Newsletter Schemes, Copywriting Scams and Chaotic Singles

we sent them an email. We said, uh, hey, just wanted to blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, if, if you read the Milk Road, do you like it? Like, just respond with like, whatever. Hello.

You know, tell me where you're like, hey, you're a subscriber to the Milk Road. Where do you live?

Guess how many replies we got?

I have no idea.

I think we literally got 3 replies out of how many sends. There was maybe like, I don't know, I want to say like 20,000 or something like that.

Like 20,000 and 3 replied. Yeah.

Dude, according to the YouTube data, by the end of this sentence, half the audience will have dropped off. That's how content goes nowadays. You have like 4.2 seconds to hook everybody.

Is that true? Was— is it really that short?

I thought it was like— but it is like that. I mean, like, after somebody clicks play, you just see the, the curve start to go Space Mountain downwards, and then, uh, and then it flattens out.

But are you looking at the data? Like, I rarely log in.

You just let it flash the camera in the first 5 seconds every time. So there we go.

You know how like there's a joke about news anchors wearing like shorts? With me, it's the sleeveless t-shirt. I'm going jacket, sleeveless tee, baby. How's that for flashing?

I mean, I don't even know what you're prepared for. You're like, I can go outside, it can rain, I can become a doctor for a minute, I can work out, I can climb a mountain.

You dressed for success. It's 107 degrees in Austin today, and so I'm either shirtless or sleeveless tee most of the time. When I record, I got to put the jacket on so I look a little professional.

Dude, I've been trying to convince Ben to move to California from Austin and I originally pegged it at a 15% chance.

What's, what's it at now?

there's this urban myth. I don't know if it's true or not, where Steve Cohen, you know, one of the guys who apparently is based off of his Billions character is based off of him. Steve Cohen, rich guy owns the Mets where the reason why Patagonia vests are popular on Wall Street is he used to make his office freezing. So when the SEC regulators would come in, they were really uncomfortable and everyone knew they didn't want to stay. Yeah, they didn't want to stay. But so apparently it works, dude.

I mean, my Costco has a walk-in freezer where you go get like our walk-in fridge where you— but it's a room, it's a giant room where you go get vegetables. That thing is so uncomfortable. I mean, it's like whatever's the nearest vegetable, that's all I'm getting and then I'm getting out of there. So I definitely believe it. If I was the SEC, I would, I would get the the fuck out of there.

well, what happened is you did it. Morning Brew then did it. So they copied you.

Did they do it? Yeah.

Morning Brew has been running an ad like that for a long time. So you, if you've seen those ads, you're like, oh, good idea. I'll copy that. Then the other thing was Facebook launched the ad library. So now you can go see other companies' ads. So you can just go and look. What ads are they running? Google launched an ad library. TikTok now launched an ad library. So you can go see anyone's TikTok ads too. Then you've talked about that ad on the podcast. And I noticed after you said it on the podcast, then people started running it. Then there's also a guy who worked for you, who worked for us at Milk Road, who then goes in, he's pitching up, he's basically going and telling every newsletter company, I'm the key to the growth of The Hustle, of Milk Road, of every fucking newsletter company. I did it. I'm the best. I could tell you exactly what they did. And I don't know about you for The Hustle, but for us, I'm like, this guy is massively overstating what he did. But like, whatever.

I mean, I guess we were already in the— we already had a million subscribers. But yeah, I mean, and I didn't work closely with him, but I'm sure he's great. I just— we were a bit—

we were bad at his job, but he is definitely overselling and he is people will come to me and they'll be like, um, hey, I just wanted to get a quick reference check. This guy basically, like, he has a presentation, a sales deck that just says like, I did everything for Milk Road. Like, I, I figured it all out. I did all these things. Uh, like, is that legit? And I'm like, no. And actually the funny thing is, I think in the short term that helped him. In the long term that hurt him because two very big names have come to me and they said, hey, I'm thinking about hiring this guy. Sounds like he did great work for you guys. Just want to do a quick pulse check. Like, Thumbs up, thumbs down, would you recommend? And I was like, I wish I could say yes, but like, no, for these two reasons. One, he's overstating what he did. If he just said what he did, they would've been fine. Two, when we sold the company, he went and put up a Twitter thread saying like, hey, Milk Road sold and here's all the things that they do to grow. And we asked him, we were like, hey man, can you take that down? Like, we're still running as a business. Like, you can't, shouldn't just like, you're a, you're a service provider. You're, you're a contractor for us. Yeah. We're a client of yours.

We never said, and you want your confidentiality.

You should never go publish all of your clients' things or it's not actually all, but like, we don't want any of this stuff out there. Right. And, um, and he's like, no, I got to get mine too from the sale. And I'm like, what? Like, dude, I'm asking you to take this down. Are you really going to like your client?

So it was never deleted.

And he was, he tried to say no again. And I was like, wow, like, Jesus, that is like insanely unprofessional to do that. Um, in my opinion, at least. And, uh, you know, so whatever, he did delete it after that, after I was like, wow, are you like, are you serious? This is actually the stance you're going to take? That's an insane stance to take.

Yeah.

I don't like when people talk about two, two really big names that I think would have been like way bigger than The Hustle, way bigger than Milk Road. We're going to work with them, have asked me, and I'm like, I can't. I'm just going to tell you what my experience was. You decide. And they're like, oh no, we would not want to work with somebody who does that. And I was like, damn, like the short-term benefit leads to long-term loss. Unfortunately, like, you know, that's the irony of, of doing stuff like that. And I've done stuff like that too, where I make a short-term, short-term good decision that actually costs me in the long run, but it's hard to see in the moment, you know?

So it's, it's, yeah, that's a, that's a, that's an expensive lesson. But my question was. Were you running this ad and did it still work? Up until we sold, it was still working.

Dude, I've talked to so many of these new newsletter guys and they're all doing. So when we, when we started The Hustle, like up into hundreds of thousands were organic. And then we like learned, I didn't know what paid marketing was. Then we learned about it. And then we started doing this thing called co-registration, which it would typically only scammy marketer type of people would do that, like people selling like sex pills and shit. And we were like, well, that's interesting. Like in theory, let's actually figure out what it means in a non-scammy way.

And so we like, well, explain it. So you go to a site.

So for example, um, you go to, uh, I'll try to find a real life example. Go to, if you go to bold.org, it's a website where you can apply You can enter in your information and it automatically applies you to tons and tons of different scholarships. And what it says was, great, if you want, somehow they have a point system where it's like, it's free to use, but you have to sign up for like these newsletters in order to be able to, in order to be able to apply to even more scholarships. And so we would pay bold.org some money. I don't remember the money, $1, let's say. For every college kid who entered their email and sent them to The Hustle, and then they would go and subscribe to more stuff, more scholarships. And so that's what co-reg is. So you're registering for one thing, but then you are asked to register for another thing in exchange for some type of perk. Typically that's an internet marketing hack that's done with scammy stuff, really scammy people. But we went to Product Hunt and we were like, hey, have you guys thought about doing co-reg? And they're like, yeah, we're working on it. We're like, well, that would be great. We would be your first customer. And so that's how we started growing really quickly, or we were already growing quickly. But once you, you know, we were adding like, yeah, we were adding like 5,000 people a day.

Well, you have to reinvent at every, every stage, right? At the beginning you do friends, friends and family, then you do your own social media, then you do, uh, posts that are really good content that's gonna go viral, that's gonna get you now to the, to the next level of organic. Then you start layering on some paid, then you have to diversify your paid cuz not one source is gonna work as well as the others and they, you know, they don't all scale, right?

By the way, there's, there's other versions of this. So Substack has a thing where you subscribe to someone's Substack and then they're like, here's 5 other Substacks you might like, auto-checked. And you just, you're just trying to continue and now you're subscribed to 5 newsletters. And you see people whose curve on Substack looks flat, flat, like, you know, normal growth, normal good growth, normal good growth. And then like hockey stick, it's like, yes, I crossed 300,000, 500,000 subscribers. And it's like, yeah, but these aren't people who actually want to read your thing. And then the other thing is that they think the open rate is high, but open rates nowadays, because of the way that they've changed with Apple and cookie stuff works, it's, it's not reliable.

So for example, yeah, when we started, 40% was good. When we started, 40% was good. That was considered the best. And then 50%, we would get 50% and we were like, we're the greatest there is. Now everyone is 50%.

Right. And because it's because they're not actually 50%, it's because open rates cannot be measured the same way they used to be able to be measured where it was more, more reliable. Now you have to use click-through rate or whatever. Uh, like, are people actually clicking your, your ads, your content, that sort of thing. And so, uh, this guy that I was talking about for the Milk Road, he was the one who was like, oh yeah, co-reg, we should do this. And we were like, okay, let's try it. Let's see how it goes. We tried it. Sure enough. Sure enough. You get, you get good growth out of it, but, and you get addicted to it, but it's the quality. So bad. So after we sold, we were like, hey, let's, you know, like some point we were like, okay, let's look at all these sources. We're gonna do this organic. We're gonna get this from here, this from here. We did an analysis and we were like, all right, let's test this co-reg thing. The open rates look good. Let's just, uh, let's, how do we figure out if these are high quality or not? Like, I don't know. Open rates look good. The cost is good. Should be fine. Right. We sent him an email. He said, uh, hey, just wanted to blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, if, if you read the Milk Road, do you like it? Like, just respond with like, whatever. Hello.

You know, just tell me where you're like, hey, you're a subscriber to the Milk Road. Where do you live? Yeah, exactly. We, we wanna know where you live.

If somebody actually reads your daily newsletter 50% of the time, they're so excited to get an email from the founder that says, you know, hey, I'm just reaching out to say whatever. They'll give a very high reply rate. Guess how many replies we got?

I have no idea.

I think we literally got 3 replies out of how many sends. There was maybe like, I don't know, I wanna say like 20,000 or something like that.

Like here's the thing, 20,000 and 3 replied.

It was like a big number.

I don't know the exact, but like I know that the reply number was something like 3 replies that day, maybe more trickled in, but like doesn't matter that day. 3 people replied and we were like, oh, cut this off immediately. And that same guy goes and he peddles that to all the other newsletters. It's like, yeah, this is what The Hustle did. This is what, Milk Road does. It's like we did with a small percentage of what we were doing. And as soon as we were able to test it, we were like, oh, screw this. Why would we want a subscriber number? Like, unless you're trying to dupe somebody, you don't want a subscriber number that's not real, right? Like, real subscribers is the only way to build a real business. And, uh, you know, I talked to the Morning Brew guys and I think they're, they're also very like, they, I think, just straight measure on like, what does this lead to in terms of clicks on our ads?

Yeah. Like, or like conversions even, you know, from how many people buy our advertising, buying something, right?

Like if you, because if I'm, if I'm getting you as a customer, that's the right way to do it, right? That's the sustainable way to do it. But I don't think people, you know, kids these days, they're doing it differently than, than back in our day, one, one year ago.

I remember way back then, 6 months ago. No, that, that's how they have to do it. And they also, another thing is I talked to another guy and I was like, well, of your list, how many, if you said that you were hosting an AI event that was free, like, uh, how many people are going to show up? He's like, oh, we'd sell out immediately. I'm like, great, then you're doing that. That sounds like you're doing it correctly. And then I talked to another guy, I'm like, well, how many people would show up to this event? And they're like, uh, no one. I'm like, well, then this, this business sucks. Like, they're, they're not, they're not real. Uh, you should bail and quit, uh, or start over. Uh, but yeah, the co-reg thing is mostly nonsense. It doesn't always have to be, or you could, uh, it's kind of a pain in the ass if you make money through advertising. It's like you need to hit a top line number. And that's why I hate advertising is because there's very, there's incentives. So like not everyone's aligned for the same thing. And so I think that's why I fucking hate advertising. It could be done well, but when you have like a team to support and you want Katie to hit her quota and get paid, I'm like, ah, fuck. You gotta like make sacrifices. And I hate that. But anyway, I wanted to bring up this ad because we were talking about copywriting. On Friday, I interviewed Laird Hamilton.

How did it go?

So it went really bad. It went very bad. Not what I expected you to say. It went bad. But why? Well, he's not a business guy for one, but I'm like a fitness, I'm into fitness and stuff, but I wanted to ask him all the fitness stuff, but I was like, I don't, I watched so many hours of him leading up to it. And I was like, I don't want to just ask the same questions. Like I just watched so much of your stuff. That all the questions that I thought I was going to have, you've already answered them. Yeah, you've answered it. And so there was like that, that there, but also, dude, I just think it's a bummer to meet your heroes because he's amazing, but I just want him to be this like idea rather than this reality. Do you know what I mean? I like, I like him. So like, I remember, I just, I've been very lucky to meet a bunch of my heroes. And once you meet them, they're a little bit less of a hero. And I think I just prefer them. Being a hero. Uh, not to say that he didn't live up to my expectations. He did. It was just that, uh, I don't want to be even remotely a peer of his. I want him to be like, you know, right, my, my great-grandpa who I've heard stories about.

If you're a fan of this podcast, if you consider me a Sam, you know, somebody that you look up to in any way, prepare to be disappointed. All right, we're just very average people. When you meet us, we will destroy— we will ruin this podcast for you.

But I was super self-conscious about it. So if you guys hear the pod, let me know, like in the YouTube comments, what you think. But it was, it was only okay. I think it was, maybe it was only okay for me as, cause I was interviewing him, but I just learned so much about him and I'm like, oh, I already know everything. There's nothing new to know about you. Or I'm just not unique enough to ask a question.

You should have shifted gears and gone Bobby Althoff on him.

What's that? Oh, uh, like that girl. Awkward interview girl and just act like you don't care. She has shot up. So basically, I saw her on TikTok, and I— the thing about TikTok and Instagram is you don't know who else knows what you're watching, right? Uh, like, it's hard. Like, there's no, like, chart, or there's no, like, greatest hits. And so I was just like, who is this random chick popping up interviewing these, these guys when she's, like, in her bed interviewing, like, Drake?

Like, not just like—

but then I saw Drake, and I'm like, What the hell? What is going on with this? How is this like just this 21-year-old woman who's like rude to her guests talking to Drake? And then on the podcast charts, I think she was number 1 for a few days.

Yeah, she's been in the top 5. She went from, I've never heard of this person and she didn't have a podcast, to a top 5 podcast in like 2 weeks. So we're doing something wrong.

A pa— well, yeah, for sure. She has this ad for SeatGeek. SeatGeek advertised on her podcast with Drake, and she was like, so today's sponsor is SeatGeek, which makes sense because Drake apparently hosts events, and I think SeatGeek lets you buy tickets for events. So if you like events and Drake, yeah, would want to go. Yeah. And she goes, and they give you $20. Cool. Like, that's her ad.

So no, no, the, the call to action was the best. She said something like Uh, she was like, so go, um, you can use shiteek if you want, I guess.

Dude, it's so funny. She, she's pretty good. I don't wanna listen to 60 minutes of that interview, but I like, she's interviewing Drake.

So she's interviewing Drake, which is like, I think her, the first podcast that came out and she's like in the middle of it, she's like, I don't, I don't know any other questions. Do you, do you have any other questions? And he's like, uh, not really.

Like, weren't they in bed under the covers during the interview?

Yeah, they were in a bed, which is just, I mean, she's a genius, clearly. So she's a genius. So I think her story is she was like a mom. She was like a mommy TikToker, but I don't really understand how she went from mommy TikToker to podcaster interviewing Drake with like a really clear brand that's amazing. Like a very distinct style. That's amazing. 'Cause if you watch her TikToks, she doesn't talk like that.

Yeah.

It's just a character she's, or, or she doesn't, I mean, it's not like, I don't think her TikTok is mainly like that.

Like I'm gonna pull one up right now, but like, no, some of it was, is like normal or her joking around with her friends. But no, it's, it's, it's like Stephen Colbert, but instead of, this conservative guy. It's the I don't give a shit type of person.

So she, uh, I watched like an hour straight of one of these podcasts. I rarely listen to, like, if you tell me, hey, there's a new podcast, like, I need 10 people to recommend a podcast before I go try it. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like an easy ask. But, um, yeah, I got hooked on her shit really quickly and watched an hour-long awkward interview with her and Mark Cuban and her with Rick Glassman. I don't know if you saw this one, but she did one with Rick Glassman, and it didn't seem like he was in on the joke.

Who's Rick Glassman?

I think he was actually the first one that she recorded. Rick Glassman's a comedian.

He's— oh, got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He might have been in on the joke because he's like a very talented guy. Like, he could, he could find that line where it looks like he's not in on the joke, but he is. Um, but she was just like, uh, I mean, she's just awkwardly interviewing him, and he, at some point, he's just like What is this? Why are you doing this? And she's like, why am I doing what? I'm interviewing you. And he's like, no, but you're— he's like, you're saying that you're interviewing me, but everything I say, you just say is a lie. Why would I lie? Why would I come to your podcast and lie? And she's like, I don't know. Why are you lying? And then he's like, I'm not lying. Is this your bit? Is this what you do? And he's like, he just can't figure it out. And he's like, I'm sorry, I was frustrated and defensive. Because I felt like you were trolling me or something. I didn't understand what was happening. I still don't really understand what's happening, but I'm going to do better to try to answer your questions. And then she's like, thank you, you were being mean. And he's like, I wasn't being mean, I was reacting.

And he just— I want to know what happens before and after the interview, because after, like, so you and I have done some stuff in person with people, and like, you're really cool and friendly enough to people, but I don't know what you do afterwards. Like, particularly with like a Tucker Carlson interview where he's like getting mean with people, and like Do you shake hands afterwards and say thanks for coming? You know what I mean? Or does like, does it, does it end?

That was terrible. Thank you. That was that.

Yeah. Like, oh, we dislike each other strongly. Yeah. So I'm curious to see what like the before where she's like, and scene. And does she like be friendly and like give them a hug? I don't, I would like to see what that before and after is like.

Yeah. I don't know. She's a mystery to me. Somebody explain this to me. I just don't understand who she is, how she landed such big guests. Why she immediately is so popular. I mean, like, I get her brand, but like, how did she even break out? That's kind of what I don't get. But whatever. Bobby Althoff, good for you, Bobby Althoff. 25 years old, I think. 25, 26 years old. And like, clearly going to be one of the most famous podcasters already. Yeah.

Fuck us. Yeah. I mean, that's the third time that's happened, or the second time it happened with the Call Her Daddy woman. Uh, where like, it was like episode 2, she shot up there. That's pretty rare. I mean, it's more common with YouTube. With podcasts, that doesn't happen often at all.

Uh, right now someone's gonna do that obnoxious tweet where it's like, everybody thinks Bobby Althoff is an overnight success. Here's how it was 10 years in the making. And then it's just gonna be like, you know, some stupid origin story that like really wasn't— like she actually is kind of an overnight success.

Yeah, which is cool.

I like— there should be some, right?

There should be some. People talk about like they don't exist. I'm like, well, Instagram was only 2 years old. I mean, like, those are real. Like, it's real. Um, which, which, which one of these things you want to go to?

All right. Um, dating. So you and I both happily married off the dating market, but shit's getting crazy in the dating world. I don't know if you've seen these 2 things I'm going to tell you about. The first one is called Chaos Singles Party.

Have you ever heard of this? No. Do you download the dating apps now just to like check it out and see what it's about?

If my wife asks, this is just, just for science. No, no, of course no. I'd bought all these, but I read the— this is in the New York Times. So, um, I heard— I read this story in the New York Times and I was like, what? This sounds fascinating. So here's the story. This woman, Cassidy Davis, is on the dating app. She's just a normal person. Um, And it's Valentine's Day 2022. So last year, Valentine's Day, she's frustrated. She doesn't, doesn't have anything to do on Valentine's. So she just basically, she's like, hey, here's what we should do. We should throw like a singles party on Valentine's Day. So if you're single on Valentine's Day, come to this. She tells every one of her girlfriends who's also struggling with online dating, hey, match with someone on Tinder and then invite them to this party, invite them to a house party. And They're like, what? And she's like, yeah, just match with one person, invite them as your plus one to this house party, but everybody's going to do it. So it'll be just a bunch of single people at this party. And she's like, all right. So they, they try to do it. She at the last minute is like, I don't know if anyone's going to come. So she invites 65 guys from Tinder to be like, come. And they're like, what is happening? Is this real? Are you like catfishing me? She's like, dude, just either come or don't come. All right. That's it. And so she has this house party and you can see the video on her, on her TikTok, but it's like a very—

which city?

I'm not sure where this one was, but it was like a small thing. It looked like maybe there was like 20 people there, but they were kind of having fun. So it was like a bunch of single young people playing drinking games, whatever. She makes a TikTok out of it, stitches it together, like just the highlights of the party, basically posted on TikTok and says what she did. She goes, she's like, I did the most chaotic thing possible for Valentine's Day. I invited I told all my girlfriends to match with someone on Tinder and invite them to my house for this house party. And it was awesome. And then people— that thing explodes. That video gets like, whatever, tons of views. And the concept— people really like this concept. And so she's like, I'm gonna do another one. So she posts an update. She's like, I'm gonna do another one in 2 or 3 weeks. Puts a link up for the Chaos Singles Party.

Same rules. Is it free?

This is awesome. I'm looking at her TikTok now.

So well done by her. And now these things are like big, like they're, they're partnering with like legit venues. It like looks like a lot of fun. It looks like a whole, whole scene now.

This is awesome. I'm looking at her TikTok. This woman's talented. Did I tell you about the, or did you ever see the Twitter things that I used to do for dating sometimes?

Yeah, those were great. It was basically like, they were great. My friend, right?

It was basically like, it was Thanksgiving and, uh, we were having friends over and some of them were single and I'm like, they were like, hey, can you post me on your Twitter?

I want, uh, they asked or you said it? Because that's a crazy ask.

One of the people made a joke. They're like, dude, just post me on your Twitter. I need to meet a guy. Or some of it was like, one of Sarah's friends was like, I need to meet a nice a nice guy who's successful. Can you like introduce me? I was like, I'm just going to post you on Twitter. And then I was like, well, I don't want to make you the only person, like I'm your pimp. So I'm going to get 10 friends. And the Twitter said, the tweet said, um, um, hope you're hungry on Thanksgiving Day. Uh, you know, like here's 10 people, 10 of my buds. Yeah. I was like, hope you're hungry. Meet my friend Jessica. Yeah. Here's 10. Here's 10 of my friends who are single. And I said like a little bit about what they do for work and just, I just went on their Instagram and took a picture and it got viewed like 2 million times and I got DM'd by a lot of brands like, hey, you want to make this a thing? We'll sponsor it. I was like, no, that's not going to be my thing. I don't want that. No, I was just fucking around. And I think that that could potentially work. Like we actually turned it into like a, like where it's like an affluent crowd dating app or something like that. I think I, I did it with Jonathan and Jonathan. Actually met a girl who he went out with, I think, like a handful of times. Like, so for Jonathan, I think it was successful.

Is this true? What happened after you got posted on this thing?

Well, one of the girls who applied, uh, shout out to Connor Anne, she came to the, uh, South by meetup that we did. So I got to meet her there, hung out a little bit. Um, but in terms of like my DMs, like I got hit up by a gay dude and this nice Indian woman who I, um, decided not to reply.

So super successful.

Yeah. But for her and for, for the women, I'm sure it crushed. Are you still seeing that girl, Connor? Are you guys just buddies now? Um, nah, not really. She lives in Florida, so. But it kind of worked. Yeah, we're grasping for straws here.

I mean, pretty successful, sounds like.

These gorilla things I love, by the way, I love these like gorilla, gorilla dating.

Yes. So here's another one. DateMeDocs. Have you, have you heard about this trend?

So it's dateme.directory. Is that the URL?

Well, that's the, that's the directory of them. But DateMeDocs is like, basically you take, instead of going on a dating app, you create a Google Doc and you just write in long form all about you, your story, what you want, who you are, what you're into, what you're not into, where your boundaries are, all that stuff. You just make a very detailed Google Doc and that's your profile. And then somebody created the directory that links all the people, like it's like an Airtable table. So it'd be like, you know, here's, you know, um, Christina, she's a female, she's interested in men, she's age 42. And it's, it's just literally an Airtable.

And, um, dude, they're all poly. They, they put mono and poly. They're like, it looks like almost half of them are poly. Does that mean they want to have an open relationship or they're not serious?

Kids these days, no, I think it's like, oh, I think they want to like be dating a bunch of people at once or something.

I think it's like half of them are poly. That's wild to me.

Yeah, yeah, that's— I think, um, you know, that's, that's something that's changed, I think, since we were like— when I was dating 10 years ago, I never met anybody who was like, yeah, I'm polyamorous.

No, it was like, you see it on a TV show that came up. It was like, yeah, the only people who did that are like, are like, um, it's like a guy who's got like 10 wives and it's on the TLC channel.

It comes on after Jon and Kate Plus 8. Yeah, yeah, this is, uh, I think that's new. So anyways, the, these docs, if you look at these, click, click into some of these docs, they put photos and stuff in like a huge bio.

This is wild.

Oh my gosh, this is wild.

Sam's just smiling. Sam is just literally, he's looking at his screen and he's just smirking.

I'm looking at a lot of this. There's one guy, he's got a 15-page user manual and he like documents his whole life to explain how to like, and he talks about like ethical stuff. He's like, the correct answer to the trolley problem is to kill one person to save five. Like he, like there is a correct answer. Like this is wild. And on some regard I'm like, well, if you're like a single woman who's like 30 and you're like, look, I just need to meet like a competent man who's like thoughtful. I guess this is the way to go. Unfortunately, these aren't the type of guys that typically, like, can woo a woman.

I'm on a doc right now, and it just— there's a whole sub— subsection called child rearing plans, and then it's 7 paragraphs of their plans for child rearing. This is pre-first date, which is kind of amazing.

So have you heard of, um— this reminds me of two things. One, if you, uh— there's this guy named Christian, uh, Rudder, I think his name is. He founded OkCupid. He was one of the 3 or 4 co-founders, and he had a blog on all the data that OkCupid had. And so, and then eventually turned it into a book. And the thing was basically like, you say one thing, but your actions on our dating app say another thing. Like you say you want X, Y, and Z. And I think one of the big takeaways was you say you want this, this, and this. You really just go after people's photos. So like you say, you don't want to, you say you don't want a smoker, but if they're hot enough, you'll, you'll go with a smoker. You say you don't want an animal lover, but if they like fit your, like your physical wants, you're gonna, you're gonna want to be with them. And like that always intrigued me. And that's why I don't think some of these like long-form things will actually work. I think they want it to work, but it won't. The other thing is, have you heard about The League? Do you remember the dating app The League?

Yeah, she came on the pod once.

Yeah, her name was Amanda Bradford. She's a buddy of mine. She sold The League. You know they sold The League?

So they sold it. Yes, I believe it was a very good sale. They sold it to Match. I think Match.com or one of the big ones. And I asked why they bought it. And she was like, well, basically we only had like 5 or 10 employees or something at the league. It was a really small team, but the league originally, I don't know if it started out as the phrase Ivy League, but it was basically like high-end to meet a high-end partner. And you had to like apply and stuff like that. And she was like, one day I just said, I went to, she's a developer, um, and she goes, I logged into like our, our App Store account. And I was like, we're charging $20 a month right now. How high does the App Store let me charge? Like, what's the highest amount for subscription revenue? And I think, I think it was like $99 a week. She's like, that's the highest. I go, fuck it. That's what we're going to do. We're just going to do $99 a week. And she was like, everyone at my company and everyone outside says it's not going to work. She's like, it crushed it. We, our revenue went up like crazy. And one of the biggest reasons why Match bought us is they're like, we need to figure out how to sell products that are hundreds of dollars a month and no one knows how. And she's like, oh, I'll teach you how. All you do is you go to your, the App Store and you just delete the number that you put in and you just put the higher number and guess what? People are still going to do it. And that was like her thing was that it was a really, really expensive dating app and it totally worked. Uh, for, for higher end people. And so I still think that could be cool. What you and I didn't have when we were younger, when we were dating, we probably wouldn't have qualified then. And we are, and unfortunately we're not, uh, we can't use it now, but basically, have you heard of Raya?

Yeah, it's like a celebrity, it's like you gotta be hot and famous to be in or something like that.

Yeah, I think they just look at your Instagram, like if you're verified on Instagram, you're allowed to do it. So Raya is like, everyone who's single is like saying like, oh, of course we know all about it, but Raya is cool, but I like these. Like exclusive dating apps and these expensive ones. I think it's way better. I've got friends that run Tinder competitors and it sounds like a horrible business. It's one of the very few businesses where you can't be like number 3 or number 4. Like there's basically number 1 and number 2 and that's it. At least that's what it appears like if you're going for mass market.

What's the quote? It's like, you know, I don't want to be a part of any club that will have me as a member. That's, that's sort of what you want when it comes to dating or cool things. Um, you know, this date me docs thing I think is a really fun idea. I'm glad, uh, whoever, I don't know who created this, but kind of, kind of like a cool, cool, cool idea. And obviously like things like this have been around for, for a long time, right? Like Indian people famously, like this is how my parents got married. For example, you write in the newspaper, like your, your, they call it biodata. It's like your, your name, your age, your job, your whatever. And you just create this profile. That's like text only and people are like, cool, married, let's do it. And, um, you know, that's basically how things, how things work. So, you know, stuff like this actually can work. The funny thing is, um, this is actually, you know what I'm gonna actually do? I'm actually just going to recruit on here. I think this is a great recruiting platform. I think these people are probably all really smart, thoughtful individuals who are tech savvy, a lot of developers on here.

They put their GitHub profile.

Yeah, fuck LinkedIn. I'm just, I'm scraping this for leads for to hire from. This is amazing. Uh, uh, dude, this one guy on here says 16 years old. That's a trap, Jack. I'm not clicking that. You think I'm clicking that? I've seen way too many episodes of Chris Hansen. I'm not clicking that. I know where that's straight to the FBI website, bro.

The next phrase you hear is, uh, come on in, have a seat.

Check yourself in to the Folsom Prison.

Yeah. Dude, my first, one of my first internet companies was called Bunk and the premise was we would put these ads, we would, we would put these ads so close to the next Airbnb. Well, it should have been Airbnb and it should have been just Tinder for Tinder, but it basically, the way it started was we would go and find online 3 and 4 bedroom apartments and we would like, if it was a 4 bedroom apartment for $4,000, we would say we have 1 bedroom available for $1,000 and we would get 500 people to apply, and then we would host a party and team up people to get that place as well as a bunch of other places. 'Cause we're like, oh, you guys are all looking for similar budgets apparently. So just like come and team up and get your own apartment. And it worked, it worked quite well. And then a bunch of the people at the party started like hooking up with each other. And we didn't catch the clue that we should have just made this a dating thing. That's, and then we launched this app, we called it Roommates, and it was basically Tinder for roommates. And again, we didn't catch the clue. That people— like, I actually met a girl, two different girls on that app, uh, that I ended up dating in 2013 or '14. And again, we didn't catch the clue. We should have just done this for dating. It would have worked a lot better.

Yeah, the dating game is changing. You know, one thing that— dating is always going to be a problem. Like, it will never not be a pain point for people. Like, no, and there's no such thing as sort of like solving dating. And anytime one thing gets popular, it creates the need for another. So like You know, Tinder created the need for something like Hinge. And now when you have sort of like Tinder and Hinge generation, I talk to people who are dating now and they're like, oh, you know what? The two worst things about those, like about Tinder and Hinge is like, you get either on Tinder, you just get bots. Like basically it's just girls trying to get you to like subscribe to their OnlyFans. Like, oh, this really hot girl matched with me and she's interested in me. She tells me to just click this link and then like, Follow the— oh man, this is just an upsell. Like, there's a bot just upselling me, basically. The other one is people that, um, uh, like, because like we were joking about the poly thing, but like people have a lot of different, like, I don't know, preferences and kind of different situations. There's like a lot more configurations than like, I'm a boy who likes girls, I'm a boy who likes boys, right? Like, that's kind of what we knew was like, you know, we were checkers, not chess when it came to dating, right? There was only so many moves you could make. You can move forward and backwards.

That was it. And so you're red or black.

That's That's the game.

Yeah.

Now it's like, you know, multicolored chess. And so the, the, the way that, uh, my friend was telling me, he's like, oh, there's this one app. I think it was called Field or something like that. Uh, maybe I got that wrong, but I think it's called Field. And he's like, I like it because people just super straight up. It's like the culture on that app is you gotta be ultra direct. It's like, I am looking for, and you say the exact thing you're looking for and what you're into and what you're not into so that like, people know, like, they're not going to get— meet somebody, oh, this person's really cool, but they want a completely different type of relationship configuration, gender configuration that I'm into. And so, uh, so I think, you know, there's, there's always a new need.

You know how when you and I do meetups and every once in a while a line will form to like say hi? It's like, hey, how are you? Uh, I was joking with my friend and she's like, you know, that's what it feels like to be a hot chick all the time. Like, like, you know, like when you and I will have like an MFM meetup and we walk in and you'll see like, oh, people like are staring at us, like this guy's giving me energy, energy, like he wants me to open. I'll turn my hips a little bit and let him like— and give him like the, the, you know, like, I'll open my hips. That's what it is. It's like wherever you point your junk, it's like you'll be at a thing and you're like one-on-one with this other guy, but you feel this— it's all dudes— and you feel this other— this energy, you feel this other guy hovering. You're like, all right, I'll turn my hips a little so this guy could get in on the combo. And, uh, that's basically what it feels like to be like a 6 out of 10 woman, like all the time, or maybe even lower. Like, just to be a woman all the time, it You just— whatever you want, it's yours, dude.

Just last thing on this, do you remember like when I was in college, the, the game was like you would go to a bar or club or whatever and literally it was like a physical version of Tinder. It was like you just go up, you guys just go behind a girl and just grind. And if the girl like accepts the grind, then, then you're in.

If they don't, it's like National Geographic, it's like National Geographic, man. You're like a bird flexing its feathers.

Craziest That's the craziest thing that used to be normal. I don't know if that's still normal. That's the craziest thing that, like, I experienced in my life.

Did you do that? I never did that. That was so uncomfortable, dude.

That was all anybody around me even knew. Like, that was—

get rug burn on your junk. Oh yeah, no, not a chance. I was too uncomfortable for that. You had a question on here that I actually was thinking about the other day. You have a question on here, and I originally thought I wrote this, but I guess you did, where it's, what's an example of things today that our grandkids in 50 years will think is absolutely insane? I've been thinking about this because on TikTok and Instagram, the kids now—

Grinding is my example. Grinding at the club is my first example.

I don't know if they do that anymore or not, but it didn't even take 50 years.

It took me 15 and I already realized that was batshit crazy then.

Well, you'll see these videos and they'll be of high school. So like the kids now will be like, check this out. This is a home video of the class of 2008 in high school, and you like see them walking around and like you see like the, the, the stuff that we used to wear and you see like our Razr flip phones. Yeah. And then like the kids reminisce like, I can't believe they did this, or that was so much better, or this was so much worse. You had a cool question on here about what do you think will be crazy?

Yeah, I think about this a lot. What are things that 50 years from now, like our grandkids will look at the way we live today and be like, what the hell were you thinking? Right? Like, you know, there's past examples. Like, if you go way past, it's like slavery. Wow. I can't believe that was just like the way you guys did things or whatever. Right? Like, you know, riding horseback. That's crazy. That's how people got around. Or just like people just dying of like everything, you know, like early on, early age. Like, that's crazy. That was so risky to have a kid. Like, you know, one out of what, 4 or 5 kids would just die before they even hit 10. Like, that's, that's really, really rough.

I was reading this Lewis and Clark book, and whenever they get sick on the trail, they like give each other pills, and they're like, we're just going to give you diarrhea and you're going to shit out the sickness. They call it a rush pill. They go, we're going to give you these pills and you're going to get tons of diarrhea and you're going to be healed. And that was like the thing, it was just, we're just going to make you poop a ton.

Yeah, yeah, we did that with Four Loko.

It was great.

Just changes shape. All right. So, so you had, you wrote some on here of more recent history. So you said driving to places without Google Maps. Yeah. I like, these are things that we experienced the before and after, right? Like we're at that age where we experienced the paper map era, the asking people for directions era, just knowing how the interstate system of the United States works. Like my dad just kind of knew roughly what you do to Google Maps.

Dude, I don't even know the highway. I live in Austin. I don't even know the highway, the big highway one mile away. I can't even tell you the name of it.

Same. I don't even look up when I drive.

I just stare right at the map.

Go by feel. All right. Then you had landlines versus cell, like landlines being the only way to contact someone versus cell phones. We both experienced that. You wrote unsafe cars. What did you mean by unsafe cars?

Dude, my first car was a 1992 Mazda Protege and we bought it for, I got it for $900 from my mailman. And when you look at that, yeah, but I was trying to tell you, you're like, I'll take it. Well, sometimes we'd have to wear ties on, we'd have to wear ties to school every once in a while. And if like my dad went to work too early and he wasn't there, my mailman would tie my tie. So like I got to know the mailman a little bit. Kind of weird. Bought it from, bought my car from $900. And if you see that car to a new brand new, like Honda Civic, if you ever watch the videos of them running into each other, it's insane. It's absolutely insane. Like the safety, it's pretty wild how dangerous they are. So yeah, I think like these, like, uh, when we look at cars, uh, when I look at cars from like the '80s and '90s, it's ridiculous how shitty they are.

Yeah, that's crazy. Um, so what are the ones that you think 50 years from now— so we got a couple on here, let's just go back and forth. You do one, I'll do one.

The first one is having— and I've said this for a while— but having like a growth on you, having something growing in your body that's going to kill you that you could have figured out had you just gotten some type of scan a year earlier. So I think that's going to— we're going to look back and like, dude, so you just had this thing in your body and you didn't even know?

It'll be like, so how, how did you know? It's like, well, if you, if you would feel a lump, then you would just go to the doctor. It's like, feel a lump? Yeah, like if it was like a golf ball in you, that's new. All right, let me go get it checked out. That's literally state-of-the-art. Like, I just described state-of-the-art procedure.

And half the time you're like, Yeah, fuck it. It'll go away.

You know what I mean? Maybe it was that burger I ate earlier.

Yeah. Like it'll go away. It's probably a lymphoma. It'll go away. And so, yeah, I think that will be a thing. How about yours?

Um, okay. Uh, easy one. I'll start easy mode. Driving yourself. Like it's pretty clear self-driving cars are like on the horizon. The idea that like, yeah, back in my day, we used to get a license when we were 16 years old. And then, yeah, I just used to drive. I used to just hold there. We used to have a steering wheel in the car. And you just have to look where you're going. And all the other cars were also holding steering wheels, looking where they were going. We tried not to crash.

And if you're on a two-lane road, it's 80 miles an hour the opposite way with 3 feet of distance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You just, well, they painted these lines and you just had to stay in the middle and you just had to keep awake and stay in the middle. Just keep looking. And they'll be like, what? Like that will sound completely barbaric, right? Like, um,, and it's like, did people not crash? Yeah, they sure did. Did they die?

It's the leading cause of death. Yeah.

Some people get drunk before they did it. Like, it'll sound just like, what were you guys thinking? And they'll just be like, well, we just didn't have the tech at the time. But like, when you have self-driving cars, cars are going to drive perfectly without you needing— there won't even be a steering wheel on the car. Cars will become like entertainment pods. You'll just play video games or you'll sleep or you'll watch movies or you'll work. Like, Cars will become a whole different thing very soon. And there's a clear before and after.

Another one is, so different diets, like we still debate, we're like the Atkins diet, that's a thing. Oh no, no, no. You wanna do the other thing where you gotta eat lots of carbs, you know, car— whole grains. That's, that's what you have to do. And to this day, like we're, we're like, well, what, which one do you feel good on? I don't know. Like just do whatever.

I have alternated carnivore and vegan twice.

Yeah. Yeah. You are a vegan to your, you'll only consume vegans. It's just constantly changed. And like, we don't know which one necessarily is better. You know, there's like really good arguments for both and we aren't sure. And I think that that's pretty insane that, uh, who knows, you know, I don't know. Right. By the way, have you ever, do you know a lot of doctors? Do you know how many classes they take on nutrition? Typically it's like, uh, it's like a class. Like they, they don't, doctors don't study nutrition, which is pretty insane. Or at least like your average, like, yeah. Or exercise. Yeah. Your average doctor doesn't exactly, it doesn't really know too much about exercise and nutrition. And so I think that that's like something we're going to be like, I don't know, you just kind of like tried a different bunch of different stuff and like you'd read, read a bunch of blog posts on it and listen to podcasts and like you just kind of guessed a little bit.

Right. I think eating meat, so killing animals to eat their meat, I think will be seen like a genocide, like a slavery. I think it'll be seen as completely barbaric and immoral 50 years from now when we have the alternative. There will be an alternative, which is basically lab-grown meat or synthetic food that will solve the kind of protein problems and taste, get the taste right, um, and the cost right. And at that when that happens, as that shift happens, we'll just be like, yeah, people just take the thing and you slaughter it. You just kill it and then you eat it. And they'd be like, you do it yourself? Like, no, no, no. Gross. I would never do that. They do it and then they package it and then we eat it. And they're like, what? Like, didn't you have a dog? It's like, yeah, I would never do that to a dog. It's like, but you would do it to this other animal? It's like, yeah. It's like, how did you guys decide? It's like, well, I guess kind of a cuteness or like, I don't know. I don't really know how we decided what was completely illegal and immoral and would get you canceled versus like you eat it 2 times a day. Like, you know, the line is very thin between like cow and chicken and dog, right? Like it's not that, it's not that clear why one yes versus the other no. Um, so I think that eating meat will become, will be seen as, uh, as basically like our generations, we just committed genocide on animals.

Cows. I have 20 cows at my ranch. You knew that, right? That I have cows out there.

They're not yours, right? They're just stray or they're yours?

They're my neighbor. They're my neighbor owns them and they are allowed to use my land to graze. And I don't pay taxes because of that, or I pay less taxes. But basically, you, I get to know them. So like, I know who they are. Like, I know which ones are which. I know whose mom is who. And like, this fucking sucked our first week there. That we bought the place, like a 4-month-old calf died, or it was, but a 4-month-old calf is still like 600 pounds or whatever it was. It was like a 600-pound baby. And apparently it like swallowed a golf ball. So my neighbor was like, hey, were you hitting golf balls? I was like, no, dude. I was like, I just moved here. It wasn't me. I don't know.

Like it's like— I saw you on Instagram. He's hitting balls at the new ranch. Yeah.

And I was like, dude, once you get to know me, you'll understand neither of us are golfer. I'm not a golfer. You know what I mean? And so, and then I was like, hey, uh, Jeff, this guy was, I was like, what do I go and get like a shovel or something? He goes, oh no, that son of a bitch is going to be gone in 3 days. I was like, what do you mean? He goes, you'll see. And so I come back in 3 days and the whole body and carcass, everything was gone. The, all the animals, like the birds and hogs, they just ate it. It was completely gone. And the mother would go back to the spot where that calf was. And would like mourn. And I was like, my heart was broken. I was like, I don't know if I could eat meat in the same way now. So I felt like devastated. And so since then, I basically, I only eat red meat like once a month because the cows, like, I get to know them and I'm like, I feel too sad. I can't do it. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not that manly of a man. I can't do it. But you, you think that childbirth manually is going to be a thing of the past?

Yeah. So, uh, when I was in LA, we had dinner with a person named Jessica Ma. You know who she is?

Yeah, she's, uh, she's very impressive.

She's super impressive. I think she did a company called Indinero. I don't know her very well. She, she was at this dinner, but she was on the other side of the table, so I didn't get to know her too much. But, uh, she seemed very interesting.

Like, Indinero was like an accounting company that's still very successful, but I think it's so successful now that she just has tons of money and does more stuff.

Yeah, it's a big one. I think she's, she's out of that business now from what it sounded like. Um, and then we were like, what do you do? And she's like, oh, I basically invest and incubate like, um, like hard science businesses.

And I think she's still only like 29.

Yeah. Yeah. It was all, she was very, very impressive.

We should actually have her on.

Sometimes you could just tell that people are playing a different game at a different level. So there's like, yeah, same game, different level, different game, same level. And then there's different game, different level. I would put her in different game, different level.

Yeah. You could talk to her. She's pretty brilliant.

I, I'm within 5 minutes. You're like, oh, okay.

I think she was, I think her, she started Indinero, an accounting software company at 19.

I don't know much about her, but she started her, I just went to her LinkedIn by the way. Started her first 6-figure business when she was in middle school.

Goddamn.

Different game, different level.

Again. Yeah.

I was, I was, I hadn't even grinded yet at that point. Yeah. Yeah, that's crazy. Anyways, so she's, she's doing this thing. One of the things we, so we were talking to her, but we were like, what are some of the crazy science things that you're funding? And then she would say things that were like, her thing was like novel, like she's trying to fund like a novel approach at like an existing thing. I don't want to butcher it, but something like that, which basically like what she called a bold, a bold, bold science. So it's like basically like someone taking a new scientific approach at an existing problem. So she'll go to universities and she'll find research labs where they'll be like, this is the one researcher who's trying to do this thing, but this like completely other way than the general field is going. And she's like, cool, I want to fund that because those bold approaches, when they work, work in a really big way. And so one of the things we talked about, just somehow the conversation came up, was like, like birthing a child is like the natural way or whatever. Like, you know, woman carries baby 9 months, goes into labor, delivers baby. Um, you know, dad snips the umbilical cord. Like, that's the, the process as we know it today.

Wait, does the dad do it?

They, they hear like, Dad, you want to do it? You got to be ready.

Is that what I'm going to be offered? I'm not doing that.

On the, in the moment, they're going to be like, Dad, come do this. And you're going to be like, What? No, I'm good. I'm, I'm holding her hand over here. I'm, I'm busy. And they'll be like, no, no, no, come, come do it. And then you're gonna be like, uh, and then you're gonna hold the thing and be like, I don't want to hurt this. This is gonna hurt. What is this?

I'm not doing that, man. I don't even want to— I won't even trim her toenails. I'm not gonna touch that thing. I don't want to touch that thing. You're— did you do it?

I did it, yeah.

Oh man, I don't—

the peer pressure of 6 doctors and your wife who just like did a modern miracle, did a like act of human bravery and courage. And then you're like, I don't feel comfortable doing this.

Like, dude, I am not doing that.

Wimp of the year.

Like, I've already told my wife, I think I'm going to pass out. I'm taking a couple of Xanax in the room. I— this is— no, that's too much for me, man. I don't know if I can do that. I'm not one of the guys. I'm not that guy. I don't think I've seen that.

My brother-in-law, when my sister was, uh, having, giving, having birth, giving birth, whatever. Yeah. Um, she, he like yawned at some point and she just turned and looked at him like, are you tired? He was like, no, sorry. It's just been like 70 hours.

He's like, no, it's just boring.

Yeah. It is honestly kind of boring. Um, but yeah, anyways, yeah, you better be prepared. You're going to have to do it. So anyway, birthing a child. So she was like, yeah, I think that's gonna be seen as like unnecessary, sort of barbaric, not like as like scientifically sound as like eventually we'll be able to kind of like almost like incubate the baby and just like deliver the baby through like essentially a machine that the a baby will be sort of like grown and delivered that way.

And I was like, have you met someone who's had a surrogate?

Yeah, I've met people who have a, who've had surrogate.

Yeah, I have. And they've acknowledged that they don't feel as, they didn't love the kid the same as the other one. Really?

Pretty, first of all, did you ask?

Of course I asked. Of course. Is that not the, that's, that's obviously the first thing you're gonna ask when you hear about it. Well, there's like a, there's like a handful of questions. Personal question. There's a handful of questions, which is A, like obviously how much does that cost?

Uh, you're gonna run yet? Yeah, other women.

Yeah, where'd you find them? Uh, and then like, what did you do? Like, what was the relationship like? And then like, my fourth question is like, did they ever try to hold the baby hostage?

Dude, I could still imagine you being the worst possible surrogate because you would micromanage their lifestyle. Like, hey, it's my baby in there.

Yeah.

You better get up here on this treadmill.

Like the surrogate can basically hold you hostage, right? Because you'll do anything. You'll do like, yeah, whatever you want. Like I have to give you what you want because I will do anything for that kid. But then the last, the fifth question was like, all right, but like, did you love the kid as much as the other ones? And the answer was at first, no, definitely not. I definitely didn't. They got honest with me. And I, so I don't know if I believe that this is going to be a thing.

But yeah, I feel like if there's the option, it's kind of like the epidural. So I think when we were in the hospital, so my wife's insane and wants to only do natural birth and feel all the pain for no reason. But she's like, that's how I get down. I'm like, oh, wow. Oh my God. I guess opposites do attract. I've taken the life version of epidural to avoid pain.

You took the epidural. Yeah, exactly. Exactly how it's supposed to be.

Strap me in.

Doc, uh, you got any leftovers? I'll take it.

We're not gonna waste that thing. Get over here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did you already open it up?

So, but the doctor had said 90%, uh, she was like 85 to 90% of the patients in their hospital do the epidural because like, you know, it makes sense. Like if you can, you know, not feel that level of pain, it's, it's easy to see why somebody would choose that. So, you know, if you just sort of extrapolate from there, you're like, cool, would you like to also not have the 9 months of pregnancy like going on in your body? If there was that option, like, you really think people wouldn't take it? I think people would take it.

Yeah, I think some people would, but I just don't— I don't know if it's—

you don't think— look at the Ozempic thing, dude. If you give people the magic pill, the way out, like, people take that shit, right? Like, if you get the cost right, that's a good point.

I do love—

people are going to avoid pain, right? They're going to avoid discomfort and pain where they can. I order DoorDash 3 times a day. Like, you think that people aren't gonna do this?

They're gonna do this. Yeah, you're right. Actually, I love magic pills. Whenever I hear someone who's selling like a magical cure or a magic pill, I'm in.

Probably won't work, but tell me everything.

Ozempic is a little bit of a magic pill. When I was taking it, it was quite magical. Did you take it?

No, no, I haven't taken it.

You should. It's awesome.

I guess I'm also kind of crazy in that way where I'm like, well then it wouldn't be as satisfying. Like I wanna do this on my own.

Yeah, yeah. But having abs is pretty sick, so yeah, totally, totally agree.

2 or 3 failed diets away from, from breaking and going on Ozempic. Alright, what else we got?

I wanna tell you about this thing that when people read it, they probably didn't have the same reaction as I did, but I think they should. So There's this guy, it's called The Greatest Scam Ever Written, and it's about a copywriter who ran this scam. His name was Patrice Runner. And so it started basically in the '90s where he originally saw this ad. Have you ever heard of this book called The Lazy Man's Way to Riches?

Yes.

So yeah. Why did he go to jail? I didn't actually know it was tax, tax something.

Yeah. Tax. I think tax. And also basically he would sell this product. I think it was called a family, uh, what is it called? A suit of arms. What's it called? A crest, like a family crest. He would sell this product where it's like you mail in like par and then you get mailed back like a crest. I don't know if it's like a graphic, but he just didn't fulfill the orders. He just took the money and like bounced.

It was just like, oh, easy to do that too, to just give him a crest.

Like, yeah, he just took the money.

He just needed Fiverr. He was just too early.

Yeah. And so he went to prison, I think for like 10 years. And that's where he wrote this really good book where it's like he wrote letters to his son on copywriting and that's called The Letters from Boron. I guess Boron was the name of the prison that he was in. But these copywriters, it's really cool how you're able to pull this shit off. And you, by the way, people act like you can't do this anymore because people are smarter. That's not true. You 100% can still pull off all this, but it's very fascinating.

I'm with you. I think this is one way that we are very, very similar where we both read these things and have the same sort of like, uh, unexpected reaction, which is some blend of like excitement and admiration. Not for the crime, but for the tools that led to the— like, you know, it's the same way.

It took skill. It definitely took skill.

Ocean's Eleven. It's like robbing a bank. I like it. I like what goes into robbing that bank. Right. It's like you shouldn't like the criminal in this case, but you are attracted to the skill, to the cleverness, to the guile that goes into doing something.

Well, every guy who saw Leonardo DiCaprio in Wolf of Wall Street or Catch Me If You Can was like, Hey, mom, can I, can you gimme one of your checks? I wanna see if I can actually change the numbers on it. Like everyone, like, you know what I mean? Like everyone who saw that was do the same thing. Or like everyone looked up like, you know, Stratford Oakmont, Jordan Belfort's thing after the Wall Street movie. Like everyone's attracted to it.

Counting cards or whatever, right?

Yeah. Right. They're like, oh, I could counting cards. How does that work? I could do that.

You had a great bit of copy that I read on Facebook the other day. You go, The more shirtless pictures I post, the more free protein I'm sent. Some ask me to, some ask to pay me to post. I've never done that and I don't intend to, but here's some brands that I use, blah, blah, blah. There you go. This is the best part. We may be whores in the Parr household, but we're certainly not pussies.

So good.

Where did you get that?

Dude, I have my, my, it's literally called, you said, you said phrases. Literally my sheet is called, my note is called phrases. Um, and I just have so many good ones here. I love it.

Because what people don't know is like phrases are really important. So I'm working on this with Hampton actually, where we're trying to create like our mantra or like with every type of community, it's basically a cult or a sorority where you like, you need like a phrase that summarizes it.

You need a crest.

You need a crest. I need a crest. Like I need something. And I've been like tinkering with phrases and it's so important to like nail a phrase. And like, there's so many like really good phrases. Like for example, I'm reading this book about Martin Luther King's assassination and he was assassinated while basically he was at this protest where garbage workers, black garbage workers wanted to be treated better. And their phrase was just, I am, and it was underlined, I am a man. And like that, like that one phrase is, let's treat me like a, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a slave anymore. I'm a man. Treat me like a man. And so I just, it's like all these phrases and I just like, we'll see a phrase, even though I remember writing that I am a man.

We are mostly men.

I'm looking for more females to apply. Oh, that's too touchy of a subject. Uh, that's a whole nother thing. But anyway, I love these like beautiful phrases. I love these beautiful phrases. You gotta collect them.

So what's going on in Hampton? Are you workshopping a couple right now? You wanna do a little live workshop?

So one that has gotten shut down, but I love it, which is CTC, confidentiality, transparency, and commitment. So CTC, and, and it's just, you gotta see, so you miss one meeting, you're banned. We've actually kicked 3 people out already 'cause we've heard that they've communicated with outsiders of like some confidential information. But CTC is what I'm trying to, which is what I'm trying to get stuck. Make a thing. But yeah, it's not becoming a thing as of late. But yeah.

What else you got?

Well, that's it. That's the only one that's hard at work over there. Dude, it's hard.

Process can't be rushed.

It's hard coming up with a phrase. Like, what are these phrases?

What are some ones that you're inspired by? So you said the I am one. What are some other ones that you think are well done?

Well, this other one is, is they're calling it CORE, which is like commitment, openness, uh, respect, and, uh, one other thing. I don't know what the E stands for, but CORE. And CORE's not sticking with me, but I'm, I'm, I'm trying to be open-minded. CORE's not sticking with me because 4 things to remember is a lot harder than 3.

It's even more like values then. It's not like your, uh, it's like your values. Yeah. It's values. It's not like your, your slogan.

So one thing I've been thinking about is no one, uh, nothing, no one, never. Where I was like that, nothing, no one, never, never, which is like, is this confidential? Nothing, no one, never, dude. Like, yes. Like everything, everything. It's nothing, no one, never. You can never talk about what's going on. So I'm toying around with nothing, no one, never. I like that one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Nice. Nice.

That one did a little something for me.

I like that. Yeah. Did it get you going?

It got me going a little bit.

What are some other interesting ones? There's not like, that many that are intriguing to me, to be honest. But I'm trying to figure out like how to do it. It's really hard just creating that shit from scratch. It's way harder than it looks. Or I'm just not talented. But like, are there any good ones that you like?

You know, the one thing I heard about like on the value side that always stuck with me was a value is useless without acknowledging the trade-off. So like, you know, most companies when they do their kind of like values, they'll be like respect, honor, Integrity, which is stupid because like, what's the opposite? It's, is that of course.

Yeah.

Like, uh, you said nothing that's of interest. You've acknowledged no, like, uh, sacrifice in that. You, and it's just generic. And so it's not memorable. It's not memorable. It's not useful because it's like, um, it's just an of course type of statement. Whereas, uh, you know, Facebook did one that, that stuck, which was move fast and break things.

It's beautiful.

Yes. It's gotta, it's gotta be like painfully truthful, painfully true.

Exactly. So she did the, when they go low, we go high, which is like kind of acknowledges that like you also, they go low, it hurts. You wanna hit 'em back, but no, we go high, right? When they go low, we go high. That's another example of one that's like, I like, I don't know when she said that, but that's like more than 5 years ago. I still remember that a lot of people repeated that kind of like to make fun of her, but because politics, people make fun of everything. But like, I do think there was something in that that was like more real than just like, we stand for respect. It's like, okay, cool. Doesn't mean anything to anybody when you say that. It's like, we're all numb to those sorts of things. Like Subway, eat fresh. And we print grill marks onto our chicken because it's not really grilled. Like, you know, it's like, all right, well, That's what they should really say. It's like, looks fresh, but it ain't, you know.

We, uh, my high school had a great one that I've always remembered. It was meant— we were an all-boys school, and it was meant for others. And they just did such a good job of like nailing that into our brains. Just, you got to be a man for others. There's like—

that could be a dating app too.

Yeah, you're right. Uh, uh, so I remember meant for others. I like that. But it's been really challenging, so I I gotta go find some more phrases. Um, but, but, uh, yeah, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta make that better. Do you have any that you use for any of your companies? You know, any of your— was— what was Milk Road's? Did Milk Road have one? No, but, uh, I don't think you need one at the beginning, by the way.

At the beginning, I don't think you need— I think you do need certain North Stars.

Like, you know, when you started The Hustle, you were like, um, you call it bullshit-free news.

What are you calling that? An e-commerce playbook?

Oh, I just like the bets, like big bets. That's what I call it. Like, what are the big bets that we're making this year? And we'll see. And I wrote at the, I also wrote at the top, like, we don't think that all of these are gonna pan out the way we expect.

And are they, or what are you right now?

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