Our Thoughts: Black Lives Matter, Renting vs Buying, & Housing Market | My First Million 06/01/2020

Do you regret buying your home?

Yes. Uh, Sam, what's up?

What's going on? Let me pull up some of our documents. Um, I'm in Austin still.

And what's going on? What's, what's, uh, what's the world like in Austin right now?

Crazy. Everything's crazy. I don't think it's as bad as San Francisco, but The world is crazy. I decided to— we got a new office down here, and so I rented a house to see everyone, and it's cool. Austin's a great city. What do you think is going to happen to San Francisco? Do you think it's going to— like, is this going to be the end of San Francisco being like the place?

I think so, yeah. I think so for a couple reasons. You know, right now I'm selling my house.

Yeah, I was going to say, you're Your house looks different. You're decorating it to sell, aren't you?

Yeah, I am trying to sell my house right now. So it's about to go up for sale. And I'm trying to move to the suburbs of the Bay Area. And so right now, because I'm doing that, I'm in the middle of the market and listening to people and hearing, you know, what are they, what's it like? Am I, is the market hot to sell? Am I gonna get a good price when I try to go look for something else? Is there a lot of stuff available or is it a bidding war? And, you know, just like you would expect, there's sort of a, you know, a flight to the— a flight to space right now. And not like the SpaceX kind, I'm talking about like physical house space.

People are leaving— de-urbanization.

Yeah, de-urbanization. People are leaving cities. They're leaving San Francisco for sure. So a lot of people who are in San Francisco are here because of the career opportunities. And now that the tech companies are saying, you know, either we are already remote or we're going remote or way more remote friendly and you work from home for the sort of foreseeable future, there's basically no— the premium, the extreme premium, I mean, like one bedroom for $4,000 a month, two bedroom, $6,000 a month type of rents to be in the city. And so when a studio condo is $1 million in the city, if you don't have to pay that, you're not going to. And so people want space, people want more affordability, and people want to be away from a whole bunch of other people from this virus. And so that is driving a lot of people out of the cities. Now, Some people say, oh, that's just temporary. Personally, I don't think so. I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Once the companies start letting you be remote, it doesn't matter where you're physically located. Why would you live in a more expensive area? Only if that lifestyle really appeals to you, which it will for like 20-something-year-olds, right, to be in cities. But right now you get the 20-something-year-olds and the 30-something-year-olds because the 30-something-year-olds are there for their career, and that's going to go away.

I feel like I've been in Austin for a week now. I'm going to stay for another week. Maybe I'll stay one more week down here. It is definitely happier, like the way of life is like it. I, for me and for many others, I understand why you'd be happier here. Um, like, dude, my new house, I got, I got a pool.

I'm like, a swimming pool? Like, what is this? This is amazing. That makes me happy just looking at a swimming pool.

I like it too. My thing though is I miss San Francisco. I want to come back. I do miss a little bit of a struggle. Um, I also miss the people. Uh, like, I hate the people and I love it.

Dangerous. San Francisco has like actual, you know, real problems with crime and homelessness and stuff like that. I don't think anybody wants that in where they're living. And so I think, you know, there's part of it that's the energy of a city. It's like, I love being in New York, I love being in San Francisco, I'm around all these energizing, interesting, ambitious people, a bunch of single people. But then there's just like crime and homelessness and like extreme expenses that put a burden on you, and I think that's— nobody likes that.

I almost feel like, and not in a real way, but just because I can't think of a better word, a little homeless where I'm like, well, where the fuck is my place now? Like, where's my— like, you know, because I'm— yeah, you and I, we're not quite similar. You've done it more than I have, but me to a lesser extent, I've lived in many different cities and I finally felt like I had a home in San Francisco and now I'm like, shit, like, it's way like— damn, it's way different. And so, uh, I'm, I'm pretty sad about it, to be honest. Like, I've been like depressed over it. I'm also sad, obviously, about all the other shit going on. Is it— are you seeing unrest and protesting and looting where you live?

I'm seeing it because I'm just glued to Twitter. And me too, you know, I'm just scrolling and I can't believe my eyes. And, uh, it is, it is so sad. There's so many different things going on at the same time. And then the shitty part about that to me is that, um, everybody pulls a different meaning away from it. So like, if you're biased going in is, you know, if you're racist in one way, you're gonna look at this and say, "Oh man, they're rooting and they're looting and rioting and this is awful. What did those small business owners do? Why are they getting their stores smashed?" And then if you're somebody else and you're looking at this, you're like, "Dude, people are sick of it. They've hit their breaking point because this has been going on for so long, this police brutality, and I totally understand what's going on." And then other people are looking at it and they're sort of like, "Hey, what's like," Why are these other malicious groups kind of hijacking the movement and just inciting violence? And, you know, Antifa, or some people believe, you know, Russia, China, whoever it is, who's dropping these pallets of bricks off trying to bait people into violence? And, you know, some people just trying to make the world burn. And so there's all these things mixed together, and I think whoever you are, you're going to select the evidence that supports your feeling, and you're just going to get stronger you're just going to see more evidence towards your view, and it's going to make people more divided.

My friend shared something, and, uh, it was like 4 circles, and it was like, uh, I'm pissed off about the racism in our country, and Black Lives Matter— Black Lives Matter has a point. I'm pissed off that businesses are getting ruined. This is not the right way to do it. I'm pissed off at the police because I think most of them are good, but a few bad Cops ruin shit for everyone, and then I forget the fourth one, and then it was like at the center all the circles had a little bit of everything, and like, you can be here. I was like, that's how I feel. I'm angry, it's sad, and so—

What was the fourth one? What's the fourth circle?

I don't know what the fourth one was. Let's see, it was really great though. Did you happen to see this go around?

I didn't see that, but no, that explains like exactly how I feel, you know, and how many people feel, and You know, I think it's really crazy. There's a whole bunch of things that you hear, you learn from these experiences where you're like, oh, you know, that is a sort of a nugget of wisdom or a bit of empathy that I didn't have before. And so, you know, when you see people that are, you know, one great quote I saw was, when you have 1,000 good cops and 10 bad cops, but the good cops don't police the bad cops, then you have 1,010 bad cops. And, you know, I believe that. And then that sort of applies to my life too, like in what Anytime I sort of stand by and do nothing while injustice is happening, that makes me sort of complicit in my own way, right? And, you know, I think about little minor examples of that in my own life.

And then, you know, it was George Floyd's— George Floyd's death was murder and the police should be held responsible. I think most cops are good, but police departments are corrupt and there are some bad cops. Looting businesses and destroying property is immoral and it hurts the cause. I empathize and I agree with Black Lives Matter protesters and believe in them and their right to be heard. And then right in the middle was like, I am here and this is sad, right?

Yeah, it's really crazy. And I know people don't listen to this podcast to hear, like, you know, um, talks about socioeconomic issues and racism and whatnot, but, um, you know, this I think affects everybody. This is very different than anything that's happened in my lifetime where you have riots breaking out across the nation, um, all simultaneously, and things really do feel like they've hit a breaking point for many reasons. I think also the fact that people were pent up at home for the last 3 months I don't think that helps necessarily, because that's a sort of a bunch of, a bunch of, you know, just water boiling over, you know, at a certain point as well.

I agree. I, so I agree. I don't even love discussing this stuff because I don't think about it a lot, and I also tend, I try to like talk about the positive. But let me bring something up that I don't think I have brought up, and I want to hear your opinion. So, I don't, this doesn't matter, and it doesn't change I don't think it should validate or not validate anything I say. So like, my wife's Black, my family's Black, I'll have Black children, and this was the first time, or half Black, or partially Black children. This was the first time that I was at my house with Sarah, my wife, and she broke down. She was like, "I don't know how," she's like, "I don't know where I fit in on this," because she's like a successful Black woman. She's like, "I haven't had a lot of racist stuff," happened to me, or if any. Like, I— and it was— and she's like, but I— yeah, it was, it was, it was just a total mindfuck because I'm like, fuck, what am I supposed to— how am I supposed to— I don't— I didn't know what to feel. I was like, I don't, I don't know what to do. And it was incredibly exhausting.

Do you—

you, you're Indian. Do you consider yourself white or not white or what?

Definitely don't consider myself white. Uh, and no, nor does anyone who sees me thinks I'm white.

But I don't know, like, how—

but I get what you mean in the sense of, like, in some ways, like, do you feel that you're privileged or prejudiced against? I think that's a different way of looking at it. And, like, you know, my sister— so we— I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which is, like, you know, not the most open-minded and racially friendly place. And so my sister, when she was in kindergarten, uh, you know, students would, would draw a picture of a pig and then write her name on it and cover the pig in brown mud. And then they would give it to the teacher and the teacher laughed. And my sister always remembers this, like she was, I don't know, 6 years old and she vividly remembers the teacher sort of looking at this and laughing and saying, "No, no, no, put it away," but like being, you know, involved in it. And I never experienced that.

I don't understand that. What's the pig have to do? Is that because—

Just like brown, brown, dirty, in the mud, you know, that sort of thing. And, you know, I remember, you know, when she went to my mom and was like, "Why can't we be white?" type of thing, where it's like, asking questions as a kid, just trying to understand why am I different? What does that mean? Why do other people think we're worse than them? That sort of thing. I personally never experienced that because I luckily moved out of Oklahoma when I was really young and went to different places where it was less so, or just got lucky in sort of my experiences around who I was around. But I guess I would say like, you know, when 9/11 happened, you know, it's not fun to be a brown guy in America, right?

Are you any religion? Are you Muslim?

No, I'm not religious, but I would be Hindu. Yeah, I would be Hindu, but, um, you know, just that's typically what most Indian people are. Um, but yeah, you know, I'm not religious, but you know, I do grow a beard pretty quick. And so like, yeah, you know, like when you go to the airport, I don't think you think about how do I look today, whereas I think about that because I'm like, look, I'm not trying to get hassled for no reason here, so let me shave before I get on this flight. Or like, you know, I had friends who like are Muslim who had like keys, their house keys taken away from them in TSA because it was like, this is potentially a dangerous thing. And they're like, this is my apartment keys, what are you talking about?

How does that make you feel? So the fact that you have to shave, are you angry or are you, where do you, what's that make you feel like?

I'm not angry about it. You know, I sort of have this opinion that my personal philosophy, if you were gonna boil it down to any one thing, is the only thing you have control over is your attitude towards the present moment. And so, so that's empowering and disempowering, right? It's disempowering because it's like, shit, I can't control anything that's going on. I can't control how other people feel, how they're going to act. I can't control the results I'm going to get in my life. But it's empowering. It's like the one thing I control is my attitude towards the moment. So that sort of is a superpower because then no matter what the situation is, no matter what the moment is, I can decide what my attitude about it is going to be. So for example, when something shitty happens to me, someone says something shitty, or, you know, I, you know, get that extra sort of, hey, come into this room while I go through TSA clearance. You know, the meaning I put on that is of my choosing. And if I put the meaning of it that, you know, I'm less than, I'm being wronged, that doesn't help me. It makes me feel like shit. And so I just decide not to feel that way. But I know that like on the grand scheme of things, I get off pretty light. It's very different than never feeling safe. You know, going for a jog in your neighborhood or something like that. I think, you know, there's levels to it, and I haven't experienced those levels where it would be very, very challenging to put a positive meaning on what's going on.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's just a confusing time because you feel so many different emotions, and some of them are opposite. And I had to, like, talk to the whole company today, which— we're small, let's say 20 or 30 people— And I was like, I don't know what to say other than if you guys like ever feel out of place somewhere, like our company, we're gonna make you feel safe. Like we'll hire all types of people. We like, and I wasn't sure if that felt like weak or like, oh, like barely anything to be done. But I was like, I don't know what, I was like, I don't know how to fucking handle this other than You're safe here.

But, uh, yeah, you know, I think that's the right approach because it's not about having the answer or the wisdom or the most heartfelt thing and the best speech. But like, I think it is important if you're the leader to show up as a decent human being in that moment and just say, look, I understand, I'm also feeling this crazy mix of emotions. I just want to do my best with this. Anything, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna try to do our best with this. I think it goes a long way to just be a decent person and try to be present and visible there versus kind of shying away from it, which is what a lot of people do.

Yeah, it's crazy. And I have a feeling once I have children, my opinion is going to change a lot. Like, or not my opinion, but my— I think I'll learn a lot. Yeah, like having Black kids or part-Black kids, I think, well, I will— maybe I'll see something that I didn't previously see.

And one more thing, which, uh, you know, we can cut all this out if, if people tell us later, hey, you shouldn't have talked about this on the pod, but did you watch the Trevor Noah, um, thing that he posted on YouTube or whatever?

I did not. I'm typically not a fan of his. I think that a lot of the times the shit he says is the wrong take, so I, I tend to avoid him, but I would watch it if you suggest it.

I avoid him because he— I don't think he's that funny, but, uh, I did watch this thing And he brings up, like, what's going on. He's like, yeah, a lot of people are looking at what's going on and saying, well, this isn't right either, right? Of course, police should not murder citizens. That's wrong. But also, rioting and looting and destroying things is also not right. And what his point was, which I think made me better understand what was going on, his point was, like, you got to think about this. What is society? Society is essentially a contract. It is an agreement amongst a group of people of here's what's right and wrong of how we're going to act. Here's the behaviors that are tolerated. Here's the behaviors that are not tolerated. He goes, so what you're seeing is that one side of a contract, you know, if we're— if we go into a contract together and you're just breaching your side of the contract regularly and without recourse, and I just see, wow, this guy just keeps breaching his side of the contract, then I also have no, no desire or incentive to uphold my side of the contract. He goes, you'll see somebody that's homeless and, you know, they don't go and just murder necessarily because they're in a bad position. They say, look, these are the rules of the game. I'm losing in the current game, or I have not been able to sort of get to an advantage position in this game, but like, I still respect that we're in a game together and there are rules of this game. He goes, what you're seeing now is that a group of people, you know, Black people in America, feel like the contract has just been breached over and over and over again. Where there, you know, unnecessary and unjust violence against us. And so now we're going to breach the contract too, and we're going to sort of make it very known what it feels like when the contract is being breached for apparently no reason, and it doesn't seem like a positive thing. And so that made me look at, you know, when somebody is either protesting, whether it's peacefully or not peacefully, when somebody's rioting and they're creating a sort of unsafe environment for all, it sort of I don't know, it sort of explained to me why somebody would behave that way. It's because if you feel like the other party's just terminally breached the contract and there's no recourse, then it's like, I'm going to terminally breach the contract and we'll see. We'll see how it feels. And now both sides feel what it's like when the societal contract gets totally breached.

And let's see if that gets your attention. I feel it. I feel it definitely feels like almost like the end of the world, a little bit. It's like there's— it's like a small— it's like in the same way having a new puppy is just like a small taste of having a baby. It's like, that's how I feel right now. Like, I'm like, if like the world— if like everything that I believed in is gonna come to an end, it's gonna like a little, a little like this, right?

Um, you know, for every sad story, there's also an inspiring story where people are, you know, waking up the next day and going and cleaning up the city and people standing together. And, you know, I think there's a lot of really positive things going on too. And I think that's the, you know, that's the silver lining, or that's the other side of the coin here, where is progress being made.

And there's this guy, there's this guy, he's a listener. I actually forget his name. I think his name is Zach. I told you about him. He's from Utah. He called me the other— he calls me like every week, like, hey, you're gonna come to Utah now? You're gonna come to— does he call you?

You know what I'm talking about?

No, he calls me every week. And he called me like a Sunday ago when this, all this corona thing was going— like, it was like bad corona, and I just got some bad news. And he called me, I was like, quit fucking calling me, or like, I lost my temper with him. So first of all, if you're listening, guy, I forget your name, but my apologies, you just caught me at a bad time. He just kept fucking calling me, and I was so angry about the world. And so anyway, he was calling me about coming to Utah. I'm like, maybe I need to get out to Utah right now. So if you're listening, guy, maybe I'll take you up on that offer right now. I need to get the fuck out of, like, I feel like I'm afraid to be around the world at the moment. So maybe I'll go out there. Let me ask you a question real quick, and then we could talk about business if you want, or we don't have to. You bought your house, so your house is in a, you could say where you live if you want, but we'll say it's a nice neighborhood that still has some issues in San Francisco. It's like, I would say it's one of the less nice neighborhoods of San Francisco overall, but it's still desirable because it's like in a hipster area. Do you regret buying your home?

Yes.

Do you, is your, what do you, can you want to say what your rent is at your new house or not?

Yeah, sure. So the new house rent is $7,000 a month.

And was that less than your mortgage?

Yeah, it's less overall because with a house you have property tax, you have your mortgage, and then you have like, you know, sort of the house maintenance issues that come up over time that, you know, just miscellaneous things.

Do you think you'll make a little bit of money?

A little bit less, but similar.

You think you're going to make any money off of this deal?

Not really. And that's because selling a house has a lot of fees. So like You know, when you buy a house, if you want to sell it the next day, you basically need to sell it for 5% more just with the broker fees. And then there's like the transfer tax, and then there's, um, you know, all the staging costs. You know, it's going to cost us $15,000 to stage the place and fix up the paint and the, you know, little scuffs and scratches that we've had along the way. And then, or, you know, we didn't take care of the lawn as good as we should have, so we got to get a landscaper. So there's all these costs to selling.

So is it going to come out that you broke even and you live for free, or is it going to come out that you just lived for 8 grand or whatever the—

Yeah, I lived for— I lived basically about what I could have lived renting it, or maybe a little bit ahead. We'll see how it nets out. Like, it's unknown, right? Like, with COVID and stuff, like, we don't even know, you know, for somebody to come do an open house tour is like a lot of friction now. It's like, wear your mask, sign this waiver, blah blah blah. So I don't know where it's gonna sell for, but the reason I regret it is not because of any of that. You know, right before I bought the house, like, I had been house hunting, and like a week before I was hanging out with Suli, and Suli's, you know, 100 times wealthier than I am. And I asked him, I said, do you own your place? And I was hanging out with him at his house. He's like, no. I was like, why don't you own, like, you know, just the most baller house here? Because you could. And he was like, oh yeah, no, I like the, you know, I like the flexibility of renting, blah blah. And I was like, it seemed like he just kind of didn't give me the full answer there. So I asked him again at the very end.

I was walking, he just didn't want to make you feel bad.

Yeah, I was walking to my Uber and I was like, so if you were me, would you buy? And he goes, "No." And I go, "Wait, why?" And he goes, "Really simple." He's like, "I just think I can get a better cap rate, a better return on my money, essentially, doing other things than buying a home." So like, you put your down payment down, 20% of your home, in our case, 25%, and that money sits in your home and it's appreciating at the rate of your home appreciation, which is like, you know, very wildly—

Well, I think— I do 3%. Yeah, historically across all homes, I think it's 3%.

Yeah, exactly. San Francisco did a lot better during a certain era where it was like 10%, 15% a year. But his point was basically like, yeah, like, I know that if I take all my options for how to deploy a dollar, you know, stock market, I can expect about a 7% return. You know, I can do private, you know, startup investing, I can do private equity, I can put my money in a hedge fund, I can do multifamily real estate. There's like all these things I can do. Putting it into a down payment of a house is not the best way. And on top of that, it doesn't spit off any cash flow. So like, if I do— if I just buy a home and I rent it out to someone, I get the appreciation of a home plus I get the cash flow every month.

Whereas I try to say this to everyone and they hate hearing it, and I understand why they hate hearing it, but I think buying a house— in our— in our— in Austin, all of our staff buys homes. And I'm like, look, don't tell me you're buying this house because it's a good investment. Tell me you're buying this house because you want to. Like when I bought my steak last night, I didn't think that this $30 is a good investment. I did it because I thought, why? And not a financial investment, but a good investment of like, it made me happy. I wanted it. I work hard so I can have things I want. So if you're, so like if you buy your house, don't tell me you're doing it because it's, you're just throwing away money on rent, right? Tell me you're doing it because it's going to make you happy or because you want to, because that is a good reason. But to say that it's an investment, that's bullshit. You could say that it's a great way to preserve wealth. But it absolutely, in most cases, is not a great way to make wealth.

Right. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And I don't blame anybody who thinks that. I thought, you know, 5, 7 years ago, I would have also said, wait, isn't renting like flushing money down the toilet? And if you buy your home, you have equity in it, blah, blah, blah. And I learned pretty quickly, first smart person I talked to, that was like, no, that's not exactly how it works. So yeah, if you haven't gone down that rabbit hole, go down the rabbit hole, because the sort of American dream of like own your own home with your white picket fence in your backyard. That is pretty silly.

It also made a lot more sense when the ratio of income to housing prices was closer than it is now. Now it's significantly different.

Out of whack. And you face risk, right? Like when I'm in my home and now, boom, remote work is on the rise. Being in a city is not the thing anymore. It's like, oh, shit. People take it for granted that these things just sort of go up. And, you know, you're one shift away. You know, as soon as Elon Musk can make the Hyperloop work where I can commute long distances in like 20 minutes or less, then people are gonna wanna go live further away, have way more, you know, space, resources, whatnot, and not wanna be packed in, you know, like a sardine into a city. A lot of people will choose that. And so you're one technological shift or one policy shift, or in this case, one policy plus biological, you know, terror away from not wanting— people not wanting to be in a certain type of real estate class. Like, multifamily real estate is now struggling because of what's going on. You get a whole lot of unemployment, and now people can't pay their rents. And, you know, every month rents are dropping. It was like 99% of people paid their rent last month on the multifamily stuff that I read. 90% of people are paying their rent. And if that dips below, you know, a certain number, maybe it's 82% or whatever it is, now all of a sudden you're underwater in your multifamily real estate.

The way that I like to live, because I've been an entrepreneur since I was 16, making money on my own, not necessarily all the time, a lot of money, but having to go out and hunt and kill each week. I am allergic to really big purchases and I'm allergic to getting locked into stuff. I actually think that me being allergic to that has actually hurt me. I think that had I increased my overhead on some things, my overhead's really cheap, Had I increased my overhead, I actually would have worked harder to like have to like fulfill that overhead. But now, I mean, if I don't work for many, for a very long, I don't even know how long, maybe forever, I'm fine. And I just prefer to be on that defense cockroach than putting, you know, in San Francisco, you got to put down $300,000 or $400,000 on a home. I'm like, fuck, I don't want to. That's scary. I don't want to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah, and so I've never had the courage to do it.

Okay, um, a couple things I thought were interesting. Uh, one, you posted something about this thing called MoPoints. What is that?

Me?

Yeah, did you post something about MoPoints?

No, what is MoPoints?

Oh, it's just— I thought it was your friend who was doing it. Uh, it's basically like—

oh, my friend! Yeah, Mo! Yes, he just launched it. Yeah, uh, Mo, my friend Mo. Okay, so what it is is Yeah, I was like, what the heck? I didn't even remember the name. My friend Mo helps people with points. That's funny, he'll love that we're talking about it. So Mo Points— so Mo, it's my friend Mo. Him and Ramon grew up together in— Mo's from Afghanistan by way of— where's Ramon from? Netherlands. And then moved here, and they used to have a business— it's shut down now, so I could talk about it— where they would buy and sell airline points. And he became an expert on how to maximize points. And so I'm getting into this now. And so for example, if there's all these ways that you can like, if you're spending money on advertising on this, on that, you can maximize your points and fly for free forever for years. And so he would teach me how to do it myself. And I was like, Mo, turn this into a course. And so that's what it is. Let's, let's, let's pick them out though. Is it mopoints.com?

mopoints.com. Yeah, I checked it out because I was pretty interested in this. Like, In the same way that you want like a tax guy to help you save money on the back end, um, you know, whenever you do like pretty significant credit card spending, and a lot of times if you own your own business, you can rack up a lot of spending on credit cards, um, I hate going and figuring this stuff out. I just feel like it's a waste of my brain and it's a waste of my time to go like optimize my spending and buy points so I can travel free and book all this stuff. But I like know it's valuable, and so I was hoping to get like, what's the shortcut? What's the like Either you do it for me or like, what's the 80/20? Give me the few things I can do that will give me the highest return on my time and effort because I know I'm sort of wasting this opportunity and I don't want to go become an expert in this stuff. But if you're an expert, fantastic. So I signed up for it.

Oh, great. I'll make sure he knows. So, you know, points are interesting. I just got into them recently. So I earn maybe 300,000 to 400,000 points a month. And that translates to 1% of that in cash value. So if I spent $1 million a year on, uh, through my credit card, which sounds like a lot if you're just an individual, and that is a lot if you're an individual, but if you're a business, that's nothing. I get $100,000 cash back. Now here's the cool thing, that cash back in most cases is tax-free. So in, if you live in San Francisco, that's the equivalent of getting a salary of $180 grand or $100 Yeah, and so it's great. And so I've actually met some entrepreneurs who earn— I think you can get up to $360,000. Some accountant's gonna like tweet at me and say I got it wrong, but I'm almost positive, and it's controversial, I'm almost positive you can get up to $350,000 in cash back. And so I know this one lady who's got this flower company and she gets $350,000 in cash back income a year.

Yeah, that's great. I have a friend who, he basically negotiated with his investors He's like, I'd like to pay the AWS bill for my company on my personal credit card. And so he earned like, whatever, Amex Double Black Platinum Gold, whatever it is, like the highest tier for life because they were spending like, you know, $3 million a month on AWS or something crazy. And so like, he's like, oh, if I ever want to fly, I fly first class now. Oh, I get like free Equinox. I get free this, I get free that because that's the perks of like the highest tier of Amex. And he's like, yeah, I got lifetime because during my company, I just asked, can I just put this on this card and keep that tied to my name? And they did it.

And so, and so that's what Mo's trying to do now. It's just like a course in hand-to-hand combat, like consultation where he's trying to help people. But that is kind of interesting to like log into a portal and, or like technology and it does it for you. That is pretty amazing. And, and your transaction fee is either upfront fee or you take a skim a little. That is incredibly interesting.

I like it. Okay, so I have another random idea I want to talk about. So I have a friend, shout out to my friend Mike, who, he went to Duke where I went to school. He was Duke's best football player at the time. Like, he was like, I think he led the nation in tackles or something like that. So he's an amazing linebacker, football player, goes, he's a little undersized, but he gets drafted or he gets a tryout with a couple teams. And he ended up getting cut after a year, I think, from the Indianapolis Colts. And that was sort of like the end of his football career. But he built a ton of connections and still has connections with athletes in the NBA and NFL. So I was talking to him about it and I was like, you know, what problems do these guys have? What stuff are they trying to do? Because these are often a class of people who have a lot of money, have specific problems to like people with money, fame, and, you know, specific lifestyle. What are some ideas that, you know, problems that they have that I've just never seen, but I could solve because I understand them? And so, uh, one of the things he had mentioned, uh, not even as a problem, but I was like asking how they did it, was every athlete— or I shouldn't say every, many athletes start their own foundation or charity. You've probably seen this, like, you know, oh, you know, random wide receiver. It's not just like the top of the top. It's like random wide receiver. Yeah, I have a foundation back in my city. It's for kids who blah blah blah. Kids and Books.

It's for Dustin Poirier. Poirier, one of my favorite fighters, has one.

And so I was wondering, I was like, A, why do they do this? And then B, like, how do they do this? Like, could you build a business around this. And so on the why, there's some interesting things, and again, the accountants are going to be sort of out in full force correcting me on this, but it seems like basically there's some tax advantages to a foundation in addition to obviously wanting to give back, because often athletes come from pretty rough backgrounds, and so they do feel this pull of, "Hey, I've made it. I won the lottery. How do I give back?" So there's the emotional pull to give back and create a foundation, but then there's the financial pull as well, which is, there are some tax advantages to doing it this way where you basically are— you're able to give and you're able to give today and reduce your taxable income. And that money goes to the foundation, which can then over time spend that money long after your career is over even. So you can separate the time of giving and then the time of spending. You can separate the tax event from the giving.

Yeah, that's— I forget the name of it, but you and I have a friend who had a large exit. And what he did was he put put away a significant amount of money. I think a very significant amount of money, at least 5, it could be as high as 10. He put it into this charitable account and over the next, I'm going to butcher this. I think over the next 5 years, he has to spend that on, uh, what's it called? What's a nonprofit called?

A 401?

Yeah. He's gotta, he's gotta, he's gotta get rid of it. So whenever I see like an interesting charity, I'm like, hey guy, throw money.

Cool. And there's other things like a DAF, which is a donor-advised fund, which is what, uh, Jack Dorsey said, I'm gonna give a billion dollars away, and he did it via DAF. So there's other ways. But I guess my idea was, um, cool, so there's reasons athletes want foundations, they're clearly doing this, but I know athletes, athletes are not excited to go figure out the paperwork to start a foundation, to make sure they're reporting on time, all that stuff. So I was wondering, is there a Stripe Atlas for foundations? Is there a push-a-button, get your foundation spun up without having to get on the phone, without having to print out a piece of paper and go mail it somewhere? Because I think you could build a pretty niche but, you know, potentially pretty lucrative subscription business where, you know, these foundations, there's a spin-up fee and then there's an annual maintenance basically to keep your foundation in good standing. I think there's a business there.

So let's talk about Atlas for a second. So Atlas is a thing with Stripe, and it's a click of a button, set up an LLC, I think, or do they allow other stuff?

C-Corp. C-Corp or LLC.

Why? How does that make money?

Uh, well, it makes money— so it's strategic for Stripe because if you're doing that, you're probably going to stay in the Stripe ecosystem. So they're like, cool, how do we get more customers? Let's get new businesses to get created, and then they'll use Stripe. So it's kind of like when Facebook gives away internet to people who don't have the internet. It's like, cool, we'll give you the internet and And guess what you're gonna do with the internet? Use Facebook. So Stripe's doing the same thing. It's like, how do we increase the rate of new startups? Because startups are who uses Stripe, and then if they grow, they grow with us, and fantastic, we got 'em while they're young type of thing.

So then how would this make money then, would charity?

They do charge a fee. So like when I did it, I used Stripe Atlas to spin up my company, and I forget what it is, a couple hundred bucks, but it's great. It's like, I don't wanna talk to a lawyer. I trust that this will get set up properly. They do all the filing and documentation. They just email me, hey, here's your tax ID, Here's your entity, here's the articles of formation, et cetera, et cetera. And so Stripe Atlas was great. Took me 3 weeks and I don't know, $250 or something like that, and I got my company set up.

Why did you do a C-Corp?

I did an LLC for me. Oh. But if I wanted to do a C-Corp, like if I was gonna do a startup that was gonna raise money, I would do a C-Corp and I would've used it for that.

Let's talk about the Sam Altman thing.

Yeah. Have you read this post?

No, but—

Sam Altman posted something.

I have something good that can piggyback off of it.

Okay, you want to start with that? You want me to kind of summarize?

No, I want you to start.

Alright, so Sam Altman, who's the guy who runs Y Combinator, or doesn't run it anymore actually, but he was the president of Y Combinator and kind of one of the, you know, more well-known guys in Silicon Valley. He put up this blog post called Idea Generation, and he said, you know, one of the most common questions I get is how do you get ideas for new startups? A lot of people want to do startups, but they don't quite know the idea. Or they don't have a lot of conviction in it. And he says something interesting. He goes, YC once tried an experiment to fund people who we thought would be good founders but with no ideas. He goes, and I think every company in this no idea track failed. And it turns out that founders have a lot of ideas about everything. Like, great founders actually have a lot of ideas. And if you want a founder— if you have a founder who can't think of an idea, they probably shouldn't be a founder. It's kind of his takeaway. But then he starts to explain, all right, so how do you get ideas for startups? So he says thing number one, you want to be in the right environment. So you want to be around the right kind of people. So he said, who are the right kind of people? He goes, you want to be around people who can have a good feel for the future. They will entertain improbable plans. They're optimistic and they're smart in a creative way. And he says they have high idea flux, which is, you know, pretty good for our podcast. Like, I consider both of us idea machines. And, you know, that's what he says, that's what he calls idea flux. So the sort of rate of ideas coming in and out of their body. These sorts of people tend to think without the constraints that most people have. They don't have a lot of filters, and they don't care too much what other people think. He says this is important because the best ideas are pretty fragile. Most people don't even want to start talking about them because they sound kind of silly up front. And like, take The Hustle for example. We want to be this big bad media company. We're gonna do an email newsletter. And an email newsletter actually sounded quite silly to people who were traditionally in media. This was, you know, back in if you rewind several years. So you want to be around people who won't make you feel stupid for mentioning a bad idea, and they certainly don't feel stupid when they mention bad ideas. And he basically says stay away from people who are like, the world has beaten them down, or they're the type that belittle your ambitions. And unfortunately, this is most of the world. They hold on to the past, and, and if you want to live in the future, you don't want to be around these people. And then he says, okay, So here's the sort of next thing that would help you get good ideas. So first is be around those types of people. The second is identify a tectonic shift that's happening right now. How is the world changing in some fundamental way? Can you identify the leading edge of that change and the opportunity that unlocks it? For example, mobile phone comes out 2007, 2008, and then you get all these companies like Snapchat, Uber, Airbnb, etc., that were launched in that time on top of that, like, core fundamental shift. These are— when a big shift happens, the big companies usually get beat by fast-moving and focused startups. So you want to ask yourself a question like, what's something that's possible this year that wasn't possible last year? And pay attention anytime something like that comes up. There's probably a lot of good ideas in that space. The last thing is, if you ever feel like something is like— if you can say the statement, I'm sure this is gonna happen, I don't know if we'll be the ones to do it, that's a good sign. He's like, Uber was like this for me. The first time I used it, it was clear I wasn't going to be hailing a cab any longer or calling the dispatcher, but it wasn't clear to me that Uber was necessarily going to win the space. And then the last thing he says is— sorry, this is kind of long— it's important to think about what you are well suited for. So like if you do some introspection or you ask your mentor to figure out what you're good at, he goes, I believe that founder-company fit is as good as product-market fit. And he goes, lastly, You can test a good idea if you can articulate why most people think of it— think it's a bad idea, but what you understand about it that makes it a good idea. So that's a final test. All right, so I thought this is a pretty interesting post.

Yeah, I think it's crazy interesting. And I did bring this up because I, I don't even care about promoting this, but so Gagan Bhayani reached out to me about 3 months ago, and for Trends we did this thing where he like just gave a talk and people signed up and it was neat. And he was like, hey, I'm thinking about maybe I want to launch like a school or something. Can I like partner with you guys and you promote this course I want to do? And I was like, yeah, that sounds interesting. And so me and him just started riffing more and more, and I really got fascinated with this idea of ideas. Like, why is it, Sean, that you are good at finding ideas? And I was like, I don't, I don't know why, but I wonder if I could like give frameworks behind it. And so he's kind of leading the way, and I'm just kind of tagging along a little bit. And so we were hosting this thing, it's mostly him hosting with a little bit of me, and it's called the Ideation Bootcamp. And I put together what I thought was all these frameworks on coming up with ideas. And a few of them that I have, coincidentally, I've never read the same article until you just told me, are similar. And so a few of them are like, I like to do reverse engineering. And so what I look at is I can go to like a website and see like how they do it. Because to me, if I can see how someone does it, it helps me realize what's possible. Another one is unbundling. So I like to look at like really big things like eBay or Craigslist or Reddit and being like, okay, if usually if something's huge, it becomes a victim of its own success and they can't move fast enough to adapt on an early, like interesting change. And so we talk about like, I just made up ways to figure that out. And then, uh, let's see, is there anything else that's interesting that is related to that? Cause I didn't realize that he kind of actually discussed that. Um, oh, and then another thing that I like to do, Coincidentally, the things that I'm talking about is what he's talking about. We just go into tactically. And it's like, how do you look at— he talked about something that's growing quickly, and you hop in on it. And that's actually quite hard. And tell me what I'm missing here. The things that I really love to do is I like to look at forums and comments and article comments and user reviews for apps on iTunes to hear what— What about, how are people using this shit that makes them love something or makes them hate something? And that's what I use to come up with ideas. So what Sam Altman said was, get something that's growing quickly early on that you think is gonna be the future. How else do you discover those?

So there's two ways. So one is, you discover a platform that's growing really fast and you go on top of it. I'll give you a perfect example of this. Zoom is growing like fucking crazy right now. I think it went from like 10 million users to over 250 million users. During just the COVID crisis. You know, my mom and my auntie use Zoom now because that's how we celebrate birthdays during COVID And they, you know, Zoom used to be this enterprise thing. So Zoom's growing like crazy. I had this friend Victor, I don't remember if I mentioned this on the podcast, but he created this thing called ZoomURL, basically zmurl.com, and it's basically Eventbrite for Zoom. So he noticed the problem of like, hey cool, everyone's using Zoom to meet up, but Zoom's like kind of invite and like you know, the sort of like splash that page doesn't exist. So there's not a cool way to like make an invite for a Zoom event. You just send this ugly link and you say, join this Zoom, that's where we're going to do this conference or this birthday or this whatever. And so he just made a really pretty auto generator. You put in your Zoom link and then you can upload a photo, you can put the details, blah blah blah, and you make this little landing page for your event. And he's growing like crazy because he's just growing— he's piggybacking on top of Zoom very opportunistically on the platform. He's doing something that Zoom probably isn't going to get around to doing for a little while, so he's got this opportunity to grow solving a new problem. The other way, which is— this is I think where I see you do this less, is about technology shifts. I think this is where Sam Altman is actually talking about more, which is when you grow on the back of an existing product or platform, it sucks because you end up with this platform dependency, and then they can often kill you or clone you, or you just get stuck on that platform, you never get off. Whereas technology shifts like, oh shit, we couldn't do this before, but now machine learning is good enough that this is now possible. Or for example, my friend told me about these little NFC stickers. Do you know what that is? Near Field Communication. So basically I bought these on Amazon. They're like these tiny little stickers that cost like, you know, 10 cents each or something like that. And if you get these in bulk, they're very, very cheap and you just program them so that like if somebody just moves their phone, into this thing, it touches, taps this thing, it's like Apple Pay, it will fire something open on their phone. It can open up a website, it can open up whatever. And I'm like, dude, this is great for marketing. Like, I should just put these on products, or, you know, this could be in my shoes. It could just say, is this a real Jordan or is this a fake? Um, these little things can be embedded everywhere because the cost has come down and the reliability has come up, and the core platforms like iPhone and Android now, you know, by default will react to these NFC things just like they do QR codes. So there's like— so technology shifts is, I think, the one that most people don't understand because they don't have technical literacy. So they don't know what's going on, and they don't know when something before that was impossible is now possible because it was like actually just a subtle shift over time, or the cost of this chip has dropped, and now it's really economical to do something that before that would have been ridiculous. Or now the chip is small, it used to be so big.

How do you identify those?

So, for example, I have a meeting every week with my former CTO for my startup because he lives in that like bleeding edge of technology. And I have an hour a week that it's called the cool shit hour. It's on our calendar and he just shows me cool shit. And I just told him, look, when we're usually in meetings, I talk 90% of the time, you talk 10% because I'm the kind of talker sales guy. But in this meeting, you're going to talk 90, I'm going to talk 10. And the cool shit hour is just you demoing to me cool shit that I don't know about because I don't I don't understand cryptocurrency the way you do. I don't understand VR/AR the way you do. I don't know about these other technological shifts that are going on. So we've been doing this for a month now, and it's fucking awesome. I basically got a front row seat at this. And all I had to do was just ask a smart guy who is in that world. But the more generic way of doing that is just to hang out with those guys. So again, it's sort of like what this post was about. It's like, who you hang out with ends up being what's in front of your eyes. And so we hang out with a bunch of business people that figure out different ways to make money. So for us, how do you make money is just a question of which way do you want to make money? I know 100 paths and I have 5 examples of each of those 100 paths. I have 500 different examples of how to make money. I just got to choose one that fits me. Whereas people who are in the world of technology, they don't really know exactly how to make money, but they can tell you 100 interesting things with technology. And so sometimes you got to hang out with them and eat lunch with them, you know, 3 times a week so that you're hearing those things. Put yourself in that position.

Yeah, it's like you just gotta hang out like in the fringes. And I think that like a great place is— great places to hang out in the fringes are Reddit, Reddit, Hacker News, just like Telegram groups. And I guess you've just kind of— you're helping me finalize my, my— the one slideshow I have to do, which is you have to look at user behavior and you have to find this fringe behavior that's growing quickly.

Right. You know, a couple podcasts ago, I went off on this random tangent about DeFi, decentralized finance. Yeah, it was just like, you know, I'm speaking gibberish. I don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about. But it's because I discovered this fringe where I saw all this activity happening. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't even understand this. But I know enough to know that this is unusual. And this is a phenomenon, and I need to know more. And so like, boom, save that, pin that tab open in my brain. And I'm like, come back to this. You got to know more about this. This is unusual. This is new. This is interesting.

Well, I think that's what you have to do when you have ideas, which is you have to actually steal from a lot of different places. So you like take like, um, fuck, I don't know, like, wow, at a restaurant I could order, like, I only have to pay for what I order or something. Or, um, I don't fucking know, like, I'll give you an example with Uber. Like, I don't actually have to like have— I don't have to own the cabs. You know what I mean?

I'll give you an example. So two ideas, if you, if you do a little idea sex with them. So cloud kitchens, we've talked about that in the podcast before. So creating a virtual restaurant, selling on top of Postmates, Uber Eats, etc. And then in the world of e-commerce, I was thinking about upsells. Upsells is, you know, obviously critical to e-commerce. It's like you're buying one thing, it's like, hey, do you want fries with that, right? Uh, hey, do you want this extra thing? And it increases the order value by 20%, 30%, 40%, whatever it is. Upsells are critical in e-commerce. In the world of food delivery, they basically don't exist. So I was thinking, like, how many times where if we were ordering, you know, Chinese food or Mexican food or whatever through some restaurant, why doesn't Uber Eats just do a, you know, sort of have a cloud dessert company that's always just like, do you wanna add some ice cream on top of that? Or, hey, we just made brownies, whatever. And like, I bet they could increase the cart size and it shouldn't be another restaurant. It should be an upsell across all orders of all restaurants that day. And so like, I don't know, you can sort of mishmash ideas. If you see something that's interesting or critical in one area, in another area they don't do it, that's usually, you know, makes for an interesting thought experiment.

I completely agree with this. What I'm wondering is, do you— can you teach people this, or you either got it or you don't?

No, you can for sure teach people this. Yeah, I would love to say you either got it or you don't. That would make it— make me feel awesome because like, I got it and other people don't. But but the reality is I didn't have it and now I do. And I know exactly what I did to get there. I hung out with people who have a bunch of interesting ideas and I got thirsty for that. So I started hanging out with them either in person or my Twitter feed is just full of those people. Like, I don't have, you know, I don't put sports into my Twitter feed as much. Like, I surround my feed with that so that even when I'm just browsing, that's what I get. The second thing is like, start to come up with these frameworks. So for example, one framework I have you should steal for your thing is like, You— if you imagine this 2x2 grid, on the left side you have, uh, what type of problem is this? Is this a new problem or an old problem, right? Old problem: people trying to meet their mates, they want to date somebody. That's an old problem. New problem: um, hey, I'm trying to throw a Zoom event and I don't have a good way to share that, right? That didn't— that wasn't a problem that existed 5 years ago, but it exists now. And so new problem, old problem, and then you have new solution, old solution. So it's like, cool, old solutions to things can be applied to new problems. So So that's what the Zoom URL thing is. He's taking an old solution like Eventbrite or SplashThat, or like these proven methods. He's just saying, cool, I can specialize and tailor that to this new problem, which is Zoom events, um, rather than in-person events. And then you take new solutions, which are things like, oh wow, so crypto lets you have trust or like a digital contract. So I don't need an escrow person. So maybe, you know, I can take an old problem like, you know, um, escrow in a home, in a home sale, or a new solution.

Notarizing.

Yeah, notaries. Okay, cool. Yeah, exactly. So new solution, uh, push a button, somebody has GPS on their phone and they come to you and they solve your problem for you. They either pick you up and take you somewhere or whatever. Cool. Maybe I can apply that to this old problem, notary. And so you just take that 2x2 grid and you say, cool, what are all the new solutions that are interesting to me? And another one is, what are all the new problems that are interesting to me? You just keep jotting those down anytime you see one. You know, whatever that is. And so that's a framework you can use to understand ideas and figure out, is this idea actually something novel or not? Well, it's novel whenever you cross old problem and new solution, or old solution and new problem. Those are the two boxes that the new ideas come in. If it's an old problem, old solution, there's nothing new there. Don't do it.

You're blowing my mind. I'm listening. No, I don't understand how you come up with these. Like, like, you think You think in like, you know how people used to say Obama talks in like quotes, like he always like, he just has these one-liners that are like really great. You talk in frameworks.

Yeah, I don't know why, but I think it's because I like frameworks, so I'm studying them and then I just naturally start thinking that way. Another way to practice this, if you want to become an idea person, is like James Altucher shared this, but he was like, every day I write down 10 ideas. It doesn't have to be good, bad, it's just a daily practice of idea generation. Because if you think about it, like, oh man, I wish I was better at ideas. Cool. Do you do that? Do you practice coming up with new ideas every day? Oh, you don't? Okay. You know, I also wish I was fit, but if I don't go exercise, then what do I expect is gonna happen? I'm not just gonna magically get fit. And so same thing here. I have two that I do. I don't do the James Altucher one, but the two I do, one is this podcast twice a week. I get up in front of, you know, a lot of people and I try to come up with new ideas. That's a practice. How do I prepare for that? I have these documents on my phone and my laptop. One's called the biggest idea in my head, and I have every month, and I just write down this month, what is the biggest idea in my head? And I just put it there. And so like, I'll go to my document right now. I'll read you one of my biggest ideas in my head.

Sean, everyone has asked that you share this shit and you never have.

Yeah, you know, these are— I, I don't know if I want to share these things, right? Some of it I want to share, some of it I don't want to share. So like in April, I refinanced my home and the biggest idea in my head was like, holy shit, that was so much work and so painful. Biggest idea in my head is turning refinancing into a 5-minute online process. I don't know how, but if there is a new solution, that's an old problem that I would want solved. When we were doing the weight loss challenge, the biggest idea in my head was, holy shit, everybody needs a little monitor in their body that tells them how their body's reacting to the food they eat. If we want to change people's diets and not have half the country be obese, we need to have real-time feedback loops so that when you put that piece of chocolate in your mouth, you pay a price immediately and not like 5 years down the road. And, um, and so the biggest idea in my head was how do we make these glucose monitors so cheap and readily available that everybody gets feedback for everything that they eat? It'll help the country eat better. It'll help the whole world eat better. That was the biggest idea in my head for one month. And so I just write these ideas down and then, you know, I basically have a place to put them.

I, I'm, I'm just, I'm like being a listener right now. I am thinking about this. Um, I don't know. I don't have anything to add. I feel like I'm a student at the moment, just listening to this.

Uh, but I think it's great what you guys are doing. If you guys are going to release these courses or classes, I don't know.

I don't know. I like really, the truth is, is that we don't have HustleCon revenue in June. And he had done all the work and I was like, nah, okay, well, I'll work with you to do it. And I don't know, I personally, as a business, like our business, we have an ambitious goal to build a really large company. I think courses will not be part of that. I think that it was simply like a thing to like, well, let's just try it. And it actually covered our HustleCon revenue, so, or profit. So, but I will not do this. I will not do it ever again. I hate the course business. I think it is not fun.

It's great for a solopreneur. It's not great for a company.

No, I think it's shit. I think that if you're Reforge, which is a $5,000 thing for companies, that is interesting, but I still think it sucks to host. Like, I don't think it's— Like, maybe it makes some profit. I don't know if it does, but it definitely does. But I personally don't like it. I don't think most people even finish the shit.

Yeah, most people don't. I think that, like, Gagan, who created— he created what, Udemy, right?

Yeah, Udemy. He—

I think they were the ones who came out and said less than 5% of people finish these. You know, at one point in time, MOOCs, massively open online courses, were all the rage. Everybody said MOOCs are gonna revolutionize education, it's going to change the university system. And then they came out and they were like, look, we made a Harvard education free and open to anyone. All you had to do was click a button and enroll, and then you got to show up and take it. You could have a Harvard education for free online from the comfort of your own home, and less than 5% of people, I think, finished the course. I think that tells you a lot about like why people do a thing. Um, you know, people don't go to university to learn. That's the sad truth. People go to university to get credentialed so that they can get a high-paying job. So if you want to compete with a university, you should actually create a credential that gets you a high-paying job, that gives people confidence. If I get this credential, I will get a high—

that's— I think this is what you needed. This is what you— your next thing will have to be.

This is the area I'm most interested in, and if I could just figure out an angle, um, I'll do it. Because there's this other great talk that came from the YC Mafia. It's by this guy Richard Hamming, and it's called "You and Your Research." You should go read it. It's a speech he gives. And I didn't know who this guy was. Apparently he's like a kind of technologist from back in the day, and he talks about his time at Xerox PARC. And Xerox PARC was responsible for like—

what's it called? Richard— Richard—

what I think is Richard Hamming is his name. Uh, I'm pretty sure it's Hamming. I don't know if his first name is Richard. Maybe I just inserted generic white name. But Xerox PARC is where like, you know, the visual graphic user interface— like Steve Jobs went to Xerox PARC and was like, oh, mouse points at item on screen, that's how computer should work. And he like stole the innovations basically from there. 'cause they were just doing R&D and he was like trying to bring shit to the world. Anyways, he talked about Xerox PARC and he used to, he said, he tells the story, he's like, I was at lunch one day and I asked my coworkers, these brilliant people, you know, all the brain in the world is stuffed into these guys' skulls. And he's like, I asked them, what is the most important, what is the biggest idea in your head? What is the most important problem in your space, in your industry? What is the most important problem? And then they would say a thing He's like, what are you researching? And they would say a different thing. And he's like, why aren't you working on the most important, the most burning question in your space, the most interesting thing in your field? Why are you not working on it? And he discovered, like, you know, so his message is basically ask yourself that question. What is the most— the biggest thing in my space? What is the biggest challenge or opportunity in my industry? And why am I not working on it? And you should go work on it. He says the filter is you have to ask yourself, do I have a novel angle on how I'm going to attack that problem? Because if I just go back, if I like— the big problems are kind of known, but you need a new attack vector of how you can solve that problem. If you don't have a new attack vector, you're just going to waste your time and energy. You're going to get the same result as everybody else. But if you have a new attack vector, then it is your responsibility as a smart and talented person to go do it. So that's how I think about this university thing. I, for a long time, I already knew the last project I do, I'm going to do this. I'm going to teach a bunch of people, but you need a new attack vector.

That's bullshit, dude. That's bullshit. That is the only one way to do it. Because if you think about it, a lot of great restaurants aren't particularly novel in the solution. Well, I mean, they're novel in branding, or they're novel in that Sean is making it. Do you know what I mean? So I think that is a little bullshit. I know all of it is bullshit.

I think that— Restaurants are bullshit, right?

No, they're not, you're wrong.

Restaurants are terrible businesses.

No, you're wrong. One of the— Tilman Fertitta owns— what's he own? Fertitta.

He owns Fertitta's, but he also owns some restaurants. Yes, he owns some chains.

It's mostly—

He owns the Golden Nugget and he owns a whole bunch of other stuff too.

Yeah, and like some steakhouses and like Bubba Gump Shrimp, just like fast casual stuff that regular people go to. And it's like one of the most profitable privately owned companies in America.

The best restaurant chains all had a new attack vector. McDonald's realized the new attack vector, and they productionized fast food, and they had a real estate model and a franchise model to back it up. Chipotle came out, and they did the same thing, but they realized sort of the fast casual model, which was different.

But there are many cases where the amount of success they have is not in proportion to the amount of— their new novelty is not in proportion with the amount of success that they have.

Yes. So, okay, here's what I think. If you're talking restaurants, the analogy there is like, I'm going to create an online course too, right? That's me opening up my restaurant just like everybody else has a restaurant, but my restaurant's run by me. I think I'm a good cook. I think some people will like my, uh, will like my, um, my restaurant. What I'm trying to do is sort of change, like, change the restaurant industry, right? So like, when I talk about education, it's not like I'm just trying to create a course. I'm trying to make it so that, um, I guess here's the analogy. I don't want to build a car, I want to build a road. So roads basically are new platforms that anybody can create a car on, and, uh, you can get a lot more leverage. No, I understand roads versus if you're just trying to build a car, if you're just trying to be a car driving on the existing road system, you know what I mean?

I get it, that's a fair point. No, it's a podcast, is a car.

It's us getting on here and entertaining people. We're gonna reach a certain set of people given a certain amount of effort. It can go— it can scale pretty big because we're using the internet and it's awesome and it's free. That's— so that's good. It's better than the cars of old where we would just go to an event and we would host a meetup and 40 people would show up and we would talk. That's the old way. This is a much better way. It's a much better car, but it's still not a road. A road is podcasting. If you create something like podcasting, boom, you've changed. Yeah, you've really changed the world. And that's That's more exciting to me.

I get it. We're on the same page on that one. I think we had an interesting podcast. I'll be interested to see if people like it or not. I think we covered a lot and actually turned— I was expecting this to be shit because I was in a horrible mood. I think we turned it into something good.

Cool. Yeah, this was fun. I think we should switch the order around. I think we should put maybe the political stuff at the back. I don't know. We'll see.

Well, we listen to the reviews, we listen to the tweets, so let us know what you think.

Cool. All right, let's get out of here.