📅 “Year in Review 2025” — Maxxing, Robots, & Kale Collar Workers

0:00Yetis, Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy Studio before our year in review episode. We've only been on sale for our live show for less than two weeks. That's it. And the Yetis have already snapped up over half of the tickets. 54 % of the tickets sold. Austin is pretty much sold out. New York, now or never, grab those tickets, baby. So this would be a great holiday gift for somebody. We got links in the episode description to our first four cities of the IPO tour, our in-person offering. So besties, in 2026, we can't wait to see you live. Grab your tickets now. Jack, let's hit the show. All right, Jack, here we go.

0:34Three, two. This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, December 22nd. And today's year in review episode is the best one yet. It's a T-boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yetis, let's be real. The three biggest forces in business this year, Trump, AI, and affordability. For more on that, look at every single newsletter, podcast, and social media post from every single day of this entire year. Breaking news! Trump and Sam Altman dominate the inflation headlines. We're not going to cover Trump's takeover of the term sheet, AI's takeover of the markets, or the K-shaped economy.

1:12No, besties. Instead, Jack and I found the three biggest pop biz themes of 2025. The ones that made business news your business this year. So Jack, the three stories for today's show. What do we got on the T-boy? For our first story, the consumer trend of the year was protein maxing. Protein maxing! But Jack and I noticed that in this economy, everything is maxing. For our second story, 2025 is the year that robots got promoted. From Waymo Highway Cars to Amazon Warehouse Bots to the human-sized robots that are doing your laundry, robots got promoted. And our third and final story, the final theme of the year is kale collared workers.

1:50Kale collared workers. We all practice duponomics and learn to thrive in the thrift economy. But yet is before we hit that wonderful mix. I mean, what a mix to end the year on. love the mix, Jack. You can't remember everything that happened this year. No, I can't, Jack. What do you think? Let's whip up the entire business year in 60 seconds. I like what you're thinking, and let's start now. Stocks hit all-time highs. An all-time high number of times. You survived the great matcha shortage, but your AMX fee hit$895. Chipotle became a Louis Vuitton luxury, and Coldplay became a kiss cam. We saw the Sydney Sweeney stock surge while electric cars got unplugged.

2:27Bitcoin had bromentum hitting 125K. But then Bitcoin had no momentum and fell 30%. OpenAI started the year looking green, but ended the year with a code red. We had Harvard major grade inflation. And your email had exclamation inflation. Mini soap roppers became a big business, while Warner Brothers became someone's little brothers. We got the rise of mugs, Uggs for men, and Ath skisier wear. Ski gear for women. Warren Buffett announced his retirement, Jeff Bezos announced his un-retirement. And Tom Brady cloned his dog. This year, we brought back the dire wolf from extinction. Yeah, but the penny became extinct.

3:04This year, we got tariff from Wakanda to Westeros. And Elon's favorite child, SpaceX, announced plans to IPO to the moon. Plus, this year, this pod had two IBOs. We did. Initial baby offerings. We both had kids. Jack had a son named Oakley. I had a daughter named Selena. But Jack, in all this business craziness this year, there was only one certainty. You know what it was? Cha-ching button. No, Jack. It's that nothing beat a Jet 2 holiday. Darling, hold my hand. Let's hit our three themes of the year, Jack. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm.

3:43It'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. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.

4:01Start the show. First, a quick word from our sponsor.

4:12Monarch. All right, yetis. 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 T-Boy. Monarch shows visually how much you're spending this month compared to the average month, which is really useful.

4:45So like, honestly, this month, been a doozy jack. Booked a lot of travel, but I know the future months won't be as bad after lobster roll season. You know because Monarch showed you. Last year, you had a spike in May for travel bookings, but a dip in the summer because the travel was already paid for. You can even ask Monarch's AI assistant anything about your finances. Like, what are the key changes in my spending so far this year compared to last year? And how much was spent on lobster rolls last summer. Use code TBOY at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Corps at half off. Just$50.

5:15That's 50 % off your first year at monarch.com with code T-Boy. Zip recruiter. Yeti's one thing we've never been accused of. Lack of enthusiasm. As you know, we set the cruise control of this show at 10 miles per hour over the podcast speed. Well, according to CNBC, nearly half of hiring managers say enthusiasm is the most important factor when considering someone for the role. Well, if you need to hire for your business, how can you separate the candidates who are really excited about the opportunity from those that are just met? Mid-ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interesting qualified candidates first so you meet the right people faster.

5:50And now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash tboy. They got the smart match and technology that finds you qualified candidates ASAP. And those candidates tell you in their own words why they're pumped about your job post. And we are enthused about that. So use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash tboy. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash tboy. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. For our first pop biz theme of 2025, it's a consumer trend.

6:27protein maxing. Businesses sprinkled protein on anything. But we noticed that maxing actually applies to everything this year. Yeah, it is. If you didn't eat a dozen grams of protein two times a dozen days daily, then your muscles might spontaneously liquefy. Yeah, I just saw Jim say that on TikTok, so it must be true. And no company captured that protein maxing trend more than David Bar. David Bar, the protein bar startup, hit a$750 million valuation this year, less than two years after it launched. Besties, in the age of Ozempic and fitness, this gold-plated protein bar, David, will give you more abs than a Renaissance sculpture.

7:06David Bar is so into protein, they started selling individually wrapped codfish fillets just to prove their devotion to the cause. Yeah, post-Pilates, you whip up a David Bar protein fish. But we also got the Kardashian clan involved, Chloe Cloud Protein Popcorn. That's right. And Jack, Costco started selling 12 packs of canned protein water too. And Starbucks said the word protein 19 times in their earnings call. Starbucks broistas, real trying to make foam protein cream a thing. But zooming out, it wasn't just protein that got maxed in 2025. No, Jack and I noticed that the term maxing actually captures the entire 2025 macro situation.

7:47Early in the year, we had office maxing. Bankers and tech workers were at their desk around the clock, working on weekends, trying to get to the next fundraise. Nine, nine, six. And you had valuation maxing. SpaceX and OpenAI became the most valuable private companies in the history of business. And crucially, this whole maxing trend actually started at the top, in the White House, with the trade war. You see, besties, Trump's Liberation Day tariffs eventually hit 145 % for China. What would you call that, Jack? Financial maxing. Yeah, policy maxing. I like it. Everyone got tariffed. Even a remote, uninhabited island with just penguins on it got tariffs.

8:22We're talking maximalist trade policies, maximalist communication strategies, maximalist starting points with every negotiation. That strategy trickled down to the whole economy this year. And yetis, that tariff maxing actually brought in maximum tariff revenue as well. And we're apparently about to see maximum tax returns too. So Jack, let me go minimalist on this and add up all the maximalists we got here. So we started the year with protein maxing codfish. We continued the year with trade war maxing penguins. And we're ending the year with everything maxing our takeaway. Hey, don't you want to point out the conflict of interest?

8:59Your son's name is Max. Yeah, I was going to save that for the disclosures at the end of the pod, Jack. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are maxing everything thing in this economy. The result of everything maxing is the casino economy. Yetis, the most maxed industry we saw this year? Gambling. 10 years ago, gambling was legal in just Vegas. Then sports betting became legal in half the states. But today, prediction markets are legal everywhere. Kalshi and Polymarket, the top two prediction startups, each passed$10 billion valuations this year. And Robinhood stock hit an all-time high this year after launching prediction markets in their app.

9:34Earnings calls. They now have prediction markets on whether a CEO will mention specific words. When Michigan's head football coach got fired, immediately a prediction market got created about who would replace him. We even saw multiple pro athletes get in trouble for insider trading, sports style. In 2025, investing, betting, and predicting all got mixed up together to the max. So the result besties was the casino economy, and we'll see how it plays out next year. For our second pop business theme of 2025, robots got promoted. Robotaxis, robo factories, and humanoid robots went from thing of the future to thing of right now.

10:16Now, Jack, if we're going to tell the story, you want to sprinkle on a little bit of personal context for us over there? So I went to business and public policy school in 2016. Yeah. And one One of the reasons I chose Michigan is because I was pumped about self-driving cars. Yeah, this sounds like a good LinkedIn post. Why don't you continue, Jack? Like Ann Arbor, it was right in Detroit's backyard. It seemed then that our autonomous robo-taxi future was right around the corner. Exciting times. But besties, just like every Uber and Lyft ride that you hail, the industry's ETA for self-driving was way off.

10:48Yeah, the estimate was way off on that. By about nine years. Yeah, well, nine years after Jack first arrived at the University of Michigan in 2025, self-driving cars finally went mainstream. Waymo is in five U.S. cities with 20 more cities announced for next year. Tesla is in two cities with robo-taxis, and Zook's also in two cities right now. And according to Google, their Waymos are way more safer, aren't they, Nick? Yeah, it turns out Waymos are involved in 90 % fewer accidents than human-driven cars. We just got the data last month. Nick and I have a legendary prediction about self-driving that is in next week's CNN interview, which is publishing on Christmas Eve, by the way, on CNN.

11:29Okay, but Jack - But comes to our pod next week. Okay, but Jack, in the meantime, kind of ironic that the most recent robot story that we did was the bankruptcy of iRobot. I know. It's a booming industry, but the OG robot company went bankrupt this year. Yeah, so RIP to the Roomba. But besties, for every other business, robots are booming right now, especially the blue-collar bots. In October, Nick and I covered the bombshell report in the New York Times about Amazon's master plan. Amazon going all in on robotics. Now, Amazon already has one million robots rolling around their warehouses and dishing packages in their distribution network.

12:07Okay, Jack, but Amazon is reportedly planning to replace 600 ,000 human warehouse workers by 2033 with robots. That's the New York Times scoop that was pretty freaky sounding. But it ain't just Amazon. Jack, remember Tesla's drive-in diner in lovely Los Angeles we covered over the summer? It's got a kitchen operated by humanoid robots that are serving French fries and burgers. And Jack, why has Palantir stock 10X'd in the last two years? In part, because of robotics. Palantir's tech helps defense companies replace human-operated fighter jets and submarines with autonomous ones. So there are enterprise robots, There are B2B bots.

12:44Every day we hustling bots. Doing the work for corporations or government agencies. They're all doing that already. But Nick, what about robots we can use? You talking Butler robots, Jack? Here, I got you. Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the robot economy? Home robots still can't pass the laundry test. Yetis, Jack and I actually covered two non-Tesla humanoid robot companies just this year, Figure AI, and One X Technologies. But it's funny, those two companies plus Tesla, they all make humanoid robots that look exactly the same. They look just like the robots from the movie iRobot.

13:21Yeah. But with blank faces instead of like a face that's looking at you. We see you, Will Smith. Well, each of these companies promises to do work around the house with the robots that we don't want to do. The dishes, the cleaning, the laundry. And if they could, Nick, that'd be a huge quality of life booster for people who can afford one. Yeah. But unfortunately, they can't yet. Homebots could unlock precious hours of the day for all of us who are time poor. The hours you spend cleaning those dishes and drying those dryer racks could be spent playing with your kids, learning a new instrument, launching a new side hustle.

13:54Jack prefers the sax, but besties were just not there yet. From our research this year, home robots just don't have the dexterity to pass the laundry test quite yet. That's a theme we'll have to save for 2026 or beyond. Now, a quick word from our sponsor.

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16:18The guide is free for you to use at netsuite.com slash tboy. Netsuite.com slash tboy. why. For our third and final pop biz theme of the year, it's slop bowls and kale collar workers. What did career anxious and budget pinched millennials do this year? We traded down so that we could live it up. Yeti's full disclosure. This is Nick. That is Jack. And we both own shares of Chipotle. We're long-term investors, actually. We are. We loved the build your own bull innovation of fast casual. So basically we put our money where our mouth is on that one. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. Now, we later interviewed the co-founder of Sweetgreen, and I, Jack, used to own stock of Cava for at least a while this year.

16:59Big hummus craving. But those three fast, casual chains have all stopped growing. In fact, they started shrinking in 2025. Stocks in Chipotle, Cava, and Sweetgreen fell by 37%, 50%, and 78 % this year. Like broiled broccoli. Like spinach in a saute pan. It all just shrank. And why did this happen? Well, not because they're slop bowls, which Jack and I consider to be a derogatory term, by the way. I don't like that term. I don't agree with that term. I'm still a fan of eating fast casual. Jack's actually offended by that term. The reason is because these bowls are expensive, and anxious white-collar workers don't need to pay 18 bucks for your daily lunch.

17:40That's why we call the customers of these fast casual restaurants kale-collar workers. And fascinatingly, according to our T-Boy data, many of you are, in fact, kale collar workers. Kale collar workers. You're 20 to 40-somethings living in cities, working in office buildings, at your computer most of the day. You order an efficient salad most days for lunch. You might even have named your daughter kale. Perhaps. Or you will. Now, unfortunately, if you're a kale collar worker, you're also anxious about the future and your job because of AI. That's right. You're afraid your company has taken corporate Ozempic and is about to trim the headcount by 10%.

18:15Plus, your taxes, your rent, your babysitter prices, they're all higher than ever. There's a reason affordability is now a section on every politician's campaign website. And for the same reason, you're probably finding lower price choices for various things in your life right now. We're talking micro changes, like cutting some streaming subscriptions or bumming your buddy's Netflix password again. Or driving to the local ski resort instead of flying to Colorado like you used to. Or buying a used car instead of a new car. and brown bagging leftovers to work instead of buying Chipotle, sweet green, or Cava balls.

18:46Besties added all up in zillennials in this knowledge economy, aka the kale collar workers, are trading down on everything. Makes a lot of sense. Nick and I are doing it too. But we're trading up on other things. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies listening to this pod? It wasn't just lunch choices. Kale collar workers turned to the thrift economy. Yeah, it is. In this economy, prices are still way up even if inflation has remained calm. We've adapted to the inflation era by looking at what we have and asking, what do we really need? Like buying and selling clothes on ThredUp, whose secondhand clothing stock is up 500 % this year.

19:22And we've also done it by embracing dupes more often. Lower-priced versions of high-end things have totally gone mainstream. Plus, Jack, you got the white label phenomenon. Trader Joe's, Kirkland-branded products, they are the rage because they're lower-priced. And TJ Maxx? Yeah, it's stocks at an all-time high again. It's now worth seven times more than Lululemon. Basties, in 2025, Americans fully embraced duponomics and the thrift economy. Jack, could you all whip up the takeaways for us for the end of 2025? Protein maxing was a trend that became everything maxing across the whole economy. And the result of everything maxing?

19:59It's the casino economy. For our second story, robots got promoted in 2025. This was the year robo-taxis and business robotics finally arrived. but home robots still can't pass the laundry test. And our third and final story, slop bowls got spiked in the stock market because kale collar workers are feeling the squeeze. The winners of this trend, it's the dupes and the thriftonomics. Now time for the best fact yet, this one whipped up by Jack and me and it's the term of the year. What is it, Jack? We're not Webster's Dictionary. We're not Miriam or Oxford either. And we're definitely not dictionary.com.

20:36But flooding the zone is what 2025 was all about. Yeah, flooding the zone was the term of the year. Again, this one started in the White House, but trickled down to Silicon Valley and the rest of business. Remember, Sam Altman flooded the zone with a whole bunch of product launches this year. And each of those new products flooded the zone with AI slop. AI musicians flooded Spotify with a bunch of AI country music. And one audio startup flooded the zone with 5 ,000 AI podcasts per week. Now, Jack, we should also point out some positive context here. I don't feel like I'm drowning in slop quite yet.

21:08My music, the things I watch on TV, my feeds, it's all human-made from what I can tell. But technically, the floodgates for slopification are open now. And we promise this pod will be slop-free in 2026. And 27? Yeah, and beyond. No slopping on the pod.

21:27Yetis, you have looked fantastic this year. Jack, I know you just got a haircut. You were glowing over there too, man. I don't know, dude. and I'm not too happy with this haircut. I know you don't like this one, but - Don't look at me on YouTube. But besties, we love being with you all year. And we would also love if you could HYH-TBOI over the holidays while you're with your family and friends. The way we grow is when you tell your friends. And so if you got a buddy looking for a new podcast, morning routine, New Year's resolution kind of thing, this show should be sent to them. Nothing pairs better with a bowl of morning oatmeal than the best one yet.

22:02So Yetis, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Guys, anything else I'm missing, Nick? And good luck with that Jet 2 holiday. Jack and I, I'll see you in the new year.

22:18And before we go, a happy birthday to Yeti Daisy Gonzalez down in lovely Jefferson, Georgia. And happy birthday to Elle Sheffrin, who's turning 21 in Boca Raton, Florida. Have a blast. And Roy Deall down in Louisiana is celebrating the best birthday yet. Happy 12th birthday to Dario in beautiful Dearborn, Michigan. And Samantha Arteaga is turning 34 years old in Everett, Washington. Happy birthday, Samantha. Happy birthday to Nick Copperwood, who's turning 29 in Chicago. And Atlas Samuel. Happy third birthday partying down in Miami. T-Boy City on your Atlas. Welcome to Miami. And a big shout out to our buddy Vinny Sabatino in Naples, Florida, who just finished his eighth race from half marathons to Spartans.

23:02I think that's like four marathons, Jack. And Yuli Ruiz just graduated from FIU with a full-time offer from UBS. Congrats, Yuli. Great math on that marathon calculation, by the way. And Monty Den, happy 60th birthday over in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Make it a T-boy. And a happy New Year birthday to Ubby Shake in Boston, Massachusetts. Just outside Boston. And if you want to get a shout-out on this pod in the new year, just tap the link in our episode description, and we'll get you on the show. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix, Nick own stock of Lululemon, and we both own stock of Chipotle and Robinhood, as well as some Bitcoin.

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