The Man Who Makes $1M/Year Selling Christmas Trees

So this Christmas tree thing is kind of crazy. The story is this article that I read in Curbed. Basically, it's talking about the brutal mafia-style business of Christmas tree sales in New York. And I'm just going to read you a paragraph here that just captures it. It goes Christmas trees are a big business in New York. A lot of people see the quaint little shacks that appear on the side of the road just before Thanksgiving with a bunch of trees and you think, oh, these are probably independently owned, maybe by jolly families of lumberjacks looking to make a few holiday bucks. That's what I thought anyways. In reality, a few eccentric, obsessed, and sometimes ruthless tycoons control the sale of almost every tree in the city. They call themselves Tree Men and they spend 11 months a year preparing for Christmas time, which to them is a 30-day sprint to grab as much cash as they can.

I'm in.

You're in, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This needs to be a Netflix show, right? Yeah.

And is this the one about this guy named Scott?

Well, there's a bunch of guys, so it talks about like the different guys because they basically carved up the territories. Like, you got Harlem, this one guy gets Manhattan, this other guy's got the East Side, and they all have different territories and they all have crazy names. So it's like George Nash and Kevin Hammer, and it's like, oh yeah, Nash got Harlem. He's a smooth-talking hippie from Vermont. Hammer is a Brooklyn-born Scientologist who is a powerful force in the business. He's the one who shaped it. Hammer is rumored to own half the tree stands in Manhattan, bringing in more than a million dollars every December. The lore is Hammer lives on a yacht somewhere in the Atlantic, and he visits New York only at Christmas time, where he holes up in a Midtown hotel room with a pile of cash on the bed and a pit bull squatting on either side of him. Like, is this even real? What am I reading?

That sounds fake, dude. If you sell $1 million of trees in one month, like with all your expenses, like that's like a, like a, like a, like a $150,000 to $200,000 a year salary. Yeah. Yeah.

Like way more.

Yeah. You might have a pit bull, but there ain't gonna be piles of cash or a yacht.

But you definitely like 50%. I could see there's a world where this is like 50% margin all in.

Well, you ain't owning yachts in Manhattan when it's on $500,000 a year.

Even if you're doing it for like 20 years, this is an old article. Um, so I think, Uh, yeah, it's pretty crazy. So then it talks about like, basically one interesting thing is it talks about the history of the Christmas tree. So it says 200 years ago, the idea of putting a tree inside your apartment would be a bizarre decision. It didn't make any sense. This is supposed to be shelter from the outside. Why would you bring a tree in? And it talks about how like Christmas trees that are trees themselves weren't even really associated with Christmas time. And then it says that started to change in 1851. There was a Dutchman named Mark Carr who was like, I think I can do this.

What's doing this?

Like selling trees to people just for the spirit of Christmas. And so he goes, he's considered the father of Manhattan Christmas tree business, and we don't know much about him, but basically the way it describes him is he was out of work and he was— he realized that he could chop up a tree from the forest, bring it into the city, and try to sell it to the people in the city to have like a piece of like, you know, nature with them. And he goes, he tells his wife, she's like, that idea sucks. This is the great story of every entrepreneur. Tell your wife an idea, she says it sucks, and you do it anyways. I think that's the real American dream. And so he comes in and he basically tries to associate these trees with Christmas spirit, with the jolly wintertime. And he goes and he bought a— got a permit for $1 to sell it inside Washington Market, which was like their wholesale bazaar. And he starts to explain to people there that these are trees that you can stand upright in your house and it signifies Christmas. And he sold them out in a day. And that kind of started the trend of indoor Christmas trees. Christmas trees. Again, assuming this article is not fake completely in The Onion.

My parents used to do this for a living. They owned a fruit stand.

Yeah, you're just sitting on that fact for 5 minutes while I'm making up shit about the Christmas trees.

No, so to this day, I've told you, my father's a produce broker. So basically, these are made-up numbers, but hypothetically, he'll, uh, buy a million dollars of onions from a farmer and then organize a truck to go pick them up and then sell that load of onions to Walmart for $1.1 million and hopefully make $100,000 in profit, of which $50,000 goes to the truck or whatever, you know, made up numbers. Uh, but the way he got into that was my mom and dad owned a fruit stand, like on the side of the road. And that fruit stand made a lot of money every October by selling pumpkins and every Christmas selling Christmas trees. And my mom would tell stories about like, getting up at 5 a.m. in the morning in order to like flip the pumpkins because I guess they can't rest on one side for too long, otherwise they get lopsided. Right. And they would package up these trees and they would just sell a shitload of Christmas trees and that would like make their Q4.

I am fascinated by these kind of once-a-year businesses. Like Michael Gurley came on the podcast. He's talking about his fireworks business where 99% of the revenue happens the day before July 4th. Right. Like this is like July 3rd is 99% of the revenue. And it's like, what a make or break. What are like high stress, but also, you know, kind of peak season versus off-season style of business. And those kind of fascinate me. We've talked about before, like, I think one of the great side hustles is going around the neighborhood and basically saying, hey, like, do you want us to put Christmas lights up for you? We'll put Christmas lights up. Like, I think you can make, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in a 6-month sprint if you just wanted to go knock on doors and ask, you know, the same question over and over again. And I think that, like, there's a guy in our neighborhood who basically does that. You know, he hits up— he gets like 50 houses to say yes to this thing. Each one of us pays, you know, I think I paid like $1,700 for like a basic Christmas lights thing that took him, you know, and the guy who was knocking on the door wasn't even the guy who put the lights up. So I don't even know if he was just like a lead gen guy. I don't know who he was, but, you know, I respect the hustle.

All right, my friends. So a lot of you guys who listen to the show, you listen because you want to start a company, but you're not sure what idea to choose, or you may not even have an idea. Idea, and you like our podcast, My First Million, because we've done a lot of the work for you on researching all these business ideas. Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot, they just put together an entire list of all the resources that you can use to find a market opportunity to validate for your next business idea. So if you're looking for a market size calculator or tools to identify market trends or a huge list of ideas to get started, So if you're interested, there's a link below. Click it and you can have access to the whole thing. It's completely free. Now back to the show. What's this, um, health startups that are— have wild traction?

So there's a couple of health startups that just caught my eye. As, uh, normally there's a bunch of these ideas that sound really great and then they just never work. And a lot of them are like— and they're all the things that, you know, basically a rich, smart San Francisco, LA, New York type of person does or wants in their life. And they think that everybody does and wants that and that it can be accessible to all of them. But actually it's too expensive and too hard to do and too bespoke and all this stuff. Ideas that fall into this category were like music discovery. And then there's like—

let me give you a good example. This was a headline in Business Insider. Billionaires plan to launch a media brand around the zeitgeist of Brooklyn.

Exactly.

A billionaire launching a media company about how Brooklyn is where it's at. That's the worst. That, that I'll take How to Lose $50 Billion for $100, Alex.

You know, the Instagram co-founders, after Instagram, um, their like revenge company was this news reading app. So they basically, they, they got, they, they quit Facebook and they were like, ah, Facebook is kind of bastardizing Instagram, they're just copying Snapchat and like all this shit. And they were kind of like making these low-key like passive-aggressive remarks. And then they were like, we're doing it again. And they did this photo shoot of them in their, like, you know, like, in their vacation home where they get away when they want to be creative. And they say they're gonna, like, try to change the way that we consume news and make news, you know, less biased and more, like, easy to consume and all this stuff. And, like, of course, you know, 2 years later they shut it down because that's, again, this kind of, like, smart, wealthy, well-meaning person trying to solve a problem that they have but that not a lot of that it's not, it's basically, it's not junk food. Like people want junk food, people want Cheetos and they want the Cheeto dust on their fingers. And anybody who's like, I'm going to take the Cheeto dust off their fingers, they just don't find a lot of demand typically. Okay. So this is like what I, there's like one model of the world I have. And then there's, but then you always pay attention to what's going to break your frame. Where am I too biased? Where have I locked in? And, and maybe the world is changing underneath me. And so there's two health startups. And so, uh, Daniel Ek, who is the founder of Spotify, who is awesome guy, but it checks a bunch of the boxes, right? Billionaire who's, you know, coming off of a, you know, huge, you know, life-altering, you know, win of a company.

And he's been rich since he was 21.

Been rich for a long time. Obviously he's at that Huberman phase where he's like, you know what? I need to like take care of my health. I need to get a protocol. And like, I'm going to start taking these like You know, I'm gonna start taking drugs that nobody can pronounce and like, I'm gonna do all these things, right? And that's like a normal thing that like, you know, I'm start biohacking and like the protocol phase of life. Like, yeah, exactly. So he's in his protocol phase. And so he, he launches this thing called Neko Health and it even had like the other kind of like, uh-oh warning signs where it's like, he's not really running it. He's like a part of it, but he's like, wait, you're running Spotify. So how are you gonna do this? Like, oh, there's like a team that's running it. Okay, so maybe this operator model, who knows? We'll see what happens. So, you know, there were some warning signs. Instead, there's this post that came up. So he posts on LinkedIn, and Daniel posts, over 60,000 signups in just 12 weeks. It's been only 3 months since we launched Neko Health in London. The response has been nothing short of incredible. Over 60,000 people have signed up for a scan, which reflects a growing shift towards preventative healthcare and early detection. And I think it's sort of like, you know, maybe Prenuvo-esque.

Dude, that, by the way, I think that's bullshit. Getting 60,000 email subscribers, I don't think that's particularly—

Maybe.

Because like if you go to the website, like it's the craziest, awesomest thing you could imagine.

It's a $250 scan, right? So let's just say, you know, the full value of this is $15 million pipeline in 3 months. Now you're saying, okay, some of you will just looky-loose. Sure, of course. Um, so not all these people are going to convert. Okay, fine. Even if it's 1/15 of that, if they booked $1 million in bookings for this thing in 12 weeks for a single geographic location in London, that's kind of interesting to me. That's not nothing, right? That's not like this pie in the sky thing.

What's it do?

I think what they're trying to do is they basically, they're going to scan your body. They're going to look for moles and they're going to look for, look at your arteries and your cholesterol levels and all this stuff. And they're going to be, it's like a better health check. Okay. So, and it's preventative. It's not like normally, you know, normal healthcare system is you have symptoms. We sort of tell you to take 2 Advils. You come back. You're like, hey, I still got the symptoms. And they're like, okay, well, uh, let's check some basic things here in the office. And then you're like, dude, I really think something's wrong. It's like, all right, go get a scan. Right. So when you're broken, you get scanned. And the idea where healthcare is going is like, you get scanned before you're broken to tell you where you might break or what's starting to break so that we can fix it earlier, right? Obviously, like, anybody can agree with that idea, but actually doing it and making it work both technically and building the brand around it and getting consumers excited about it and getting enough funding or getting enough revenue in the door for this to be a real business, it's pretty impressive to me. Okay, so, so that was the first thing that happened, that, that little post. The second thing was I'm an investor in this thing called Superpower. Have you, are you investing in this?

I think you told me about it and it looks amazing. So superpower.com. So it says a new era of personal health, the world's most advanced digital clinic to help you live longer, prevent disease, and feel your best.

Okay. Ignore all that. Ignore all that. All it is is a 10 times better version of an annual physical.

Okay. I like that.

Okay. You're getting an annual physical anyway. If you're, if you've, if you're bought into the idea of I should get an annual physical, here is a better annual physical. And they're like, okay, what's a 10x experience of the annual physical? And by the way, I love that idea. The simplicity of that pitch, of that, of that, of that, uh, mission, I think is really, really powerful. And the thing costs, uh, like, I don't know, like $400 or $500. So it's like, I, I would be willing easily to pay.

Dude, you're on their homepage right below, uh, Mark Zuckerberg's, uh, sister and right next to the Winklevoss twins.

Oh, hold on. Mark Zuckerberg's sister? Well, okay.

Well, still pretty cool.

My excitement went up and down.

You're right next to Mark Zuckerberg's sister.

Shout out to, uh, Ariel.

Yeah, cool.

Actually, I met her. I met her at a party. She was, she was actually very cool. Okay. Yeah. Me and the Winklevoss twins and then a bunch of MDs and biology. Okay. So, okay. So let me just tell you a little about this. So they sent this investor update. I think I'm allowed to share this. So Jacob, one of the founders, he sends this investor update and I invest in this thing like a little while back. Didn't kind of hear about it. They were like working on it. I honestly was like, all right, we'll see when this thing comes out. And here's what they said. They go, the best doctors in the world already offer this today, but having a concierge doctor who does this type of, type of work for you can cost like $100K plus. It's right. It's only for rich people. So how our job is to make that available to everybody. Okay.

So then, by the way, I'm going to my concierge doctor tomorrow for my checkup and it's not $100,000.

Would he pay $20K a year?

No, maybe $5,000 a year.

That's it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's okay.

I, I don't want—

yeah, I found them in the Yellow Pages. Uh, no, I don't want—

we have a friend who has Peter Attia as his doc, and I think it's a quarter million dollars a year. So there's a range, and you're on one side of that range. You're not in the middle.

That's the good news. I'm definitely on one end of that bell curve. Uh, not the good one.

They wrote these stats and they were like, we had 3 million hits to our site during launch week.

Wow.

I was like, what? And they said our waitlist has grown to over 100,000 people. What? I was like, what is going on? And so I emailed them and their, their product is the first product of the membership is a 10x better version of the annual physical.

And so basically it's like, is that the language they use in their, in their documentation? Or are you just saying this is just 10x better?

This is what they said to me in an email.

Got it.

And they were like, you know, basically you're going to get 100+ lab tests, a full body report, an hour-long consult with your doctor, unlimited Q&A with your doctor throughout the year, additional health consults and whatever at Inc Enterprises for $499. Okay. I was like, I kind of buy this value prop, right? Like, I think that's going to work. Um, and so I was like, dude, that's pretty crazy. Like, like, how can you even offer this for $500? Secondly, did you say you had 3 million visits during launch week and 100,000-person waitlist? Like, how did you do that? Because yeah, I tweeted your thing out, but like, you know, as much as I love to pat myself on the back, I don't think I can, I could help anywhere near that type of, those type of numbers. And they were like, yeah, like Basically in the first 3 or 4 months, 100,000, uh, 100,000 people signed up for this thing.

So superpower.com, their site is beautiful. Uh, but the way to— you, you can click join. Did you say thank you? Yeah. Uh, yeah, that's my thing nowadays.

I'm just, I'm slipping in thank yous and you're welcomes when people are not trying to give me compliments. It's great.

Or when you're 0.1% of the, uh, of the reason why it looks good, you know, like you, you, we have a 100,000 person waitlist. Yeah. Uh, do, is it in person? So like, is the checklist done or sorry, is the checkup done in person? No. So how do they like, like, you know, like do the thing where I like cough or I, I don't know.

Cause I haven't been a customer yet. I'm on the waitlist still, but I assumed it's like those other, like all telemedicine where basically let's say they send you to a diagnostic, like, you know, a Quest type of thing to do the blood draw. Got it. They order your labs and then there's a doctor remote who's analyzing your labs, who does the call with you, does the consult, talks to you, all that stuff.

Understood. Okay.

Anyways, I thought that was pretty crazy traction because I was like, dude, if I was like, let's just take the total potential value of the pipeline you're saying during launch week or during this like kind of first couple of months after you just announced the company, you have $49 million of potential revenue in the, in the list, which of course only a fraction of a fraction is that, is that going to convert. But I mean, it's still just like really impressive. These, so a lot of these health startups that I thought were kind of like wishful thinking, I think something has shifted in the culture where health startups are no longer wishful thinking and people are legit willing to pay. And you see this with content, you see this with Huberman, with Peter Attia, with Bryan Johnson. I think you just, I think there's a shift happening where health is cool. Health is in and whatever that next layer of like the market, you know, that next segment of the bell curve that's interested in this, but it's a big, like sizable chunk. Um, it feels like another part of the bell curve has gotten unlocked of people who are willing to spend.

What's the early adopter phase? Is it like, like, it's like freaks and then it's like early adopters and then it's like everyone else. Like, what is it? What's like the—

we should rename all the segments.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, like fucking quacks and weirdos.

People you hate to talk to. Yeah.

Like, you know, it's like innovators.

That's the one you're talking about.

Freaks and geeks. Yeah.

All right. So the freaks and geeks, and then there's early adopters, which are wannabes. That's us. Yeah. So we're, we, we keep an eye on what the freaks and geeks are doing and we start to, you know, half-ass copy them. Um, and then there's the early majority and the early majority is kind of like, you know, the smart, reasonable person. And then you get to late majority and then the laggards, which is like, you know, you're, you're, mom who still has a newspaper subscription and, you know, whatever else, AOL email address.

Uh, my mom does actually. Um, and I, so I, I, I would say I'm early adopter. Sometimes I'm, uh, the innovator for some of these things. And I think what's gonna happen based off of my pattern is I think a lot of these things are one-off stuff. So I have tested so many different blood work companies just because they're the latest and greatest and it's exciting to try something new. In general, I've not had a huge amount of repeat purchase for, uh, many of them. For some of them, I've like, for, for example, do you remember Forward Health? Mm-hmm. Like I, like something like that. I was like, oh, I'm actually in. Or you remember One Medical, which is, um, you know, like popular now. Uh, we've been paying, I've been a paying customer of theirs for like 5 years. So some of 'em I become like recurring customers, but I love trying new stuff. What I think is gonna happen is now it's shifting to now the, uh, one past the, uh, early adopters. They are now open to trying this stuff. And so I think getting a waitlist, I actually think it's less challenging than it appears, but making it so you come back every year is really, really hard. And it's gonna be interesting to see who can pull that off. 'Cause I've done the Pernovos, I've done, uh, in, you know, InsideTracker, have you, or Yeah, like I've done everything and they're awesome. It's just a matter of like, which ones do I rely on every quarter or every year as opposed to I just found some new drug and I just want to stick it in my body this one time just to see what's up and I'll never touch it ever again. There's a lot of people like me who do that, by the way. Yeah. Yeah.

You're in the— on the fitness and health side, I would say you're in the freaks and geeks category, right? You were telling me about like, you're like, dude, I injected this stuff in my butt and I don't have cravings anymore. And basically you were talking about Ozempic before Ozempic had like a brand name. I read about it on a forum and it's amazing. I don't eat candy anymore. This is going to change the world.

I think I told you about that in '21. I think it was summer of— I think it was summer of '21 and, or something like that, maybe '22. And I remember telling you when I was like, when I put this stuff in my body, it feels like people who have alcohol and addiction issues, I think that's going to go away. And then actually last week my friend Jason went to a conference and the CEO of Eli Lilly, I think it is, the maker of one of the semaglutide or Ozempic competitors, he announced that it has been officially approved for alcoholics. So like, I do put weird shit in my body just to see what's up. And I actually texted you 8 months ago, I think, and I said this new one, I forget what I called it. It was like tri— it started with a T and I was like, This one, this is going to be the one. What was that?

I remember thinking I should buy Eli Lilly stock when you told me that, because, uh, I was like, who makes this? And I'm in. I learned my lesson the first time, ignore, like, kind of writing off your weird health experiments. And I was like, okay, I'll just blindly follow this. But Eli Lilly is already a $750 billion company. So I was like, okay, I don't know how much like upside is left on that. Like, even if it became a $2 trillion company, it's like, I, like, what am I, what am I really thinking is going to happen here with this thing? So, you know, I think I missed that. But if you look at like a 5-year span, Eli Lilly is up, you know, 10x almost in the 5-year span. So 8x.

Do you do any health stuff today that you think—

doesn't it show?

Thank you. The sentence was not ending, do you do any health stuff? Do you do any health stuff today?

Are you trying to die?

Do you do any health stuff today that you think is considered a freak and will one day be the norm.

Yeah, I do two things. I don't think these are like in the freak— I guess they are. I guess if I took a population of 1,000 people and I said, how many people are doing this? I think the number would probably be zero. Even if I went to a CrossFit type of like health community, 1,000 people, and I said, who's doing what I'm doing? I think the number is zero. You, I think, have done one of these things. But there's basically two things I do on a daily basis and have been doing now for probably two years. The first is breathwork every morning.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So I do breathwork every morning. It only takes me 6 to 10 minutes. I use the Othership app. It's the best breathwork app. I think you might have invested. I invested too, but this is not a shill. I don't even think the app is their product anymore. Like, the app is like their side thing. They have like physical locations in New York and stuff, but Their app is so good for breathwork, so I do that. The second thing I do is I work out, but I don't do what most people do when they work out. So, you know, I would say conventional workouts are either cardio or weightlifting, and then some people will do like a yoga, Pilates, something that's flexibility, pliability based. And my trainer got really into something, and I'm into whatever he's into because he's my trainer for life. And he got really into something called functional patterns. It's basically a style of training that I think the way to describe it would be like it helps you pick up a baby when you're old, right? Where it's like, yeah, it's like, so it's based around core movements. So like, like if you like sport, this will make a lot of sense to you. If you don't like sport, if you're just used to going to the gym and trying to get a pump, then this might not make a lot of sense to you. But like if you play any sport, baseball, tennis, basketball, whatever it is, like the core movement in all of the sports is like, let's say throwing. It's a, it's a twist motion of your body.

Yeah. It's not like a squat or a bench press where it's a linear lift weight up. It's, yeah, I understand.

Love the pronunciation of linear there. That was awesome. That was, that was, that was like European.

Yeah. It was like, I also call it personal finance.

Yeah, exactly. So the couleurs of this are, all right, so So yeah, so if you go to a gym, everything is usually static, it's rigid, or even if it's like a dynamic movement, it very rarely involves like torque. And if you do that wrong, obviously you can get really hurt, but doing it right matters. So Functional Patterns is based around moving in like the 4 kind of core movements. So, so run or sprint, throw, which is a twisting motion, jump, and then, I don't know what the— oh, I think it's just like walk, like your gait. And so like, I would literally, like my workout, when I go downstairs is not to like, I go to my gym and it's not like some like Barry's Bootcamp music blasting, like, go, go, go, push, push, push. It'll literally be like, all right, let's practice our gait. And it's like, are you putting the right amount of weight on your big toe? How's your weight shift? Let's look at your ankle mobility here. Let's try to get strong in this position. It's like things that don't even look like you're doing a workout. It looks like you're rehabbing from an injury, but it's an injury you never had. It's like to prevent all your injuries. And so like, I do it, my mom does it. He trains like NBA players with this. Like it's, it's that type of training where it's very much for sport and it's for— yeah, it's, it's to prevent like disease and like breakages in your body. So it's a weird, it's a weird style of training, but that's something that I do, you know, 4 times a week basically.

Mine, mine are— I think that in 15 years We're going to look at Whole Foods sort of like a discount grocer where it's like, you know, however you look at like Kroger or Safeway or wherever your regional like normie brand is, that's what Whole Foods is going to be. I think that people are going to be like, they're going to think it's nonsense and they're going to instead they're going to want to buy their meat locally.

So I think that because it's marketing smoke and mirrors or it's just not the top of the top, there is, there's no more levels above that. Which one is it? Is it that it's not what they say it is? It's kind of like it's just a marketing stick or there's, there's even better.

It's not what they say it is. And also because they were the first popular health food store, we still hold them with high prestige. But in reality, I don't think they're that high prestige. I think maybe it's a lot more expensive than other alternatives, but I'm not convinced that it's actually significantly different than anything else.

And what makes you say that?

Because if you go and look at the ingredients of the hot food bar, So if you go to the hot food bar and you look at the ingredients, it's shit. It's not good. Like they got all types of crap in the, in those ingredients. And that like to me is like a signal. That's a canary in a coal mine type of vibe.

Gotcha.

And I also, when you look at the meat, so when you look at the meat, so I tend to buy during the summertime, I have a farmer's market across the street from my house. So I tend to buy my meat there and the chickens are like bright yellow. Have you ever seen like a, like a, like a chicken from a farm that you get? It's like, no.

Eggs look different, but they look way different.

They look way different. They look way different. It's like a bright yellow. Honestly, it's kind of gross if you're not used to seeing it. And so all the foods have way more color in them. And you go to Whole Foods and it's kind of weird to think that a company as big as Amazon can somehow get lots and lots and lots of fresh, healthy stuff. Isn't it fucking insane how in Connecticut in December I can still get a strawberry? Like, that's ridiculous when you think about that, like, supply chain. And there's no way that you could do that, in my opinion, in some type of, like, safe way. Like, it's better to do, like, local, in-season type of thing. And I think local meat in particular is going to be a huge trend in the next 15 years. You're seeing it a little bit. Like, there's a lot of people in Austin who I know that were, like, yuppie types, not, like, rednecks or farmers, and they would buy whole cows and you'd store it in your freezer. And I think that will be more common soon. Do you agree or disagree?

I do agree with that because you're right. When I think about the freaks and geeks in my life, a lot of them already do that. It's like they have a favorite ranch.

Yeah.

Like, where do you get your meat? And I was like, the store. What are you talking about? Like, you know, I don't have a— I don't like to have farms on speed dial. I don't have like a personal relationship with a ranch. Uh, but they do. And they have like, they'll open up their freezer and there's all these like kind of like frozen steaks basically that they have.

Yeah. You like spend $1,000 and you get like a year's worth of beef.

Right. So like, I don't know and understand that. Uh, I also, I don't know if this is true or this was just a one-off thing, but like, aren't farmers markets, like I've read something that farmers markets got in trouble because the, they looked into where they were getting the stuff and it wasn't like from a farm. It was like they were taking this, the Safeway rejects and like stuff that was about to expire and just selling it at the farmer's market as like, ooh, like this is, this is, you know, straight farm to table or whatever. Um, so I don't know how much I trust, like, you know, even my local farmer's market. That's the problem with all food.

Yeah. And I agree with that.

What do you trust? You know?

Yeah. My sister one time went to Ghana for some trip and she came back with the souvenir that she bought from some kids on the street thinking they made it. And it said made in China on the back. And so that's basically what like this little lady selling chicken, uh, at my farmer's market might be doing. So yeah, that definitely could be a thing. I think another thing is that in the future, I think a lot of people are going to have plants in their homes way more than they do now. I think plants are going to be a lot more popular because it keeps the air clean. And I think one of the things in 20, 30 years, we're going to look back and be like, you had dirty-ass air in your house all the time. That's probably why you felt sick all the time. I think that— here's one: natural fiber clothes. That's going to make a big comeback. So there's one company called Ryker, R-Y-K-E-R. I don't know these guys. I just think it's cool. They make all cotton workout gear. Workout gear in particular, oftentimes you want like some type of sweat-absorbing, stretchy material. Typically that's not natural fibers. And so a lot of people are wearing shorts and shirts and underwear that has plastic in it and has forever chemicals in it. And I think that natural fiber clothing is going to be a lot more in fashion in the next 10 to 20 years because of what we're going to learn about forever chemicals and plastic in foods. And then the last one is one-use plastics, I think will make a decrease. I think that it's weird how much bottled water we drink. And so those are some of my predictions. But the cotton clothing, I would bet a lot that that will be a very popular trend in the next 20 years, a health trend.

Is there like a trade-off, like quality, price? Like what's the trade-off here?

Yeah, like, look, the reason why Lululemon is dope is because when you put on a Lululemon pair of shorts and it has that nice stretchy feel, And when you stretch it, it goes right back to how it's supposed to be. That is, uh, manmade material. So like, it's good in that sense. It's probably cheaper as well. Like, uh, natural fibers I think are probably more expensive. And they, like, have you ever had a sweater that you wear a bunch and it starts losing shape? Like, that doesn't happen with like a loo— what I call it a swishy material. What's like the rainwater resistant, like, material for like a raincoat? Like, that shit don't happen with that. Right. So that there is a trade-off is that like some of these man-made stuff are definitely more convenient or are better performing. That's why they call it like, like performance wear or whatever. Performance wear. Yeah. It's because it is like better performance. Right. So there is, yeah, there is a trade-off, but I do think it's going to be more popular. Riker is actually the only company I have found that is making somewhat interesting non-toxic workout gear. But that's like an interesting, it's an interesting angle for a company like that to get started in.

Right, right. Okay. Fascinating. Do we want to wrap it there? I feel inspired to be a healthier, better local, local eating man machine.

Dude, local eating's great, man. It's great. I got a, I got a nice old Russian lady who makes great cheese. You need, you need some cheese? I got a lady. It's fantastic.

Yeah. I kind of want to have a, I kind of want to have a guy or a gal for every food that I eat. It's like I have like a hummus lady. I got a chicken guy. That seems like my future to have that.

Dude, I'm down. Um, all right, that's it.

That's the pod.