Work Like Ocean's 11, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the Deepfake Dilemma

So somebody had tweeted out something which was like, hey, if you needed a side hustle that was going to generate like $3K to $5K a month and you could only kind of work like, you know, let's say like, you know, a couple hours during the week and, you know, half a day on the weekends or something like that, what would you do to do that if you didn't know how to code?

Are we good?

I'm a whole different guy, Sampar. I'm— you're looking at a man 4 days in to clean eating. And guess what?

Are you really?

Now I'm on time. Guess what? Now my kids love me. Guess what? The stocks went up today for the first time in like 5 months. So a lot of things are going well here.

What are you eating?

I'm just Like, I don't know if this is healthy or not, but I'm very heavy meat and protein right now and just like nothing bad and not eating late, not, not doing bad stuff.

Dude, listen to this thing that I'm doing. It's called My Body Tutor. Have you heard of it?

I have heard of this. Is it like a text messaging thing? Somebody like—

It's actually quite good. I should try this. The fact that I don't want to try this tells me that I absolutely should try this. So I think I might, I think I might do it because, uh, yeah, I don't know. It's, I'm, I'm, uh, I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what's, I'll tell you what's embarrassing. What's embarrassing was that a day and a half into just eating clean and just not, not like, you know, oh, my daughter's leftover macaroni and cheese. All right, let me just eat these 3 spoons before I put it in the sink. Or like, oh, there's a free cookie here at this thing. Let me just grab that. A day and a half in, I felt a difference, which tells me how poorly I had been eating. If I could feel a difference just from a day and a half of eating perfectly right.

What do you eat normally that's bad? Like, are you talking about like processed? Just clean meat? Just like no sugar and not processed?

No sugar, not processed. Not like late night snacking or whatever, like just cutting it off at a certain time. And then not like, okay, you know, I've been like, you know, what will happen to me sometimes is I'll be like, oh, I'm working.

I got calls.

I got the pod. I got all this stuff going on. I'm excited. I look up, it's 2 PM. I haven't eaten anything. And I'm like, all right, the next edible item in sight is just getting like devoured. Right. It's like a stress eat at that point. Yeah. It's getting got. Oh, you thought this party size of Doritos was for a party? No, it's getting got right now. And so, so You ever heard of, uh, you ever heard of someone doing a line of Oreos? It's when you, when you get the Oreo tray and it's got like 3 columns and you do a whole line. You just take a whole column out in one sitting. That's something that would happen before, um, you know, just on an inconsistent basis.

I like to do Oreo cereal. You just get a gallon of milk and a sleeve of Oreos and just, just go to town. So I'm on board with you, man. I like all that stuff too, but you just can't do it.

Yeah, I can't do it. Um, all right, so we got a bunch of stuff. Let's do, uh, let's do some of these topics. I don't know where you want to start. Oh, actually, I just see my topics. I don't see yours. Do you have any?

I had a few. We went through a lot of them the other day, but—

well, well, one thing that is quick, the classic, we went through a lot of them the other day, the classic.

No, I'm usually really prepared, but do you see that Conan O'Brien's thing got acquired? Team Coco.

Yeah, you texted this. So what is it? So he has a podcast network or just his one podcast?

We have 2 or 3 million.

Yeah, we have, we have 2 or 3 million a month. So what does that put us worth? And ours is a business. Like, it's the people listening. You guys are richer than like Conan O'Brien's audience.

Yeah. And we're way better looking and way more funny. So, you know, if you just take his multiple and you say, all right, divide by 8, we don't do public math. So that's unfortunately just the problem. We're not going to know how much we're worth because we don't do public math. And moving on to the next topic, I think that's $20 million. Who, who bought it, by the way? Sirius. SiriusPod. Okay, so he's gonna like go exclusively to them.

Crazy. That is absolutely crazy. And was it only one podcast or no, they actually had a bunch more. It was like, yeah, 12 maybe or something like that, but they've got a few winners.

It's like 3 winners and then like, it's like one big winner, 2 small winners and then a bunch of like long tail stuff that, that kind of doesn't matter. In terms of, of like how, how big it is. But also I think for them, you know, the thing is it's not like they were bought for a revenue multiple. It's not like Spotify was like, you know what, we're going to buy this revenue multiple because, you know, that's going to get priced at a favorable rate in the market here. It was just like, we need to strategically move into podcasting. Okay, go get Rogan, go get The Ringer, go get the one that got bought that's like up our alley is that StartupOne Gimlet. So they bought Gimlet also for a lot of money. They bought Anchor, that podcasting tool that sucked— like, not sucked, the tool was cool, but nobody was using it. They bought that thing for like $150 million, which is crazy to me. And so they, they did, they splurged. And I think, you know, that splurge, that splurge window is now closed.

Well, listen, if you're a listener and if you work at Sirius or Spotify or something like this and you want to throw—

we are motivated by money.

Yeah, we do things because people pay me money so we can have that conversation.

I enjoy commas with many zeros around them.

Yeah. So anyway, if you're listening and you want to make an introduction or you want to help us get paid, can we talk about this?

Um, okay. So I have a few ideas. So I have a couple of things I want to talk to you about later. I want to talk to you about this, a new version of plastic surgery that I think is interesting. I want to talk to you about a virtual reality project I saw that was actually doing pretty significant revenue. I want to talk to you about, um, this like bionic reading thing. So I have a few things I want to talk about, but first, can we talk about this meme, the drinking a cola meme? Yeah. So Sam texts me while we're on vacation and, uh, I was like, dude, this is perfect for the pod because you saw a tweet from Moyes who came on the podcast the same day or the next day or something like that. And Moyes said something like, I don't know, can you pull it up with the exact phrasing is, but he, he was just tweeting about some business thing. He's like, oh yeah, I was drinking a cola with the founders of this blah, blah, blah app. And, and then he said some business thing and Sam rightfully pointed out how hilarious That intro is of like, I was enjoying a cola with my friends and then we just decided to start talking about, you know, cashflow.

I met with the Triple Whale founders yesterday for a cola. They were exhausted from a day of traveling, but we all, we all left with so much energy. Genghis Khan conquered 30% of the world during his reign. We want to do the same, except the world is now the digital marketing share. But the intro was, I met with these founders yesterday for a cola.

That tweet is hilarious on multiple levels. First of all, the metaphor, the founders for cola. Hilarious. Who drinks cola? I don't know. Who says cola?

Yeah.

First of all, that's like, who smokes and drinks soda still? I don't know. Second, who calls it cola? Third, why is that relevant for the tweet? It's so funny.

Yeah. So we have to do a series of tweets where it's like we talk about something profound, but the intro is like, You know, so I was getting some caramels with a friend, or, uh, yeah, so like, it just got to be like the most random stuff.

Snapping off a beef jerky with my buddy Timmy, and he told me about how self-storage market is really going under right now.

It's like, yeah, I thought it was— who says a cola? Do you think that's what he meant, is a cult? Like He sat down for like Pepsi.

Like, dude, it's like, you know, at our board meeting today we poured out a peppermint schnapps and decided to—

Fanta. Yeah, that is weird.

So that's my new, like, if we ever do an event or a conference, it's like, that's the passcode. Like, how do we know you're real, you're a real listener, you're real loyal, is like You need to be able to come up and be like, tell us a story. Tell us a story that starts with like, you know, you know, so I was eating a Dunkaroo and, you know, just had a question.

Yeah. Or we got to like do the most extreme thing ever where it's like, so I was doing this thing where you suck on a piece of candy and then spit it in your friend's mouth so that changes the taste. Anyway, we were talking about— that's not important, but we were talking about the economics.

Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Uh, yeah, that's my new shit. You know, my last shit was I have moved straight to the end because of Elon, and I haven't moved straight to the end. That's done. And my new shit is, yeah, me and my buddy, we're doing the spaghetti thing where we each take one end of the noodle and suck on it. But when we got close to the middle, we realized the problem with COVID and then we started talking about, uh, the recession.

And how it's looming. That's pretty good. Drinking a cola. All right, wait, really quick. Do you think that he was trying to be funny?

No, that's the best part. I think he was just saying like, I think he was just saying what happened and that in his mind is what happened. Even the second part of the tweet alone, I think the cola part out, just being like, I met with the founders of Dribbble. Well, And you know, Genghis Khan, if you bring Genghis Khan into whatever sentence you're saying, you are talking about Dr Pepper. Yeah. You, you are dramatically overestimating whatever you're doing in life. It's like the same way where if anyone's like, yeah, um, you know the way that Tesla came out with the Roadster first, so we're also doing like a high-end of digital marketing attribution before we go low-end. It's like, no, you're equivalent. You're making yourself equivalent to Tesla. And like, that's, Anytime you're like, Genghis Khan conquered 30% of the earth, whatever the next sentence is better be fucking lit. And instead, his was like, we're doing the same for digital marketing. And so that also was like, you know, just hilarious to me.

Is Cola— is Moiz— was Moiz born in America? Yeah, he was born.

No, I think they were born in Pakistan and then they moved when they were like 7 or 5 or something.

Is that like a Pakistani thing where they call like soda Cola?

I don't know, maybe, because actually I have a cousin who came over from India, but like when he was like 20, and he would always be like, hey, can I have a Coca-Cola Light? And we're like, what? What'd you just say? And he would like say— he would always say the full name of things, and it was like, okay, yeah, like, oh, is this covered by Nationwide Insurance? It's like, yeah, it is, funny you ask.

This is awesome, we could go on this forever.

Yeah, it's, uh, too much. It's too much for me. All right, so I wanna talk to you about a couple ideas. Did you see this thing about, I have this link in here, you can see it's this, this surgery that guys are getting that, um, costs $75,000, but it'll make you 3 inches taller. Did you see this thing? They broke your foot.

That's like a great, that's a great thing to text to like your friend who like is a little short. You're like, hey, heard the news.

Good news.

Congrats.

Congrats. Heard about, heard about the break, the scientific breakthrough. Oh, oh, what happened? You get a vaccine? No, they break your femur and they'll put a rod in and it'll make you 3 to 5 inches taller. And this thing is like apparently just popping off. And I've just been looking at this like, it's like, what are the big problems that nobody wants to admit to but are real? I just think that that's an interesting prompt for business ideas. So it's like, Our buddy Craig Clemens does this where like one of his products is like, like one of his best-selling products, right? Like he's got these D2C companies that do like, I don't know, over $100 million a year in sales, uh, as, as part of his like bootstrapped thing. And, um, I think one of their products was like some toenail fungus remover. And it's like just like the unsexiest thing, but it's like common and it's actually somebody, something that people really want to get rid of. Right. Um, or they were something that people really want to change. And I think height is another one. I've seen this now in two places. So first I saw this surgery thing and I was like, oh, that's funny. Like the article was written almost like, can you believe this crazy thing people are doing? And in my mind I was like, yeah, I can totally believe that. I think being 3 to 5 inches taller is fucking awesome. Yeah, exactly. Like if you're gonna get breast implants, breast implants are like a fake ass.

Like, yeah, this is, this is, um, I'm on board.

Exactly. And I was like, you know, being taller is like, you know, just awesome. Like if you gave me 3 inches, I'd be very happy and I'd earn more money and I'd be more liked. Like, that's just a thing. Like Ben, how tall are you? Like 6'4", right? Yeah.

Yes. Correct.

You already know. You already know the advantage you have. You're, you're so privileged, dude. You shouldn't even talk to this podcast.

You're so privileged.

You're speaking from tall privilege right now.

Check your privilege.

Yeah. You need to check your tall privilege at the door right now.

I had a, a girlfriend one time, uh, not like a girlfriend, but like a girl I was familiar with who, who said, uh, who told me, I can't tell if I think you're actually handsome or if you're just tall.

Yeah. By the way, Sam, did you, in your course, there's a review from me saying like, Sam's copywriting course, it works. I, I, I got 3 extra inches in 2 weeks or something like that. And, uh, did you write that? Cuz people keep coming to me to be like, that's so funny. Yeah, they're like, dude, that's so funny. And it's either I blacked out or somebody just impersonating me because I don't remember writing that. But it's hilarious.

Basically, if you go to trycopythat.com and you scroll all the way down, like on the sales page, you'll see like, and it says Sean Perry. And then the review is, loved it so much it gave me 3 extra inches. Totally 5 out of 5 stars. I thought you did that, which was funny, but the fact that someone else did it and wrote your name is even funnier.

Yeah.

Dude, I knew a guy. Yeah. So this is an interesting question. We— I know a guy named Nat and he's got an app. It's called like— I forget what exactly what it's called, but it helps you with a Kegel. You know what a Kegel is? I don't. I think— I think a Kegel is the exercise that you do, or is it the muscle that needs to be stronger?

It's the exercise.

It's the exercise that you have to do that keeps you from pre-jacking early. I guess that's That's an oxymoron.

I like how you just shortened it. You're like, if I just say half the word, it's half as bad. The other thing I think, I think women do it, which is like supposed to be just like good for you in general, but also like for women, it kind of tightens. It helps them feel, helps, helps sex feel better for them, I think is the idea.

Well, this guy, and he created an app for men to keep you from just jacking early. And I think he kills it. I mean, like, it's not doing pretty well.

Yeah, what? I guess, let me guess, it's doing pretty well.

Yeah, it's doing good. And so that's like another one that I don't know if that's that big of a market, but what else is there?

Yeah. Here's another one. Have you ever, have you ever like cheese grated your foot to get the callus off?

You know, country, like that's the most country thing you've ever said. No, I have never done that. Like, you know, like with Parm, have you ever had like, oh, I know what you're talking about. Like I've seen, I've seen a girl doing this on the, like there's like a, like the equivalent of like a sweet potato peeler or whatever. And they just like use that on their like to get their callus off their foot.

Oh my God, this thing is 82,000 reviews on Amazon. It's just like one—

Have you ever seen a product with more reviews than that?

Like the Hot Pot has— the Instant Pot or whatever has that many reviews.

Is that crazy? It's a $10, like, made in China cheese grater that they just call a foot file.

Is that insane?

Uh, that probably costs them 50 cents, right?

No, more than that. But like, yeah, it's still profitable. That's crazy. Cause they're just going to get so many searches, right? Like for something like this. Um, the other one that's like the height one that I saw. So somebody's doing this on TikTok and the ad is brilliant. So they're selling a shoe, like a men's platform shoe. So it's an insert into a normal shoe. That's kind of like a heel., but instead of the heel being on the outside of the shoe, it's on the inside. So your foot just like your heel gets elevated from the inside like a Dr. Scholl's, but like gives you 2.5 inches in inside of a shoe.

Way better than surgery.

Just do that way better. Right? And so the, but how do they sell this? How, how do they sell this? The TikTok ad is, it looks like, um, so it's, you know, this like, I don't know if you heard this thing in comedy, like a man on the street interview where it's basically like if you ever watch those late night shows, they'll go to like Times Square, they'll be like, Uh, you know, do you support, you know, whatever this thing? And then people don't even know what it is. They like say stupid stuff. But it's basically like dude walking around with a microphone out and about, like Times Square, outside of a nightclub, or like at a bar, and they just like ask questions. And so the ad is a TikTok— is on TikTok. And what the guy's doing is— or the girl is, um— oh no, the guy's interviewing girls. He's like, all right, be honest, does size matter when it comes to height for guys, right? Or like something like that. They're like immediately gets you of like, okay, first, this doesn't look like an ad. Secondly, you kind of want to know what the girl says because—

and then it makes you self-conscious of it.

That's actually interesting. Yeah, this is pretty cool. I never— that is a good one that people are embarrassed about. They need to do an ad about how, like, everyone who says they're 5'11" is really just 5'9" because no one's actually 5'11".

Like, you just— yeah, if you did a man on the street, you're like, how tall are you? And they're like, yeah, 5'11". I'm 6, I'm 6. And they're like, okay, cool, we have a thing right here, just stand up. And they're like, 5'10"?

No one's 6 even. No one's 5'11".

You're either 5'—

are you 6'1"?

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Never, never met a 6-footer in your life. It's like a leap year.

Never met a 6-footer in my life, dog. You 5'10", just admit it.

5'10", 6'1". No in between.

God skipped that. We went from 5'11" to 6'1", but you, but you weighed 6 even.

God doesn't make mistakes, but he never made a man 6 foot even.

That stamp wasn't made. So like, anyone who says they're 6 even, that ain't true. That's why women always say you have to be at least 6'1".

I looked up, I looked up this word for, I've never heard that word. It's a, I looked it up. It's a, it's a Yiddish word that means poor quality. Uh, and so, but who's this lady? What's her handle?

It's just that, it's that word. Those words together. Rockhockteh apartments, and that's her TikTok. She has 37,000 followers and like, you know, like, here's a huge loft in Brunswick. It'll have 108,000 views on that video, right? So she's showing these things, but then she has her actual— so she's like comedy actress slash realtor. If you want my real rentals, you know, compass.com, go, go get them, right?

Like, you can email me.

That crushes.

That crushes.

Yeah. So I thought this was great and it's like completely differentiated, from what most people do. And so like, I'm trying this right now with the Milk Road, which is like, I'm, I'm really obsessed with this idea of like, you, if you combine two things that are usually not combined, you don't have to be great at either one of the things because you've created a whole new combination, right? Like this happens in food all the time where like you've, you've talked about this formula in food, like jumbo donut. It's like, you don't need to have the best donuts. Just do a huge donut and then people will come to you for, for that, right? Go for the biggest, make a green, you know, purple ketchup, green, like, you know, Dorito tacos, right? Like, uh, it's not that it's better, it's just so different. And so with Milk Road, we're doing this right now where I'm trying to create like basically a, it's not funny enough for it to just be like a straight up like comedy thing.

Kind of like this podcast.

A lot of, yeah, it's like this podcast. Yeah. I don't know why I'm trying to go for this like far-fetched example, this podcast. Are we the richest?

Are we the smartest? No. Are we the best prepared? No. Do we have the best insights and research? Absolutely not. Are we the funniest? No. But do we have the right combination of like, we're having a good time, we make ourselves laugh and make you laugh just enough where like it's business and it's just enough business and just enough make you laugh? And that's what like, I'm trying that with the Milk Road now. I'm trying to do the same thing. It's like there's crypto information, there's a lot of people trying to be the smartest guy in the room with crypto. It's like a a big brains contest. You go into a room and everybody's trying to have this like 9,000 IQ. It's like, well, we wanna be smart, but we're not gonna be the smartest because who the fuck knows who's the smartest? And it's really hard. But like, we can also be slightly funny and we would differentiate ourselves from everybody else doing crypto content. And so I'm, I'm pretty interested in this, like, this like idea of stacking skill, unique skills that are like, you don't have to be the best at either. You just have to be just dangerous enough at both. But if you combine them, you're completely differentiated in your market.

Can I ask you about a crypto story really quick that you might know about? And yeah, I need you to explain it to me. So do you know anything about Sam Bankman-Fried? That's his name, right? Bankman-Fried. Of course. So how old is he? Is he under 30 still?

He's like 29, 30, 31.

I know. I know he was under 30 at once, but is he still?

I should know. They are currently the leading sponsor of the Milk Road. So FTX, go get your— go get your account. So he is 30 years old exactly. On the dot.

All right. That was a bad joke I made, by the way. I said I knew he was under 30 once, but is he still under 30?

Uh, that was good, actually. I just didn't pick it up.

Um, all right. So this, like, basically when he was 28, he was worth like $20 billion, right?

Yeah.

He's the—

I think he's probably— I think him or the guy from Binance, they're the richest person from crypto besides whoever Satoshi is.

That's crazy. So in this, he said in an article the other day, he's like, I'm thinking about spending $100 million on the upcoming presidential election, but I'll probably cap out at about a billion. Yeah. And just like that statement is just a ridiculous statement to like, not that it's wrong, it's just like a crazy chain of words added together in one sentence. Like, I didn't think I would hear someone say it, let alone a 30-year-old. How— what type of person is this guy to become that rich at like 28?

He, he also has a unique skill stack, which is that, so he was like, um, I think a trader or an analyst at Jane Street. So it's like kind of like a smart quant type guy. And then, uh, you know, I think I've told the story before, you know, the story about the, uh, the kimchi, like arbitrage or whatever, you know, this.

Not exactly. I know that like he did some arbitrage, but I don't understand why Bitcoin would be cheaper in Korea than it would in America.

Well, it's all about like kind of like access and the liquidity of the market. So like, uh,, some markets, like for example, Japan is where the access was the hardest. So like, I think, let's say this, for example, the government's cracked down on exchanges, so you can only get it in the black market or on these small niche exchanges or these foreign offshore exchanges. There's a lot of friction.

And so because of that, like, and you can't access coinbase.com.

Just calling that action makes it sound cooler. Can you support that action? That's such a better word than—

can you handle that size? That's my new ship also, by the way. Just being like, yeah, we got to be able to do it in size, or like, yeah, they're moving in size.

I'm just going to say action instead of the word amount. So like asking my wife how much like beef she wants me to buy at the store. How much action you want?

How much action you trying to get on these ribs? In terms of oat milk, Can we— trying to move size or what? Yeah, it's crazy.

So basically what ended up happening was he had this company, like whatever, Alameda Research or whatever, uh, but like he saw that the, um, I think it was like the kimchi premium was like the big premium was like if Bitcoin was $10K in the US, it was $15K in Korea. And I think in Japan there was a smaller one. And so he was, he, He was able to do it in Japan and he made like something like $20 million doing this arbitrage in like one summer. And it took him like find their, finding a network of local banks that would let him wire serious money in and out and make sure that they could just repeat these transactions on the same day close so that they had the money. They were recycling a small amount of money. So I think it was like take $2 million, they buy Bitcoin, they sell it in Japan, they take the money that they made in Japan. They need to be able to wire it back so that tomorrow they can go buy again, 2.2 million of Bitcoin based off of the extra that they made. And then they did the same thing next day, 2.4 million. And they got it up where they eventually profited like 20, 30 million. So then he basically is like, all right, him and his like small team, I guess, um, like this little crew that was doing this arbitrage.

Did he have money ahead of time or was he just like a, like a, like living with roommates?

Yeah. He, uh, did I also read an interview, or is it you told me where he was like, I don't even care about Bitcoin. Like, I'm just doing this to make money. Like he said something to the—

he's not like particularly interested in crypto.

He's full of shit.

Yeah. So there's a lot of people in crypto that are like very missionary. Like if you listen to Brian Armstrong from Coinbase, he's like, uh, he like lived in Buenos Aires and he saw like, you know, what happened to the Argentinian peso. And he was like, it's not right. Like people around the world are, you know, don't have access to like economic freedom. And, you know, they live in a place where their currency gets devalued like crazy and like there's a better way and it's crypto. I believe that to my core and I'm going to like Coinbase is going to help more people like get into crypto because I think crypto is what matters in the world. And Sam Bankman-Fried is just sort of like, you know, not that his mission is different. His mission is like, I'm an effective altruist. I'm trying to give away as much money as possible. So I need to make as much money as possible. And in order to do that, I'm gonna just, oh, you know, whether you're selling this or that, like, cool. People wanted an effective trading platform for crypto. I'll build that. Uh, you know, I know this product and this need cuz I'm a trader, so I'll be able to like do it that way.

That's baller, man. And there was a meme of him going—

the other piece of the, I was gonna say the other piece of the effective altruism is like they really use, like they, they want it to be evidence-based that like, um, you you know, every dollar going in is like having like, you know, sort of like the greatest possible impact is like one of their, their big things. Like how measurable is the impact?

Dude, this guy's great. There's a funny meme of him going around. Basically, this guy, his name's Sam Bankman-Fried. Google him. And he looks like you'd want him to look. So he's kind of like a chubby Jewish guy who wears like New Balance shoes and like high socks and cargo shorts and like an army green t-shirt and like shaggy hair and a huge Timex watch. Like, he looks like— yeah. And he, uh, there's a picture of him on stage and it's like this beautiful interviewer. And then on his left is like Gisele, and on the right is like some other model, like Heidi Klum. I forget, like these, like, you know, smart, like, business women who, but who are just like the most gorgeous people you've ever seen. And he's sitting in the middle and they're all like looking at him. And it's like, get you, get you a person who will look at Sam Bankman-Fried like Giselle looks at him or something like that. And it's hilarious.

Yeah. Yeah. And he's just kind of hunched over, oblivious to the whole thing. It's great.

Is he, is he like, uh, what makes him special?

I love those people. I call them freaks and I love them. I love these freaks. I love freaks.

He also is one of my favorite Twitter followers. Like, I don't know if you— do you follow him on Twitter? He posts awesome threads that are like, not like— again, it's not propaganda for his company, but it actually is effectively propaganda for the company. So he'll just be like, you know, here's my thoughts on like raising money, here's what actually happens. And he'll be like, yeah, investors, they want us to do this. And at first I thought, ah, that's just self-serving bullshit. But then I realized actually the game theory is this. And then he like just talks. He'll just lay out these long threads and like, he's like, look, I'm not saying this is FTX's point of view. This is like my late night thoughts about this topic. And when you see him think out loud, you're like, oh wow, this guy's just incredibly sharp and he sees both sides of it. He's kind of like an independent thinker. And so he's one of the best follows on, on Twitter.

Do you think working with him, do you think that he's, he's obviously has some intensity, but is he like a hustle, hustle, like let's work, like why? Like this alpha type of guy.

I don't get that vibe. I don't get Wolf of Wall Street. I don't get the— he's not Genghis Khan took over 30% of the thing. It's like, it's more like obsession meets like, you know, I don't know if this got cut. I think it's got cut out of our previous podcast where we were like, we kind of admire the like Asperger's personality because it has like the ability to like focus really intensely and the ability to like think not like think for yourself and not think just like, oh, what is the norm? What's societal norms? Like, let me just go with that. So to me, it's like when he says the let's go get the Yankees and Tom Brady, it's not because like, let's go swing our Big D around here and let's go show who's boss. It's like, well, it seems like the most effective thing to do if we're trying to build trust would be go to the most trusted athletes and like get them. And on a cost, you know, a cost per, you know, fan basis, they're actually the most effective even though the total gross dollar amount is higher, right? Like To me, that's how his brain works. Not like, you know, it'd be sweet, dude, if we go get like, let's go get the fucking Yankees, bro. Like, it's not that.

And so, and so he's like, like, who has the largest reach? Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, just whatever's number one on that chart.

Do I wonder what he's like as a CEO? Like, do you think he holds one-on-one meetings and like— because he just does not look like—

well, we should have him on, him and the head of whatever. They wanted to come on the pod. So, uh, I think they're pretty I think they're protecting him a little bit. Like he's now super busy with like press obligations or whatever. Like, so they, I think they were trying to have like their, the number 2 guy in the company come on the pod. And so this guy Brett, uh, so I think he'd be really interesting too. Uh, but I, you know, everybody wants SBF cause he looks like he, he's the Zuckerberg, right? Like Sheryl might be the, the secret weapon and the one who actually runs the show. But like Zuck is this like alien character that people are fascinated with and they want to like poke them and be like, oh look, It moves, you know. And so I would love to get Sam on.

I wouldn't mind having a guy who is his boss, you know, a guy who works for him, as long as the guy coming on would be cool.

We're only going to ask you about Sam. Is that cool?

Yeah. Oh, wait, no, I don't think you understand the assignment. We don't care about like you.

That's not annoying, right? Yeah, dude. It's like if I meet someone who's like, oh man, love the podcast, I'm like, I'm like, dude, great. So glad to meet a fan. And he's like, Sam's so awesome. What's it like to be around Sam? I'm like, ah, fuck you, dude. I'm busy. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and talk about Sam.

We've had a couple of guests and they're like, cool. And they like say like, oh yeah, I worked with Steve Jobs. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. All right, let's just, let's just only focus on that.

Scrap your current thing.

So as long as they're okay, like if they understand the assignment that it's strictly a, like we're just here to like, learn. Like, Joe Rogan had this guy who worked at SpaceX, and they talked about what it's like to work for Elon. And I was like, oh, just let's just only focus on that thing. The whole go to space stuff is cool, but just tell me what it's like to work with Elon. And that's what we— as long as they understand that's the assignment, I'm on board. Our software is the worst.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.

I think I love our new CRM.

Our software is the best. HubSpot.

Grow better. Here's another kind of like interesting, like intensity teamwork thing that I think is, you know, close enough transition. Have you seen this business called A-Team? A-Team? Like, uh, I think it's cuz I think it's just a letter A and then .team is their website.

Well, you know, that's like, um, and a famous TV show, right? You remember, uh, Mr. T?

Mr. T or whatever.

Yeah. That all I know is that much. I don't, I've never seen anything. So, so it's that same, uh, like I think they're kind of playing on that branding a little bit in the sense that like, uh, the idea is based. So they just raised $60 million and they raised it from NFX who I really respect. NFX was early in them and said good things. I respect NFX. So made me pay attention. Now this is an idea that's been around. It's been tried. But maybe the time is right now. And so that's why this is interesting to me. So let me kind of give you my backstory of this idea, and I want to hear what you think, if you think this is a good idea or bad idea. So I once heard Naval on a podcast talk about like the future of work, and he was basically like, Naval was like, you know, I, um, I don't buy this whole— I don't believe that we're going to live in a world where you work 9 to 5 sitting at a desk in some office for one company and you work there for 30 years. And already you see that shifting. Like instead of working at a place for 30 years and then getting your pension when you retire and they like, you know, have a cake cutting ceremony in the, in the, in the lobby for you, uh, as they send you off to your death, like, okay, now people started to hop jobs more and then people started to work, you know, remote and freelance. And Naval's thing was like, he said, I think the future of work is like Ocean's Eleven. He goes, you're going to have your crew the same way that Ocean's Eleven is this badass team. Of like, you know, you got the pickpocket guy, you got the ninja, you have the like the comms guy, you have the planner, you have the like, um, you know, the guy who can go gather intel, you have the hot girl who's a distraction, and you have this, you know, you got Brad Pitt, George Clooney. All right, so that's the team, and it's like you're just going to get a message which says, all right guys, round up, like we got one, we got a mission to go on. And everybody meets up and every— everyone doing other stuff, and it's like, what's the mission? Oh, like, you know, Ocean's Eleven, we're going to rob this bank or whatever.. And then it, for, um, for work it's gonna be like, all right, here's this brand that's trying to whatever, they're killing the US, they're trying to expand into India. And so you might be the Ocean's Eleven team that continuously gets called on to take a brand and expand them into India. And like you, you wake up, you get a page, uh, you know, your pager basically goes off and says, we need you. The bat signal is up. You all congregate, you've all worked together, so you know, you come as a group. Who's good at accomplishing certain types of missions. You do those missions, you rate each other, you rate the company that hired you, they rate you, you rate each other on your team, you go on your way and you get called in for the next mission and the money hits your bank. And so Naval kind of describes this thing and he is like, you won't just have one team. Like you'll probably float around with a couple teams. Like if you're the pickpocket, you've got like 3 teams that can call on you. And, um, and it just works that way. So you get reputation that's built not on a resume, but through this like verified ratings of like, I've actually worked with this person. You have not continuous work. You get called on when there's a mission, you sprint, you crush it, then you relax until the next mission. You can work as much or as little as you want. You may or may not even know the identities of the other people. You could be like, my nickname is just whatever, Starwing, and I just go in and people know me as Starwing and that's how I work. And that's the future of work. So that kind of fascinated me when he described it and he did it in the Naval way, which was like 1/10 of the words I just used, but twice as interesting. And now I'm starting to see some startups pop up that are doing this. And to me, A-Team is, is an idea of that where they're like, oh, you wanna build, um, an e-commerce website? Well, we have the designer, the front-end developer, the back-end developer, and the like conversion optim— uh, optimizer. And like, they'll just swoop in and they'll just do it for you in like 2 weeks. You'll get a better product than whatever. And here's the big lump sum payment you, you do for that team.

This is so amazing. I saw a meme the other day where it was a guy. He goes, "I so look forward to the day where I'm just sitting at a bar and a stranger walks up and says, 'I'm putting together a team,' and I look at him and respond, 'I'm in, when do we leave?'" And it was just like that.

Yeah, I live in the duffel bag, you know? Yeah.

I'm putting together, I'm putting the team together, you in? Dude, this is awesome. Their site is amazing. This is one of the best landing pages I've seen in a long time. It's a.team. Look at their landing page.

It's pretty good. The hero image is really good. And then, um, yeah, the examples are good.

It just so succinctly describes what they're doing. So you just get on, you just log on and you see it. It's a relatively strange concept and they describe it in like 2 sentences wonderfully. This is awesome. I'm not sure. I don't, I think it's quite bold to say it's the future of work. I don't think that that's what it is, but I think it's like a subset of freelancing that's going to be amazing.

Yeah, exactly. It's not everybody, but in the same way, like the gig economy made it so that, you know, I can like a thing that didn't happen 10 years ago or whatever, like was you wake up, you like hop in your car, you open up your phone, boop, this guy wants a ride over here, drive over there, pick him up, drop him off, cash hit your bank. You know, you made $16 for that ride. Oh, you want to go— you want to stop working because you want to go pick up your daughter from school. You swipe to log off. You're off work now. You want to get back on later, you know, at midnight and take people to the airport. All right. You can do that again. Like that whole gig economy thing where your phone just gives you jobs, like gives you work that will just pay you small micro, like payments off your micro tasks. That's pretty cool. And that's like a thing that Uber and like TaskRabbit and DoorDash all brought to the table. So I feel like there might be the next version of that, which is like for highly skilled cross-discipline. Like I know I could do this, for example, like I have 3 or 4 people where it's like, that's the great developer. This is the great designer. I'll be the marketing guy. And this guy will be the, you know, whatever the—

but the problem is, is that they're not available, like to do stuff. And this is creating an opportunity for them to be available. But if like I've gone on, I've gone to the Shopify marketplace and I've used Upwork. And oftentimes when I use Upwork, it's just like a guy in India who's like the face and he's got like a team of like 8 guys. And like, isn't that kind of what's already happening? They just packaged this in a far more sophisticated and sexy way.

Yeah, they did in a more sexy way. And I think it's more for premium like things. So like in the same way that like, if you don't want the India thing, but you want like, it's sort of like what an agency does, but what typically what agencies do is they specify, they They specialize in one vertical. So it's like, we do SEO, we do Facebook ads, we do copywriting. And what this is saying is like, no, you're trying to launch a marketplace. You're trying to launch a new NFT marketplace. Well, you're gonna need somebody who's great at email marketing. You're gonna need an engineer who knows smart contracts. You're gonna need a designer. You're gonna need a social media person. So like, whatever they give you, the 6 cross-disciplinary people that are good at building marketplaces. And that's just like a different cut of the same idea of agencies.

This is awesome. This is one of the cooler companies I think I've seen lately. This is amazing.

Yeah.

How'd you find this?

Uh, cause the guys I follow at NFX, they were like, hey, this company's growing really fast. Like fast. I forgot what they said, but it was like growing super fast. And I was like, how fast? And, uh, you know, that's why I started looking into it. And it reminded me of that, like that dreamy idea that Naval had brought up. And I was like, oh, maybe now with COVID maybe now the time has changed where like, there's enough really talented people that are no longer like locked into jobs, um, because they're at home, they're remote.

They've got like all the right people. If you go to like their team, it says that their, their featured advisors are the guy who started Fiverr, which is crazy. The guy who started Fiverr also started Lemonade. That's pretty wild. The CEO of Upwork. So like they've got all the right people on board.

Wow.

Yeah, this is an amazing company. This is a badass find. I've never, I'd never heard of these guys.

Yeah, that's cool. Um, all right, take another idea off this list and, uh, another topic of this lesson. Let's do that.

Um, uh, let's do that one.

Yeah, I literally never read DocuSign. I just sign. Uh, this is more like I just needed to verify with you, do you also do this? Like, dude, when I get a DocuSign, I'm not reading it. I'm not gonna lie, you can scam me pretty easily.

Have you seen the South Park episode where like, it's like what they do is, um, they create like, you know what a caterpillar is? No. So it's like, do I want to know? They take a chain of 6 people and, and they, okay, I think I know. Go ahead. They sew their mouths to the person's butt and you just got to stay there. Okay. And Apple, Apple does that to people because it says it in the terms and conditions in iTunes when you sign up and the whole episode is like, whoa, Stan, you didn't read the terms and conditions of Apple before you click yes? That's crazy. Of course, like you have to go do a caterpillar now because that's what it said. I can't believe you didn't read it. And it's like this whole thing. But dude, I've been getting DocuSigns lately where they literally just send me the sign page and they don't even send me.

Yeah, yeah. It's people like, hey, here's the DocuSign. It's just one underline and says sign here. I'm like, sign what? What am I signing?

Yeah, it's, it's called the signature package. And basically I've got it in the context of a company that I've invested in. They need me to sign paperwork for some reason because they're raising a new, at a new valuation, at a higher valuation. And they literally just send me the signature packet. And like, I have, it's 4 or 6 things and I'm just, it just says like Sam Parr and then a line and the signing. And I have no idea what I'm signing. And so, yeah, like, A, yes, I do that because I just don't read the stuff. And B, sometimes they don't even send me the stuff to read. They just send me— they just sign. I have no idea what it means. Do you get that?

Yeah, I got— I've been getting those and I'm like, I'm like, all right, it's one thing if I'm not going to read it. For you to not even write it, it's like a whole level, another level of arrogance here. And like, you know, poor form that we're taking to market.

It goes to like lawyer@fu.com and this schmuck. Just like sign this nerd.

Law firm's name, Fuckman Banks. What is that? What do those guys do?

Yeah, he's based in New York. Yeah. Why is Seymour Butts asking me to sign this stuff? They're just messing with you.

Yeah, that's crazy. It's like, you know, when people, when people really want to get us to respond, they'll like Venmo us money or they're like, PayPal money being like, oh, I'm being super creative to like to reach you, to get you to read my message or whatever. I'm like, it doesn't really, doesn't really work. I don't really like that. And it makes me feel uncomfortable. And like, you know, generally the people I want to meet never do that. So I'm like, you know, generally this is not a good signal for you.

The other day, these guys were emailing me to try their stuff and they're like, what are you, soft? You're not up for the challenge? And I just, I was just like, I am not up. I am not up for the challenge. They just replied with, okay, you're correct. I am not up for the challenge.

I think people, they hear us out here and we're joking around and they're like, ah, what if I take that joke to the next level and I make it weird and they don't know me and they somehow think that's going to work. It's like, this works because me and Sam have known each other for like 10 years and the jokes are meant to be jokes. They're not serious. And it's like, then you take the— you take that same idea, you make it serious and you do it from a stranger. It's like, no, no, no, it's not the same thing.

Yeah, I actually don't like the annoying— the other day this guy sent me an email and then the subject line, it said like, you know, like, you're a c-word sucker. And he's like, major open. And I was like, oh, I don't— I don't like that. That I find that to be inappropriate and not cool. Like, I'm not on board with that. And that's what he said.

But I can totally see how somebody would listen to this podcast and think, ah, they'll love that.

Yeah.

Like, like, it's like, why are you approaching me? It's like, we're— that's what we're doing. We're like, Oh, I love this copywriting and, you know, just do what you got to do. And for the hustle, I was super annoying getting people to be conference speakers. Like, yeah, but I don't like when it happens to me.

Yeah, I didn't call someone like a little bitch. Like, people will call me that. They're like, what's up, you little bitch? Like, dude, I don't know you.

Who was doing that? Somebody was doing that. Somebody who worked for us was doing that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have not called them out, but they called us a little bitch. And I'm like, dude, you're an intern. Don't talk to me like that. Like, my friends don't even call me a little bitch. Like, what are you talking about that for? It was like, I think it was an intern that called us that. Oh, I know, I think it was a Breu. A Breu used to call us a little bitch.

I wasn't gonna call them out. You're like, I'm not gonna call them out. Oh, unless it's a Breu, in which case it was a Breu.

He was our producer and he'd be like, uh, time to work, you little bitch, or something. Dude, don't talk to me like that. I'm gonna talk to you like that. It's like, why are you calling me that?

Yeah, yeah. But you came in really hot. You came in really hot.

Let's do one more. What's this? Yeah, I know. I mean, I love him and he could talk to me that now that we're friends and not coworkers. But when we were coworkers, I was like, dude, I was like offended. I was like, please don't call me that. I don't like that. Zelensky deepfake. What's that? Oh, wait, no. What's the history of the internet?

That's a longer one. I went down this rabbit hole of like the history of the internet, like how it came out. Pretty crazy, just crazy stuff. Uh, I'm not gonna do that one right now. That one's, that one's too long. But, um, the, okay, so Zelenskyy deepfake. So people know about deepfakes, which is like, I think, I think a lot of people who listen to this probably know about deepfakes, but if you don't, it's basically the way that you can Photoshop a picture to kind of like edit it and make it look a certain way. And it looks real, but like, oh no, that's been Photoshopped. You can now do that with video, which kind of means— it's not as easy, right?

Like, there's not an app I can download.

It's not yet. There are some, but like, you know, in a small way, like the Snapchat face filter is essentially like a bit of a deepfake. There's this—

have you seen the baby one or the one where it makes you sad and cry?

No. Is that on Snapchat?

Yeah. Or it's on Instagram. I think they like show someone's face and they're like, hey, Sean, why are you so sad? Why are you crying? And you're like, What? I'm not crying at all. But like, it looks like you're crying and sad.

And so like, that's one version of it. Then there's like, uh, this— there's this app, I forgot what it's called, it's Moves or something like that. It's like some dance app, but like you basically take a picture of yourself standing there and then it'll make it look like your body— it'll make you look like a great dancer. You know, you could go post something on Twitter.

I think you might have done this where it's like, I think that's how you found it, was I did it. It looked like I was breakdancing.

By the way, um, go to the chat of Riverside and click the link I just sent you. Tell me what you think about that deepfake.

That's you, you dancing, dude.

That's great.

You said announcement. While, while you guys have been taking this time to chill, your boy's been learning to dance. Get on my level. And there's a video of you. Okay, so it's get, get getsway. So Sway is the name of the app. So getsway.app is the name of the thing. And this is hilarious, although it made you a little look a little chunky here. You look, you look a little bit like Will Ferrell in this video. So, you know, well, yeah, you could dance, but it also looks like you put on like the COVID 30.

I, I was that, that was pre-Influencer.

Um, well, but it's like glitching. It's like, it's like, it's like, it's not the, it's not your actual thing. It's like, because you're moving so fast, it's like It has to make it fuzzy. It can't have like a really sharp, like, line.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I mean, click left, go to the left one. There's another one. I mean, it's pretty amazing for just like a free app.

What do you mean? What do you mean click left? There's no left.

There's a video to your left on the next picture to the left.

Uh, on your profile. Okay.

I mean, like, they're, it's, it's a pretty amazing, what's the app called? Get Sway. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pretty amazing.

Uh, anyway, I hope some smart people out there are working on deepfakes. I'm curious what people are going to do. The only solution I know is doing it at the hardware, the operating system level. And even that's probably not perfect, but if somebody does figure out a perfect way to do this, that's going to be very, very valuable technology.

And I saw the Obama thing. Yeah. They made them kind of say some crazy shit. Uh, Yeah, man, I agree. It is kind of scary. Well, Ben, what do you think? How do we do? We got Giddy early. Very, very eclectic. Very eclectic, but like all very interesting stuff. And, and the cola stuff was, was all time. Can't wait to drink a cola with you guys. What was your favorite one?

Your favorite non-cola doing the cola one? Which one did you like? I think eating caramels was my favorite. It's just simple and amazing. So unexpected. I think my favorite was actually we were just eating spaghetti, kissing in the middle when all of a sudden me and my co-founder were doing the, uh, kissing the spaghetti thing where you each take one end, put it in your mouth, get meat in the middle. And what we realized was that the recession—

Yeah. And then we realized, yeah, that's a good one.

But the thing about co-founders is It's like you don't address the first part.

And you got to do this like in a keynote. It's like a product, like a Steve Jobs product announcement.

And never address it and never laugh.

The office grabbing each other's butts, and then it hit us, why stop there, you know? All right, we're out of here. This is great.