Buffett’s Money Wisdom, Galloway’s $100M Advice & Why Newsletters Suck

And that's how we grew. And that's why I tell people, I say to blog, I don't actually mean blog, but I meant create bangers, text-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content enough to subscribe.

TBB, baby. Text-based bangers. That's been our strategy, right? Like, how'd you—

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.

All right, we're live. Can I tell you about a few interesting pieces of content I've consumed lately? And I want to hear what you've consumed.

Yeah, let's do it. The info diet section.

The info diet section. Yeah. Let me tell you the first one. So I have been on a Scott Galloway kick. Scott Galloway has a podcast and I think that's what he's more famous for than anything, but he started a few companies, but he's got this, like one of his companies, L2, I think it sold for like 200 million. It was like 9 figures. He, dude, he did this podcast called Scott's Personal Finance. I found it on YouTube where he talks about like money and, and, and like how much money he has and what he spends it on. And he like, he's like, this is all going to sound douchey, but I'll tell you, he's like, basically I'm worth at least $100 million. He goes, he goes, I made it into the 9 figures recently. He said, I'm still incredibly anxious about money. It stems from childhood. He's like, we were just poor and I'm super anxious about it. But then he goes, he does something cool. He says two things that are interesting. One, he goes, I'm spending between $200,000 and $400,000 a month and I moved to Europe. And the guy was like, why would you move to Europe? He goes, well, America is the best place to make money and Europe's the best place to spend it.

Love that.

100%. I wouldn't say more yet, but I've definitely seen examples of that. So I'll give you a very simple example of my life and I'll tell you one that was from a recent episode. So in my life, I've, I started an e-commerce company, maybe e-commerce brand 3 years ago, roughly. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on this e-commerce thing. Like it takes a lot of time to build a real company that actually has, you know, real revenues, real profits that are significant. And there's a physical product, tons of energy that goes into it. I have pulled out $0 and $0.00 from this business. Now the business makes a lot of money, right? We're tens of millions of dollars in revenue, but I pull out $0. It all gets reinvested and all my time gets invested into this thing and it is very, uh, labor intensive. So I haven't made much money from this. But one thing that did happen was along the way I was like, ah, such a pain. Like I'm always on my phone, you know, like often if you message me, I'll be like, oh yeah, I'll send it to you when I'm back at my computer. They're like, I'm not just like at my computer a lot. And, um, I wanted to be able to check on my, my, my store from my phone. And the Shopify app doesn't really make that very easy. Like you can get in, you can maybe see your revenue, but you don't know how your ads are doing. You don't know how your Amazon store is doing. You don't know how your Google account's doing. You don't know how your Klaviyo emails are working. And so meet these two, you know, two Jewish guys who are like, hey, we made this thing that's like a mobile way to manage your storefront for any e-com brand. They're like, oh, we have an e-com brand. We built this thing for us and I use it. I'm like, oh, this is great. And I'm like, hey, I'd like to invest. And they're like, oh cool. Like, you know, I think I was maybe the first investor, maybe second, something like that. Very cheap, like $5 million valuation or something like that.

Do you remember what you put in?

$75,000 to a company called Triple Whale.

Was that all your money?

It's $3 million.

I think it's called the arena. It's being in the arena.

Sorry, it's hazardous for brown guys like me to say the arena. I don't want to get caught in that fire.

You could say that he's in the arena. That's good. And by the way, that podcast was great. The second thing that I've consumed lately, I've been reading like crazy. So you and Andrew kind of got me turned on this. I hate, I don't really love investing, but I wanted to learn more about it. And so I read Warren Buffett's biography, not the one Snowball, because that's too long. It's like 1,000 pages. This one's called The Making of an American Capitalist. Have you ever read anything about Buffett?

Back in the day, like 10 years ago, I read a Buffett book, but I don't really remember it, to be honest.

Man, I didn't know anything about— I didn't really know anything about him, but there's a few traits about him that are crazy. The one, like, he's got like this aw shucks demeanor, like, I'm from the Midwest, like, what do I know? You know, I just—

super charismatic. He could be president.

Right. Yeah. He, uh, he has a very weird, a strange family dynamic. So what happened? So he got divorced.

Yeah. But then he didn't get divorced. So his wife, Susie, they, she was like a hippie. And for some reason he was into that and they were married and he loved her and everything. But she was one day, she goes, you know, Warren, I just want to go off to San Francisco and I want to do my own thing, but we're not going to get a divorce. And he's like, all right, cool. And she goes, also, I have my friend named Astrid. She's going to come over and take care of you. I thought it was her sister.

It's not her sister.

It's just a friend. It was, it was like someone she was friendly with. Okay. And so within a week of Astrid taking care of Buffett, of Warren, they are like lovers and like she moves in and they like date. However, like they're all friends with each other. And so Susie's like, hey Astrid, I think you should redecorate the house from when I did it. It's getting a little old. Like she gives her tips on taking care of him. And then like when Buffett has to go to like these big, like presidential public meetings where he is meeting with Senate or whatever, Susie comes. When he, when she wants, when he wants to go and do like some local stuff or like some, some stuff that doesn't require a lot of press, Astrid comes and they take turns. And every once in a while, if it's like a really big thing, they'll both go and they'll team up and they'll support him. It's very interesting and it's very strange, but he's not a very present father and he's super fucking cheap with his kids. So there was a time when his daughter was living in a really crappy apartment and she had just had a baby. And this one of Buffett's friends goes to check on her and the daughter can barely see the TV because it's a little small black and white TV. And the friend goes, Warren, you should buy her a big screen TV, man. She just had a baby. She's sitting in this shitty apartment. Just buy her a fucking TV. And he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to buy her a TV. And it took him convincing to, he's like, I don't want to spoil them. And so he's really cheap and it didn't seem like the best father.

That's where you got your fat pitch thing.

Yeah, exactly. There are no called strikes in investing. Like you could sit there all day and just watch pitches go by and just wait for the fat pitch. The problem is people suck at waiting. And that really stood out to me because I'm somebody who historically is very bad at waiting. I'm a very impulsive, impatient person. It serves you well as an entrepreneur. To be very impatient. You take a bunch of action. As an investor, impatience and impulsiveness is a terrible trait. So as I've shifted my career to go from entrepreneur to investor, I had to ask myself, you know, what do I need to relearn? What do I need to unlearn? What served me as an entrepreneur that's not going to serve me as an investor? And let me make that conscious switch. And that was one of the key switches that I realized I had to make.

And I just, and I agree, that's a really good lesson. And I think he stole that from Teddy Williams, like a famous baseball player who hit lots of home runs. And he like, Teddy Williams made this like graph.

He just, he has a strike zone. So it was just the strike zone. And he's like, look, my batting average, if I hit a pitch in this bottom corner is pretty low. I might make connection with the pitch. It might be a strike, but my batting average is low. I really shouldn't even swing at that pitch, even though it's a strike. He's like, I'm looking for stuff in the sweet spot because here I'm over .400, right? So He has the, Ted Williams has the greatest batting average ever. And one of the reasons why was he was more disciplined than others in what pitches he would swing at. He would really wait for those fat pitches, whereas most batters get quite impatient and start just hacking at everything.

But my issue with Warren Buffett's advice on that stuff was, all right, well, what's a good pitch look like? And so I ordered this book that's going to, it's like they didn't make a lot of copies of it, but so I had to find it on Amazon and it's going to take like 2 or 3 weeks to come, but it's I like how you just said Amazon like it's like some niche bookstore you went to. Like, oh, it's hard to find.

I had to go to amazon.com to find it.

It's this little book, this little mom-and-pop boutique. But they analyze all of his deals and they write out what he saw in them because I'm trying to figure out, okay, you're telling me what a bad one looks like. What's a good one look like? And so that's some of the content that I've been consuming. Um, it's been good. I've been reading like a book or two a week. It's because Kindle, you read on Kindle ever?

Yeah. Yeah. That's all I read on pretty much. I'll, I start on Kindle and then if I like the book, I'll order the hardcover so that I have it around the house to just remember it, pick it up whenever I want. But I start on Kindle.

Well, they have this like percentage bar at the bottom where it says what percentage of the book that you've read. And I'm like, I'm going to get through 20% every night. And, uh, it's been awesome. So shout out to Kindle. You got, you nailed it.

Gamified your ass.

Okay.

So let me, let me tell you two things that are interesting. One, the content I consumed. So I listened to this podcast by our friend David Senra. I don't know that, that well. I hung out with him one time and he's, he's a total nut in the best way. Like, he's a thousand miles a minute. But I want to share with you, he did a pod the other day that I thought was really good called, I think it was called The Greatest Interview I've Ever Done. And it was basically some, it was Patrick O'Shaughnessy interviewing him. They're like, what did you notice about a lot of, you've studied all these great men in history, right? You read these biographies and what are some common things that you see? He goes, the story of the son, the story of the son begins at the end of the story of the father. So basically like, embedded in the story of the son is the story of the father. And he's like, this is very common. Whether the father was great in all these ways, often you'll see the son take a totally different approach. Or if the father was limiting or hard-ass or really brutal in one way, the son takes that trauma and basically uses it in what they do. And I thought that was pretty cool. Second thing he said about reading that I really liked, he goes, They go, do you reread books? And he goes, yeah, of course. I love rereading books. Reread books all the time. And I think a common thing would be like, oh, isn't that kind of a waste to read what you've already read? It's like, you've already read that book. It's the same thing. Why not read something new? And he said it really well. He goes, I read books like several years apart often. And he goes, the words are the same, but I've changed. He's like, I'm a different guy than I was when I first read that book. So the second time I read it, I've had years of life experience. I've read 100 other books. I've had all these things that I've done in my life and now the same words mean something totally different to me, or I have an elevated understanding or memory, or a different thing stands out to me. I thought that was a really great insight on rereading because I'm a big fan of rereading. Like, I'd rather find a great thing and soak in it versus trying to just move on to the next and count the number of books I can read in a year. And I thought that point he brought up is one that I really never never heard. I also thought that he did an amazing job of almost like building his like personal story. So he said it really well. Why'd you start doing this? Like, why did you start this, this whole thing where you're reading all these books and you're doing this podcast? Like, how did you even have the inspiration for that? He goes, look, man, my, my childhood was not the best. Like, I grew up and my parents did their best, but they weren't necessarily the best. He goes, I'm the only person in my family to ever graduate from high school. And he is like, I wanted to be successful, but everywhere I looked around me, all I saw was the wrong answer. All I saw was what not to do. I didn't read just as a hobby for fun. I read because I was looking for the answers. I wanted to know what to do because all I saw in my life was what not to do. That's what led me to reading the biographies of the greatest people. He goes, I've spent the last, you know, whatever, 10 years of my life having one-way conversations with the greatest people ever to live on this earth. And he goes, that's what I think about reading. He goes, I think reading is having a one-way conversation with the greatest people on earth. And he goes, and he goes, and the, you know, the podcast, people are like, why'd you start a podcast? I don't know, man. I didn't even start it. He goes, this is just an obsession. I'm just studying these people. I needed a way to put it, put my thoughts down. He goes, this is an obsession disguised as a podcast. And I loved it.

I was like, wow, dude, he's good.

These are great little one-liners. He's very lyrical with it. And so, um, I'm very impressed by David Sennett. I think he's doing a great job. And yeah, there's, there was, it was a fun, fun thing to consume.

I joked with them. I was like, you know, like David, I got turned off on reading a lot of these books for a while because I would listen to them on Audible and I had my favorite narrators and I would go like, oh, I love this guy's voice. What else did he read this narrate? And this guy has read like a thousand, narrated a thousand books. And I'm like, How the fuck is this guy still a narrator? What'd you think if you like read all these business books, he would be way more successful.

That's, that's kind of what I'm bringing up here. Like, I love the way he phrases things. I think it's really compelling. I actually don't agree with him that like, you're not actually having one-way conversations with the greatest people on earth. It's not like you needed to do all of that to be successful. Actually, you should probably just get out there and do some things right. Like I actually could argue a bunch of the other sides, but what's the point? The fact that he believes that is going to lead him to a really great and successful place. I don't subscribe to all his thoughts, but I am a fan of his level of intensity and conviction in himself and what he's doing.

In California, like, I think in the '90s, they banned weightlifting in the prisons because they're like, holy shit, we're building super criminals. These guys are getting yoked. They're like too big. And they're like, they're surrounded by other criminals. They can like talk about like the best way to do stuff. And now they're fucking bench pressing 500 violence. These are super criminals. We gotta get rid of 'em. David is like becoming a super criminal a little bit.

He's like one of the guys who's like reading it and like plotting and stuff.

He's in the yard just cranking away. He's plotting. David's plotting, dude.

There's a, I feel like I could be like, hey David. He's sitting there reading a book. I'm like, David, you like that book? He's like, fucking love this book. What are you, are you joking me? And I'm like, David, in this room right over here, Heidi Klum is standing there naked. She's surrounded by all the best desserts you could ever eat. Michelin star desserts. The music, it's the greatest music you've ever heard. All of the unreleased Drake albums are in here. It's the best music. It's the best party. There's no other guys in here, just all naked supermodels. And David, the best part is when you walk in, you become a billionaire. And I think he'd be like, he wouldn't have even heard anything. He'd just be turning the page to the next page. Like, this guy doesn't want to do anything else.

He would've licked his fingers and just looked back down and said, just turn the page. The silence, chump.

I'm reading, and that's the best compliment and the best insult I can give him at the same time. Like, I think it is amazing that he is that way, that he really feels like this is the best thing that anyone could possibly do. He can't believe nobody else is doing this. He doesn't— it's like, this is the peak of the peak of life experience.

I'm inspired by him. Anything else that you've consumed that you like?

Not a consume, but I have a different— so in the way that I'm like, by the way, I hope he doesn't take offense.

I'm joking about some of these things, but like, yeah, I'm a huge fan of David Eagleman.

I'm a fan of his stuff and I think he does an amazing job. And I have no vested interest in his success except for I think he's really cool and I think he does a great job. I appreciate his craft.

And he's one of the few pods that I like listen to on a regular basis. It's quite good.

Yeah, that was like a genuine endorsement.

It's called Founders, by the way. The pod is called Founders. So we'll give him a, we'll give him some love.

Like a famous person. Well dude, I'm not trying to make a, you know, I'm trying to give you a famous, like a, like a, or like a, a, someone who you've read about. Let's see. A public person.

I don't know off the top of my head.

Do you have one who's just dry? I mean, there's like a bunch of like famous investors and shit who like I've read about and I'm like, this is snooze fest.

Um, like, yeah, there's probably just like some, I don't know, enterprise SaaS or these people who are like, yeah, we just make the best, um, we're like, you know, we just provide, uh, solid procurement services to others. Right.

It's like, I don't know. And like, they don't have a lot of hobbies.

Yeah. I'm like, do you love that? Like, no, but we, we service a need and it's like, cool. Like, so like, what are some of the cool growth hacks you've been doing? They're like, Oh, we don't really need growth. Actually, we grow 17% year over year. It's like, uh, we just really need to do solid operations. It's like, oh, okay. I, I just, I need to get out of this conversation right now. Like I'm, I feel itchy. Like I gotta get outta here.

Whenever I read about like hedge fund guys, I'm like, this is a snooze fest, dude.

You're just like this, like, like when they do like a lot of like fast trading, unless they're kind of like a criminal and kind of doing drugs, then I'm in.

Well, yeah, I'm always down with like, I love a good crime story unless you're, Driving your successful life off a cliff. I'm out. Yeah. Yeah. I need some drama, but like whenever I read about like hedge fund guys, I'm like, dude, you're just playing on Excel all day. I don't find that enjoyable to hear about.

But I think it is useful. So it was a useful exercise for us to do, which was what are you irrationally drawn towards that you should probably like dial it down, discount, be able to apply a discount after the fact when you're out of heat. And then what do you have an irrational distaste for? Where you're going to underprice or underestimate somebody and actually you shouldn't be. People have been talking about like bias and like the stuff like, but like, you know, they almost came at it from like a diversity and inclusion point of view. For me, I, you know, like, sure, that's fine, but I've never been like drawn to like, you know, I've never been drawn to spending a bunch of time thinking about that. However, for this, I immediately saw for myself, oh yeah, I could see myself making mistakes being overly generous towards a certain personality type. You say the certain 3 key phrases and I'm all in. And I'm kind of repelled from these things even though I really shouldn't be. It's actually like, I don't need to be your friend. I just, like, if I'm investing into you, I don't need to think you're cool and want to hang with you. I just need to be able to understand what you're doing and invest in it. Do you feel like you have the same thing? Do you have a thing you're drawn to? Like, I feel like one of yours, I'll just say it out loud, is I feel like you're drawn to people who are very meticulous and orderly in the way they operate. Like if somebody's got like a system and like they're a stickler for the details, I feel like in your, like they go up 100 points in your book. Whereas for me, that doesn't really do it.

That does it for me because I envy that. 'Cause that, that's not my natural, you know, like my wife is like that. Like I'm drawn to people who are like orderly and systematic. Indisciplined, like people who wake up at 5 AM every morning. That's not me. And so like, I'm really fascinated by people who like grind really hard and are systematic and are operational and things like that. I get a lot of joy being around those people because I'm not like that.

Can I tell you real quick about a cool thing? Because I feel like we did a bunch of fluffy stuff today. Okay. Yeah. I got to get a rant off my chest. People are really drawn to things that are highly tactical or, or highly like specific versus and complex versus things that are simple but might be a little bit airy. Let me give you an example. When I was in LA, we did a bunch of those dinners with founders. And I think I said this in my debrief, but I'll, I'll point it out again. People, the conversation would inevitably go like you have a bunch of people who've all sold their company. Everybody in the thing is successful by traditional measures. And the conversation would always gravitate towards two subjects, like kind of health and longevity, or just kind of like being happy, being a happier person, some sort of quality of life improvement.

Rich guy problems.

Rich guy shit. He's like, oh, I've already made it, but yeah, I feel like I'm not as happy as I thought I would be. So then what? And the longevity health things gives him a new carrot to chase and they kind of feel like they neglected it while running their company and the life quality. Everybody actually just wants a high quality of life. They just don't know how to ask the questions around it. And what you would see was two things. Somebody would say something like that was just like simple and useful. They'd be like, yeah, you know, I just like, you know, before bed, I don't really use my phone. I just actually kind of review the day and think about like, you know, how I did and what, you know, just in general, like my interactions of the day, what I might've done differently. And like, you know, and I'm like, oh, I do that too. It's, I have this thing called Revision and it's like, I just kind of see the day. Events of my day and I just go back and just play them out a little differently in my head. It's really useful. And people are like, the reaction to something like that, if you just kind of tell people like, hey, here's a simple thing you could do. Imagine what you want and what it would feel like to have it, or think about how your day went to just be kind of mindful and thoughtful about versus just always onto the next thing. And the reaction I would get would be like, cool. And the cool is kind of like Cool. Good for you. Like, I ain't doing that shit. Like, you know, don't tell me to be alone with my thoughts. And then somebody would be like, yeah, you know, I really, I was feeling kind of, you know, I've just been feeling like I'm in a funk. And so I started taking, you know, 6mg of low-dose naltrexone. And then people are like, what, what, what, what is it?

What is it called?

I just thunk it up. I just thunk in my bed and it worked.

I was like, hey, here's what I do. You know, when I go into a situation instead of just reacting like, oh, it's kind of cold out here. So I'm uncomfortable now. I feel bad. I'm a little bit bothered by that. I just decide before I go in, like, you know what? I want to have a playful experience. I want to have a laughing experience right now. And then I'll just like, I was like, I decide that, then I go in and I have that. I look for those moments and I create that experience for myself. It's pretty amazing. You could just do this. You could just decide what experience you want and then go have it. And they're like, is that okay? Can the next person say like a pill that I could take? Like some new nootropic that's going to help me?

They're like, all right, all right, Chad, but can I put that in my body intravenously? Like, does it come with needles or do I buy them? I'm just like, y'all are insane.

You're insane. Or this guy's like, he's like, you know, I really want to like, what's that? You know, this equipment. Oh, I bought all this exercise equipment. I'm like, bitch, do you walk? Do you even have like 30 minutes a day? He's like, no, no, I don't exercise. I don't have time. But I'm building out this home gym and I'm building it out. And like, I'm like, you know, you could just do pushups on the floor, right? You don't have to first buy $10,000 of equipment before you could work out. Like, there's There's no gate to pass. You can literally just do 10 pushups right now. In fact, let's do that right now. And people are not ready for simple action that doesn't require a magic bullet solution. And it annoys the hell out of me. I'm like, are you guys insane? Is everybody around me insane? That's how I feel.

When people say magic pill, I definitely automatically get interested because like, I would like that. Like, why don't they say shortcuts? Like it's a bad thing, but it's like, yeah, I mean, if I can get to my destination shorter and faster, I'm in.

That's the thing. They're not even shortcuts. Literally this shit that I was talking about, this low dose fucking whatever it's called, Naltrexone, I don't know what it was because guess what? I don't care. Don't need it. But I was like, I was like, so does this work? Like, have you felt like an amazing difference? The person was like, no, you have to take it for 6 months first for your body to acclimate. I'm like, you're getting hosed. And I'm like, okay, honestly, I don't know what this drug does. Maybe it's useful. Maybe it's a specific thing. I'm kind of jokes aside, but I, for that person who, you know, got it prescribed, maybe they needed it for the other 8 bastards in the, at the dinner who were like immediately trying to order it. I was like, y'all don't need this. Like you don't need that right now. That is not the answer to whatever you're, whatever hole you're trying to fill right now. Like there is no chance that that is the correct first step you should be taking.

Well, I think we talked about like the different types of procrastination, like the good, there's actually good types of procrastination, which is like, uh, like the forgetful scientist who like forgets to like shower or like put on the right pair of socks. It's like, ah, that's all right. He's doing the big things right. That's okay. And then there's like the bad type, which is like making plans that don't need to be planned or like buying domain names or like going back and color coding it afterwards.

Like, dude, it's okay.

Like, yeah. Or like, in, in this case, it's like buying pills when it's like, just 10,000 steps a day will, will do the trick as well. But that's pretty funny. That's a good story. I, I, I would've liked to have seen you in that room.

Yeah, I was, I was just like, you guys are nuts. But okay, now to satisfy—

I like this stuff though. I like this stuff, by the way. I like this stuff.

Me too.

I love to talk about me most because tactics change, strategies don't, you know what I'm saying? Like, I like talking about strategy sometimes.

Dude, have you been following the presidential debates and campaign stuff that's going on? Did you watch the Republican debate?

I watched the clips. So everyone is, it seems like the Vivek is, wow.

There's two ways to say his name and one is the right one and one is the wrong one. And you just came with a third Vivek. Holy moly.

It's V-I-V-E-K, right?

Vivek is the way you say it. So some people say Vivek and you went, you went, I don't even know where you just went.

Dude, that's like correcting me if I say it like Lady Gaga. Are you a big Lady Gaga fan?

I mean, come on. He was like the star of the debate because he's just, look at him. The guy is like a debate champion. It's like what this guy is trained to do., but he's still polling like, you know, I don't know, 10% or something like that. So I think it's all, I mean, I think Donald Trump's gonna win. Uh, but I did wanna tell you a funny thing that I remembered when I watched that debate.

You watched it?

Oh, I love watching. I don't care about politics, but I love watching fights.

I would not have, uh, thought that.

He, of which him and his wife owned it.

So they got, they owned the whole thing. Yeah. So it was a huge exit for a husband and wife couple. Before that, he had built another social network sold for a few, you know, single digit millions of dollars. So he kind of made one, sold it for a few million bucks. Then as soon as the non-compete ended, he created it again. He's like, oh, now I know what I should have done the first time. And that became the $850 million exit. But he also created Birthday Alarm, which is a company that had millions of dollars in cash flow every year. So he had multiple wins. Very interesting guy. But ever since the big Bebo acquisition, he created this Idea Lab, but he kind of transitioned to a different phase of life almost. He was like, you know, I'm not like, you know, what do I care? It's sort of like, yeah, I angel invest, but like, you know, doesn't really matter. Like, I kind of already won the money game in a way, right? He wouldn't say that, but you could just tell it's not like his heart was in that.

Is he a billionaire at this point, you think?

Even that, he's like, I'm not really a billionaire, but who cares? I got, he's at that 5'10", 5'11" range and those guys want to be 6 foot. He was just like, that's pretty much 6, right?

With shoes.

So he's like, he's at $800 million or $900 million or something like that. He's like, I don't know. I don't really keep track of it. Does it really matter? Seems like overkill to care about something like that.

That's a nice billionaire response.

He did two interesting things. One, he built a private members club in San Francisco. So he bought an old candy factory that was 60,000 square feet that was abandoned because it needed tons of like seismic retrofitting. Nobody wanted to put in the millions of dollars it would take to retrofit this place. He did it and he built a members club. So if you go to San Francisco, you can go to this place called the Battery and it's like Soho House, but for San Francisco. And built that thing into a real juggernaut. Like it actually like totally came to fruition. This idea that seemed kind of crazy and he had no experience in, he had never done hospitality, never done any of that stuff.

One time I went there and I saw a booth of 3 people and it was a bald, like imagine a monk wearing like the Dalai Lama, like orange outfit. Like he was bald-headed and sandals with like a black guy that looked like a rapper. Like he had like gold chains on and like sick shoes and then this blonde-haired lady and they were all leading in having a conversation and I was like, this is just the funniest place I've ever been to. Yeah.

And they're usually like tall, not ugly people.

Did it go anywhere or is he just goofing around?

He also, so he wrote a memo.

It was a very well-written memo. Is that the rich guy version of buying the domain name?

Yeah. He wrote a memo, he showed it to me and I'm like, yeah, this is great. And I think he was like, okay, if I'm going to do this, this is going to take some real kind of like social capital to do. And I think he kind of was like, uh, maybe not. Maybe my life is amazing as is.

Um, that's his version of like when the remote is just a little bit too far when you're laid out and you're like, ah, I'll sleep with the TV on.

Yeah. But I've loved this idea and I'm saying it because A, I think that more business people should apply their kind of creative and entrepreneurial talents outside of just creating yet another business. So I liked that he was taking his creative and entrepreneurial spirit to be like, oh, how could I, what if I did a TV show that would influence politics? I thought that was cool. And I think more people should do that. The second reason is I kind of wish this idea existed and I totally think this would work if somebody created it.

So what's funny is like, because you and I've, I've, I've, I've complimented you with this, but this is actually a criticism at this point, uh, for this particular point, this is a compliment.

Sam Park special. I don't even know what that meant. Should I prepare myself for a compliment or insult? Just tell me that.

The compliment was that you're worry-free and like you're pretty optimistic and you always like default to like, oh, that person, they're not trying to do anything bad.

Here comes the bitch slap.

But in this case, when I hear this, I'm like, um, but I want like my president to like know what they're doing and not just be able to like be a good speech giver.

Uh, and so like, dude, that's what we have now. You think, you think Joe Biden knows what he's doing? The guy's not even alive.

Well, I'm not saying what I know works and what I know doesn't work. I'm just saying that like my romantic view is like, well, that would be, it would be also nice if they knew what they were talking about rather than just good at talking. Yet your take on this is like, wouldn't it be cool if we just let the most charismatic person run away with it?

Well, you know, I think you could design the challenges to actually get them, force them to think on the spot or perform, uh, in terms of figuring out solutions to real problems., or like putting forth what their solutions would be in a way that's not just prepared by handlers who have talking points and they're going to avoid the issue or false promises or whatever. Like these people that would be in this, uh, you could design the weekly challenge to bring out whatever it is that you want. Obviously people fall in love with the characters. That's how all reality TV works. You fall in love with the characters. However, you could fall in love with them as they're trying to do certain things in the same way that The Apprentice would test you for Can you figure out how to sell? Can you figure out how to organize a project or manage a plan? I think you could put people through a battery of weekly challenges that are not just, are you good at kissing babies and shaking hands? But that's part of it. But there could be other parts of it that the show decides is like, what are the attributes that a president needs or the qualities, or what do we wish we could see them doing? To be able to assess their abilities. I think the cynical person would say, well, we should look at their track record serving in government. Yeah, cool. But that doesn't happen. That's not really what, that's not really what happens. It's not really what works. If that worked, you know, Trump would never have beaten Hillary. She had spent her whole life in politics. She had, she was by far on paper the more qualified candidate, but America didn't get to see that. They didn't get to appreciate that. Uh, all they saw was what gets put forward today, which is debates and campaigning on social media or on TV.

There's this funny story about JFK when— do you remember like, uh, what the Cold War was? You know, it was in the '60s where like we thought that Soviet Union and America were gonna like bomb each other. Yeah, there's a story where JFK, John Kennedy, goes to, um, Soviet Union and he meets with the president or the leader of Soviet Union, and at the end of the meeting, this— the, the leader was like, you know, you're, you're a really nice person. You kind of remind me of my son. I guess like we could be, we could be cool. Like, you know, you seem, you seem kind. And I read that story and I was like, oh, I guess like charisma really does matter a whole lot when it comes to like diplomatic stuff. Like just being likable and being like, hey, let's just calm down, let's be friends. It definitely is.

Tony Robbins tells the story, I don't know if this is real or not, but who was the, you know, who, who was the president during the Cold War?

Is that Nixon? Was that Reagan? Well, Kennedy. Kennedy for Cold War was a long period, but Kennedy was like when we thought that we were literally going to bomb each other.

Okay. There was, I don't, I feel like it wasn't Kennedy he was talking about, but Tony Robbins tells the story. He goes, I was, I had a chance to talk to former president, whoever. Let's just pretend I know or care about presidential history. Sure. And he's like, the Cold War was happening and he went to go see, I think it was Cold War. People who actually know about this are going to— you have full permission to beat me up in the comments. So he goes to see Gorbachev and they have a meeting and the meeting is not going well. The hope was we could de-escalate, but actually the meeting was sort of like tension and neither side wanted to give and they were sort of getting more dug in and more stubborn in their stance.

And this would be Reagan. Ronald Reagan.

Reagan. All my married men out there know when this happens, you think you're going into de-escalate. But actually both sides are what Sam Park calls dug in and the tension is escalating. He doesn't know really what to do. And he goes, how did you do it? How did he's like, something happened in that meeting that worked. What was it? He goes, well, we hit that point. I said, this is not going to work. And I got up and I walked out of the room fast, stormed out of the room. And right before I got to the door, I hit him with a little 360. Turned back, big smile on my face, said, let's start over. Smile on his face, shook his hand and said, I'm, you know, I'm Ronald. And, uh, you know, I really appreciate these things about you. And he like turned her, he just basically like, you know, broke the frame for a second and used a little bit of charisma, a little bit of playfulness in order to reduce tension. And then they had a conversation. Now I have no idea if this story is true. Tony Robbins told me this. I believed it in the moment because It's a great story and who, why let the truth get in the way of a good story? If it is true, that's unbelievable. If it's partially true, that's really cool. If it's totally made up, ah, whatever. You know, it's okay. Still, the story still serves its purpose. It is a very useful technique to be able to do this, to be able to use a little bit of charisma and playfulness in order to defuse a situation or to break through any like deadlocks that exist, whether it's in business or in personal life.

So either Vivek is just not charismatic or I'm an idiot, but let me tell you a really quick story. I have, so I've turned down two presidential candidates to either come on this pod or speak at my events. The first one was Andrew, what's his name? Yang, the guy, the math guy. So he emailed me, I think in 2015 being like, hey, I want to come speak at your event. And I don't know if the podcast existed then, but he's like, or if you guys want to write about me in the newsletter, I'd love to do an interview. You know, I run this study test prep company. It did okay. And now I'm running for president. And I was like, oh, you're insane. You're, you're like, you're going to make me look like a fool. Just this nobody guy who run a mediocre business running for president. I can't interview you like that. That hurt my credibility. Well, turns out he was a serious candidate, or at least he made it in the top 10 or whatever. The second time this happened was Vivek.

Vivek.

Vivek. Lady Gaga. It's not— it's not— is it not called fajita? It's fajitas. Fajitas. Um, so Vivek DM'd me on Twitter like a year ago, and he was like, hey, would you guys want me to come on the pod? And I stiffed on him hard. I thought this was because he had a really— his Twitter picture was him in a suit with a nice smile.

Stuff it, nerd, you're not coming on the podcast.

Well, and I think like I was like researching Martin Shkreli and I was like, oh, this, and his bio said he was in bio, like pharmaceutical industry or something like that. And I was like, oh, this guy's a charlatan. Like he's so good looking. He's got a nice smile. This is like a crypto guy with abs and a Ferrari. Like, I can't take this guy seriously. And I just said, what do you want to talk about? Like, and I tried to like stiff arm him to like make him prove himself. And he replied and I ignored him. Turns out. You know, a year and a half, 2 years later, he's actually a threat. So this is the second presidential candidate that I've had bad judgment on of whether they're going to be serious and not asking them to come on the pod.

Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally with you. By the way, for high entertainment, do you subscribe to Ron DeSantis's SMS program? No. So if you want to learn about marketing or you want to learn how the presidential race really works, go subscribe to all the candidates' marketing emails and text messages. Warning, it's fucking annoying. Okay? So that's the first problem. If I wanted somebody to text me every day, I'd have a girlfriend. And this guy texts you all the time and they text the dumbest stuff. So like here, I'm just going to read you the last 5 texts. If you think this guy's like some super serious politician who's really making it a substantive race about the issues. Here's what he's saying.

And was it like 5 in one day?

Text yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yesterday, 4:21 PM. New shirts, shirt emoji, new koozies, new cups, new buttons, new stickers, new hats. If you haven't seen our storefront, go get the hottest limited edition campaign merch here. Okay. Let's say yesterday. Okay, cool. Let's go back. Friend, it's Ron DeSantis. This is now the day before, 2:08 PM. Friend, it's Ron DeSantis. I want you to know that as president, I will not let the government weaponize federal agencies against Americans who dare to disagree. I'm disgusted by the FBI's disgraceful act labeling Catholics as extremists. It's time to fire the FBI director and defend liberty, religious liberty for all. Can I have a donation to have your support? Okay, so that's the, that's the next one. Here we go again. Um, let me find a particular He just texted me at 7:19 AM. It's too early for a text, Ron. Enough with the talk. Americans need action. And that's what Ron DeSantis is all about. I'm the leader you need. This time, the time to act is now. This can't wait. Rush your support in. Link to his donation campaign. Link to his donation. Then another one. Hey, like this, like this credential. And he puts a picture of a, like a credit card that just says DeSantis on it. And he goes, you can have your own, all caps, donation with $47 or more to join my investor team. If you're an investor in this campaign, you'll have everything you need to show it off. Grab your membership card today. And it just continues every single day. Hey, enter this giveaway to come to the next debate. You just have to donate and you can win a VIP experience. It just keeps going. And it'll just be like, hey friend, I'm out here draining the swamp right now. And it's like, dude, just stop. Like, what are you talking about?

Well, they're building like a billion-dollar company in like 18 months. They're like a moving company. You ever notice how like moving companies, like, they don't give a fuck about the service because like you're only going to use it once? And they're like, let me just get you on board. Gotcha, bitch. And then they just like throw your shit there. They're like, dude, we don't give it— like, renewals aren't a thing here. I don't care. You know what I mean?

I hired this service that was like, um, it was called like Musclehead Movers or something like that. And all of the imagery, all of the imagery was just these huge like buff guys. It was like, hey, we make it easy, we'll move that couch, we'll move that fridge, no problem, just another day at the gym for us. So I'm like, oh hell yeah, I hired Musclehead Movers. 3 tiny Vietnamese guys showed up and I was like, and the truck said Musclehead Movers, and I was like, Got him. I'm looking at him and I'm just, are you going to say anything? Are you going to address this, friend? And they didn't. And I didn't, because I was like, what am I supposed to say here? And I was like, what a bunch of greasy punks. Hoping. And they did the job. Like they could move everything because they just used dollies. And I was like, oh, if I wanted dolly movers, I would have, you know, like it's different. It's a different experience than I signed up for. Catfished.

That's so stupid.

There is one cool thing I wanted to tell you about.

All right. What is it?

So what's the, uh, what's the URL? Do you know? Because it's so new, it doesn't show up on Google.

There's not a website for it yet. He's like, oh, like we built this for ourselves, but like I'll let some people in beta if you fill out this Typeform, like that sort of thing, like soft launch.

I would love to see that.

This is awesome.

Then he's like, cool. Now when a paper comes out that has one of them in the name, or those people on social media share a paper. I immediately know this is probably an interesting paper. So that first creates a hit list. Uh, he gets alerted, like, alert, top scientists have shared the paper.

PageRank is what Google invented. It's how they know what to show up on the top of Google. PageRank is categorized, like, there's a bunch of different measurements. The biggest measurement, or they don't even tell people, but it's theorized, or maybe they even said this though, but which is how many people link back to your website.

Yeah. How many other reputable websites link to yours. So every, every website has an authority. So let's say New York Times has a high authority compared to shaunpuri.com, right? And so if New York Times links to some other website, that tells Google that that other website might be, uh, and also a high authority site. It increases its authority. If Shaun links to it, it increases it a teeny tiny, tiny amount. And so that's how Google basically figured out what's the right, you know, what's the right webpage to show when I, when you search a question, who's, who has the most authority to to give you the answer. So this guy for Alpha Signal, Lior, did this for scientific papers. So he's like, who are the top scientists? What are they sharing? What are they linking to? If they're linking to something, that's an important paper or an interesting paper. Then you take the interesting paper, feed it through his LLM, and it gets summarized down into 4 bullet points. Like, what was the finding? What was the methodology? Who are the scientists? And what's the kind of, like, key takeaways from this?

And Alpha Signal is only for, like, AI topics? Correct.

But I'm like, this is a generalized product that's actually just really interesting. Like your, I was like, your method to create this newsletter is more interesting to me than the newsletter itself.

Yeah.

Yeah. And Paper Scraper is the same idea, just from a different guy approaching it from a slightly different angle, which was same thing, like basically trying to figure out what are the important papers that are coming out. So of the, of the 2 million papers or of the 5,000 that are published every day, Which 3 should I care about? Which 5 should I care about? And then of the 5 that I care about, what do they actually mean? And what do they say?

Yeah, they're really hard to read. They're really hard to read.

So I think this is a really, really cool product idea. And then he also built like a thing called SpinoutGPT, which was basically like, you can, it's like ChatGPT, you can ask it questions about things that might like, you know, could we commercialize, uh, this and, or like, would this work in a cell culture or tissue? And then it'll go look in the paper and find, did they do it in cell culture tissue? And it'll answer to you that way. So it's almost like being able to talk to research papers or talk to a very smart person that read all of the research papers. And it's like, oh, I see where this is going. Like, you know, the hustle, Milk Road, these were like the horse carriages, right? Like, we have random humans trying to keep up with what's going on. Maybe they set up some Google alerts or they check Reddit and Twitter. And every day they make a list and we talk about it and then they read it and summarize and they summarize it as good as they can. And then the pitch was like, it's like your smart friend explaining what happened in crypto that day. Or yours was, it's like your smart friend explaining what happened in business news that day. And this is like, this is like your fucking genius friend that read every scientific paper ever and you can ask it any question in any variation and it will answer. You're like,, that seems pretty powerful, huh? It's like, yeah, we're on our horseback and just boom, look at the car just flew by. Whoa, what the hell was that?

But what about my friend Greg? He, uh, no, I, by the way, I'm happy we, I would not wanna be in the newsletter business right now.

It's way harder. Which is so funny 'cause everybody's following us into the newsletter businesses now. Like now is like peak hype on newsletters.

And also the way that people are acquiring users, like I just subscribed to Seth Bannon's Substack and like right after I subscribed it said,, do you want to subscribe to these 18 other newsletters? And it's auto-checked and I almost accidentally clicked like, yes.

It's like, and they're all like, whoa, look at my newsletter growth. It's insane. And it's like, dude, anyone on Substack that's talking about your newsletter growth, you're full of shit is my, my answer to you. Like you are absolutely full of shit. It's like people think they're filling out a CAPTCHA and they're just actually subscribing to 19 newsletters like at a time. It's insane. That's why, you know what I like? Beehive has a good feature. They did a feature like that. That's actually legit, which is Their thing was you can, you have to manually be like, who do I want to endorse? But also they have this thing, I forgot what it's called, like Sparks or some shit like that. But it's like, you can pay to acquire newsletter subscribers. Like all of us know the best newsletter subscriber you can get is somebody who already subscribes to other newsletters that are similar.

But that's really hard to get historically because you have to advertise in like a hundred different newsletters.

First of all, this Seth Bannon thing is awesome. I just, I, the tweet that Sean's referring to is from June 12th. So if you Google Seth Bannon and go to his thing, it was on June 12th. That's awesome. He filmed the video in like an amazing place. Uh, like it looks like a TED Talk almost, but like with like an IMAX style screen explaining his concept. I don't know if that would be a good business. I'm nervous about people building businesses right now on top of OpenAI because I'm like, they're just going to crush everyone and just do it themselves. But this is awesome. And second, yeah, to reiterate, I'm happy I'm not doing a newsletter as my main thing right now. It seems really, really hard. And like, I remember at The Hustle, we had one daily newsletter and then Morning Brews. Um, strategy was to launch more, but my thing was like, fuck, but if we have more, our main thing was going to go down. Like, they're not going to open 2, they're not going to open 3. Now people, if the numbers are true, are subscribing to dozens. And I want to know, is the engagement even remotely the same? It seems really, really, really hard. It seems way harder.

Yeah, I think it's a lot like podcasts. Like, how many podcasts do you actually have in a regular rotation at any given time?

Yeah, it seems hard. I mean, with newsletters it's easier 'cause it only takes 3 minutes to skim it, but it seems really hard to get people's attention with the newsletter right now. It's just so funny when we, so I got the idea for a newsletter because I had my friend Noah Madora and then my other friend Noah Kagan. They were like, they had one foot into the startup world, one foot into like the internet marketing world. And I was like, oh, this internet marketing world, they love email and they use it in sometimes shady ways, but let's just see if we can do it in a legit way. And people are like laughing at that. Now it's so cool, but also that people take it seriously, but I'm so happy I'm not doing it. It seems way more challenging at the moment. I, uh, it seems really hard.

Yeah, I think the best will still win, um, because, you know, the best tends to win in everything. Um, like, you know, so I say it's not that the door is actually closed. Um, but it's definitely much harder than when you started, you know, when did you start? 2015, 2016?

Yeah, I got the idea of doing a newsletter and I started it in 2014, but it became what it was on May 19th, 2016.

A great day in history.

Well, I always remember that because it's the day before 4/20, uh, so it always, it was always easy to remember. Um, but yeah, and it was like, I remember like at, for, I originally started as a conference and if I had 5, uh, if I had 2,000 subscribers to my conference newsletter, I think I made $50,000 in conference ticket sales. And then when I had 10,000, I think we did $150,000 in ticket sales, something like that. And like the engagement was quite high. And then I remember people back then saying, I think Gary Vaynerchuk, I talked to him one time. He was like, dude, my newsletter, we had a 99% open rate because no one else was doing newsletters. Yours is only 40%. It's so much harder. And, uh, I was like, oh man, I wish it was easier. Now I don't know what those numbers would be like, but I think it would be hard to make that amount of money with as few subscribers today as it was. It was easier then.

You know, the other thing that's funny is, um, or I guess the other thing that that kind of reminds me of is your— I wish people would see kind of your early blog posts, or you should, we should do kind of like a trip down memory lane. Of some of our projects, um, because you're incredibly good at creating content and writing. Um, we like, when I see what you did versus what I see a lot of people doing now, I'm like, oh, there are like many rungs on the ladder above is where, where you were with creating content. Um, back then, like I remember your early blog posts that were just regularly going viral, getting millions of hits. To the site because they were that good.

Like which ones?

Like when you were doing the guy, you like, first you had the right concept. So you were kind of like a YouTuber before YouTube. Actually, you really should have been a YouTuber. Like that would have been your calling.

I believe we got, we got asked to do it.

Like we were thinking about doing it, but I was like, the hustle, I was like, Sampar as a YouTuber would have been, I believe like you would have been one of the most successful YouTubers on the platform. Let me give you an example.

That's awesome.

You're like, for example, I remember some of your early Hustle blog posts, surviving 30 days on Soylent only. Guess what that sounds like? Every Ryan Trahan video, every MrBeast video. This is the current meta of YouTube. You were doing this 8 years ago. You know, like it was, you were, you did microdosing LSD. You did an interview with an anonymous entrepreneur who Who plagiarizes books.

Yeah.

Yeah. You did the, the, the, you, the thing where you were like, Amazon bestsellers are bullshit. I'm going to prove it by making an Amazon bestseller spending only like $1,000. Guess what? That's a YouTube video. These are YouTube videos. They would, these videos would still work. But the thing is you have to do them with style. You actually did the thing with style. Now you, your problem was you were locked into this blog world because those are the people you admired at the time.

And I knew how to write. Writing was my thing. I wasn't— I don't know if I could have—

maybe I could have— you had the visual aesthetic too. You're good on camera. You lived in a freaking— you lived on a motorcycle or something. I don't know. You were sleeping on a motorcycle. You were doing some crazy shit. It's like you had the dog and you had the look and you had the humor on camera and you were willing to— you liked Jackass and those sorts of things. And I feel like you would have kind of tortured yourself for people's entertainment. As soon as you got that hit of feedback, you would have gone all the way in. Yeah, for sure. And I just wish you had kind of gone down that route. In fact, I still think you should go down that route. Like, for example, I think I can be successful. In fact, I'm going to be successful on short-form video, but it's not gonna be the way you could have been because you're kind of like those, like, you know, whoever the Danny Duncan and, uh, and, uh, Ryan Trahan and, and, and, you know, MrBeast, you're, you're a lot like them in the, in the way that you are as a character. And what you're willing to do and what you were willing to do and how long you were kind of like, I'm single and don't give a fuck. And like, I don't need comfort. And like, you know, oh, like this firecracker is going to go in my ass. All right, let's roll. Like, you know, lights, action. Right. Like, I think that you had all of that. And so anyways, I don't know what my point is here.

I don't wish I would have gone that route, by the way. I don't. I think I probably could have done it. I think that that's a hard life. I think it's hard. I like Danny Duncan a lot, but I'm like, can you do that at 40? I guess it just has to change. It has to evolve. Or like MrBeast, what's he going to do at 40? He's going to be so wealthy. It doesn't really matter.

Yeah. But you would've done the same.

Yeah. But, um, yeah, like our early blog posts were good and there was a period where I was writing like 5 a day. Um, I would write so many of them. Not all of them were bangers, but like we would write a ton and that's how we grew. And that's why I tell people, I say to blog, I don't actually mean blog, but I meant create bangers, text-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content enough to subscribe.

It's a marathon, not a sprint, but we're Kenyan.

And so we're going at 5 miles. Yeah. My last name. Pretend you're this. Yeah. Your last name is Kipchoge. You know, you're going to be a Kenyan. Yeah. You can be a Bekele. You're an Ethiopian, but you know, like we're East Africans here, baby. We're going to run fast. And, uh, yeah, I think, um, but I actually, I prefer writing. I think that it's more fun to be in a quiet zone late at night and just bang it out. And it feels a little bit more artful. it felt like I was in my zone of genius a little bit. Whereas with video, it feels like sometimes you have to perform. And I felt that writing was a different type of performance that is more enjoyable to create for me.

Yeah, sure. Dude, surprise, surprise, man likes his choices and defends them.

By the way, look at my shirt.

That what they did was the correct thing.

Shocker. I did live that life. Look at me when I was fat and selling hot dogs, man. I was about, I was about, I was that YouTube life.

It's just, you know, without the camera.

I was telling Sarah, I was like, I'm nervous about going to Westport or like Connecticut or like if we're going to move to the suburbs. And she's like, why? I was like, well, one of my favorite things to do is like, so every day I like to go to this gas station near my house and get a Diet Dr Pepper and loiter. Like I just like the Yeah, I get a Slim Jim and a Diet Dr Pepper and I'll like dab it up with like the clerk and then I'll just sit and see the regulars. Like, what's up, man? Right now, what's good? How are you? Like, I just like to loiter and like do hood rat shit, man. Yeah. And I was like, Connecticut doesn't have like hood rats or gas stations. They have like people that pump your gas. Yeah. What am I going to do? Like where, like I want to watch people buy lottery tickets and scratch-offs and like, like smoke Black Milds. Like, where am I going to hang out with? Like, I need the smell of like the woods, they call it, you know, like the blunts. And where am I going to do that? You know, like that's how you get like good ideas and you like see interesting people.

So yeah, I'm about how many incredible podcasters there are that just don't podcast, but they just chop it up sitting on steps like all day.

Or I'm walking around people that come by.

Like, can you imagine how good those people would be if we just put a mic in front of them? They just don't know. Like, they're just, they're just like, you know, it's like those like kids who are like incredible basketball players somewhere in Africa that we just don't know. We haven't found them yet. Like, just imagine the dudes that just sit on the steps all day just shooting the shit that like Joe Rogan is lucky those guys don't have a microphone and they just like sit outside of a gas station, like read newspapers.

I always be funny. I always thought it'd be funny if you like walk up and you overhear the conversation and they're like, dog, you better diversify your bonds, man. Like the Dow's down. Like just having like the most academic conversations ever because they read newspapers. Papers all day.

All right, all right, I think we've, uh, I think we've crossed, crossed the threshold.

The slab happy phase is initiated. All right, that's the pod.