In this episode of My First Million, hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri riff on a wide range of entrepreneurial ideas, health trends, and quirky cultural indexes. They start with a deep dive into the executive‑VIP health‑checkup model, proposing a $10k‑$20k membership service for high‑net‑worth individuals in major U.S. cities. The conversation then shifts to practical tools for creators, highlighting Beehive (a newsletter‑creation platform with built‑in growth and ad tools) and Sono.ai (AI‑generated music that can mimic famous singers). They explore unconventional data signals such as the "pizza meter," the Big Mac Index, the Waffle House Index, and a newly coined DC Bear Index, using them to illustrate how informal metrics can predict events. A substantial segment examines the economics of stock exchanges, focusing on ICE, NASDAQ, and Eric Ries’s Long‑Term Stock Exchange, discussing profitability, network effects, and regulatory barriers. They also critique crypto‑style token incentives for early‑user rewards. The hosts showcase a series of side‑hustle stories, most notably Danielle Baskin’s eclectic product line (fruit‑branding swag, bike‑helmet designs, escape‑room kits, etc.) and a "blue‑collar" marketing anecdote about a $5‑per‑fruit corporate swag model. Throughout, they sprinkle humor (AI‑generated rap, beets‑smoothie health hype) and personal reflections on pivots, advice from Eric Ries, and the importance of publishing ideas. The episode ends with a quick plug for a SaaS tool for witches, underscoring the show’s eclectic, idea‑driven vibe.
Chapters
Sam, this is the secret to my success right here.
A plain gray t-shirt?
Free shout out to Kohl's. This is the Kohl's super soft tee. I wear a new shirt basically every day, um, which feels phenomenal.
You remember the TV show Cribs where Master P would only wear a pair of Air Force Ones one time?
What do you think my last name stands for? I am Master P myself. All right. I have a, uh, an idea for you. So would you like to hear billion-dollar healthcare idea? Actually, healthcare is the wrong word. Healthcare. Actually, when people tell me healthcare ideas, I just kind of tune out and run away. I'm like, uh, isn't that like super complicated, hard, and impossible? Let me just, let me just ignore this completely. Um, but I think you'll like this one. So have you ever done an executive health? Checkup?
Not yet, but Nick Huber's convincing me that I should do it.
Okay. So these things are pretty interesting.
Have you done one?
I've never done one. I've, uh, I've tried. I've, I've basically gone through the process of booking and then, and there was like, that's kind of the point. They didn't have a lot of availability. Yeah. So they have a long wait list. Oh, I got to travel to Arizona to do this. Like, geez. Like if this was just here in the Bay Area, I would have done it yesterday, but it's not. Well, that's the idea. Let's open one of these up in the Bay Area, in LA, and in New York. Okay. So what are these? So an executive health checkup is basically something that CEOs, high net worth individuals will do where they basically pay somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 usually to go for a 1 or 2 day visit to a medical center. And you do a battery of tests and just think of it like the Four Seasons meets a doctor's checkup. And so you go and it's kind of this executive VIP treatment where you go and they just put you through a bunch of tests all in one day. Which normally if you try to do in your traditional thing, like first of all, your normal doctor's gonna be like, why do you need this test? You don't have any, do you, are you having heart issues? It's like, no, I just want to like proactively measure my like heart health every year and like make sure I'm on top of that. Um, and so you, most doctors won't recommend these, uh, you know, normally. Secondly, if you, even if you did, you wouldn't get all your appointments done in a day, just like one day, knock it all out.
Take months.
Uh, it'd be spread out. It'd take forever. Um, and you each one you're like kind of waiting in line. You don't have the, uh, the TSA, you know, PreCheck to be able to just go through and do this. So this is our— actually, a better analogy is actually flying private.
And a lot of times they wouldn't talk to each other, right?
It's not comprehensive. Yeah. Okay, so why is this an interesting business idea? So the Mayo Clinic, which is probably the leader in doing this, is estimated to do over $100 million a year on just their executive health checkup service, right? So that's basically 17,000. The last number they publicly released was 17,000 patients did it in 2015. Um, and you basically got to fly there. Four locations are Arizona, Jacksonville, Minnesota, or London. So like not in, you know, hotspots, but like that's where they have their, their big hospitals. And so Mayo is doing this. The Cleveland Clinic does this. And then there's a bunch of private practices that will do this too. So my idea is that somebody needs to create this for SF, LA, New York. It's the Soho House for medicine. And, um, you know, just charge a $10,000 to $20,000 a year membership fee. And it's an annual checkup for you or your spouse even. And, um, if you can get basically 5,000 members across, uh, you know, in, in any of those geos, you're doing $50 million a year recurring revenue. That's only, that's like 100 patients a week, right? It's like, it's not insane. It's something like this, especially with the like longevity, Bryan Johnson, like Huberman, like. There is a very, very big trend in this direction. And I don't really think that genie's going back in the bottle. Like, I don't think that people are 5 years from now are going to be like, ah, I just don't care about health anymore. Like, I just don't think it's going that way. I think people will get disillusioned with some of the things that are happening, but I think on the whole, more people are becoming, you know, health conscious than before. And as that kind of high net worth class, it becomes a high status thing to do to be, you know, health optimized, I think that this is gonna get bigger and bigger and bigger.
When we started this pod, I think I said one of the big things that I'm bullish on for the next like 10, 20, 30 years is I always thought it's insane that you can have like a cancer in your body and like the conversation of, well, had we just known about this sooner, we could have fixed this, but we don't, we, or we didn't, so you're dead. And like, that's kind of crazy to think that like, had you just walked through the doors and gotten this test, you would have been, this was, could have been solvable.
100 years from now, it's going to be insane that you didn't know how your body was doing.
Yeah, I agree.
Maybe 50 years from now. I don't know. I don't know what the number is, but like for sure by 100 years, like the idea that you could, it's like, dude, my grandpa used to walk around and he had no fucking clue what his like glucose levels were. He didn't know if he had cancer. People just had cancer and died. It's like, you know, when we talk about like smallpox and polio just killing people. Or like, you know, like, I don't know, like, how'd you get around without Google Maps? It's like, oh, you just like, you just keep stopping at gas stations and then you'd unfold this map and you'd trace your finger and then you'd ask a guy and he'd tell you like, when you see a blue thing, turn left. And like, that's how you got across the country.
It's like going to a restaurant and saying you want smoking or non-smoking sections. It's like, wait, that was a thing? You could go to a smoking section of a restaurant? You know, like, because I, that was one of the things I was alive for. I remember as a kid, it's like saying, uh, you only have smoking available?
Fine.
We'll do that.
Do you know what else that's similar to? Starting a newsletter today and not using Beehive. That's what it's similar to. And that's the thrill of the show today. I'm gonna tell you guys about Beehive, easiest way to start a newsletter, spin it up, start your newsletter. It has all the growth tools built in. It's got an ad network so you can start making money on your newsletter. Even if you have a small newsletter, I see people every week on Twitter posting that they're making $1,000 a month or $3,000 a month on their newsletters. And they don't even have that big of a newsletter. It's pretty crazy. Putting your thoughts out there aside from the money is, I would say, the most underrated thing that a smart person can do. If you're a dumb person, you don't need to do this. But if you're a smart person, putting your thoughts out there and creating a magnet that will attract like-minded people, create a little landing area for luck in your life where people can reach out to you because they heard something you said, or they agreed with something you said, or they offer you a job, or they want to work with you or partner with you. That's what happens when you, when you publish. And so highly encourage people to do it. And if you're going to do it, use Beehive. It's spelled beehive.com. Weird name, Beehive, but it's a good, great service.
And Tyler's awesome, you guys. I do think people should check it out. Tyler's one of the most interesting entrepreneurs that we've come across.
By the way, actually, the best thing about Tyler is his playlist on Spotify. So if you go on Spotify and you need music for while you work, He has a playlist called Big Desk Energy.
Is it actually good?
It's awesome, dude. I listen to it all the time when I work. Big Desk Energy, great name, and it's a great playlist and he keeps it updated. So he keeps curating it as he goes. And I've told him, I was like, dude, I, you know, Beehive's great, but the playlist is legendary. The playlist is so good.
But you invested in Beehive, so that's the one that needs to work out.
So yeah, I did invest in Beehive also. Um, so I invested once, I use the newsletter twice a week and I use the playlist 7 days a week.
All right. Beehive, beehive.com. Um, by the way, the companies that are like kind of testing this out, you did one of these, right? These like, are they MRIs that you can go to? It's like $500 and you just walk off the street and get an MRI and it tells you if you've got cancer or something like that.
You could do a full body MRI, um, at places. And so I went and did one. And I, you know, the reason I didn't talk a ton about it afterwards was I just don't know the science behind some of these things. And so it might be great. I know several people that have said, oh, I did a Prenuvo scan and we found something, blah, blah, blah. I've talked to doctor friends who are like, this is BS. Um, and I'm always like, you know, there's like a, there's like a Theranos, uh, sixth sense in my body where I'm like, just be careful before you endorse something that you don't understand the science of that's making a very bold claim. That doesn't mean that they're doing something wrong or that anything is up with it. I'm just saying, I have no idea if these things work. I do know that. The stuff like the executive checkup where they're doing like more tried and trusted, like tests are, um, you know, a bit more, more safe, right? This like the Lindy effect, right? They've been around for a longer period of time, more widely accepted in the community. More testing has been done. They've made it through that gauntlet. Whereas the new stuff, the full body MRI, it might be awesome. It might be overkill. I'm not sure. I can't say.
Dude, we have a lady. So we do like for Hampton, we have like perks. So you get discounts to different services and we partnered with one of these MRI companies and this member and her boyfriend or her husband went and got one together and he had cancer. They caught cancer and he got surgery and he's good. And she was telling me the story and I was like, that's insane. That is absolutely insane. So there's one positive story.
Yeah. I think they said like when I was there again, I don't want to repeat these claims. I don't know what's true, but I think they were like, you know, 1 out of 20, 1 out of 30 people who come in find something.
That's insane.
It's so funny when you go do these, by the way, you're just like, No news is good news. So you're like, I'm going to go voluntarily check this thing, give myself a very high anxiety day. And then I really, what I want is this anticlimactic, like, yeah, you're fine, dude. 35. What are you doing? Uh, you're normal. Do you feel bad? No. Oh, okay, cool then. Uh, that's, that's the best case scenario at the end of these things. Hey, real quick, you know, one of the cool parts about what we're doing is that people have reached out and told me that they've built actual million-dollar businesses, made their first million, off an idea they heard on the show. That is crazy. That's wild. That's why we wanna do the show and we wanna see more of that. One of the questions we get asked over and over again is, is there some kind of idea database or spreadsheet where we list out all the different business ideas that we've talked about? Well, the answer is finally yes. The fine folks at HubSpot have dug through the archive and pulled out 50+ business ideas and put them into a business idea database. It's totally free. You can click the link in the description below. And get the database for you. All right. Now back to the show. Uh, Sam, did you see this thing that this guy tweeted at us? The AI MFM theme song?
The rap song?
The rap song?
Yeah.
Ari, can you play this?
Listening to the dudes who turn their dreams into bucks. Sam Parr, his hustle, muscle, sealed the deal on the cusp of millions. They say 30 a figure, let's trust. Sean spinning narratives, his stories grip, they clutch. Podcast vibing, my first million Stirring the pot, Sean the baller shot calling, no small boy stuff. He's got both a sage and a slacker productivity unlocked. Sam, six-pack dreams, aesthetics, they cannot be stopped. MFM hosts with the most, sharing that wealth of brain from tips to the realm of the game. They spill without restraint.
Restraint.
How did he do this?
So he goes, here's, here's my prompt. A rap about Sam and Sean, the host of My First Million. Sean, uh, Sam previously sold this company called The Hustle for an undisclosed amount, but everybody thinks it's $30 million. Sean is a storytelling master, the laziest, most productive person who loves basketball and says no small boy stuff. Sam loves big muscles and six packs. And then it generated that song.
It says that I've got six pack dreams.
I got six pack dreams. Yeah, it's so good. It was like actually very good for an AI song. And the second one cracked me up. This is, uh, this is me coming into today's podcast recording. Just put the GIF up on the screen. If you're on audio, go to YouTube so you can watch this.
It's always funny.
Yeah, there are some internet memes that are funny for like 20 years. This might be one of them.
Dude, did you see this thing? I believe it's called, is it called Sono where you can make songs? Sono.ai. It is freaking awesome. It is so cool. It is awesome. And like you can make it sound like Frank Sinatra is singing any song that you want him to sing. And so you could use it for theme songs, for background music of different things. It is awesome. It's one of the few AI things that I've seen and I'm like, this is wonderful. This works. There's a perfect use case for this. It's really good.
Dude, my uncreative ass doesn't know how to use these. I'll be like, uh, make it a Journey singing Don't Stop Believing. It's like their actual song. I'm like, I guess I just wanted to hear that song. And then I go on Spotify and listen to it.
Yeah. You're like, uh, a Journey song about a boxer in Philadelphia and he's trying to beat the USSR and what do you got? And it's Eye of the Tiger. Dude.
Um, the, uh, there is a cool version of these though. Um, you see that Drake tweeted out a. Song that he made using AI, uh, like AI Tupac and AI Biggie on his track.
Yeah, it's awesome. I love these things, dude. Let me tell you this story. So I had to do some camera. I had to set up this camera at my house and I don't know how to do it. And a friend of a friend connected me with these 3 kids. They're 20 years old and they, uh, they have like a marketing agency, but I guess on the side they like help people like me set up their camera or whatever. They've come out here, they help me out, and after about 4 hours of them in my house doing work, I'm like, all right, so what's your guys' stories? Like, I could tell that you're like being polite and like you're trying to ask a little bit about me and like, let's talk, let's, let's hang out. So it's these 3 kids that are 20 years old. They dropped out of college to start a marketing agency and to get business, they go to, uh, what's it called? Is it called the Better Business Bureau? Like where, like your local small town communities have these like business bureaus. They go there and start convincing all these small businesses to make promotional videos for their website. So they start making videos for their website and then they're like, well, what do I do with this video now? So they go to their clients and they go, well, you should run Google Ads. We'll do that for you and we'll make a website. And they're like, all right, cool. I've got this website. Now how do I get leads? And like, well, we'll run the ads and then we'll just get leads to you. And I go, wow, pretty cool. What software you guys use? And they go, we just use like our iPhones. And they go, and matter of fact, my phone's ringing right now. It looks like someone's calling for this particular landscaping company. So they put their phone on speaker and they go, hi, this is XYZ Landscaping Services. How can I help you? And they go, hi, this is Rosemary. I live here and I'm trying to inquire about seeing if you guys can come and like build this like small project at my house. And she goes, oh yes, ma'am. I'm not the owner of the business, but I'll put you in touch with her right now. And so they, you have their iPhone out, They click hold, they call their client right there. And this is at like 9 o'clock on a Saturday. They go, hey Linda, I've got Rosemary on the phone right now. She wants this, this, and this. I'm going to merge you two right now. And she goes, all right, sounds good. He clicks merge and he goes, hey Rosemary, this is Anna the odor. Um, she, I filled her all in about what you want and I'll let you guys take it from here. And then he clicks mute and just puts the phone in his pocket and he goes, that's, that's $400 right there. And they're doing $15,000 a month this way. These three kids, they're like, yeah, we like have been grinding at this for like 12 months. So then we're finally at like $15,000. We're able to pay ourselves. We've each been DoorDashing in our free time in order to make bills, uh, pay our bills because we live on our own. And I just think to myself, you've got it. Great stories begin exactly like this. You guys, they're asking me for advice. I go, guys, you're, it's going to work out. Just keep doing this for 5 years.
Dude, the best part of the story by far is that's $400 right there. Putting it in the pocket, put the phone in the pocket. I'm going to start saying that every time I unlock my phone and I'm with my wife. I'm just going to be like, another $300.
It's just, it was awesome what these kids were doing. And, uh, I, I just respect the hell out of that type of stuff. And it, it just showed me these guys have what it takes. And this is how like great stories begin, is these little, like, it's not complicated stuff, it's really simple, it's not sexy, but it's awesome.
Dude, my brother-in-law, I was asking him over the weekend, I go, Yo, what's, what's your favorite job you've ever had? And he goes, oh, easy. Smoothie King in high school. I was like, Smoothie King in high school? You've had a whole— he's 40. He's like 43 or something. I was like, your greatest job was your first job 23 years ago or 26 years ago? He's like, yeah, no doubt. And I was like, why did you like it so much? Like free smoothies or something? He goes, no, no, no. My boss was so funny. He's like, my boss was this character. He's like, you know that thing I say every time I answer the phone? I go, yeah. He goes, I stole that from my boss. And the thing he says on the phone is the thing his boss said. So one day he was in Smoothie King and the phone rings, like the Smoothie King, like landline rings. And his boss is basically like, you know, if my brother-in-law's 17, this is like a 19-year-old, you know, normal dude. He's a manager of Smoothie King, kind of an overweight guy. And he goes, ah, must be Jordan about that summer league. And he picked up the phone and my brother-in-law thought it was so funny that he just came up with that on the fly. Like, it must be Michael Jordan calling about summer league. And for literally 26 years, my brother-in-law, every time the phone rings, he goes, ah, must be Jordan about that summer league. And I could tell it just puts him in a good mood every single time.
Well, now the new one is, uh, when you hang up, um, you want to do one? What do you got?
All right. I got another thing that's funny. Well, it's funny and not funny, but the funny thing about funny things is that if you take a really not funny thing like war and you multiply it times a funny thing, together they become funny. That's the beauty. That's the beauty of humor.
Bold statement. Let's see. Let's see how you pull it together.
The pizza meter. Do you know what the pizza meter is?
I don't know what the pizza meter is.
Okay. So the pizza meter is a way that people on the internet knew that the Iran strikes were happening before the news reported it. And you might be wondering, how could just random people on the internet know this before mainstream media? And the answer is the pizza meter. And so the pizza meter is basically a signal that people watch for, which is basically they study the, um, they watch the pizza shops that are around the White House, the Pentagon, places like that. And they look that if there's a sudden spike and if, you know, for example, if you go on Google and it says busier than usual, and you'll see like, wow, 10 PM, it's like spiked way higher than normal, that you know that something's going down. That's the only reason that the closest pizza shop to the Pentagon or closest pizza shop to the White House would have spiked like that is that there's something going down that has the staff there late at night ordering pizzas. And so they know, and it's basically been a signal for like the, uh, the invasion of Kuwait, the Iraq war. Most recently when Iran launched those missiles at Israel. Um, and so people knew that this was coming because of the pizza meter. And the funny, the story behind this is pretty funny. I don't know if you, I guess if you've never heard of it, you probably don't know the backstory either, but it got popular because there was a guy named Frank and Frank owned 60 franchises of like pizza shops around DC. And he actually went and told the LA Times, he was like, um, the news media doesn't know about something big's going to happen. They're in bed sleeping. But my guys, my guys are out there on the front lines doing deliveries. And we know when something's going down because we'll get a spike of deliveries to the Pentagon at, you know, 11 PM at midnight at 1 AM. And that never happens. And so this happened and then the government basically had to shift their, they sent out a memo. They're like, hey guys, you can't be doing this. And so now they send staff out to try to pick up pizzas and do all this other stuff to kind of like smoothen out the curve where it's not so obvious that some shit's going down. Isn't that hilarious?
Dude, that's brilliant. There's a phrase for this and I can't remember what it was, but it's basically where you do all of this work to protect something and just the smallest, dumbest thing that you forget about that you don't even realize is the key to, uh, you know, unraveling the entire thing. This is awesome. This is so cool. And I'm reading the Wikipedia right now. It started in 1983 with the invasion of Grenada. And then again, in 1989, the invasion of Panama. What they noticed was that Domino's pizza deliveries increased dramatically right before the invasion by 25%. Like, so this has been going on for decades.
This is, this is the password 123 of wars. It's like the easy to guess password that like you didn't, they didn't realize. Actually, the true origin story was this, of this was apparently during the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence agency was using indicators like this. So not just the pizza thing, but other things like this to try to alert them of a potential global crisis. And they called it, uh, Pizint, like pizza and then intelligence, pizint. And, um, so that's how, that's like how it started. And then Frank kind of put, put a spotlight on it and there's other ones too. So like recently, so this happened before the Iran thing, people were like, uh oh, pizza meter spiking right now. And then sure enough, within 24 hours, the news came out about the Iran thing. The other signals, people were like, hey, wait, it's not just pizzas. Because they realized that the second best signal is that gay bars in the area see a, like a big drop off in foot traffic when the government, like is when they're busy basically. And so people were looking at gay bars. There was a guy who was like, hey guys, I can confirm.
Because the, the politicians would normally be going to the gay bars.
Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy who tweeted out, he's like, hey guys, I don't know what this means, but I'm at Uproar right now and there's way less government guys there than usual tonight. And normally, like, I don't know, whatever, Thursday night, this place is popping. There's nobody here. And so now there's the, uh, the DC Bear Index, which is basically trying to measure, um, you know, like the, the gay bar, uh, foot traffic as well. So this is up there on my Mount Rushmore of silly indexes. There's, there's some other great ones, uh, that you might not know about. Do you know about the Big Mac Index? I think you probably know that one.
Is that just the price of a Big Mac or?
It's like a better, uh, indicator of like inflation or what they call PPP. So, uh, purchasing power parity. So basically how much is a dollar versus a euro versus a franc versus a yen? And the most common denominator between all of those countries is what's the price of a Big Mac? And so you can go see that, oh man, a Big Mac relatively is now more expensive in one place than the other. That basically indicates that that currency got weaker. It's a more true indicator of the currency strength or weakness than like what the government will tell you. So that's the, that's what the Big Mac Index is supposed to be. And by the way, all of these are, you know, they're not, they're not bulletproof. So there's people who are like, oh, the pizza thing doesn't work anymore, blah, blah, blah. Who knows? I, I, I, you know, I can't say that these are like, you know, perfect science or anything, but they're, they're funny. The other one that's great is the Waffle House index. You know this one?
Uh, for hurricanes.
Yeah. For storms, basically. They, there's a 3-color, a 3-color system. So Waffle House, which is open 24/7, 365. So it's like, uh, how do you know how bad a storm is? It's basically green is Waffle House is still open and operational, full menu. Yellow is it's open, partial menu, and red is it's closed. If Waffle House is closed and the guy, like the director of FEMA came out, basically was like, you know, it's bad when the Waffle House is closed. And so it became a whole thing.
The Waffle House Index, a Mount Rushmore of indexes, is awesome. That is a Hilarious bit. I thoroughly enjoy this one. And by the way, have you ever noticed if Waffle Houses are supposed to be open all the time, why do they even have locks on the doors?
Do they? Maybe they don't.
They do. Because I went to one recently and I was like, if you guys are open all the time, why do you even lock the place up?
I'm sure they enjoyed that conversation. Like, look, dude, you want waffles or not?
Like scrambled or what? What do you want? It didn't work out. Uh, that's pretty good. Uh, where'd you, why, why did this interest you?
There's this general trend, which is like, whenever there's like a murder that happens or like a crime, or there's like the Boston bombing, do you remember like Reddit was basically solving it almost in real time? Or like, you know, they're trying to—
Yeah, but they got it like, they got it all wrong.
Yeah, but there is like, yes, that seems important, but, uh, it is pretty fun to follow along and just see like what the open source intelligence community can do. And like, they do get things wrong, but there's, you know, there's several examples of this that are like, you know, if you go look at the root cause, the root, the root, um, you know, discovery of maybe some conspiracy or some, uh, um, some, some exposé, it's usually like some guy on a message board notices something. And that's like often like how things get figured out. And so, you know, that's how they caught the, you know, the Silk Road, for example. Uh, you know, they went and looked at message board posting, for example. Um, but you know, I just think that's cool that like there's a, there is like the official agencies, but then there's sort of like this open source community of internet sleuths. And, uh, you know, I don't think they're, they're not necessarily better, but I just think it's a cool in addition to, uh, what it, what it exists out there.
Let me show you something that I saw recently that is actually related to indexes. So I got curious about, uh, I was looking at like, I saw an article about some of the most profitable companies in the world. And now let me list a few that are very obvious. So Visa, of course, Visa is going to be one of the more profitable companies, something like 40% income compared to their revenue. Nvidia, Berkshire Hathaway, very obvious ones. Two less obvious ones, Public Storage. I think we've talked about Public Storage. You know, they make something like 50% profit on each dollar that they take in on revenue. Another one is Relics. We've talked about Relics. They own the academic publishing industry and it's like a very controversial thing because it's kind of a pay-to-play model and it's a little, it's a little weird, but there's two that stood out to me. The first one I'll tell you because you may not know, but it's called the Intercontinental Exchange. Do you know what the Intercontinental Exchange is?
No.
Well, the second one that stood out is NASDAQ. So the Intercontinental Exchange owns the New York Stock Exchange. And so these two stock exchanges are some of the most profitable public companies in the country. Something like, uh, I think in 2018, the Intercontinental Exchange, I think it's, I think they call it ICE, I-C-E, 60% profit for every dollar that it took in. And this company is worth something like, I think today it's worth $35 or $40 billion. One of the most profitable companies out there. And it makes, uh, I think $10 billion in revenue. So it's just like printing cash. And it kind of got me interested that these stock market exchanges might be the world's greatest business models. Because when you think about a stock market exchange, once a stock, once a company lists on an exchange, they're basically never going to go away. And hopefully a great company like a Ford or something like that can last for 100 years. It's incredibly challenging to build a new stock exchange. There's actually only, I think, 15 of them in the world. Like 15, like legit big ones. And the barriers to entry are super big, but it got me interested. Do you know who started a stock exchange recently? Have you heard about this? It's called the Long-Term Stock Exchange.
Eric Ries.
Eric Ries from the, the book, uh, The Lean Startup, one of the most famous startup books of all time. So I think he started this in 2010 or 2012, a while ago, and it's taken a while to get going. And the reason he started it was at the end of The Lean Startup, in like the epilogue, he lists like a bunch of ideas that are interesting to him. And he said on this talk, he goes, all of these ideas have been started. My readers have messaged me saying, I've started this, this, and this after this book. And he goes, the one thing that no one started was a long-term stock exchange. So I decided to do it. And one of the reasons he decided to do it was because, so the large index funds or the, or a lot of the large traders, do you know how long they hold a stock for on average?
No, I have no idea.
10 minutes. That's how long on average it's—
I'm super bullish on this stock for the next 10 minutes.
Yeah.
And it's like me at home with all my ideas. Yeah.
It's for 10 minutes is the average hold time. And he was like, I think that's insane because nothing has changed with that company. And it really bothered him. And another thing that bothered him is there's this chart. You like One Chart Businesses. There's this chart that shows the average number of public companies And it's been going just straight down. So I think 20 years ago there was something like 10,000. I think today there's like 4,000 public companies. So people just don't want to take their company public for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons being is that it's kind of a short-term, like, what does Warren Buffett say? In the short term, it's a, uh, it's a, what does he say?
It's like a measuring stick, but in the long term, popularity contest, long-term, it's a weighing machine.
Yeah, that's right. And he's like, that has. A lot of people don't like that. They don't want to take their companies public because of that. So basically in 2011, he proposed this idea of this thing called the long-term stock exchange, where you get more votes for how long you've held the stock. So if you held the stock for longer than someone who's just recently bought it, you get more votes into how the company is run, theoretically. And he actually raised something like $100 million to start this. I think Andreessen Horowitz funded it and a bunch of others.
That wasn't the only thing, right? I think there was like a mandatory 1-year hold time, right? Wasn't there like a, if you buy, you can't sell within a certain period of time? Wasn't that the rule?
Yes. And there's a, and there's a few other rules where the companies, in order to get listed on the stock exchange, you have to do what you just said. You also have to like have a plan as to how your company is going to be great for the next many decades. And so they like, it's all about long-term stuff. And so, yeah, there are a whole bunch of rules about this. Now the story isn't exactly going well because I think there's only like 2 or 3 or 4 companies listed on his exchange so far. I think it's Twilio, I think Twilio, Asana, and ThredUp. I think those are like, I don't think there's that many companies listed there. And those companies are also listed on the NASDAQ. So I don't know why you would use Eric Ries's long-term stock exchange. However, I thought this idea, I didn't understand it when I was younger. I'm like, why do you, why do you need to do that? Now I'm kind of growing to understand, like, that is pretty badass. And this is an epic idea that has not played out yet. But I was researching these exchanges and they're so fascinating at how they work. It's this weird, it's a little bit crony capitalism because they're in bed with the SEC. So they're in bed with the government and there's a lot of regulation around this whole thing, but it's so fascinating. And Eric Ries was talking about starting it. He was like, in order to start it, you have to, file paperwork, and it's called SEC-0001. So when you file paperwork with the SEC, even for a startup, it's all these paperwork. This is literally paperwork number 1. It's the first, like, it's their first document. And he like has, and he filled out all this paperwork and now he's finally kind of starting to get a little bit traction. But I found this to be so fascinating, these, these stock exchanges and how they're probably one of the best business models I could think of.
All right. I have a bunch of short stories, uh, related to this. Number one, I met the CEO of, I think either the NASDAQ or NYSE. He came to my office once and I didn't, he came to meet Michael Birch, who was our like main investor, and they were hanging out and he's like, oh, come in here and join. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, I didn't even know the exchange was a business. I was like, what the, like, why would it have a CEO? It's a business. And he's like, oh, it's not only a business, it's a phenomenal business. And he's like, basically we have, The exchange and the exchange in the US obviously is the big one, but what they do is it's a software company actually. So what they do is they power the stock exchanges of like a whole bunch of different countries. So it's like, oh, I mean, Finland needs a stock exchange. They're not going to build their own thing. They'll just take the US's like battle-tested, super, you know, military-grade exchange and they'll just be a customer of it. And so that was the first like line of business is basically that countries will use their software to run their own exchanges. The next is that they basically fight for IPOs. So he's like, yeah, big deal is basically how do we versus the NASDAQ compete to get, you know, Facebook's IPO? How do we get the next big tech IPOs? So that's why he was in Silicon Valley meeting people was like, these are long-term relationships. And like when the time comes that they're deciding which exchange to list on, like that's a big deal for us. And it's a network effect, right? The more The more great companies you have on your exchange, the more valuable your exchange is. But it's like a network effect married with enterprise, you know, like super enterprise contracts married with like complete defensibility. Like nobody, like literally like regulatory defensibility. So you get the defensibility of network effects and of regulations, and then you get the business model of enterprise, you know, enterprise sales. And so pretty phenomenal. Business. Actually, it's also a marketplace, right? Because they could take fees on all the different transactions that exist. So pretty phenomenal business. You're absolutely right. And, um, I was surprised to even learn that this was a business. It's just another reminder that like everything you see around you, it didn't just show up. It's there because somebody somewhere has a motive and a profit in order to generate that product or that service or that thing that exists. And once you see that, you can't like unsee it. Uh, so that's my first story. Second story is about Eric Ries. So I'm a, I love Eric Ries. Uh, like his blog was one of the key blogs that like, you know, shifted my like entrepreneurial journey. Like I was like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. Like that's why we failed. We should have been doing this shit. And I got to meet Eric. I went to his house in San Francisco. Nicest guy, nice guy, but also wasn't just like pleasantries. He was nice, but he was so helpful. Like I was like, oh, we're planning on doing this. It's, and he's like, okay, that's an interesting idea. I was like, yeah, we're gonna do this big launch, blah, blah, blah. He's like, don't do the big launch. And I was like, but I just told you, I, I told, I like talked for 5 minutes about my big launch plan. He's like, not a believer in big launches. Uh, here's why. And he's like, basically here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna take the worst version of the product that you've ever made and will ever make that you have no idea if there's demand for, and you're gonna completely blow your wad telling everybody how great this thing is. And you have this, like, you're going to put all this energy into that and it's going to completely, like, the odds of you just getting it right and your initial product being good enough is so low that you're actually like lowering your odds of success by doing that. And then now it's like pretty common, this like fallacy of the big launch. This is like 10 plus years ago. And at that time, like big launches were still kind of a thing that people tried to do. And, um, he talked me off that ledge. And then also I was like, uh, I came to him and I was like, you know, we have this, uh, idea. It's not really working. So I'm thinking about pivoting to this. He's like, okay, here's how you plan to pivot. I was like, oh, I think we're going to make these like changes feature and start to test this and blah, blah, blah. He's like, cool. Here's what you need to do. He's like, you need to take your old idea. You need to bring it to town square. You need to shoot it in the head. I was like, what? And he's like, your team is going to be so confused unless you explicitly tell them that, hey, all the shit I've been saying for 2 years, it's changing. Like the old assumptions turned out to be wrong. We learned this by doing this. And now we know that's not the path. We now know that this is a more viable path or that this is a better path to be trying. That old idea is done. That old assumption we had is done. And he's like, you need to take it in the middle of everybody and you need to do a public execution of the assumptions and the ideas that you no longer are married to because 9 out of 10 CEOs are too afraid to, um, to sort of admit that they were wrong or to like be really explicit that like, no. We, that was a dead end. We need to go back and we need to try something new. He's like, you try to like blend it together and just kind of like keep iterating in the shadows basically. And you're like, kind of like your team is always like half confused and they don't really know what they're supposed to be doing. Is that the thing we've been saying or this new thing, or do we just bolt this new thing onto the old thing? And then that doesn't really work either. And he is like, you know, when Instagram pivoted and they became Instagram, they basically were like, look, this other thing, Burbn, this idea of location-based check-ins. We're not doing that shit anymore. Locations suck. Uh, we used to say location means everything. Location now means nothing. It's photos with filters. Okay. And we may have a new app with a new name and it's photos with filters. And they're like, but the old app had photos with filters in it. He's like, yeah, but the old app was about the old shit. And this is not about that anymore. This is now about this new thing. And, uh, that was very, very valuable advice that I don't know, nobody else had ever told me. And I bet nobody else would ever tell me. And I'm saying it here on the pod because, you know, there's probably 100 people out there that need to pivot and like, this was good advice. It really helped me.
That's such a good metaphor too. That's a very, that's a very, uh, that's a very sharp metaphor.
Yeah, exactly. I needed to be punched in the face because like most founders, we ask for advice and really what we're asking for is, can you please affirm the things I want? And anything you say that I don't want, even though it's important, I'm going to like ignore to my own detriment. And then 3 years later, 2 years later, when it's all failed, I'll be like, I was like, huh, maybe there was some like wisdom in that. If only I had listened. And, uh, I thought it was really good that he just like punched me in the nose so that I couldn't ignore the advice. And most people that, that's actually very generous. Most people won't put themselves out there to do that. Most people don't need it. It doesn't, it didn't help him. You know, I went to his house, that changed my life. He never heard from me again. Right? Like I've never bumped into him again. And so, you know, I paid back nothing, uh, for that, but he kind of went out on a limb and was like, look, I'm going to be direct with you, bro. I really appreciated directness because that's actually what I, what I wanted.
Do you think his new company is going to work?
Well, it's his old company because it's 10 years. It's like 10 plus years old now, dude.
Yeah.
I don't, I mean, as much as I love the guy, it just seems like this idea has not come to fruition. There's, you said Twilio, Asana, and ThreadUp. Twilio delisted voluntarily. So now there's Asana and ThreadUp. They have two companies listed on the exchange. So like in terms of objectively. It's not working unless there's some other, you know, momentum. I know that for a long time they really couldn't do anything. They needed the like regulatory approvals and that was like a multi-year thing. So I, it does seem like they've crossed that, but you know, it doesn't seem like they have a lot of traction at the moment. I wish they did. I think it's a great idea.
I wish they did too. I wish they did too.
In the words of, uh, what's his name? Gary Halpert. Never has more money been lost than trying to convince the market what they should do versus what they want to do. Maybe long-termism is what you want the market— you think the market should do, and not necessarily what it wants to do. Maybe that's not what companies or investors want.
I think when I was thinking about this, I'm like, how do you make this work? And I'm like, well, I think the biggest way to make it work, but this has to do with the SEC, is to get rid of quarterly earnings calls. I think quarterly earning calls should probably go away. I think that this is actually something that I think Trump proposed this But many other people have proposed this.
I think he's like, no audits, never check anything.
He, uh, I think, I think that's something he proposed, but I think earnings is ridiculous. Every 3 months is kind of crazy. Um, but that's beyond, I think, long-term stock exchanges, like purview. Like, I think that's like some SEC bullshit. But anyway, I thought it was interesting. I doesn't sound like it's getting the traction that I wish it would get. But I still think it's intriguing.
The coolest innovation in this space was actually from crypto. Crypto basically, when they had the tokens—
FTX.
No, no, no. Like, uh, like crypto tokens that it wasn't, uh, they didn't clear this for regulatory-wise, but the idea was actually really good, which is that an app should be able to issue tokens to the users or members of its community that are helping build it. We've all been a part of things early on where without that user contributing, without them being a part of it, without them actually participating, whether it's Airbnb or it's the drivers on Uber, like for them to not get anything or like, you know, Reddit, for example, Reddit after like 20 years was like, we're going public. We made billions of dollars and the mods who, you know, have made this place what it is and who actually created these communities and run them, uh, they're like, you, we're going to go, we're going to do the thing no company does. We're going to let you buy the stock at the at the price 20 years later. When in reality, like the proper way to do this is what crypto was trying to do, which was let any app create an incentive mechanism that will, that will reward early participation of people who bring value to the network. So that if the network actually becomes valuable, you, by being there and putting in work, that was like the equivalent of an investment. You were able to invest energy. And what if you do that, it actually gives you a chance to spin up new networks or new things. Now, of course, All these things have the other side of the coin, which is you might attract the wrong person, the person that's just there to get the early coins, right? It's like the worst customer is the one who's like the coupon clipper who's just, you know, there to just redeem their early, early thing and then quickly cash it out and bounce. And so there's all kinds of things you have to get right to make this work.
But a lot of them are evangelists.
Yeah. Like, you know, the, the, the idea that you could allow your early adopters, early evangelists and early contributors. To own a piece of the upside in something I thought was a really good idea and a big step forward that just simply doesn't exist in the traditional system today.
All right, well, that's my bit on stock exchanges. I'm going to be paying attention. I think this will make it to Eric. Eric, you got to reach out to Sean, man, and let him thank you face to face. What do you got?
All right, this is my hustler of the week. So we kind of have, uh, we got the blue collar side hustle. We got the Billy of the Week. That's for the billionaire of the week. I don't know what we call this lady. She's the, uh, the Hustler of the Week, which is just somebody who's just making shit happen. Her name was Danielle Baskin, which I thought was the same name as the Tiger King lady, but maybe it's not. Um, here's her story. So I saw that this lady is doing a fruit swag company. Basically, imagine you're a company and you're hosting some conference. You're HubSpot hosting Inbound. And you wanna have something cool, something unique for like, you know, 10,000 attendees. They got enough t-shirts. How many koozies can one have? Uh, oh great, a pen. How thoughtful of you. And so what she does is she's like, I got it. Put your name on fruit, baby. Let's do a Salesforce avocado. Let's do a Lyft banana. Let's do a Mailchimp, uh, pineapple or whatever it is. I guess it should have been a Mailchimp banana. Uh, but basically she prints corporate names onto fruits and charges $5 per fruit to the companies and companies pay for this for their conferences. And she's made a bunch of money doing this. I think it's awesome. And I, what I liked about her was I looked her up and she's like this, like kind of this, uh, opinionated artist. And she's done a bunch of these random businesses. So she, uh, she was like, bike helmets are ugly. So she painted her own bike helmet. And then she kept getting stopped at places for, um, for her bike helmet. And so she's like, okay. And so she created a bike helmet company that just does like cool looking bike helmets. And then that was like her first business. And so she was doing that. She like made us, uh, she's like, I don't know anything about tech, but like she went on like, I don't know, Squarespace and then like got like a, uh, you know, put Stripe on there or PayPal on there and started taking payments. So that started to work. And then she's like, all right, where do I sell these helmets? And so she bought a, a vintage tricycle that has a wagon attached to it, like a three-wheeler with a wagon. And she just piled up all the helmets into the wagon and made like a cool little stand. And the people were like, yo, I love your stand. And she's like, huh, all right, I'll start selling these stands. And so now she sells the helmets and then she built the stand for the helmets. And then there, people loved her, her stand so much that she started doing, uh, she started selling stands. I think the fruit thing started the same way. She was like, oh yeah, just to be funny, I created this, this fruit thing. And then people were like, hey, can you do that for my brand? And it was just a great example of this, this awesome quote from the founder of Geek Squad. He said, marketing is the tax that you pay for, for an unremarkable product. And this lady has such a remarkable product. She just builds remarkable products, products worth remarking on that she never does need to do marketing. And she actually just spins up new businesses because she'll do, she'll make something for herself. And then 10 people will talk about it and she's like, okay, that's business. That's a thing. And she'll make it.
She has another thing called Maskalike where you upload a picture of your face and it makes like a COVID mask, but the bottom half of your face on the mask and on her Branded Fruit website, she needs some, her copy's funky. She needs to move this part up. This is actually good. This should be the tagline. Go bananas. And it says, uh, how they work with local farms to source produce. And then they put these like stickers on the produce. It's pretty cool. This is pretty cool.
If we do an MFM meetup, we need to have this at one of them. I don't know what our fruit would be, but like, I'm a beet guy. I like beets. Uh, big, big fan of beets.
Wait, you eat beets? How do you eat a beet?
Dude, I think I told you this. My buddy Sam Sole from college one day sent me a PowerPoint deck. He's like, oh, I was listening to the podcast. I haven't talked to this guy in years. And he's like, oh, I heard the podcast. You're talking about health. Here's my beets presentation. I was like, what? And he just has this, this slide deck of all white slides, no design. And it just says beets. Want to have a longer life? Next slide. Beets. Want to have better sex? Next slide. Beets. Want to feel good every morning? Beets. And he's just like, everything you want is on the other side of just a few beets. And he's like, you need to buy raw beets. You need to put them in a smoothie. Here's my recipe. Beets are amazing for you.
How do you eat them?
I just blend them up in a smoothie.
Like, what's that mean?
What part of blended up in a smoothie is unclear? What do you mean?
That's incredibly unclear. Do you literally take a bunch of beets and put them in a smoothie and like you juice it?
I make a smoothie and one of the ingredients is beets.
Okay. That's what I was asking. You just said, but what you said was you just put beets in a blender and make it into something. So what do you put? What is your beet smoothie recipe?
So his recipe, his recipe will be. Spinach, beets, water, uh, I think like a splash of OJ. He puts like olive oil, salt. He puts like different stuff that I never put in smoothies, like olive oil. I never would've thought of hemp seeds. He makes like a killer, like super healthy smoothie. And, uh, I'll try to, I'll publish the recipe. I gotta go find the exact recipe. I haven't done it in a couple years, but for like a year and a half I was all on the beets train.
And now did it make you feel better?
Yeah, it feels great. Uh, well, mostly because his presentation was very convincing. And so like I got placebo pretty hard there. But the hard part is that raw beets are the worst for cleanup. Like you have to peel them and then they're, and then everything is red. Your hands are pure red. The cutting board is red. Your whole kitchen is red. Like these things are like just pure ink. And so that's the only reason I stopped was for a period of time. I was like, I'm just tired of like having red hands for the all day. Yeah. You know, so I need to figure out a way to do this. I need some gloves. This is the answer.
Dude, what a dork. I love this guy.
Yeah, you made a face like it's gross, but this is everything you stand for in life. Doing weird overkill stuff for health.
I'm not that overkill, but beets are like, I don't actually—
How long is that race you're running right now? How long is that race you're training for? Is it a mile, 2 miles? What are you doing? You're not that overkill, right? How, how long is it?
About 50 of them. About 50 of the miles.
Oh, okay. So like a marathon wasn't enough. You needed two, but you're not overkill for sure.
Uh, all right. Well, congratulations to Danielle. How'd you find her?
I honestly have no idea.
Are we like the Chris— you're like the Christopher Columbus where it's like you discovered America. It did not exist before you, before you, it was, it was not a thing. You came across it. Now it is a thing. Uh, yeah.
By the way, she to me is like the female Peter Levels in real life. So, you know, he's like the indie hacker, just spins up cool ass projects online, makes a bunch of money. I feel like she's the female real life Peter Levels. So that's, that's how I think about her. I also have a couple of her ideas that she's had that she's been tinkering with. So, um, Baskin has been tinkering with other applications for this idea. For example, what if companies sponsor produce that's at the store? So you could buy discounted fruits or vegetables if it came with the brand's logo on it. What if Taco Bell sponsors some tomatoes or avocados, for instance? And then you could think about the brand as you make your Super Bowl guacamole. These are the thoughts going through the mind of Danielle Baskin.
Dude, she has a whole website full of like crazy things. So she's done drone sweaters, sweater, sweaters and clothing for cold drones. She's got the helmets thing. She's, oh my God. She, she has an, an escape room for your baby in your womb. Womb Escape Game is an escape room kit for newborns complete with a tiny 'We Escaped' sign for baby's first photos.
Uh, she hosts funerals for expired domains.
Oh my God, this woman is— she is something. She has Touchbase collectible and rare trading cards of venture capitalists including stats, a foil pack, and a stick of gum. She has SF Sign Maker, Uh, a sign making company doing painted and printed signage for local businesses in New York and San Francisco. She's got the Trillo Box, a phone mounted compatible with irregular handlebars for your, for bike share companies. This is funny. She has a stained glass window for airplanes, a removable window decal that transforms your flight into a place of prayer. This woman is really good.
Yeah, she's got some other ones. Founder Fitness Club, a service that will print your pitch deck onto a yoga mat. So if there's an investor at the yoga club, They will be attractive. Last Chance Tours, an immersive scanning service that will tour a place that's about to be demolished that you can later revisit in VR.
She has Blue Check Homes, which is a satirical service that offers verified, like a Twitter verified blue chest crest that goes on to your home if you're a public figure.
She literally has more on here than we have time to say. Pretty impressive.
She's brilliant. She's awesome. Is it, is Is this stuff like making a living? Surely it is, right? I mean, you have 20 of them.
Yeah, I'd like to believe that, that that's true. She must be doing well. You can't be this talented to not do well.
Yeah, I'm a fan. Danielle, you're awesome.
Is that it?
Is that the pod?
That's it. That's the pod.
All right. That's the pod.
Hold on. We had to come back on. Sam found Danielle Baskin's best, best one of all.
It's called Moonlight, moonlight.world. What tagline did you just say, Sean?
It's SaaS for witches. All those witches out there who've been needing some, a SaaS tool to let them do their tarot card readings. She made it finally.
Uh, for transformative social rituals, experience interactive and deep illuminating tarot card sessions right from your browser. SaaS for witches. Beautiful. I'm all about it. Danielle, you're awesome.
