it. And when we made that shift, all of the like metrics kind of went up because people just naturally would resonate with that better because we had like a guiding principle for what goes in and what goes out. And I think that's the other thing that's really useful is it's really easy to talk about what goes in, what's important is to say what goes out. And I do this with strategy planning documents too. I wrote up a strategy for our e-com business.

1:18:39I think everybody should do something like this, by the way. I wrote it down and I wrote, here's the six bets that we have made this year. We're making this year. And I write them down. For example, I wrote the things called Big Bets and I shared this document with everyone. I said, Big Bet number one was we didn't have anybody in demand planning or inventory forecasting. I was like, It's pretty stupid that we don't have anybody doing this. Because of that, I think we have a ton of waste and we're missed. Like sometimes we're way under on products that people want. Sometimes we're way over and it just sits there and just ties up our cash.

1:19:12I think that if we hire somebody who's got experience doing this, we will get 20, 30 % improvement on the bottom line, literally just from that one hire. That's bet number one. And then we hire that person. Now we're seeing how it plays out. that number two was like that's smart um let's say like uh whatever i don't without giving too much away let me say um like uh part like this this type of partnership we're trying to go for this type of partnership um with this other big entity we believe that if we do that it's going to have this effect that's the bet we're making we'll know if it's successful if x happens i just wrote that wrote this down and so the whole strat company strategy for the year is one page long and it's just six like sentences.

1:19:54It's like, here's the situation. Here's the bet. Here's the situation. Here's the bet. And I just wrote that out. And then with that, at the bottom, I wrote, and here's the bets we are not making that we otherwise reasonably could have. So for example, we're not launching on Amazon because even though that would clearly add to the bottom line, but if we're launching on Amazon, that's going to take resources away and see those other six bets. That's going to take all of our attention this year. So we're saying no to that. We're saying no to this other thing. We're saying no to this other thing, all of which were totally reasonable.

1:20:26You could make a case for, but we decided not to do them because we don't want to spread ourselves too thin. And it was actually that not doing section. Like the first part was useful, but the second part was even more useful. And I think that people should, should highlight those like, you know, it's not focus is not what you say yes to focus is the hundred good ideas you say no to. And so I think when you take that principle and you apply it, that that's where you find the interesting stuff, whether it's your company marketing or whatever. What are you calling that? An e-commerce playbook? The bets.

1:21:00Big bets. What are the big bets that we're making this year? We'll see. I also wrote at the top. We don't think that all of these are going to pan out the way we expect. Are they? Where do you write now? I wrote one or two are going to either fail or we won't even execute on because one or two winners will suck up a bunch of our energy. I expect that to happen. I expect the middle four to work maybe, you know, plus or minus 20 % on how well we think they should work. So like some will slightly underperform our expectations, some will slightly overperform. One or two of the six bets will either fail completely or we won't execute well enough because our attention got sucked away by the other ones.

1:21:40And one or two should have a huge payoff. That's the distribution. If they all just work as expected, we didn't really bet wildly enough, right? It's like kind of like the goals thing that you don't want to hit 100 % of your goals. You want to hit maybe like 70 % of your goals. That shows that you stretched far enough without overstretching. All right, we're out of here. Sam, hit them with the line. That is the pod. Yeah. 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, let's travel, never looking back.

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