If you’re in your 40s, build a business on these trends.
Sam and Sean identify six business trends for entrepreneurs in their 40s: the collapse of alcohol consumption and rise of non-alcoholic alternatives, compact home-gym hardware like Voltra, AI-enabled physical products from meeting recorders to sex-tech, the podcast market's shift toward clips, peptide bio-hacking, and sports-betting platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.
Chapters
All right, Sam, today I got 6 trends that I'm watching that I want to tell you about. My spidey sense is tingling on these trends, and I just need somebody to talk to. And you're my guy.
How masculine of you to say it's tingling. I love that.
My spidey sense is throbbing right now. I'm going to call my doctor after this. All right, first one. Alcohol is in the gutter. So I sent you this tweet. So it says spirit inventories are soaring, and it shows Campari and, uh, you know, a bunch of other spirit brands that honestly I don't know how to pronounce because they're kind of French. But basically, from 2011 to 2025, there's this up and to the right trend. It's basically a measure of inventory as a percentage of sales. And so it goes from like what used to be under 20% to, in some of these cases, like 60%, 70%, 80%. You know, it's a crazy, crazy rise. And this lines up, um, with, I guess, my lived experience in our social circle, our age group. Drinking ain't cool anymore. Being healthy is cool, and drinking isn't cool.
When are you going to learn that when you see me do something health-wise, you should just expect that it's going to be popular in 3 years? I, I gave up booze in 2013 or '14, I think '14. So yes, I didn't actually think this was going to be that popular. I did not think that this was going to be a trend. But we actually wrote about this. We had a— my old company, The Hustle, had a newsletter called Trends, and we wrote about the rise of nonalcoholic beer. And it was actually Steph Smith, who we all know is an amazing person, very smart. She pitched me this idea and I was like, I don't, I don't buy it. I think this is insane. I don't— I really don't believe it. But go ahead, write the article. And she— so a lot of guys, a lot of people have been calling this. And I actually, even though I'm sober, I did not think that this was going to be as real as it is.
And so I think there's an interesting question, which is I don't think people fundamentally just become better, better behaving over time. I think they substitute.
Yeah, they're just using drugs.
Yeah. So what's the substitute? I think is the interesting question, right? So you had, you had non-alcoholic, non-alcoholic beers. We had, I think, the guy from, what is it called, Athletic Brewing Co. on the podcast.
Yeah, they're awesome.
We, you know, Kin Spirits. There's been all these like startup brands that are in the non-alcoholic space. But then you have just substitutes, straight substitutes. So weed, it's probably a winner. Where else have people gone? Where are people getting the behavior? What jobs to be done were done by alcohol that are now being done by something else? Like, is it literally just TikTok scrolling, right? Like, people are literally just not going out because they're at home on their phones. And when you're not going out, you're not drinking as much.
What I'm noticing in my life is, so I, you know, I could never tell if I only hang out with people who don't drink because I don't drink. Right. Or if it's like truly popular or less popular. But zyn, I mean nicotine, some type of like non-smoke nicotine. So vaping, I mean, although none of my friends vape, but everyone does do some type of like zyn. The second one is the rise of psychedelics. So I have just a crazy amount of friends that are regularly and I mean like every 6 months doing some type of like journey that they call it, which I think has like a different set of issues. But then I think like exercise, to be honest. Like, it just seems like more people are like into exercising.
Have you seen this company called Ultra? I think they're kind of like a Zen-type company. So Ultra, founded in 2025, which is last year, just raised $11 million to scale non-nicotine focus pouches. So they basically taken the nicotine thing, but they're branding it as like a focus tool. And, um, they've already sold 1 million cans in 6 months and claims the position number 1 amongst nicotine-free pouches globally. While Zyn dominates the nicotine pouch market, Ultra is targeting a different segment: high performers who want cognitive enhancement without addiction. It's a $16 can. Their round is led by blah blah blah. I think Austin Reef maybe is in this, or he was definitely—
he was bragging about it.
Yeah, he's very bullish on this, uh, company.
The, the website says powering top performers at Facebook, Goldman, Sequoia. Like, it's pretty funny that like that is considered cool now.
Your cracked-out friend's secret weapon.
Listen, when you and I were just getting started in San Francisco, it used to be a thing that people would protest at the Google bus. And I even remember there was an era where they were flipping over smart cars because they thought that smart cars, like, represented, like, techies for some reason. I don't— I don't understand that. But do you remember that? Now, now they're trying to be cool by saying that people who work at Ramp chew our nicotine. That's just crazy. Times have changed.
By the way, you were also early on the nicotine trend.
Yeah, except I dipped. I was a, I was a, I was a Skoal guy. I loved, I loved tobacco.
I remember before we went on stage, we were doing our first live show in Vancouver or Victoria, and me and you didn't really have a good idea of what we were getting into. And we saw that this like entire theater full, like, I don't know, 2,000, 3,000 people, but it looked grand.
Like, it was overwhelming.
You have a photo of it. It's like, you know, 4 stories high of people, and it's a dark theater or whatever. And we peek out from behind the curtain. You see that? And then immediately it was me, you, and Andrew, and both of you started scrambling for drugs. You were both like, go get a pouch. Can somebody go get a— can you run across the street real quick and get a nicotine pouch? And I was like, what do you even— is that like— did you not need that till 2 seconds ago? What is happening right now? And then you both popped in a pouch and then went on stage. It was incredible.
Yeah, that's a substitute. And I think then I was actually— I would just swallow the nicotine spit. You just stick it in there and you just swallow it. That's like what the, what the hard Southerners do. Yeah. But the lack of alcohol to bring it back to that, um, that is a bit surprising that it's so widespread, but I haven't been around like drunk people in so long. Have you?
No, but I just assumed it's cause I'm like in dad mode. I didn't realize how, you know, like I thought these are all bubbles, right? So I thought, oh, myself and just kind of dad mode. What? Yeah, I'm not drinking out there. Then I thought, well, my tech friends were all biohacking Brian Johnson, but we're in a bubble. But then you see this, and this is the global inventory stock of these alcohol companies. And it made me realize, like, maybe this behavior is not just limited to my bubble. It's taking place in the broader community because we're, we're all too small of a group to affect, you know, the actual trend lines.
If I had to guess, it's going to be cyclical. If I had to guess, this will make a comeback.
Similar to black turtlenecks under jackets.
Well, look, Sean, bringing that one back single-handedly, uh, a turtleneck is a pedestal for the face, and I'm just trying to show off what God gave me.
Put it on a pedestal.
I like it.
Remember you said pedestal, which took away some of that, that unisex quack that you had there. Um, all right, can I give you a 10 degrees in New York City?
Listen, there's this article that I read about a turtleneck. It said when a man wears a turtleneck, he's asserting or he's advancing the situation. And that situation is himself.
He's advancing the situation. That's incredible. Wow. That's the best branding since, the actual Situation from the Jersey Shore, which was, which was an all-time nickname he gave himself.
All right. So a lot of people watch and listen to the show because they want to hear us just tell them exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. Now, a lot of people message Sean and I and they say, all right, I want to start something on the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea? And again, what they're really just saying is just give me the ideas. Well, my friends, you're in luck. So my old company, The Hustle, they put together 100 different side hustle ideas and they have appropriately called it the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's a list of 100 pretty good ideas, frankly. I went through 'em. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start 'em, how to grow 'em, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So check it out. It's called the Side Hustle Idea Database. It's in the description below. You'll see the link, click it, check it out. Let me know in the comments what you think.
Let me give you a better one. All right. Voltra. Another trend you might've been early to as a, uh, former fitness influencer.
So yeah, I could tell you all about that.
I heard this for the first time when we were doing a podcast with Hormozy. And you do the podcast with Hormozy. I go to his office and we're talking, and we talked for probably, I don't know, 2 to 3 hours, something like that. So we talked about a lot of business stuff. But by the end, I'm sort of out of asking him about business stuff, and I want to talk to him about other stuff. So I asked him, I said, what are you nerding out about? What are you really like? What are you really interested in that's like letting your freak flag fly? Like, what's getting you off here on the nerd level? And he goes, Voltra. I forget what he called it. There's a category for these. He's like, I don't know what the term is, but it's like resistance-based, blah, blah, blah. So he tells me about this device, this fitness piece of gym equipment. And the way he said it was like, some guy's Instagram feed is sports, some guy's Instagram feed is girls. My Instagram feed is just niche gym equipment. So he goes, this thing is incredible. So he was telling me about this, and I thought it was pretty fascinating. So I filed that away. I took a look at it, filed it away. So I was watching this guy that was in Home Gym Reviews or something like that.
Mitchell. So I want to tell you all about Coop.
Yeah, he was talking about it. Somebody else was talking about it. And then in general, like, all of my training has been like the number of times my trainer has said the word eccentric load. I'm just like, okay, I don't know what— I don't know why the eccentric load is so important, but it's definitely super important and the two go together. So what's— let's explain what it is.
Yeah. So basically, if you're looking at it, it looks like it's the size of a red brick, like for building a house. It looks about that size. And so if you imagine you have a home gym or any gym and you have a squat rack, imagine having this brick that you could attach to various points of the squat rack and then you could attach a pulley or a handle to it. And it's sort of like a portable cable machine, except instead of a cable machine, it's just this brick-sized pulley that I imagine is magnetically creating resistance. So you could say make this 400 pounds worth of weight and you pull, but it it's special because it's very precise, I believe.
Right. So there's a couple of things there. One is you nailed it. It's a Bowflex that's the size of like a shoebox or even smaller than a shoebox, which is pretty cool to put a cable machine inside of such a small thing. So there's— first point is small, small footprint. That's a big deal because most gym equipment is enormous and bulky. The second thing is that you can change the, the precision you're talking about specifically is you can change where the resistance happens. So let's say I go pick up a pair of dumbbells. If it's 60 pounds, then it's 60 pounds on the way up of my curl. It's 60 pounds on the way down of my curl, right? There's no difference there. But the way your muscles work is that the, the, the cur— let's say the curling up, which is the concentric part of the motion, and the eccentric, which is the bringing it back down, you actually have totally different strengths. So your eccentric can typically hold, have like, I don't know, somewhere between 20% and 60% more load than your concentric. But if you're picking a pair of dumbbells, well, you just got to pick the one— you're sort of limited by your weaker part, which is your concentric load. So what's actually happening is that the more important part of the movement, the eccentric load, you're actually undertraining because you're limited by what you could— what you were able to curl. Now, what this machine does, which is kind of great, is that it lets you change the weight. So you could say, hey, on the way up, give me 100 pounds, but on the way down, make it 150. And so that precision of changing the, the curve of where the resistance happens in the movement, apparently you get like incredible progress and gains from this. Now, I don't know how real that is. Like, I, I don't wanna make a claim that I can't back up. I've never used this device, but in theory, that makes total sense to me. And I think this is kind of a game changer on multiple fronts. So that's, it's a game changer in size. Because now you can have a piece of equipment anywhere.
Well, you still need like, like a— you still need an anchor. So you still need like a squat rack.
But it could be a wall, it could be a tree, it could be like anything. It doesn't need to be a squat rack.
It could be a tree. Yeah. As long as it could hold like, as long as it could hold like 300 or 200 pounds worth of force. Yeah.
I think it goes up to— I think the max resistance is like 200, I think, on their main, main skewer.
Yeah. But if like you could use this in lieu of a bench press, so you could actually use it as a bench press, but you would need two of them, one on each side.
Right. So, like, so the, so the size is a big deal. The potential gains you could get by changing the eccentric and concentric loads. And then the third is the weight of it. So the bulk of the cost of gym equipment is in the fact that you're shipping, like, 1,000 pounds to someone's house whenever you have to do this, or 1,000 pounds to a gym. And now if you have this thing the size of a brick, well, it's also the weight of a brick, pretty much, because the resistance is from the cable pulley, not from, like, actual weight in the box. So I think this is a big deal. This might like change the way that gyms are made, home gyms work.
It actually comes with a battery. You charge it. So the way the technology works is it has some type of battery and you have to— but you do have to charge it, I think, after every session. But it is incredible how you can get 200 or 300— I think it's 200 pounds, like you said, 200 pounds of force from like a thing that's this small.
Well, I think I just sold myself on it on this, on this pod. I'm, I'm very curious about something like this.
Did you go down this rabbit hole with, uh, when you were making your home gym?
I tried to go down the rabbit hole. It was the wrong rabbit hole because the people who are interested in this, they're too interested in the gym equipment, whereas I'm interested in like the MTV Cribs, or what's it called, like Pimp My Ride. It's like, hey, how do I turn a kind of generic space into a cool space very quickly? And what are like most bang for my buck materials? I'm not trying to stuff it with equipment because the way I train, like our training model is much more functional anyways, movement-based. It's not— I don't want 15 bulky, like static machines or racks that I need to work on.
Yeah, look, on one hand I'm like, dude, 45 pounds is 45 pounds regardless of like how nice it is. And like I lift things up and I put them down. That's like what the exercise is. But then on the other side, there's like gadget nerds, of which I am one of those guys. And so I'm in the category of people who just love browsing this gym stuff. There's this guy named Coop Mitchell that I met, I think in 2020 because— or '19 when I was building my home gym. And he's been reviewing stuff for years and it's a really good channel and it was hilarious. Hermosi did this video with him and this was the one time where I've seen Alex like, can you— he was asking the questions like, you know, he's always— people are always asking him questions and it was really cool. And they were nerding out for about 30 minutes about this Vultro thing.
Well, you were, you were my version of this because when I was building my home gym, I was like, hey, tell me what I need to do. And you were like, hey, I was like, what do I need to do for the flooring?
Horse stall mats. Yeah.
You were like, hey, get these horse mats. It's go to this barn website and get these things that horses like poop on or stand on. And I was like, what?
Are you sure?
And I bought them. They're amazing. They're great.
They're amazing. Yeah.
If they get out of, what do you call it, like alignment or out of shape.
I have a solution for that.
Total pain for that. Oh, okay. I need this. What's the solution?
So you, have you ever looked inside of like a garage or, or a barn there when, when, when the, when it comes together where the 2x4s come together to form the, um, the angle of like the home, they usually use this like piece of metal that has nails on it. You put those on the bottom of the mat. So you lift the mats up and you put these little things and it nails them down.
So then they don't move.
Is that the idea? Yeah. Imagine a thing that looks like a Post-it note, but that Post-it note is made outta metal. And on top of the metal, on top of the Post-it note part is like tons of little like tacks, like little like, uh, little, little, uh, nails. And so you just set it on, you set it on the ground, you put the mats on top of it so it like comes like the seam comes together and then you just smack it down really hard.
I see. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. I needed that.
Uh, I think it's called a, uh, you'll find it in the roofing section of Home Depot. What's, what's the third trend?
Next trend, physical AI. All right. So, um, I think you're going to hear this phrase a lot. And I think people, when they normally say it, they're saying it for robots. They're talking about Optimus. They're talking about, uh, the Figure robot. They're talking about like humanoid robots. I'm talking about something different. I'm talking about almost like these gimmick devices where you— can you just put AI in anything? So here's an example. Uh, have you ever seen, uh, ads for this thing called Plaud?
No.
No, I could use a better name. P-L-A-U-D. I bought this thing. I don't use it. Just, this is like an anti-endorsement. I don't use it. I think it's kind of junk, but this company has done $100 million in revenue on this device.
Oh, I have heard of this. I, the, the promise of it is amazing.
It's so, and maybe it's better now. I maybe ordered the early version and it was definitely like the wish.com, like type of experience. But the premise of this is it looks like a business card almost, or this is what it did. It looked like a business card. but it basically is like a physical meeting recorder. So you could bring this to any meeting, you could put this on the table and it'll record your conversation. It's something you could use for your own notes, just talking out loud at your home office. Or, um, again, if you're at a, at a, at a meeting with somebody, I think the big use case actually that they say is student notes. So students bring this to class lectures, and I think that's where they found like really fast growth was, oh cool, if I go to class, this thing will record it, it'll transcribe it. It's like. What, uh, Fathom and some of these other, like, um, meeting recorders are doing for the business world, they were doing for classrooms. So this thing kind of took off, and I think there's a lot of things in this genre. So there's teddy bears, where, um, now your teddy bear comes with essentially, like, ChatGPT inside. So, um, I have a couple of these, like, for my kids. Again, still all in the janky state, nothing that I would be like, this is good yet. But it's definitely where the puck is going. Wasn't one of them incubated in your buddy's, uh, yeah, F Inc has one that was being incubated there.
It had the best launch video I've ever seen. It was basically this like, like nerdy engineer type, uh, guy like sitting there and then the bear was saying like, Farcon, you're, you're such a nerd. You're always talking to a bunch of robots. And he's like this like nerdy guy's like having a conversation with a robot. It was hilarious.
Yeah. Uh, that's the idea. So, um, it's a talking toy. I think, uh, Fatim is the guy who's probably been at it. It's called magicaltoys.com is the name of theirs. They gave me like a really early prototype of this thing. Like you could literally, it's like the bear on the front. And then there was like a control, control board, like dangling out the back, like open wires. So, you know, I got like the earliest prototype. So I don't know how good the newest one is, but again, this is where the world is going where. Your toys are going to be able to talk to your kids, to teach your kids. They're going to be interactive in an open-world way. So a lot of toys today are interactive, but it's just hardcoded. Like, you push this button, it sings Itsy Bitsy Spider. You push this button, it's going to say hello. Well, these toys can do anything. And so once this works, it's going to be kind of amazing. When my kids ride in our car, we have a Tesla, and Tesla has AI built in. And so I would say on half the rides, we just pop her— pop the AI open, and we're like, hey, We're playing guess the animal, like come up with, you know, come up with animals we're going to guess. Or, uh, how does, like, you know, where does the earth come from? Right? Or like, you know, questions my son has that I'm like, ah, this is pretty hard to say. Like, what's older, the, you know, the sun or the moon? You know, things like that. And then she explained where did, who invented chocolate? We learned this the other day. Do you know who invented chocolate, by the way?
No idea.
So this is kind of a crazy story. Thank you, AI, for telling me this story in the car. So chocolate was, uh, initially they took the cocoa beans. I was like, where does chocolate come from? It's like, oh, there's like cacao trees, like a nasty bean, right? It's like a big nasty bean. It's bitter. But then if you roast it and you do whatever, and then you add sugar, you add butter, you add all this stuff, it becomes like milk chocolate that we all like. So I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Yeah. How does money—
who would have thought of that? Who would have took the nut and like got to chocolate bar at the end? Like, that sounds like an insane leap. And AI was like, well, here's the progression. Actually, first they took the, the cacao thing and then they put it just in a drink and it was a spicy kind of bitter drink, more like a coffee, but they thought it had these like benefits. And so it was really popular for that. So then this doctor named like something Fry, he believed in the medical benefits of the drink. And then his, he had stopped being a doctor and his family had made an industrial plant to make the drink. But in order to increase demand, he had this idea to experiment to turn it into a bar, like a snack bar. And then the bar was too bitter. Like the bitterness was okay in the drink form, but it wasn't that good in the bar form. So he's like, well, just add a shit ton of sugar to this and like, see if we can make this good. And he created the chocolate bar.
That's pretty awesome.
Um, so physical AI, small little either, you know, one-off devices, baking chips into toys, chips into different, different objects in the house. I think this is going to become more and more popular.
When you said physical AI, there's this guy who just applied to join Hampton. It's called thehandy.com. Have you seen The Handy?
I think I've been to this website. Might be saved, bookmarked. All right, I'm here. What am I looking at? Someone male interact— oh, okay. All right, it was what you were joking about. I thought that was like a— oh yeah, get your mind out of the gutter. It's actually going to save lives.
Nope.
It's not.
Uh, no, I'm like, I'm being as clinical as one could be. I'm just gonna read you exactly what it says. The number one male interactive stroker, the top-rated male sex toy with perfect sync to adult videos on VR.
Top-rated how and where is what I want to know. Let's get some source cited on that.
But it says that— it says they've sold 200,000 of these things, like, on the website.
So this guy applies to Hampton and you're like, instant acceptance, skip the application process, come on in.
Well, we like do these weekly meetings where we discuss like who has applied and like, do we have a good group for them or not? And it's pretty funny to be like, yeah, like the Handy Guy. It's just kind of a, yeah, it's definitely weird, but it's pretty funny.
There's a tab on their website. So it's like products, bundles, accessories, and then the last tab of the navigation menu just goes, oh, Oh man, this is weird.
Oh, I think I know what they're saying this is.
So I don't think this is AI, but, uh, but maybe it could be someday.
What's the, uh, fourth?
Okay. So my next trend is too many podcasts, too little time. So I don't know if you've seen—
is that what a trend means?
This insane explosion in the number of high-quality podcasts done by high-quality people. So there's one that this guy did with his, he, the, the podcast was, um, from this guy, T, T. I. Morris, T. I. Morris. It's a podcast called Relentless. So just shout out to him. I don't know him, but, uh, I thought it caught my eye.
I've had so many people, uh, like reach out. There's a guy named Mark Brazil who I like. He's got a podcast and he was like, does everyone know how much money can be made in podcasting? Like all these people are like discovering this about how strong this medium is for engagement. All right.
So look at this podcast. Do you see what I'm looking at?
Yeah. With like, you get a Cybertruck tonight if you can get a training run on these GPUs in 24 hours.
So this guy, just describe what you're seeing. Wow.
He's actually recording a podcast outside on a huge building.
Yeah. And I think, by the way, it's not that hard. Like, I think what he's doing is, you know, like these apartment complexes in San Francisco where like, there's like a, oh, we have like a rooftop thing with like a shuffleboard and like a grill. That nobody's going to use because it's like cold. And but if you had friends, which you don't, but if you did, they could hang out here, but they won't because it's cold.
Our version of that, when Sean and I like started making like a podcast, it was let's just make our love seats bright red.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. We were like cavemen in the podcasting game right now. So this guy basically has this like fireside chat literally by the fire. He's talking to some, like a technical staff member at XAI. The guy's sharing a bunch of like Elon stories. So you know what? I'm in. Guess what? Guess what? I'm definitely in on that. And so I'm listening to this, and then the next podcast I see is Joe Lonsdale, who's a billionaire and, you know, probably going to be like in the 10 richest people on earth at some point. Like, uh, Joe Lonsdale is talking to Joe Gebbia, the guy who created Airbnb, and they're in like a warehouse and it's well lit and they're talking about, you know, Joe's time at the White House now because he's the chief design officer of America. And I'm like, there's been this absolute explosion of podcasts. And it's in every industry. In the sports industry, this is the same thing. You know, I grew up— the first podcast I ever listened to was Bill Simmons. I used to listen to him back in 2007, but in college when he used to like have to like download from the RSS feed and, you know, he had like Ronald Jenkins doing his intro music type of deal. And now sports podcasts are like, well, here's LeBron has his own podcast called Mind the Game. Where he's sipping wine, talking to JJ Redick, the future Lakers coach, and they're just talking X's and O's. And then, oh, guess what? Um, you know, Max Kellerman, he's not on TV anymore. So, so Max Kellerman, who goes from the number one TV show to now he creates a podcast with Rich Paul, LeBron's like longtime friend in sport, like the number one sports agent in basketball. They're gonna, they're gonna talk shop. So like, the amount, the, the type of people who are getting into this industry, the quality of production and sets, like our friend Chris Williamson is doing like IMAX 4K, like, you know, your phone starts rumbling when an insight happens. Like, I don't know what he's doing with production value. And then you have the volume, the overall volume that comes from this. And I think it's because of what you said. Podcasts went from niche and nerdy to now kind of cool. Cool people do them. People think you can make a lot of money doing them, which I think is not as true as people think. And I think there's this big problem, which is what I call the shelf space problem. Which is that a podcast is great when you have listeners because it's like an hour in their ears and it's habitual and it becomes a part of their day when they're commuting or they're at work or they're doing chores or they're going for a run or the gym. And I'm, I'm glad we're that for some number of people, but the reality is like you only have so many idle hours where you're going to listen to podcasts. And so the number of podcasts might 10x, 50x, and it has over the last, you know, 10 years or so. But the number of podcast listeners and listening space hasn't gone up in that same way. And I think that dam has broken. And now what's happened is, I think a couple things are gonna happen. There's gonna be too many podcasts that are bad and boring. So that's happening already. I think there's gonna be a disillusionment when people realize how much time, money, and effort goes into podcasting well, and you don't get, uh, fame and money back. And then I think the, the trick and what's happening with the, the, the, the savior in this case is clips. And so I think podcasts are just becoming clip farms.
That's not where real engagement is.
But I think that's what, that's what all these people are going to use as their moral victory, which is, uh, oh, look how many people liked that clip on Twitter or TikTok. And they're going to make a— the, the pod is a clip farm and whether anybody listens to the pod or not doesn't really matter. This is, I mean, TBPn I think is doing the best at that. But, but that's where I think all this is going.
I think that what a lot of people, okay, and we, we have, I think, made mistakes on this path a lot as well. I think a lot of people think that just because you see the video and that's what gets your attention because it is cooler. The reality is, is that you just said that it's hours in ears and that a lot of the shiny stuff really doesn't matter. The content just needs to be good and it needs to be consistent and it has to have a unique perspective. And it is all in your ear. It's audio is what matters more than anything. And like there's been times where we've talked about something like in minute 55 of this podcast and people on the streets will bring it up and they didn't watch that on YouTube. They're listening to it while they're working out. If you're working out and actually, in fact, if you're listening to this on your ears, go to Spotify right now and just like tell us what you're doing right now. I'm curious in the comments, but, um, people aren't like watching these things.
And what do you mean people aren't watching these things? People are definitely watching these things.
No, no, they're not watching it near— if you look at the time spent, if you look at our, for example, if you want to on our Megaphone and you look at time listened versus time to watch. So the average engagement, the average time, um, on YouTube versus Spotify or some other type of feed, it's significantly longer.
So we'll put numbers around this. Our average time on a YouTube video is about 15 minutes. Yeah, 15 minutes. And on audio, about 40 to 45 minutes.
Yeah.
So, so you, you need 3 views for every 1 listener of audio if you wanted equivalent of, uh, time spent. Now even that's not exactly right because that 1 person who listened to 45 minutes has a deeper sense of connection and trust and, and, uh, fandom than 3 people who watched 15 minutes each.
Now here's the downside for anyone listening. YouTube, it's very simple to grow. It's not like there's, there's a formula behind growing YouTube. It's still challenging, but it's simple. Growing an audio, uh, feed, very hard. It's very hard. We have tried so long to do it and we have hit so many plateaus multiple times. Growing audio is so challenging, but it is significantly more consistent in, in listenership, but it does not grow fast in most cases.
I think you're right. I, I don't think you're right though, that like the clips and stuff don't matter.
No, I didn't say that. I didn't say they don't matter. They matter significantly less.
Right. I guess what I'm saying is I think that the people who are, who are going to play that game are just actually playing a different game and they can do very well in that game and have like all the results that they want out of it. But it's very different. It is a, it is like literally just like a new game in the same way that I think if 7 years ago, you're making prestige TV or movies, and you looked at like Ryan Trahan and MrBeast, and you're like, what? He painted a circle and they have to— these 6 strangers have to stay in it, and every 3 seconds something changes on the screen? Like, that's not art. No, that's not Breaking Bad. That's not Game of Thrones. You're not gonna get that, you know. You could say all those things.
No, but I'm not criticizing it for that reason. I'm criticizing it because of the the physics, the mechanics of it, oftentimes the equation of influence involves time spent. And so the amount of time you have spent with someone, so meaning the—
yes. So I wonder if it's going to flip, or I wonder if volume is the other variable in this. And if you just said, okay, but you're going to see my face 30 times for every one time you're going to see that.
It could be.
I wonder if that works. It might work.
You just need to do it a lot. So yeah, like Clint's are 60 seconds. Our podcast, you said the average listen time is 45 minutes and there's 2 a week. You just— you're— the volume has to be the game. You better be Walmart. You better be churning that shit out.
Yeah. All right, I'll do two quick ones. Peptides. Peptides everywhere. I think peptides are going to be here, there, everywhere. I think you're going to put peptides in your nose. I think you put them in your mouth. I think you put them in your butt. Peptides are everywhere. And it's a classic, like, what the nerds are doing on the weekend, everybody's going to be doing soon. Arguably, they already are because Ozempic and the GLP-1s, those are peptides. But I'm just seeing people I would not expect, people I don't count as biohackers, who are very interested and jumping through a lot of hoops to get peptides. Because you can't just get peptides easily and in a trustworthy, frictionless way. And so a great proxy for demand is like, are you willing to, you know, break the law and like do something sketchy for the thing you want? Well, that's what's happening with peptides. I have, you know, cousins, brother-in-law, like people who are not like, dude, just outing him.
God. Yeah.
He's like, I got shoulder pain.
Did he do BP-157?
I don't know which one he's on, but yeah, he does. Probably doesn't even know which one he's on. He's like, I got pain. This guy gave me this acronym and my shoulder feels better. I feel younger. I got friends sending me pictures of themselves just absolutely ripped on the, like, you know, the new version of the Wolverine stack.
Yeah. What's that? What's that one called? For research, we should find out what that is and start putting it in our bodies.
Yeah, exactly. So I just think peptides are this, uh, this thing that's going to be a big deal. And if you use proxy for demand as, uh, people who are willing to jump through hoops, go through untrust— go to untrusted sources. Imagine once somebody makes this easier to access, more easy form factors, like get it to, get it to gummies, get it to pills, get it to different form factors. As that happens over the next 10 years, I think peptides will become a normal part of everyday life for people in the same way you take protein supplements and vitamins and, you know, medicine when you're sick. I think you're going to have enhancements through peptides.
I'm shocked that you're so interested in this, and I think that you will never take this, right?
Sometimes I'm a user first and I become an investor. Sometimes an investor first, I become a user. In this case, I'm an investor. I'm looking at it as an investor. I haven't made any investments yet, but I'm hunting.
Would you take it?
I try not to be early to experimental, like, health stuff. I think the risk-reward doesn't really make a lot of sense. But would I? Yeah, at a certain point I would. And at that, you know, and I'm happy to be late to certain parties.
I would challenge you about investing. I do not think that these are particularly good businesses. I actually don't take a lot of stuff anymore, but I used to, like, dabble with everything because I loved, like, trying new things. And then I just found what works and I just repeat that. But I don't run one of these businesses, but I am an investor in one of them and I've like was a customer. People jump from one to one to one. Like you very easily can switch and there's not really a reason to stay with someone for a very long time because in most cases they're just selling the same thing. And so any time that you see there's a discount or a doctor is going to be more liberal about what they prescribe, or you could just like tell someone, give me this. You switch. It's very easy. And oftentimes, even though people say you have to take these, take these things for life, people don't. You just do it for 12 months, you feel good, and you're like, I'm going to bail. I'm going to get off of it.
I'm glad that this is contrarian. I thought that's going to be just too consensus. So I appreciate that. That is not—
well, we've invested in one that's killing it. Hone Health, correct? They are killing it. But I guess what I'm saying is I've seen, like, for example, we had More Plates, More Dates on Merrick Health. Health, I think it was called. He has one of these companies and it just like, I've tried a bunch of them. They just seem like they're mostly similar and I don't understand how you get locked in with someone for years.
Well, I think most people are not you. You're in the early adopter, uh, experimenter cohort of people. Money is never made on you. Money is always made on the early majority and late majority.
So, you know how people like, have you seen those videos of people celebrating that they got their first customer? I'm usually on the other end of that. I'm the one who's like, just like, here, I'll give you my money and I'll take a risk and then I'll bail after 6 months. What's the 6th one?
Okay. Sports betting and the consequences. This is a trend that is in plain sight, but I think people underestimate how big and how bad this is going to be.
I'm shocked to hear you say that. And also I'm very happy to hear you say that. So basically, I think there was an article in The Economist and they talked about the, how sophisticated sports betting companies are. And basically the headline is whenever you make your first bet, they know to a high degree of certainty what type of customer you're going to be, and they manipulate you and the rest of their customers down to like an amazing science in order to get the most amount of dollars from you.
Right. One gambling consultant told The Economist, by the time a customer places his first bet, first bet on the sportsbook, They are 80 to 90% certain they know the lifetime value. They know how big of a sucker you are from the first bet. And they mathematically monitor players, create new risk score every 6 to 8 hours. Basically, they're trying to figure out, is this customer going to become profitable on us? How do we monitor, keep the, keep the profitable players out, keep the unprofitable players in? And okay, so what, what else is interesting about this? There was new data about, um, like Kalshi and Polymarket.
How are those two different, by the way?
So they're both in the same category, prediction markets, right? Prediction market basically just says you're able to wager what you think the outcome of an event is. And they're markets, meaning unlike a sportsbook where there's a house that defines the rules of— or defines the odds, the way a market works is the question is posed and then you take the yes or no side. And based on the volume of dollars that go into the yes or no side, You're basically competing in a free market against each other. And there's been some incredible things that have come from this, right? Like, um, it is more accurate than the news, right? So a lot of people go to the news to try to get a sense of what's happening or what's going to happen. But the news is far less accurate than just going and looking at, with skin in the game, what the Poly market says of what is actually going to happen. Um, what do the odds say is going to happen? And the odds change in real time as new information goes in. And so here you are, you know, let's just take the incentives as an example. The incentives of a journalist who's writing for The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, these extremely prestigious, you know, supposed truth-seeking, uh, platforms. Well, their incentive is how do I get as many clicks as possible on this headline? Um, how do I make sure that nobody unsubscribes because I said something that they don't like? Right, that they canceled their subscription because I told them an unpopular truth. And so those, you know, fundamentally my incentive loop is that now you take the incentives of Polymarket. Somebody who's betting yes is saying, I'm going to, I'm going to win or lose money by being right or wrong. And so, you know, and the higher, the more conviction I have, the more money I would place on this wager. And the conviction, if I'm taking, if I have conviction based on, you know, gut and superstition, over time I'm going to lose all my money. I'll be out of the market. But if I have conviction based off of research or insider information or, you know, in-depth analysis, I will make money and I'll have more capital to bring to this market over time. So that's what— that's the category. Okay. Now what's interesting, they're now doing over $2 billion a week in just sports betting volume.
PolyMarket?
The common— both of them, both of them together.
And what percentage of the revenue do they get?
They're taking— I don't know, it's less than like a it's like a point, point whatever percent, 0.1, 0.2. I don't know what it is. Some very, very small vig that they take, um, on, on the transaction.
And how much did they do in a week?
$2 billion on just sports. And so like what's happened is that these things started where they were doing, you know, like who's going to win the election and are we going to end up in a war in Ukraine? And that those are very like informational things in order to inform, like, you know, it's, or you could say in some ways it's a, it's a signal or a hedge against, uh, you know, your, maybe a stock market performance or whatnot. But sports betting is just so popular that like as a percentage share of action, it's just taking over these platforms and they're essentially becoming sports betting apps that are just like in this like loophole of regulation where you can't make— you can't do sports betting, but you can do prediction markets about sports.
And this is legal in all 50 states.
Yeah. Or sorry, I shouldn't say that. I'm not— I'm not as well versed in it. Kalshi, based on the way they're regulated, because like Prediction markets are regulated by like commodities or something like that, the commodities market. And so they are. And that's why if you open up the Robinhood app, you can just bet on any game right now. And it's powered by Kalshi. Uh, and I think they're going to switch off of Kalshi at some point because why are they giving Kalshi so much volume?
If you were a politician and you could, if you were the dictator, uh, what would you do?
Oh God, that's a lot of power. What would I do? Uh, yeah, I'd have people feeding me grapes and I'd have, no, about this, um, You know, this is pretty dangerous. Like, there's like my, you know, I'm coaching this high school basketball team and like, you know, it's interesting because you're around teenagers, you get to see like, what are they interested in? What do they do?
Do they talk about it all the time?
They're talking about it all the time. They're like, over-unders.
That's crazy.
You know, they don't just watch the games. They bet on the games. They're probably betting very small amounts, maybe on their dad's account. I don't even know how they're doing it exactly, but it's definitely something that they love to do and that they're doing a lot of. And the problem is it's one Sports betting, and I take it— take this as somebody who's wasted far too much of their life gambling, whether it's poker or sports betting. Sports betting is one of these things that it's dumb to do, but it's easy to look smart. So like, it's a dumb activity to do, but if you cherry-pick a good bet, you can share it, you can tell people about it, and you get to look smart for a moment. And like, the real gains in life come from things that look dumb to do but are actually smart to do. Those are like, that's where all the real alpha of life is. And of course there's the obvious things, things that are smart to do, that look smart to do, and you should do those too. That's like, you know, the sort of highly competitive things that people do, like going to college or, you know, like trying to get a good job, right? Like, sounds smart is smart. And then, you know, and so I think that the problem is sports betting falls on this one. It's obviously super addictive. Obviously there's going to be a lot of people who, you know, lose a lot of money, waste a lot of time, get addicted to this stuff. There's NBA players that get death threats constantly because like some guy's got a $200 parlay on them getting 11 rebounds instead of 9. And, you know, in his DM every day he goes home and from basketball, if you talk to any player, like their DMs are just filled with angry voice notes and death threats from a guy who needed them to get an extra rebound for their parlay.
And you could do this for college sports too.
You could do this for college, which is toxic now at the younger level, right? It's crazy. Like, I put this in my 5-2 Tuesday, like some guys rooting for World War III because he's going to win $390 on Polymarket, right?
Like, I think it's— so I tend to— I would say I'm a very moderate person politically. I disagree and agree with people on both sides. And also I would say I'm very pro-capitalist. And this is one of the free time, one of the few times where I'm like, no, I'm definitely not in favor of the market just doing what it wants to do. In this case, I definitely think that regulation would be nice. I don't exactly— I don't— I'm an idiot. I don't know how it needs to be done, but this seems very dangerous. I think what will happen is I think that like a college or professional sports, sports player is going to be murdered or there's going to be like something crazy that happens in politics where the person made the decision just to get the payout on the bet.
Yeah, and there's, there's already been players who have lost their, whether it's college scholarships, there's NBA players that are getting fined or banned from the league permanently, um, because they, they told their homies, hey, I'm out today, it's not reported yet. Or worse, right, there's been guys who like owe people money in the mafia from their poker losses in the poker games. They're like, hey, to make it back, I'm gonna pull a hammy in the first quarter, just bet my under, you'll make it back. but it's too obvious because somebody suddenly slams $50,000 on this obscure player's under. And then, you know, the NBA bans that player. They lose their $30 million contract.
I remember when we were younger, there was this one player. He was like, uh, the superstar quarterback for, I think, Ohio. What's his last name? Like Owens? Uh, and he got in trouble for, um, getting free tattoos from a tattoo shop in, in exchange for like, uh, some jerseys or something like that.
And he was banned. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like signing jer— he like signed a jersey.
I think he got kicked out or he was huge. It was a huge deal. It's national news. And he signed jerseys and gave it to a, I think, a tattoo parlor in exchange for free tattoos. Do you remember that?
Known as Tattoo Gate. Uh, let's see. Yeah, it was Terrell Pryor.
This was years ago and this was a huge deal. And I think he was like the hottest guy going and he did this and that was like the biggest scandal I remember in years. It's going to get way worse. It's going to get way worse, dude. This is where they're— what they're doing instead of drinking alcohol. I'd rather people drink, by the way, than do this shit.
Yeah. Gambling instead. Yeah. So those are my trends. Give me a favorite and a least favorite.
I think alcohol is going to get popular again next generation. I think it's good. I think that whatever the generation—
generation—
yeah, whatever your parents do, you're going to do the opposite. I think sports betting in the next 5 years is going to be incredibly heavily regulated and companies like Polymarket and Kalshi are going to to crumble. Wow.
Big, big predictions there.
Let me tell you one thing that I saw really quick. Yeah. Did you see Hermosi and Tony Robbins do a podcast together?
I didn't see it. I mean, I think I saw it on YouTube. I didn't click it. Is it good?
Yeah. The reason it was good is I saw two things yesterday that I thought were pretty funny or interesting. One was Tony Robbins and Alex Hermosi, and it was basically a coaching session where Tony Robbins was coaching Hermosi. And that was kind of cool because Hermosi is usually giving advice in this one.
Sure.
He appeared—
a student, a student.
So I was almost going to say the word lost. I don't think he was lost, but he was like, here's my issues, help me. And then the second thing that I saw was Scott Galloway was at— is it Davos or Davos? Like the Davos, the— I don't even know what it's called. Never in my life have I had a conversation about Davos. Like, I don't give a shit. But I guess it's where, like, the global superpowers meet and somehow decide, like, who's going to win what. And Scott Galloway was like, I think I'm just going to go home. I'd rather be home with my kids than be here. Did you see that?
No, I didn't. He was like, was he— was there anything particular he was like?
He was like, I'm going to give you a takeaway. Here's what's going on. But first, let me say, I think I'm just going to leave. I don't really care. I don't care about this at all. I'm just going to go home and hang out with my boys. I really miss them. And I thought that was cool because in the Hermosi podcast, he basically was explaining— Hermosi was like, you know, I've been experiencing a lot of success lately. But I feel empty. And there's something that you and I, I think maybe you say it more than me, talking about seasons. And Tony Robbins was basically like, dude, you've like primed yourself to only care about like being aggressive and succeeding and getting after it. And you just told me that you said basically every waking hour I'm working. And the problem with that is not that that exists. That's okay to exist. The problem is, is that you don't also have these other seasons states of life or these other like feelings where now this for these next few hours you can turn work off and you can feel enjoyment. And it was this whole idea of seasons. And I think Scott Galloway was the same way, which is like, you know, I get after it sometimes, other times I want to like enjoy life and be with my kids. And I thought that was really interesting because we talk about work a lot here and the people who listen to this are listening because, I mean, the podcast is called My First Million. It's like making money. And I think that we actually do a pretty decent job. I think that's one of the reasons why people like us, although it's not necessarily intentional, where we laugh and we have fun. And I thought that this was just like super interesting to see such a serious person and such a successful person like Hermosi complain about not being happy even though he's succeeding. And what I've realized— I realized this when I read Robert Greene's book Human Nature, which is humans are humans. And you and I have been very lucky to talk to billionaires, to all these successful people. And oftentimes when they're on our podcast, we're asking them questions and they come off they're giving advice and so they're not going to purposely appear weak. But we've gotten to become friends with a lot of these people and it's really cool to see behind the scenes that the people who we look up to— and it was cool that Hermosi did this where he showed like weakness. He even cried a little on the podcast, which was, uh, I didn't think that he had that gear.
My boy's got range.
Yeah, he has range. I did not think that that was going to come out.
He's like Jim Carrey in like a serious movie or something.
Proportions. And I thought it was cool. I thought it was cool and it was a really good reminder. And I want to give that, that reminder to people that, A, the people who you look up to, you and I, some people actually shockingly look up to us, but we have hung out with people who we look up to on this podcast and the people who others look up to we've had on this podcast. It's cool to see that everyone complains about the same shit and has, has complained about the same shit. And also the advice I think that Anthony or Tony Robbins gave It's sort of the same advice. Anthony, we're friends.
That was incredible.
Hey, dog, we're buddies. It's sort of been like the same feedback, like on how to, like, live life. Have you heard of that song by The Byrds? I don't want to sing it because I look stupid, but it's like, to everything, turn, turn, turn. You know that song?
I've never heard that.
No, no, that's crazy. Okay, so this song was from the '60s. This song, let me tell you an interesting fact. This song, I was looking it up. I was like, I recognize this. So I went to Catholic school my whole life. We had to read the Bible. This song is word for word a Bible verse. And I'm not a religious person, but because I like read the Bible so much as a kid, I had to like read it. It's word for word a Bible verse. And here's, listen to the words. It says, to everything there's a season, a time to whatever, to everything there's a season, a time to be born, a time to die. But then it goes, a time to kill, a time to heal, a time to weep, a time to laugh. And basically further down the verse, it says like, Now go and eat your bread, drink your wine, be merry. God has already, like, approved what you're going to do. Whatever happens, happens. So, like, these are, like, old issues that people have cared about for thousands or tens of thousands of years, which is work hard sometimes, enjoy yourself sometimes, be sad sometimes, be happy sometimes. There's a season for all of it. And it's just so interesting to me that we all, and myself included, complain about the same things. And we have for tens of thousands of years and, like, the advice that Tony Robbins gave of like, there's a season, be happy. That's literally the same advice from like the Bible and from the song. It's kind of interesting.
Yeah, you know, there's, um, uh, I had an interesting conversation with, um, this basketball coach. So we had just played a game and, um, the head coach of my team that I'm coaching this high school basketball team, the head coach of the team is really young. He's 25 years old. His first, first head coaching job, and he got the recommendation to get the job from his old college coach. So there's this guy who was his college coach. He's kind of like a legendary community college coach. He coached, uh, at Diablo Valley for like 30 years or something. He's like one of the winningest coaches, and he's retired now. And so he comes to our game sometimes. He sits in the crowd, he's just like up in the bleachers, and he's just observing. And then occasionally afterwards, after, after the game, after we talk to the players, we hang out in the locker room, and he comes down and he gives us kind of like the old coach's wisdom. And it's the best. It's the best. That's like my favorite time in this whole thing. You know, couldn't have predicted it, but that's like my favorite time. And so we had just won a game that we kind of weren't supposed to win. We were these underdogs and we like played amazing and we won. And then we were playing the best team in our league and we were coming off that win and we're like, yeah, we're going to do this. And, um, we just got smacked and we lost by 50 points. It was embarrassing. We only scored 15 points in an entire basketball game. It's hard to do that. and it was just terrible. We played scared. It was just bad. So coach comes in and he just goes, you know, 2 days ago, you're unstoppable. You're the best team ever. Today, you can't do anything right. You know, you're the worst. And he just said, he goes, the number one thing you're going to learn as a coach is that victory and defeat are liars. They're both liars. And once you learn that they're both liars, then you can become a great coach. And I just love that. And it was like, uh, my roommate in college, Trevor, he had this— his dad gave him this gift, uh, when he went to college. And like, I went to Duke, and so there's a lot of rich kids with rich parents who's, you know, they give them this like air conditioning device and this like, you know, like their rooms were like tricked out. And Trevor's parents are both PE coaches in Wyoming. Their whole careers. And so when they drove him out to— they drove him out to college, and then his dad gave him this, like, this poster and had a poem on it. And it's this poem called If. I don't know if you've ever read it. It's If by Rudyard Kipling. And on it, it has the same line. And this was— I stared at this thing, like, every day in college because it was just the only thing on our walls. And it's the line from it is that it says, if you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, The last line is, you'll be a man, my son. And his dad gave him this poster, and I kind of by proxy got this poster from that. But it's this idea that the highs and the lows are liars. The wins and the losses are liars. Victory and triumph and disaster, they're imposters. And once you recognize that, then you're free. Then you can actually do what you need to do. And so when you're talking about Hormozy and being happy and success and all these things, I think, you know, the challenge is that we think success is something that's real and final and lasting, and that was the meaning of this whole thing, of all that, of all that effort. And then if it's failure, that it's real and going to be lasting and that it's, it means something. And, uh, once you realize that, like, no, it's, they're neither real nor lasting, nor were they the meaning in the first place, like, then you're actually playing the real game.
MFM Wisdom Corner.
Yeah. Welcome to Guru Corner.
No advice given. Look, you just quoted an old coach. I quoted Tony Robbins and the Bible. I mean, no advice given. Just messengers. All right, that's it. That's the pod.
