#144 - Shaan's Giving Away A Company, A Mysterious, Anonymous New App and The Most Gimmicky Marketing Thing The Guys Have Done

Uh-huh. Yeah.

I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

Life. All right, well, um, what do you want to talk about, Sam?

Did you see I lined up— you have like a little crush on MrBeast, I think, right?

Uh, I do not have a little crush on MrBeast, but I think he's doing interesting stuff.

So his manager's coming and I think we lined up— did we line up one or two more people? Uh, yeah, his manager's coming next, uh, next podcast, the podcast that comes out Friday. And then, um, that Deep Citadel, you know, those guys, they reached out to me. I'll, I will hope to set something up with them, but, uh, no more guests, or we don't have a lot of guests planned.

Our friend Sully's coming on in a couple weeks.

Oh, is he? All right, that's cool.

Sam, you seem, uh, you seem out of it. Are you okay?

I'm tired. I just— I'm tired, that's all.

Do I need to crack open a Topo Chico for you?

No, I'm good. I'm good, man. It, uh, it snowed in Austin yesterday. I was freezing my ass off and I stayed inside and like slept and didn't exercise that much and it still wore me out.

So I'll give you, uh, I'll do an idea that's based on the way you're feeling right now. So are you familiar with smelling salts?

Yeah, I mean, originally they're meant for like waking someone up after an injury.

Yeah, like after a knockout.

Yeah, like Barstool Sports uses them as a joke where where they like go and find someone whose eyes are closed and they put them under their nose to make them throw up.

Yeah, so basically, um, I've been looking into smelling salts, and I originally wasn't going to even talk about this idea on here because I, I gave it to a friend of mine to execute. So nobody copy this idea, but if you can help out or you got ideas, feel free to, uh, to chime in. But I like this idea. So smelling salts, traditionally I only knew them because, okay, boxer gets knocked out, you wave the smelling salts in front of their nose and they wake up. The other option is The other people that use them are like weightlifters. So before any weightlifting competition, you'll see a lot of weightlifters crack a smelling salt open and basically just use it to get kind of amped up before they do their lift. And it's a stimulant. And so same thing with football players. There's a whole bunch of videos of Peyton Manning and a bunch of NFL players before games using smelling salts to sort of get amped up and get ready to go. So I thought that's interesting. And I'm somebody who— I never drink coffee. I don't drink any coffee. I don't drink any soda. So I basically never do caffeine as stimulants. But I'm really into this idea of being able to quickly snap into, I don't know, like a peak state of mind. All right. I treat my workday like an athlete treats their pregame routine. I don't just get up and start working. In the same way an athlete doesn't just kind of roll out of bed and go play a game. Like, they have a warm-up and they have a routine they do beforehand to get themselves ready to go.

Do you take smelling salts?

Did you look at the— have you looked up this stuff on Amazon?

Yes.

So I typed in smelling salt. So there's this— the leading company looks like it's called Atomic Rhino, and there's another one called like, uh, something Sport, Ammonia Sport.

They all look like they're— on the COVID is like a guy exploding with steroids.

Basically it just looks like a meathead product because it is a meathead product to Oh my God, this is crazy. I'm gonna buy this. The reviews are really good. They're probably all fake, but it's how interesting. How about this one? Asylum Smelling Salts, right? So good you go crazy.

Yeah, exactly. So that's the— all the existing products in the market are branded like this, uh, and then you have a whole other batch of like people that, that buy products that are, uh, you know, like essential oils and whatnot. They're kind of like a different brand. And so what I—

and so I talked to my dad, listen to this one, it's called Nose Torque, the most potent, long-lasting smelling salts available. Number one choice of powerlifters worldwide.

Yeah, I'm looking this up. This is something. I can't believe this. Will be interesting to watch. I would never bet my money on it, but I would love to pay the entry fee just to watch you fuck it up.

So I'm gonna build this one in public, so everything from sourcing to whatever. So I'm having the guy who's working on it, uh, basically working on it, uh, blog about it. I'll announce that a little bit, uh, you know, when he, when he writes his first thing, we'll, we'll kind of introduce anyone I know. Uh, yes, someone you know, someone who in fact has even been on the podcast once in a small way. So we'll leave it as a teaser for now, but smell like salts.

Are they the same ethnicity as you?

Uh, they're not the same ethnicity as me, no.

Hmm. Hmm.

So that's one idea. Uh, let's do another idea. So actually, I'll tell you about something pretty interesting since you didn't really have too many topics. I'm just gonna kind of monologue half this podcast and you react to these things that are going on. All right, so I've been— what's the right way to introduce this? Okay, so something cool happened to me last week or two weeks ago where I got a DM from somebody. I can't say who, but it's like a very well-known person in the kind of like tech world, somebody who I kind of like look up to, consider like awesome. I don't know this person, so I was surprised to get a DM from them. And they basically said, hey, join this, uh, like kind of private community on Apex. I said, I never heard of Apex. Don't know what that is. So join this private community on Apex. A bunch of us are on there. I think you'll like it. And I just thought this was spam. I was like, oh, someone's account got hacked and they're just trying to like, they're just spamming everybody using this person's account to try to grow their thing, I guess. So I wrote back, actually kind of rudely. I was like, okay, did you get hacked? What is this? And the person was like, no, did not get hacked. I don't know what you mean. I'm inviting you to this. And I was like, but you don't even know me. And the person's like, well, actually, I've seen you on Twitter, you know, followed you kind of for a little while, you know, just Twitter respect. So thought I'd invite you to this. And I was like, oh shit, this might be real. Okay, so I go and click. I was like, what's Apex? So Apex is a new app. So anybody can create their own Apex. They can create their own little island, right? So you can create an island. So this person had created one. You can invite whoever you want to it. You invite a real person, but once they join, you can make it anonymous or pseudonymous where you can kind of pick a random username. So it's like a— the idea is like a digital masquerade party. So, uh, you invite all your friends, but everybody comes with a mask on, so nobody knows who's who, but everybody knows we're all kind of like, we've all been curated here. It's not just randos of the internet.

What's it called?

The app is called Apex, and it's out. It's not a test flight, so it's actually in the App Store. And I really like this idea. I've actually myself wanted to create something like this. I wanted to create a version of this that was like public. Like I wanted to invite a bunch of badass people, let them all be anonymous, but everybody in the thing is badass. And so they feel free to say whatever they want, but it's not just like random anonymous anonymous egg accounts on Twitter or YouTube comments.

How would I find this? Private groups. Apex private groups. It's like a two arrows up.

Two arrows up. Yeah, exactly.

Interesting.

So, uh, you know, like there's a bunch of Apexes, right? Like, so I'm, you know, I'm in one. I just created another and I'm like, okay, so I created one.

Oh my gosh, dude, this is so weird. The— why would they do this? The— if you go to the Apex screen, like the, um the app screen, the App Store, like the App Store preview. In their demo picture, the username is called Efray Jeppstein.

but who can verify that they are somebody?

The creator of the group, of the private group, the host of the party, basically.

So can I tell you my prediction on this? Yeah. It's going to get quite popular.

If it raises seed funding early on, it's ruined. Because what if it stays independent for a while and gets a huge user base and then raises money, then there's a shot.

Oh, okay. Gotcha. So it's not, not, it's not the raising that's going to That's not the raising that kills them. You're saying it's a signal, like if they get a bunch of money before they get hot, I think I'm going to bet that they die. Is that it?

It's kind of like a, uh, like a WhatsApp type of deal where like, or something that like it's already successful and it's already big. We're just gonna make it bigger and more successful. If you do like a, a thing where they raise money early on and they get too much of the wrong hype, I think it's going to die.

Okay. I can see that.

I can see like, uh, like, you know, there's 3 apps that I'm referring of that are the same thing, like the Secret thing.

So like, okay, here's what we'll do. I will create one for listeners of this podcast. Let's try it out. We'll see what happens. So the way to get it is the app is called Apex. If you search the App Store, Apex Private Groups, and the symbol is like two little arrows going up. And I created a group just now. I'm calling it Platform 9¾, just like Harry Potter.

And I— oh, don't do that. Just call it My First Million. How do you do my— I don't even know how to type in three-quarters. Is 3/4— is 0.75?

I did 0.75. Okay, I can rename it. So I'll rename it to my first mail. I'll put the link in the description of this podcast episode. That's the private link to join. And, uh, it's a masquerade party. Now, I don't know what— I don't know if that group particularly is going to be that interesting. I think this is interesting when you kind of like curate the set of people, but we'll try it and we'll see.

But so you, you can see who they are?

I can see when they join who they are. I don't think once they join, I don't think I know what they set their name to and who's who. I don't think I— that would be—

you just know I hope this person is in the room and they're one of the 5 here.

I just know at the door I can say yes or no to the person, and once they're in, I don't know who's saying what. I don't know who's who. I hope that's the way it works. If I can just always see everybody, that's kind of lame. Let me see. Yeah, I don't think I could. Yeah, I cannot see. Once you join, I don't know. I don't know. I can't tie your real identity to your, uh, to your username.

I'm excited to try this. I don't have my phone on me, but I'll use it.

And by the way, here's the other interesting thing. The group I'm in, you know, you have like what you see on Facebook and Twitter every day. Like, okay, I go check social media, everybody says X, everybody's kind of in agreement. This is good, this is bad, these guys are evil, these guys are heroes. And then I'd go into the Apex and it's like the— not the opposite opinions, but you hear people say things there that they're— that you just don't hear people saying in public social media. And that's why it's quite addictive to keep checking it because it is interesting.

There's this there's this—

and they're not idiots because like they were invited in, they were curated in. It's not just like randos, you know.

There's this firm who you and I know well. It started as a two-person VC company. They were associated with me, and they say they have this very public presence, and when they talk about stuff, I'm like, oh, okay, you feel that way. In private, one time I've brought a few things up and I'm like, well, you know, you believe this, and And they've just been like, oh no, that's— I mean, no, that's way too woke. We don't believe— like, that's— no, just like, we want to get— we're just here to get rich. And like, they just— well, how do you feel about that? My opinion is that is the weak of the weak, and I want nothing to do with you.

For people that are kind of two-faced, you mean?

Yeah. Or— but another perspective on this is fair, which is like, yeah, but they're playing. So like, you and I have a couple friends that maybe have this persona of being this nice person, and in real life they're just cutthroat ruthless and they'll destroy you. Maybe you you could— one justification is, yeah, they're playing the game. I mean, this is just how it's played, and they're just trying to get yours. You can't be mad at them. But then the other side is like, no, you're a punk, you don't have any integrity, just like sit, call it like it is, and be you 24/7. Where do you come out on that, of like people in this app not talking like that?

That's great.

That's level 2. Yeah. Fear and self-censorship, uh, you know, take you out. And then there's level 3, which is what you talked about, which is just a straight-up lie where you say one thing and you actually mean another or believe another. And, uh, yeah, if you're level 3, I also consider you kind of like a punk. And, uh, you know, you lose some respect points there. And I, you know, I try not to do that ever myself, but maybe I've done it, uh, at some point in my life. I'm definitely guilty of levels 1 and 2, where like, you know, only post the good shit, leave out the bad shit, and also think something but don't know how other people are going to react to it, so I might as well just like not say it, don't cause a fuss.

Well, that's different. That's a little different. Yeah. Can we talk about this guy who you have listed? The best segments that I get from you are the Billy of the Day.

Yeah, which one do you want me to do?

There's only one up there, the guy that starts with a K, right?

It's not a guy, that's a woman. So, um, the woman's name is Catalin Carico. I have this person as Billy of the Week. In reality, not a billionaire. But just a fucking baller. And this story is incredible. So do you know who this person is? Like, who— did you know them before this? Never. I didn't know them before this either. So Catalin Corico— and I hope I'm saying the name right. I've never heard it said, I've just read it.

By the way, in one of the most recent reviews, someone said that even though I butcher everyone's name, they're happy that I try really hard.

And it's— wow, Moderna is only 10 years old.

She looks exactly like I would expect her to look. She looks like a hardened person, a hardened Hungarian biochemist. This is Correct. She looks like she—

and her daughter is like an Olympian, like a gold medalist. Like, she, you know, like, this whole family is probably just badasses.

Yes, this woman looks like she will solve— like, she looks like the female version of James Bond.

When you hear these stories, do you think that, 'Well, I'm just— I'm working on this clothing company,' or, 'I'm looking on this video— video game platform,' and then you read this and you just— do you say to yourself I'm worthless.

No, I say to myself, I'm going to tell everybody how awesome this person is so that, you know, the 5 people that listen to this that are capable of doing this are going to be inspired by this person. They're going to go do something like this.

Okay. That's such an easy out.

I'm the messenger, baby.

Okay. That's a, that's a good answer. Yeah, correct. Fine. You could say, yep.

Honesty, my, my true answer is something like that. Like when I took a step back after we sold and I was like, all right, well, what do I do with the next 10, 20 years of my life? Of like, what do I want to work on? I was lucky that the thing I like to do, which is like learn stuff and teach stuff through things like this podcast or whatever, I think genuinely that is the highest leverage thing any one person can do.

Well, I think that's, it's silly to compare, but it's undeniably interesting that if you can have a mad, a large audience and tell them of cool people who deserve to be well known, you're right. That, that is, that's normal.

Tell them of cool people. I'm just saying in general, teaching, I believe, is like a multiply, it's a force multiplier.

I agree with you.

Okay. But think about it differently. We talk on here about boring businesses all the time and we talk about it. The reason we talk about it is like, well, we haven't heard about it before, but also They make a lot of money and it's easy and it's not a lot of work. Well, it's a lot of work, but it's simpler and it's a surefire way at the end of the day. And this isn't an insult at the end of the day. That's a very hedonistic way of viewing life. That's a very much like, I'm going to, I don't care what I'm doing because I'm providing for me and my family, which, you know, supplying for your, giving your family a good life. That's not quite hedonistic, but it's still like, if you include your family in it, it's quite selfish. And again, nothing wrong with that, but that's what it is. But we go, like, whenever I go and like get sick and meet a nurse practitioner who helps me or hear about this woman, I'm like, there is, you know how people say like, you know, just because you're rich doesn't mean you're like more valuable than someone else. I agree with that. But then I hear this woman, she could be poor. I have no idea. I'm like, oh, that woman's more valuable than me and more valuable than a lot of others.

Yes. The people who are like the Catalan Caricos and the Elon Musks and the, um, Forgot the guy who started microfinance or whatever, microlending. The people who go and someone who is going to go and fight climate change, let's be honest, they don't listen to this podcast for the most part. And if they do, the things they're hearing here are not really going to help them do that thing right. Like the great scientists, scientist entrepreneurs, essentially, they are motivated and inspired by different things altogether. There's a different teacher for them, right? There's a different person out there who gives them information and inspiration, and it's not me for the most part. If I do what I do though, there's like a different argument, right? There's the hero argument which says the world needs Elon Musk and Cattelin Carrico to like solve the big problems and like make us all better. That's what I'll call the top-down hero solution. Superman flies in, saves the day. And then there's the bottoms-up solution, which is like, well, if every single person got a little bit smarter, a little bit happier, a little bit healthier, a little bit more kind, and, you know, a little bit more, you know, motivated and inspired every day rather than feeling like they're going through the motions. If you like solve it at the individual level for the masses, you make the world better in a different way, right? And so that's a bottoms-up approach to doing the same, to sort of having the same level of impact. So if I was gonna like be a little dreamy about what I'm doing, uh, or what— not feel like a piece of shit, I should say— it's like, well, if I can help a whole bunch of people be a little bit healthier, a little bit happier, and a little bit like more free financially so that they can like spend their time doing what they want and not in some like kind of tedious, monotonous job every day. That's a different type of unlock versus these people who are gonna have these big breakthroughs and like solve big problems for humanity.

People talk about legacy fighters a lot, you know, athletes, particularly UFC guys. They're like, it's about legacy. And then business people also say that as well. They say, um, like, all right, I have money now, it's all about legacy. And I'm like, okay, yeah, your legacy is making your name known, part of it. Your legacy is definitely leaving the world a better place. I think that's cool. But then I always try to look at the opposite of everything. And the opposite of that is like, just live a quiet existence. And this is like what I said about being hedonistic and selfish. Live a quiet existence, have a ton of fun, and take care of your family and just seek pleasure. And part of me is like, legacy's cool, but why the hell do I care? I'm dead. Screw it. I'm having fun now. Like, when I think of like Steve Jobs, he was like, yeah, but how are you going to change anything when you're, uh, like not working 80 hours a week? And I'm like, I'm not, right? Yeah, I don't want to. Yeah, those things bother me because I'm like, we value these Elon Musks of the world, and I acknowledge they need to exist, but then most of the time I'm like, I don't want to do that, right? Fuck that guy.

Yeah, yeah, definitely I do. But I ask myself why, and is that really important? Like, okay, so there's like the fun factor of like, yeah, it's awesome. You're powerful, you're rich, you do whatever you want. That's cool. What's the opposite look like where you're not that? Is it a significant difference in happiness and fulfillment? Right. Maybe not, I don't know, but I do question this.

As of now, I think I'm a 3. Either a 3 or a 1.

And then for sure you'd say 1.

I think I'm more of a 1 of enjoyment, but in the future I think I'll be a number 2 in impact. But as of today, right now, I have a feeling— I don't know this yet— I have a feeling when I have children, it changes a little. Does it?

Not really. I guess it changes, but like maybe for different people in different ways. When I'm with my daughter, like, I kind of like— I guess I'm in one of two modes. Either I'm like, oh my God, I just want to go do something else, this is so boring, I've read this book 45 times in a row, like bubbles, bubbles everywhere, bubbles bubbles in my hair. Like, I'm just tired of this. I want to go do something more fun. Do you know how fun the internet is? I'm tired of like this babysitting that I'm doing right now. And then other times I'm with her and I'm just like, dude, who cares about like success? Like, all I need to do is just hang out with her. She's awesome. And, uh, like, you know, I don't really need to go be like super ambitious. Like, what a waste of energy to go sit in my room on my computer. And I'm literally like in one of those two camps at all times.

I think this is normal, but maybe not. I think that for the people who are extremely successful, they don't, uh, waver, right? But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

I have a— I have another idea for you because I think we got philosophical for a bit. So which idea do I want to do? These kind of seem anticlimactic when we're talking about like, what's the purpose of your life? And I'm like, oh, here's an idea.

That's okay. By the way, Sean, people have been telling me they like listening to us because it's not always strictly business. They listen to us on a regular basis because they need, uh Uh, someone was comparing us to All In, that podcast, and then Morning Brew's thing. I don't know what it's called. Apparently they both talk about politics a lot, and someone was like, oh, I hate that. I just want to like turn my— like, they say they want to turn their brain off, but at the same time they turn it on with us. But we don't ever talk about—

well, it's an escape, right?

Like, uh, we have— we— yes, it's a very good escape.

Yeah. And, uh, and like, I, I always wanted to rename the podcast— what was it, like Idea Porn or something like that? Because porn itself is also kind of like an escape. It's just kind of a pleasure thing. It's not like a long-term commitment. Like, I think a lot of people listen these ideas, not to go do them all, but just because it's like interesting and entertaining. And then so embrace the podcast and be done with it.

Embrace the banter, embrace the escape. Are you gonna talk about micro biz?

Uh, yeah. All right, did you see what I did with this? This is funny.

No, it looked awesome. I like the sound of that though.

All right, so you actually missed this opportunity. I pounced, uh, before because you didn't reply.

So wait, how did I not reply?

Okay, so this guy Andrew runs this company called microacquire.com.

Yeah, he's in the trends group.

So who, who, what, what business are you guys going to get?

So then I said, all right, so then a bunch of people replied as like, pick me as the operator, because like, hey, who doesn't want to just get a business gifted to them? We found a couple people, and I think we're just gonna like do like a 30-minute phone call with the final 2 or 3 people and just pick one from there.

Give it to Henry Johnson.

Henry Johnson, okay. I don't know if he replied to it, but I'll check him out. I know who you're talking about. He's very active in our community. And so then I went through all the businesses. I was like, okay, which one is good to buy? And most of them, I would say, are bad to the point where I was like, okay, if I gave someone this business, I'm giving them kind of a shitty job to go do. So I want to avoid that. This experiment will be fun if the business has enough potential where this can actually grow into something. So picking a good operator and a good business are important here. So anyways, I'm curious of what's going to happen. We're going to finalize the whole thing this week, and I think what we're going to do is going to finalize the money, we finalize who the operator is this week, and then we're going to take a 60-day window and we're going to say, all right, in the next 60 days, it's like a little tiny micro SPAC. It's like you have 60 days to find a company to acquire with this blank check, and we're going to publish the whole thing on my newsletter about like, okay, here's what they're doing, here's how it's going, so on and so forth. So I'm excited.

How do you have time to do all that?

Well, I'm not doing it. I just tweeted it out and I picked the operator.

Yeah, but even like organizing that stuff is—

Yeah, I'm looking it all up now. This is, uh, it's a great site. I— he's been doing it for a minute, and now it's— it was okay at first, now it's really getting cool.

I really like the concept of the site. I would say, like, just in full, you know, transparency, most of the deals on there I think are very bad deals, but, you know, whatever. That's any marketplace a bunch of junk and has some really good stuff. That's where all the value is. So don't be like, oh, Sean said Microcard is great, I'm going to go buy some business on here. Like, I would not advise that as just like a— like, do your homework.

Okay. Your shoulders, are they tired from carrying the weight this whole time?

No, dude, I just get stronger as the hour goes on.

Okay, let's do one more. Last one, maybe. Eureka Surveys.

I want to save that one. The guys— the guys— so we talked about user testing and these guys are doing something dope with— in that vein. And he DM'd me and he shared the numbers. But I think they wanted to like, like they're just like, they want to push out of private beta into public beta. So he's like, wait one week to talk about it. I was like, all right, fine, no problem.

Well, you want to do one more?

Yeah, let's do one more. Um, okay, here's like, okay, I'll give you two really dumb simple ideas. Maybe something like this exists, but I ran into these pain points and maybe somebody could build a simple tool that solves these. So the first one is Amazon affiliate links. So you said on your blog you used to sell Amazon affiliate affiliate, right? I used to have those affiliate links.

And to do that, you have to become a like official affiliate or something like that.

Correct? Yeah. And I've been banned many times for doing stuff that I didn't think was bannable.

There's kind of a process you have to go through to do that. Cause like, for example, a bunch of people were asking me about like, you know, my setup of like a podcast and stuff like that. I was like, okay, cool. Why don't I just publish this podcast?

You gotta have a blog. But like, for example, I didn't know that you, so there's rules. You You cannot, there's like many rules, but one of the rules is you cannot email people a link.

Yeah, which is crazy.

Like you have a newsletter.

That's why I was gonna do it in a newsletter and I was like, how do you do this?

And they banned me. It's a big pain in the butt. Or the other day, it used to be like 4.5% commission. They just said, all right, for most all these categories, now it's 2%. Like they just change it whenever.

Okay, so this idea might not actually be viable. It might not work with the terms of service, but basically like a one-off, like, you know, like link shorteners like Bitly and shit like that. Like why not just like a one-off way to generate an affiliate link? Affiliate link for Amazon products because I don't want to go become a merchant and a long-term affiliate and become a blogger, like none of that stuff. But like, why can't I just like affiliate-ize my link once?

Well, there's this, there's this company called Skimlinks. Have you heard of Skimlinks?

No. Is that what that is?

It's an e-commerce— yeah, a little bit. They, uh, they're about 12 years old. They, in 2017, they did $100, uh, they did $1 billion in gross market— or what's it called?

GMV.

Yeah, GMV. So let's say they took a 30 or 40% cut, that's $300 million, which I don't know if it's that high, probably way less is my guess.

What, even 2% of a billion is not sure, nothing?

Yeah, it's actually probably 30, 40 million they do, but that's what they do and they've been around for a while, 12 years. It's a pretty reputable company, pretty big. They've raised tens of millions, maybe close to $100 million in revenue, and it is kind of similar, and it's quite effective. You never heard of Skimlinks?

I've heard of it once before, but I didn't know if it works for— does it work for Amazon products or no?

I don't know exactly how it works, but I know that they cold email me on a regular basis to sign up. But I guess you're saying something valid.

Yeah, so basically, like, I just think there should be like a disposable, simple way to affiliate-ize my link to whatever product it is, and somebody should make like a Bitly that just does that easily. Maybe Skimlinks is kind of already this.

Um, so yeah, and it's, it's actually owned by another company. Have you ever studied like ad tech? Uh, I mean, not studied it, no, but man, these ad tech companies, like, like, okay, so the company that owns Skimlinks is called Contexity. The company that owns Contexity is called Symphony Tech Group, founded in 2012. Its total portfolio includes $2.5 billion in revenue and 15,000 employees. There's ad tech companies that you, unless you're in the, in the world of ad tech have no idea exist that are just massive, massive, massive, massive. It's amazing. Oh wait, sorry, Symphony Tech Group is PE. I was wrong. But you get the idea. Like, some of these ad tech games or ad tech businesses are freaking nuts, right?

And, uh, and I don't really understand how most of ad tech truly works because it's like such a complicated machine of like cookie swaps and data transfer. It's like all kinds of like, oh, the pixel is hashed and then the hash past users passed to here. It's like, what's going on? Like, how do these businesses work? And who the hell thinks of this stuff? And, you know, obviously, you know, there's a lot of money to be made, so, so good on them. Okay, here's another kind of simple idea. I think I've kind of said this before, but Facebook advertising is like one of the, like, you know, big industry. You know, there's probably like 9 to 10 million advertisers on Facebook. Uh, let's say even half of them are, are active, or, you know, whatever. Let's say 4 million active advertisers Facebook, make up some round numbers. And, um, the ad manager is just like such a pain in the ass to work with.

It's a horrible thing.

And, uh, one of the biggest problems with it is just visualize— just going and checking how are my ads doing. And, you know, they present it in this like very like sterile table kind of way. And I think that somebody— I think that there should be this like somebody who just says, all right, how do I build a layer on top of Facebook ads that is useful to some of the 4 to 10 million in advertisers of Facebook. Like, what should they look at every morning? How do I make this presentation more visual, right? Like, how do I take all your ad creatives and then like layer on the data on top? Or how do I show you, you and your competitors' ads? And how, like, just layer on top of the Facebook Ad Manager is—

have you seen AdEspresso?

Yes, so I've used AdEspresso before and I found it like okay to use. Uh, it like kind of got outdated, right?

Like, it was like shit. The problem I, I found that if you get really complex, if you learn how to operate Ad Manager, it's quite complex and you need it to be complex, right?

I'm not saying replace the Ad Manager, I'm saying build things using that as the data source. There's certainly going to be some value-add thing you can do that just uses that as the data source, and people are going to be willing to pay you monthly to get X extra value or alternative view or, you know, different, different level of insights.

You wanna hear a crazy story about this? So there was this company called Contextual or ContextLogic. You know what that is? You ever heard of that?

No.

And the founder is jacked. Have you seen this guy? Okay, I'm gonna send you, uh, well, Pete the founder.

Yeah, yeah, I have. I've, I've chatted with him via email once or twice. He's an oddball. He's, uh, he, uh, he's very quirky.

Uh, you can see in his Instagram picture here. I love, uh, tech founders that are jacked, by the way. I find it hilarious. I remember one time there was the Facebook F8, like the annual conference Facebook does. Facebook is run by some of the smartest people in the world, but they're not like the most, you know, like athletic or well-rounded or great public speakers necessarily, right? Like, yeah, there's a lot of dorks there. And for some reason I was sitting there and I was watching this and I was like, I noticed every single exec that got up there was jacked this year. I was like, what, what kind of— who is the personal trainer? What is the program that they all got on? You know, who's putting creatine in the milkshakes at, you know, in Menlo Park? What is going on? Because there was one year that literally everybody was jacked.

I have nothing more to say in the story, but they probably have like a doctor who lives with them.

Yeah, don't they have like in San Francisco, don't they just like own one of the buildings like where they own all like all the, all the execs have like apartments in the same building in SF so that when they do need to come to San Francisco they kind of have like an apartment there because their office is not in San— no, uh, Facebook, the office is not in San Francisco. So like Sheryl and a bunch of the other execs I think have like a bunch of penthouse condos in this one tower. So the tower is like 25% occupied by Facebook executives who are not all there except for like 2 days a month when they go to San Francisco, and then they use this as their—

and it has like a Botox clinic and like a TRT clinic and like an HGH clinic.

Did you ever watch the show on Netflix called Selling Sunset?

I think it's called— oh yeah, those guys are the worst.

Did you watch the show? Did you see the Botox thing that they did?

Yes, the worst. I can't stand it.

I thought that was so funny.

That is everything I'm against.

The people who haven't seen it, they're real estate agents. They try to sell these like luxury properties, and they're always trying to drive foot traffic to their open houses. And their open house, their, their tactic, their marketing tactic to, you know, most people, it's like, oh, it's an open house. Okay, we'll have wine. Maybe we'll put some cold cut sandwiches out, some cheese, cheese board. And this one girl's like, fuck that. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna get all the real estate agents to come to this. I'm gonna do Botox and burgers. So she had a doctor there giving Botox shots to the agents for free who wanted to get Botox at the, at the showing. And I was like, wow, what a different world than I live in that this is even a thing. I don't think I know a single person who has Botox. Maybe, maybe I did. I'm just oblivious to it. But like, I've never heard anyone in my social circle ever speak about getting plastic surgery or Botox.

They don't talk about it. I don't think they're going to talk.

Do you know anyone that gets Botox?

My sister had Bell's palsy where that paralyzes your face. And so she had to get it.

I almost— not for that. I'm saying for like people who do it just for this aesthetic, you know, just for the look. I don't know. They don't tell me.

About it. No, I don't know anyone.

What's the like most gimmicky marketing thing you've done that's like, you know, your equivalent of the, uh, the Burgers and Botox, uh, marketing stunt?

Well, when I ran Southern Sam's, wieners as big as a baby's arm— if you put your baby's arm in a hot dog bun and put mustard on it and took a picture, you got a free wiener.

I love that one. I have one that's like that. When we were doing the sushi restaurant thing, we, you know, it's all— it was a delivery only, so there's no— there was no, no storefront. It was a cloud kitchen.. So how do you get people to hear about your restaurant if there's no storefront? So I was like, all right, we gotta make a splash. So we were based in downtown Denver. I was like, okay. And I was just tired. I used to go in a, I would go into a skyscraper building. I would just kind of sneak past the concierge guy. I would go in the elevator and hit 1. I'd get out and I'd start talking to the front desk lady of every floor of like an 80-floor building or whatever. And I got tired of that. So I was like, okay, what's a, what's a better technique than me going door door-to-door selling sushi, essentially. And, uh, I was like, of course I'm a huge idiot. Like, we didn't even try Facebook ads. This is like— Facebook was out. This is 2010, 2011. Like, we could have done Facebook ads, we just didn't even know. And so what I did was there was a nearby, um, beauty school, you know, like where you learn to like, uh, cut hair and like do stuff like that, I guess. I forgot what they're called— cosmetology schools. And I went in and I said, hey, do you— do any of you girls like sushi? And they're like, oh my God, we love sushi. You're you know, it's like bringing candy to a 4-year-old's birthday party. And, uh, I was like, I will give you guys free sushi for life if you put these shirts on of ours and you go downtown and you basically, like, you know, the free hugs campaign, do the free hugs campaign, and then tell, like, just basically, like, while you're wearing our stuff.

And it worked. It was amazing. Like, businessmen would come out of the thing and they'd be like, free hugs! And like, they would give these guys a hug. The guy would like, you know, start blushing and be like, did I just cheat on my wife? And then he's like, no, it was just a hug, what's the deal? And it's like, oh, we're doing this because we're this new sushi restaurant that's in town. You guys should totally order from it. The further away me and my ugly face got from that campaign, the better it worked. Like, these girls were amazing, and we had like way more sales from that.

That's a pretty good one. Thank God it worked though.

Uh, all right, we're at the hour, so, uh, Abreu, how did we do? How did I do? Because I think I did that episode.

I know, I'm sorry.

Be honest with me, Abreu. How did I do?

Sam did as much as I did this episode. Um, fuck, for real? I feel horrible. I'm just not— I'm just— I hadn't— I just feel like I'm a little drunk, so tired.

Sean, you were an A, uh, but overall the episode is like a B-ish.

Fuck, that means I was a C though.

You coasted to a C. A C is a passing grade, man. You got through.

All right, I'll bring the heat next time then.

All right, sounds good. I gotta run.

All right, bye.

See ya.