How to Learn To Do Anything In Record Time

The opposite of what people think. People think you should go learn some secret theories that you don't know, and then you need to like develop your own voice and like come up with original content. It's like, actually, that's a really slow way to get better.

So I was saying, I have a lot to ask you about this document. What did you say?

I was saying, are you going to ask me about my fresh green smoothie? Maybe my green goddess salad or maybe this green can of Mountain Dew giant steak that the chef made. You know, what kind of life am I living here? This is an incredible life.

Well, I would say maybe like now is not the best time to eat a salad and a steak. Maybe like later. Like you literally are eating a steak right now.

Yeah, I took one bite, right? The countdown to recording was like 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I was like, I got to get it in.

Um, before we really get into stuff, um, so did you see that picture that I shared of you when we first started recording? Yeah, that was great. So, and I was kind of reflecting on it, and the reason I was reflecting on it is The Hustle, like the, the, the newsletter, The Hustle has a daily podcast coming out and they've worked on it for like months. When we started, I mean, you rented a studio at first, but then it was you and I, like, I'm pretty sure we just used our iPhone headphones and we were in that shitty like closet.

Yeah, we're in a— we're basically in a closet with a table where we were so close together that anytime I talk, your mic picked it up. Anytime you talk, my mic picked it up. So it's like awful, awful recording. You can see the— in the photo you posted about like us recording, I'm like hunched over. I got my glasses on. I didn't wear my contacts. I'm wearing my jacket still because I just walked over from my office and just like we started recording instantaneously. I'm looking at my phone You know, like, uh, really wasn't, you know, you know, some people are like, you know, you wear a suit, you know, act like, act like you, you're gonna be where you want to be or whatever. Uh, I definitely wasn't doing that. I was just sort of like, uh, whatever, none of this video stuff matters. All that matters is the audio. Let's just do that.

Which wasn't entirely wrong, but what, what I was proud of was that when we did it, like, we really oftentimes we would just use the iPhone and just like an audio file. And the, uh, like I said, I'm recording this on an iPhone.

Are you, you're using your iPhone or using the fancy camera?

Well, we have fancy mics now, but like there was one time where I remember like we literally like, it was like a speakerphone and an iPhone. But the, the Hustle guys, they've got this podcast coming out and they're doing it every day. I'm, and I'm gonna pop on it sometimes. I, I, they're gonna ask you to pop on it sometimes too, but they're doing a daily podcast. I think it's gonna work. It's so, it's so much work though.

Daily, like about the news or about what?

Yeah, they're doing a day, it's called The Hustle Daily Show. So it's easy, right? And they're doing a podcast every single day. It launches Wednesday. And, um, we were talking about— I just left a meeting where I was helping them get it off the ground, and I was like, what I told them was, it's gonna work right away, I think. So like when your episodes, when it was just you, came out, it took off right away. Yeah. But then it goes down when like the— when the novelty wears off, and that's when you've got to like actually develop this skill. And I would actually say Sean, I would say you started out pretty great, but then, and I would say I started out decently as well, decent as well, but then we like developed the skill and that's like when it really starts getting good. And I'm like, don't forget guys, when you start doing this, it's like a skill. This isn't like some people like you were talented, but you still have to like hone this in.

Yeah. And by the way, the best way to do that is just to be a fan of other people's work. Uh, because if you're a fan of other people's work, you'll pick up on the little things that they do. That, um, it's like, man, why do I love this? I love this because blah, blah, blah. And you're never gonna recreate that. But if you see 5 examples, then you start to realize what the bar is and where you need to be. And so it's like, you, you talk about this with copywriting. How do you come up with a better copywriter?

It's actually copy other people's work.

The opposite of what people think. People think you should go learn some secret theories that you don't know, and then you need to like develop your own voice and, and like come up with original content. And it's like, actually that's a really slow way to get better. The way you get better is you do copywork, which is you write other people's— you literally handwrite word for word what somebody who's writing you love, what they do. And, uh, you write that. And I do this, uh, still I do it as a warmup basically. So if I'm gonna write something, I'll first spend 5, 10 minutes. And actually I want, uh, one of the pieces I copywork is yours. You have something that you have this post, it's very hard to find cuz every time I want it, it's so hard for me to go find it again. So you need to like put I'll put this front and center somewhere.

Which part?

But it basically, it starts with, let's, let me be perfectly clear, you're reading this because I want you to.

Yes. I'm making you read this.

That's a good one, right?

Yes.

It's like I'm casting a spell, but I'm not forcing you to do something you don't want to do. You want to know what I'm talking about. And you like write it like that. And so, and I know it because I've copywritten this same thing like a bunch of times. And, um, and I just love that. Let me be perfectly clear. Let's be perfectly clear. It's so good. And then you're like, you're reading this because I want you to. Every line is getting you to further down the slippery slope and you're like, you're explaining what's going on. Uh, so that, that one is brilliant. I love that one that you do. I have another one that's, uh, the Scott Adams one, The Day You Became a Better Writer.

Yeah. He goes, um, in the first sentence is like the most important part of that whole thing.

Right.

I forget the, I forget it. What was it? Do you remember?

I don't know. Ben, Ben, pull that up. But, but basically the, this method is actually applicable to many things. So if you wanna learn, you know, how to play the guitar, you can first learn all the scales and you can learn music theory and then you could try to write original songs. But man, that would be a really hard way to do it. The better way is you take a song you like, you figure out how to play those 4 chords, and you're like, okay, so you play covers, right? Yeah. And you play a shitty cover initially, then you get better and better, then you might add your own twist to it and you go from there. Ben, make that bigger. I can't, I can't, I can't see it. You know, this is What is this, a screen for ants?

So this is written by the guy who created Dilbert, who's a beautiful writer. I can't read it from here. What's that first line?

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in quote-unquote business writing. I couldn't believe how simple it was. I'll tell you the matrix here so you don't have to waste a day in class. It's great.

And then he references the first article and he goes, by the way, the first— what's he say? Uh, the first sentence is like the most important thing. Go reread that sentence up that I wrote when we started this out. I wrote and rewrote that dozens of times.

It makes you curious. That's the key. And then he goes, write short sentences, avoid putting multiple thoughts in one sentence. Readers aren't as smart as you'd think. And he goes on and on. But it's a short, very short post, but it's very good. And so yeah, whether you want to, if you want to learn to cook, first start with recipes, nail those, then do original creations. If you want to learn to play music, first start with covers, then do this. Um, and so like, like for example, I'm, I'm about to teach my power writing course again. So I took like 5 months off and I'm gonna do it again at the end of, uh, end of this month. Um, and in it I have one section which is just the habits you need to become a better writer. And the first one is copywork. And then I make them do copywork right there. And I'm like, I remember asking, I was like, I'm gonna use 10 minutes of our course time for you to write this. Cuz I know if I just tell you to go do this, you're not gonna fucking do it. You're going to feel like it's weird. You're going to say like, okay, I get the idea, but like, I'm not actually going to go do that before I need to write. I'm going to give you one rep at doing this right now. I said, go write, come back. They come back. And I was like, what did it feel like? And they're like, they're like, it's weird. It's like, I feel like my hands aren't my hands. They're their hands. It's like my tongue isn't my tongue. It's their tongue, right? Like my voice. Like I can almost pick up their voice by the time I'm written the third paragraph. It's like if I then switched and was writing my own stuff, it'd be in that voice. And it's like, yeah, that's exactly the point. It's like, it's a hack to getting your stuff to not be flat and boring or cumbersome and like not be stuck with writer's block where you just have an empty page that's intimidating you.

So for Trends, um, they were doing this thing like a contest to see who could launch a product. And I was like, oh, I'll, I'll play, I'll do this. And so I didn't use my Twitter as a way to promote anything because that would've been a little unfair, but I did use my Facebook. And basically I was like, I'm gonna create a copywork course. I think I called it Copy That or something. Nice. And, um, it's just Gumroad. It was for $50. And I just gathered like my 12 favorite bits of copy and I made a PDF and I explained why each part is interesting. And the person who receives one, they receive one every 10 days and they have to write it by hand and they get commentary as to why it's cool. And, uh, I think it's going to be good. I, I'm releasing it in like 3 days and I've been like spending all my time doing it.

That's amazing. That's a great idea. What's, uh, what's the URL for that?

Uh, you, you liked it, so I, I don't want to show the URL yet because that's an unfair advantage or whatever. Yeah, it's an unfair advantage. But if you go to my Facebook, uh, you'll see. But basically I tell the story about how— here, I'll send it to you— about how Ben Franklin used to use copywork and it was one of the best ways to learn how to write. But for some reason we don't do it anymore and I just did what you did where I talked about how you get to feel the texture of other people. It's called, uh, I just, I just call it How to Write Irresistible Copy.

Yeah.

I just sent it to you.

And, uh, there's, there's a lot of, um, it's like, you know, so when I made the Power Writing course, I was like, okay, I'm literally gonna only teach, it's that you have 10 days. My goal was I'm gonna make you a, a like 2 times better at writing in 10 days. That was the mission from the start. And I was like, I don't think it's that hard because most people, they themselves feel like they suck at writing and they kind of do suck at writing. And but like most things, when you haven't tried to get great at something or you don't know how you— how to get great, you're actually not that far away. A couple tweaks will get you double, like twice as good or 3 times as good. And then, you know, to become the best in the world, yeah, that's a whole lifetime of practice. But you can double your skill in pretty much anything if the right guide gives you like the right couple of things to do. And copywriting, uh, copywork is one of those that I was like, this is one of the central ones. And, uh, people aren't gonna believe me, but it works. And so, um, I, yeah, I devote one of my little sections to it in the course. By the way, I should shout out the course name, otherwise they're gonna get mad at me for talking about the course and not telling people go, go, go do it. So I'm teaching it in February. I teach it myself with my bare hands. I, it's live on video, it's recorded if you miss it. Uh, and go to powerwritingcourse.com. And so I think we have like 200 spots. We opened it up like 2 days ago. 100 people took it already.

And wow, really?

If it fills up, yeah.

How many people came the first time? Also 200 people?

I did 160 the first— 150 the first time, and that was capped. Then the second time I did no cap and it was 350 students did it.

Oh my God.

This time I think I'm going to shut it off after 200. But I'm gonna teach it. Yeah, basically I'm gonna teach it, uh, cuz I, I like the slightly smaller group sizes so I can just give a little more feedback myself. Wow. Cuz it takes a lot of work cuz after the thing you write your thing and then I go in Slack and I'll give you like direct feedback on it. And so that takes more time than actually teaching the course or coming up with the content is like going giving people real feedback. So I don't do it for everybody, but after every session I'll give like 15, 20 students direct feedback and then So over the course of the 10 days, you're gonna get it from me at one point.

Dude, that's sick. Uh, yeah, I know, uh, Sarah took the class or did Sarah take it or who? Some, one of my, someone I'm close with took it and they said they loved it. And Gagan, the founder of Maven, said that it was one of the most loved courses.

Yeah, they, they actually have hooked me up. So Maven is, uh, really helping me out cuz they knew I was lazy. I was like, ah, probably never gonna teach it again. They're like, why? It was like one of the highest rated courses. And I was like, well, it's just like, it's work to like, And like, what's the work? I'm like, well, I got to send an email out to be like, join it. I was like, I feel stupid asking. So I'm just like, I just don't want to do it. And they're like, you already made all the content. It's highly rated. All you got to do is send out 2 emails. So they just sent it out on my behalf. I was like, thank you. All right, I'll teach it then. Because I like the actual teaching.

And look at the homepage. So if you go to maven.com, you see Sean. And then right next to him, you see Sarah, my wife. How funny is that?

Does she love teaching it? She did hers, right?

Yeah, she dug it. Yeah.

Is she doing it again?

Yeah, she will.

Yeah, I think that's the trick is to do it regularly because you just get better at teaching it. All right, let's do some other stuff.

Wait, but before we do other stuff, what's his name? Ryan is coming onto the pod. So everyone, Ryan will be on in like 30 minutes.

Ryan is the— he's the founder of Bolt. And so basically Ryan's pretty impressive dude. So I invested in Bolt. He has built two projects that are worth over a billion dollars and he's under like the age of 28. And recently a bunch of people heard, most people hadn't heard of Bolt. And then he went on Twitter and started like, basically he took a, he took shots at Y Combinator and Stripe, like two of the most beloved startup organizations. And he basically was like, they're the mob, they're the mafia. And he's like, and YC is not worth doing and here's why. And so controversy or picking a fight really works. And so, uh, I want to talk to him about, about that and see what he has to say. And I think he's going to bring a couple ideas.

So let's see what happens. Let's talk— you want to talk about Dan Price? Well, what's your crazy Dan Price story?

Well, okay, most people probably don't know this. So, so you— I think you know because you wrote about it in 2015, which is way ahead of the curve.

So listen to this.

You explain this and let me tell you my piece.

Let me explain how this, how this happened. So I'm reading— so we have this document and Sean was like writing in the document right before we started and he wrote crazy Dan Price story. I don't know what that is.

That's our little secret. We, we We write the topic so you get the other person curious, but you don't, you don't fill in the details so they don't know what you're going to say. So the reaction's authentic.

Yes. So I don't know what you're going to say, but in 2015 I wrote this article and the headline said, so Dan Price is the guy who kind of looks like Jesus. He's based out of Portland. I think he's the guy who famously said, from now on everyone, the minimum wage at our company is $70,000 a year. I'm reducing my salary. The headline to the article I wrote in 2015, which at the time and still has not gotten picked up a lot, it says, Dan Price, the Gravity Payments CEO paying everyone $70,000 is full of shit. Turns out 90% of the Dan Price story is completely made up, but he's making a fool of all of us. And, and basically I like wrote about how there's like 3 things that are very weird that happened with the story. And a lot of this, by the way, is opinion. Some of it's facts, but there's a lot of, uh, allegations. So, so take that for what it's worth. But a few things. One, prior to him raising everyone else's salary to $70,000, he was paying himself $1.1 million. And that's for a company that was only doing $16 million in revenue. Well, why is that weird? Well, because he was being sued by his brother and his brother was suing him. The brother was suing Dan, who's a co-founder. The two brothers were founders. Was suing Dan for pay. Dan was paying himself too much money. And it's kind of like—

the brother had a profit share. The brother was not active full-time, so he didn't take a salary or had a small salary. He was there for the profits. Funny thing was, there's no profits because the brother is taking a humongous salary and reducing profits to like zero.

So that's why the brother quit. So Dan goes, oh well, and I don't want to share the profit, so just boost my salary. And then immediately the brother sues Dan. And so he's like, oh, well, maybe we should reduce my salary and everyone's salary. I'm going to make this. And second and worse, he was accused of— listen to this sentence— Dan Price is accused of repeatedly waterboarding and beating his wife. And on October 28th, this was, I think, 2015, his ex-wife gave a TED Talk where she talked about how Dan was punching her in the stomach and slapping her in the face, and she had to go lock herself in the car because she was afraid that he was going to, like, kill her. So like crazy stuff. So anyway, I— this is allegations, but like if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

There is allegedly a duck.

Yes. There's just a few things. And then here's another funny thing Price said of himself. I'm just so sick of the attention. It just feels a lot like it feels like such a big investment of yourself. There's this episode of The Office where Michael Scott was like, these people wanted to talk to him about this thing going on Dunder Mifflin. And he goes, man, I was amazed. You know, I was like, I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but like the media was contacting me, so I decided to call a radio station and I did it. And I called this other radio station. I did an interview. And, you know, like, it's just crazy that they're all coming to me. That's like what Dan's like. He's like, I'm sick of the attention. Why is everyone coming?

He runs ads promoting the story of the CEO who reduced his salary and everybody else in the company makes $70,000 minimum wage and he's like barefoot. And then even further, you know, the guy doesn't wear shoes. He loves the earth and he loves the world. And he says all CEOs are too greedy. You know, be like me. And then his employees— I don't know if you heard this part. This is after your— this is after 2015. So you probably didn't have this in your thing. There's this video that goes viral of his employees gifting him a Tesla because they're like, Dan, you've sacrificed so much.

Oh my God, you have.

You have so little. We're going to give you this Tesla. So they all pitched in and bought him a Tesla and he's like crying. He's overwhelmed.

Blah blah blah.

So they got fooled because basically, so yeah, he pays himself a high, high salary. Brother gets mad, brother, whatever. He ends up buying his brother out at a discount, cuts his salary, still takes the money as a profit. Like, he still gets the profits from the company as the, as the owner of the company, but it's not a W-2 salary. It's not a salary. So it's actually even more tax advantageous. It's just like, you know, Zuck takes a $1 salary because he gets paid in stock. Stock. Um, you know, it's crazy. And then he, and then he makes bank. Oh, he does $50,000 speaking gigs, doesn't share that with anybody. He has a $500,000 book deal because of his like story about, you know, CEO greed and, uh, you know, friggin waterboarded his wife. I was like, this is crazy. Like what, what is going on? Um, this is a crazy story to me. And it just reminds me of like anytime somebody really goes out of their way to tell you how virtuous they are, You can pretty much take it to the bank that they are— they are overcompensating for something, that they are not as virtuous as, uh, as the effort that they're taking to tell you how virtuous they are.

It's like Fox News saying fair and balanced. It's like, dude, like, don't piss on my back and tell me it's rain. Like, don't lie to me. Like, just be you. That's fine.

Piss on my leg. Who pisses on your back? Piss on my leg and tell me.

Just like, be honest. Like, like, so Like, this whole thing that his whole shtick, the wife thing, is like, if that's true, that's obviously, that's its own category, and that's unforgivable. But the whole, uh, pay thing, it's like, dude, like, it's kind of like, it's kind of like Lance Armstrong. A lot of people aren't mad that Lance Armstrong took the drugs. They're mad that he was so cocky about it that he did a commercial saying, what am I on? I'm on my bike 8 hours a day, busting my ass. What are you on? And then he He sued a guy who was accusing him of taking drugs. It's like, dude, that was the part that was a little like when you went overboard.

And that's like, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

For— yes, the cover-up is worse than the crime.

Yeah, that's crazy. Okay, so I want to do a couple other random things. I want to talk about this, this business I heard about that I think is kind of amazing. I don't know if you looked into it, but it's called Canna. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Uh, maybe. Tell me more.

All right, so this guy, uh, David Friedberg, who's gotten really pop— he went from like, you know, didn't have a Twitter account to now very popular because he's on— he's one of the 4 people on the All In podcast, which is a pretty popular podcast. Um, you know, if they're— you know, if we're not the best podcast in the world, you know, they're the second best type of thing. You know, they're, they're a great podcast. So basically it's Chamath, it's Jason Calacanis, it's David Sachs, and then it's this guy Friedberg. Pretty much everybody had heard— everybody in the tech world had heard of the other three. Nobody knew about Friedberg. And Friedberg has been like the, the, like, you know, the revelation. He's actually, you know, my favorite one on the pod and many people's favorite one on the pod. Why is that? Well, he's kind of got like a science background and he's an engineer slash like scientist who goes into business. And so the first business he built was called Climate Corporation. And it ended up— it was basically telling farmers about weather. It was like weather data and kind of like giving farmers, uh, information about what they should be doing with their crops and things like that. So it was like a data company for farmers. I, I don't know a ton about it, but I think that's any—

and, and I think they raised a relatively small sum for the amount of which they sold for, right?

So actually, I should go back. He was early Google, pre-IPO. He was like, uh, one of Larry Page's favorite people, the founder and CEO of Google. At the time, and he was working on special projects for them. Then he left. He starts Climate Corporation, ends up selling it to Monsanto, the big evil, you know, whatever company in the agriculture space.

Like a billion.

Then he starts— yeah, for like a billion dollars. Then he starts this company that's— what's it called?

Last Metro Mile.

So it's an insurance company and it was a pretty innovative idea. It's like, get in your car and instead of like, if you don't drive your car much, why should you pay the same amount for insurance as somebody who drives a ton, right? So it was like pay-per-mile insurance. And even better, it was like they install a little thing in your car or whatever. It could basically see, do you speed a lot or not? If you don't speed a lot, you should pay less for insurance. So it's like a dynamic form of insurance. That was a cool idea. Ended up going public in a SPAC, and then famously the SPAC kind of has crashed since then.

It's, it's been obliterated.

It got obliterated. It got bought by Lemonade for, you know, like a third of what it went public for.

So, you know, not a great— is $209. Its previous market cap was like $4 billion.

Yeah. So, uh, so ended up getting acquired, you know, whatever. The public story wasn't great, but, you know, built a company that ended up going, you know, generating hundreds of millions of dollars. Uh, so, so anyways, another good win. So now he's got a new company. So he actually, he has a, he has like an incubator for himself called The Production Board. And basically it's like not VC, it's like Google backed it for like a billion dollars or something crazy. And then BlackRock and a couple others backed it for, so it's, it's raised a ton of money and all it does is it builds its own companies in-house. One of the companies that they just announced I think is really cool. So anyways, that's a bunch of backstory. And by the way, I think I got like a third of that wrong, but whatever, you get the general idea of who the guy is. So his new company is pretty dope and it's this trend I've been trying to follow, which is 3D printing, but it's basically printing beverages at home. So what does that mean? They're going to give people a machine. So you buy this machine and think of it like a printer and it sits in your kitchen. And when you want to have a drink, whether that's you want, you know, like a LaCroix, you want sparkling water with lemon flavor, you want a hot tea, you want a White Claw with alcohol in it, you want a white wine, whatever drink you want, you push a button and it'll dispense that beverage for you. And it does this because they basically realize— and he tells a story, it's pretty dope. He tells a story that like Um, he was at a dinner and the scientist is there and the scientist kind of educating him on this. He's like, you know, almost every drink is all water, right? So juice is like 94% water, uh, Coca-Cola is like 95% water, wine is like 95% water, everything's like 90+ percent water. And the la— and then, you know, it's like X percent sugar and alcohols, and then like 1% is the flavoring that gives it the unique taste that makes it tastes like iced tea to you, and it's only 1% of what's actually in the beverage. And it's like, so isn't it crazy that we like have factories that produce, you know, we go, we get all these like chemicals and water and whatnot, we put it in a factory, then we put it into bottles, then we put the bottles on a truck and we truck it to a store, it sits on their shelf, then you drive to that store, you take it off that shelf, you drive it home, you put it on your shelf at home, and it's in a bottle plastic thing that then goes into the, you know, recycling or the trash. Wow, that's a lot for like something that's basically water. And we all have water in our own homes piped, you know, already through the water system. So like, why, why instead of doing this central manufacturing and like kind of brutalizing the environment and having this high cost, why can't I just add the flavoring at the endpoint at your home using the water that you already have and create these beverages on the fly? And so after years of like R&D and testing, they've basically got it to the fact where here's what they do. The machine basically takes your water, And it can either make the water really cold, really hot, or carbonated. And then it has 3 cartridges. There's a sugar cartridge, there's an alcohol cartridge, and then there's the flavor cartridge. And all you do is you just select what drink you want and it'll say, okay, we're going to put out like 1 microliter of, you know, um, of this ascorbic acid, because that's what gets you the soda taste. And then we're going to add some sugar and then we got no alcohol because it's a soda. Or if it's a white wine, it's gonna be like, here's the alcohol, a little bit of sugar, and then here's the flavoring that's gonna give it that, you know, the, the, the, the palate of, uh, of a white wine. And so, and the idea is that with those 3 cartridges, you can make basically an infinite combination of, of drinks. Cuz one, the, the flavor cartridge itself has like 85 different flavors inside of it that can be mixed and matched. And so I think this is kind of amazing. It's gonna be like, let's say you could pull this off. Now all of a sudden we're not buying bottled drinks everywhere. We're just able to, at our endpoint, have any drink we want for any— you know, my mom wants tea, my dad wants wine, I want soda, and my wife wants flavored water. She— we can all get that out of the same device for a fraction.

It's like a— it's like a better Coke Freestyle machine, you know?

That's exactly the analogy. I love those at-home mini Freestyle that can do 10, 10 times more than what the Freestyle could do.

I used to go to the movie theater near my place in San Francisco. I would never see a movie, but I would walk into the lobby just to get a Coke from the Freestyle machine because you could make Coke Zero Cherry Vanilla or Coke Zero Orange Vanilla, and I loved it. And it's the only place you could do that. And so I tried to get one for my office, and the terms were ridiculous. It was something like $100 a month for life, or like, it's like a, it's like a crazy, like, it's It's— they make it challenging to get a Freestyle machine, and they are so cool and they are so good. And so this is just like a home Freestyle machine, but for every drink ever, right?

Yeah, because, you know, like, as kids we used to go to like the normal soda fountain that has like 10 spouts, and it's like you do the rainbow, you just put all of them in the cup, and it's like, oh, that's how I want my drink, right? And Freestyle took it one step further because you could be like, I want orange, I want like— it's a long tail of flavor. So you could be like, I like black cherry Mountain Dew, and I might be only 0.1%. So like Mountain Dew can't afford to bottle that because they're like, dude, it's such a small market. But with this, it's like the long tail of flavors gets done. And so the analogy is like, it's like TV. So back when we had 3 channels, they could only program the most general stuff that the average consumer's gonna want. So if you're a fishing enthusiast, then we only have 3 channels on TV. It's not gonna work for you. But then you get cable and now you get, you know, hundreds of channels, let's say. So now there's a dedicated fishing channel. But then let's say then YouTube comes along and YouTube's like, no, we can literally— anybody can create from their own home. And now we'll have every variation. So you want only bass fishing in Spanish because you're a Spanish speaker? Well, now there's a channel for you. And, um, and so that's the same idea, the way that we did it with content, where once the means of production went to the home, now you got every single supply-demand, like, niche got filled. Uh, that's gonna happen now with beverages where every flavor is gonna be done. And even better, you get the economic savings, you get the environmental savings, you get the flavor personalization, right? Like, start— one of the reasons Starbucks is so successful is 'cause my wife can go in there and order a venti skinny, you know, latte, half decaf with oat milk, light ice, and blah, blah, blah. And with, you know, one packet of stevia. And it's like, her drink is her drink. And Starbucks is willing to do that. Whereas you go to, you know, a normal coffee shop, you can't get, can't get that done. So that's gonna be at the home. And even further now, it also creates a business model for, so like me and you, we could basically say, uh, let's say Sam loves root beer. We could create My First Million Root Beer. All we do, we don't have to find a manufacturer and a bottler and a whatever. All we do is we just create a recipe. It's a piece of software. It's like, it's like a piece of content. You know, it's a— it's just like 3 variables, and we could just send it to your device and you could print it out for, you know, 55 cents.

Great.

And we would get our share of the royalty from everybody who does that. And so all of a sudden you're gonna see, just like The Rock made his own tequila and so did George Clooney, you know, that will go down to— you don't need 100 million followers to do that. You could now have 10,000 followers on Instagram and create your own beverage, and people could print it at home and you could get your share of that. How cool.

First of all, diet root beer is one of the best sodas of all time because it has no caffeine, so you can drink it at any hour of the day. It's not Sprite. Sprite's wack. And it's diet, no calories. And it's like creamy. It's the best.

The second point was it's not Sprite.

Well, because like you could do— I used to drink diet like 7-Up sometimes, but like that's like some ratchet stuff. But it's got it just— that's kind of weak. That's like a refreshing— I want like a hearty, creamy thing. So I used to drink a diet root beer a day, but for some reason in San Francisco, I could only find it in the Asian neighborhood. So my office, the Craigslist office, was in an Asian neighborhood. And so I've always wondered, like, do Asian people love it? What they were, um, the Vietnamese grocery store always had the best selection of diet root beers. They had like 4 different types. Uh, anyway, I love diet root beer.

Sam gets a 23andMe test. Yeah.

Just to know.

It's like a little nom in me.

Yeah. The, um, the second thing is we used to have this lit list of, um, companies that you should work at in order to like get rich that are growing. I would put this on that list. And what was the name of his, uh, TPB, the Production Board?

And it's basically like, I think the theory is like we have to produce real things for the world to move, to work. And what if we could rethink the way that production happens in these different systems? So Okay, how does quinoa get made? How does— how do beverages get made? How does, you know, like this one fertilizer get made? And if we can find a way to use new technologies to like improve the means of production, those are all big industries. I think that they've got overall thesis, lab-generated protein or like lab-generated meat. I guess he's a vegan, for example. So he's like, you know, he agreed with me, which is he said something that's pretty controversial. He's like, I think that the way people will look back on what we do with animals and see it as worse than slavery. And then people got really mad at him for saying that. And he's like, no, like, just— I meant it. Okay, I'm not saying it's— it is worse than human slavery. I'm saying that the scale of mass murder that happens on an everyday basis, there's no comparable to it.

I'm on board with that. The other day I ordered— I ate 15 hot wings and I was like, I just ate 7 and a half chickens.