Steph Smith: Jobs of the Future, Fractional Real Estate, Mouth Tape and More

23:24Is it now already that they can be sold over the counter? Is it this coming October? No, no, they can. Okay, so they already can. But apparently 99 % of hearing aids or custom hearing aids are 3D printed already. And so there's a few companies that basically own this market currently. But the reason I love this is because 3D printing is the epitome of like tech hype cycle. Started in the 80s, then got way overhyped, wasn't ready. Everyone thought it was dead. But it's like come back in these really niche places like hearing aids. We talked to people on Trends a while ago that were using 3D printing for like dental implants, things like that.

24:04And so I feel like it's something that actually is like overlooked because people were like, oh, 3D printing is dead. Wait, what do you, Sean, you said yep, as if you know. You know people doing this for teeth? Yeah, one of my best friends, one of my best friends from college, he's a surgeon and he's an ENT surgeon. So ear, nose, throat. and what he, I was like, while he was in med school, so this is like over the past, like, you know, eight years or whatever, he's been, the guy's just been in school forever. And I was like, how's it going? He's like, oh, you know, it's fine. But like, I'm having the most fun because now I run Duke's 3D printing facility.

24:38I'm like, 3D printing, like just like for engineering, like you're making toys or what are you doing? He's like, no, like the medical 3D printing. And I was like, wait, I thought med, I thought 3D printing is like not even a thing for normal shit. You guys are already using it in medicine. He's like, dude, I surgically implanted part of a skull that I 3D printed the other day. Like, you know, we take your jaw shape and then we're able to like create like the perfect shape that we needed for this implant, this surgical process. And I was like, wow, I had no idea. And they're doing this with like, basically, it's interesting.

25:11Some technologies take forever to get into medicine because it's like the high stakes spot. and for some, medicine is the only justification for putting in the time and the money that it takes to get the technology to work. And I think that's kind of where 3D printing has gone, where it started as this hobbyist thing, but then the real commercialization so far has happened on the medical side. I think the same thing's happening kind of in VR. People are trying to do the hobby thing for a long time, but one of the better, more commercial use cases of VR is doctor training, pilot training, things like imagining.

25:51Destruction. Yeah, exactly. Anything where you need to sort of visualize and plan something. It's worth the money to develop a really high-quality VR simulation because it's cheaper than doing a real prototype of it. Damn, I didn't know you had the sighting vision. I got friends in hospitals, as they say. Well, you're Indian, of course. Of course you do. You're the odd man out, but you know, you're, you're shilling web three for years. Turns out you're a practical guy as well. We put the blockchain in your brain, baby. Yeah. Do the, do this. Well, I also, for this hearing aid thing, I met these guys that were doing 7 million a month in sales on their hearing aid brand that I had never heard of.

26:34And I was like, oh, huh. Maybe this makes a lot of sense, actually. Like DTC hearing aids. I think that's actually going to be a big deal. Was it bootstrapped? I don't know if they were fully bootstrapped, but they're not like Venture Act. It's like bootstrapped and then their uncle gave them some money to keep scaling it. It seemed like that sort of vibe. And they were profitable? I mean, I'm just turning you on. Yeah, they were. Tell me more. Say it again. Are they Mormon? Oh my God. How far away from the coast did they live? Are they inland? All right, let's keep going. Let's do this jobs of the future.

27:17I think this is a good one. And I also love that you're branding this Steph's list. Well done. Way to take a page out of our book. I had to. I love Sarah's list. But yeah, this all comes from, I guess, two things. One, people think AI is taking all of our jobs. I personally don't fully agree with that. We don't need to dive into that. Well, what's the official stance at A16Z right now? Is there like a... I don't want to speak for A16Z, but we're tech optimists. Is there like a poster where it said like Web3 is future and they just like put an X over it and they just wrote AI? No comment. No comment.

27:54But what I'll say is we even on this pod have talked about different jobs that don't quite exist or maybe are starting to exist. I've talked about chief automation officers. Sean, you've talked about this idea of like a mental fitness coach. And I guess this idea of Steph's list is partially, I want to share a few ideas today, but I also want to hear from the listeners, what are the jobs that you think are, as some people might say, a little more anti-fragile, but also that, again, don't quite exist yet or early, the types of things we would have talked about in trends? Start with the stat you have here, because I think the stat actually makes it clear that these aren't just like, oh, cute things on the fringe.

28:37It's like, no, this is the future. Yeah, so apparently 85 % of employment growth in the last 80 years came from new jobs. So AKA, between 1940 and today, 85 % of employment growth came from jobs that did not exist in 1940. Did they not exist because AI didn't exist? Or did they not exist because it's by new businesses? The job title didn't exist is what you're saying. Yep. So even, you know, simple examples of this that I think anyone can recognize from even the last few decades. Before 2008, 2009, the idea of a social media manager did not exist. The idea of a UX designer did not exist. And those are jobs that truly, like, what, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people now do these jobs.

29:27And so there's going to be versions of this. I think it's a little more brain-wracking to figure out in the age of AI, because you can always ask like, oh, well, is this going to disappear in three years instead of 30? But I think actually there's maybe like frameworks to think about this. So for example, I think drones are kind of hitting that. We talked about 3D printing, hitting that stage where a lot of consumers own drones, but a lot of companies are also starting to use drones. And so like what within that industry could exist? It could be like drone technicians. If there's a lot of drones, people are going to need to fix those drones.

30:05Is there like drone traffic control? There's aircraft traffic control. So why wouldn't there be, right? Safety inspector, charging installation, blah, blah, blah. Exactly. Exactly. And so my question for you guys is like anything on your radar? Well, let's start with the ones you talked about before. So you said it quickly, but I think it's worth repeating because you were on, I don't know, a year ago when you said it. So chief automation officer, when you said that at that time, this was kind of like definitely pre-AI being the thing that everybody's talking about. What does a chief automation officer do and why did you think that was a cool job, like a job of the future?

30:41Yeah, so I mean, a lot of companies will have a CTO. The CTO typically though is so wrapped up on what's our infrastructure, is cybersecurity, how are we tackling that and how are we keeping our company safe, our data safe? What they often aren't focused on, and maybe some people would argue this is the role of the COO, but is how do I actually take the technology that exists today, like AI, and enable every single person within my company to understand how to up-level their jobs, right? So like to become 3x more productive. Because most of those people, unfortunately, either aren't plugged into the technology, don't have the like excitement to actually implement it within their job, or honestly, it's just one of those like, you don't know what you don't know.

31:30So Steph, can I give you, let me give you a compliment. I remember that pod that we did where you talked about that. At Hampton, the first hire we made was an automation expert. Really? The very first hire. His name's Grant. All he does is automate stuff. So he's basically a Zapier plus Airtable expert. Yeah. And because one of our values early on was we want to grow to be big, but we don't want to have to hire loads of people. So let's right away start automating stuff. And it was because of that conversation. So the very first hire we made was an automation expert. That's awesome. And you know what?

32:03It is fucking awesome. It is awesome. And the bottleneck is not typically like you have to create new things. It's that they're basically you're bridging a gap. You're seeing a duct tape, a ton of stuff. There's a process we're doing that's kind of tedious, manual, repetitive, or low value add, but needs to be done. And then there's tools that could do that if you knew they existed and you knew how to pipe them together and stitch them together so that they actually work. and what this person does and like i do this at our company almost by accident which is uh like for our e-commerce company it's like i just discovered yesterday there's somebody who just has to like spend hours a week just like square cropping photos so that they look better in shopify from what the photographer gives them and i was like wait you do this for how many pictures and they're like yeah it sucks and i was like you know there's this tool that will just bulk upload and it'll do that and then it'll put them pipe it to you here in Slack and you can see, we'll use a different tool to pipe it into Slack and you'll see if there's one that's off because you can just kind of skim this with your eyes and then you'll just be able to fix the one off that's not good, but 98 % of them will just be done well the first time automatically by this one tool.

33:13And they're like, oh shit, that's like, no, thank you. That saves me a bunch of time and now I can go do things that are actually going to drive a little more growth versus is just like some bullshit that had to be done. And how many of those are there? In every company, there's a ton of those. And the problem is, Sean, is even let's say that hypothetically you only have 10 people, even though you've been 10 people for three years, just 10 people has created enough habit that even getting an automation person in now, it's going to be like, oh man, where do I start? So doing it with 10 ,000 people is like an impossible task.

33:48That's why we were like, let's get this right away. let's do this right away. Yeah. There should be like a ratio. Like for every 10 employees you have, you have one chief automate or not chief automation officer, but someone who knows how to automate and you just pair them with teams and you, they literally do user interviews. They sit down and say, Hey, let me shadow you for a day. Let me just see what you do. And then from there, I bet anyone, myself included, who tries to automate what I can, they would just pick up so many things of like, why are you doing that at all? So I think you should also have this for team collaboration.

34:22Have you guys ever read this book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team? Yeah, by Patrick something. I don't even know who it is. It's a great book, honestly. I love that book. I think other people - It's like a narrative director, right? Other people I think don't really like it. It's kind of like fiction. It's a business advice book, but it's written as a fictional story, which is cool because that's not usually how those are written. It's basically describes like there's a company, whatever, Acme Inc., and they go to this team off-site, and they're trying to figure something out. And then you have these four personalities or five personalities or whatever.

34:53And it shows the different ways that a team can be dysfunctional. And once I worked in a bigger... I've worked in two-person teams. That's what I'm in now. Well, I think the takeaway of the... You forgot this part where he says... The reason the book's called that is successful teams all look different, but every dysfunctional company looks the same. And here's the five things that they all have in common. Exactly. And you kind of identify them, but he identifies it. And the way the book's written is kind of cool. I think it's sort of like, it's, it's, here's a situation that you have two people who both have kind of like valid perspectives, or one person doesn't realize that the thing that they're saying is causing the other people to feel a certain way and causing all these like, second order effects.

35:33Anyways, it's a good book for like management, I guess. But what I, I guess my real takeaway is like, I've been in a bunch of companies where they do these, it's like shit builds up. And then they're like, we need an executive coach. We need a team offsite. We need to like break down all this scar tissue that's being built and like dysfunction that's in the team and resentment that's in the team. And what all these things that are not allowing us to perform at our best. I actually think that companies should embed this in the company. So I think there should be somebody that floats around. That's basically like the chicken billions.

36:04Who's like the team psychologist or whatever. It's sort of like that. But instead of one-on-one therapy. What's her name? I love that lady. Yeah. I stopped watching the show after season one. So I forgot, but she's awesome. She's Wendy Rhodes. So basically instead of that, it's somebody who just sits in meetings and takes notes. And every week they just deliver like, Sam, do you know that you do this and you say this and that that's making these, did you notice that that makes these people feel this way? And when they walk out of the room, they're not going to go do the thing you want in the way you want because of the way you said it.

36:39Or this person just didn't have that information and they were put on the spot. Maybe you should put in a process that gets the information on a dashboard that everybody sees beforehand or whatever, right? Like somebody that identifies dysfunction because let's say for every 10 people you hire, if you can make that team 10 % more efficient, you've basically created one of extra employee without that payroll. And so I think that the numbers would, the ROI would be there if you had this, but I'm surprised this doesn't exist. So I think that's a kind of a job of the future is basically like a collaboration expert.

37:12So somebody that like is like an internal you know, compass, team compass to figure out like, you know, where are the trouble spots? Hey, you like that word doula. You got to use that word doula here. Yeah, I guess I'll just keep using doula as a guy and pissing everybody off. Sam, what do you think? Any jobs that stand out to you? What are you guys hiring for? I don't fucking know. But nothing that... Some of the ones that are bullshit that you see out there, and then I see their titles and I'm like, oh, you're not actually good at that, is Community Manager. So Community Manager is a title that I actually don't think most people know how to make community.

37:53So that's kind of like a nonsense one. Here's one from the podcast that we've talked about. like we have like a podcast producer, Ben Wilson right now. And we have, you know, people will have like social media manager. They have like all these different functions. But what I told the team was like, I think we just need like a band manager. It's basically like, if podcasts are, as they get more successful, they're kind of like a band. You have the talent, they're the face, they get on stage, they perform. And then there's all this shit that needs to be done. Like whether it's like, we're going on tour, we want to sell merch.

38:24We want to develop this cult following of fans that just love us because we just do dope shit that is fan service, fan love. Then you have the recording stuff that's got to get done. And you kind of just need somebody who's like a hybrid of a business manager or an agent, as well as somebody who's kind of got the community building skills of a community manager. And that's what a band manager is for bands. And I think that you're going to see this more for podcasts and YouTubers is a role that's sort of like the band manager. like the Nelk boys and whatever, they have that. It's like, but most others don't have it underneath them.

38:58Oh, yeah, for sure. What are the lists that you have here? Head of remote and then cyber actuary. What are those? So head of remote is kind of similar to the thing that you mentioned, Sean, but it's like there's so much dysfunction at companies, especially the ones that transition from being non-remote to remote. Totally. Just copy and pasted a bunch of things from the office. They don't actually know how to build a remote organization from the ground up, how to do things asynchronously. And so it's kind of crazy when you think about how macro a shift that is for thousands of people to be doing things all one way, switching to a totally new way, and to have no expertise from someone to actually guide that.

39:39So that's the idea of how to remote. And some companies already have this, right? Like a remote work officer or RWO, what would they do? It's like, well, people like I know in our company, it's like, well, first they have to, it's kind of like IT. there's like, well, they need to have like a good home setup. Sam, you talked about this, we need to not look like dog shit on camera, whether internally or with our clients and our customers. So how do we make sure everybody's got a good Zoom setup? Okay. Secondly, how do we create some best practices around remote working and how to do stuff that's different now that we're not all in the office and can just look at each other and talk to each other real quick?

40:12And how do we set boundaries for different time zones? How do we plan meeting? All of that, I think is definitely in - Location-based pay. I mean, isn't this crazy? Like to your idea with Hampton, Sam, of the nice background. The same companies that had these really strict clothing rules, like you have to show up in a suit and you have to look this way, are letting people sit with their MacBook under their chin with like a dirty ass background behind them, showing up to their business meetings, trying to win a client. And it's like, where's your digital suit? You don't like - Right. They don't care.

40:46they don't even think about that because it's so outside of their field of view. But that's just one example. But do you guys do that at A16Z? Because when I imagine A16Z, I'm like, that's a khaki pants type of place. Well, I don't think we have a clothing code, but we do have... Dude, like, Lululemon's ABC pants is like the official pants of Manhattan. Here's something that A16Z does do that I never put together as related to this, but like, Their design team will create every quarter these beautiful Zoom backgrounds that the company uses. And they actually look good. I feel like a lot of Zoom backgrounds are like the company's logo kind of awkwardly photoshopped in the background.

41:31And it just looks terrible. Like bouncing around in the corner. And again, they refresh them every quarter. Everyone has access to them. So there's at least that visual consistency. But I don't know if we have a clothing code. But... I hope some of your bosses and employees listen to this. And I just want them to hear me say this. It is me and Sean making fun of you guys, not Steph. Just fly. I was going to say. With a threat there. That was awesome. You're like, it's like on TV where they're like, put the camera on me. Put the camera on me. Like, listen up. Put A on me. And then you look down the barrel and you deliver some like wrestling promo.

42:04That's what I thought you were about to do. But you were trying to cover. Sam's version is like, look at me. And he's like, you're great. Yeah. No one believes in you more than me. Well, I had a friend that lived in China and, uh, I used to like text him all the time and I'd be like, dude, your government sucks. What's going on with that? And then I would reply with, by the way, whoever's reading this, it is me saying this. Yeah. Don't disappear. My friend, uh, invest in the cool zoom backgrounds and stuff. You know, they got the, uh, I think, what, like$700 million in management fees? Those management fees got to go somewhere.

42:45So I'm glad they're putting them to good use. Yeah. But I mean, just to summarize on the head of remote thing, think about, I think maybe the easiest way to think about it is there's all these macro tech trends, right? Like remote work, AI, automation, cybersecurity, right? The idea of a chief security officer didn't exist 10 years ago, right? Because that just became such an important, I guess, concept within, especially tech firms. And what's this food engineer one? Well, I wanted to ask you guys about this because - Yeah, we never talked about this, Sean. Canna, do you guys remember that? Yeah, I was so hyped about it.

43:20I know. But I still think the concept of like a food engineer will exist. I think this one's a little further out. So give the story, Sean. Yeah, so a lot of people know David Friedberg now because he's on the All In Pod. So he kind of got a lot more popular or famous. But this awesome guy, used to work at Google, created this thing called the production board, which is his incubator, startup studio, whatever. And they build things that are kind of like hard tech. So it's like things that interface with the real world. They have hardware. They're making food or making biological substances or whatever.

43:56They're creating real world things. And he had this company called Canna that he created that was basically like the Coke freestyle machine in your kitchen. So you would have this device, this Nespresso machine that sits on your countertop that can make like a thousand different drinks exactly to your specification using basically like the equivalent of a printer cartridge. So it's like you put in this cartridge that's got all these like micro flavors and then you hook it up to your water supply and it's like, it just takes water. It makes it cold, hot or bubbly. And then it pipes in the exact dose of flavor to create whatever drink you wanted.

44:29You want tea? Here, you can make hot tea. You want a sparkling water that's like flavored like, you know, So Blackberry, boom, done. And so it was this awesome idea. It will also be good for the world in a way because a lot of the supply chain is basically spent bottling water or soda, putting it in cans, putting it on shelves, putting cardboard around it, transporting it to the store, transporting it to your house, then transporting the trash to the dump. I was like, dude, what if we just took the water supply everybody already has to their home and we let you make whatever drink you want? Very cool idea.

45:04and then out of nowhere just suddenly got cancelled and they were like, unfortunately to scale up, we needed a lot of money and in this funding environment, we couldn't do it. That's a bullshit excuse. Who can't raise... They've got the top tech podcast in the world. Yeah, they also... Maybe an interesting way of framing that idea was also... It came from the idea that they had done research and they had realized that basically every drink out there whether it was tea, whether it was wine, whether it was beer 95 % water like not just 95 % water but even the chemicals that go into it I don't remember the number but it was something like there's only through like 30 or so flavors that you need to basically generate every taste um but yeah I don't know maybe something for yeah we should get him on or I want to tweet at him I want to know what what really like not what really happened like there's a scandal but like tell me more because clearly he could sneeze and raise 30 million dollars for an idea so like I'm surprised if it wasn't like it must have been And his sneeze will be lovely flavors.

46:06I feel like he must not have believed, meaning the team must have realized it's not feasible or something like that. Or they must have proven that the thing is not feasible or non-economic in some way for them to not be able to raise money. Because just on the concept, I feel like they could have raised more money. So I think that's an interesting one, what went wrong. He said that he was going to send us one, and then his assistant or someone at the company was talking to us, and they just quit. No, not send us one. they were like, we want you guys, basically their idea was like, if you could make any drink flavor on the spot, okay, then what happens to drink brands?

46:38And his idea was like, drink brands become software, so they just become brands. We would create a drink flavor, you know, Sam's, you know, Almighty Root Beer or whatever, and it would just be like a specific dosage of flavors, and that somebody could just buy it for a dollar on their own can of machine, and it would just like, dispense the drink, and we would make money for every one of those flavors sold, basically. Every one of those drinks sold. That was kind of the concept. So they wanted us to make one, and they were like, come down to our facilities. We never got around to doing it, and now it's gone.

47:11Did you guys see the freestyle machine for condiments? Yes, I did see this. Dude, sign me up. Sign me up. Dude, this stuff is... Have you been to Hot Pot in Asia, where they have the sauce bars? No, tell us. Well, if you go to Hot Pot in Taiwan, they're literally... Hot Pot's like a style of food or like a yeah yeah it's like so basically you get a big pot of hot water um they give you broth of a certain sort and then you basically go shopping on this wall and you you pick oh i want some like some noodles i want some like beef whatever and you pick it out and then you basically cook your own soup but as part of that they have rice and other things and they have they typically have this huge sauce bar of like maybe like 20 to 30 different things like like garlic or ginger, soy sauce, like ponzu sauce, whatever.

48:01And you make your own sauce. And so when I saw this coming, I was like, this is genius because this exists in Asia, but only in these hot pot locations. Yeah, I kind of love this. I really do want the future of food to be a lot more interesting. I think it's going to be. So in your jobs thing, you got food engineer. I got that one. Cyber actuary. What does that one mean? Have you explained that one? Yeah. So basically, I mean, a lot of people, even if we relate this back to AI, are worried that like, you know, there's just going to be a lot more cyber, quote unquote, crime, right? People like replicating your voice, like getting your bank details.

48:38And I think this idea of being a cyber actuary is basically actuaries assess risk for anything, right? How risky is it for us to deploy, you know, this celebrity's voice in this way? How risky is it for us to, I don't know, like open source our new LLM? Like there's going to be all these implications of things, I guess, becoming a lot more online if they aren't already. And so this idea of a cyber actuary is like there's already a ton of actuaries that figure out how much insurance should cost in the typical world, like if you buy a flight. And I think there's just like this huge white space around risk that people have not calculated yet.

49:21Did I tell you guys about Eden Data? No. So I met him because he's joined Hampton. His name's Taylor. And he, I don't know if he was playing up to my ego, Steph, but he told me he created this because of an article that one of us wrote on trends. I don't know if that's true or not. But he launched this thing called Eden Data. And in just two years, it's now doing like$6 or$7 million in revenue. And basically what they do is, if you are a small-ish startup, so like 50 to 100 people, you have to have a certain type of compliance in order to sell software to enterprise companies. And so the service that he provides is, and this is like an oversimplification, but there's basically like a 50 to 100 point checklist of all the things that you need to do.

50:05And a lot of these startups, they can't afford a full-time chief security officer. And so instead, they pay Eden Data$7 ,000 or$8 ,000 or$10 ,000 a month. And he's got a team of outsourced people overseas who goes through your website and goes through your entire checklist and makes sure that all 50 or 100 things are done and they have templates to do it. And then they stay on top of it and they monitor it in case any changes have to happen. So now when you go and pitch this enterprise company to sell your software, and even though you're a small startup, you've already done all the stuff that needs to get done.

50:37And I think it's only two years in. I think he's going to do 8 million in revenue this year. And it's like a service that's subscriptions. It's like a subscription consultancy almost. And he's killing it. It's a crazy company with huge margins. Damn. I have it pulled up. Your digital security sidekick. Yeah. When I see companies like this, I think like I'm in the wrong industry. Were we talking to somebody that was doing this or wanted to do this for rich people? It was like just an overall security audit for rich people and like everything, like your house security, your bank accounts security, your crypto security, like just somebody who's going to come in and try to like just poke holes in your stuff.

51:17and at a certain dollar amount of net worth, it definitely makes sense. And you're not the expert and you have more to lose than you have than the cost of the service. You have a lot more to lose. It's like asymmetric downside, basically. And I think that kind of makes sense. I've reached out to tons of people. I've reached out to tons of people doing it. And the problem that I saw is that a lot of them, they're all ex-military guys, too. And so I remember I was talking to Pomp. I was like, Pomp, after the show, I was like, what do you do for security? Can you walk me through it? he goes, oh, I got this guy named Chad.

51:48We do this, this, and this. And then I talked to Chad and it's a little bit mom and pop. It's not like I can just log in and you can just tell me what to do or it can just get done. There's no like Plaid or whatever that other software where you just log in with your bank accounts and it just does what you need to do. It was very much a manual process and it was like 15 grand and this person's going to do this. And so I do actually agree with you. I think there's a start. I do think this is like a fragmented, it's a fragmented service. And I think that one great company can do all the stuff you need to do.

52:21Let's hit some of these other random trends you have. Don't mention the one I wrote. Don't mention because I got something in that space. So don't mention that one. But do some of these other ones. Let's start with mouth tape. Yeah, so mouth tape. I first heard about this like six months ago because some guy on Twitter was like, I tape my mouth shut every night for the last six months. And it's the best thing I've ever done. Dude, the hostage tape guy will not stop DMing me. He's so aggressive with it. We have this guy who's got a company he called Hostage Tape. And it's just tape for your mouth.

52:55And he told me he's going to launch it. And I'm like, this is dumb. And then six months later, he's like,$500 ,000 in sales. I'm like, great. And then he's like, a year later,$2 million in sales. And he's like, just rubbing it into my face. I don't think he's an official sponsor. But Andrew Huberman has been talking about it. And we, in my household, we like to call him Father Drew as a joke. But if Father Drew promotes something in this day and age, people will buy it. Yeah, he's like the bro Oprah in a way where like if he says, bro science Oprah, if he says it's good, you're just going to get a huge spike.

53:28Yeah, so that's, I mean, these are just like, I don't know where this goes. I don't know what opportunity there is other than going and selling some mouth tape, maybe rebranding it. But that's one trend. This guy's company is called Hostage Tape. and like I saw I was like oh this is the worst this is the worst thing ever like this is awful what are you doing but he's proving us wrong. That was your weight loss idea remember wasn't it called hostage? Yeah a hostage SF where I kidnap you and just don't feed you for four weeks You should partner Yeah This guy's crazy so whatever kudos to him. Yeah but I guess we didn't even mention do you guys understand what's good about mouth tape?

54:09It makes you breathe through your nose, and breathing through your nose is better for you than breathing through your mouth. Okay. Speaking of health benefits, another trend that I would love to see take off, because then I would have called it, is lupini beans. So, people like health. Haven't you been talking about this bean forever? For the last year. I went into I don't know all the American grocery stores. Is this like the high protein bean? Yeah, so it's got... Dude, you've been talking about this to be forever. You keep telling me about this bean. I've been out with you a bunch of times.

54:4150 % more protein than chickpeas, 2 % or two times more fiber than edamame, 80 % fewer calories than almonds, 60 % fewer carbs than pistachios, 35 grams per serving. Obviously they cherry picked this data and compared to like the best option for them. But these beans, I think they're like originally from Italy or they're popular there. But I just have seen this over and over and over is someone who traveled a lot where like edamame, edamame was not popular in North America 20, 30 years ago. Like no one knew what it was, right? It came from Asia. And so now when you go to restaurants, it's like a very common thing.

55:19How would you like to invest in the next edamame?

55:25Sam, do you remember when Bobby at HustleCon would go around pitching people as a joke and he's like, his pitch was tuna water? No, I thought it was hot dog water. it was tuna water

55:38dude the uh have you guys had chickpea pasta of course i don't like it makes you fart like crazy man it makes you it just you it'll give you the number three seven like it 40 percent of many calories is almonds but 70 percent more gas it's like that's the lupini you know pitch um okay so you've been calling this for a little while i see i mean this seems like a good like ddc product idea, to be honest. There's like one company doing it. This one, Bram or whatever? Yeah, Bramie. They also do, I think, the chickpea pasta. But I just think maybe there's something in the supply chain or how hard it is to procure this stuff, but to me they're pretty cheap.

56:19They taste really good. You eat them plain? Well, at least this company will do flavored versions. So they'll do rosemary garlic. Does it give you gas? I don't think so. I didn't do an A-B test. You can admit. I don't think you can. It's a safe space. Seems like you can say it. Sam farts every episode. This is a great idea. Okay. I'm going to buy some of this stuff. I like this idea. Yeah, I'm going to try these out and see how I feel about it. By the way, this is the type of product that when we say on MFM, there's going to be 13 people that start this for six weeks. and then nobody six months later will be doing it for whatever reason.

57:02It's like... And the same people that tell us they're going to come back in eight weeks and they're going to say, actually, what do you think about this idea? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like... If my DM history has four different ideas from you that you were pitching me for investment, like it's probably not going to work out. Sorry, it's a no forever. It's exactly... You got the forever no. It's a forever no. Yeah. I'm stealing that line. This is a no forever.

57:30can we do one more around these advent calendars because I feel like that's another case where I don't know someone in the community is going to jump on this is this some like catholic shit what is this this is as catholic as catholic can get what is it advent's in December so catholics I'm catholic are you catholic Steph no sorry the cat race yeah you're not one of us but it's okay uh the we have lent which is like 40 days and that was when like jesus like walked around in the desert you're not supposed to eat meat and shit like that and then we have advent which is the 30 days leading up to christmas and oftentimes there's an advent calendar where it tells a story about like what mary and joseph jesus's parents like what they did like with the donkey and the mule and how they got like all these gifts from people, whatever.

58:30It tells that story. And each day you open up the calendar, it's like the kid's favorite thing. There's a piece of chocolate in the calendar. Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the advent calendars. Like at some point it was a religious thing. Then capitalism got involved. And then, you know, every day kids are opening a little chocolate. I swear, my whole life, I thought the advent calendar was those little calendars that are like you peel it and there's like you peel the calendar for each day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been walking around thinking that's what an advent calendar is for a long time. My whole life, I would say.

59:00This one you like peel back. It's always chocolate inside. That's the idea? Usually. That's the one you get at like Target or whatever. And yeah, it's like a couple dollars. But it's like the most simple, you know, you buy it for your kids. So what's your idea here, Seth? The better advent calendar is my idea. Beautifully done. You must have beautifully done advent calendar. Five minute abs. Yeah. No, so this comes from, I got to give this guy Namazaki Paul credits. He doesn't sound like a Catholic. No, no, no, no. So this is it. I don't think this has to do with religion, but I actually got this for Cal this past year.

59:36Because here's the thing. Advent calendars, yeah, I guess it was tied to religion, but they happen around the holidays. And so people are scrambling to figure out last minute, like, what should I get my family as a gift that's kind of thoughtful but fun? And a lot of people get Advent calendars, but they get these like shitty versions that are like, you know, expired milk chocolate from the year before. What Paul did is he created this sake calendar. And so if you click... That's the best way to celebrate Jesus's birth too. He created this sake calendar where basically every day for the month of December, or you can use it after, you open your little Advent calendar, but it's not little.

1:00:16It's like the size of a printer kind of thing. and you get this like special sake that he has handpicked from japan this is partially like his job his existing business um and he sells them for 300 bucks and every year he sells 500 of them which he caps and you do the math that's like 150 000 just from that one one drop for him and he doesn't get that much traffic like if you look at his existing site it's like 2 000 visits per month So not something he would typically be able to make much money from. But that's one example that just got me thinking, especially since we're like, what, six months ahead of Christmas.

1:00:57What advent calendars is the My First Million community? What are you going to make that is way cooler than the expired milk chocolate? I mean, I've seen some stuff like hot sauce calendars, Lego calendars. But it's got to be something that like someone can open either for 12 days, because some people do the 12 days of Christmas. for all of December. This is actually cool. Yeah. I actually think this is really cute and cool and awesome. You have a picture of this person who has a binder full of condiments, like individual ketchup packets. And I see your vision here. This is actually cool. I see.

1:01:38I smell what you're stepping in, and I think it's awesome. Well, so the tweet you're talking about, Sam. What is that phrase? Is this girl, Nicole, who says, her tweet just says, organize my sauces. And it's like, do you guys remember, you know, if you collected like playing cards back in the day or coins, they had those binders. Like Pokemon cards. Yeah, with the little, I don't even know what they're called. But this tweet got 468 ,000 likes. I think it's probably one of the most popular tweets of all time. And it's just her organizing her sauces from around the world. So these are not for use.

1:02:16This is just like collections. That one is for a collection. I feel like the advent calendar, it would be for use. Yeah. Wow. This is crazy. What I like about you, Steph, is like you find things that I would just scroll by, but you're pretty good at finding interesting things and applying them and like connecting to like five other things. Yeah. When I scroll past something and I think this is stupid, you write that thing down and make it sound smart. It's amazing. I waste my time curating an Evernote that is just full of random internet shit. But what you do something that's different is you actually remember it.

1:02:54So I like bookmark so much stuff. And then I just like forget all about it. You actually remember it. And then you like, it's just the difference between like good and great in terms of like whatever the skill set is that we have. You like actually are organized. That the, you know, what makes someone good versus great is like being organized. You are very, very, very organized with this stuff. And that actually helps your thought process, I would think. When are you... Dude, when are you just going to bail and start creating some of this stuff? I feel like you started this train, Sam. So before I joined The Hustle, I was working at a company.

1:03:25And in my last year at that company, I said... And I must have been, what, 24 or something? Yeah, around that. I was like, next, this is the last job I'll have, right? Like after this, I'll go and do my own thing. but then ever since then I just kept keep getting offered really cool stuff that I'm like oh I get to more money well I get to be paid to like go research trends and go down these internet rabbit holes that I'd be doing anyway okay great oh we got acquired now I'm at HubSpot and I get to build this like cool creator program okay great and more money now I'm at a16z I get to talk to interesting people and more money.

1:04:05I got to meet this interesting person with more money in my pocket. It was amazing.

1:04:13You're learning this. Steph's just sitting there. She's like, how can I get the things that are in their bank account to my bank account? My daughter does this thing where she's three years old and she says this thing where she goes, this is my best day ever. And I'm like, she might actually be telling the truth. This might've been like the best day ever. this is the one that's how I feel Steph is whenever she gets a raise at ACCC this is my best day ever guys

1:04:43Steph you and I were talking about how much money you've had we were going through an exercise at 20 we had this at 23 you've had a nice run you've had a very nice run a very nice run compared to where I came from like you were saying earlier Sean And if like 21-year-old me would have said, like, this is where you'll be. This is how much you'll make. These are like the opportunities you'll have. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Are you even 30? No. Oh my God. What would 21-year-old you say? Like, what would the reaction be? Well, it's funny because I feel like I still have, like throughout my whole life, because I didn't grow up very wealthy, very like money orientation.

1:05:24Not that I need that much, but just like, oh my gosh, like you have that much money. Like, go buy a car, like go buy nice clothes. Go, you know, go like use the money that you've always wanted but never had. But it's funny because now that I have more money, I'm still like just as cheap as I ever was. So I don't know if that stuff ever leaves you. Sean, do you know that Steph's half Taiwanese? My mom's from Taiwan. Yeah. Do you know that? No, I didn't know that. Is that supposed to be super special or what? Why are you telling me this? At our old company when someone found that out. And I was like, yeah, I mean, I could see that.

1:06:00And then there was like people like, Steph, why are you lying to us? You're Canadian. I've had some, well, Canadian's not right. I know, that was the joke. They're like, quit lying. Why are you lying about being Taiwanese? Jordan was like, so there's a huge spectrum. I don't know why, like what it is about the way I look, but some people, when they hear that I'm half Asian are like, oh yeah, of course. Like, I knew that. And then other people are truly shocked. Jordan was one of those. And he went to Sam, or no, So he asked me and he was like, does Sam know this? Your secret's safe. That tells you more about them than about the way you look.

1:06:38It's just like, what is their level of exposure to different races versus anything to do with you? Yeah. Yeah. By the way, this thing about being cheap, I was reading this story yesterday about this guy who made a bunch of money. And they're like, what was your first purchase? He goes, I hired a consultant to help me spend money. And he goes, you know, I had learned over 25 years how to make money. It took me a long time to learn how to make money. And I was just very honest with myself that I have no idea how to spend money. And I could shorten that learning curve if I get a coach to help me spend money.

1:07:12What was this coach called? A wife? Ah, I'll be here all night. I was going to say, isn't that like Ramit's thing too? I feel like he talks about that all the time, right? Like you got to learn to spend. It's like it takes reps. what was the coach actually called i i mean i don't know it's just like i don't know it's actual job title but you know a spending consultant let's call it i have no idea but what do they like teach you how to do i think it's i don't know i mean he didn't go into details on exactly what the guy said but let's just pretend for a minute that he did i would imagine he does two things one is um figures out where your psychology screwed up about money because everybody's got like this it's like you know people like body dysmorphia i think everybody has bank account dysmorphia too.

1:07:58You think you need more money than you need. Even when you have money, you still act like you don't have money. It's all this weird stuff. It's like, dude, you're fit now. Why do you still think you're fat? You have to retrain yourself to see something different in the mirror. I think that's part of it. Just talking to figure out what are the ways your brain is a little screwed up about money. Let's identify that first. Some people spend too much. Some people don't spend at all. And then I think the second thing would be like, all right, what do you really want? So let's try to outline your dream lifestyle or the things you really want.

1:08:29Identify those. And then let's calculate, okay, how much those cost? Could you afford those now? Could you afford a step in that direction? And giving you the encouragement to pull the trigger on the things that you actually want or setting certain rules. You have to spend this much per month. What are you going to spend it on? And also on the protective downsides, it's like, hey, we're going to set aside this amount of money so that your safety reflex is satisfied. We agree that by all logic, this amount of money being here untouched means you're safe. Okay, cool. So now we can talk about this other spending part without triggering your fight or flight mode around your fear of financial safety.

1:09:10Where was this article? Yeah, I want to look this up. I need one of these things. Yeah, you should look it up. I don't know. I don't know if this exists. Maybe it's a job of the future. I don't know if his recent episodes are the same, but Ramit's early podcast episodes would do this, right? They'd talk to millionaires who are fretting about$8 blueberries at Whole Foods. Or I remember one episode where this guy was like, I think at least$10 million and was picking up a stroller on the side of the road. Things like that, where it's clearly like, yeah, you haven't upgraded your thinking or your mindset to where you are.

1:09:43dude i just made 400 selling used gym equipment from uh from like from some stuff i'm not using and i'm like this is my best day ever 100 bucks yeah this is my best day ever like it's like i feel more happy about that 400 than i do making much larger sums yeah uh and the best part is that i paid 300 for it five years ago now i got 400 and it's like the best high i read this thing that was like this guy, Timer, who created, he's got this company called Causal. And it's like this Excel competitor. But he has this blog post I really liked where he was like, he was trying to figure out in a nerdy way how to decide if he should buy something or not.

1:10:26And so he's like, he's like, well, I break everything down into kind of like, I don't remember the exact message, but it was something like this. It was like the frequency of like, how frequently am I going to get the benefit of this? And then like, what's the like magnitude of the benefit and so he's like something that's it doesn't have to be a big shift but it's going to happen all the time or like 10 times a day or something like that like you know like i bought a phone case that just feels better in my hand and it was like a great purchase because like the hand feel of my phone is something i'm touching my phone all the time and just making that feel a little smoother a little better it was like dude what's that case called by the way i'm looking very good uh let me look at the pain feel so it's um oh wait do we Do you know how much it costs?

1:11:07Yeah. Is it going to be? Free plug for you guys. Moaz, I think is the name of it. But it's got this like, this is not like plastic feel. So this feel right here is like, it's almost like the feel of a basketball. It's like almost like a traction kind of like feel. Because I was like, I hate the plastic feel of cases. Like, I think that feels cheap. And I don't enjoy it. I didn't want the leather ones either. So I was like, what else is there? And found that. And so he identifies like if you're going to do it, if it's going to be frequent, then the magnitude needs to be less. If it's going to be infrequent, then the magnitude of the joy it brings is going to need to be high.

1:11:45And you kind of multiply those two together to figure out like the value of that item. And then you sort of say, OK, that's the value to me. And then what's the price to me? And you sort of use that to figure out, you know, where should you where should you spend versus not? And what people mostly get wrong in that is they undercount frequency. So like a better pillow or something like that is great because you're going to sleep on it every single night versus a nice Louis Vuitton bag that's going to sit in your closet. Like my wife's got a Louis Vuitton bag and she literally never takes out because she doesn't want it to get messed up.

1:12:14It's like, wow, that's the most expensive$6 ,000 thing that just sits in a closet for no reason versus things that you get joy out of all the time. And so I bet if you guys looked at like, what's the best purchase you made or you're, you're, you're most satisfied with this year, it's probably something that you interact with somewhat frequently, or it was like a one-off life-changing experience. That was just like crazy magnitude. Yeah. What was that article called? I want to, I want to read that. Let me, I need some good money therapy in my life. Money therapist. That's the title. Yeah. Yeah.

1:12:46I need some good money therapy. Yeah. So I made an article, but Steph, um, I appreciate you doing this. You're always coming with fire. You're, you're a Twitter. You're a Twitter person still, right? I'm a Twitter person. Steph Smith IO is the handle. And if you want to support my day job, go listen to the A16Z podcast. We're doing some cool stuff there. That's just what it's called. A16Z podcast, right? Yes. All right. We appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

1:13:23Looking back.

1:13:31Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:14:01If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.