you2idea@video:~$ watch QDjs_Wem9zI [1:00:24]
// transcript — 1316 segments
0:02 We call you the most interesting man in tech and I stand by it. One of the
0:06 reasons you're great is because you made money in all these random ways that I
0:10 wouldn't have even ever thought to. You've got a $450 million fund down. He
0:14 also started thistle, a food delivery business that's like doing over $100
0:17 million a year. You're an SF running around like rich people, weirdos. What's
0:22 hot? What are the kids into? Everyone is on peptides and everyone's got their
0:27 dealer. I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch I was like, "So, like,
0:30 how do you plan to be legit with this whole thing?" And he basically pulls up
0:34 a picture of the like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. He's like,
0:38 "Yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some things through." Say
0:42 it with me. Crony capitalism. >> One of my best friends is completely
0:48 jacked and he does not really work out. He does EMS. >> It's going to go viral because it's
0:52 going to be hated and loved at the same time, which is what you need. Dude, I'd
0:56 rather take drugs. This is the only podcast where you're going to get AI
0:59 Triple H reference from wrestling. I mean, the the range is incredible. We're
1:11 >> So, one of the reasons you're great is because you made money in all these
1:16 random ways that I wouldn't have even ever thought to. You like created a
1:19 domain auction thing and made millions of dollars that way. I think you did
1:22 like a fee fighters thing once you're called credit card fee fighters thing.
1:25 >> Credit card processing. Yeah, >> credit card processing. You've got a
1:29 $450 million fund down. You're probably, you know, if anything is in fintech. I
1:32 go to you as basically like, hey, gut check. Is this smart or is this dumb?
1:36 Cuz it's easy to fool me, it's hard to fool you. >> He also started thistle.
1:40 >> Yeah. A food delivery business that's like doing over $100 million a year. So
1:43 all these different spaces. The guy got married in the metaverse at a Taco Bell.
1:46 Whatever the hell that means. We call you the most interesting man in tech and
1:51 I stand by it. I have yet to meet a more interesting man in tech. Welcome Sheil
1:54 back for round three or four. >> So happy to be back. Um also I got to
1:59 tell you since the last time I was on so many things have happened as a result of
2:01 me being on. >> Like what? >> Okay. So, I was hiring a chief of staff
2:07 and a bunch of people applied, but one person applied and the person who got
2:11 the job, my current chief of staff, is a huge fan of MFM. And she was debating
2:16 leaving her current thing, which which was paying her a lot more money, her her
2:22 previous thing. And then she was like, "Fuck it. I got the opportunity to work
2:26 with this guy who was on MFM. I'm going to take it." And so, my chief of staff
2:30 joined because of MFM. >> That's a lot of pressure for you. I hate
2:32 when people say that when they're going to like they're like I'm willing to take
2:35 this big pay cut to work for you. I'm like >> it's a lot of pressure.
2:40 >> Um last time I was on I talked about wanting to get better at like
2:46 photography and video with AI and this guy Jacob reached out and he was like I
2:51 can help you. And we went out for like hours in New York shooting. He he showed
2:56 me all this cool stuff. And then I mean I your audience must be like the nicest
3:03 people out there because also like recently I went back and looked at the
3:08 YouTube comments usually a cesspool but you guys are so nice. Everybody that
3:13 listens to your podcast is super nice. Nobody was like that guy has a big nose
3:17 or whatever whatever people would say on YouTube comments. Everyone was like just
3:21 talking me up talking you guys up. It's great. Ari the bots are working. Keep
3:26 keep paying them. Um, all right. So, we got we wanted to brainstorm with you.
3:29 So, we asked you to bring some ideas, businesses that you think are
3:32 interesting, would be cool to start. I think we said $10 million ideas, which I
3:36 don't even know really what that means, but here we are. Shield brought five
3:40 ideas. Let's run through some of the ideas and then I want to talk about some
3:43 Oh, actually, wait. Before we go to the ideas, you had a great thing on there's
3:47 this idea of this 50-year mortgage and you're my finance guy. You're my fintech
3:49 guy. >> Yeah. >> 50-year mortgage. Trump is like, "You
3:54 know what? More years the better." Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
3:57 >> Give me context. I don't really follow the news. So, I mean, Trump
4:02 >> Sure. So, so right now, uh, 30-year mortgage is generally the maximum in the
4:06 United States. So, you pay off a home over 30 years. Trump wants to address
4:10 the affordability crisis, which is a real problem, and said, "What we should
4:14 do is extend mortgages to 50 years. So, you have 50 years to pay it off instead
4:18 of 30 years." I think it's a terrible idea because basically what happens is
4:23 you give people more money. So the monthly the month the amount that they
4:27 pay monthly goes down a little bit but actually you're not earning equity in
4:32 the home after like the average length of time that somebody our age stays in
4:37 their home is relatively low and by that time they'll earn no equity in the home
4:40 or almost no equity. >> I I think the average person spends
4:44 something like six or seven years right now. It's not a lot.
4:46 >> Yeah, I think that's right. six and a half years. >> And on a 30-year mortgage, I think the
4:51 way it's set up right now, something like the first 15 years is just
4:53 interest. Is that right? >> It's not just interest, but you're
4:57 earning you're not you're not earning that much equity. And so here, you'd be
5:00 earning less. But the thing is, actually switching from 30 to 50, it doesn't
5:06 change the payments that much. And the real problem is the 30-year mortgage
5:10 kind of worked well for an America back then, which was like you bought a house
5:16 in your upper 20s and then you retired by 60ish and you owned your home
5:23 outright. So even today for when people retire, the median American when they
5:26 retire almost 80% of their net worth is the equity in their home.
5:31 >> Wow. >> So >> yeah, your home is your retirement plan,
5:36 right? your home is a retirement plan and and part of that is for Americans,
5:41 you can't spend it. Like, if you could spend it, you would spend that money,
5:44 but because it's in your home, you can't spend it. So, I I don't think the
5:48 50-year mortgage really solves anything. And actually, probably what it does is
5:53 drives asset prices higher. So, Japan did this in the 80s. They they had a
5:57 bunch of problems like interest rates were zero and asset prices went through
6:02 the roof. At one point, a single property in Tokyo was worth more than
6:08 all of the real estate in California. Like, it was an insane bubble. And part
6:14 of that was they extended mortgage times to 50 years. And actually, some people
6:17 got a 100red-year mortgage. So, like your grandkids are on the hook for the
6:22 home that you buy. And asset prices went through the roof. And then leverage is
6:27 nasty when it collaps. When prices drop a little bit, you're you're pretty
6:31 screwed. So home prices have actually gone down so much so that they're still
6:36 half of what they were in 1989 >> in Japan. >> In Japan. Yeah. In Tokyo.
6:41 >> Did you say one property was worth more? >> Yeah. Which property? So, okay. So, it
6:47 was the land value under the Imperial Palace. And so, that's it's about a half
6:55 a half square mile of space in Tokyo. >> So, okay. So, maybe maybe a bad idea.
6:59 Yeah. From what I understand, because when rates drop here, basically the
7:04 sellers just raise the price because they're like, "Oh, you're you're buying
7:07 not really on the whole price. It's like, what do I owe per month and what
7:11 can I qualify for? If I can if my monthly payment is X, I can afford
7:14 that." >> And so what happens is when your monthly payment goes down, whether it's because
7:20 you stretch the payments over 50 years or the rates go down, what happens is
7:24 the sellers just can justify a higher price and it didn't affect anything. You
7:28 just end up paying more. Because I think in a 30-year mortgage, I think you pay
7:33 whatever the home price is plus something like what is it 50% or
7:36 something is because the interest compounds over 30 years. And if it's 50
7:39 years, you're going to basically pay almost double the the the the list price
7:43 of the home because you pay so much more in interest. >> Yeah. Exactly. So, I think the solution
7:50 like we do have an affordability crisis. No question. But the solution is not to
7:55 induce demand because if you induce demand, what happens? You have the same
7:59 fixed amount of properties. You're just making prices go up. So the solution is
8:04 creating more supply like making it easier to permit like all this kind of
8:09 reform to build more housing, make it make it cheaper to build housing.
8:12 >> I was listening to this person who had a different take on affordability. He was
8:17 like, "Are things less affordable today than they were in the '60s?" He goes,
8:22 "Look, here's the deal. In the 1960s, your version of a family vacation was a
8:26 road trip to a state park once a year. Okay? You never traveled. You didn't go
8:30 on a plane. You lived in a 1,800 foot home in Dayton, Ohio. Okay? Like you had
8:35 a crappy car, you didn't eat out, and you never took vacation. Now, young
8:38 people today, they want more things, which is totally fine. They want uh to
8:42 go international once a year. They want to go on these cool trips. They want
8:46 fancy phones. a new home. Even the the the average home nowadays is a new home
8:51 with two ACs and a a beautiful build with a really nice kitchen and really
8:55 nice bathroom. And they're like, >> is it more is it are things less
8:58 affordable or do people just want more stuff. >> And uh it was like it was like an
9:02 interesting take where I was like that's okay. That actually does have a good
9:05 point because even when I grew up, I didn't go this isn't like a oh I was so
9:08 poor, but like I didn't go on a plane until I was 18 years old. Like we never
9:10 we didn't take like vacations like I do now. We didn't uh I remember like the AC
9:15 was broken one summer and we just like left the windows open. Uh like
9:20 >> shared rooms like bunk beds. There'd be like two or three kids in a room. Now
9:24 each kid needs their own room. Like you said, Sam, like 1,400,500 ft was like a
9:29 nicesized palace and now that's not the case. >> Have you guys ever seen the TV show The
9:32 Wonder Years? >> Yeah. >> Uh and it's like Yeah. One father, the
9:37 husband could provide for the whole family, but he was angry all the time.
9:40 He worked at a factory where he got like black lug. Uh, and like
9:44 >> be a man. >> Yeah. Like he was like borderline an
9:47 alcoholic and he was like grumpy all the time. They didn't go anywhere. And when
9:50 they did like the car broke down. Uh, like times were different.
9:56 >> Yeah. I I think so. Take the other side though. I think we shouldn't be telling
10:00 people like you shouldn't want these things. I think we should say
10:02 >> I'm not saying that. I'm just joking. But yes. >> Yeah. So I I think I think we should
10:07 make stuff cheaper and I think we can do that. making the cost the inputs cheaper
10:12 I I think is all possible but I I hate demand side adjustments.
10:18 >> Uh the way you said that is so so uh made it so simple to me which was if you
10:23 make if all you do is increase demand and the supply stays the same you're not
10:26 going to make things cheaper. You're going to make things more expensive. Uh
10:29 it's like yeah that that obviously makes sense. All right. So, a lot of people
10:33 watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them
10:36 exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And
10:39 really, a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and
10:42 they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of
10:45 people message Sean and I and they say, "All right, I want to start something on
10:48 the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" And again, what they're
10:52 really just saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in
10:57 luck. So, my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different
11:01 side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it the side hustle
11:06 idea database. It's a list of hundred pretty good ideas, frankly. I went
11:08 through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow
11:12 them, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So, check it
11:16 out. It's called the side hustle idea database. It's in the description below.
11:19 You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what
11:22 you think. >> What do you got, Shield? Hit us with your first.
11:26 >> Okay. So, a lot of these are based on like what's going on in my life today.
11:33 So, I am trying to redo my backyard and I redid it like 10 years ago and it's
11:36 like kind of a [ __ ] hole now. I want to add pavers. I want to add like a nice uh
11:41 maybe a waterfall, something like that. And so, I've been reaching out to all
11:44 these landscapers, uh all these backyard specialists, and the process sucks. It
11:50 takes them forever to get back to me. And then they come here, all they do is
11:53 measure. And like I knew the measurements to begin with and scheduling that on my schedule and their
12:00 schedule sucks. And they're coming from like an hour away sometimes just to do
12:05 this like 10-minute thing. And then once they take the measurements, they're
12:08 super busy. They don't get back to me for a week. And so then I'm like, can I
12:13 really trust this guy? And I was talking to to a guy um who built a company in
12:18 this space and said like one of the things that's really important to them
12:21 is just getting back to you quickly. and if they get back to you quickly, you're
12:24 way more likely to purchase from them. And this this is a fairly large
12:28 purchase. Let's let's say $50,000. And so I was thinking there's got to be a
12:32 better way. And you could solve this with AI in in part. So all I could do is
12:37 give them my address and they know what my backyard looks like. Like they can
12:40 get the measurements from satellite imagery and they could actually give me
12:46 a design. like they could they could either not show up at all or when they
12:50 show up they could have an iPad with a bunch of sample designs of my place. How
12:57 amazing would that be? And the idea for this came to me from a buddy of mine who
13:02 has a company called Deep Lawn. All they do is they help lawn companies quote.
13:10 And so the lawn company, you put in the address, it looks at satellite imagery,
13:14 uses some AI to determine how much grass you have, comes up with a square
13:18 footage, it knows what you charge, and it instantly gives them a quote, and
13:23 they charge like a couple dollars per quote, but there's so many lawn care
13:26 companies, so many lawns out there that it's actually a pretty good business.
13:31 And it's simple. This is actually like one step beyond that. It's not just
13:35 giving you a simple quote, but it's giving you a bunch of designs and stuff
13:38 like that. >> And I think I think it's very doable and
13:42 it would solve a problem that I have if these guys used it. >> So, it's really interesting you say
13:47 that. Ben had told me about a business that's very very similar in the roofing
13:50 space. Yeah. >> Uh, so if you go to roofer.com, so it's
13:54 r.com, >> and the guy's doing the same thing. It's just the quote part. So basically I I
14:00 guess the way that roofing works is >> if you want to get a roof or repair or
14:04 whatever it is the guy will come out. So, you got to do the same thing you
14:07 said. Schedule it. Comes out. >> Just gonna check out the roof today.
14:09 Gonna got gonna get give you a quote. And the roofers hate doing this step
14:12 because they they make no money in the quoting process. They need to get the
14:16 job. They got to go all the way up the roof. They got to schedule it. They can
14:18 only do so many in a week. And so, what this guy was doing, I don't know if I
14:21 don't remember exactly the me the method, but I know what he was doing,
14:24 which was he's like, "Hey," he would go to the roofers and say, "Hey, anytime
14:28 you need a quote done, I'll do the quote for you, you know, you just pay me like
14:32 a small amount basically to to go do this quote for you." And I think he was
14:36 using either drones or imagery in some ways. I think it was drones. The drone
14:39 would fly by. >> It would autod do the quote for you. So
14:42 you would have a way faster quote which increases your odds of getting the job.
14:46 You didn't have to go do it yourself. It can scale. So it can do way more quotes
14:49 per week than the than the roofer could have done themselves. And it takes off
14:52 like, you know, one part of the salesunnel that they really hated doing.
14:56 Um, and I think this business is doing really well. I think he's bootstrapping
14:59 this. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is this business is doing really
15:01 well last time I heard the numbers for it. >> Yeah. And I think you could do the same
15:06 thing for like pools, decks, pergolas, like playgrounds, uh fences, outdoor
15:11 kitchens, like all all this kind of stuff would be fairly easy to do. So you
15:16 could build you could build this in one niche and then go into all the others.
15:20 >> Do you guys remember the um there was like two or three tech guys that like
15:24 left their like seemingly great tech companies, I think, and like started
15:28 bathroom remodel businesses. I think the first one was this was this guy named
15:33 Roger. So Roger was like previously like uh I think he started Zingga or
15:35 something like that. >> He he founded Mafia Wars which was part
15:39 of Zingga. >> Okay. Sorry I'm in the ballpark but you're in the ballpark. I'm not right.
15:44 Um okay. And then but like Gigster was like a like a you know raised by raised
15:48 money from prominent investors and then he left to start maid.com which was
15:53 basically like a you know how like the best barbers you go and you sit down in
15:56 the chair and they're like what do you want and you're like uh just do like a
15:59 little here I don't know just like give me like the Justin Bieber and the the
16:03 great barbers are like there's option one option two option three option four
16:06 here's the menu which one do you want? You're like give me that one give me the
16:08 four. >> He did that for bathrooms and it like killed it. And then the second guy was
16:14 this guy I think named Luke, one of the co-founders of Casper. He left Casper
16:20 and he's start a I think I think bathrooms and kitchens. I think
16:23 >> it's called Block Block renovation. >> Was it just And it was Was it both of
16:27 them or just bathrooms? Same thing. It was bathrooms and maybe now they
16:30 expanded to kitchens. And by the way, I don't know how these businesses have all
16:33 done now, but like super interesting where it was like, "Hey, here's four.
16:36 You can pick off the menu. You want your bathroom to look like this, this, this,
16:40 or this." And it was like running Facebook ads. We talked about this years
16:43 ago on the running Facebook ads for people who wanted upgrade their
16:46 bathroom, which is not how they were how any other construction company was
16:49 selling to customers. So, you had this new channel and they were requiring
16:53 customers to do these like expensive bathroom renovations using this like
16:57 kind of pick off the menu model, which I thought was pretty fascinating. I think
17:01 it's interesting, but it's it's so complex and things can go wrong. You get
17:06 bad reviews based on your partner or whatever. I feel like it's a very
17:09 complicated business. I don't know why. I I know I think Roger sold made to like
17:13 Home Depot. I don't know how I don't know how good of a business it was. What
17:17 I like about this one is it's really software. Like you just have to sell
17:20 these folks and you're not on the hook for anything else and it can be a pretty
17:24 lean team. I think you can easily do 10 million of revenue on this business,
17:28 >> right? I love I love this cuz you know I hate when people want to start a
17:31 marketing agency cuz you're signing up to be a genius every month.
17:34 >> Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm going to be and and every business really cares how
17:38 their marketing is going and they're going to be on you're going to be on
17:41 your ass and you got to continually be fighting versus things like compliance.
17:45 It's like nobody wants nobody cares how their compliance is going as long as
17:48 it's not a problem. So, similarly here like roofing, it's like doing the quote
17:53 is very different than the emotional purchase of a new bathroom that's going
17:57 to go in our master bath and I really care how the grout was done or whatever.
18:00 I don't even know what that word is. I just used it. Did that work? I don't
18:04 know. Um so so so you know you want to sell things ideally that people don't
18:09 have extreme like preference and um emotional attachment to cuz you're the
18:14 the bar for delivery is so much higher than it is for boring things that they
18:18 don't really care about. So you know I I like that I like the example you gave
18:20 better and also the fact that you could do it for if you could do it for
18:23 roofing, you can do it for lawns, you could do it for pools, you could it's a
18:26 blueprint business. Anybody can go do these businesses. >> Is that true? Is is the stereotype true
18:30 of Indian guys that they don't like being handy? >> That's like saying, "Do white men not
18:35 like to jump?" Like, no. It's not that we don't like being handy. We're just
18:39 not handy, okay? Like the all the all the blood rushes to our brains. There's
18:42 just nothing left in the limb. >> My dad likes being handy, but like I've
18:47 looked at he he owns some apartment buildings and I've looked at reviews and
18:51 people are like, "Whenever I need a problem, there's like Mr. Macgyver who's
18:55 like trying to solve it with like he doesn't have the right tools or anything
19:00 but he like creates some crazy way to solve some problem. >> The Indian handyman comes to your house
19:03 when you have a problem and just convinces you that it's okay and you
19:07 need to compromise and life is not about getting what you want many years.
19:11 >> Yeah, it'll be fine. Exactly. >> And now look at you guys now just
19:15 talking about like uh you know like a bathroom remodeled startup.
19:17 >> No, but this one works. This is an Indianfriendly business. That's
19:21 satellite images price quoting and then you hand it to a strong guy who's going
19:25 to be able to go do the do the manly stuff. >> Exactly.
19:28 >> Strong idea with number one. All right, let's go to number two.
19:30 >> So that that's number one. And then number two is maybe an offshoot on that.
19:33 Like you could start with number one and go into number two, but every let's use
19:39 this back backyard guys. So every service business runs the same workflow.
19:43 Like you get a call or an online whatever thumbtack. Um, so you have to
19:47 answer calls, you schedule jobs, then you dispatch a crew, you follow up, and you respond with an
19:55 with an estimate, and then, you know, you schedule the job, and then you ask
20:00 for reviews. And I think all of that stuff, a lot of that stuff is super
20:06 automatable. And I think the big unlock is actually AI voice. Like I think a lot
20:11 of people are sleeping on how good AI voice is already today and how useful it
20:15 would be for something like this. Actually yesterday or the day before
20:20 Bill Aman posted something about Elon Musk and he was like I'm not sure if
20:25 this was AI or not. And like the three of us are like are you [ __ ] kidding
20:29 me? It's obviously AI. >> What was it? >> It was a fake video about Elon Musk and
20:34 it was so obviously fake. it like didn't have his mannerisms or anything and it
20:39 was like talking slowly. It was kind of his voice kind of not. But the fact that
20:43 Bill Aman, I don't know how he how old he is, maybe 60, he couldn't tell or he
20:48 was like, I'm not sure if this is AI. So that means that AI voice is already good
20:52 enough. If Bill Aman's fooled by this video, then like a lot of people are
20:59 fooled by a AI voice. So already these service providers should should be
21:03 having AI voice do the work for them. And I think it's already good enough.
21:05 It's just going to get better in the next year. So I think instead of a
21:11 contractor hiring an office manager, you give them an AI office manager for like
21:16 a few hundred bucks a month. And it's actually you you might think of it as a
21:20 as a money-saving thing, but it's actually not. It's more than that. It's
21:24 like you have super fast response time. People responding round the clock. Like
21:29 I whenever what when when I decided to do this back backyard remodel was like a
21:34 Sunday afternoon and nobody's responding me then. But like the first person to
21:38 respond is way more likely to get the job than the next person and the person
21:41 after that. So like >> you respond super fast. There's no
21:46 missed calls. You text to follow up. Like it does all that stuff for you in a
21:51 super easy app. Man, so we have uh Alex Hermosi comes on uh to the pot a bunch and he's one of
21:57 our buddies. He's got the he like runs these like seminars or these like events
22:01 that you can go to that look really cool and we're I wanted to see like how good
22:05 his salesunnel was and so I went to like sign up to like a call and like as I
22:10 clicked like confirm calendar I get a phone call from a guy and his name's
22:16 Xavier and I'm like Xavier he's like hey Sam what's up I just saw you both to
22:18 call I just want to like confirm a couple details with you make sure we're
22:20 good and if you want I can like move the appointment up whatever and I go I don't
22:24 believe this is you goes it's a real person and I was likeetime me right now.
22:27 He's like, "Well, we don't have face." I go, "Well, you you know my number.
22:30 FaceTime me. Like, I know you have an iPhone." And so, he FaceTimes me while
22:34 he's talking to me. And it was him. It was totally him. And uh like it kind of
22:39 like got me bought into this idea of calling leads like within minutes.
22:44 Within minutes. And like there's been so many times where I've bought Yelp or
22:47 been on Yelp and I'm like literally the first person that will respond to my car
22:51 wash like request is coming to my house right now. I don't care how much it
22:53 costs. The first person. >> Exactly. And Sheil, what do you think is
22:57 going to be the challenge of uh because I've seen it, this idea makes so much
23:01 sense to me and there's, you know, there's a couple of them out there. What
23:04 do you think is going to be the key? If you're the founder, you're running a
23:07 business like this. >> What do you think you need to do to win?
23:11 What would you do in your maybe go to market or like how would you how would
23:14 you take this idea that I think a lot of people are going to have, but how would
23:16 you end up being the winner? What do you what do you think would make the
23:19 difference between winning and fourth place? >> Yeah. So, it's too bad that AI
23:25 robocalling is illegal cuz what I would probably do is just have my voice
23:31 >> I would just have my voice agent call each of these people. Right.
23:35 >> Right. So m maybe you can do it where like I don't know what the legality of
23:40 this is, but like maybe you do it where you call your AI voice agent calls in
23:47 and you're on the call and it it maybe it's fine then and the AI voice agent is
23:52 so good that you convince them. So you just call each of these people and
23:56 convince them that their agent is so good like don't you want to try this?
24:00 Try it for free. I'll just send you leads right now. and you do it that way
24:05 and and it can be a great business. >> Uh I want to ask you so you have like
24:08 two or three more ideas on here that are actually really good. One that is like
24:11 like the has the least amount of information on it. I actually have a
24:14 question about it. Let's do it. >> Um >> so you put on here something about
24:21 peptides because everyone >> because everyone in SF is doing it
24:26 >> and this is me just like wanting to get information. So you uh peptides um
24:30 basically it's a category of drugs whatever we could talk about it but like often times
24:37 people use peptides and TRT and uh HGH like interchangeably or in the same
24:41 ballpark. Um are you saying that all the nerds in SF are now on testosterone or
24:44 peptides? >> Everyone is on peptides and everyone's got their dealer. So, so the way this
24:54 works is like peptides are like these amino acids that tell your brain to to
25:01 repair or regulate something. >> They're like precursors to protein or
25:05 something like that where yeah, you can like >> So, it's really good for a bunch of
25:09 things that your body can do and regulate. So, like healing, body
25:15 composition, like give you more energy, control your appetite, those are GLP1s.
25:19 The problem is the problem with this business idea is they're not legal or
25:24 they're they're legal for research purposes. >> They're not approved for the uh
25:27 applications that people are using them for. >> That's right. So I don't know where the
25:34 opportunity is here, but it's like really complicated to use them and like
25:38 in San Francisco everyone's doing it. So you have friends who are doing and
25:41 they're like, "Oh, I got this peptide and it's been so great for me or
25:45 whatever." And of course, like there are challenges in it not being FDA approved,
25:50 but I think for the most part, these are things that people have been using for
25:54 years and and have some sense of efficacy on. But um you know, people are
26:01 getting o semiglutide like ompic and and other ompic like things uh via peptides.
26:07 And so a lot of people right now longevity is a huge opportunity. You've
26:11 seen like function health and superpower and others do really well there. So
26:15 there's a ton of ton of interest, but the experience I've had with peptides is
26:19 confusing and sketchy. So I actually haven't I haven't tried them yet, but I
26:23 have tons of friends who are talking about it. So I feel like there's some
26:28 educational opportunity. There's some like dosing guidance, safety,
26:33 some high trust supply chain and coaching opportunity in this space, but
26:39 I don't know what it is. And the FDA approval thing obviously is a big
26:41 problem. >> Uh interesting. So you're saying maybe right now because the legality and the
26:47 approval part of selling the things directly is sketch. Yeah.
26:51 >> You would build the biggest most trusted information source so that when the time
26:56 comes that this becomes more clear, you either become the highest value
27:00 affiliate or you could yourself could start to to deal some deal peptides.
27:05 >> Exactly. Exactly. Right. Have you guys heard of peptides or you have friends on
27:10 them? I heard of it because Sam like five years ago before peptides was
27:14 really a thing told me he his Achilles hurt and he was on some Reddit forum and
27:19 got a vial of something and injected it into his body and I was like bro what
27:23 are you doing you know just taking drugs off the internet and he's like it's
27:29 amazing I feel like Wolverine BP57 baby my >> people love BP57
27:33 told me about it >> my daughter who was just born that's her
27:36 middle name >> BP57 uh Like I love that stuff. Um, so yeah,
27:42 look, like I've always been like into this type of stuff. And if you listen to
27:46 the podcast, you know, I'm going to kind of brag a little bit here, but like semi
27:50 glue tide and OEIC, dude, when it when it got popular, we were that was old
27:54 news to us on this podcast. We had been talking about it. All right. I had
27:56 already overdosed on it. I could have told you all about it.
28:00 >> Um, and then when I and so I was into this stuff in San Francisco and then I
28:04 uh moved to Austin and that's when I really got my fix, man. like every jack
28:08 guy ever was like showing me all the cool stuff that they're doing. And not a
28:13 lot of the stuff was like like it's not wasn't like a I don't know actually the
28:15 definition of a steroids, but it wasn't like an anabolic like um make your
28:19 muscles huge, but there was like BP 157 for when I hurt my Achilles. Someone was
28:22 like you should try this or you should try your shoulder. And there's all these
28:27 like um weird peptides and weird things that were go were around longevity, not
28:31 like how do I look like Triple H like you know in wrestling, like not like how
28:34 do I look huge, but how do I like live a long time? And so, yeah, I've been
28:37 fascinated by all this stuff and I think that um I think there's a lot of really
28:41 interesting stuff and I and I still test a lot of this stuff and I got a guy. I
28:46 text him. I got a guy. I text them and I Venmo him. It's incredibly shady.
28:50 However, Sean and I invested in a company called Hone. Hone first. Well, I
28:54 forget what they originally called. >> Peak Peak Health or something like that.
28:55 Yeah. >> Yeah. I don't even remember. But they were originally just TRT. Now they do
29:00 everything. And we get their monthly updates. And this is like the chart is
29:04 like you want the chart to look this way. And I think that they're they're
29:07 doing a really good job of not looking like um you know for a long time
29:10 actually we talked about TRT clinics Sean and I you and I did and it was like
29:14 dude the biggest TRT clinic is like this guy based out of Vegas and he's got
29:17 these like stores and you go to the store to get your TRT and they have like
29:21 lazy boy leather sofas and like Monday Night Football on and it's like it was
29:25 like the lamest like unmost untrusty word thing and so Hone is actually a
29:29 good example of uh they do they also do female stuff too. I don't know what type
29:32 of drugs women take, but they sell women drugs as well. Um, and they've done a
29:36 much better job. >> It's not like Spanish where there's like
29:40 the male and female pronunciation of the >> Like, you know, what are we talking
29:45 about? >> Women. Yeah. I don't know. Whatever you guys take, whatever you're into. I guess
29:51 there's a little bit of everything for everyone. >> This is the only podcast where you're
29:56 going to get AI, TRT, Hle reference from wrestling. I mean, the the range is
30:02 incredible. Um, dude, I was feel I looked at this peptide business recently
30:05 because same thing. I'm like, okay, clearly there's demand, right? But the,
30:08 you know, how do you do this legally and what's the good way to do this? And, um,
30:12 I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch, I was like, so like, how do
30:16 you plan to be like legit with this whole thing? Cuz it's unclear what the
30:20 what the legality is going to be of this. and he basically pulls up a
30:25 picture of like the like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. He's like
30:30 he's like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some
30:33 things through that will make." And I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay, that's like
30:37 probably one of the best slides I've ever seen in a deck." >> He pulls out he pulls out a card from
30:41 his wall. He goes, "I have an answer right here." You're like, "Sir, that's a
30:44 get out of jail free card from the game And so I was like, I think actually,
30:52 yeah, being we're really close with Bobby Kennedy would be like a perfectly
30:55 reasonable part of your business plan right now. So, so >> is that really what he said?
30:58 >> Literally, yeah. They were like, hey, we they're pro this. It's going to pass and
31:02 we're like, you know, we're going to do everything the right way. One thing they
31:05 pointed out rightfully so is that everybody who's in the space right now
31:08 is like the kind of like, you know, like the early kind of crypto community, not
31:11 early, like kind of mid-stage crypto community where everyone's just trying
31:14 to get a quick buck and they're going to go like foul and like you could just be
31:18 Coinbase, right? And you could just be like, "Hey, we're just going to do
31:21 things the right way and we trust that over time this will become more and more
31:25 uh, you know, mainstream, but we're just going to do things the right way from
31:28 the beginning." And like what Coinbase did where like, you know, all the other
31:32 crypto, you know, exchanges sort of fell off is, I think, a valid strategy in
31:36 this case. >> They're like, say it with me, crony capitalism.
31:42 >> Oh, dude, this is this is a good topic cuz there's so much of it. And actually,
31:48 like I have never in the past, I'd never seen anybody pitch like a a core part of their pitch
31:55 as being I'm close to administration. I've heard so many pitches about that
31:59 now, which which is kind of sad honestly, but that is what it is.
32:03 >> Like slide 13. We know a guy and it's just >> exactly
32:07 >> like what why is this in your deck? >> Totally.
32:08 >> Um >> actually like I've been searching and chat GBT will not answer me a bunch of
32:15 questions I have because it says peptides are not medically cleared. Like
32:19 we can't answer this question. So like one of my main sources of information is
32:22 gone. >> Right. Um, by the way, again, a little can we do a little politics uh tangent
32:28 real quick? Ear muffs if this bothers you, but Sam, I just thought you'd find
32:33 this entertaining. Did you see the Trump thing about um Do you know who CZ is? Do
32:36 you know who CZ is from Binance? >> By the Binance guy, didn't he like
32:40 pardon him, but Trump definitely doesn't know who that guy is.
32:43 >> So, he pardoned him and then he gets interviewed. So, the guy was in jail, I
32:46 think, for four months or something like that. And this guy owned like the
32:51 biggest Asian uh crypto exchange and was like in whatever he was in in in hot
32:57 water for moneyaundering and wire fraud a bunch of stuff where it's like you
32:59 know bad people are sort of using your exchange to to to do moneyaundering or
33:04 something and they they asked him they were like but you pardoned this guy and
33:10 then he bought like $2 billion of your son's cryptocurrency. Like don't you see
33:13 how that seems bad? Like why did you pardon him? He's like here here's the
33:16 thing. You want to know what? You want to know? I don't know who he is.
33:23 And I was like, wow. The audacity. It was just the audacity of saying, I
33:26 don't even know who he is. Don't know anything about the guy. And he pardoned
33:29 him. I just thought that was one of the most crazy things I've ever
33:35 >> seen. It It's like this man is this man has no fear. He's not afraid of
33:38 anything. He has he does not fear anything. If he's going to say that
33:41 >> pardoned uh the what was the guy from Nicola? Uh >> Trevor Milton.
33:46 He pardoned that guy too. That guy. What the hell, man? And then they looked into
33:50 it. They're like, "Oh, that guy donated." >> Yeah. It's a get out of jail, not for
33:53 free card. >> Yeah. >> Get out of jail at this fixed price.
33:58 >> Yeah. That was insane. It was actually very low. It was like a couple million
34:04 >> Uh, and did he really say that word for word? He was like, I don't know.
34:07 >> Another thing where it's like, you're not you're not ugly, you're just poor.
34:12 It's like you're not it's like you're not um you're not a criminal. You're
34:15 just poor. You know what I mean? It's like you can get out for if you got
34:18 access to a couple million dollar. >> There's that joke. I forget who where
34:21 where it originally came from. They're like, "Look, if you own the bank like 50
34:25 grand, that's a big deal. That's a that's really bad for you." Uh but if
34:28 you own the bank if you owe the bank $500 million, that's really bad for the
34:32 bank. >> That's the bank's problem. >> Yeah. The other one that was crazy was that
34:38 George Santos that that I just thought it was so funny like this this like a congress person
34:44 who like lied about everything. Like he would have a different college that he
34:47 went from each time you talked to him. He claimed >> the guy said he was Jewish.
34:51 >> He said he was Jewish and then he was like Jewish kind of Jewish
34:56 >> out here where I live there was like a New York congressman or something like
34:59 that like kind of a or was a local I don't even remember what it was. So, not
35:03 that important, but he was like he was he was a gay Brazilian guy. I think he's
35:07 Brazilian. And he had he had the audacity to to tell people that he was
35:12 Jewish. And they were like, "George Santos, I I don't think you're Jewish."
35:15 He goes, "Oh, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jewish." Like, I like
35:21 hanging out with like Jewish people. >> Honestly, it's an oldtimer.
35:24 >> It's an oldtimer. And then like he had so much audacity like he claimed that
35:30 his mom died in 911 but like there are very good records of who died in 911 and
35:35 he he like lived in Brazil at the time. There was no chance that that was
35:38 possible. He just >> Anyway, pretty pretty incredible.
35:42 >> All right, ear muffs can come off. I know the politics. Uh all right, so what
3:43 Oh, actually, wait. Before we go to the ideas, you had a great thing on there's
3:47 this idea of this 50-year mortgage and you're my finance guy. You're my fintech
3:49 guy. >> Yeah. >> 50-year mortgage. Trump is like, "You
3:54 know what? More years the better." Is this a good idea or a bad idea?
3:57 >> Give me context. I don't really follow the news. So, I mean, Trump
4:02 >> Sure. So, so right now, uh, 30-year mortgage is generally the maximum in the
4:06 United States. So, you pay off a home over 30 years. Trump wants to address
4:10 the affordability crisis, which is a real problem, and said, "What we should
4:14 do is extend mortgages to 50 years. So, you have 50 years to pay it off instead
4:18 of 30 years." I think it's a terrible idea because basically what happens is
4:23 you give people more money. So the monthly the month the amount that they
4:27 pay monthly goes down a little bit but actually you're not earning equity in
4:32 the home after like the average length of time that somebody our age stays in
4:37 their home is relatively low and by that time they'll earn no equity in the home
4:40 or almost no equity. >> I I think the average person spends
4:44 something like six or seven years right now. It's not a lot.
4:46 >> Yeah, I think that's right. six and a half years. >> And on a 30-year mortgage, I think the
4:51 way it's set up right now, something like the first 15 years is just
4:53 interest. Is that right? >> It's not just interest, but you're
4:57 earning you're not you're not earning that much equity. And so here, you'd be
5:00 earning less. But the thing is, actually switching from 30 to 50, it doesn't
5:06 change the payments that much. And the real problem is the 30-year mortgage
5:10 kind of worked well for an America back then, which was like you bought a house
5:16 in your upper 20s and then you retired by 60ish and you owned your home
5:23 outright. So even today for when people retire, the median American when they
5:26 retire almost 80% of their net worth is the equity in their home.
5:31 >> Wow. >> So >> yeah, your home is your retirement plan,
5:36 right? your home is a retirement plan and and part of that is for Americans,
5:41 you can't spend it. Like, if you could spend it, you would spend that money,
5:44 but because it's in your home, you can't spend it. So, I I don't think the
5:48 50-year mortgage really solves anything. And actually, probably what it does is
5:53 drives asset prices higher. So, Japan did this in the 80s. They they had a
5:57 bunch of problems like interest rates were zero and asset prices went through
6:02 the roof. At one point, a single property in Tokyo was worth more than
6:08 all of the real estate in California. Like, it was an insane bubble. And part
6:14 of that was they extended mortgage times to 50 years. And actually, some people
6:17 got a 100red-year mortgage. So, like your grandkids are on the hook for the
6:22 home that you buy. And asset prices went through the roof. And then leverage is
6:27 nasty when it collaps. When prices drop a little bit, you're you're pretty
6:31 screwed. So home prices have actually gone down so much so that they're still
6:36 half of what they were in 1989 >> in Japan. >> In Japan. Yeah. In Tokyo.
6:41 >> Did you say one property was worth more? >> Yeah. Which property? So, okay. So, it
6:47 was the land value under the Imperial Palace. And so, that's it's about a half
6:55 a half square mile of space in Tokyo. >> So, okay. So, maybe maybe a bad idea.
6:59 Yeah. From what I understand, because when rates drop here, basically the
7:04 sellers just raise the price because they're like, "Oh, you're you're buying
7:07 not really on the whole price. It's like, what do I owe per month and what
7:11 can I qualify for? If I can if my monthly payment is X, I can afford
7:14 that." >> And so what happens is when your monthly payment goes down, whether it's because
7:20 you stretch the payments over 50 years or the rates go down, what happens is
7:24 the sellers just can justify a higher price and it didn't affect anything. You
7:28 just end up paying more. Because I think in a 30-year mortgage, I think you pay
7:33 whatever the home price is plus something like what is it 50% or
7:36 something is because the interest compounds over 30 years. And if it's 50
7:39 years, you're going to basically pay almost double the the the the list price
7:43 of the home because you pay so much more in interest. >> Yeah. Exactly. So, I think the solution
7:50 like we do have an affordability crisis. No question. But the solution is not to
7:55 induce demand because if you induce demand, what happens? You have the same
7:59 fixed amount of properties. You're just making prices go up. So the solution is
8:04 creating more supply like making it easier to permit like all this kind of
8:09 reform to build more housing, make it make it cheaper to build housing.
8:12 >> I was listening to this person who had a different take on affordability. He was
8:17 like, "Are things less affordable today than they were in the '60s?" He goes,
8:22 "Look, here's the deal. In the 1960s, your version of a family vacation was a
8:26 road trip to a state park once a year. Okay? You never traveled. You didn't go
8:30 on a plane. You lived in a 1,800 foot home in Dayton, Ohio. Okay? Like you had
8:35 a crappy car, you didn't eat out, and you never took vacation. Now, young
8:38 people today, they want more things, which is totally fine. They want uh to
8:42 go international once a year. They want to go on these cool trips. They want
8:46 fancy phones. a new home. Even the the the average home nowadays is a new home
8:51 with two ACs and a a beautiful build with a really nice kitchen and really
8:55 nice bathroom. And they're like, >> is it more is it are things less
8:58 affordable or do people just want more stuff. >> And uh it was like it was like an
9:02 interesting take where I was like that's okay. That actually does have a good
9:05 point because even when I grew up, I didn't go this isn't like a oh I was so
9:08 poor, but like I didn't go on a plane until I was 18 years old. Like we never
9:10 we didn't take like vacations like I do now. We didn't uh I remember like the AC
9:15 was broken one summer and we just like left the windows open. Uh like
9:20 >> shared rooms like bunk beds. There'd be like two or three kids in a room. Now
9:24 each kid needs their own room. Like you said, Sam, like 1,400,500 ft was like a
9:29 nicesized palace and now that's not the case. >> Have you guys ever seen the TV show The
9:32 Wonder Years? >> Yeah. >> Uh and it's like Yeah. One father, the
9:37 husband could provide for the whole family, but he was angry all the time.
9:40 He worked at a factory where he got like black lug. Uh, and like
9:44 >> be a man. >> Yeah. Like he was like borderline an
9:47 alcoholic and he was like grumpy all the time. They didn't go anywhere. And when
9:50 they did like the car broke down. Uh, like times were different.
9:56 >> Yeah. I I think so. Take the other side though. I think we shouldn't be telling
10:00 people like you shouldn't want these things. I think we should say
10:02 >> I'm not saying that. I'm just joking. But yes. >> Yeah. So I I think I think we should
10:07 make stuff cheaper and I think we can do that. making the cost the inputs cheaper
10:12 I I think is all possible but I I hate demand side adjustments.
10:18 >> Uh the way you said that is so so uh made it so simple to me which was if you
10:23 make if all you do is increase demand and the supply stays the same you're not
10:26 going to make things cheaper. You're going to make things more expensive. Uh
10:29 it's like yeah that that obviously makes sense. All right. So, a lot of people
10:33 watch and listen to this show because they want to hear us just tell them
10:36 exactly what to do when it comes to starting or growing a business. And
10:39 really, a lot of people who are listening, they have a full-time job and
10:42 they want to start something on the side, a side hustle. Now, a lot of
10:45 people message Sean and I and they say, "All right, I want to start something on
10:48 the side. Is this a good idea? Is that a good idea?" And again, what they're
10:52 really just saying is, "Just give me the ideas." Well, my friends, you're in
10:57 luck. So, my old company, The Hustle, they put together a hundred different
11:01 side hustle ideas, and they have appropriately called it the side hustle
11:06 idea database. It's a list of hundred pretty good ideas, frankly. I went
11:08 through them. They're awesome. And it gives you how to start them, how to grow
11:12 them, things like that. Gives you a little bit of inspiration. So, check it
11:16 out. It's called the side hustle idea database. It's in the description below.
11:19 You'll see the link. Click it. Check it out. Let me know in the comments what
11:22 you think. >> What do you got, Shield? Hit us with your first.
11:26 >> Okay. So, a lot of these are based on like what's going on in my life today.
11:33 So, I am trying to redo my backyard and I redid it like 10 years ago and it's
11:36 like kind of a [ __ ] hole now. I want to add pavers. I want to add like a nice uh
11:41 maybe a waterfall, something like that. And so, I've been reaching out to all
11:44 these landscapers, uh all these backyard specialists, and the process sucks. It
11:50 takes them forever to get back to me. And then they come here, all they do is
11:53 measure. And like I knew the measurements to begin with and scheduling that on my schedule and their
12:00 schedule sucks. And they're coming from like an hour away sometimes just to do
12:05 this like 10-minute thing. And then once they take the measurements, they're
12:08 super busy. They don't get back to me for a week. And so then I'm like, can I
12:13 really trust this guy? And I was talking to to a guy um who built a company in
12:18 this space and said like one of the things that's really important to them
12:21 is just getting back to you quickly. and if they get back to you quickly, you're
12:24 way more likely to purchase from them. And this this is a fairly large
12:28 purchase. Let's let's say $50,000. And so I was thinking there's got to be a
12:32 better way. And you could solve this with AI in in part. So all I could do is
12:37 give them my address and they know what my backyard looks like. Like they can
12:40 get the measurements from satellite imagery and they could actually give me
12:46 a design. like they could they could either not show up at all or when they
12:50 show up they could have an iPad with a bunch of sample designs of my place. How
12:57 amazing would that be? And the idea for this came to me from a buddy of mine who
13:02 has a company called Deep Lawn. All they do is they help lawn companies quote.
13:10 And so the lawn company, you put in the address, it looks at satellite imagery,
13:14 uses some AI to determine how much grass you have, comes up with a square
13:18 footage, it knows what you charge, and it instantly gives them a quote, and
13:23 they charge like a couple dollars per quote, but there's so many lawn care
13:26 companies, so many lawns out there that it's actually a pretty good business.
13:31 And it's simple. This is actually like one step beyond that. It's not just
13:35 giving you a simple quote, but it's giving you a bunch of designs and stuff
13:38 like that. >> And I think I think it's very doable and
13:42 it would solve a problem that I have if these guys used it. >> So, it's really interesting you say
13:47 that. Ben had told me about a business that's very very similar in the roofing
13:50 space. Yeah. >> Uh, so if you go to roofer.com, so it's
13:54 r.com, >> and the guy's doing the same thing. It's just the quote part. So basically I I
14:00 guess the way that roofing works is >> if you want to get a roof or repair or
14:04 whatever it is the guy will come out. So, you got to do the same thing you
14:07 said. Schedule it. Comes out. >> Just gonna check out the roof today.
14:09 Gonna got gonna get give you a quote. And the roofers hate doing this step
14:12 because they they make no money in the quoting process. They need to get the
14:16 job. They got to go all the way up the roof. They got to schedule it. They can
14:18 only do so many in a week. And so, what this guy was doing, I don't know if I
14:21 don't remember exactly the me the method, but I know what he was doing,
14:24 which was he's like, "Hey," he would go to the roofers and say, "Hey, anytime
14:28 you need a quote done, I'll do the quote for you, you know, you just pay me like
14:32 a small amount basically to to go do this quote for you." And I think he was
14:36 using either drones or imagery in some ways. I think it was drones. The drone
14:39 would fly by. >> It would autod do the quote for you. So
14:42 you would have a way faster quote which increases your odds of getting the job.
14:46 You didn't have to go do it yourself. It can scale. So it can do way more quotes
14:49 per week than the than the roofer could have done themselves. And it takes off
14:52 like, you know, one part of the salesunnel that they really hated doing.
14:56 Um, and I think this business is doing really well. I think he's bootstrapping
14:59 this. I'm not entirely sure, but I think this is this business is doing really
15:01 well last time I heard the numbers for it. >> Yeah. And I think you could do the same
15:06 thing for like pools, decks, pergolas, like playgrounds, uh fences, outdoor
15:11 kitchens, like all all this kind of stuff would be fairly easy to do. So you
15:16 could build you could build this in one niche and then go into all the others.
15:20 >> Do you guys remember the um there was like two or three tech guys that like
15:24 left their like seemingly great tech companies, I think, and like started
15:28 bathroom remodel businesses. I think the first one was this was this guy named
15:33 Roger. So Roger was like previously like uh I think he started Zingga or
15:35 something like that. >> He he founded Mafia Wars which was part
15:39 of Zingga. >> Okay. Sorry I'm in the ballpark but you're in the ballpark. I'm not right.
15:44 Um okay. And then but like Gigster was like a like a you know raised by raised
15:48 money from prominent investors and then he left to start maid.com which was
15:53 basically like a you know how like the best barbers you go and you sit down in
15:56 the chair and they're like what do you want and you're like uh just do like a
15:59 little here I don't know just like give me like the Justin Bieber and the the
16:03 great barbers are like there's option one option two option three option four
16:06 here's the menu which one do you want? You're like give me that one give me the
16:08 four. >> He did that for bathrooms and it like killed it. And then the second guy was
16:14 this guy I think named Luke, one of the co-founders of Casper. He left Casper
16:20 and he's start a I think I think bathrooms and kitchens. I think
16:23 >> it's called Block Block renovation. >> Was it just And it was Was it both of
16:27 them or just bathrooms? Same thing. It was bathrooms and maybe now they
16:30 expanded to kitchens. And by the way, I don't know how these businesses have all
16:33 done now, but like super interesting where it was like, "Hey, here's four.
16:36 You can pick off the menu. You want your bathroom to look like this, this, this,
16:40 or this." And it was like running Facebook ads. We talked about this years
16:43 ago on the running Facebook ads for people who wanted upgrade their
16:46 bathroom, which is not how they were how any other construction company was
16:49 selling to customers. So, you had this new channel and they were requiring
16:53 customers to do these like expensive bathroom renovations using this like
16:57 kind of pick off the menu model, which I thought was pretty fascinating. I think
17:01 it's interesting, but it's it's so complex and things can go wrong. You get
17:06 bad reviews based on your partner or whatever. I feel like it's a very
17:09 complicated business. I don't know why. I I know I think Roger sold made to like
17:13 Home Depot. I don't know how I don't know how good of a business it was. What
17:17 I like about this one is it's really software. Like you just have to sell
17:20 these folks and you're not on the hook for anything else and it can be a pretty
17:24 lean team. I think you can easily do 10 million of revenue on this business,
17:28 >> right? I love I love this cuz you know I hate when people want to start a
17:31 marketing agency cuz you're signing up to be a genius every month.
17:34 >> Yeah. It's like, oh, I'm going to be and and every business really cares how
17:38 their marketing is going and they're going to be on you're going to be on
17:41 your ass and you got to continually be fighting versus things like compliance.
17:45 It's like nobody wants nobody cares how their compliance is going as long as
17:48 it's not a problem. So, similarly here like roofing, it's like doing the quote
17:53 is very different than the emotional purchase of a new bathroom that's going
17:57 to go in our master bath and I really care how the grout was done or whatever.
18:00 I don't even know what that word is. I just used it. Did that work? I don't
18:04 know. Um so so so you know you want to sell things ideally that people don't
18:09 have extreme like preference and um emotional attachment to cuz you're the
18:14 the bar for delivery is so much higher than it is for boring things that they
18:18 don't really care about. So you know I I like that I like the example you gave
18:20 better and also the fact that you could do it for if you could do it for
18:23 roofing, you can do it for lawns, you could do it for pools, you could it's a
18:26 blueprint business. Anybody can go do these businesses. >> Is that true? Is is the stereotype true
18:30 of Indian guys that they don't like being handy? >> That's like saying, "Do white men not
18:35 like to jump?" Like, no. It's not that we don't like being handy. We're just
18:39 not handy, okay? Like the all the all the blood rushes to our brains. There's
18:42 just nothing left in the limb. >> My dad likes being handy, but like I've
18:47 looked at he he owns some apartment buildings and I've looked at reviews and
18:51 people are like, "Whenever I need a problem, there's like Mr. Macgyver who's
18:55 like trying to solve it with like he doesn't have the right tools or anything
19:00 but he like creates some crazy way to solve some problem. >> The Indian handyman comes to your house
19:03 when you have a problem and just convinces you that it's okay and you
19:07 need to compromise and life is not about getting what you want many years.
19:11 >> Yeah, it'll be fine. Exactly. >> And now look at you guys now just
19:15 talking about like uh you know like a bathroom remodeled startup.
19:17 >> No, but this one works. This is an Indianfriendly business. That's
19:21 satellite images price quoting and then you hand it to a strong guy who's going
19:25 to be able to go do the do the manly stuff. >> Exactly.
19:28 >> Strong idea with number one. All right, let's go to number two.
19:30 >> So that that's number one. And then number two is maybe an offshoot on that.
19:33 Like you could start with number one and go into number two, but every let's use
19:39 this back backyard guys. So every service business runs the same workflow.
19:43 Like you get a call or an online whatever thumbtack. Um, so you have to
19:47 answer calls, you schedule jobs, then you dispatch a crew, you follow up, and you respond with an
19:55 with an estimate, and then, you know, you schedule the job, and then you ask
20:00 for reviews. And I think all of that stuff, a lot of that stuff is super
20:06 automatable. And I think the big unlock is actually AI voice. Like I think a lot
20:11 of people are sleeping on how good AI voice is already today and how useful it
20:15 would be for something like this. Actually yesterday or the day before
20:20 Bill Aman posted something about Elon Musk and he was like I'm not sure if
20:25 this was AI or not. And like the three of us are like are you [ __ ] kidding
20:29 me? It's obviously AI. >> What was it? >> It was a fake video about Elon Musk and
20:34 it was so obviously fake. it like didn't have his mannerisms or anything and it
20:39 was like talking slowly. It was kind of his voice kind of not. But the fact that
20:43 Bill Aman, I don't know how he how old he is, maybe 60, he couldn't tell or he
20:48 was like, I'm not sure if this is AI. So that means that AI voice is already good
20:52 enough. If Bill Aman's fooled by this video, then like a lot of people are
20:59 fooled by a AI voice. So already these service providers should should be
21:03 having AI voice do the work for them. And I think it's already good enough.
21:05 It's just going to get better in the next year. So I think instead of a
21:11 contractor hiring an office manager, you give them an AI office manager for like
21:16 a few hundred bucks a month. And it's actually you you might think of it as a
21:20 as a money-saving thing, but it's actually not. It's more than that. It's
21:24 like you have super fast response time. People responding round the clock. Like
21:29 I whenever what when when I decided to do this back backyard remodel was like a
21:34 Sunday afternoon and nobody's responding me then. But like the first person to
21:38 respond is way more likely to get the job than the next person and the person
21:41 after that. So like >> you respond super fast. There's no
21:46 missed calls. You text to follow up. Like it does all that stuff for you in a
21:51 super easy app. Man, so we have uh Alex Hermosi comes on uh to the pot a bunch and he's one of
21:57 our buddies. He's got the he like runs these like seminars or these like events
22:01 that you can go to that look really cool and we're I wanted to see like how good
22:05 his salesunnel was and so I went to like sign up to like a call and like as I
22:10 clicked like confirm calendar I get a phone call from a guy and his name's
22:16 Xavier and I'm like Xavier he's like hey Sam what's up I just saw you both to
22:18 call I just want to like confirm a couple details with you make sure we're
22:20 good and if you want I can like move the appointment up whatever and I go I don't
22:24 believe this is you goes it's a real person and I was likeetime me right now.
22:27 He's like, "Well, we don't have face." I go, "Well, you you know my number.
22:30 FaceTime me. Like, I know you have an iPhone." And so, he FaceTimes me while
22:34 he's talking to me. And it was him. It was totally him. And uh like it kind of
22:39 like got me bought into this idea of calling leads like within minutes.
22:44 Within minutes. And like there's been so many times where I've bought Yelp or
22:47 been on Yelp and I'm like literally the first person that will respond to my car
22:51 wash like request is coming to my house right now. I don't care how much it
22:53 costs. The first person. >> Exactly. And Sheil, what do you think is
22:57 going to be the challenge of uh because I've seen it, this idea makes so much
23:01 sense to me and there's, you know, there's a couple of them out there. What
23:04 do you think is going to be the key? If you're the founder, you're running a
23:07 business like this. >> What do you think you need to do to win?
23:11 What would you do in your maybe go to market or like how would you how would
23:14 you take this idea that I think a lot of people are going to have, but how would
23:16 you end up being the winner? What do you what do you think would make the
23:19 difference between winning and fourth place? >> Yeah. So, it's too bad that AI
23:25 robocalling is illegal cuz what I would probably do is just have my voice
23:31 >> I would just have my voice agent call each of these people. Right.
23:35 >> Right. So m maybe you can do it where like I don't know what the legality of
23:40 this is, but like maybe you do it where you call your AI voice agent calls in
23:47 and you're on the call and it it maybe it's fine then and the AI voice agent is
23:52 so good that you convince them. So you just call each of these people and
23:56 convince them that their agent is so good like don't you want to try this?
24:00 Try it for free. I'll just send you leads right now. and you do it that way
24:05 and and it can be a great business. >> Uh I want to ask you so you have like
24:08 two or three more ideas on here that are actually really good. One that is like
24:11 like the has the least amount of information on it. I actually have a
24:14 question about it. Let's do it. >> Um >> so you put on here something about
24:21 peptides because everyone >> because everyone in SF is doing it
24:26 >> and this is me just like wanting to get information. So you uh peptides um
24:30 basically it's a category of drugs whatever we could talk about it but like often times
24:37 people use peptides and TRT and uh HGH like interchangeably or in the same
24:41 ballpark. Um are you saying that all the nerds in SF are now on testosterone or
24:44 peptides? >> Everyone is on peptides and everyone's got their dealer. So, so the way this
24:54 works is like peptides are like these amino acids that tell your brain to to
25:01 repair or regulate something. >> They're like precursors to protein or
25:05 something like that where yeah, you can like >> So, it's really good for a bunch of
25:09 things that your body can do and regulate. So, like healing, body
25:15 composition, like give you more energy, control your appetite, those are GLP1s.
25:19 The problem is the problem with this business idea is they're not legal or
25:24 they're they're legal for research purposes. >> They're not approved for the uh
25:27 applications that people are using them for. >> That's right. So I don't know where the
25:34 opportunity is here, but it's like really complicated to use them and like
25:38 in San Francisco everyone's doing it. So you have friends who are doing and
25:41 they're like, "Oh, I got this peptide and it's been so great for me or
25:45 whatever." And of course, like there are challenges in it not being FDA approved,
25:50 but I think for the most part, these are things that people have been using for
25:54 years and and have some sense of efficacy on. But um you know, people are
26:01 getting o semiglutide like ompic and and other ompic like things uh via peptides.
26:07 And so a lot of people right now longevity is a huge opportunity. You've
26:11 seen like function health and superpower and others do really well there. So
26:15 there's a ton of ton of interest, but the experience I've had with peptides is
26:19 confusing and sketchy. So I actually haven't I haven't tried them yet, but I
26:23 have tons of friends who are talking about it. So I feel like there's some
26:28 educational opportunity. There's some like dosing guidance, safety,
26:33 some high trust supply chain and coaching opportunity in this space, but
26:39 I don't know what it is. And the FDA approval thing obviously is a big
26:41 problem. >> Uh interesting. So you're saying maybe right now because the legality and the
26:47 approval part of selling the things directly is sketch. Yeah.
26:51 >> You would build the biggest most trusted information source so that when the time
26:56 comes that this becomes more clear, you either become the highest value
27:00 affiliate or you could yourself could start to to deal some deal peptides.
27:05 >> Exactly. Exactly. Right. Have you guys heard of peptides or you have friends on
27:10 them? I heard of it because Sam like five years ago before peptides was
27:14 really a thing told me he his Achilles hurt and he was on some Reddit forum and
27:19 got a vial of something and injected it into his body and I was like bro what
27:23 are you doing you know just taking drugs off the internet and he's like it's
27:29 amazing I feel like Wolverine BP57 baby my >> people love BP57
27:33 told me about it >> my daughter who was just born that's her
27:36 middle name >> BP57 uh Like I love that stuff. Um, so yeah,
27:42 look, like I've always been like into this type of stuff. And if you listen to
27:46 the podcast, you know, I'm going to kind of brag a little bit here, but like semi
27:50 glue tide and OEIC, dude, when it when it got popular, we were that was old
27:54 news to us on this podcast. We had been talking about it. All right. I had
27:56 already overdosed on it. I could have told you all about it.
28:00 >> Um, and then when I and so I was into this stuff in San Francisco and then I
28:04 uh moved to Austin and that's when I really got my fix, man. like every jack
28:08 guy ever was like showing me all the cool stuff that they're doing. And not a
28:13 lot of the stuff was like like it's not wasn't like a I don't know actually the
28:15 definition of a steroids, but it wasn't like an anabolic like um make your
28:19 muscles huge, but there was like BP 157 for when I hurt my Achilles. Someone was
28:22 like you should try this or you should try your shoulder. And there's all these
28:27 like um weird peptides and weird things that were go were around longevity, not
28:31 like how do I look like Triple H like you know in wrestling, like not like how
28:34 do I look huge, but how do I like live a long time? And so, yeah, I've been
28:37 fascinated by all this stuff and I think that um I think there's a lot of really
28:41 interesting stuff and I and I still test a lot of this stuff and I got a guy. I
28:46 text him. I got a guy. I text them and I Venmo him. It's incredibly shady.
28:50 However, Sean and I invested in a company called Hone. Hone first. Well, I
28:54 forget what they originally called. >> Peak Peak Health or something like that.
28:55 Yeah. >> Yeah. I don't even remember. But they were originally just TRT. Now they do
29:00 everything. And we get their monthly updates. And this is like the chart is
29:04 like you want the chart to look this way. And I think that they're they're
29:07 doing a really good job of not looking like um you know for a long time
29:10 actually we talked about TRT clinics Sean and I you and I did and it was like
29:14 dude the biggest TRT clinic is like this guy based out of Vegas and he's got
29:17 these like stores and you go to the store to get your TRT and they have like
29:21 lazy boy leather sofas and like Monday Night Football on and it's like it was
29:25 like the lamest like unmost untrusty word thing and so Hone is actually a
29:29 good example of uh they do they also do female stuff too. I don't know what type
29:32 of drugs women take, but they sell women drugs as well. Um, and they've done a
29:36 much better job. >> It's not like Spanish where there's like
29:40 the male and female pronunciation of the >> Like, you know, what are we talking
29:45 about? >> Women. Yeah. I don't know. Whatever you guys take, whatever you're into. I guess
29:51 there's a little bit of everything for everyone. >> This is the only podcast where you're
29:56 going to get AI, TRT, Hle reference from wrestling. I mean, the the range is
30:02 incredible. Um, dude, I was feel I looked at this peptide business recently
30:05 because same thing. I'm like, okay, clearly there's demand, right? But the,
30:08 you know, how do you do this legally and what's the good way to do this? And, um,
30:12 I can't say who was doing this, but on the pitch, I was like, so like, how do
30:16 you plan to be like legit with this whole thing? Cuz it's unclear what the
30:20 what the legality is going to be of this. and he basically pulls up a
30:25 picture of like the like the co-founder with like Trump and Kennedy. He's like
30:30 he's like, "Yeah, we're pretty sure we're going to be able to get some
30:33 things through that will make." And I was like, "Oh, wow. Okay, that's like
30:37 probably one of the best slides I've ever seen in a deck." >> He pulls out he pulls out a card from
30:41 his wall. He goes, "I have an answer right here." You're like, "Sir, that's a
30:44 get out of jail free card from the game And so I was like, I think actually,
30:52 yeah, being we're really close with Bobby Kennedy would be like a perfectly
30:55 reasonable part of your business plan right now. So, so >> is that really what he said?
30:58 >> Literally, yeah. They were like, hey, we they're pro this. It's going to pass and
31:02 we're like, you know, we're going to do everything the right way. One thing they
31:05 pointed out rightfully so is that everybody who's in the space right now
31:08 is like the kind of like, you know, like the early kind of crypto community, not
31:11 early, like kind of mid-stage crypto community where everyone's just trying
31:14 to get a quick buck and they're going to go like foul and like you could just be
31:18 Coinbase, right? And you could just be like, "Hey, we're just going to do
31:21 things the right way and we trust that over time this will become more and more
31:25 uh, you know, mainstream, but we're just going to do things the right way from
31:28 the beginning." And like what Coinbase did where like, you know, all the other
31:32 crypto, you know, exchanges sort of fell off is, I think, a valid strategy in
31:36 this case. >> They're like, say it with me, crony capitalism.
31:42 >> Oh, dude, this is this is a good topic cuz there's so much of it. And actually,
31:48 like I have never in the past, I'd never seen anybody pitch like a a core part of their pitch
31:55 as being I'm close to administration. I've heard so many pitches about that
31:59 now, which which is kind of sad honestly, but that is what it is.
32:03 >> Like slide 13. We know a guy and it's just >> exactly
32:07 >> like what why is this in your deck? >> Totally.
32:08 >> Um >> actually like I've been searching and chat GBT will not answer me a bunch of
32:15 questions I have because it says peptides are not medically cleared. Like
32:19 we can't answer this question. So like one of my main sources of information is
32:22 gone. >> Right. Um, by the way, again, a little can we do a little politics uh tangent
32:28 real quick? Ear muffs if this bothers you, but Sam, I just thought you'd find
32:33 this entertaining. Did you see the Trump thing about um Do you know who CZ is? Do
32:36 you know who CZ is from Binance? >> By the Binance guy, didn't he like
32:40 pardon him, but Trump definitely doesn't know who that guy is.
32:43 >> So, he pardoned him and then he gets interviewed. So, the guy was in jail, I
32:46 think, for four months or something like that. And this guy owned like the
32:51 biggest Asian uh crypto exchange and was like in whatever he was in in in hot
32:57 water for moneyaundering and wire fraud a bunch of stuff where it's like you
32:59 know bad people are sort of using your exchange to to to do moneyaundering or
33:04 something and they they asked him they were like but you pardoned this guy and
33:10 then he bought like $2 billion of your son's cryptocurrency. Like don't you see
33:13 how that seems bad? Like why did you pardon him? He's like here here's the
33:16 thing. You want to know what? You want to know? I don't know who he is.
33:23 And I was like, wow. The audacity. It was just the audacity of saying, I
33:26 don't even know who he is. Don't know anything about the guy. And he pardoned
33:29 him. I just thought that was one of the most crazy things I've ever
33:35 >> seen. It It's like this man is this man has no fear. He's not afraid of
33:38 anything. He has he does not fear anything. If he's going to say that
33:41 >> pardoned uh the what was the guy from Nicola? Uh >> Trevor Milton.
33:46 He pardoned that guy too. That guy. What the hell, man? And then they looked into
33:50 it. They're like, "Oh, that guy donated." >> Yeah. It's a get out of jail, not for
33:53 free card. >> Yeah. >> Get out of jail at this fixed price.
33:58 >> Yeah. That was insane. It was actually very low. It was like a couple million
34:04 >> Uh, and did he really say that word for word? He was like, I don't know.
34:07 >> Another thing where it's like, you're not you're not ugly, you're just poor.
34:12 It's like you're not it's like you're not um you're not a criminal. You're
34:15 just poor. You know what I mean? It's like you can get out for if you got
34:18 access to a couple million dollar. >> There's that joke. I forget who where
34:21 where it originally came from. They're like, "Look, if you own the bank like 50
34:25 grand, that's a big deal. That's a that's really bad for you." Uh but if
34:28 you own the bank if you owe the bank $500 million, that's really bad for the
34:32 bank. >> That's the bank's problem. >> Yeah. The other one that was crazy was that
34:38 George Santos that that I just thought it was so funny like this this like a congress person
34:44 who like lied about everything. Like he would have a different college that he
34:47 went from each time you talked to him. He claimed >> the guy said he was Jewish.
34:51 >> He said he was Jewish and then he was like Jewish kind of Jewish
34:56 >> out here where I live there was like a New York congressman or something like
34:59 that like kind of a or was a local I don't even remember what it was. So, not
35:03 that important, but he was like he was he was a gay Brazilian guy. I think he's
35:07 Brazilian. And he had he had the audacity to to tell people that he was
35:12 Jewish. And they were like, "George Santos, I I don't think you're Jewish."
35:15 He goes, "Oh, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jewish." Like, I like
35:21 hanging out with like Jewish people. >> Honestly, it's an oldtimer.
35:24 >> It's an oldtimer. And then like he had so much audacity like he claimed that
35:30 his mom died in 911 but like there are very good records of who died in 911 and
35:35 he he like lived in Brazil at the time. There was no chance that that was
35:38 possible. He just >> Anyway, pretty pretty incredible.
35:42 >> All right, ear muffs can come off. I know the politics. Uh all right, so what
35:46 else you got? So >> the circus the surrogacy thing or the
35:49 EMS thing? Those are all >> Let's do the surrogacy one.
35:51 >> Okay, let's do the sacy one. So, okay. So, personal note, my wife and I, we're
35:57 like old. I'm I'm I'm 43, my wife's 40, and uh my wife has a genetic condition
36:02 that we need to screen against. And um being pregnant can trigger this
36:05 condition that she has. So, our doctors have said, "If you can avoid pregnancy,
36:08 you should do so." And we were like, "Okay, we can afford it. Let's do it."
36:12 So, we started going down the surrogacy path. And for those of you who don't
36:18 know, surrogacy is when uh another mother, another person carries your
36:23 child. And so you you transfer your embryo to that person and then they
36:30 carry your child. And it's growing uh very substantially. So like this wasn't
36:35 really a thing not that long ago. And then actually New York only legalized it
36:40 5 years ago. So it's still growing very rapidly. It's obviously extremely common
36:44 in the gay community because that's the only way they can have kids uh you know
36:49 their own their own children. And it's it's actually a very complicated thing
36:53 how it works. There are a bunch of surrogacy agencies out there and the
37:00 surrogacy agencies they have a a number of women that they work with carriers
37:06 and and then they try to match you. But the way it works is they can only
37:10 introduce you to to people that are in their platform. So imagine if it was
37:16 like and it's it's a matching thing like there are a bunch of things that we care
37:18 about. There's a bunch of things that she cares about. We ultimately found a
37:22 great match and she's she's wonderful. We love her. >> And how much is it and how much does the
37:26 woman get? >> Yeah. So it costs roughly $150 to $200,000.
37:35 >> Okay. And that goes to her plus the agency takes a cut. Is that how it
37:37 works? >> Agency takes a cut, she gets a certain amount. So I think in our case, she gets
37:46 $75,000 roughly. Um something in that ballpark. There are a bunch of there are
37:49 a bunch of things that you know there's a base fee and then a monthly fee and
37:54 travel and time off work and all sorts child care, all sorts of stuff that's
37:57 embedded in that. And then there are a bunch of there's like legal fees and
38:01 then of course there are medical fees for like actually doing the transfer and
38:05 her healthcare and her insurance that we pay for. >> And do you get to hang out with her or
38:09 is it like do you see her on a monthly like do check-ins or >> Yeah. So we we hung out with her like so
38:15 we're in San Francisco. She's in Las Vegas area. We've hung out with her.
38:20 She's she's come to our house. We like her. We text with her. um you know when
38:26 the transfer happened we sent her stuff like we you know we've we know what her
38:31 family life is like all sorts of stuff. The thing I didn't realize going into
38:35 this is there are a bunch of things that you might care about or that somebody
38:40 might care about that are important in making this match. So like I thought
38:45 like I didn't really know what I would care about but we've talked to people
38:50 who care about like what do they eat? Are they eating only organic? I met a
38:54 Hindu person who said their surrogate can't eat beef during the time of
38:59 pregnancy. People obviously care about um would they abort if medically
39:04 important? Are they okay carrying twins? Would they have a C-section? And then
39:08 there are all sorts of other stuff like do you want to have a relationship with
39:11 this person? Like we really like our surrogate. Like we we we check in with
39:15 her all the time and she texts us back. But anyway, there all these things that
39:18 you want to match on. But the way it works is like each agency only has a few
39:24 folks that you can talk to and and make that match. And it would make a lot more
39:31 sense if you had a like a dating app like e-harmony. Here are the things I
39:34 care about. Here are the things they care about. So it makes sense for it to
39:38 be a larger thing. Imagine if you were buying a home and your real estate agent
39:43 could only show you homes that they had listed. That's kind of what it is today.
39:49 I think there's an opportunity in making this much more common. I think people
39:53 don't realize how many medical challenges people have and that being
39:56 the reason they're not able to carry and not not able to have kids. I think if
40:00 people knew that some of the stigma about this would go away and you'd have
40:04 more people who want to be surrogates, want to be carriers. So, I think there's
40:09 an opportunity to create a company that does this for people and and is a much
40:13 broader agency than what's out there today and sort of does this matching
40:19 process, brings people on um sort of recruits carriers. That's really the the
40:23 challenge right now is there are not enough carriers. So, I think you have to
40:28 create more carriers and to do that you sort of market you offer them a higher
40:33 portion of the payment. So like I think by automating some of this stuff instead
40:37 of it being a manual process where like our agency you know the ladies going
40:42 like word of mouth to f find new carriers I think you can automate a lot
40:47 of that process and um and create an awesome business but I don't think this
40:50 is going to be billion dollar company like I think there are maybe 5 to 10,000
40:57 birds in the United States every year uh from surrogacy and I think that'll
41:01 probably expand but I don't think you can build a billion dollar company here.
41:04 I think you can build I think you can do something great for the world and you
41:08 know run a company as well. >> How do they recruit these women now?
41:13 That's such a strange way to recruit someone like >> it's a great question. I don't know. Um
41:18 but I think what they do is there are all these communities Reddit, Facebook,
41:24 etc. where people are posting and um you go there and people and a lot of the
41:27 agencies are there just recruiting. >> Can I go full full crazy here?
41:29 >> Yeah. >> SGY MLM. >> Yeah. I think an MLM has solved the
41:34 marketing challenge of how do you recruit other women to go like kind of
41:39 do this thing for money and this is just the like premium. Why sell makeup and
41:45 candles when you could have a downline generating, you know, $100,000 a pop,
41:48 right? Like that's a it's a it's a premium MLM. >> Man, I I it's so crazy. I've got so many
41:54 friends doing this. When I was a little kid, like or in my earlier 20s, like the
41:58 only thing I knew about surrogacy was that Amy Puller movie where she, you
42:02 know, she's like the surrogate. She's the surrogate for Tina Fay and she like
42:06 eats Big Macs and it's like, can we change her to be healthy? And like that
42:10 was like that was the the gist of the movie. But I didn't know anything about
42:14 this. And now I think I probably know five or six or seven friends that are
42:18 have done it this way. It's a pretty wild experience. It's also like science
42:21 is amazing. It's one of these things where I learned about this and I'm like
42:23 this is just absolutely insane. I can't believe this exists.
42:27 >> So Shil, if you said there's 10,000 surrogate births a year roughly, you
42:30 think that's ballpark, right? >> Yeah, it's growing fast. I think it's
42:33 growing like 10% a year, but let's just say 10,000. >> So if it was a h 100,000 average spend
42:40 per surrogate surrogacy, that's a billion dollars a year of sort of
42:43 revenue generated across all the different um agencies today.
42:48 >> But yeah, but note that most of that goes to the surrogate. So, right, you
42:53 know what? If you you're a venture investor, right, like how do you
42:59 describe to somebody who's not a VC? The appeal of the sort of niche weird
43:05 marketplace that behavior that seems a little fringe today, but oh my god,
43:10 wait. People spend how much money watching people break open Pokemon card
43:14 decks and whatnot as a 12 billion company now watching people open Pokemon
43:18 card packs live on the internet. What do you mean? Right. There's like there's an
43:21 appeal to this. How do you describe that that kind of phenomenon and and where
43:25 the and the upside of the of the sword of the fringe? >> Yeah. So, I think Whatnot's a great
43:31 great one because it started out as a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop
43:35 toys. And if you told me that a collectible marketplace for Funko Pop
43:39 toys would 5 years later be worth I think it's like 12 billion or something,
43:44 I would say you're crazy. But you start somewhere and like you dominate that
43:49 niche. I think in this case I don't think it's a venture opportunity and I I
43:53 also think venture capital incentivizes growth and that might incentivize the
43:58 wrong thing in this in this space. So I probably wouldn't want it to be a
44:01 venture opportunity but I think it is a good opportunity for somebody to build a
44:04 business. >> Can I ask you about one more thing you have here because this is on the long
44:09 list of things I thought were so stupid when I first heard about this and people
44:12 seem to love it and it's you know what do I know. Sean, have you heard of EMS?
44:18 Is that uh like a ambulance? Is that is that what EMS is? >> That's another EMS.
44:23 >> Electronic muscle stimulation. >> Okay, tell me about it. Is this like the
44:26 thing where you get six pack abs by putting the electrode on your thing and
44:29 you watch TV? >> Yes. >> So, okay, here's the thing. So, you got
44:38 to try it first of all, but my one of my best friends in the world,
44:42 >> dude, I'd rather take drugs. >> Yeah. Okay, fair. So, so one of my best
44:48 friends in the world, completely and utterly jacked and he was not five years
44:55 ago and he does not really work out. He does EMS. So, what it is is he has this
45:01 little machine that he bought for $35 on Amazon. Look for TENS, Tens, and EMS.
45:06 >> Oh, we have one of those. That's for like during contractions. My wife used
45:09 the TENS machine. >> Yeah. So, he puts those all over his
45:14 body. and he like jacks it up. I hate the feeling of it. So, I don't do it. But I
45:22 have seen it work for him so well that this is something. And so recently, I
45:27 was in New York a couple weeks ago and I went to a workout facility where they
45:32 have it set up like on a thing that you wear. And part of the problem is it
45:37 needs direct skin contact. So, it's annoying to put on and off. If it was
45:41 easier to put on and off, I would be doing this thing. But I went to a
45:45 facility where they had this thing and they like you put a shirt on that has
45:50 these electrodes on it and they spray water on it so it makes it touches your
45:56 skin basically. And it's an amazing workout. Like it was one of my favorite
46:00 workouts ever and it was 15 minutes. I know it sounds like total [ __ ]
46:04 >> Wait, so you do with this one you do workout while it's happening? You do a
46:08 little bit of a workout, but it's it's working you out a lot more because of
46:13 the stimulation in your body. >> Wait, wait. So, let's go to the case
46:16 study of your friend. Your friend 5 years ago, not Jack. >> Tell me his name. I'm going to go to his
46:22 name. Dear, he's going to love this. >> Okay. So, Sam, pull up a picture. Ari,
46:26 get a picture. Let's get a screenshot. >> Do we Do we got a shirtless pick?
46:29 >> Yeah, we need a shirtless picture. >> I can send you guys a pick.
46:33 >> He's jacked now. And you're saying that the in between there wasn't like a
46:37 crossfit phase and then this. It was really just this over a period of time
46:43 plus diet. I assume not much change in his diet. He's diabetic so he's kind of
46:46 limited in what he can eat. He's he hasn't changed his diet. But he
46:53 attributes it all to this. So okay. So where's the opportunity? I think so.
46:58 This gym thing that I did in New York, it was amazing. And I looked for one
47:01 here in San Francisco. I I couldn't find I couldn't find one in in a cursory
47:05 search, but I think you basically build a berries of EMS where like you have a
47:11 workout routine and it's really fun and there's a class and people put on this
47:14 thing and they they're used to it and and they get jacked and people see them
47:18 getting jacked. And I think the way you do it is like you start with somebody
47:23 like me who's like not in great shape, a little flubby, and then I go through
47:29 this and like you show the evolution and uh and then people are into it and
47:31 people like, I got to try this. >> Yeah, this has the the viral factor of
47:35 being weird, right? Like of people hating on it, right? Like if I posted
47:39 this and I was like, this is all you need, you're going to get all the
47:42 comments about like, dude, just do it, blah, blah, blah. you know, like and so
47:45 it's going to go viral because it's going to be hated and loved at the same
47:49 time, which is what you need. >> Yeah. So, the problem with the $35
47:54 product, so he bought it for me and I The problem is you have to like do these
47:57 sticky things you have to put on your body and it just like takes time. What
48:04 he does is his primary workout is he flies a lot for work and when he's on
48:09 the plane, he's doing it the whole time and that's his primary workout.
48:14 Does he put this through the X-ray machine and they're like, "What the hell
48:16 are you?" >> It's a little thing. It's like the size of a phone. It's nothing.
48:21 >> Oh. Oh. But so this thing you linked this catalyst thing, this is the full
48:26 body suit. You go there and you exercise or what is this? >> Yeah, that's that's the full body suit.
48:32 That's basically this but already in a suit form. >> All right. I think I may have to try
48:36 this. Sam, what do you think as a as an actual fit person? What do you think of
48:40 this? You may not be the market. Actually, I love shortcuts though. Like,
48:45 you know, we like if I think we had someone in the podcast be like, "Well, I
48:47 don't get why people hate on get-rich quick schemes. Getting rich quick is the
48:52 best way to get rich." >> So, like, if I can get like more fit
48:55 without doing anything, I'm I'm on board. Is there actually data that backs
49:00 this up? I think it's pretty lame, but if I can >> Did you not hear the story about his
49:03 friend? >> Yeah. No, it's a good >> The data. >> So, I think there is data on Catalyst.
49:11 Um, people use it. I think the question is whether these $35 machines work and I
49:18 only have my one friend as a data point. And the the funny thing is like we've
49:24 all seen it work for him and yet none of us others in the friend group have done
49:27 it. And the reason for that is it's annoying like to put these things on and
49:34 it's painful. And he's willing to like every plane ride he's willing to just do
49:38 it the whole plane ride and I'm not. But when I did this workout, he took me to
49:41 this workout class in New York 2 weeks ago. And when I went to that workout
49:44 class, I was like, "This is actually really fun and I know I'm getting a
49:49 great workout." Like, you feel the next couple days. It was like the good kind
49:52 of hurt after a great workout. So, I was like, I know this is working, but how
49:57 come I haven't heard more about this? So, I think there's opportunity in
50:00 building a product and this like berry style workout where like you teach
50:04 people how to do it. >> Dude, this looks pretty sick. the vests
50:08 like look like a like like armor, like body armor. Like >> Yeah, you look like a Navy Seal except
50:13 for I don't know what this tank is here. That that's a little bit suspicious. I
50:16 don't really fully understand what all the pieces are, but >> dude, if people are buying $6,000 $6,000
50:24 cold plunges at their home and, you know,5 to $10,000 saunas at their home
50:29 and red light therapy. My brother-in-law's got a got a red light
50:32 therapy bed in his house and his kids are doing it because it's like good for
50:36 their sports whatever recovery whatever this is. Like there's really no end to
50:41 the kind of wellness, you know, rabbit hole, right? And there's there's always
50:43 people who are going to look for the next edge. It's not too dissimilar to a
50:47 reformers machine in a Pilates class, right? Like it's a tool that gets you
50:53 more leverage on, you know, your your hour of exercise. Although this makes me
50:56 want to make fun of it, it also makes me want to secretly do it.
50:59 These guys, I actually was looking up. These guys, I think they emailed me,
51:03 this Catalyst guys, asking if I wanted to test this out. And I don't know if I
51:06 replied, but if they're listening, >> wanting you to be an influencer. Was
51:09 this during the Sam Fitness influencer era? >> It could have been. That was a great
51:13 era. I think I influenced literally dozens of people. >> Does six weeks count as an era, though?
51:19 >> Well, you know, it's a season. that that was dad dad dad dad dad dad dad dad
51:25 influencer pretty quickly and uh the content shifted >> once I became a once I had a kid I
51:29 wanted to quit posting shirtless photos online but just so you know it's still
51:33 there go away it's still there and so Catalyst I I'll totally try this thing
51:37 this looks cool I like to make fun of these things but uh suit me up
51:41 >> there's an announcement on their site of like hey I know a lot of you had had a
51:44 very very bad experience but there's a new owner and we're going to you know do
51:47 it right this time so you know maybe it's been a little bumpy road
51:51 >> yeah I'm I'm in a bunch of like these longevity groups in San Francisco and
51:56 WhatsApp and people are people were like trying to buy the company.
52:00 >> Can you wait? That's actually okay. You just gave me a beautiful opening. Uh
52:03 you're an SF. You're kind of running around like a bunch of like rich people,
52:08 weirdos, successful people, like this really cool combination of people. What
52:11 are the kids into? Like uh like this longevity stuff. What else is
52:15 interesting uh to them? What like you know I don't live in San Francisco
52:18 anymore. Sean lives a little bit outside of SF now. Before when we were there, it
52:22 was the best place to see what's going to happen in a handful of years because
52:24 there's all these weirdos doing cool stuff like sharing their couch on a on a
52:29 website and now Airbnb is a thing uh or sharing their car. What What are some
52:32 other interesting stuff that the the oddballs are into? >> Yeah, I think there's so I think we
52:37 talked about a lot of them. Peptides, nobody's drinking. Um you know, I think
52:42 this Brian Johnson has done wonders for a lot of folks uh in just changing how
52:46 they think about life. Not necessarily all good. Like I don't think drinking is
52:50 absolutely terrible, but I I think probably people should drink less than
52:55 they do. One interesting one uh that I did not like a new business like as as
53:02 crazy as Airbnb and Uber were, I think prediction marketplaces are a good one.
53:06 It's obviously not just the San Francisco thing, but it's the kind of
53:10 business that like I probably would not have funded when these companies got
53:13 funded. I would say like this is never going to work. It's going to be highly
53:16 illegal. But the fact that you can >> What's the difference between a
53:19 prediction market and so prediction market does that just mean like guessing
53:23 who's going to win president or who's going to win the mayor?
53:27 >> Yeah. So so one of my push backs was initially was it's only going to be used
53:31 for elections because you know that's obviously something that everybody is
53:35 thinking about and wants to wants to bet on. But actually they use it for so many
53:39 other things too like their their political outcomes all the times. People
53:43 are using it it's basically like a proxy for sports betting. You can do all sorts
53:48 of secondary derivative products on top of equity investing. There are markets
53:52 for everything. I think there are a lot of questions in my mind about why it's
53:59 legal and like can you influence the outcome of something that you're betting
54:03 on like you know is if there's a marketplace on whether how many companies BTV would invest in
54:09 the next year I'd be, you know, I'd be betting on that while while
54:13 participating as well. But I think there's no question that there's a huge
54:16 opportunity in this space. >> Did you see the uh Coinbase earnings
54:19 call thing? >> Yeah, that was [ __ ] hilarious. What
54:21 happened? >> Did you see this? So So there's a there was a prediction market on Poly Market
54:29 for um the Coinbase earnings call like, "Oh, the Q3 earnings call. Will Bri,
54:33 will Brian Armstrong say any of these words or how many times he'll say these
54:34 words?" >> Oh my gosh. And and then at the very end of the call,
54:39 >> how much volume? >> I think it was probably, you know,
54:43 >> it was single digit thousands. >> It was like a very small thing, but his
54:47 team passed him a note and he goes, "Oh, before we hang up here, I just would
54:51 like to say web 3, crypto, blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum. Thank you very much."
54:54 And he just basically he's like, "Uh, you know, just for all the prediction
54:57 markets out there, you know, here we go." And he just hit all the words. He
55:00 just said seven words and then laughed and then basically like they hung up the
55:05 call. And I thought that was so funny. But of course it's not that funny when
55:08 like >> there's all these like sports things going on right now where
55:12 >> dude in the UFC like in the UFC if you're like a nobody UFC guy you get
55:16 like 25 grand for fighting and they've like flagged a bunch of they flagged a
55:20 bunch of fights where they're like this is very suspicious because there was
55:24 like you know 80 grand on the line for a fight that the guy would only earn
55:27 $25,000 and they're being investigated. So yeah, there's going to be a lot of
55:31 downsides, but so like the average tech nerd, like when I was in San Francisco,
55:34 it was like a joke. Like it was like the Giants play here. Where are the Giants?
55:37 Like no one knew about like, you know, like it like wasn't like particularly
55:40 popular. I know Sean was into basketball, but like basketball or any
55:44 sport wasn't particularly like, you know, um that popular. Are the young
55:49 tech guys caring about gambling for sports or is it all other stuff?
55:53 >> It's a lot of other stuff. I think sports is interesting and I think will
55:57 be one of the key markets in the prediction space but I think there are
56:02 all sorts of other things like like gambling on or you know predicting
56:08 equity outcomes uh are interesting too. I I I look through those things all the
56:13 time. I'm just curious and it's it's also uncanny how right they are and how
56:16 ahead of the curve they are on some of these things. >> Can I ask you about one more thing? Um
56:21 >> you made a very interesting statement. We said, "What are three strong opinions
56:25 that you have for life?" And your number one opinion is, "I I think books are a
56:31 waste of time." >> For me, I think books are a waste of
56:36 time. So, I haven't This is I haven't read a book in like 15 years. And I
56:43 think it's very very contrarian opinion, but I think like I have so many friends
56:47 that are authors that I talk to that are just like trying to get the words out,
56:53 but if you like listen to a podcast, it's like one podcast by that author is
57:00 at least 80% of the value of the book. And so, is it worth spending another
57:05 five hours reading to get the additional 20%. In my mind, no. So that's my that's
57:09 my provocative statement. >> It is the first thing I do when there's
57:13 a book I'm interested in. I go to YouTube and I just look for a talk by
57:16 the author. And if they're not interesting in the first 15 minutes of
57:19 that YouTube video, the book is definitely not going to be interesting.
57:23 The book will probably have more. You know, it's not going to be fully
57:26 sufficient. But if you can't do if you can't give a good talk, you probably
57:28 don't have a good book. >> Let me give a a different opinion that's
57:32 related. So I read a lot like in terms of quantity. And I was rereading a book
57:37 that I read when I was younger. Uh I think it was like Robert Chowini's
57:40 influence, you know, it's all about persu persuasion. And I was like, I've
57:45 read all these other books on business and whatever. I should have just reread
57:49 this same book every six or three months and not read any other book on this
57:52 topic and I would have been significantly further ahead. And so my
57:56 opinion that I'm telling young people when it comes to reading, I'm like pick
57:59 like the two or three like classics or the great of it and master it. know it
58:03 word for word and master it and don't read uh a lot. Just read the same thing
58:07 over and over and over again. And if you want to read for fun, read for fun, but
58:10 just do the same thing over and over again for your educational books.
58:15 >> What were the other uh three? You said you had three.
58:17 >> I think I had I think I had two. The other one was uh just reached out to the
58:21 owner. So, this is lately a few things have happened. Like, I'm booking um it's
58:27 my wife's 40th birthday and we're we booked a trip for like 40 of our friends
58:33 and I was having some trouble with the the cruise. It's it's a a Virgin Voyages
58:38 and I was having some trouble. So, I just reached out to the CEO. I just
58:42 found the CEO's email and I reached out to him and I was like, "Hey, I you know,
58:48 if I were you, I'd want to know troubles like you're a smart guy. You want to
58:52 build a great brand. I've had experience with you with your brand that was not
58:56 great. Let me tell you about it." And um he responded so favorably. He was like,
59:00 "Thank you so much for telling me. Here's what I'm doing about it." And it
59:04 just re made me realize that I should be doing that more often. So, actually, we
59:07 did that recently with our fertility clinic. Same thing. like had a bad
59:11 experience. I reached out to the the like the guy who founded the clinic and
59:15 you know obviously you shouldn't do it for everything but in some cases these
59:20 people want you to have a great experience with their brand and they
59:25 they don't often know until things get like until you write a bad review they
59:29 don't know. So it's just important to let them know earlier on. It doesn't
59:32 have to be the owner but in my case it was >> what did and did you get a discount? Um,
59:38 I didn't get a discount, but I got like really uh like white glove service where
59:43 they're like everything I want, they respond immediately. And I'm I'm not
59:47 trying to be a dick about it and like get something that I don't deserve. But
59:50 it it worked out quite well. >> Right. But I wouldn't say no to you
59:53 making it right either. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. If you want to
59:58 give me a discount, I'll I'll take it. >> Uh, Seal, you're great, man. Thanks for
60:03 coming on. Uh, as always, it's always super fun having you on. Super fun to
$

Ideas That Sound Illegal (But Print Money Anyway)

@MyFirstMillionPod 1:00:24 10 chapters
[content creation and YouTube][fundraising and investment][marketing and growth hacking][product development and MVP][solo founder and bootstrapping]
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*Want to start a $1M side hustle? Get 100+ ideas here:* https://clickhubspot.com/sby Episode 769: Sam Parr ( ⁠https://x.com/theSamParr⁠ ) and Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) talk to Sheel Mohnot ( https://x.com/pitdesi ) about $10M business ideas you could be early on. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (3:42) 50-year mortgage (11:22) #1 - AI Yard Vision (15:02) #2 - AI Pool Vision (24:05) #4 - Peptides (35:43) #5 - eHarmony for Surrogacy (44:13) #6 - EMS - not the one you're thinking (55:53) #

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