😬 “Millennial Cringe” — Sweetgreen’s low. Walmart’s villain-to-hero. Mini-Soap Drama surge. +Techie facelifts

0:28This is Nick. Jack, three stories for today's pod. What do we got on the T-Boy? For our first story, it's the millennial cringe stock market. Every brand that millennials love is tanking on Wall Street. Sweetgreen, Warby, Allbirds all struggling right now because millennials can't afford them. And also because of a triple whammy of costs. For our second story, Doug McMillan is retiring from Walmart after raising worker pay there by 90%. Walmart's gone from corporate villain to corporate hero from Baltimore. to Superman. And it's thanks to the wartime CEO. And our third and final story. Four of the top apps in the app store right now are micro drama apps.

1:09Mini dramas. What's a micro drama? Yeah. It's 90 second episodes of addictively trashy TV. But besties, if you want to see the ending, you're going to have to pay a buck. Spoiler, the father of the baby is a billionaire werewolf. Classic Jack. But yet is before we hit that wonderful mix of stories. Fantastic mix to kick off the week. No one else is doing that mix. Do you have a buddy who works in tech as an engineer, but do they suddenly look 10 years younger? It could be that they're part of a new trend in Silicon Valley, mini facelifts for men. That's right. Just like your grandma down in Florida, tech guys in Cali are getting a lift these days.

1:46True story sent to us by a listener, Manish Parikh. He found it in the Wall Street Journal. And this story, it's never looked better, baby. Here's the context. The tech industry has a bit of an age complex, a particular phobia for aging. Peter Thiel once said that he would never hire anyone over the age of 30. I guess he wants people with the stamina to work a hundred hour work weeks. That's exactly what he's doing, Jack. So there is pressure to look so young you don't even know what an iPod is. Knowing what Napster is, is a red flag. And that's why engineers in their thirties are getting a little neck pinch.

2:16They want to look like they're interns. Oh, you work in tech and you don't believe us? Well, We got the data on that. In San Francisco, male facelifts are up 25 % since the pandemic. Eyelid surgery, it's up 50 % since the pandemic. If Nip Tuck came back for a season seven on FX, it'd be a very different kind of season. Oh, and if you know what show Jack's talking about right now, then yeah, you're probably part of this trend. Oh, and since each operation costs about$50 ,000 at least. Jack, that pairs perfectly with your annual holiday bonus, man. Correction, it doesn't cost$50 ,000. It's an investment in getting a job with Peter Thiel.

2:55So besties, if your PM buddy at Google says they're getting some work done right now, could be some Figma design work. Could be account management work. Or it could be some chin work. Is that HSA approved? I don't think so. Doesn't matter. It's a write-off. Jack, let's hit our three stories. I don't think it is a write-off. Yes. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list.

3:28If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

3:36Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

3:47Biro Premium Non-Alcoholic Beer. All right, yetis, a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went sober for two weeks. True story. Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover. It was New York, baby. Okay, but Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special. So we drank Biro, the premium non-alcoholic beer brand co-founded by Tom Holland. Yeah, I actually first saw it at my grocery store. delicious taste like a celebration, feels fantastic, and looks legit.

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4:55So use code T-Boy for 20 % off your first order at BureauBrewing.com. Monarch. All right, yeah, these one lobster roll, no joke, 50 bucks on Nantucket. And why is that a problem, Jack? Because we're going to Nantucket this summer on a joint family T-Boy trip. It's a write-off. It is expensive, but we will travel with peace of mind because our finances are organized in Monarch, despite the lobster rolls. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Accounts, investments, savings goals, and spending. Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off, just$50 with promo code TBOY. Monarch shows visually how much you're spending this month compared to the average month, which is really useful.

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6:10For our first story, sweet green stock fell to an all-time low last week. This is the Slot Bowl recession. But there's actually a much bigger story here, because every millennial brand is near an all-time low right now. It's the millennial cringe stock market. Hey, Eddies. This story kind of begins earlier this month when Jack and I had most of our team with us in San Francisco, and we took him out to the sweet green right down the street in Soma. I love the sweet cream product. We've interviewed the co-founder before. The pesto chicken salad is unbelievably delicious and somehow under 700 calories.

6:45I'm more of a customizing guy, but I end up with pesto 99 % of the time, Jack. But the price for us four people was$74. Besties guac is always extra, but apparently now so are the roasted sunchokes these days. $18.50 per salad. None of us even got protein on top. And that explains Sweetgreen's latest earnings. Sales fell 10 % last quarter. Foot traffic at their stores fell 12 % last quarter. And the new healthy French fry did not take off. Sweetgreen's got no profit and they just sold off their robot salad kitchen technology in order to raise cash for the company. And the stock is down 80 % this year to an all-time low.

7:25Yet he's added all up and hold the hummus, Sweetgreen is now worth under$1 billion. In this case, we can't use lift as a unit of measurement. Or actually, I can, but I have to use fractions. Sweetgreen is worth one twelfth of a lift. Now, Yetis, the term du jour for this situation is the slop bowl recession, which we don't really like that term, right, Jack? I think what's being served in the bowls is delicious and healthy and fresh. I don't know why we call it slop. It's actually pretty organized. Like, usually you got the carrots on one side and you got the cabbage on the other side. But it's called the slot-bull recession because it's not just sweet-cred.

7:58Chipotle and Cava are facing the same exact sales shrinkage. But besties, this is actually bigger and wider and goes across industries. It is a phenomenon that we call millennial stock cringe. Brands we love from the past decade are all at all-time lows. All right, four eyes, let's start with Warby Parker. The hipster-chic eyeglasses icon is down 70 % from their all-time high. The only store that rivals Apple in terms of how clean and nice it looks inside. It is very eat-off-avitable. Allbirds, once worth$2 billion. Their shoes were in the closet of every CEO in San Francisco. But Allbirds' stock is down 99%.

8:39The whole company is worth just$43 million. Mark Zuckerberg pays some engineers more than that company's worth. True story, Casper Mattress. They woke up to this trend years ago. They went private. You can't even buy the stock these days. It's not just direct-to-consumer companies, though. Basically, if any brand bought an ad in the New York City subway in 2015 and hyped themselves as organic and used very clean branding, well, now their stock is down near an all-time low. And no amount of curried cauliflower can fix it. And the reason is our takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies looking at the millennial cringe stock market?

9:15This isn't a triple play. It's the triple pain. Yetis, all these companies and all these different industries have been hit with the same triple whammy of pains. All of these companies offered artificially low prices at first because they were subsidized by venture capital. True. But after the IPO, the subsidies went away and they had to raise prices. All these companies faced general inflation the last few years, so they had to raise prices even more. And all these companies' millennial customers are now facing job stagnation, so they can't pay as much and are trading down to cheaper options.

9:45Add it all up, besties, and prices pop from harvest bowls to eyeglasses to wool sneakers. But the millennials who used to buy them might have kids now and are saving money instead. Oh, and the dinks out there, they have jobs to worry about and debt, so they got to pass on that extra guac order. We're rooting for them, but the timing is tough right now. Millennial stocks are facing the triple pain. For our second story, Walmart's CEO turned the company from villain to hero, from Voldemort to Spider-Man. He fought back Amazon and he defeated Target. But now he's retiring. So we're looking at his most strategic move, the 90 % pay raise across the company.

10:25Jack, let's start with some historical context, the era of retail warfare. Tell me about it. In 2014, Walmart had just fallen out of the top 10 list of most valuable companies in America for the first time in 13 years. Funny timing, Jack, because guess who joined the top 10 list that same year? Amazon. Amazon, a weapon of mass commercial destruction. Besties Walmart, just like Circuit City and Radio Shack, was doomed because of e-commerce. And on Walmart's physical flank was Target, the high-end Walmart. Basically, Walmart customers were defecting over to Target. Or they were defecting over to Amazon.

11:02So when Doug McMillan took over as CEO that year, he was a wartime CEO. And last week when Doug retired, he retired with the highest valor. because Walmart stock has shockingly quadrupled in his 11 years to a new all-time high. Sit down, stand up, and ask for help in aisle six. Yetis, the data is clear. The data's clear that Walmart is back and better than ever. It's the biggest grocer in America. It's the biggest retailer on earth. It's the biggest, biggest. But anecdotes also prove Walmart's glow up because 10 years ago, a millennial wouldn't get caught dead shopping at Walmart. Millennial million, are you kidding me?

11:39Today, though, Walmart's kind of a cool place to shop. Just like Costco, people are humble bragging about the money they saved by shopping at Walmart. Oh, I'm sorry, you paid full price for Lulu? I got these dupes I'm wearing right now over a Walmart in aisle six. Walmart's also become an economic melting pot. The percent of high-income American shopping there is at an all-time high. They're lured in by the e-commerce that matches Amazon and the physical perks that Amazon can't match. When I was in Florida, I was going to the beach. I ordered a sunblock on Walmart, picked it up at the Walmart that was right on the way to the beach.

12:13Amazon can't match that. And I know you like your sunblock, Jack. Well, acquiring Jet.com in 2016, that was Doug McMillan's playing catch up in the industry of e-commerce. But Walmart also transformed during this era from corporate villain to corporate hero. It became like the Batman of corporate responsibility over here, right? In 2015, Bernie Sanders was campaigning for president and he singled out Walmart for paying, and I quote, starvation wages to the staff. Well, shockingly, Doug, CEO of Walmart, actually agreed. So he jacked up worker pay a whopping 90 % more in the last 11 years. Now, Bernie still calls out Walmart.

12:51Yeah, he's got some issues with it. But they've made major progress on pay and it leads to our takeaway. Yes, it does. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Walmart? Macmillan's Walmart turnaround lesson, pay more, perform better. Yes, Yeti's Walmart's smart investments in tech helped it fend off an Amazon attack. But its investments in people set the tone for the company's glow up. Get this, Macmillan's first big move as CEO of Walmart was to raise the minimum wage from$7.25 an hour to$9 an hour. Then he raised the minimum wage again to$10 an hour, then$11 an hour, and today$14 an hour.

13:30Hey, Jack, what did Wall Street think of all these pay raise moves? I mean, they hated it. Oh, hated it. Yeah. Always low prices? That's supposed to mean always low wages, too, to the investors. Today, the average worker gets paid 90 % more than 11 years ago when Doug McMillan began. Basties, we're talking 1.6 million American workers getting paid double than they did a decade ago. In 2015, Walmart greeters handed out smile stickers. Remember those? They were yellow. Today, they might actually smile because they're paid so much more. It's lowered turnover costs, improved customer service. It's brought in a higher income crowd from the Upper West Side.

14:03And it's even won over the love of Wall Street, thanks to the nearly$1 trillion valuation Walmart has today. The big reason Doug McMillan quadrupled Walmart stock? Because it's a great place to work. McMillan's corporate lesson is if you pay more, they'll perform better. Now, a quick word from our sponsor. Top hats, baseball hats, Von Dutch hats. We wear so many hats on this podcast. Honestly, we're not great at all of them. No, we've been avoiding hiring someone to wear those hats instead of us, especially the Von Dutch one, because hiring and training can take forever. Well, proud to say that we are hiring right now at T-Boy, and this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

14:40Because Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95 % more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So besties spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes, less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs. And listeners of the show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com slash podcast. So just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

15:12That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed-sponsored jobs. Upwork. Yeah, it is. Before we had a podcast, we had a newsletter. And the moment that newsletter began growing, it's not when we came up with the clever subject lines with the emojis. It's when we found the right freelancer. Freelancer built a referral program that grew our newsletter, which helped launch this podcast, which helped us sell our company, which we eventually spun out, and which eventually got us to where we are today. Yeah, that's the story. Having the right expertise at the right time, that can make or break your business.

15:46So Upwork is a one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across web and software development, data and analytics, marketing, business operations, and more. If you need a freelancer, Upwork is where you get it. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire flexible, high-quality freelance talent for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork. And with AI-powered shortlisting, you'll get matched with the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy.

16:12So visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com, Upwork dot com. For our third and final story, it's a brand new industry. Microdramas, the freaky second cousin of Hollywood movies, 90-minute shows being cut up into 90-second addictive episodes. In China, microdramas are way bigger than the box office movie industry. And now, they're coming here. But yet is our story really begins back in 2020. and Jack, it begins with Shrek, right? It begins with the creator of Shrek, Jeffrey Katzenberg, who launched Quibi.

16:55We covered it on this pod. But unfortunately, Quibi never became a verb. Quibi was short for quick bites. It was premium shows, but to be watched on your phone, 10 minute long episodes. A new industry was created, micro dramas. Super short episodes of TV on your phone. But unfortunately, after just six months, Quibi burned through a billion bucks and fell apart. They ended up selling their entire catalog to Roku for just$100 million. Microdramas as an industry appeared dead. But Yeti's some enterprising entrepreneurs over in China saw Quibi fix the business model and made it work. And today in China, microdramas generate more revenue than box office movies do.

17:37They remix the business and here comes the new plot twist. After China copied the idea from Quibi, now we're copying the idea back from China. It's come stateside. But here's the best part of the story, Yetis. Because Jack dove in T-boy style for like three hours while we were prepping the show. No, no, no. Let me stop you right there. Let me tell the story. I watched the first three episodes of I Had a Baby With You. But I watched the whole microdrama in just four minutes. Yeah, again, I Had a Baby With You is an example of a very popular microdrama right now. And here's how you make a microdrama.

18:12You basically grab an airport fantasy novel and then turn that into a screenplay. You ruthlessly cut out the parts that aren't essential so it's just the steamy juice. Cut. You hire some budget actors, a budget set, and some rando directors and record the whole video production in 90 minutes. And here's the plot. The heroine's husband's brother has twins with her mom's step-uncle on the family vacation during Christmas. And wait, he's also a trillionaire merman. Man. Somebody described it as fantasy smut. And I can tell you, because I watched the first three episodes, I Had a Baby Without You is very much that.

18:47Yeah. Wait, Jack, be real with us. Was it the first three episodes or the first 13 episodes? It was extremely addictive. I'll give you that. Well, either way, these companies then slice that entire 90 minutes into 57 total episodes, give or take. And each episode ends with an epic cliffhanger. It's the digital equivalent of a page turner. But yetis, here's the catch and the profit puppy. To turn the page, you have to watch an ad or pay some money. Boom, there is your industry. Quibi had the right product, but the wrong business model. Instead of a monthly subscription of 10 bucks a month, do the freemium model.

19:24Let people consume it for free with ads or pay to skip the ads. Oh, and if they want to find out if the merman trillionaire ends up with his ex-wife's cousin, they're gonna have to pay an extra 10 cents. Quibi also should have made the episodes shorter, like these microdramas do. Not 10 minutes per episode, 90 seconds per episode. But the microdramas did it. And Jack, what's the result? A$7 billion a year industry in China. That's what microdramas is. Oh, and microdramas are already in the US making a billion dollars of revenue per year. We're talking drama box, net short, good short, real short.

19:57Where are they in the rankings, man? These are all apps in the top 200 in the Apple App Store right now. And they're so high up because people are hooked. People end up paying probably way more than they intended to, to keep watching these steamy dramas. You end up paying more than Netflix, Nick. Besties, if Jack keeps watching a season a day as he's currently been doing, Amex is going to cut him off. But seriously, it adds up to more than a Netflix subscription. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the micro dramas? When you unlock micropayments, you unlock micro-industries. Yetis, have you ever hit a news article paywall and wished you could just buy that one article, not like the whole newspaper subscription?

20:39Not the whole month? Well, in China, you can because micropayments are commonplace there. With micropayments, with one quick tap to pay$1, digital commerce can happen at a smaller scale. Like microdramas. I can't watch past episode 18 of I Had a Baby With You unless I start paying money. The micropayments concept, it's broken down our economy into, ironically, quick bites. Instead of a whole meal, you can order any product a la carte, just a quick little bite for a buck. Micropayments, they're in video games here already, but they haven't hit mainstream American digital commerce quite yet. But when they do, they'll unlock entire micro industries.

21:18Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us to kick off the week? Sweetgreen stock is at an all-time low. So has every other brand that got big as millennials came of age. It's the millennial cringe stock market because of the triple whammy of pains. For our second story, Walmart stock is at an all-time high as its wartime CEO retires with honor. His boldest move to go from villain to hero, raising average worker pay 90%. That's why Walmart is booming. And our third and final story are microdramas. They're China's most addicting version of what Quibi tried to do. And now they're here in the States too.

21:54Two, micropayments are the key to unlocking microdramas. Jack, I'm sorry. I have to take away your phone. One sec. One sec. Sorry, guys. One sec. Yetis. All right. Give it over. Give it up, bud. All right. Okay. Okay. It's a steamy show. I won't lie. Proceed with caution. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, Callaway Golf is reportedly close to selling Topgolf to a private equity firm for $1 billion. Awkward for Callaway because they paid$2.5 billion for Topgolf just four years ago. You're going to want to call four on this one. Topgolf was extremely fun during the pandemic, a pandemic-friendly activity, really.

22:30But Topgolf sales have slowed big time since the pandemic. And second, Warren Buffett, the patron saint of profits, made a surprising new investment, Google. Berkshire Hathaway just revealed a$4.3 billion investment in Alphabet that they made in September. The only other tech investment we know of that Warren's made is Apple. But now Warren Buffett, who is stepping down next year as Berkshire Hathaway CEO is betting big on Google. And finally, a strange business victim of the government shutdown, it's cannabis. Hemp, a low THC version of cannabis, was legalized in 2018 nationwide. But then shockingly, the new bill to reopen the government last week illegalized hemp again.

23:12Some politician slipped it in there last second. I don't even know if anybody noticed. So hemp-based gummies, drinks, vapes, those will all be illegal at a federal level. Once again, Maui, wowie. Now time for the best fact yet. This one, because it's Monday, means T-Boy trivia, and we whipped it up for you. We just learned that the Department of Defense changing their name to Department of War actually cost$2 billion in terms of new signage and new stationery. Yeah, it actually cost$2 billion to change the name, which reminded us of a 14-year-old kid who had the opposite effect on the government 10 years ago.

23:47This 14-year-old kid had an idea to save the government$400 million a year. So, besties, our trivia question to you tonight. What was the creative idea that this 14-year-old kid had that saved the government$400 million? The kid was severe Merchan Dondi, and let's hope he got into Harvard because of this idea. Yetis, you look fantastic to kick off the week. Jack, you're looking fantastic as well over there. Thank you, Nickus. I'll see you later this week in New York City. That's going to be a fun one. Oh yeah, I know. We're funny. We got the big interview this week. This is going to be awesome, man.

24:21I'm flying in and out same day, but I think we'll have time for a burger. I think we'll have time for a couple sweet cream salads. Jack, it may be 20 bucks a salad. That's a write-off when we're together. That is a write-off. That actually is this time. Besties, if you haven't yet, drop down to give us five stars, a rating, and a review. Jack and I love reading them. And Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. It helps us grow the show. If you know, you know. See you there.

24:46And before we go, a happy birthday to my wonderful mother, Alice Martel, from Philadelphia, but living in New York. She is the queen of Midtown books. And happy birthday to Phil Albright, turning 36 years old in Atlanta, Georgia. And happy birthday to Alex's mom in Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina. She is a mama with a great birthday. And happy birthday to Dave Franzel, the king of the Upper West Side, who recently recommended I go to Celeste. Dave, you didn't tell me it was a cash-only establishment. Thank goodness they accepted Venmo. And congrats to Dave's cybersecurity firm, Naxo, who just did a deal with Google to stop spam texting.

25:23Congratulations to Alyssa Cervolino and Kennedy Tourne, who got engaged in Tampa, Florida. And Matthew Cannella is moving on after 14 legendary years of just doing it over at Nike. Happy seven-year anniversary to Jess and JP Moralda in Hope Dale, Massachusetts, sits, and they're welcoming baby number three next year. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-boy. Celebrate the wins.

25:49This is Jack. I own stock of Warby Parker, Netflix, Berkshire Hathaway, and Lyft, and Nick and I both own stock of Apple and Chipotle.

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