How to hijack attention: Lessons from jingles, candy crush, and betting sites
All right. I've got a thing I want to fill you in on, and this is something I've been thinking about lately. And I think that you actually, you're going to bring more application to this topic than I am. And so it's my theory, but I want to hear how you would apply this idea that I have.
All right.
Hit me. So did you see that blonde-haired woman? She had that song that was like looking for a man in finance, 6'4", whatever. Yeah. What was it? What was it?
Blasphemy. 6'5", bro.
6'5". Finance Trust Fund, 6'5".
Yeah. Blue eyes or whatever. Dude, have I seen that? Chat, has there been 10 minutes in my house where either me or my daughter is not singing that song? My 4-year-old daughter, by the way. It's very different when your daughter says it. My dad hormones kicked in and I was like, you ain't looking for— what are you looking for? You're looking for your Barbie, your toys. Get— you're looking for Legos is what you're looking for. 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. There was really funny follow-ups where people are like, let's do the math on that, by the way. How many men are 6'5"? It's like 0.1%. How many people live in New York City? How many have a trust fund? And it was like, you know, and they're single.
It was like, there was like 7 guys left.
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty funny, but that got me thinking. And before I tell you exactly what it is, I have to ask you a question. Do you know your mother's or father's cell phone number by heart?
I do not.
So for the life of me, I couldn't tell you my wife's phone number. I could tell you the area code, but I couldn't tell you her number, which is like a big deal. However, how many commercials from the '90s do you remember?
I want my baby back, baby back, baby back. I want my baby back.
$5. $5. We know what, we know what comes up after that. I don't even have to have known you, right? You could be a complete stranger, but if I'm like, $5, $5, the guy's gonna say footlong at the end of that.
So I got really interested in jingles. Because I don't remember my wife's phone number. You don't remember your parents' phone numbers, but I can cite all these jingles. In fact, I follow Instagram accounts where it's like commercials from the '90s. The '90s, because that's when we were kids, and for a lot of listeners, that was the heyday of these jingles and commercials. And in my opinion, we need to bring that back. And I want to tell you, I'll give you a little, little bit, a short history of, of jingles. So in the '90s, something like 15% of commercials had jingles. Now it's closer to 1%. So in the '20s, this company called General Mills came out with this thing called Wheaties, Wheaties cereal. And it wasn't that big of a hit early on. And so they were like, let's write a song about it. And we're going to create a commercial on the radio for Wheaties. And it's the first time that there was ever a dedicated commercial for a product. And the Wheaties wasn't really doing that well for the first 3 or 4 years. That song comes out in year 5 or so, it takes off. And now Wheaties is like a huge brand that we all know. And I just, I think that we need to do more of that. In the '90s, it kind of kicked ass because when we were kids, there was what, like 50 or 60 channels? So there was less channels. And the key to a jingle sticking and like something to remember is you need to hear it tons and tons of times. So when the Wheaties commercial came out, they ended up playing this song something like 300 times a day on a variety of radio stations and back then there weren't actually that many radio stations. And so repetition is important. However, once YouTube, Facebook, whatever came about, we have so many different channels. However, when you run Facebook ads, you can increase the repetition, the frequency, I think they call it, right? You can increase frequency. And so you could see like, am I hitting the same person 20, 30, 50 times? A lot of times with ads, it's just a photo, right? It's usually a photo for like, there's little silly trends, like for a long time, It was pointing an arrow at something or zoom in on someone's face. There's like little silly trends that you'll see one successful brand do, everyone copies them. Yeah.
One we had was we would write the ad in the Notes app on iPhone, take a screenshot of that. So it looked like someone was sharing a screenshot from Notes, but it was actually just an ad.
Yes. And I remember reading or seeing this short video. It was launched at Sundance, actually. It was like a featurette in 2016. Maybe you saw this. But it was about people who have Alzheimer's and they were like really bad, you know, they're elderly, have Alzheimer's and they were just out of it all the time. And so these doctors played music that the people would've listened to when they were in their 20s and 30s. And all of a sudden it clicks and they start singing the song and they're like, oh, I remember this song. I was in the army doing this or whatever. And that's when I met my wife. And then they like have the next 3, 4, 5 minutes, they're like, Speaking normal, and it kind of like made me realize music is really important for that reason, but particularly for advertising brands and products. And I've been trying to think about what does a jingle have that makes it work? And so I have it down to a few things, and this is a little bit for the modern day jingle, what it needs. The first thing that I think it needs is it needs a little bit of cringiness. I think with ads, we be like, this needs to be cool. Like it needs to be a little bit overly cringe. That's the second thing that you have to have is it has to be incredibly repetitive. For example, do you remember that song? Don't you wanna Fanta, Fanta? Don't you wanna? Like you need to say the brand many, many, many times.
Like Chiquita Banana.
Yeah. So the Chiquita Banana ad is actually interesting. So that ad, it was like a sexy banana dressed up as like a Cuban lady dancer. And she was like singing and dancing and it was all, and it was all about when do you know a banana is ready to eat? And so she was singing about like, you can, you should peel me back when you see a little bit of brown, like whatever. It was kind of like sexualized and awesome. And that ad would play hundreds of times a day. It was awesome. I love when people sexualize stuff, by the way. My friend Neville had an ad for why you should buy this set of fonts from him. And he was like, when I whisper Geranda, does it make you weak in the knees? If so, this is for you. And so I love when they do that. And then the last thing you need is a call to action. So do you remember this song where it's like, call J.G. Wentworth, 877-CASH-NOW? Do you remember that song?
Yeah, you can remember full phone numbers when it comes to a jingle, right? You started this by saying, can't remember your wife or your mom's number, but we can remember some company's phone number, 1-800-whatever, if they put it in a jingle.
And so this whole kind of rant is, I think we need to bring them back. Now the problem is, is that I don't exactly have like a consumer brand to do this on. You do, and you work a little bit more consumer stuff.
Why can't you do this for Hampton, by the way?
I could, and I should. So that was a bullshit excuse.
Yeah. Thank you.
Do you see this working with your stuff in consumer?
Well, I would say in theory, I'm all there with you as in a jingle's work is a non-debatable statement. Would jingles work for my brand? Well, why not? Jingles work. So we're back to square one. Do jingles still work? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it still works. I think you might have to tweak the form factor, maybe make it a little shorter or whatever. You know, like McDonald's, like what they do now is they have their whole commercial and then it's ba-da-ba-ba-ba, I'm loving it, right? Just, they just hit that at the end as like a little 5-second hook at the end, which was shorter than maybe how, how jingles used to be where it was much more of the whole commercial. So I think there's maybe some tweaks that people are doing to them, but they, they for sure still work. So I'm with you. And I'm also with you that I'm surprised that they've declined because the brain has not changed. In fact, there's a thing I think people call the phonic loop or something like that, the phonetic loop. I don't, I forgot how they call it, but it's like the, the people who study the brain and the ear and there's like neurologists, there's even somebody called like a musicologist. They basically try to figure out why is it that when we teach kids that they learn easier through nursery rhymes.
Yeah, there's like a nursery rhyme. To like learn your, your home address. Like, have you ever seen those?
Dude, I could tell you Caracas, Venezuela, Lima, Peru, right? I could tell you like the capitals of South America that I haven't thought about in 30 years. But when I was 6 years old, some teacher taught us the song, right? Or all of the states, right? I could teach my daughter the states much faster than I could teach her numbers because I could turn it into a song. And so there's something in this, right? And I think they call it earworms. It's basically the, what they call it when they, a small repetitive snippet of a song or a slogan or a jingle just gets stuck in your ear, right? And that's called an earworm. And so using this to improve recall, improve memory, and even make your brand associated with something that's kind of fun or upbeat or positive definitely has value. Now, the question is, why don't I or you or any of us kind of modern marketers use this? And I think really most people would say, well, it doesn't work anymore. The form factor changed. People got over it. Blah, blah. I don't think any of that's true. I think it's just like fashion. I think it's marketing fashion trends. I think it's out of vogue right now. And as soon as somebody brings it back in, it will become a thing again.
Remember DatPiff? That was where like mixtapes were. It was like rappers. So this was, it was like Lil Wayne would put out like a rap a day on DatPiff and he would just churn these suckers out. I think you need a certain creative type of person to be able to do this, but we can definitely churn these out. In a relatively fast way and see what works, which is different than a commercial. But one of the reasons why I think it went away is so the things that you and I liked when we were 9 or 8 years old, by the time we're 15 to 25, that's like, that's lame. That's no longer cool. But then we get in our 30s and we're like, oh, I remember that. That was awesome. You know, that was so cool. Like, it's kind of like the feeling that you get when you see a Surge, like a Surge drink, like a soda. You're like, oh, I remember that. That was so awesome. I remember that as a kid and you get like this nostalgia. And so I think what we can do is look at all of the past things that worked well with the brands that we liked when we were younger. I really think you can replicate them within like the law and actually not copy. And the reason I think that is because the $5 footlong song and McDonald's songs, they're coming back. And so they're reusing a lot of these songs now because once your customer base is a bit older, you can reuse the same stuff and it becomes cool again because it's nostalgic.
I'm subscribed to My First Million on YouTube. There we go. Well, we could workshop that. If you want your ad to be memorable, which we all do, then using one of the most sticky things, which is like a jingle, it compresses several things together, right? A feeling, a positioning, right? $5 footlong. Nationwide is on your side, right? Like compresses a position plus a feeling into 4 seconds, 5 seconds, 7 seconds, and in a package that is now easily transmissible, right? You can sing it, you can hum it, you could self-tell it to another person as well as sticks with you. So like, of course that's a good thing if you can do it. I got something that's kind of interesting, totally different angle, but I think you'll like it. Are you familiar with Polymarket?
Is it gambling for crypto?
Well, that's one way of looking at it. It's a prediction market, which is sort of an AO Libanese situation with gambling and reframing gambling. But It actually is a way to go bet on a prediction that you believe will happen. So if I go to Polly Market right now, I'll see the top bet. $237 million has been bet on who will be the winner of the 2024 presidential race. And right now Trump is a 61% bet, Joe Biden 19%, you know, odds, Kamala is 10%, et cetera. And so you could see for any idea you have that there could be a betting market for it. So like, you know, you can go to sports and right now the, I think the Euro Soccer Cup is happening right now and Spain is the top favorite bet with 34%, or you can bet on Wimbledon right now, but you can also bet in like scientific things. Like there's a bet right now, what will be the June 2024 temperature increase? And it's like, you know, more than 1.09, less than 1.09, you know, you can bet on will this hurricane hit the United States? Yes or no? And right now that bet has played out where like if you click it, you could see that when it started, it only had an 18% chance of yes. Right now it's a 99% chance, which means it's about to hit or almost certainly hit. So that bet is played out or playing out right now.
And you could see the top bettors. So there's a guy named Revenge Tour 1984 who's bet $2.3 million this week.
No, I don't, I don't know if it's that week.
I think it's, uh, Says top volume this week.
Okay, maybe, maybe it is his, if you go to his profile, so he's the top bettor on the platform right now. So he's got $1.69 million, $1.66 million in bets placed basically his positions that are out there. He's got a P&L where, where his profit and loss is, he's up about $1 million so far on PolyMarket and he's traded $169 million worth of bets. So like right now, for example, he's got a bet out. Will J.D. Vance win the 2024 Republican VP nomination? He bet it when it was at 6 cents. It's currently at 31 cents. He could just sell that position today and bank the profit even though it hasn't happened yet. So you can win even if your thing doesn't win, as long as the odds go up. So a couple of years ago, I got on Polymarket and I got really addicted to this thing. Every day I was going and I basically had like a $10,000 slush fund that I was just betting on Polymarket. And I think I ended up making— That's insane. 5 or 6 grand and then I cashed out because now you can't do it in the United States. They like ruled against it basically. So all of this volume, this, they're doing about $50 million a month in volume, which is huge. Probably the most popular crypto app right now is Polymarket. And so they've done $400 million this year in betting volume. So they're on pace for almost $1 billion of betting volume this year.
What did you bet on?
I used to bet on all kinds of things. So I would bet on like tech stuff. So you could bet like, will Tesla stock be above this price in July, on July 31st. It's like easier than buying the stock was just to go and bet, do you think it'll be here or will they announce this at this time? I was betting on sports stuff, so I would bet just like a game. Oh, there's a game on a Tuesday night and I could just bet here easier than I could bet, you know, at a sportsbook. Because the way this thing worked was you would just sign in with your MetaMask wallet. You didn't have to do KYC. You didn't have to do a bunch of things.
Who makes the odds?
There's no, there's no odds maker. So this is like a, what's called a, Automated market maker. So basically the bet gets created and then it's based on the betting volume. So if more people start betting no, then the odds of no go down because that's a more popular bet. If everybody thinks yes, then buying yes will have less upside for you. Most of these don't work like an order book. There's not a buyer and seller. It's the same way that a lot of the DEXs work or the NFT platforms work where it's an AMM.
A lot of the bets are weird. So will Taylor Swift be pregnant in 2024? Yeah.
30% chance, right?
Or something like that. 21% chance. Will Andrew Tate be found guilty of human trafficking in 2024? But then there's weird things like, will Trump say the word MOG in 2024? I don't know what that word is, MOG, but can't he just say that then and win the bet?
And so that's one of the controversies of betting markets is that Okay. The easy example is, oh wow, if I'm Trump, I could theoretically go place a big bet and then just say the word. But there's a couple problems with that. One, the more I, like, let's say something like that, it probably has very thin volume. So for example, right now, $24,000. Yeah, $24,000. So if he went and tried to bet $100,000, he would swing the odds himself to yes, to the point where it wouldn't really be worth it. There's not much action on the other side. So basically the yeses win the money from the nos. And the no's win the money from the yeses depending on how the bet plays out, right? There's no, there's no third party that's involved. So you would have to do it in one of these that has like really big volume if you wanted to make a lot of money.
It says, uh, will Travis Kelce go for ring number 4 and get engaged this year?
Yeah, exactly. Uh, there's, you know, Elon tweets. How many tweets will we have this month? There's, uh, will, will TikTok get banned in the US in 2024? Right now, only 8% chance. So if you thought that TikTok was going to get banned, if you're Pelosi, you could go and start betting yes, but that bet only has $29,000 of volume. So you can't bet too much. You can't make too much of a profit on something like that. The controversy, the thing that people have always said about prediction markets is that prediction markets become assassination markets. Meaning if there was a bet that like, will this person win or will this person live? And let's say there was hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. You've inadvertently created a giant bounty. To go and assassinate somebody. And this is one of the controversies around prediction markets is that it could become problematic in that way. But these are not new. Like crypto is a new way of doing it, but these have been around for a long time. Like historically, people felt that prediction markets were more accurate than polls, right? So let's say you wanted to say, you know, who's going to win the election? They would go do a poll. You have a very small sample size. People might say one thing and then do another, which is like what happened with, when Trump won, I think 2016 was, he was polling far less than what actually happened when people went to the ballot booth because they didn't want to admit where they stood. Whereas prediction markets, because you're putting money on the line, it's just more predictive. It's more accurate versus just general polling. And so this used to be a really popular thing. There was in fact even like, on the stock market, you could go and bet this way. Wall Street was like a hub for prediction bets. But then after World War II, there was kind of a social stigma around it. Newspapers stopped quoting it and they shifted to polls. But I think it's swinging back where we're going to go away from polls and back to prediction markets. And so my prediction of this whole thing is that Polly Market is going to be massive, that in this presidential election, it's going to have just like a huge run-up this year because Already you can see that whenever, when anybody is writing about the odds of something about, let's say the election, they're referencing Polymarket and they're embedding Polymarket in their articles.
They're doing that now, or you think they're going to?
It's already happening. It's already happening. That's why it's got this huge surge. I think a couple months ago they had over $100 million embedding volume and it was because it's made for TV. It's made to be embedded in articles. And in fact, I think they should take this further and make their little their little betting widget much easier to share and much easier to embed inside of articles, inside of news, news things. So, 'cause they're going to need to quote what the predictions are around interest rates, around presidential stuff. It's just going to continue to grow that way. And so I think Polymarket is actually sort of a media company, a decentralized media company where it has really interesting data that every other media company is going to want to reference. And that's going to just drive this surge. And they've also had just really viral bets. So right now, one of the viral bets is obviously the presidential election stuff. But when, remember when the idiots went down to the Titanic in the submersible? That was one of the most viral bets. I think they had like $60 million bet on that one thing of like, what's going to happen with the submersible? So, you know, they can go viral. Like just yesterday it had $5 million in volume. And so business is booming for Polymarket.
Who started it and when did it start?
This guy Shane, Shane Copeland, I think is his name. And he started in 2020. So this is not a very old business. This is, you know, pretty, pretty recent, 3, 4 years it's been out. And he, I think it's like his first thing. He, his LinkedIn, when I was on it earlier, was like, he was an intern at Rap Genius. He was an intern at some other place and then he created Polymarket and he's been doing that for 4 years now.
Did they raise money?
Yeah, they just raised a big round. So it was pretty under the radar and actually sort of, you know, seemed sort of sketchy before. Like when I was betting on it, people I remember were telling me like, what are you doing, dude? You put real money onto this thing? And I was like, yeah, it's awesome. And they're like, who runs this? Is this legal? And I was like, I don't really know. You know, I'm not sure. It just, it looked like a very thin, thin app at the time, but they just raised $75 million from Founders Fund and Joe Gebbia and Vitalik and a whole bunch of other heavy hitters. And so it's obviously become a lot more legitimized.
I hate talking about gambling because I'm like, I don't want to sound like my farts don't smell type of guy or what, like I'm better, but I am because I hate gambling. Like I don't, I don't like gambling and I don't particularly love products that make it more popular, which is weird because I have vices, like I love nicotine and shit like that. So I would be bummed if no one made that stuff., but I feel weird making this more popular. Do you know what I mean?
I understand. I don't know. Obviously I enjoy betting. I've bet on many things. I have a bit of a betting problem, I would say, is the honest way of explaining it.
Well, it's like porn. We consume it, but we're like, you know, that's disgusting that you would do this for a living.
That's disgusting.
Zip.
Yeah. It's like, all right. So, but, but I, I, I think there is actually a lot of value in this. So I think that The wisdom of the crowds has always been a phenomenon I've been interested in, and I think it's just a more pure form of information. Like, I think that it is very easy for the news to tell you one thing or random polls to be quoted and claimed. Like, I like things that are more ground truth. And I don't know, like, more ground truth is an actual betting market on something. That is what people actually believe. And the wisdom of the crowd, it is very hard to beat the wisdom of the crowds. When it comes to betting.
I don't, I don't know if I buy that yet, mostly because I'm ignorant to these predictive markets. In 2016, what did whatever existed before Polymarket, what did it say about the election?
Um, it wasn't as popular back then, so they— there's been like Augur and a couple other crypto prediction markets, but they were never mature enough. They didn't have enough volume, or the people that consumed, there were only crypto degenerates. And so only crypto degenerates skewed one way. It's almost more like a poll in that case. So I'm not sure what they said then. All I know is that all of the polls were wrong. FiveThirtyEight was wrong. All of this sort of like data science around polling was so wrong during that. And I know that also that the other unrelated data point is that one of the things that helped FTX take off back then was Sam Bankman-Fried was one of the first to put political bets on his platform, I think in 2020. And it was a big accelerant for FTX, was letting people bet on election information back then. And people around the world wanted to bet. And so it was a way to attract a lot of liquidity to FTX at the time.
What was his philosophy? SBF's philosophy? It was like, what was it called? Altruism?
Yeah. Effective altruism.
But doesn't him having betting on his website go against that?
No, not at all. Effective altruism doesn't mean no sin, no vice. Effective altruism basically means make as much money as you can. The highest impact way to give and contribute to the world is to first, like, do something that's going to accumulate a huge amount of capital so you can reallocate it to your cause.
Like addicted to things that they spend all their money on.
If you're Sam Bankman-Fried, right, you're more, you are more value. Like you, you have two choices. You could go work for a nonprofit or go volunteer in a soup kitchen and pour, pour soup every day. But that's a pretty low leverage way to give, to contribute. Versus if you become a billionaire and you give away a billion dollars, you have done more good that way. And so effective altruism is basically working for the purpose of accumulating as much capital to give away as possible. Now, in his case, he turned out to be, you know, a liar and a fraud on many accounts, right? So it's not— I think he sort of tanked the brand of effective altruism, which probably is a little unfair. He also tanked the brand of crypto, which is a little unfair. People are like, oh, crypto is a scam. It's like, no, this dude scammed crypto. He tricked He lied to the crypto community. Basically, he was taking money and not, you know, somebody would go try to buy Bitcoin on his platform and instead of buying Bitcoin, he would just tell them he bought Bitcoin, take the money and do something else with it altogether. He was deceitful, is very different than saying crypto is deceitful.
The New York Times had this podcast the other day about this woman who got addicted to DraftKings or FanDuel or what I think they're the same thing. And she told this story about how she was like a $150,000 a year earner and she got addicted to it. And one of the reasons why she got addicted to it was A, she just is an addict, whatever. But B, they assign an account manager to you just like you do when you want to upsell software. And they're like, hey, I see you're spending on this. We've got this new game called this, this, and this. I'm willing to give you like a $500 credit. In order to get your, uh, you can wet your whistle a little bit and, and try this out. And she was like telling the story and I'm listening to this. I'm like, hey, that's the same tactics we, we did to like get people to buy ads. Like you like say like, hey, you know, you're a new customer, we'll hook you up this time and hopefully you get addicted to us. You want to give us more money? But they were doing that with this woman when she was in, she eventually got into $350,000 of debt and she, so she got divorced. It was like a whole issue. And she was like, they're still like, I, I, they're still sending me emails trying to get me to like try these new games., and I want to try 'em so bad. Like, they sound so awesome.
Uh, okay.
And so it kind of, this whole online gambling thing kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, particularly because now you watch, I, UFC's the only sport.
By the way, same thing happens in like, you know, bunch of different fields, but also just the entire mobile gaming market. Things that look very harmless, Candy Crush, these, all these games, all the mobile gaming companies work the same way. They're all hunting for whales. The whole business is you go try to acquire 100,000 users. And you're looking for the few users that are going to spend $100,000 inside your app.
And people doing that with games where they spend $100 grand.
Of course.
Yeah.
This, I mean, Candy Crush and the entire like casual mobile gaming thing that looks like these silly, innocuous free-to-play games. They're based on, there's, you know, women in the Midwest who are going to dump tens of thousands of dollars into each game that they get hooked on. And those are what they work for. They work for whales. They're trying to find whales. Whales is obviously the most profitable customer. And in that you can't even win anything, right? It's not even like gambling where there's nothing to, there's no, there's money, there's no money to be made in it. It's just money to be spent.
You had friends in the gaming industry, or, uh, or at least you know them better than my friends, uh, who work in the gaming industry. How many times did they say they had a customer that would spend $50,000 or $100,000 on a game?
What do you mean how many times?
That's like, uh, I guess like, I guess how, how big is the scale of, of people willing to spend that much?
It's very large, dude. This is, I mean, this is how they make, these games make like a billion dollars in revenue, right?
So they're all— I thought it was like everyone buying like a $20 a month thing.
No, no, no. It's most players spend nothing, right? Vast majority of players will spend nothing. Then there's a segment of people that are going to spend a small amount. And there's a very small segment of people that are going to spend a huge amount. And the total thing blends together where you're like, oh, our ARPU, our average revenue per customer is $7 or $10, but it's not every customer spends $7 to $10. It's that most spend zero, a few will spend $23 on average, and then a few will spend $23,000, right? That's more of how it, how it looks when you look at the distribution of these things. That's insane. Ben used to work at FanDuel and he was like, yeah, dude, part of the program I had, I think he was like employee 30 or 40 at FanDuel. He's like, you know, I basically oversaw this program where he was like associated with some program that was like the whale VIP white glove service. It's like, oh, if you're betting and losing this much money or winning, even winning, you, it's just, you'll eventually lose it. So if you're betting a certain volume, guess what? It's the Super Bowl. We want to fly you out. You're going to, you're going to come visit. Hey, we're in New York. We want to invite you to this private dinner. And there was a whole VIP program, white, white glove program where, hey, we got you tickets to this game and they're going to make you feel like a rock star.
Is it just a bunch of other degenerates sitting around the dinner table? Like, hey, what do you want to bet that the meal's going to be chicken. Yeah.
And these are willing participants. These are adults. Now, I would say obviously some people ruin themselves. They get addicted to gambling, just like people get addicted to everything, social media and drugs and vape. And you know, there's a ton of things that people get addicted to and it's not good for them. I definitely agree with that. That is, that is for sure a thing. And you will always see news about that because A, it's happening and B, it makes for good news. Big company ruined this person's life, right? That's always going to be a thing. Guess what? Robinhood is designed the same way. Robinhood is literally designed like a mobile game to get you addicted to trading, to get you to try to trade as much as you can. They make money every time you make a trade. They don't make money by you buying a low-cost index fund and holding it for 20 years. They make money by getting you to buy Robinhood Gold to trade options and be day trading. And so Robinhood, which is this like name of like the, we're going to steal from the rich and give to the poor, is doing the exact opposite. It's basically steal from the dumb. And give to themselves. And that's, that's what Robinhood is.
So I'm going to place a bet on this. I'm going to, that's what I'm saying. I'm going to bet that Justin Bieber is going to be having a baby boy.
You can't, you're in the US. You're not going to be able to make a bet.
You can't. And how do they, how do they, how do they track that?
I think it's just like your IP address right now. I don't know what else they do.
God, this is horrible and awesome. I like this one. I can't believe this exists. That's pretty wild.
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All right. What do you want to do? One more thing. What do you got?
Okay. I wanna do one thing. You said something earlier about jingles, catchy things, and, uh, I was sitting in a meeting and I was sitting in a meeting and there was somebody who was prolific. Like if, uh, Kendrick Lamar wore a suit and sold B2B software, that was this guy. This guy had lyrics. He was lyrical with his corporate slang. And it got me thinking about epic corporate slang and some of my favorite greatest hits of corporate slang. And I just started thinking, you know, we need some more. And so I wanted to play a little game with you. So I'd like to play a game. I texted you this. I said, I want you to think of this. Think of corporate slang that doesn't exist, but it should, because we're innovators here on the podcast. And I want to come up with some slang. I think it would be a fun claim to fame if we could just make something stick with corporate slang. So I say we go back and forth like a rap battle with this is corporate slang that doesn't exist, but it should.
All right. You have more than me. I didn't re— I, I, I came with about 4 or 5. You, you have a bunch of them. This is right in your wheelhouse. So let's see what we can do though. All right.
Let me get my phone. All right. So the first one is going to be, uh, this is the first one. One man's Thanksgiving is another man's Thursday. And this is for any situation where you are, uh, when somebody's really excited about something that you, to you is just normal or even lame, but hey, it's their Thanksgiving. It might just be Thursday to you, but it's their Thanksgiving. So it's kind of a way to throw shade in a corporate setting when somebody is overly excited about something that's actually just normal or average. And you just say, hey man, one man's Thanksgiving is another man's Thursday. And you just plant that seed and you just leave it with them. And they'll realize later that they just, they just had shade thrown at them.
And that's a phrase that you need to use. And when someone is like, wait, what? And you're like, what, you don't know what that means?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Like it's just one of those things they say.
Yeah. Like when I was a kid, I thought it was go out there and break an egg, not go out there and break a leg. You know what I mean? So we'll make that a phrase or instead of cat-like reflexes, I thought it was Cadillac reflexes.
This is not even corporate slang. These are just Um, like stutters that you had. Yeah.
Yeah. So I used to say for years, like, you know, go out there, have fun, break an egg. Uh, so that's how you need to use this phrase. Um, all right. I have got one. All right. We're going to call it bubble wrap as in when someone like, do you have any employees that are overly sensitive? And when you bring news to them, you have to be like, how are we going to phrase this?
So it's like, if we are like, we got to bubble wrap this.
Yeah. Like, all right, we have to, we have to tell this guy about this thing, but we got to bubble wrap his ass and we got to bubble wrap this phrasing and we got to figure out how we can deliver this. So it doesn't like totally crush him instead of just saying, uh, hey, we're not doing that anymore. Your idea sucked. We got to bubble wrap it. So we got to bubble wrap it.
So it's actually like a, uh, it's like, I like what you're saying. You're right. But we're going to need to bubble wrap that before it goes out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
So you have to say it in a more sensitive way, not to, uh, freak a particular person out because that person, when you talk to them, you gotta bubble wrap 'em before you talk to 'em. So we're gonna call it bubble wrap.
Like, I like that one. That's, that's strong. All right, I got another one. Alohomora. So making email intros sucks. I hate doing it. It's like, oh, can you introduce me to this person? I gotta say, hey Bob, meet, meet Sean. He's, he's this guy. He's this guy. I'm, I'm shortening it to one word. We're using the Harry Potter word Alohomora for the spell that just is like unlocking doors. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go to an email thread. I'm just gonna say, Sam, Bob, Alohomora voice. Alohomora, fellas. Uh, I've unlocked the doors here. Go on through. And that's it. I'm shortening it to one thing.
What, uh, but what's that word from?
Harry Potter. It's a, it's the spell he uses to unlock any door.
Oh my God. All right. That one's extra nerdy. Um, all right. I've got another one. All right. So you know how on the Google Calendar, the default is typically 30 minutes. I hate that. So we're going to call this, or we're going to say, um, so we're going to use this word when it's like, hey, put something on my calendar and let's sync storm it. We're just going to sync storm it. So it's by default, it's a 5-minute meeting. So let's just sync storm. Uh, you know, people say like, let's, let's sync up and it's always either default 30 or 60 minutes. Now, fuck that. We're going to sync storm this and we're going to get done in just about 4 or 5 minutes. So, hey, just put something on my calendar, put a little sync storm on my calendar and we're going to bang this out.
I love it because the other person's gonna have no idea what you mean by that, but it sounds like they're supposed to know. So yeah, yeah, no problem. Love, love sync storming. It's my, one of my favorite things to do. And they're gonna walk away and be like, what the hell am I supposed to do here?
We gotta sync storm this son of a bitch.
Don't, don't send me. It's also nice because it's a way they're like, it's, it's the equivalent of dating a first date and being like, they're like, hey, let's grab dinner. And you're like, let's do drinks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's actually that.
Yeah, you gotta sync storm it. Um, all right. What do you have? All right.
We got to crash the boards here. So this is a sports one that's, that's going to be used in the corporate setting. So it's when you're emailing people, but you're not following up hard enough. So you're, you're, you're emailing a prospect, you're trying to do a sale and you notice there's just no follow-up. There's no follow-up email. So either you could just use it like, you know, when you're following up, you could be like, hey, I'm just crashing the boards here. Or you could tell your sales team, be like, hey, we really got to crash the boards here, fellas. And they know, oh, that means we got to really just follow up stronger.
I used to use the word Blitzkrieg when referring to that, and then I realized that referencing World War I, World War II Germany and their military tactics probably wasn't the best thing. So crashing the boards. Yeah, you're a little too blonde hair, blue-eyed to be using that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had to bubble wrap Blitzkrieg and use crashing the boards. That's pretty good. You got another one? Yeah. So let's do, All right. So you know how when you have a meeting and oftentimes, even if it's a good idea, you still, it turns into a vote a lot of times, uh, where it's like, look, not everyone thinks that's a good idea. So we're not going to go with it, even though a lot of times the non-popular choice is the good one. And so what you do is you try to like be political and get people on your side before the meeting. Uh, and so like they vote for your idea or whatever, we're going to call that landsliding. Look, we're gonna have a meeting, but we gotta landslide this in advance. We gotta get everyone to vote for our side and we gotta landslide this meeting. This idea needs to get landslide. So we're gonna call it landslide.
That's powerful. I like that. All right. This is when you got an employee who it's sink or swim. You got somebody new and you need to really figure out what they're made of. It's, are we boiling eggs or potatoes here? And it's a way to ask about somebody what they're really made of, cuz when you Like a potato starts out really hard, but if you boil it, it gets soft. But an egg starts out soft, but if you apply some heat, it gets hard. And you want it, you want eggs, you don't want potatoes in your company. And so that's, that's where you put that out there. And it's when times are getting tough and people are, are wilting, they're, they're folding under the pressure, under the heat. You just gotta ask, are we boiling eggs or potatoes here?
That's a good one. I think that's an old phrase from the South. Haven't I heard like grandpas say that? Have you ever heard that?
I have not, but maybe I got, I've been told I have an old soul, so maybe that's, that's where they're at.
That's a good one. Um, all right. This is the last one that I have. Um, we're going to call, all right. So, you know, you were just in a meeting where a guy was saying a lot of jargon, or oftentimes you'll be in a meeting and like people are lying. They'll be like, well, we're doing great. Uh, and it's like, well, we're not really doing that great. And so for that, we're going to use the phrase bullshit bingo. It's like, hey, are we having a meeting about what we're going to do? Or are we just playing bullshit bingo and winning right now? Uh, we're, this is, this meeting is just a game of bullshit bingo and we're killing it. And so, yeah, it's like, Sean, look, you're telling me all this nonsense. It's nonsense. I think your board is full, uh, for bullshit bingo. Uh, this is just nonsense. And so we're gonna call it bullshit bingo. I like that one.
It's a way to call someone out, but because it's an alliteration, it just saw, it just bubble wrapped it just enough. Yeah. Bubble wrap is the real winner here. It sounds like.
All right.
I got one last one. This is similar to a situation where somebody's— we're trying really hard, but we're working on the wrong things. Feels like we're just massaging elbows here. It's when you're working on a problem and you're working really hard, but you're working on something that doesn't really matter. There's not enough meat on the bone there. And so you're just massaging elbows. It's the wrong place to be applying the effort.
I like that one. I like that one. But you have one more that I think you should, you should finalize with, the one about a tree.
Yeah. So this one came from Diego, uh, 'cause I was brainstorming with him and he goes, it's when you have an employee, uh, okay, so the phrase is, I think we're trying to teach a fish how to climb a tree. And it's when you have an employee and you're putting 'em in a position that's not really their core strength. They're great as a fish, but they need to be in water and you put 'em in a position, maybe it's a, a, a technical person, you got them on sales calls. And it's, we're trying to put a fi— we're trying to teach a fish how to climb a tree here. And you'd just be better off putting 'em in their natural environment and letting them succeed there than really just working against, you know, the laws of nature.
Have you used any of these phrases yet? I'm gonna start.
This was a brain— this was a think storm. And so now I'm ready to start.
Nice. There was this TikTok I saw where it was this teacher and he goes, My new favorite thing is to talk to my Gen Z or whatever, uh, students and to say phrases and then gaslight them that they don't know what they are. He's like, I just make up phrases. And I think one of them was, uh, pebbles. He was like, pebbles is like the opposite of a mountain or the opposite of a boulder. So it's like, hey, why are you crying over this problem? This is a small problem. It's pebbles, baby. Like, you don't have to freak out about this. And he would just like throw these phrases at him. Actually, pebbles is a good one. And I think another one was he was like parked. So it was when the day's going really slow or something's not moving. So for example, man, it's only lunchtime now. Like this day is so parked and like it's going so slow. And so he would use in this TikTok, he is like, I use these phrases and I just, and they look at me and they're like, what does that mean? And I'm like, you don't know what that means? Like nerd, you know, that's what we have to do with bubble wrapped or teaching a fish how to climb a tree. We're like, how do you not know what that means? We just had, we have to act like it's normal.
And so when we have these— had potential, like, first of all, parked and pebbles, I think are elite. I don't know. I think bubble wrap is pretty elite, to be honest. But in the YouTube comments, let us know which one was, which one you're going to actually adopt, which one was, was ready to go.
We have to have some like buttoned up billionaire guests or something on, on and just like, oh, we just started using them. We'll just start using them and we'll use them so many times. And just like, for example, do you remember that movie Super Troopers where they're cops and they're like, hey, you want to play the meow game? And so instead of saying now, they use the like, give me your license, right? Meow. And they're like, let's see if we can play. Let's see who can say meow the most. That's what we have to do with our next guest is like, so like Dharmesh, did you like, were you able to give it to him blunt or did you have to bubble wrap it? You know what I mean?
Just see, do they react or do they try to roll with it? Yeah.
Um, are we gonna wrap up here? Is, is that it? Are we, are we gonna— was this podcast a six storm?
Yeah, I think we gotta, I think we gotta end it there.
All right, that's the pod.
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