SaaS CEO QUIT His Job To Start A Trash Company

That's a great idea. I'm glad I brought this up. I should do this.

I love how you were like, you gave me a great idea, but the thing you said was completely different than what I said. That's how, that's how this works. That's how this thing works. That's a little yes and there for you. To all my thespians out there. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel.

Never— All right, we're live. Sean, what are we, what are we talking about? You're kicking it off.

Well, maybe you should introduce yourself. I don't even recognize you because it's new year, new you. Am I right, Sam?

Same me, new year.

New year, same shit as always.

Yeah, nothing, nothing will change. I, I have, I didn't, I purposely didn't set any goals this year. I'm just gonna go with the flow. What, why, what do you, what do you think?

Well, I want to talk about New Year's, um, resolutions and stuff. At first, I have to apologize. We did not put out a lot of content over the last week or so. Normally, who cares? No big deal. And I thought, well, you know, this is good. Let's take a little break, spend time with the family. You're a new dad. I'm an existing dad. Let's just be quality home, homebodies here and fa— family men. Family first, right? But the thing is about family first is that the time I need podcasts the most is when I'm with my family. This might sound crazy to people who aren't podcast people. But I know there's other people like me out there who you love your family. You spend a lot of time with your family, a little too much time sometimes with your family. You need these little mini breaks. I was taking out the trash and I was, then I had to like walk my dog and I was like, I went to my favorite podcaster's channel and they didn't have anything new for me. And I was like, damn, this is what I needed. I needed a little break from the family world just to go and escape.

Who's your favorite podcaster?

I like Bill Simmons. He's— it's because I like to just listen to basketball stuff or sports things. And so I will, and I've been listening to him since, I don't know, 2006 or something. He's like the first podcaster I've ever heard. So I have this familiarity built up and when there's not a new episode, I hate it. And I realized we're that person for some people out there. We are their escape from family card or escape from the boring chore. And I know that it was holiday time, but I bet people needed us more and we weren't there. So next year we will be there. That's, that's my commitment to you, guy out there who's, who's run, has to run errands and deal with a bunch of BS.

We should have just done reruns. Could we have done a rerun and it'd been all right?

Just our voices actually, just ASMR of us saying nonsense, just gibberish for hours. Um, did you, have you ever seen this Louis C.K. skit or like, or one of his bits from his standup thing where he talks about being a dad? Now that, now that, now that you're a dad, you're gonna start to, appreciate this one joke. It's not even that funny. You know, some people are like, it's so true, that's hilarious. This is just, it's so true. It's not even that hilarious. What'd he say? He talks about, he's like, the greatest 30 seconds in the world. He's like, you know what the greatest 30 seconds in the world is? He's like, when you put your kid in the car and you fuck, you get 'em into the car seat, you finally clip it all together and then you close the door and you have like 30 seconds while you're walking from their door back to your door, and that 30 seconds of silence and solitude is everything in life. And it's so true.

This was the, the first week that I experienced where I was like, oh, a break would be nice because my, my baby has been perfect mostly, but like she goes through like a week of growing and she'll cry more than normal. Mostly she doesn't cry at all. And I remember there was a day where she cried for like an hour and I was like, I understand why people request breaks. 'Cause before I was like, why would I ever want to leave this thing? I'm getting so much dopamine from it now. It was the first time that I experienced a break. So I'm slowly understanding some of these things.

Well, do you know how chill I am when my, like our nanny will be like, oh, I'm sick or whatever she calls out sick or, you know, hey, my daughter's visiting from college. Can I have the day off? And dude, I get I, in my head, I'm like, yeah, of course, no problem. But in my soul, I'm like enraged. I'm like, how dare you make me spend all day with my kids? How dare you? How? I have to look after my own? Like, you know, this is an injustice that has happened to me.

Don't you feel guilt? You don't feel guilt? You're like, the guilt being, why am I so reliant on this person? I experienced that a little bit because we have a night nurse.

I'm past that. I fully accepted that that is the way I need to live and that that is a necessity and actually a right of mine, a core, a core human right in American right of mine.

By the way, right up there next with aioli being just flavored mayonnaise, Night Nurse is beautiful rebranding. It's basically just this young woman who I have no idea what her credentials really are, but she just like plays on her phone while she lays on the couch next to my daughter. And when she cries at this point, now it's only one night a week or one time a night, and she gives her a bottle and then just goes back to sleep. And I'm basically paying someone a full-time salary to live and sleep on my couch. And because we call it a nurse, I think there's some type of medical component. It ain't.

There ain't. If it was called, uh, if it was called like sleep sitter, yeah, it's a babysitter. We just pay her, you know, to help with one, one, one moment while we sleep. It'd feel a little different than night nurse.

Yes. Beautiful rebranding.

By the way, I think that the aioli for this has got to be au pair, by the way. What a word. What a fantastic word. Okay.

We can move on. Yeah, au pair is a beautiful one too, by the way. Do it. We're thinking about getting an au pair and I was like, wait, so we just get this like young 23-year-old who's just going to be living at our home and it's kind of weird. It's pretty weird. What do you think about it?

It's weird, right? Okay. So now I want to talk about resolutions. So in the past, do you do resolutions? You said you didn't do it this year. Is that part of like chill mode?

Yeah. So, so, so what I do is I have 4 categories. And I named them all Fs because it's cute. So family, fitness, fun, finances. So I'll usually have a finance goal of like, I want to make this much money. I want to launch this thing, do this. That's a business thing.

Friendship would be the last one. And I was so excited for myself there, but okay. Finances works too.

That's fun.

That's fun. The forgotten fifth F. Okay.

That's fun. So fun is like trips. I want to do this with friends, whatever. Family is, uh, you know, Sarah and I want to achieve this thing together. We want to communicate more. I don't know, whatever it is. And then fitness is, you know, this much weight lifted, this whatever. Normally I do that. Right now I've not set it and I'm set, I'm going to do quarterly, but I'm not going to start it for another month. Yeah.

Oh dude, I'm in the same boat. I have a very, very similar exercise that I do. I think mine are like, you know, work, play, love, and you know, whatever fitness or health, you know, stuff like that.

My branding is a lot better. You should do family, fitness, finance, fun.

Well, I just don't want to use your thing now because I feel like, oh, I'm going to do Sam's New Year's resolutions today. Kill me now. All right. So, so, so I agree with what you normally do and I normally do the same, but I don't know why I had an extreme aversion to it this year. And so I looked up some alternatives to New Year's resolutions. The aversion I think came from a bunch of Thread Boys on Twitter. I think honestly there's just like a lot of content on Twitter right now of people being like, just wrapped up the annual plan, annual review of 2023 and my predictions and plans for 2024. And I was like, oh, this is too much for me. I can't, I need to just get away from this.

Yeah. And no one hits them.

And in general, I would say if I try to think of, all right, what is it? What is the new stuff I'm going to do? It's such a small boy attitude. To be like, yeah, I waited till the, uh, I waited till the 1st to do the things I wanted to do. It's like, no, I like anything I wanted to do, anything I realized I should do, a decision I just made in, in that moment and started doing it immediately. I just did it on November 21st instead of January 1st. And so I think it's—

what are your alternatives?

Okay, so a couple alternatives. You tell me if you like these or not. So saw this on TikTok. This is definitely such a, a sort of Gen Z approach to life. They go, New Year's resolutions, goals, ugh, what are you, my dad? Bingo card. New Year's bingo card. So here's, here's how a New Year's bingo card works. I don't know how many things are on a bingo grid. I think it's like 16 squares. So you just come up with 16, but also leave a couple blank if you can't think of them. Gen Z, that's how we roll. Um, you just come up with some things that you might do this year. It's a maybe, it's a huh, huh, might go, might go on a travel, might go backpacking through Central America. Might not though. Um, might start dating somebody. Also fine alone.

And that's blank.

You just come, you know, you come up with squares of things that might be fun to do this year. Got it. And then you just see if you do them. And if you do them, bingo. You just try to shade it in. You shade in the square and you see how. You, you get a bingo card and it's a low pressure vision, but it's like an actionable little vision board. And I was like, I think I kind of like this.

By the way, on my bingo card this year, if I were to do it, I, they're in Houston, they're doing a zero-G flight and it's $5,000 and they take you up into this. Have you seen that? They take you up into like a 747 that's like empty and it's like full of like pillows and you float for like 20 seconds at a time. That's gonna be on my bingo card this year. I'm, I'm scared of it, but, and I, so I might do it.

Might do it. What an attitude. What a, what a new attitude. What a refreshing attitude to the new year. Right? So the Gen Z bingo card. All right. Here's another one. This has come from the, uh, the psychology world. Here are my New Year's anticipations. What, what is that? You just say things you're looking forward to this year. You just brainstorm. You just say, oh man, I'm looking forward to that. That would be so fun. That would be amazing. And the reason why is these psychologists did a study and they found that actually more joy is derived from the anticipation of an event from versus the actual event itself. And like, I just had this with my kids for Christmas. Like we did the Elf on the Shelf thing. And just in general, like the build, the whole buildup to Christmas Day and the idea of Christmas morning and opening up all your presents. Like I got 25 days of joy out of that from them because The anticipation. And then on the day of, you know, they woke up, they started ripping presents open. They didn't even know which one to play, which toy to play with. And, uh, and it was over like an hour. And then they were like, okay, can we have cartoons with breakfast now?

And I was like, yep.

All right. I guess back to the routine. And, uh, and it was kind of done. And I just realized these people are right. New Year's anticipations might be a thing because instead of planning and committing like some, some brute alpha saying, I'm gonna do this. You just say, oh, I can't wait to have X experience. I can't wait to do Y. And that, that might be a little bit more, more fulfilling. What do you think? 8.

All right. 8. I give that an 8. That's pretty good.

Wow. Okay. I thought you were pretty in on bingo card.

Bingo card is cool. And I, you know, anytime you said, if you say I read a study that said this, it's like saying, it's like when a restaurant has a sign that says world's greatest cup of coffee. I have a rule that if I see a restaurant that says world's greatest blank, I always go to it. That's my rule. Because I think if you have the audacity to say that, then I will give you the, I'll try it. So that, that, if you say, yeah, so like, uh, hearing someone say a study once said just makes me weak in the knees and gets me all hot and bothered. So I'm into that.

You know, the funny thing, by the way, so I saw that and I was like, you didn't see a study on it. That's something. No, so I was like, who, oh, I was like, for the first time ever, I was like, yeah, I'll take the special, right? Like, you know, the waiter reads you the specials. You've never ordered the special. I was like, let me read the study. And I scrolled down and it said University of Scranton.

And I was like, uh, pretty sure that's a made-up town from The Office.

I don't think Scranton exists. And so, oh, oh, Dunder Mifflin came out with a study this year. So this is probably bullshit, but, uh, nevertheless, that's, that's where the study came from. All right, here's another one. There's this guy on, uh, on Twitter that's, he's made his brand all around the idea of obsession. You know this guy?

No, I wish I knew. The OCD guy? What is it?

That's awesome.

That's an awesome sentence, right? That's like actually a pretty powerful sentence. I'm in. I read it. I was like, I'm in. And I closed the tab. I was like, I don't even want to— anything else you say is going to make me like you less than that first sentence.

And I think that that is so true that one year of obsession really can change your life. If you just said this year, I'm going to be obsessed with X. And you just started to just rev up that engine of obsession. And whether it's around, you know, working out or it's around having fun or it's around, you know, this company that you're going to start or whatever it is, creating content, whatever it is. I think that's just an amazing attitude. It's different for some reason. It's different than a resolution.

That's the best. I would even say the year of like identity where you, I mean, obsession is actually better, but it's like a year where you change your identity. I remember like Do you remember like 3 or 4 years ago when I was kind of pudgy and I was like, this is the year I become a fitness influencer and I was joking, but I was like, I was gonna, I was, I was going to make fitness part of my, my identity. Right. It's the same thing. Obsession, identity. That's a, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful sentence. That's a 9.

That's a 9. Okay. You're in on that one. Um, so, okay. Another one. Forget, forget looking forward. Do a New Year's reflection. So in. Just forget the to-do list of here's a bunch of promises I'm gonna break to myself, you know, like, uh, which is what the New Year's resolutions tend to be. Instead, just triple down on the reflection. So really take a walk down memory lane, open up your camera, go through your camera roll, go watch, you know, January, February, March, April, write down what some of your best experiences were. You know, just do a little bit of a journal entry kind of to end the year. Send a few thank you notes to people or moments or people who, or experiences that you had with people just talking about how great they were or how much you appreciated having them. Reflect on, maybe everybody, I think everybody always says, oh man, I learned so much and I grew so much. And then if you ever say awesome, what'd you learn? The writer's block occurs suddenly. Silence, silence sweeps over the room. Try to actually suss out like, what did I really learn? And what were the big learning moments for me this year? This happened and my learning was X. And I did like a monster reflection exercise the other day. So fun. And I think that people should do this in a more intense way. Forget like the method, just, just do it in a more intense way. Just be like, I'm going to actually, Really try to dig in.

So I've been doing that every year for a while and I would just put them in Google Docs, but now, so like if you're listening, you're listening, I don't know what day this will go live, but if you go to theantimba.com, you'll see my reflection and The Anti-MBA, that's just my personal blog. I barely ever share it. I don't give a shit who reads it. Um, not that many people read it because I don't really share it, but I started doing this publicly now just to reflect and my family will be able to read it in 10 or 30 years, which is awesome, right? Imagine when your mom was coming to India. If, or coming from India, if she, instead of just telling you the stories, she, you could read her blog, what she thought then. And so I've been doing that a lot lately. Um, it's awesome. It's really fun. And it's awesome to go through your camera roll because your camera tells you exactly every month what's going on.

Relationship hack, learned for this from Tony Robbins. He's, he basically said once a month, he's like, me and my, he's like, it's very easy with your wife to like, uh, or your partner and just to, to kind of like get into some routine where you're just like, mostly your focus and energy is in your work or your kids or your whatever. And like that kind of dating time is gone and people try to do, to try to like, you know, reignite the spark with like, oh, it's date night tonight. But like, you're both kind of tired and you know, you already have had a bunch of conversations, not that much new stuff to share. It's like, hey, what's new with you? I don't know. The same things you've been going through, you know, like we've been together.

My in-laws were in town and they were like, hey, Sam and Sarah, do you guys want to swatch a baby and you could have a date night? And we're like, yeah, but could our date night be we're just going to go upstairs and scroll on our phone? Yeah, that sounds great.

Sam's going to turn on a bath and Sarah's going to leave the house.

Yeah. Like that was our version of date night.

So, well, I have that all the time in that case. But Tony Robbins said that he does exercise called flooding, which is he's like real romantic. He's like, just sit down and basically, um, open up the, you know, the camera roll or the videos and just watch together. You know, something from like a year ago or 3 years ago or whatever it is, and just kind of flood those memories together and it will almost re-bond you because you'll both re-experience what you've already experienced. And it's a kind of like low bar way to, it's sort of like the minimum dose you need to get like sort of a maximum impact in terms of how close you feel with somebody. And I've been doing that. It's pretty awesome. Don't do it every month, but like I do it from time to time.

You should blog this. Just create like a blog that no one, that you don't care if anyone reads and kind of force yourself to write on there. It's pretty awesome.

But dude, whenever I write something, everybody reads it. It gets like super popular and just don't share it.

It's just like, you know, like I, you know, my big thing is I read a lot of history. It's crazy. People used to like journal and diary. Remember when you were a kid and someone told me about like having a diary and I'm like, dude, that's what like chicks do. I'm not gonna write a diary. Now we're just gonna rebrand it, call it blogging, and it's way more fun.

You don't want that. Do I have it here? It's in the other room right now. But I bought not like a journal, because most journals are like very small and that's great, but like actually writing in a journal can be kind of, it's kind of hard. It's like, it's kind of limited. I bought one of those artist sketch pads, like a huge, like thick cardstock canvas thing. This thing is amazing. It's an absolute pleasure to write on and draw on. I don't feel limited in any way. Way better than a journal. I really love this thing. I leave it on my desk most days and I just have it there. I can take notes on one side. I can scribble an idea on the other. And it's just the idea of a sketchpad is just way better than these like—

Yeah. But in 20 years, your kids are going to be like, why did dad just make these stupid S's with the 6 lines? Like, what is that doodle he keeps doing? That dumb S that everyone does. Like, why does he keep drawing cubes? Like over and over again.

There's no chance my kids care about what I was thinking when I was 35 years old. Or that's the reality. Maybe one day, one little thing, but, uh, but no.

All right.

Last, uh, last one here for New Year's. So we got the bingo card, we got anticipations, we got the obsession, we got the reflection. Um, the last one is just, this one's actually not, it's kind of the best one to end on, but the magic word and the magic word is, um, you pick a theme. For really just the month. So you forget the year, year's too long. You just say, all right, January, my word, word of the month right now, the theme of this month is going to be, um, uh, playful flirting. I'm gonna flirt with everybody, right? You just come up with whatever the word is. I'm going to take every situation. I'm going to try to infuse this word into it, or as often as I can, I'm going to try to have this be the theme, right?

I actually think that's great. What's yours gonna be? Just like pizza?

That's what mine is.

Typically ranch is the default, but what doesn't get better with ranch?

Ranch.

That's so funny. Yeah, I think January's is just carbs. No, I think Taco Bell is good.

That company, by the way, is killing it. Who would've thought?

Who? Not I. Not I is the answer.

Not I. Not I. All right. Let me bring up a juicy topic. I got a big juicy one. I got one that when I was researching this, I kept giggling and I kept laughing as a bystander. This topic, it is awesome. It has made me so happy. And let me explain why. So I've got this friend, I met him in Hampton. I think he said that you knew him through one of his software companies.

He did something, he won some contest we did.

His name is Spencer Scott and he owns two software companies. The software company that I think he spoke to us about, it's pretty funny. You go to like your website, so for in our case, let's say mfmPod.com, and you could see who's on your website and you could video call with them and it just pops up and it says, hey you in Austin, if you have any questions, I'm here in real time. You can ask me questions, whatever. He's got these software companies. I think they probably do $400,000 or $500,000 a year in revenue. He makes a great living. Well, something happened to him and the way that he reacted to this is just hilarious. So Spencer lives outside of Dallas and apparently there is an issue where the trash collectors come and they leave their trash bins, like they come and pick up the bins and they leave them like all over the place. And so seeing that he's like a scrappy entrepreneur, he went on to—

I'm looking at a photo of that. Like we should post a photo of this on the YouTube channel. There's somebody's trash cans. Like one looks like it got in a WorldStarHipHop fight. It just got beat up. It's on the ground. Another one is just at the neighbor's lawn. And then one is where it's supposed to be. And he's like, This is how they left my trash again today.

And it makes, and it made the neighbors really angry. Apparently people, he had heard like people complain about this. And so the, the group, I guess it's, uh, is it called Wiley, Texas? Page Wiley, Texas?

Yeah. It says like whatever, whatever his neighborhood is like residents. And then it's in, in the little town that he's in.

Great name, by the way.

You've got to go with him.

I'm going to go with him. Not tomorrow, but over the next few weeks, we're going to— I'm going to get a videocrew. I think we've got to go do this. But this guy has started a trash can or a trash business. And so, and so let me see, I have his math here. He was like, I think a bad year is going to be about $150 grand in revenue. I think a decent year will be $250 and I think a great year will be $350. And if it works well, I'll expand to new regions. And it's crazy fascinating that he's doing this and he's doing it mostly in public where he's like tweeting out all of the stuff. Stuff that he's doing. And it's just so funny that this guy's doing this because he's like making a joke about it. So for example, he bought hoodies for himself and I guess the one employee he has. And what's the t-shirt say?

It says, uh, it says great days start with a good dump.

I love this story and I feel very invested in this. I've invested in a lot of companies. But I feel invested in this. I need this to work. Lone Star Trash. I feel like we should single-handedly pump this. And to all listeners in the, uh, where is he?

Dallas? He's, uh, 30 minutes outside of Dallas. And he explicitly said, he goes, when you talk about this pod on the pod, I'm afraid that too many people are going to go to my website and there's a buy now button. And I'm just going to have to like go through all the work of refunding them and telling them we can't service them. So I have to remind people he is only servicing one region. Right.

He's like, he says my neighborhood has, um, I think 300 or 400 houses and then there's 400 houses in the sister neighborhood. He says the trash collecting company is currently charging $33 per month per bin. So most houses have 2 bins. So it's $66 a month. So let's just do the math here. $66 a month, just his neighborhood. That's $26K a month, $316,000 a year, double it for, for both. And that's like sort of $600 grand of potential revenue if he got everybody to switch. Of course, not going to get everybody to switch, but I do think he could do pretty well. So here's, should we brainstorm a few marketing tactics for him?

Well, Spencer, if you're listening to this, which I, I'd be stunned if you didn't listen to this giant segment about your company. Me and Sam, we haven't talked about this. I don't know if Sam's cool with this, but we're going to buy your next truck for you, sir. We're going to invest in your company and we will fund your next truck and that will be The MFM trash truck. How many other podcasts do you know that will have their own trash truck?

Dude, I would 100%, I would, I would, I would put up $20 grand to partake in this.

Exactly. We're both in for $20 grand. We'll buy the next $40K truck whenever he's ready to expand this. We'll come in at a low valuation here, right? Give us a, you know, $500,000 valuation. And, uh, we as this podcast will then single-handedly promote this neighborhood by neighborhood as you expand. But I think you should do a couple of things. So. Here's a few free marketing ideas for him. Do you know, can you design the bins? Like, could he paint the bins? Could he color the bins in a different way or design them so that if you're using this trash company, your bins will look different?

I don't see why not. I mean, like a bright pink one or something.

Like the Lyft mustache back in the day. Remember when you would go through San Francisco and you'd see these cars driving with this fluffy mustache on it? You're like, what the heck is that? And then somebody would have to tell you, right? It was so weird. You had to ask, what is that? And then as soon as somebody knew, they were happy to tell you, oh, that's Lyft. It's a ridesharing company. You could actually just request a ride on your phone and then the driver will show up like that. That's his car. He puts the mustache on it. That means he's a taxi. And it's like, whoa, okay, interesting. And the Lyft, I have a Lyft mustache right here. I admired this marketing tactic so much. I stole a mustache off a car and I have this thing.

And so, so you'll have to have like, um, he could have like, he could paint like cookies on, on the bin and then the truck will look like Cookie Monster or something where it's like silly when it like goes into the truck.

It's like the Wienermobile. Do you remember that? The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile?

Yeah, exactly.

They would go to school.

Exactly. This is the Oscar Mayer playbook. And so in our town, the fire department for Christmas, they always like, they'll bring the fire truck out. They'll like play music off it. They'll put a Santa on top, do the same thing every holiday. You're putting the, your truck's gonna drive around, it's gonna be themed and it's gonna like, you know, create an occasion for the fam. Like when a garbage truck comes outside here, I grab my kids and we run outside because they love to see it. They love to see it pick up the trash, whatever. And so use, do something that's gonna get the kids to do it. So for example, go around, let the kids ride in the truck or drive the truck or something like that. Or let everybody get out their hose and wash the truck so you can like spray your hose at the truck while it's going by. Create something that's going to get kids excited to see it and families excited to see it so that they know who you are, tell your story. So I think if he does this, he could literally get like 80% of the neighborhood on board because the other trash company does no marketing whatsoever. And it sounds like they're not doing a great job. There's a little bit of an opening here to, to go in and sell a better service.

I think it's just fascinating. I think that like, obviously the margins are going to be way worse than software, but you have a recurring element here. Every— I mean, the size of the market is every home in America. And also like just somebody's doing like, you remember how we talked about Pink's? Pink's was a window cleaning company. And for some reason they just have cool hats and people have their hats. They sent me one, I wear it. It's awesome. The, like what he's doing with it, great days start with a good dump, like that little silly stuff. Or like the fact that his website is kind of funny and how it has an affiliate program. This is brilliant.

I do think he's missing that branding though in the, the tru— there's no like, uh, like, you know, Pink's is, is got its, its color. It's got its name. It's got whatever. Uh, there's like the two guys in a truck kind of like moving company. That's another good one where it's like, you know, two, two dudes in a truck. He needs something like that.

Yeah. But, uh, keep in mind, I'm pretty sure he started this 3 weeks ago. Uh, so he's like, he's like, look, why didn't he have everything figured out? Yeah. I decided this was my mission. 8 weeks ago, I'm all in, like, just, you know, you can't stop me now.

Also, we'll crowdsource this, dude. If there's a design agency that listens to the pod, you need to do a free, a pro bono, free, full branding. You know, where's Red Antler? Red Antler, I need you to do, take on this project for free in exchange for marketing collateral that you did this truck, this, uh, this trash company, uh, this local trash company in Texas branding. We need a design company to let's crowdsource all everything we need to make this happen.

And he said, uh, so I had him fill this out on 12/15. He goes, I came up with this idea 60 days ago. So what's that? That's, uh, so, uh, on October 15th, he came up with the idea, uh, and then he got customers that fast. I, I just can't believe this. It's just so funny. And he's got all these pictures of all these bins in front of his house of him and his wife cleaning the bins. Uh, it's, it's just, this is art.

Also, TikTok. He needs to go on TikTok and tell this story. I don't know if you've seen, but like, uh, so somebody posted this TikTok the other day. They go, oh, you're worried about, um, oh, like, you know, you want to start posting on TikTok, but you're worried, oh, what do I have to say, or how do I look, or whatever. And the woman goes, do you know what I watch on this app? I watch, I watch guys cut sand. I watch women clean houses. I watch, and it's like, I watch a massage therapist. I don't even get the massage. I watch other people get massages. Dude, I watch chiropractors and fruit getting crushed. Yeah. Cracking necks and opening up avocados. Like, you know, what are you waiting for? And I think that is a, you know, Marc Andreessen did, it's time to build as this rally cry. There's like the equivalent one of like, do you know what I watch? I'll watch anything is the rally cry of TikTok. And I think he's got to tell the story of like this dad, this father of two who got so annoyed with his trash company that he's just decided like, all right, F it, I'm doing this.

He says that he goes, his goal is, uh, 24 customers in less than 18 months, which is around a thou— a million dollars in ARR. Uh, he said he's gonna hit 1,000 customers in the first 6 months. And his first day driving the truck, he's, he goes, I screwed around with it a little bit to test it out. Uh, but I really like am just getting going tomorrow for the first time. And then listen to this, listen to this guy's humor. He goes, I go, are you looking to hire for certain positions? He goes, yeah. In fact, as I'm typing this, I'm sitting at the bar at Dave Buster's watching adults play the claw game. Anyone who wins, I slipped in my biz card and give them an invite to make $20 an hour driving my trash trucks.

This guy, he's great, man.

He's great. He's great. He's full of humor. This is awesome. This is a really cool thing that he started as just like a stupid idea, but it's got legs. And I think that this is going to be awesome.

This can make, because I think Spencer also wants a bit of, a bit of fame, a little bit of content fame.

Of course.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Not just that. I think he, you know, from meeting him, I think he has an urge that I have a very primal urge inside, which is like, I just want to live. Like, I just want to do something different with my life. You know, like I just want to do something different than the like path. Like, okay, I get it. I could do the path. But I really don't want to just do the path. I think Spencer has this, which is what leads somebody to do something like this. And I, my, it sounds like he's already pretty all in, but triple down, go even further all in, rebrand yourself as Trash Daddy, tell your story to the world, like do the unnecessary, like, you know, every Sunday have a theme. You know, like remember how Gagan used to do this with Sprig? He used to put a truffle in every box. Like, you know, every time you ordered, you get a little chocolate truffle with it. Like, just keep coming up with surprise and delight ways to go do the absolute unnecessary because that's what people pay attention to.

The things that you do. Yeah, like leaving a toy trash truck in people's mailbox or something like that.

Exactly. Sam, brilliant.

I should be doing this, frankly. This is, this is my type of business.

Spencer, get out of the way.

Yeah. Yeah. He's the Ryan Graves. I'm the Travis Kalanick. I need to take this thing over. Uh, this needs to be my business.

Okay. His ass on this. Yeah. That's so funny.

No, I think this is awesome. So what's his handle? His just, if you look up Spencer Scott, I think his handle is AKA Spencer Scott, um, on Twitter. This is going to be a really fun journey for us to follow along. And we're early in the, we're early on this and we're going to help make this a thing. This is awesome. By the way, Spencer, if you're listening, holler at us. I know I talked to you about this before, but So now it's public record.

Yeah, that was awesome. Okay. Wow. What a segment. What a way to start off the new year. That was, that was amazing. That's what this podcast is all about. If this is your first time listening to this podcast, that's what this podcast is all about.

Yeah. Finding cool stuff.

All right. I wanted to tell you another, just like fun product real quick. This is a quick one. Click this link to this thing, Birdie. Birdie.design is the name of it.

Dude, I can't tell if these things are popular. Like, is this like a yellow cab where like I noticed one and they're everywhere or have they always been everywhere? We talked about this type of stuff a while ago. Uh, it's everywhere now.

I've, I've never seen one. You've seen one of these in real life? No.

Uh, well, go ahead and explain what it is.

Or a thermostat. Just a thermostat.

You can't argue with somebody who is just saying, we're just not going to do it. You know, all the bad ways you could do this. We're not going to do any of those. Just beautifully done. And Nest is a thermostat. That's just, this is beautifully done. This is an air quality monitor that is beautifully done. So go to birdie.design and you'll see it. It's this white circle with a small yellow bird, like the Twitter, old Twitter logo. And when it's, it's like, uh, when it's pointed up like a cuckoo clock, that means the quality is good. If the air quality in your house ever drops, rather than, you know, beeping like an annoying smoke alarm or having tons of numbers and strange colors and you're like, oh God, you get stressed out. The bird just changes positions just to tell you that, hey, the air quality is not great right now., and then you look in your app and it'll tell you all about it. So this thing is awesome. I think it's big in Europe. It's not actually, they're like just now, like, actually, I don't know if this is true, but they're expanding to the, to the States now. I think it's bigger in Europe. I think this is a fantastic idea. Beautiful website.

The currency is DKK. What's DKK? Um, some type of monopoly money. I don't know.

Yeah.

Danish krone.

Ah.

Proner. Yes.

How could I forget? So yeah, this thing costs 2,000 DKK, an unknown amount of dollars.

$300. $300. That's 300.

It's beautiful. It's a piece of art. It's wonderful.

Yes, exactly. So she was saying like, you know, she's like, I noticed that sleep or sleep quality went through this crazy trend over the last, like, you know, 4 years where sleep became like, you know, the vogue kind of health trend. And, um, she's like, I think air quality is going to be next. Look at the growth of the, of the air quality subreddit, the products on Amazon that are there. And it's kind of like an immature space. And I think this is a wonderful beautiful product design for a product that's, that's in that space.

Yeah. I mean, I'm looking at the Amazon ratings right now. I mean, some of these products have tens of thousands of reviews. Um, this is going to be a thing, man. This is going to be like the next version of Ring, I think. Uh, these air quality controls. But the thing about it is I don't know if this is pseudoscience, like, like, I don't know the truth of—

are you willing to bet your life on it? That's the beauty of these products, right?

That's the beauty is it's like a dog vitamin. It's like, I don't fucking know if this works, like, like, I'll buy that insurance.

Like, right. But don't you love your dog? Yeah.

How do I get CO2 out of my house? I can tell you, I don't know. Breathe less. I don't know. Remove the car from the living room. I don't know how to do it.

It's coming from me, I think. Like, don't fart outside.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know how to do it, but when I see it, I'm like, that sounds important. It's like the word leaky gut or a juice cleanse. Like, well, if you use those words, I guess I have to do it.

Right. I don't know if I have leaky gut. But I sure as hell, uh, am willing to like take any product that will stop it, you know, just in case.

Um, all right. I've got one more quick thing.

Yeah, you go.

I need some advice.

Hmm.

So I own a Facebook group. You know, one of my hobbies is I have Facebook groups. I'm one of the only people that actually do that. I actually have 3 or 4. I've got a couple that are in the 60 and 70,000 range. But I have one that when Trend shut down, I just posted in there and I said, um, I don't know what I'm going to do with this, but here's a Facebook group. I call it, uh, I actually am not going to say the name of it because I don't want to get flooded with new people joining. And I just said, uh, this Facebook group is going to close down. I just made a new one. You guys can all hang out in there. It's got 3,000 members. Most of them are people who have small businesses doing hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's mostly like those types that size of business. I have no intention to monetize it, but I wouldn't be lying if in the back of my head, I'm just thinking this could be something I'm missing out here. The group has a lot of traction. People post every single day. Are you a member of it?

Uh, I think what did you call it? Uh, let's, let's give it a, you want to give it a plug or you don't want to give a plug?

It's called shit.

Yeah. Terrible name.

I think it's a hilarious name and it's in the tagline is shipping products with the bold, fast, fun energy. It's a community of people who build and talk business that are bold, fast, fun. The Artists Formerly Known as Trends, we're a pirate ship of people who care about talking nerdy business stuff, showing off projects, asking questions, and commiserating with our fellow pirates. And mostly because Trends kicked us out and we're a bunch of degens, we need a place to go to. Uh, and so I created this group. It's got 3,000 members, dozens of posts per day. If I wanted to monetize this, which I actually am not sure I will, because I don't want to work on it. What would you do?

The real answer is kind of a boring answer. I would absolutely not bother monetizing this.

I'm not going to. There's a 1% chance.

Let me tell you some reason why. You have an incredible business that you already, you know, own and can focus on. Any ounce of mindshare and timeshare that you spend on not that business, on some really secondary business is dumb and wasted.

I agree. I agree. So that's the first thing. But, but we are a podcast where we talk about stuff.

Right, right, right.

So for the sake of argument, I'll tell you what you could do. So I do think you probably should have called it something like The Artist Formerly Known as Trends. I think that's like a better, uh, better name. I think you could simply reboot Trends. That's the first simple, obvious idea, right? So, uh, let's not, let's not, you know, overcomplicate things. People liked Trends. These are people that already were in Trends and paying customers of Trends. Trends is now free slash like, you know, different, let's just say. So there's an opportunity to do this. I actually think this is true about many businesses. There is this window, like, I don't know, 3 years after a company's been acquired where you can literally just start the same company again. This is so common. I see this all the time. People can literally build the same company and re— the guy we sold the Milk Road to, he did the same thing. He built a company, sold it for $45 million. And then he built the same company, sold it again to $45 million to the same company. And then finally they were like, hey, non-compete this time. Like, you can't do this again to us. And people really, really underestimate how much you could do this, especially a few years after a company's been acquired, a product's been acquired, because by that time the team has changed, the product's been folded in, you know, like a whole bunch of stuff has gone awry.

So I think that's the easiest thing you could do. I believe they shut down Trends because I think it had 500,000 people on the list, on the email list. And HubSpot was like, dude, like Trends charges $300 a year. It probably makes, I don't know what it made, but let's say $5 or $6 million a year. And we have 400,000 people saying they're interested, but haven't bought it yet. We can make way more money just making it free and a portion of them will buy our software. And so, but like many entrepreneurs would be like, Yeah, but $5 million or $6 million a year with 2 people running it, that's pretty dope. I would like that as well.

You've given me ideas. So look, here's how I think about some of these small projects. I think I don't want to spend a second doing it, but what I love about little projects like this is there's people in my family, there's people who I'm friends with. I'm like, I don't want to spend a second doing this, but I will give this to you as long as you keep it awesome. And it makes a little bit of money for yourself. You can just pay yourself with all that money. I don't care. But as long as this thing lives and it's great, I don't need to make a cent from it. I think what I can do is make this, um, a thing where the community stays amazing. And once or twice a month, I can have a sponsor that pays a small enough salary for the person running it to make, uh, to make a living while keeping the community great. That's a great idea. I'm glad I brought this up. I should do this.

I love how you were like, you gave me a great idea, but the thing you said was completely different than what I said. That's how, that's how this works. That's how this thing works. That's a little yes and there for you. To all my thespians out there. Sam just yes anded. With a huge leap.

Didn't you say sponsored?

Yeah, I said the word sponsored.

Oh, you're talking about job posts on Hacker News. That's why I was saying one to the other.

What Paul Graham didn't do. And then you go, that's what I should— you stopped listening and then you said sponsorships. That's a great idea.

For the record, I'm not going to, I'm not going to spend any more than 10 minutes a month on this thing. I'm not actually going to do anything. But it is fun. This is the point of the podcast is to think about this stuff. We'll see what happens, but I'm not personally going to spend a second with this. But you know what I mean? All these young bloods that we have in our crew who I would love to work with in some capacity, and I don't have an option to work with them or something. I'm just thinking about it. Uh, I'm just, I'm going to start doing yes and like to my wife. It says like, Hey, let's go do this. Yeah, let's do that.

And we're going to do it differently than what you said. We're going to do what I said instead.

Yes, sand is my new thing. Yeah, that's a great idea. And also at that time, we're going to do this other thing.

You're like, what are you going to eat for dinner? And I'm like, well, I had Thai for lunch. So not that. You're like, Thai? That's a great idea. I'm so glad you said Thai.

That is so fucking funny. I'm going to yes and the shit out of people from now on.

Well, the beautiful thing about yes anding people is instead of— they can't like argue with you because you're like, ooh, are you trying to be a buzzkill and not yes and here? Are you trying to like stop our flow? They're like, oh, I guess I got to go with this. It's not going the direction I want, but I guess.

Last thing. You have Camp MFM coming up on Wednesday. I had to bow out because I'm committed to this whole, this whole being a parent thing, you know, whatever that thing is, the whole, this whole, you know, being a person dad and all that nonsense. I'm committed to it. I saw the flyer you made for it. And I did not have any FOMO until I saw that the Airbnb founder is going. In particular, the Airbnb founder Who interviewed me for my job at Airbnb and then fired me 4 days later, 1 day before I was supposed to start. He's going, and I would've loved to have gone to see that guy. He, uh, by the way, he fired me for just cause. He was right. I was wrong. Why? Um, how'd you get him? Ben.

Ben is the easy answer. So we, we went into Camp MFM this year with a, a fresh mindset. New year, new us.

And Camp MFM is basically Sean and Ben. You went and found Last year, or we did 2 years ago, 15 people, including MrBeast, maybe 20 people. You, last year we went to a kind of a crummy house that was just huge. And you somehow got us all Nikes. And then we went like basketball shoes. And then we went and like played basketball.

We tried it last year.

It was amazing. MrBeast, I tweeted out the thing. I said, here's my dream for an event. And I had 3 bullet points and I put out a Google form. And in that Google form, there was like 200 people replied, of which 199 we did not invite to the event. But one of them was MrBeast. And I didn't even know he followed us. I thought it was a prank when I was like, oh yeah, sure. Your Twitter handle's MrBeast. Yeah, sure. Whatever. And then his email was like a real name, but it was kind of like a Yahoo or something like that. I was like, ah, this has got to be Fake. Then I get a DM, so I don't even reply. The next day he DMs me, says, so are we doing this or what? And I like, you know, spit out my drink and I was like, oh shit. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. We're doing this. Uh, where do you live? Oh, North Carolina. Funny coincidence. We're doing it there. And so I was like, I'm gonna make this easy for him.

And so we just so happened to be doing it in Greenville, North Carolina.

Yeah, exactly. And so we went, you were there. It was a great time. There's 27 people and we, We invited this guy who trains a bunch of NBA stars like Kyrie Irving and Trey Young and these guys, he used to train Kobe and he came down and he basically was like kind of our coach and it was a bunch of out of shape, you know, business people plus a couple of entertainers. So like, you know, people from the entertainment world that joined as well. Anyways, it was a good time. So this year we wanted to do it again, but we made, you know, came up with some differences. So I was like, even less people. Last year we had 27 people. This year we cut it down to, I think, 17, which was, we really only tried to have 15, but we ended up with 17. We said, well, we don't want to do it with the same exact group every single year. Because again, the point of this is we're trying to rotate kind of like, you know, just meet people. We want to use it as an excuse to meet people we want to meet.

And so, by the way, you forgot, we all lived, or it was only 2 nights, but we all stayed in the same Airbnb. It was just a huge house. It was like a family's house. That had all their, like, like I shared a slumber party. I shared a, I shared a bunk bed with Ramon and his son. And, uh, and then they had like a lake that we were swimming in. It was awesome. It was a crappy like inside house, but that's actually made it amazing. It made it really fun.

Well, it was the best house in Raleigh, North Carolina, but that says more about Raleigh, North Carolina than it does the house. So, so it was, uh, but so this year we were like, all right, we're doing it again. And, um, we came up with kind of a dream guest list now. Why did I say that Ben was the way that we got the Airbnb guy to come? Because Ben somehow just like, he is the Twitter API. Like he just consumes so much content that he know, I was like, you know, it's like an AI search. I was like, who is a super interesting business person who also loves to play basketball? And he's like, oh, I think the Airbnb guy plays basketball every weekend. And I was like, how could you possibly know that?

And he owns the San Antonio Spurs.

He owns the San Antonio Spurs. And I was like, Oh wow. So we reach out to Joe, Joe's assistant, he finds me his email. I cold email him and I say, hey, you don't know me from, you don't know, my name's Sean, but you don't know me from John. Here's this event that we're doing. I think you would really like it. Yeah, we'd love to have you. And he calls me and he's like, basically calls me, asks me some questions, but I could tell it's just like, are you like an insane person? Like, do I want to be around you for 2 days or not? And so he's coming. There's a, the guest list is kind of amazing. So I'm going to do a recap of it afterwards, but what a thing to manifest. Like, you know, Jess Ma came on the podcast and she said this thing. She's, I was like, so you run a venture studio, an idea lab. Like, what do you call it? She's like, oh no, I don't call it anything. She's like, I have a team of people that are like my little manifestation company. Like if I want to make something happen, they just help me make it happen, make it come, make it go from idea. To a thing. And now that's how I think about what me and Ben do. It's not like a holding co. It's like a manifestation co. It's what is the life we want to have? And then we just sort of make it so. And this is one thing that I would want to have as my kind of like annual thing that I do. Yeah, I got to tell you, so I'm flying out tomorrow, right? So I'm like, all right, I got to get my haircut and my beard trim. I got to get fresh.

By the way, your haircut looks quite good. You should do that more often.

But you'll notice my hair might look good, but my beard looks untouched. Why is that? What happened? Let me tell you a little story. So this is a little—

I didn't think that.

Well, I think that. And so I, uh, I go to this barbershop. Normally I have this guy who comes to my house, cuts my hair, and, uh, it's like a routine, so I don't need to think about it, but he couldn't come. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna go to this place. I go and, uh, this, I'm like, great. Yeah, I got this big event. Just need a, you know, little standard F-boy haircut, trim the beard a little bit and, uh, we're good, right? He's like, I don't do beards. And I was like, pretty sure I booked that. What do you mean? Um, he's like, I was like, this is a barbershop, right? Like, what else do you do if not hair and beards? He's like, he's like, I just don't want to mess it up. I was like, well, I also don't want you to mess it up, but I needed— all right, whatever. Weird, but okay. And then he's like, okay, what do you want for your haircut? I show him a picture and he starts doing it. And, um, super nice guy, but I noticed that his hand is like really trembling while he's cutting my hair. And I'm like, okay, this is interesting. Um, I feel bad for him, but you know, Sam, I also feel bad for me because you don't want to get your hair cut by somebody whose hand is trembling with clippers. So I'm like, okay, this is now a high-risk situation. I'm about to go to my biggest event of the year. I hired this vlogger guy to follow me around. I'm not trying to have an effed up haircut. But I put my faith in this guy. We did it. The haircut turned out okay. I was like, you know what, Beard Trim, forget I ever said it, not doing it. And he's like, at the end, he goes, thank you so much. You have been so kind to me. And I go, I didn't do anything. What do you mean? I just sat here and got my haircut. He's like, I was so nervous. I have never done that haircut.

And I was like, hey man, What the hell? What?

Why are you telling me this afterwards?

You got the most basic haircut that every guy ever has.

I was like, this is the standard guy haircut. What do you mean? This is a barbershop. You work here, right? Like, did I just ask a customer to cut my hair? Most bizarre experience. He's like, I was so nervous. He's like, I've done one of these before and I totally screwed it up. Bianca, she's amazing. He points at this woman, Bianca. He goes, she had to fix it for me. She's so good with the clippers. I'm like, why did Bianca cut my hair? What's happening right now?

You should ask him if he wants to— you should tell him he should start a trash company. He'd fit right in.

Dude, it's not racist experience, am I right? I was laughing so hard. I was like, what just happened to me? This is like a comedy skit.

It's going to be Wednesday to Friday. I'm— this is the— I just got FOMO for the first time last night when I saw that Joe was going to be there. I'm bummed I can't go. Hopefully you do good and hopefully you get some good podcasts.

Yeah, that's a lot of pressure. I'm just going to try to have a good time. That's my goal.

No, or make videos that get views. I'm chasing bingo cards. All right, that's the pod.

I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.