Black Friday Prep Session: $1B or bust

You know what's happening in 2020— 2025? RFK and the Rizzler are going at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right?

Yo, I want to see a video of RFK. Like, he could probably eat— he's gonna eat the Rizzler, dude. He's like, yo, he might.

They were like, oh, Bitcoin, it's going up again. I'm like, can we not do this again? Just let it go.

I know, I know. For real. It's, it's, uh, they're, they're trying, they're trying to bring it back. Everybody based their identities around it. They're trying. Have you seen that new cartoon show? Uh, Universal Basic Guys. It's, uh, this Family Guy style cartoon about two bros who get universal basic income. Uh, like once UBI becomes a thing. Such a good idea. Yeah, so that's what that means.

So what would you do if you were on the UBI?

Dude, I'd do the same thing, man. I just keep doing this, you know, just I make memes, write, read books, hang out with my dog, my family, have a bunch of kids. I don't know, you know.

You know what I would do?

What would you do?

I would become a complete degenerate. Like I would just, I would not do a single thing.

Yeah, a lot of people would be complete degenerates for sure.

Yeah, everyone's like, "Yeah, if they gave you BIU to the things you love," like, no, I'd stay home, I'd do nothing. Like, no, sir.

Fair. Speaking of degeneracy, all right, let's jump into things here. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you are the customer retention guy, have a lot of experience in e-commerce. What is the most degenerate Black Friday, Cyber Monday things that you've seen go down?

I think degeneracy is when they do like all the fake oopsie emails. Like, that shit has to stop. Like how many oops, he's like, oops, we messed up. They're all fake. No. They're all fake. 90% are fake. Like one person at some point in time, couple years ago, like actually messed up and sent like an oops, we messed up. Now it's like, oops, we made too much sales. Oops, we made, oops, we messed up email. Oops, the discount code didn't work. Oops, I forwarded this email to my manager by mistake. I leaked it. All the oops stuff is, is fake. And I think it's like, there are very few brands that actually can pull it off. Like Mischief has always been like the, you know, like they can, they can, they can push, but when you're just like a brand selling like a air freshener, like you don't need to do an oops. Like just create a good product, give people a good promo, let them buy and let them go home and go to sleep. Like nobody wants to get, the, the other massive degeneracy that goes on is Everyone tells people to send more emails, but we don't realize that everyone that's saying that is actually getting paid when you send more emails, right? Like every, like every ESP is like, send more emails, it's good. And I'm like, yeah, no shit, you're getting paid a couple of pennies. When the list gets bigger, you then take more money. Like, or you're an agency bro and you are the one that drives more revenue when you send more emails, but you're not responsible to what happens in 6 months when the list is completely washed out and dead. Uh, so those are like the two big degeneracies is like weird kind of weird emails, uh, and sending way too much of just like annoyance.

That's crazy. I may have to try that. Just kidding. But it's funny, man. Like I have always, anytime I sell in an email, just like super organic, like I, I tried hiring one of those kind of agency bros to, you know, write one of those emails and they wanted to do like 8 emails in like a 48-hour span. And I was like, this is not happening. Like, I respect my readers too much for this. This is, this is not happening, my friend.

Like, you know, it could be cool to test the, the oopsie on, on the newsletter.

Yeah. I'm down to do oopsie just once, you know, like, oops. Like, I forgot to include memes on this one. I don't know, something like that. Especially, you know, with the meme letter, we send it every day for, for Meme Lord Tech. And so maybe we, we say something around that. Oops, forgot to send some extra memes. And we have a lot of people who sign up for like premium from just the newsletter. So yeah, maybe it'd be fun, um, or make it way more degenerate. Like, you know, sorry, my wifey's yelling at me and I accidentally pressed send. Sorry, I was high. Yeah.

Yeah.

Something like that.

No, no, I think there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of just kind of like best practice energy, right? Like everyone just kind of follows what everyone else does. It's funny, I was telling this to somebody last week how there's this constant insufferable conversation on D2C Twitter about like, what, what is the right amount of emails? And everyone says like, send more emails and Whenever there's any pushback saying like, no, this is lame, nobody wants more emails, the response that you always get yelled at by like a middle-aged man is always like, no, like you're just a marketer. So like you're biased because you know what, blah, blah, blah. So my mom, who's like an Orthodox Jewish mom that had a bunch of kids, like I asked her a couple of months ago, I was like, what's your opinion on like, uh, like emails around Black Friday? And she was like, oh, I get a insane amount of emails. And I'm like, do you remember which brands like harass you the most? And she was able to list them like 8 months, 9 months after Black Friday. And I'm like, she's not a marketer. She doesn't know what marketing means. And she's annoyed by your like lame-ass, lazy-ass email frequencies. So I don't think this is like a— I don't think this is like a cognitive bias. This is just really lame, lazy marketing. Like lazy marketing is sending the same email 4 times with a different subject line. It's just lazy. Like, get creative, do something useful. Like, nobody will read it the 4th time when they haven't seen it the first 3. Like, it's just annoying.

Yeah, 100%. And I think it really, like I was saying earlier, it comes down to respect for your readers and audience as well. If you respect your readers, if you think they're smart people, you're gonna treat them well. You know, I started every newsletter, sup nerds, you know, because they're nerds, you know, my readers are nerds.

They deserve that respect.

Yeah, they do, dude. Exactly. And like, you wanna, you wanna put your best foot forward. You don't want to just send trash out there and hit 'em with 100 emails. Also, like, yeah, no, I mean, I do say like nobody wants that much more extra emails, right? But I don't know.

I, I think like newsletter, like newsletters are, are slightly different than kind of like work, work stuff.

That's true.

That's true. Um, I, I will say like to me, newsletters are kind of in the, in the realm of like, what are you promising and how are you delivering on that? If you say like, this is a daily email, yeah, send it daily. If you say it's a weekly email, send it weekly. When you're kind of just all over the place, now you're like, whenever I've got a free time, I bang out newsletter. That's just like, it's just weird. Like I think people, humans just like being trained on something. Like they like eating dinner the same time every day.

Yeah, dude, every Sunday, every Sunday, dude. 150 weeks straight. Straight up. Oh yeah. Yeah.

That's the move.

Yeah. So how, when you're working with brands, previously with Jones Road, right? Like how long before Black Friday would you guys start like planning that stuff?

You'll talk to like, yeah, you'll talk to 10 brands, you'll get 10 different answers. It very much depends on like the size of the business, the how great they are at planning, how much like chaos happens day to day, right? So for example, if a brand, Jones was pretty lean, right? Like it was like Joanne was our retention person and then you know, I was leading retention as a part of the business, but it was Joanne and we had a designer and she was kind of writing the copy. So in that case, it's like she's spending every week writing the news, like writing the emails for the week after. So she's not super, super ahead. So Black Friday was a couple weeks and months ahead. There's some companies that probably start like 6 months ahead. Uh, especially when you think of like, there's emails, but then there's like dev and then like all the website dev, which you generally will have a code freeze a couple of weeks before you won't touch the website. But then there's like production of products, which can be a year before. Uh, so like right after last Black Friday, they order the inventory for the next one.

Um, really?

It depends if you're doing like unique products and special SKUs and, you know, Very much depends on the business. Some, some businesses I spoke to a few folks in the last few weeks that are like kind of just starting to plan now. Um, but depends on the—

Yeah, I'm literally planning right now, like as we're talking, like in my head.

What's the plan?

Oh, I don't have one. That's why you're here. No, I, I gotta figure something out. I haven't really, uh, maybe something around cyber memes. We could do that. Um, I don't know, do some sort of sale, free trial. I don't know.

I like it, I like it. I think there's like a— there's a— there's— there's a general vibe around just like people buying shit. Uh, like Beehive has been doing last year, the year before, they did like a sign up for an annual, get like 50% off.

Uh, I could do that very easily. My annual is already like $69, so it's like very cheap, and a lot of people do annual already. So if I just put it down to $42.0, I think maybe I'll try that.

You know, they probably, they probably crush, uh, I imagine Beehive crushes annuals.

Uh, I'll talk to my publisher too, see if we could do something for my book. That'd be smart.

A little, a little BFCM push.

Yeah.

A little Cyber Monday push. Yeah.

It is. Do people like, I don't know, man. Like I shop all year long, you know? Like, do people really, like, I don't shop crazy. Like I'm not like Do people really like— is— so, you know what I'm saying?

So I'll, I'll tell you that for most brands, uh, like the human race as a general rule is not mega intelligent, like compare, compared to like, you know, other, other parts of our universe. Yeah, we're intelligent, but overall I think people suffer from any marketing ploy ever. So like when we're told to shop, we imagine that it must be the cheapest time of the year. And from what I've seen, it's, it's not always right. Like there are so many brands that have like a reasonable sale on Black Friday, but it's like any other day of the year. So for, for like probably 80% of this country, they hear sale, they think it's the cheapest of the year. Brands will do anywhere between like they can do like a full month, month and a half of revenue in 3 days. Like they can— brands crush Black Friday, Cyber Monday. People do shop. I think we're Jews, so we're just a little bit more or a little bit more pessimistic where like, there's no way you're getting me to shop. It's like, it's like challenge accepted. It's not gonna happen.

I'm not doing it. It's not happening. It's not happening.

Yeah.

I ain't pulling out.

I shop like the week after. I like pay more just so I feel like I didn't do Black Friday. I didn't fall for it.

Yeah, exactly. We gotta be smarter, you know?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I like it.

I like it. What brands are you watching these days? Any ones that you're like just a huge fan of?

I think that I just gave this like whole spiel around like how I don't fall for it and I'm kind of like, I'm a Jew and I'm astute and I'm on my shit. But I do, I do fall for, for in the universe of like fashion slash streetwear, I have like at any given time I have like 1 or 2 brands that I love and I just can't stop. It used to be ALD until they wronged me and then I've been on like a don't touch it.

What did ALD do?

They, they just like basically were super, super not excited about honoring something that was like a day out of the return policy after I spent like a zillion dollars throughout the year. And I was like, really? Like, I'm one day out because I was traveling and you won't— whatever. And I'm a petty Jewish customer. So I was like, never again. But I will say, like, always been excited about Madhappy. I think that their story, their story has always been like exciting for me around mental health. I've been on a little, a little slower push recently and I've just been like, since 2020, I've just been excited about Kith. I think that like every collaboration they do hits. It's, it's so at this point, like, so I'm just like any other dude at this point in time, but I just love the quality and I love the fit. Outside of that, I'm not a big shopper, which is embarrassing. Like, for Yeah, we do this for a living and I'm like, I'm like, if I find a good deal, there aren't very many brands that I'm like, wow, they can't do wrong. You know what I mean? Like, there's even, even the people around me, like, I feel like recently people are less, this is one brand, I need to put all my eggs in this basket. And people are shopping much more wider with a wider lens. So like, my wife is not using one brand for her skincare. She's like, likes the moisturizer from here and the eye cream from there.

Yeah, same, 100%. I, I feel like I don't buy clothes anymore as much as I used to. Like, I used to a lot as like a teenager, for sure.

Now it's like, ah, do you wear clothes or you just like wear the same stuff?

I, I mostly wear the same stuff, but, um, I'm not like a fancy guy. Like, I, as I say this, like, I'm wearing Burberry, but my wife works at Burberry. Like, she— so I just I've kind of been a little spoiled the last few years cuz I just get like $20 Burberry shirts. And so I'm wearing like Burberry sweats and a Burberry shirt right now that are like each $500 for like 20 bucks. And so now I'm like, ah, why should I ever buy clothes again? Cuz like, she's just gonna buy them.

When you started with this, I was sure you were going in the, in the Zuck territory that you just don't like the mental. Oh no, no, no.

I am pretty like, uh, I don't, I like dressing up. I like, you know, I was at this conference last week, this like fancy-ass conference or whatever, and I wanted to just kind of wear like chill stuff. And my wife was just like, no, like you are meeting Peter Thiel. Like you are not wearing your sweats. Like this is not fucking happening, Jason Levin Levin Levin. Like you don't—

what was Peter Thiel wearing?

Peter Thiel was wearing a camo suit on Halloween with his shirt wide open. So I saw Peter Thiel. Basically half naked. Palmer was wearing a Hawaiian shirt as usual, and I was like, babe, Palmer could do it, I could do it. And she's like, no, like, you're not a billionaire yet, Jason. I'm like, yeah, it doesn't matter, I could wear Hawaiian shirt. Like, you know, what, what do you mean? Like, I don't understand it. She's like luxury fashion through and through, like FIT, you know, since she was 18 working. Like, I, I've been wearing the same stuff since I was 15 for the most part, you know.

I do think that— I do think that Palmer is probably the only person in the universe that has permission to wear Hawaiian. So I might— I might be—

dude, Hawaiian shirts are amazing. I love Hawaiian shirts. They're incredible.

There's like almost no— when you wear it, when you wear a Hawaiian shirt on a regular Tuesday, you're like, what kind of buffet is this guy heading to? Like, is this guy going to eat?

I always want that, you know, I want— you want that vibe that I eat You know, then if we're having lunch, I'm going to eat your food. So like, I want that vibe, you know, people are scared.

And then if you're going on like on a trip and you're wearing Hawaiian, like, unless you're a middle-aged, middle-American, uh, dad of 6, it's kind of like a little bit of a challenging, but maybe directionally that's where you're heading.

I, it is, it is definitely. I'm meant to be like very fat and just like very rich sitting on a pool, like Hawaiian shirt open, like. That's, you know, smoking a cigar, definitely where I'm meant to be, like, and I feel good about that, you know? But let's, let's talk about another brand, something I'm interested in, Blueprint. So Brian Johnson's brand. So I think it's actually like he's going to build a really big thing here and it's already happening with like young men. I saw a tweet the other day was talking about like, he's like very focused on young men, but young women, like if he could somehow get them on. Like, I don't know if he gets one of the Kardashians to like partner up or something, but like if Pinkprint— I don't know, but like there needs to— if he could nail young women, you know.

Is it supplements?

So it's supplements and like a whole food stack. And then I think also I do think he might have skincare and stuff coming. Just from seeing him last week, like that dude's skin is beautiful.

It's wild. I saw the photo and I was like, looks younger, bro.

He looks younger in person. Like, it's insane.

Nobody's— he kind of looks a little like UFO. You're kind of not sure if he's an alien. It's a little— it's like weird territory.

No, I don't know, man. Girls were flocking to him all week. That's all.

Really? I do think— I do think his, like, his launch strategy has been so interesting, which it's basically just been like going at AG1. Like, every week he'd be like, AG1 sucks. It's not a real company. None of this is real. And then like, 2 tweets down the thread, it's like, oh, but I got my competitive product. Yeah, which is—

I do think it's smart though, because like AG1 is kind of faceless and everybody's already annoyed at AG1's podcast ads.

The Rogan, the Rogan podcast ad. The—

wait, I should—

I should—

now Athletic Greens, not as good as Blueprints. That's bad. I I feel like we're all annoyed at it and we all have no idea what's in it. You know, like I was, I was on AG1 because Tim Ferriss told me to.

And did it do anything? Did you feel differently?

No, no, of course not. Yeah, of course not.

Yeah.

Also, I always found it shady not to throw shade on Kat Cole here because we love her friends. Yeah, we— everybody, everybody loves Kat. I've never— I've only talked to her once, but like, yeah, she did work at Hooters and Cinnabon. Now she's like president of a health company. Like, that always threw me a little. I don't trust this shit, bro. I go, I'll be like, I think she—

no, I think Kat kind of spent too long at Cinnabon and was like, I'm on my— no, but the funny thing about Kat, so I, I know Kat, she has been eating/drinking AG1 for years as a customer, way before she became the president, which is interesting. But I do— I'm not a healthy individual. I wouldn't call myself super healthy. Yeah.

You were telling me about your yesterday. It doesn't sound healthy, brother.

It doesn't. It was yesterday. Wasn't healthy. But in general, I think that the brands— this is actually a, a good topic to hit on— is the brands that have to keep customers current and present but don't have an easy way to show results are some of the best marketers in the world. Give you some examples outside of AG1, 'cause AG1 is the obvious one. Ritual, selling vitamins the same as any other vitamin, and they have to convince you that theirs is better than the Ollie one that you buy at Walmart for $7.97. And they also have to convince you that you're going to feel something over 6 to 12 months, because if not, after a month you're like, you know, granted, like the US health system, like the, the RFKs of the world have done like a good job convincing people that vitamins are like a real thing. Whereas in reality, I'm not a doctor, but imagine you get, imagine you get most of this shit from—

Are vitamins real? Can we talk about this for a sec?

I don't know that they are. I haven't taken vitamins since I was like 6 and I'm good, bro.

I also haven't washed my hands in like a few years. I'm fine.

So like, not since COVID Is it the last hand wash?

That you don't really need to, you know?

Yeah. And we're like spraying, spraying the fucking shopping bags.

Exactly. Exactly. The whole thing. Um, but I do think that's a good point though. It's a lot easier to sell instant gratification than long-term. And so you have to, like, it's so much easier to just sell like, Yeah. Or any gratification, whatever. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. But any gratification, like even, even for example, like if I sold a hair loss supplement, but like over 3 months you're, you're actually gonna see something much easier than AG1 because I have to now convince you that you're gonna feel more awake.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. I think what it's a lot easier to sell when there's results to, to prove it. 100%.

And I, you have to guess, I do that with Yeah.

Yeah. And if you're selling without results, yeah, basically.

Yeah.

It's, it's, uh, it's kind of, it's not fraudulent, but it's, um, you just have to believe. It's, I, I like selling things that have results, you know, it's, it's, you know who else, you know who else crushes this?

Like, you know who else besides like Ritual, AG1, Scientology.

Wanna know who else crushes it? Norden. Dude.

What's that?

Dude, Norden, uh, cybersecurity.

Oh, the antivirus. Yeah.

Yo, that didn't do anything. No, they never blocked anything.

Never. Well, McAfee was the first one and he kind of ended up killing his neighbor. And, uh, did you know McAfee?

He straight up, he would send viruses to people's computers and then sell them the software. Really?

It's kind of iconic, to be honest.

Yeah. Yo, I would have loved to meet him, man. He seemed dope. Also like crazy.

He went too soon. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Rest in peace. I think there's definitely some stuff with that with like, oh, insurance, dude. Insurance. Fair.

It's gotta be fair. Yeah, they got a lot of fear.

Yeah, selling fear. Yeah. 100%. So what does retention mean exactly? Is it like you're president of semen retention or what?

So retention in general is basically how do we keep people around? So if acquisition is responsible for—

it's not acquiring.

It could be, it could be, it easily, it easily could be. But I think in general, when you get like retention as a conversation, it's generally more on the customer side than the CMO. But it generally kind of like, how do I, if, if acquisition spending all the spending, all the big bucks, uh, how do I keep people around?

Yeah. I'm, I'm starting to think about that stuff now, actually with Memelord Techs and got a bunch of users. Um, you know, like any other SaaS, people cancel. And fuck them, fuck you. But, um, you know, how do I, how do I prevent that from happening? Right. As much as possible is like, like I, I hate when software has a cancel survey. And so I haven't added one, but I also get why people would want one. Right.

But you know what the trick is, right? Like, you know who doesn't cancel? The people that use it, right? So like Netflix, they see a correlation of usage with cancellation, right? Like Peloton, the more you use it, the less likely you are to cancel. I have one in my room. I haven't used it for 6 months. I get charged every month for it. I probably will cancel. Peloton should be sending me more emails to somehow engage me and make me feel shitty about how fat I'm getting.

Right, dude. Alright, this is actually— oh, I could see how many people download memes and stuff. This is it, dude.

This is why they pay me the big bucks.

There we go. Alright, yeah, guys. So if you have a SaaS out there, You're tracking usage, send emails to the people who don't use it much, get them back in the door.

Figure out ways to, figure out ways to have them use the product because ultimately usage is almost always correlated with retention. But in general, I think, I think like the, the, the, the way this has gone over the last like couple of years is essentially the olden days of SaaS, not even SaaS, like the olden days of kind of like Netflix was you sign up, you never hear from them again. And they just quietly charge your card every month. A lot of that has changed with like Rocket Money and all those other apps that track monthly, that they now, you know, you'll be notified every month when you hit that renewal. So now Netflix is kind of like every couple of weeks you'll get an email or whatever of like, these are the newest shows, and you now see it on the top of when you log in. It's like they need to kind of keep usage going. If not, that's like the, that's the best way to You know, deal with, uh, churn.

That's so smart. I never thought about that. Do you think that applies to newsletters as well? Cause I don't do that much with my newsletter. Like I could see obviously segments of open rates, but I haven't really spent the time hitting up people with a lower open rate. Cause I figure if they're not opening it, they're not gonna open that email, you know?

Yeah. I think newsletters are interesting because everyone kind of peddles the same, like best practice bullshit, which is like, If somebody's not, uh, engaging for multiple weeks, like send them an email and say like, this is the last chance and please click this to stay engaged. And it's like, if they'd stop opening your newsletter, then just like remove them, right? Yeah. Or keep the cadence as usual and 6 months later remove them.

Yeah. I just have an auto cleaner like once a month. Yeah.

It feels good.

It feels good cleaning newsletter. It feels good. At first it felt really bad cuz I hated seeing number go down, but what matters is TLV. You know, and like, and, and revenue per customer, revenue per reader. So it actually feels good.

Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't feel strong feelings around it. Uh, I probably don't clean it enough, but I do think that in general newsletters as a business, but also newsletters as a hobby is a, is a quality game. And it's very, very rare that it's a quantity game. And I'll give you an example. My newsletter with like 14,000 subscribers, uh, makes probably just as much as most of the newsletters that are 200,000-300,000 because it's super niche. So if you're super niche and you're talking to a very engaged audience that also has like trust or interest in your shit, quantity is very often irrelevant. So I think most people, whether it's a SaaS or a newsletter, it's like just find like a hyper niche kind of maybe slightly ridiculous part of the internet that just wants memes all day. And for them, it's just a quality game and it doesn't really matter. Obviously if you're charging monthly, you want more customers, but if you're, if you're not charging.

Yeah. I had a realization the other day, which is like my retarded meme SaaS makes more than most VC-backed startups.

Yeah. I mean, that's crazy. That's crazy. Congrats. But I do think, I do think again, you have like a very, very, very niche solution. For like people that wanna be consistently current and it, it's, it's actually something that bothered me early on in my startup journey. I was like, I love feeling like I get every single cultural meme and I had no way, I had no way to keep on top of things. And when people reference something, I'm like, I feel like I'm under a rock 'cause I don't get it. So I think your, your solution is like very, very targeted towards people like me that maybe don't know where to find these things and need like a meme dealer.

Exactly. I am the meme dealer. I am the meme dealer.

Be careful what you say because you don't want to be like the next, like, Ross Ulbricht in jail for, for dealing, for doing too many memes.

If they're, if they're too illegal memes. Um, but Ross might be freed, dude, now that Trump is president.

Free Ross.

I don't know, man. I don't know if I agree with that. I don't agree with that, freeing Ross, actually. I think he deserves to be in jail.

I'm going off on a tangent here, but the dude was like, he, he tried to kill He called a couple of hits, but, but he really, it wasn't a mission to create a better world.

So, so yeah, I guess. All right. Wait, let's say, speaking of creating a better world or worse world, depending on where you stand, Trump, let's discuss Trump, but not from a political standpoint. Marketing and retention.

Yeah.

How do you think, dude, he's one of the best marketers of all time, hands down, obviously. But like, what are your thoughts?

I think, Jason, when you think about marketing, we think about two things. Like, to me, marketing is two universes. One is like the buttoned up, uh, went to Oxford, went to Harvard, kind of like knows marketing in a spreadsheet. And then there's people that just get a cultural moment and feel it, like getting shot in the fucking ear and picking your hand up and yeah, like that, that is They don't teach that in college. And I think that he has, he has a gut feeling on like what hits and he has a gut feeling of like what, what, what'll get the zeitgeist. Like, was it his idea to hop in a garbage truck and put Trump on the side? I don't know. But he knew that would hit. And I think you can't— you can have 500 staffers and a bunch of people that went to the best schools in the world. Either you get or you don't. He's once in a lifetime when it comes to marketing. Because it's not something you teach. He just gets it.

100%. I actually read an interview with the guy who started Apprentice. I forget his name, who, like, you know, found Trump. And they were talking about how he would— they would try to give Trump scripts for The Apprentice, and he just was like, no, just let me just talk. And it actually was so much better when he just talked. Like, he is— he just talks. He's just himself.

And that's the weave.

Yeah, it's the opposite of Kamala, right? I also think, dude, I'm loving the dark MAGA hats that are now popping around with Elon.

I haven't seen it.

It's pretty wild. It's just black on black, like MAGA. They're really building out a merch line here. Trump is a unicorn founder. Let's not forget. True Social, $10 billion company.

His DJT coin, pump and dump of the century. Love it. I do. Listen, call me crazy. I think those camo hats, if they were not— if they, if they were made from the other side, if they were MAGA, but the camo, those would have been like the largest cultural moment ever. Those hats are going to have a comeback in 35 different ways. Like, we will see those camo hats hit in 10 different variations over the next year.

Yeah, it definitely should have been MAGA. They, they fucked up. They is so funny. Like, all right, let's, let's get young men. So we'll just put camo because So they love Camo and yeah, then we'll play Twitch and talk about that.

You saw that him with the Twitch setup. Oh Lord, man, it's like wild. Hello, hello, my fellow kids.

The biggest Twitchers, Aiden Ross. I do think, yo, Barron Trump, man, he's the marketing strategist behind it.

Nobody's talking about this, dude.

You know, he's got that burner Twitter. He's got a burner Twitter for sure. He understands the zeitgeist better than anybody. Also, all right, I also found something yesterday which I need to write a thread on.

Please.

Kai Trump. All right, Trump's granddaughter. She is a golfer, right? And going into University of Miami to play golf. She starts— started tweeting and posting more, right, in the last few days and getting all the retweets. And what she's doing is, is actually promoting Trump golf courses in some of her content. And she's going to Trump courses and making videos. So my bet is she's going to be the biggest golf influencer in the next 5, 10 years.

And between the Kardashians, between the Kardashians and the Trumps, it's like, at that point, I think it's like the breakfast they eat. It's the cereal. It's like, it's in their, it's in their DNA. These kids are just like, you know what I was doing when I was— how old is she? 18? You know what I was doing? I was like a complete degenerate. Until I was like 24, I was a degenerate. And these people are just like slinging, slinging like lines of God knows what. And like, I mean, yeah, yeah, I respect it. I—

that's, that's that multi-generational wealth, you know.

But to be honest, usually when it's multi-generational, the kids are kind of just like, give me the trust fund, right? Like the Soros kids are just like, Dad, introduce me to everyone you know and write me a check. And then you have the kids like the Kardashians where they're like, no, I want my own shit. Like, cool that you have X, Y, and Z. I'm going to start my own brand. And I don't know how you train that. Like, I don't know how you give kids that energy.

Yeah, I talked to my wife about it before. It's like, all right, say we're super rich. How do we make sure our kids aren't brats? And like, how do we make sure they're ambitious? You know?

Did you guys come out with an answer or no?

No, no, we're clueless. We're just gonna make a ton of money, then worry about it then. Yeah.

See, this is what I've always said is like, I'm good with my bratty kids if they have a lot of money. Like, I'm whatever, dude.

Yeah, here's, here's the Ferrari for your 16th birthday.

Yeah, it's your problem now, right? Like, if you're an insufferable 18-year-old, probably end up in a juvie somewhere. That's your problem. Like, it's not—

Yeah, I know, that's fair. I, I think I want to give my kids like a loan of $1 million. Seems to work out for the people who get that.

I feel like a loan of $1 million, a small loan, but also kind of like connect them to people that maybe own real estate in a large city.

Yeah, 100%.

And give them a name that's like marketable.

Yeah, I might have to switch it from Lev to like Lev. Just Lev instead of Levin. Just Lev.

Do you know there is a billionaire, uh, billionaire Israeli? Yeah, Lev Leviev. You can be like a Lev Levine or something.

Lev Leviev. I like it. I like it. Yeah, it's a— I mean, it's a pretty good name. It's a solid one.

Lev is catchy. Lev on a big building, big banner. Don't hate it.

So you spent a while in like e-commerce, right? Uh, like physical products.

Yeah.

Um, do you think about this stuff a lot with digital products too, around this kind of stuff? Just retention in general, software, information products, courses. I spend, dude, it's crazy how many people buy courses and then, that's actually a really interesting thing.

I just think courses are basically you saying like, hey, I'm interested in this, interested in this, and I wanna make like a move towards it. And you just feel like if you. Buy the course, you're ready there.

I don't see— I can't relate to that because if I'm going to buy a course, I'm going to do it because I'm Jewish.

I don't think I've ever bought a course because I'm Jewish.

Yeah.

Like, what am I, a schmuck?

Yeah, some of them work. I have a good course. Yeah, figure it out. But there are good courses out there.

What's your course? Is it in the ad voice? Yeah, do it in the ad voice.

You could buy my meme course for $69. I've actually made thousands of dollars from this and it's helped. It has helped a little bit.

The, the thing I will say is, uh, most of my existence has been on customer experience and retention. Um, and then I had like a quarter-life crisis and I just decided to, uh, jump into SaaS. Um, but it's, it's, uh, not, it's, it's not very different. It's kind of the same, same shit.

Uh, do you guys use like heat maps and stuff a lot?

I don't use heatmaps, uh, myself, but I'm sure people use heatmaps. Uh, I'm not a big heatmap individual.

Yeah. I haven't used it for my product, but I've seen it being used a lot. I'm starting to track a lot of data over like which meme templates are being used, all that kind of stuff. But I haven't really started tracking amount of time people are spending in the app. I was told to definitely do that, but I don't know how. So that is first time SaaS founder. Trying to figure this out.

I, I, I don't have an answer for you.

So I'm not asking for one. I'm just talking. I'm just yapping. This is a podcast. Remember, this isn't— yeah, yeah, this isn't Mentor Pass. You know, it's just a podcast. Yeah.

Well, if anyone in the audience has an answer for Jason Levin, he'll pay you $69 if you can help him figure out how to I do think there is a market for—

what about like employee retention with drugs?

Yeah, so there's certainly a market for employee retention with drugs, but employee retention can be, can be done by similar to customer retention, kind of like craft a promise and keep to it. Like most people quit their job because it's not what they thought it would be, right? Like if you take a job and it's—

yes.

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Craft a promise and also usability, right? How much are people doing? I feel like there's definitely like maybe a correlation, but then if they're doing too much, they're gonna quit. But like, there's just more of a happy medium.

So I'll give you like a tactical example. SpaceX, Tesla, like these are miserable places to work, but they have people that love it and stick around and get into it on purpose because they craft a promise of like, you will have the opportunity to change the world even if you have to work really fucking hard. Maybe you'll make a lot of money, but you can probably make money elsewhere for less hours. Similar to like, uh, so that's number one is like the, the like promise you get of like you'll change the world. The second universe around this is like the Googles or like the best law firm in the country or the best, like working at the best at any, anything that's in the whatever, it's the prestige. So it's either prestige or it's like an ulterior, you feel like you're changing the world. Um, or it's the third, which is just like, what you told me on my JD is what I'm doing, slash if it's a lot of fun, uh, which most jobs aren't. Like, most jobs aren't mega exciting, uh, as a rule.

I try to make it really fun for my employees. Like, we have, we have a ton.

How, how do you do that?

Uh, by gamifying shit. Getting high right now?

How?

No, no, no, gamifying shit actually. So like, We're doing a reel contest right now. So we're each posting one meme reel per day on, uh, on my Instagram and whoever gets the most views per week gets an extra like $250. Uh, and we're just, I'm like, go insane. Like do the weirdest, like be unhinged, you know, stuff like that.

Who's leading, who's leading the pack right now?

We just started it earlier this week, but I think I am potentially, or one, uh, one, one of my guys is, I'm not sure. Like one of my employees got, made this reel that, uh, has like 7 million views. And so that's what inspired it. It was like, oh, like let's just double down on this, you know, like fuck it. Like, let's go. And so that was a, that was, that was one. And then another way, um, we do like meme streams, which is fun. You know, it's fun when it's, when it, when the product is memes, you know, you get to do crazy. But I think for, for me, what, what I found the most fun, like my podcast producer who's you know, gonna be listening to this right now is like, I tell them like, do like, give some calibration, but like, go crazy. Like, have fun, like, be weird and just like cook. Like, I've worked with a bunch of bad freelancers who like needed to be super micromanaged, but like the ones who are, you know, my employees now is like, just cook, bro. Just cook. Yeah.

So I think you're 1,000% right when you give people the ability to like feel like they actually have the power to do cool shit. That's like, uh, That's life-changing. Like, I've had jobs both ways. I've had jobs where it was like, this is exactly what I want you to do. And I'm like, fucking kill me. And then I've had jobs where like, no, we hired you because we trust you. Go fuck around. And I'd agree, those are, even if the work is much harder, when you have like the ability to do cool shit, it actually feels like, it's almost like being an entrepreneur without the risk tolerance, right? Like, if you don't have the risk tolerance to be a boss, Uh, but you have the ability to do entrepreneurial type stuff in your work where you're like, no, I'm like the, the entrepreneur of this project. I can build whatever I want within reason. That's like a self-determination vibe, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I, employee retention is super important. I wanna make sure my employees are happy. So if you're listening to this and you're not happy, if they're good, if they're not good, they're good.

They're great. They can go.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I've gotten rid of freelancers or employees before, but, you know, I feel like the hire slow, fire fast, definitely a thing. You know, I think I like that.

How do you hire? How do you hire well? Like, how do you know when—

All my best employees have come to me from Twitter, like just found me, DM'd. All my worst are ones that I've gone on like Upwork or stuff like that. It's just like, oh, this was a waste of time. Um, but yeah, I, I get a lot of inbound because of the weirdness of my products. It's like people who are doing, who love weird shit, uh, and memes and being silly on the internet. Like I get a lot of inbound of young college kids, especially who are just like, let me cook. And I try to make use of it as much as I can.

Um, love it. Yeah.

Yeah. We'll see. Employee retention. I do think I should send them more drugs or like go on a trip with them or something. Maybe do both, like an ayahuasca trip. Like Greg Eisenberg, he took his entire like agency to a fucking castle in Canada. I was like, that is employee retention. Like that's how you show your employees a good time.

So let me give you, let me give you an alternate end to that story.

Yeah.

You take all your employees to a castle. No, but, uh, if I was on that trip, like you really have to make sure, especially when you're, when you're, uh, a distributed team. You really have to make sure the vibe— like, to you, you hire 10 people, but the vibe of all those 10 people around each other, if it's not stellar and you took them and you had ayahuasca in a castle, that can go off.

They did ayahuasca. I mean, they theoretically talked to Greg.

Theoretically, if they did do ayahuasca in a castle and they didn't have like a good vibe between each other, that could be rough. Like, there's some— there's some companies where if they did like a trip together to the wherever, I'd be like, I wanna stay home. Like you have to have a really, really good team.

Yeah, yeah.

Energy.

That's true. Especially for the ayahuasca. Dude, have you seen the stuff on Twitter where it's like, ayahuasca is like the founder killer? So funny. A VC tweeted, I think it was Andreessen actually. He was like, yeah, multiple founders have come to me and said, or like, I've had multiple founders take ayahuasca and stop building SaaS.

Really?

I just love, I love the concept of that.

It's like, just like, oh, I guess it makes sense. Yeah, I guess it makes sense. Like, imagine if you did shrooms, it would have like a similar, like suddenly you're 3,000 feet zoomed out and you're like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, what am I doing here? Like, there are kids that are dying and I'm just like selling SaaS to make whatever on the internet.

Like, yeah, I think it'd have the opposite effect for me.

Like I would do, you'd go 10 times harder on the pavement and do much more memes.

I would do much harder on memes. I would actually probably do like much more serious stuff. I'd go into like B2B payroll or something. Yeah.

Really? Wow.

Yeah.

I just wonder like how, how much you have to love yourself to go into B2B payroll when there are 3,500 providers. You have to really love yourself.

The B2B payroll, speaking of that, similar to what we were saying earlier, like they're all trying to differentiate in just such stupid ways. It's like it's all just me. It's so—

it's all the same shit trying to make it sexy and it's so boring. Like, if I see one more ad from like Rippling, I'm going to lose it. Like, it's just like—

sucks. But like, yeah, if it's all healthcare or Rippling, like they're all trying to market in different ways and it's like, oh, you guys, like, I love it, but like, your product is so boring.

But you're like, what do you feel about the Ramp? Like Ramp versus Brex? Like that whole—

I like Ramp. Ramp. Ramp is dope. Um, I think their social media manager is on Memelord, and so I'm, I'm a big fan. Um, this is so biased. Yeah, I'm very biased.

Okay.

And also Brex is not on Memelord, so I'm biased. Um, yeah. Uh, no, I, I mean, I do agree along the similar lines. Like, I like Ramp's marketing, but yeah, another stupid boring product that like, all right, like Cool.

But you know who's the king? The king of the game on like boring shit, but trying to have a good time? Air.

Air? What the hell is Air?

Yeah, they compete with Dropbox. Okay, you gotta go down, go down the rabbit hole. Go down the rabbit hole. It's Air Inc. Yeah, they do like they make SaaS fun. They just did a campaign with the Rizzler.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

All right, wait, let's talk Rizzler. I think he's an industry plant from Big Candy, bro. Like he's trying to make him—

yeah, again.

Yeah, yeah, like I see he went to a Welch's factory. Like they're not sending a skinny kid there, you know what I'm saying? Like they're not— he's not going to a carrot factory.

You know what's happening in 2020— 2025? RFK and the Rizzler are going at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Yo, I want to see a video of RFK. Like he could probably eat He's going to eat the Rizzler, dude. He's like, yo, good protein. Yeah, I want to see him like training the Rizzler. That'd be a great—

Do you see his— I think him, him like the bear story memes. Yeah. Were stellar content.

Yeah. What's crazy is he killed the squirrel too. Peanut, you know?

You know, I don't know that he did. I haven't heard that. I thought it was Big Cat. I didn't think it was. It was RFK.

Big RFK. Yeah, it was—

What do you think about Big Pharma? Like when we talk about marketing boring things, like what do you think about Big Pharma?

So I, my, my mom works in regulatory affairs in pharma.

Hell yeah.

And so summer after freshman year, she got me an internship working in marketing and it was so boring. I quit 2 weeks in to get— Why would it be exciting? The summer?

Like what?

It was so bad. I just needed a job, dude. And they were, you know, it was like, I was, it was summer freshman year. I quit. And just got stoned and made funny shit with my friends all summer. And it was so much better. And it's no progress.

And you can always just add it to your resume that you spent half of the summer getting high with your friends.

That's how I got this job here. Podcasting with you was from that. Yeah.

Do you know that? Do you know that, like, there has to be a memo that they give out that, like, every single ad should kind of be the same of, like, a family and a dad walking away and his hand hurts, and then he takes medicine and he's all good. And then the quick talking at the end. And like, imagine being on that shit. So worse than ramp.

Unbelievably boring. Oh, marketing here. Wanna know best marketing I've seen yet? Lucy Nicotine and John Coogan. I love John.

I haven't seen it.

I, so I don't, I don't do Lucy. I don't, I, I quit drugs and alcohol like 5 years ago.

You give like zen energy. I don't know why.

Dude, I give so much drugs energy and it's because I used to be like a total druggy, like LSD dropping person and I, my brain did not react well. So I stopped for like, I've been clean for 5 years. And so, I don't talk about that shit too much, but yeah, Lucy. So last, you know, they sent me a fucking briefcase full of Lucy to, you know, and then they also last week, right? So at this conference, this Founders Fund thing, there's like a girl half naked walking around with like things of Lucy. There was a Lucy bar, like a cigar bar and shit like that. Like they are just so good. And the whole thing is like, you know, Lucy creates more shareholder value because, you know, kind of working more. And I do love it. And I was very tempted, you know, I haven't, I haven't had nicotine in like 5 years, but I was very tempted to like give it a try because I want to create more shareholder value for myself.

It's in your DNA. I mean, this is like, it's what you wake up feeling. I think in general, like, to me, it's always so inspiring when brands that are in boring, like really boring spaces can somehow get creative. Like, I would highly recommend looking at Air. If anyone's listening to the podcast, Ari, who's a Jewish friend of ours who's like probably one of the most creative geniuses I know in SaaS or in marketing in general, like they've done so much. They've done some stuff with Kareem. You know the guy that does— What's his first name? That's his name. His name is Ari from Air.

Oh, he's the CEO.

Okay. He's the head of marketing, but you know the guy Kareem who does like the subway, like what's your take?

Oh yeah, yeah.

So they did like a bunch of stuff with him. They made— they, they, uh, but in general, I think like taking boring shit and making it— imagine there was a pharma company, imagine Ozempic, imagine Ozempic hired a marketing team that was actually kick-ass and did a bunch of memes.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, how, how fucking cool would that be, dude?

There's actually, um, a lot of Ozempic generic competitors coming out, um, and my friend is designing for one of them and like there's ads all around the subway in New York for like these crappy Ozempic competitors and it's all—

But they're kind of like cringy ads.

They're not good ads. They're terrible ads. No, they're not good. I agree. I think other memey, like fun ads would be really good. Wanna know, speaking of really good marketing, dude, the last week Polymarket and Kalshi, you know, have just been killing it. Oh my God. I mean, I know they're spending—

A lot of billboards.

Yeah. They're spending like a million a day. Probably like some crazy number, but in general, like they've been killing it for the last few years. And I'm just fascinated by it. I love it. I think like what's so cool about prediction markets too, I'm very, very tempted and was talking with somebody like 6, 10 months ago about starting a business around this is like endless content. Like it's not just politics. Like there are prediction markets, every new ones every day. And you know, when I was doing those street interviews, right, I was talking to Kalshi about working with them. Because there's just endless things to ask people. There's endless things to bet on. Yeah, I really think there's going to be like a Barstool of prediction markets and I may or may not just build it on the side for fun.

You should.

But I think in general, like, I might because Polymarket is already using Memelord tech. Kalshi isn't. So I obviously have a favorite. Again, you know, I've got to have preferences.

You must know it's part of the— it's not a part of the job.

Yeah, it's a personal bias, you know? Yeah, it's a preference. It's like I Yeah, it's like being straight. It's just better.

Yeah. It's just a preference. I do think, I do think in general, like the, the idea of taking something that has like inherently baked in consistent stream of, of potential content is the biggest hack ever. Right? Like, you know who did this quite well actually built the credit card company like that you get points for rent. They did like that kind of like in the park talking about finance stuff and it's like finance conversations are the most invasive and exciting. Like, how much money do you make? What do you do for work? How much do you pay for rent? And there have been like— and then it was like, how much do you pay for rent? Can I see your house? Like anything around that, it's close enough to the product. If you were doing like Ozempic type stuff, it can be like, how much do you weigh? What do you eat for breakfast? Or let's go eat together.

Intrusive. Oh my God, I love that.

That's the idea.

Yeah, I'm so nosy. That'd be so much fun. Yes, dude. My mom raised me right. Jewish mother. Dude, it should just be a Jewish mother walking around interviewing. They are the— they would be the best street interviewers, dude. My mom does that anytime I'm in line or like she's in line with somebody. Like, she'll just come back and be like, oh, I met this person who like, you know, she went to school and her job.

You're like, leave her alone. She's just trying to get Sweetgreen.

I know. Exactly. Mom, dude, I'm sending my mom out to do street interviews because I'm busy.

I think it could be good.

I, I do think, yeah, I was hiring like college kids, so like Jewish moms, so much better.

Jewish moms. Uh, I do, you know what I wanna do in e-com? I wanna do like a lot more Jewish stuff. So I did like a, with Air actually, we did like a Hanukkah party like 2 years ago and I wanna do like more, like maybe we do like a Pesach Seder, maybe like we, I just wanna bring more like culturally Jewish, uh, like a little Evening of Latkes or something like bring culturally Jewish stuff to more of, uh, of e-com, not in a way of like, oh, uh, we're gonna take all your money. More like, uh, such a nice heritage.

Like take your media kind of way. Kind of like not take your money, but the media. I agree, dude. I love that Morning Brew has, uh, been openly Jewish. Like they've done a lot of like Hanukkah stuff.

They've done Jewish stuff.

I, um, yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm down for that. I was supposed to come to that event and I think I was sick, but I'm, I'm definitely. I— my wife and I have been talking about doing some like Shabbat dinners or something.

That can be nice. Yeah, let's do juice stuff.

Let's do juice stuff, man. Like Hanukkah memes would go so hard.

Also, you know what we could do?

The Jews— Indians, do they— they love the Jews, man.

They love— because we're kind of culturally, we're very similar. Like overbearing moms, cheap, overbearing.

Yeah, 100%. Peaceful for the most part.

Yeah. Yeah. For the most part. Overbearing. Uh, but also love to eat.

Love food. Love food. Kind of annoying. Always late for things. You know?

Love money.

So many options. Yes. Yes, we do. We do indeed. Um, but yeah, the Indians love Jews and they love Israel, which is nice.

This could be an interesting kind of like a, we start with a Shabbat dinner, but then we do like a, like a Indian kosher fusion.

Yes, yes, yes. It's not a bad Indian Shabbat.

Okay, here's the deal. You find one of your Founders Fund tech sponsors, and then we co-host a little Shabbat dinner.

Okay.

And we invite half Indians and half Jews, and we figure out a way to fusion the fuck out of it.

I'm so down. I think that would be actually hilarious.

We give everyone kippahs, but then also red dots. I wasn't gonna say that. It could be, it could be anything. I don't know. I don't want to culturally appropriate.

I don't know. I think we should bring back, bring back cultural appropriation. You know, like everything was already cultural appropriation. Like, you know, I'm like, we're already— yeah, dude, we're already like, it's such bullshit. Like, I think I think now that Trump is president, I could say that it's complete bullshit cultural appropriation.

If you said that, and if you said that in the UK, you'd be in jail right now.

I know, I know. Even before it went on YouTube, just from the streaming, they would know what I'm saying. Because memes are illegal there. But like, dude, somebody wearing like a Chinese costume or something in a video, right? Like, that's just being a good actor, like being in a scene. Like, you know, I'm buying whatever you're selling, to be honest.

I just want to do good. I just want to do the kosher, the Jewish Indian Shabbat dinner.

I'm down. Yeah. So are you in New York often or just Philly mostly?

I'm in New York often. Uh, I go in like once a week, sometimes more. Uh, sometimes I'll be in a couple days, like I'm next week or the week after I'm there for like Monday through Friday. But, uh, cool. Yeah. Too often. I, I take the, uh, I don't like trains cuz I'm not like a Like a homeless, like I don't, yeah, yeah. I don't like, I'm not like trying to sit on a train that comes to the city.

Did you know autistic people just like love trains? That's just a thing. Yeah.

So I don't do, I don't do trains. So I drive into the office. I leave, I left my house yesterday at like 5, got to the office at like 7:20. And then it's like until I get home, it's like a, a good 16, 18 hour day. Um, throw a Shabbat dinner in there. All of a sudden it's like I'm not home till the next morning.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Well, we'll make something happen. All right. I hope the podcast retention on this was decent. I don't think it was, but if they got to the end, there were some good ideas in there.

If they made it—

Indian Shabbat.

If they made it to the end, look out for the new Ozempic spin. Yeah, it'll be fun. Don't hate Jews. If you're an Indian, stay close to us. We have something coming.

Yeah, yeah. We got to retention— retain, return, retentionize, retain, retain. We got to retain the Indians. That's going to be Israel's number one priority. Yeah, you got to do it. All right, cool, man. Where can people find you? Where can people read your work?

Yes. Eli Weiss. So there's always an extra S because it's just the most common Jewish name ever. So it's like Eli double eliweissss.com, Eli Weiss with an extra S on Twitter. And I probably won't see enough memes from me. So if you see me online and just demand memes.

Yeah, go bully Eli and make him post more memes.

Yeah. Namaste.

All right.

For my Indian people.

All right. It was good having you, bro. I'll talk to you soon.

Bye. Cheers.