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mfm_pod_steph.txt
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Shaan Puri (0:00:00-0:00:03): D to see hearing AIDS. I think that's actually going to be a big deal.
Sam Parr (0:00:03-0:00:05): And they're profitable.
Shaan Puri (0:00:05-0:00:08): I mean, I'm just turning you on. Yeah, they were.
Sam Parr (0:00:12-0:00:13): They Mormon.
Shaan Puri (0:00:13-0:00:14): Oh, my God.
Sam Parr (0:00:16-0:00:18): How far away from the coast did they live?
Shaan Puri (0:00:18-0:00:32): Are they inland? I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in. It like, no days off on the road. Let's try.
Sam Parr (0:00:32-0:00:40): All right, we're here. Steph Smith's here. Before we talk about Steph Smith and all our ideas, we have two things. Sean, you want to go?
Shaan Puri (0:00:40-0:01:04): Yeah, I got to come clean. I have a very late disclaimer I have to give. So a few episodes ago, maybe like four or five episodes ago, we had talked about a business idea that was like a children's play space. Basically, you go there and it's just a place to play. You pay membership fee and you go play with all these cool toys inside. Anyways, I was like, oh, it turns out, like, interesting business. It's a franchise thing, blah, blah, blah.
Sam Parr (0:01:04-0:01:07): Anyways, you just went there. You didn't know anything about it.
Shaan Puri (0:01:07-0:02:05): I didn't even go there. Ben went there. My business partner went there, and he was telling me about it, and he's like, yeah, I was talking to the guy, and here's their occupancy. If that's true, then here's what they would be making. Well, I went and looked at the website and before and after and basically meetings, like, bookings to inquire about a franchise got booked out for, like, four and a half months after the pod. And I just want to say, I have no idea if this is a good business or not. That was an estimate. That was a single experience. It was, hey, that's kind of cool. That could make money. I do not endorse this. I don't know if it's good or bad. I can't say either way. And I really hope that a bunch of people didn't go buy franchises of this thing thinking that I was vouching for this. So I just had to say that because I saw all those meetings get booked and I got a little nervous. I was like, oh, wait, this is not a I can't co sign this. I can't vouch for this either direction. And I just needed to say that up front. So please don't mortgage the house and go buy a franchise of this thing.
Sam Parr (0:02:05-0:02:06): Did they reach out to you?
Shaan Puri (0:02:06-0:02:10): No, they didn't. I don't think they knew what happened.
Sam Parr (0:02:11-0:03:41): That MFM effect. Well, the second thing is, so we have these sources wherever I'm about to talk about something health related or like, I don't know, in your case, in that example, the franchise related or real estate related, we have, like, three or four buddies who will text and be like, hey, we're thinking about talking about this. What's your opinion on X, Y, and Z? And they'll kind of give us some insight. One of those guys, his name is Adam Bornstein. I met Adam because he basically ran a lot of Tim Ferriss's stuff. And one time he had this conference called 212. He invited me to go, and they would rent out, like, the Four Seasons. And one time I checked into my room, and it was so big, I called down to the front desk and I was like, hey, who do I share this room with? And it was a 4000 square foot Four Seasons penthouse, the presidential suite that had, like, a 16 person dining table, a movie theater. And that's how I met Adam, is he invited me to come to his event, and so I've always asked him for health stuff. Well, he just had a book come out. It's called you can't screw this up. I'm trying to think of the best way to summarize it, but it's basically so I have this thing written down. It's basically Ryan Holiday, James Clear, Tim Ferriss. Like, that style of writing and that I don't know, simple hacks, but that's kind of a bad word, but I don't mean it that way. But like, these simple hacks on how you can create healthier diet habits. So the book is called You Can't Screw This Up. He also worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that's who got to write the forward. So I just want to give a shout to Adam. He's a friend of the pod, so I want to give him a shout out, but steph Smith. What's good? Nice to see you.
Steph Smith (0:03:41-0:03:42): Good to be here.
Shaan Puri (0:03:42-0:04:16): One of the all time favorite guests. This is, I think, appearance number six. So if you love this one, go listen to the other five. That steph's done. Steph is great because she brings a dossier. I can't even call it a document. It should be on Google Dossier.com because it is a 15 page document of trends, ideas, small observations that might half ideas that might become something, which makes you essentially the perfect MFM guest. And you're also cool and fun to hang out with. So thank you for coming back.
Steph Smith (0:04:16-0:04:22): Yeah, good to be here. Every time I come on, I get way more nervous than any other appearance because you guys hype me up like that.
Sam Parr (0:04:22-0:04:24): Sean, do you know how I met Steph?
Shaan Puri (0:04:24-0:04:26): No. Tell me the story.
Sam Parr (0:04:26-0:04:52): I will forever take credit for Steph Smith's career. It has nothing to do with how hard she works. What I do, no matter how hard she works, no matter how smart she is, it's all of me. So basically, she had this blog. Is it Stepsmith IO? Yeah, it was a really good blog, and she had this headline, and the headline was to be great, just Be Good Consistently. Is that its stuff?
Steph Smith (0:04:52-0:04:52): Basically.
Sam Parr (0:04:53-0:04:54): What was it? What is it exactly?
Steph Smith (0:04:54-0:04:58): Yeah. It's like how to be great. Question mark. Just be great repeatedly.
Sam Parr (0:04:58-0:04:59): Be good repeatedly.
Steph Smith (0:04:59-0:05:00): Oh, yes. Be good.
Sam Parr (0:05:00-0:05:27): And I was like, I DM'd her. I was like, Steph, this is the best headline I've ever read. This is a really good headline. Like, we're launching this thing called Trends. Do you want to join us? And she was like, yeah, maybe. And I was like, look, come work for us for a couple of years. And I have a feeling you're going to go and leave us. And that's totally cool. Come do like, a tour of duty now. It's been about a year and a half, maybe a year since she's left. She's at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest VZ firms in the world. How is that going?
Steph Smith (0:05:27-0:05:48): It's going great. Yeah, we just hired a producer, which is nice because for a while I was kind of hacking it together myself. But yeah, I feel like the podcast finally is taking off and we're trying a bunch of different formats. I feel like I'm easing into it. I'm finally having fun. Like, when I listen to my first million, you can tell you guys talk about it's like the best job in the world. I'm finally easing into that, which is nice.
Sam Parr (0:05:48-0:06:05): What's it like working there? I mean, when I think about working there, I think of the TV show Billions. It's just like fun shit all the time. But is it just normal company bullshit? Is it more normal of a job than I think? Or is it as spectacular as I would imagine?
Steph Smith (0:06:05-0:06:11): I mean, it's kind of both because day to day it's totally normal because you're just doing your job. You're just doing work.
Shaan Puri (0:06:11-0:06:12): Do you go into an office or are you remote?
Steph Smith (0:06:12-0:06:28): I'm remote. They do have offices. I go in every so often just because I started working remotely a year into my career. And so for the last like eight years or so, I've never had an office. And so it's like a novelty for me. Everyone else is sick of the office. And I'm like, oh, candy bar.
Shaan Puri (0:06:28-0:06:33): You're like, oh, you just sit here all day? Wow. You can't leave this box.
Steph Smith (0:06:33-0:06:37): I know. It's crazy. I'm like, OOH, a call booth. Like how special.
Shaan Puri (0:06:37-0:07:12): I think the way Sam talks about, like, when his wife Sarah worked at Facebook and he's like, when you work at a place, you just sort of get used to everything and you kind of optimize for convenience. And so like, oh, they're all Hands meetings on. I can either go down to the cafeteria and listen to it or they have like a streaming option because there's plays all around the world. And like, all right, whatever. I'll just stream it from my dad. That's easier. I'll eat my salad here. And Sam was like, no, you need to go sit front row with a pen and pad. And when he says any questions, you need to jump out of your chair and ask him a question every single week until he invites us over for dinner. That was basically Sam's master plan.
Steph Smith (0:07:12-0:07:14): Until you're his best friend, I kind.
Shaan Puri (0:07:14-0:07:37): Of think you should be doing the same thing. Like, what's the point of working at Andreessen Horowitz unless you're just like, at the office every day just waiting for some awesome Mark Andreessen moment to happen. Or just like, you're there when he just yells at somebody and it just goes off. Or like they're doing a blood. The twelve year olds come in to give them blood, and you're like, yes. This is the weirdness I came here for.
Sam Parr (0:07:38-0:08:02): It's like every movie ever where there's like, the big boss at the conference table and it's like, what channel? Let's put this together. And then the manager is like, oh, one of my guys. Bring your guy here. Let me talk to that person. Or like, Mark Adrien is going to say, like, who thought to do this? The number on this is Blankety blank. And you say, Actually, sir, it's 6473. What did you say? It's 6473. Because this come with me.
Shaan Puri (0:08:02-0:08:28): Yeah. It's like for six weeks, I've been leaving crumbs in the kitchen to see if anybody would clean it up. And finally somebody did. Let's pull up the security footage. It was Steph Smith. You're promoting. You're at the top now. This is the fanfic. This is what I think is going to happen if you but you just got to be there. I can't believe you're not there every day. You should be every day in the office. That's the real upside of your job. It's not your salary. It's that you can go hang out with some of the smartest people in the world, but you got to do the hangout part, not the like just.
Steph Smith (0:08:28-0:08:32): When we're on calls, then we I got to hover. Yeah, you got you're right. I got to hover around the office.
Shaan Puri (0:08:32-0:08:34): Just like you do on the Internet. You got to lurk.
Sam Parr (0:08:34-0:08:36): You got to be a link.
Shaan Puri (0:08:36-0:08:58): If you told, like, 21 year old you that you would be in this position and you'd be like, would you just stay home and just kind of do your own thing? Or would you go be there and hang out and lurk and just be serendipitous about what's going to happen? The 21 year old you would be like, oh, I'm definitely going in. I'm going to meet these people. I'm going to see what's up. But I think it's easy later to be casual about it.
Steph Smith (0:08:58-0:09:06): Yeah, I got to embrace I feel like, Sam, if you were in the office, go up to someone grabbing a snack and be like, hey, what's up? How's it going? And I'm so awkward.
Shaan Puri (0:09:06-0:09:20): I'm like, you need to be romantic comedy, bumping into everybody and dropping all the papers that you're holding and then being like, let's clean this up together. Not even for the romance, just to create a little intersection between you and me and these people.
Steph Smith (0:09:20-0:09:21): Yeah.
Shaan Puri (0:09:21-0:09:35): When I was at Twitch when we got acquired. I even told people there openly. I was like, I'm not here to do my job. I was like, I'm going to find whatever the most interesting things are happening here, and I'm just going to go be in those meetings and do that.
Sam Parr (0:09:35-0:09:36): But that worked, right?
Shaan Puri (0:09:36-0:09:37): And it worked.
Sam Parr (0:09:38-0:09:39): You're friends with Emmet?
Shaan Puri (0:09:39-0:10:39): Yeah, me and Emmet. I was like, this is the most interesting guy in this building. So anytime it's like, you need to go talk to Jerry on the fourth floor. Nah, I think I'm just going to hang out and Emmet, I'm just going to stay in the meeting. Like, we do the meeting with Emmet. Everybody gets up and leaves, and I'm just going to stay there on my laptop. Next group walks in, I'm still there. I'm just going to hang out and see what happens. It's like, no one's going to say anything. Or I remember when Ninja got poached. So the top streamer on Twitch got poached. And then there was like, I know there's secret meetings happening about like, what should we do? Should we counter offer or what is like a code red moment. But I wasn't in those. So I just wrote up a plan and I sent it to the three top executives. I was like, here's the plan for Ninja. I know I'm not even on the team. But then they were like, attend this meeting tonight at 08:00 P.m.. And I was like, I'm in. I got into the cool shit by just not doing my job. And that's my recommendation to you. If you're going to be around these, like 9000 IQ people, that's the real upside of your job. Don't do your actual job. Do the job of hanging out.
Sam Parr (0:10:39-0:10:49): Speaking of which, step do you think that the talent there are? They actually significantly smarter than any other pretty decent tech company?
Steph Smith (0:10:49-0:10:53): I would say yes. I've worked at I mean, not that.
Shaan Puri (0:10:53-0:10:58): Many companies, but there's a direct shot at you, Sam. She's only really ever worked for you and market.
Steph Smith (0:11:00-0:11:05): At least five companies where I've been a full time employee. And I would say yes.
Shaan Puri (0:11:06-0:11:09): My previous job was a lot of checkers, and now I'm playing check.
Sam Parr (0:11:11-0:11:14): What the fuck do those geniuses know about newsletters?
Shaan Puri (0:11:14-0:11:28): Well, you said something at the beginning of this. You were like, oh, I get nervous for this more than anything else. I'm curious. Do you feel nervous when you are in one of these Asics and Z, like whatever meetings? Like, are you like, oh, these are these are like the people I used to follow on Twitter and shit like that. And now I'm in this room?
Steph Smith (0:11:29-0:11:59): Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's an element too, where I don't represent the company running this podcast, but in a way, the podcast is like an asset to the firm. And I'm like, they hired. I mean, I'm glad they did, but they hired a 29 year old who candidly feels a little out of place amongst these people who have been like, mark Andreessen basically invented the Internet. Like, he created the first browser or the widescale browser. And so I'm like I do feel sometimes a little out of place, but I feel like I'm a year in. I'm getting used to it.
Shaan Puri (0:11:59-0:12:09): I think you should give yourself more credit. You're cooler than everybody I've met at Asics and C. So I think they're lucky to have you, as far as I'm concerned.
Steph Smith (0:12:09-0:12:14): I'm going to bring in one of those Nick Gray name tags that says cooler than you. Sean thinks I'm cooler than everyone here.
Shaan Puri (0:12:14-0:12:15): Exactly.
Sam Parr (0:12:15-0:12:32): This is why I knew she was a good hire, because I was like in my head, I was like, oh, she doesn't realize how good she is. This is a deal she doesn't know yet. Seth, where do you want to go from here?
Steph Smith (0:12:32-0:12:49): Let's just start with the first idea. So this one I think is really interesting because right now, I think a lot of people listening know that there's this issue with commercial real estate. All these office buildings are up for sale, or at least people are leaving.
Shaan Puri (0:12:49-0:13:08): Like, the highest level of going down of vacancy ever, basically. Especially in cities like San Francisco, where I think it's like 35% vacancy and going up. As soon as people's leases roll off, as soon as they can get out of their lease, they will. So it's a disaster.
Steph Smith (0:13:08-0:13:08): Exactly.
Sam Parr (0:13:08-0:13:09): What is this thing?
Steph Smith (0:13:10-0:13:28): A lot of people think, okay, well, then let's go change. Let's swap that commercial real estate for homes, apartments, et cetera. That makes sense, but I think there's this huge opportunity for fractional real estate. So click one of where it says see here? Click one of those and tell me what you see.
Sam Parr (0:13:28-0:13:29): All right, Sean, you want to go?
Shaan Puri (0:13:29-0:13:47): I'll describe it. So it's something called Temple Immersive, and it basically looks like a yoga class of some kind. It's like dimly lit candles, looks like a hot yoga class. But then on the roof is this like, crazy visual where it looks like you're in the forest, and the whole thing just looks super cool.
Steph Smith (0:13:47-0:13:49): Where do you think this is? Like, what is this building?
Shaan Puri (0:13:50-0:13:54): I have no idea. This looks like the lobby of an office building. In a way.
Sam Parr (0:13:54-0:13:57): It's, like, huge, but they make it look like a temple.
Steph Smith (0:13:57-0:14:56): So this is a club during the night, a nightclub. This is just one example, obviously, of where real estate is used from what, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, from like, 07:00 P.m. To 02:00 a.m. And then throughout the week, it's not used at all. And so the thing that I found fascinating, I went to this called Temple Immersive in San Francisco, and I talked to the woman. They just opened up, and I was like, how'd you find this? Did you reach out to a bunch of clubs, and they were like, no, the club reached out to us. I guess it makes sense. But this club has just all this real estate that's being unused. And I was just thinking about what other I guess one this could be applied elsewhere, right? Like, in any city, someone can go contact a bunch of clubs, link them up with yoga studios, Pilates studios, et cetera. But then I was also thinking, what else could this real estate be used for? And another trend that's been taking off is rage rooms. Have you guys heard of rage rooms?
Sam Parr (0:14:56-0:14:57): No, but I like rumors.
Shaan Puri (0:14:57-0:14:59): Smash shit, right?
Steph Smith (0:14:59-0:15:07): Yeah. There's one in SF as well, but basically people are angry they're losing their jobs.
Sam Parr (0:15:07-0:15:11): Yeah. Is it called, like, the rage room market?
Steph Smith (0:15:13-0:15:15): The city is the rage room.
Sam Parr (0:15:15-0:16:11): CVS is doing a rebrand. We all want to feel better and be happier and have more freedom. And there are endless resources at our fingertips. But waiting through a sea of self help books and podcasts and workshops takes more time than you've got. So you have to check out Selfhelpful with Kevin Miller. Kevin is a pro athlete, peak performance expert, published author, and personal development guide. He invites today's most important influencers and change makers to grapple with their own wisdom and stories in authentic, relatable conversations about self improvement and what drives them from personal fulfillment and work life balance to spirituality, relationships, motivation. Each four part series distills the guests greatest wisdom and methodologies into practical steps that anyone can integrate into their life. Tune into Self helpful with Kevin Miller to elevate your personal experience and improve the way you show up for others. Okay, what is this rage room shit?
Steph Smith (0:16:11-0:16:42): So people will literally go and yeah, like Sean said, you just smash it. So they'll give you a bunch of plates, they'll give you old electronics, they'll give you stuff. And I think depending on what you choose, you pay a different amount and you just get a session in this empty room, and you just get to smash stuff, which you just don't get to do in normal life. And so I was thinking, I was like, not just a yoga studio, but a lot of this real estate. Like, go convert a club during the week to, like, a rage room people.
Sam Parr (0:16:43-0:17:09): I always thought, like, these little things wouldn't be that interesting, but we have this member of Hampton, and he's tweeting about it. His name is Raleigh Williams. I was just going to bring him up, dude. I think he's in Utah. And he created I thought Escape Room was, like, a brand, but I think it's also, like, the style. And so he created a version of an escape room. And what did he do, Sean? He sold it for about $30 million.
Shaan Puri (0:17:09-0:19:19): He created a business, he sold it for $26 million. And what he says is basically, he's at a law firm and he doesn't love his job, and he's like, okay, should I do something else? Like, what should I do? He reads an article that talks about how lucrative escape rooms were. This is back in 2015 when the escape rooms were really just sort of like the new trend. It was the new Froyo, basically. So he looks it up, he finds out how much money these make, and he's like, okay, I think this is a good business, but I don't have enough money to go build it out. But in the true entrepreneurial spirit, he doesn't let the lack of resources stop him. He becomes resourceful. He's like, all right, can I build an escape room inside this abandoned bus? So he goes by this 1984 Bluebird bus, and he converts the inside into an escape room. And now he's got an escape room on wheels. He could drive it up to companies offices and do the corporate off site right there. And so it wasn't perfect in the sense that if it was a hot day or a cold day, it kind of sucked to be inside of it. But other than that, it was like this super efficient escape room allowed him to get real cash flow going. I think he said the bus itself was making like, five or ten grand a month of free cash flow. And so he starts opening up more, and so he builds out his first real one. He opens five, six more or whatever. Then he starts adding to the back of it. So there's, like, real estate. So he's getting the real estate with the escape room, and he's getting more space, and he created a trampoline park and an axe throwing things. So basically, just like this kind of like out of home entertainment is what we call this category. And so he just bundles these together, and over that period of, like, 2015 to 2020 ish he's built this thing up. And then he starts selling them off. So he's selling off in chunks of pieces. And he basically said that he made $26 million doing this, I think through a combination of the sale plus the distributions along the way. But I might be wrong. Maybe it's both. He had said he had, let's see, he spent 10 million building these out, and over the over the years, there was about 20 million in distributions from that's crazy. So kind of an amazing outcome, an amazing return for this guy.
Sam Parr (0:19:21-0:19:25): Yeah, I didn't think that these would be good, and then I met him and I started learning about him.
Shaan Puri (0:19:25-0:19:27): He's a nice dude too. People should go follow him on Twitter.
Sam Parr (0:19:27-0:19:28): How do you know him?
Shaan Puri (0:19:28-0:19:36): I just know him through Twitter. I've been going back and forth with him a little bit, and then he listens to the pod. So though he had reached out at.
Sam Parr (0:19:36-0:19:42): Some point, steph talk about this pay transparency thing, this interests me a lot.
Steph Smith (0:19:42-0:21:22): Yeah. So in the last couple of years, there's been a bunch of laws that have changed across states. I think Colorado is maybe the most well known where companies have to, depending on the state, disclose certain aspects of a job related to pay, right? So it might be a range that a specific job requires. Also things like even if you're in a job, you can request your band and why you're paid a certain amount and how you compare it to others across the company. And so that's changing. It's still changing. It's very much in flux. I think there's at least a dozen states that now require you to share those pay ranges. For example, but this one girl, Hannah Williams, she's 26, so super young, quit her job. She's making like $115,000 a year and then in the last year has just been doing the kind of man, or in this case woman on the street. And all she does is she goes up and she just asks people, hey, what do you do? How much do you make? But her social accounts have blown up, so she has over a million followers on TikTok again in a year, 450,000 on Instagram, and she's on other channels as well. And so an article was written about her in January, and she had already made $600,000 since her switch. And so I'm sure she's made way more now with the accounts being the size they are. But this is one of the cases, we've talked about this before, when there's like regulation change, there's like a rule change, a line in the sand is drawn and then that has implications. And this one's so far ranging, right, because it impacts any job within these given states.
Sam Parr (0:21:23-0:22:12): So if you go to her profile, she's doing a really good job. So you go to her profile on TikTok and you click that link that says Stan. So check this out. So here's how she's making money. So the top link is an Indeed link where it says, get a job as a nurse. And so she's getting an affiliate thing. Then she has a market research guide, which is learn how you should do, learn how much you should be making. And I guess that's so she can collect emails, but then click attend La and NYC workshops. So she partnered with Capital One to do local seminars at their banks because some of their banks have cafes. And then she also has, I think I believe it's a subscription database where you can see individual salary data packed with contextual information. This woman's awesome. This is how you do it.
Shaan Puri (0:22:12-0:22:13): Also shot.
Sam Parr (0:22:13-0:22:13): This is how you do it.
Shaan Puri (0:22:13-0:23:06): Sam invested in Stan. So good use of Stan here for putting a link in the bio that lets you make a bunch of money. Yeah, this is cool. We've talked about levels that FYI on the pod before, which is a similar concept, which is like crowdsourcing salary info. So if you're an engineer at Facebook. You can go find out. Am I getting paid? What other l four engineers get paid? Or should I be working at Google? And what would I get paid if I was over there? I think they're doing an awesome job of this. When we had mentioned this on the pod, somebody did this for doctors. I think we had said somebody should do this for nurses and doctors. And then they were like, hey, we're med students. And so they went and did this for doctors and created a database. I think they got acquired by levels, actually, after hearing it on the pod and then taken action on it. So definitely think that there's an opportunity here. And I like, Sam, what do you call it? Regulatory inflections regular? What's your big word?
Sam Parr (0:23:08-0:23:37): Inflections is the I word. The inflections, which is anytime there's, like, a law change. Well, there's, like, multiple inflections. So there's like a tech inflection, which is, like, Uber exists because everyone now has an iPhone and you have GPS in your phone. Then there's, like, cultural inflections, which is, like, teens feel comfortable filming themselves. And then there's regulatory inflections, which is this drug is now legal, or this patent is about to expire, or you now, in Colorado, have to disclose your salary ban, therefore it opens up new opportunities.
Shaan Puri (0:23:38-0:23:40): There's another one you have here that.
Steph Smith (0:23:40-0:23:50): I was going to say. So you guys have talked about hearing AIDS on the pod before. So, as of October, the FDA relaxed their rule, which basically meant hearing AIDS could be sold over the counter, which.
Sam Parr (0:23:50-0:24:03): Is bullshit that they're not sold over the counter. It's fucking bullshit. It's been bothering me so much that in glucose monitors, I'm amazed that they're not sold over the counter. I've been trying to get a hearing aid, and they make me go to all these appointments and I miss them. It pisses me.
Steph Smith (0:24:03-0:24:04): Oh, really?
Sam Parr (0:24:04-0:24:04): Yes.
Steph Smith (0:24:04-0:24:15): Another fun fact around hearing AIDS, which I feel like is interrelated to the fact that they can is it now already that they can be sold over the counter, or is it this coming off?
Shaan Puri (0:24:15-0:24:16): No, they can.
Steph Smith (0:24:16-0:24:57): Okay. They already can. But apparently 99% of hearing AIDS or custom hearing AIDS are 3D printed already. And so there's a few companies that basically own this market currently. But the reason I love this is because 3D printing is the epitome of tech. Hype cycle. Started in the 80s, then got way overhyped, wasn't ready. Everyone thought it was dead. But it's like, come back in these really niche places like hearing AIDS. We talked to people on Trends a while ago that were using 3D printing for, like, dental implants, things like that. And so I feel like it's something that actually is overlooked because people were like, 3D printing instead.
Sam Parr (0:24:57-0:25:01): Wait, what do you sean, you said yep. As if, you know you know people doing this for teeth. Yeah.
Shaan Puri (0:25:02-0:26:51): One of. My best friends from college. He's a surgeon and he's an ENT surgeon. So ear, nose, throat. And I was like, while he was in med school. So this is like over the past eight years or whatever. The guy's just been at school forever. And I was like, how's it going? He's like, oh, it's fine. But I'm having the most fun because now I run Duke's 3D printing facility. I'm like, 3D printing? Like just like for engineering? Like, you're making toys or what are you doing? He's like, no, the medical 3D printing. And I was like, Wait, I thought 3D printing is not even a thing for normal shit. You guys are already using it in medicine. He's like, Dude, I surgically implanted part of a skull that I 3D printed the other day. We take your jaw shape and then we're able to create the perfect shape that we needed for this implant, the surgical process. And I was like, wow, I had no idea. And they're doing this with basically it's interesting, some technologies take forever to get into medicine because it's like the high stakes spot. And for some, medicine is the only justification for putting in the time and the money that it takes to get the technology to work. And I think that's kind of where 3D printing has gone, where it's like it started as like this hobbyist thing, but then the real commercialization so far has happened. On the medical side. I think the same thing is happening kind of in VR. People trying to do the hobby thing for a long time. But one of the better, more commercial use cases of VR is doctor training, flight pilot training, things like imagining instruction. Yeah, exactly. Anything where you need to sort of visualize and plan something. It's worth the money to develop a really high quality VR simulation because it's cheaper than doing a real prototype of it.
Sam Parr (0:26:51-0:26:54): Damn, I didn't know you had the siding view.
Shaan Puri (0:26:54-0:26:56): I got friends in hospitals, as they say.
Sam Parr (0:26:57-0:27:07): Well, you're Indian, of course you do. You're the OD man out. But you're shilling Web three for years. Turns out you're a practical guy as well.
Shaan Puri (0:27:08-0:27:10): We put the blockchain in your brain, baby.
Sam Parr (0:27:12-0:27:13): Do this.
Shaan Puri (0:27:13-0:27:29): Well, I also for this hearing aid thing, I met these guys that were doing 7 million a month in sales on their hearing aid brand that I had never heard of. And I was like, oh, maybe this makes a lot of sense, actually. Like DTC hearing AIDS. I think that's actually going to be a big deal.
Sam Parr (0:27:30-0:27:32): Was it bootstrapped?
Shaan Puri (0:27:32-0:27:42): I don't know if they're fully bootstrapped, but yeah, they're not like venture act. They made bootstrapped and then their uncle gave them some money to keep scaling, it seems like. That sort of vibe.
Sam Parr (0:27:42-0:27:43): And they were profitable.
Shaan Puri (0:27:44-0:27:46): I'm just turning you on. Yeah, they were.
Sam Parr (0:27:51-0:27:52): They Mormon.
Shaan Puri (0:27:52-0:27:53): Oh my God.
Sam Parr (0:27:54-0:27:56): How far away from the coast did they live?
Shaan Puri (0:27:57-0:28:10): Are they inland? Let's keep going. Let's do this. Jobs of the future. I think this is a good one. Yeah. And I also love that you're branding this steps list. Well done. Way to take a page out of our book.
Steph Smith (0:28:10-0:28:23): I had to I love Sarah's list. But yeah, this all comes from, I guess, two things. One, people think AI is taking all of our jobs. I personally don't fully agree with that. We don't need to dive into that.
Sam Parr (0:28:23-0:28:39): Well, what's the official stance at a 16 Z right now? Is there like a poster where it said, like, web three is future and they just like put an X over it? They just wrote AI.
Steph Smith (0:28:39-0:29:16): No comment. No comment. But what I'll say is we even on this pod have talked about different jobs that don't quite exist or maybe are starting to exist. I've talked about chief automation officers. Sean, you've talked about this idea of like a mental fitness coach. And I guess this idea of Steph's list is partially I want to share a few ideas today, but I also want to hear from the listeners, like, what are the jobs that you think are, as some people might say, a little more antifragile, but also that, again, don't quite exist yet or early. The types of things we would have.
Shaan Puri (0:29:16-0:29:25): Talked about in trying start with the stat you have here because I think the stat actually makes it clear that these aren't just like, oh, cute things on the fringe. It's like, no, this is the future.
Steph Smith (0:29:26-0:29:41): Yeah. So apparently 85% of employment growth in the last 80 years came from new jobs. So Aka, between 1940 and today, 85% of employment growth came from jobs that did not exist in 1940.
Sam Parr (0:29:42-0:29:47): Did they not exist because AI didn't exist or did they not exist because it's by new businesses?
Shaan Puri (0:29:47-0:29:51): Like new businesses, the job title didn't exist is what you're saying.
Steph Smith (0:29:51-0:30:58): Yeah. So even simple examples of this that I think anyone can recognize from even the last few decades before 2008, 2009, the idea of a social media manager did not exist. The idea of a UX designer did not exist. And those are jobs that truly like, what, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people now do these jobs. And so there's going to be versions of this. I think it's a little more brainwracking to figure out in the age of AI because you can always ask like, oh, well, is this going to disappear in three years instead of 30? But I think actually there's maybe like frameworks to think about this. So for example, I think drones are kind of hitting that. We talked about 3D printing hitting that stage where a lot of consumers own drones, but a lot of companies are also starting to use drones. And so what within that industry could exist? It could be like drone technicians. There's a lot of drones. People are going to need to fix those drones. Is there like drone traffic control? There's aircraft traffic control. So why wouldn't there be? Right?
Shaan Puri (0:30:58-0:31:00): Safety inspector, charging, installation, blah blah blah.
Steph Smith (0:31:00-0:31:06): Exactly. And so my question for you guys is like anything on your radar?
Shaan Puri (0:31:06-0:31:27): Well let's start with the ones you talked about before. So you said it quickly but I think it's worth repeating because you were on I don't know, a year ago when you said it. So Chief Automation Officer, when you said that at that time this was kind of like definitely pre AI being like the thing that every's talking about. What does a Chief automation officer do and why did you think that was a cool job? Like a job of the future?
Steph Smith (0:31:27-0:32:17): Yeah. So I mean a lot of companies will have a CTO. The CTO typically though is so wrapped up on what's our infrastructure is cybersecurity, how are we tackling that and how are we keeping our company safe, our data safe, what they often aren't focused on. And maybe some people would argue this is the role of the COO, but is how do I actually take the technology that exists today like AI and enable every single person within my company to understand how to up level their jobs. Right? So to become three X more productive. Because most of those people unfortunately either aren't plugged into the technology, don't have the excitement to actually implement it within their job, or honestly it's just one of those like you don't know what you don't know.
Sam Parr (0:32:17-0:32:26): Kind of. Let me give you a compliment. I remember that pod that we did where you talked about that at Hampton. The first hire we made was an automation expert.
Steph Smith (0:32:26-0:32:27): Really?
Sam Parr (0:32:27-0:32:48): The very first hire. His name is Grant, all he does is automate stuff. So he's basically a Zapier plus airtable expert. Because one of our values early on was we want to grow to be big but we don't want to have to hire loads of people. So let's right away start automating stuff. And it was because of that conversation. So the very first hire we made was an automation expert.
Steph Smith (0:32:48-0:32:49): That's awesome.
Sam Parr (0:32:49-0:32:52): And you know what? It is fucking awesome.
Shaan Puri (0:32:52-0:32:59): The bottleneck is not typically like you have to create new things. It's that basically you're bridging a gap.
Sam Parr (0:32:59-0:33:00): Usually a duct tape, a ton of things.
Shaan Puri (0:33:00-0:34:14): There's a process we're doing that's kind of tedious, manual, repetitive or low value ad, but needs to be done. And then there's tools that could do that if you knew they existed and you knew how to pipe them together and stitch them together so that they actually work. And what this person does. And I do this at our company almost by accident, which is for our ecommerce companies. I just discovered yesterday there's somebody who just has to spend hours a week just like square cropping photos so that they look better in shopify from what the photographer gives them. And I was like, wait, you do this for how many pictures? And they're like, yeah, it sucks. And I was like, you know, there's this tool that will just bulk you bulk upload, and it'll do that, and then it'll pipe it to you here in Slack. And he could see we'll use a different tool to pipe it into Slack. And you'll see if there's one that's off, because you could just kind of skim this with your eyes, and then you'll just be able to fix the one off. That's not good. But 98% of them will just be done well the first time automatically by this one tool. And they're like, oh shit. That's like, no thank you. That saves me a bunch of time. And now I could go do things that are actually going to drive a little more growth versus just like some bullshit that had to be done. And how many of those are there in every company? There's a ton of those.
Sam Parr (0:34:15-0:34:38): And the problem is, Sean, is even let's say that hypothetically, you only have ten people. Even though you've been ten people for three years, just ten people has created enough habit that even getting an automation person in now, it's going to be like, oh man, where do I start? So doing it with 10,000 people is an impossible task. That's why we were like, let's get this right away. Let's do this right away.
Steph Smith (0:34:38-0:35:03): Yeah, there should be like a ratio. Like for every ten employees you have, you have one chief automate or not chief automation officer, but someone who knows how to automate. You just pair them with teams and they literally do user interviews. They sit down, they say, hey, let me shadow you for a day. Let me just see what you do. And then from there, I bet anyone, myself included, who tries to automate what I can. They would just pick up so many things of like, why are you doing that at all?
Shaan Puri (0:35:03-0:35:11): So I think you should also have this for team collaboration. Have you guys ever read this book, five Dysfunctions of a Team?
Sam Parr (0:35:11-0:35:14): Yeah. By Patrick something, I don't even know who is.
Shaan Puri (0:35:14-0:35:16): It's a great book, honest. I love that book.
Sam Parr (0:35:17-0:35:18): It's like a narrative driven other people.
Shaan Puri (0:35:18-0:35:48): I think, don't really like it's kind of like fiction. It's a business advice book, but it's written as a fictional story, which is cool because that's not usually how those are written. It basically describes like, there's a company, whatever, Acme Inc. And they go to this team Op site and they're trying to figure something out. And then you have these four personalities or five personalities or whatever, and it shows the different ways that a team can be dysfunctional. And once I worked in a bigger I've worked in kind of like two person teams. That's what I'm in now.
Sam Parr (0:35:49-0:36:02): Well, I think the takeaway of the or the what the you forgot this part where he says the reason the book is called that is, Successful Teams All Look Different, but Every Dysfunctional Company Looks The Same. And here's the five things that they all have exactly.
Shaan Puri (0:36:02-0:36:57): And you kind of identify them, but he identifies it, and the way the book is written is kind of cool, I think. It's sort of like, here's a situation. They have two people who both have kind of, like, valid perspectives, or one person doesn't realize that the thing that they're saying is causing the other people to feel a certain way and causing all these second order effects. Anyways, it's a good book for management, I guess. But I guess my real takeaway is, like, I've been in a bunch of companies where they do these shit builds up, and then they're like, we need an executive coach. We need a team off site. We need to break down all this scar tissue that's being built and dysfunction that's in the team and resentment that's in the team, and all these things that are not allowing us to perform at our best. I actually think that companies should embed this in the company. So I think there should be somebody that floats around that's basically like the chicken billions who's like the team psychologist or whatever. It's sort of like that, but instead of one on one what's her name? Therapy.
Sam Parr (0:36:57-0:36:58): I love that lady.
Shaan Puri (0:36:58-0:37:03): Yeah. I stopped watching the show after season one, so I forgot. But she's awesome.
Sam Parr (0:37:03-0:37:04): She's Wendy Rhodes.
Shaan Puri (0:37:04-0:38:07): Yeah. So basically, instead of that, it's somebody who just sits in meetings and takes notes, and every week they just deliver like sam, do you know that you do this and you say this and that, that's making these did you notice that makes these people feel this way. And it and then when they walk out of the room, you know, they're not going to go do the thing you want in the way you want because of the way you said it, or this person just didn't have that information and they were put on the spot. Maybe you should put in a process that gets the information on a dashboard that everybody sees beforehand or whatever. Right? Like somebody that identifies dysfunction. Because let's say for every ten people you hire, if you can make that team 10% more efficient, you've basically created one extra employee without that payroll. And so I think that the numbers would the ROI would be there if you had this. But I'm surprised this doesn't exist. So I think that's a kind of a job of the future is basically like a collaboration expert. So somebody that is like an internal compass, team compass, to figure out where are they?
Sam Parr (0:38:07-0:38:10): You like that word doula? You got to use that word doula here.
Shaan Puri (0:38:10-0:38:15): Yeah, I guess I'll just keep using doula as a guy and pissing everybody off.
Steph Smith (0:38:15-0:38:20): Sam, what do you think? Any jobs that stand out to you? What are you guys hiring for?
Sam Parr (0:38:22-0:38:42): I don't fucking know, but nothing that some of the ones that are like bullshit that you see out there. And then I see their titles and I'm like, oh, you're not actually good at that is Community Manager. So like, Community Manager is like a title that I actually don't think most people know how to make community. So that's kind of like a nonsense one.
Shaan Puri (0:38:42-0:39:45): Here's one from the podcast that we've talked about. We have a podcast producer, Ben Wilson, right now. And people will have social media manager. They have all these different functions. But what I told the team was, I think we just need like a band manager. It's basically like podcasts as they gets more successful, they're kind of like a band. You have the talent, they're the face, they get on stage, they perform. And then there's all this shit that needs to be done, whether it's like, we're going on tour, we want to sell merch, we want to develop this cult following of fans that just love us because we just do dope shit that is fan service, fan love. Then you have the recording stuff that's got to get done and you kind of just need somebody who's like a hybrid of a business manager or an agent, as well as somebody who's kind of got the community building skills of a community manager. And that's what a band manager is for bands. And I think that you're going to see this more for podcasts and YouTubers is a role that's sort of like the band manager, like the Milk Boys and whatever, they have that, but most others don't have it underneath them.
Sam Parr (0:39:45-0:39:52): Yeah, for sure. What are the lists that you have here? Head of Remote and then Cyber Actuary. What are those?
Steph Smith (0:39:52-0:40:29): So Head of Remote is kind of similar to the thing that you mentioned, Sean, but it's like there's so much dysfunction at companies, especially the ones that transition from being non remote to remote. Totally just copy and pasted a bunch of things from the office. They don't actually know how to build a remote organization from the ground up, how to do things asynchronously. And so it's kind of crazy when you think about how macro a shift that is for thousands of people to be doing things all one way, switching to a totally new way, and to have no expertise from someone to actually guide that. So that's the idea of how to remote. And some companies already have this, like.
Shaan Puri (0:40:29-0:41:04): A remote Work Officer or RWO. What would they do? It's like, well, people like I know in our company, it's like, well, first they have to it's kind of like it there's like, well, they need to have a good home set up. Sam, you talked about this. We need to not look like dog shit on camera, whether internally or with our clients and our customers. How do we make sure everybody's got a good zoom set up? Okay, secondly, how do we create some best practices around remote working and how to do stuff that's different now that we're not all in the office and can just look each other and talk to each other real quick? And how do we set boundaries for different time zones? How do we plan media? All of that, I think, is definitely.
Steph Smith (0:41:04-0:41:38): In location based pay. I mean, isn't this crazy, like, to your idea with Hampton Sam of the nice background? The same companies that had these really strict clothing rules. Like, you have to show up in a suit and you have to look this way, are letting people sit with their MacBook under their chin with, like, a dirty ass background behind them, showing up to their business meetings, trying to win a client. And it's like, where's your digital suit? They don't care. They don't even think about that because it's so outside of their field of view. But that's just one example.
Sam Parr (0:41:38-0:41:45): But do you guys do that at a 16 Z? Because when I imagine a 16, that's a Khaki pants. That's a Khaki pants type of place.
Steph Smith (0:41:45-0:41:52): Well, I don't think we have a clothing code, but we do, like, Lululemon.
Sam Parr (0:41:52-0:41:56): ABC pants is like, the official pants of man, Silicon Valley.
Steph Smith (0:41:57-0:42:30): Here's something that a 16 Z does do that I never put together as related to this, but their design team will create every quarter these beautiful zoom backgrounds that the company uses. And they actually look good. I feel like a lot of zoom backgrounds are like the company's logo kind of awkwardly Photoshopped in the background. And again, they refresh them every quarter. Everyone has access to them, so there's at least that visual consistency. But I don't know if we have a closing code, but I hope some.
Sam Parr (0:42:30-0:42:38): Of your bosses and employees listen to this, and I just want them to hear me say this. It is me and Sean making fun of you guys, not Seth.
Shaan Puri (0:42:38-0:42:44): Just fly with a threat there. That was awesome. It's like on TV where they're like, Put the camera on me.
Steph Smith (0:42:44-0:42:45): Put the camera on me.
Shaan Puri (0:42:46-0:42:53): And then you look down the barrel and you deliver some wrestling promo. That's what I thought you were about to do, but you were trying to cover.
Steph Smith (0:42:53-0:42:56): Sam's version is like, look at me. And he's like, you're great.
Shaan Puri (0:42:59-0:43:01): No one believes in you more than me.
Sam Parr (0:43:02-0:43:16): Well, I had a friend that lived in China, and I used to text him all the time, and I'd be like, Dude, your government sucks. What's going on with that? And then I would reply with, by the way, whoever's reading this, it is me saying this, not him.
Shaan Puri (0:43:18-0:43:33): Yeah. Don't disappear, my friend. Invest in the cool zoom backgrounds and stuff. They got the I think, what, like 700 million in management fees. Those management fees got to go somewhere. So I'm glad they're putting them to good use.
Steph Smith (0:43:33-0:43:57): Yeah, but I mean, just to summarize on the head of remote thing. Think about I think maybe the easiest way to think about it is there's all these macro tech trends, right? Like remote work, AI, automation, cybersecurity. Right. The idea of a chief security officer didn't exist like ten years ago. Right. Because that just became such an important, I guess, concept within especially tech firms.
Sam Parr (0:43:58-0:44:00): And what's this food engineer one?
Steph Smith (0:44:00-0:44:14): Well, I wanted to ask you guys about this because yeah, we never talked about this, Hannah. Do you guys remember that? Yeah, so I know, but I still think the concept of like a food engineer will exist. I think this one's a little further out.
Sam Parr (0:44:14-0:44:15): So give this story, Sean.
Shaan Puri (0:44:15-0:45:50): Yeah, so a lot of people know David Friedberg now because he's on the all in Pod. So he kind of got a lot more popular or famous. But this awesome guy used to work at Google, created this thing called the Production Board, which is his kind of incubator startup studio or whatever. And they build things that are kind of like hard tech. So it's like things that interface with the real world. They have like hardware, they're making food or making biological substances or whatever. They're creating real world things. And he had this company called Canna that he created that was basically like the Coke freestyle machine in your kitchen. So you would have this device, this Nespresso machine that sits on your countertop that can make like 1000 different drinks exactly to your specification using basically like the equivalent of a printer cartridge. So it's like you put in this cartridge that's got all these micro flavors and then you hook it up to your water supply and it's like it just takes water. It makes it cold, hot or bubbly. And then it pipes in the exact dose of flavor to create whatever drink you wanted. You want tea? Here, you can make hot tea. You want sparkling water. That's flavored like BlackBerry. Boom. Done. And so it was this awesome idea. It will also be good for sort of like the world in a way because a lot of the supply chain is basically spent bottling water or soda, putting it in cans, putting it on shelves, putting cardboard around it, transporting it to the store, transporting it to your house, then transporting the trash to the dump. I was like, dude, what if we just took the water supply everybody already has to their home and we let you make whatever drink you want. Very cool idea.
Sam Parr (0:45:51-0:45:52): And then out of nowhere it just.
Shaan Puri (0:45:52-0:46:00): Suddenly got canceled and they were like unfortunately to scale up, we needed a lot of money and in this funding environment we couldn't do it.
Sam Parr (0:46:00-0:46:04): That's a bullshit excuse. Who can't raise they've got like the.
Steph Smith (0:46:04-0:46:34): Top tech podcast in the world. Yeah, maybe an interesting way of framing that idea was also it came from the idea that they had done research and they had realized that basically every drink out there, whether it was tea, whether it was wine, whether it was beer, 95% water. Not just 95% water, but even the chemicals that go into it. I don't remember the number, but it was something like there's only 30 or so flavors that you need to basically generate every taste. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe something for you.
Shaan Puri (0:46:34-0:46:48): Yeah, we should get him on, or I'm going to tweet at him. I want to know not what really happened. Like, there's a scandal, but tell me more, because clearly he could sneeze and raise $30 million for an idea. So I'm surprised if it wasn't like.
Sam Parr (0:46:48-0:46:52): It must have been, that his sneeze will be lovely flavors, too.
Shaan Puri (0:46:53-0:47:12): I feel like he must not have believed meaning the team must have realized it's not feasible or something like that, or they must have proven that the thing is not feasible or not economic in some way for them to not be able to raise money. Because just on the concept, I feel like they could have raised more money. So I think that's an interesting one. What went wrong?
Sam Parr (0:47:12-0:47:17): But he said that he was going to send us one, and then his assistant or someone at the company was talking to us, and they just quit.
Shaan Puri (0:47:17-0:47:57): No, not send us one. They were like, we want you guys. Basically, their idea was, like, if you could make any drink flavor on the spot, okay, then what happens to drink brands? And his idea was, like, drink brands become software, so they just become brands. We would create a drink flavor Sam's Almighty root beer or whatever, and it would just be, like, a specific dosage of flavors, and that somebody could just buy it for a dollar on their own can of machine, and it would just dispense the drink, and we would make money for every one of those flavors sold. Basically every one of those drinks sold. That was the kind of the concept. So they wanted us to make one, and they were, like, come down to our facilities. We never got around to doing it, and now it's gone.
Sam Parr (0:47:58-0:48:00): Did you guys see the freestyle machine for Condiments?
Shaan Puri (0:48:00-0:48:02): Yes, I did. See this?
Sam Parr (0:48:02-0:48:05): Dude, sign me up. Sign me up, dude.
Steph Smith (0:48:05-0:48:10): This stuff is have you been to, like, hot pot in Asia where they have the sauce bars?
Shaan Puri (0:48:10-0:48:10): No.
Steph Smith (0:48:11-0:48:15): If you go to hot pot in Taiwan, there will be hot pot is.
Sam Parr (0:48:15-0:48:18): Like a style of food or like.
Steph Smith (0:48:18-0:48:58): A yeah, so basically, you get a big pot of hot water. They give you broth of a certain sort, and then you basically go shopping on this wall, and you pick, oh, I want some noodles. I want some beef, whatever, and you pick it out. And then you basically cook your own soup. But as part of that, they have rice and other things, and they typically have this huge sauce bar of maybe, like 20 to 30 different things like garlic or ginger, soy sauce, like ponzi sauce, whatever, and you make your own sauce. And so when I saw this coming, I was like, this is genius because this exists in Asia, but only in these hot pot locations, right?
Shaan Puri (0:48:58-0:49:11): Yeah. I kind of love this. I really do want the future of food to be a lot more interesting. I think it's going to be. So in your Jobs thing, you got Food Engineer, got that one. Cyber actuary. What does that one mean? Have you explained that one?
Steph Smith (0:49:11-0:50:07): Yeah. So basically, a lot of people, even if we relate this back to AI, are worried that there's just going to be a lot more cyber, quote unquote, crime. Right? People, like, replicating your voice, like getting your bank details. And I think this idea of being a cyber actuary is basically actuaries assess risk for anything, right. How risky is it for us to deploy this celebrity's voice in this way? How risky is it for us to, I don't know, like, open source our new LLM? There's going to be all these implications of things, I guess, becoming a lot more online, if they aren't already. And so this idea of a cyber actuary is like, there's already a ton of actuaries that figure out how much insurance should cost in the typical world, like if you buy a flight. And I think there's just like this huge white space around risk that people have not calculated yet.
Sam Parr (0:50:07-0:50:09): Did I tell you guys about Eden data?
Shaan Puri (0:50:09-0:50:10): No.
Sam Parr (0:50:11-0:51:36): So I met him because he's joined Hampton. His name is Taylor. And I don't know if he was playing up to my ego stuff, but he told me he created this because of an article that one of us wrote on Trends. I don't know if that's true or not, but he launched this thing called Eden Data in just two years. It's now doing like, six or $7 million in revenue. And basically what they do is if you are a smallish startup, so, like, 50 to 100 people, you have to have a certain type of compliance in order to sell software to enterprise companies. And so the service that he provides is and this is like an oversimplification, but there's basically like a 50 to 100 point checklist of all the things that you need to do. And a lot of these startups, they can't afford a full time chief security officer. And so instead, they pay Eden Data seven or eight or $10,000 a month. And he's got a team of outsourced people overseas who goes through your website and goes through your entire checklist and makes sure that all 50 or 100 things are done and they have templates to do it, and then they stay on top of it and they monitor it in case any changes have to happen. So now when you go and pitch, like, this enterprise company to sell your software and. Even though you're a small startup, you've already done all the stuff that needs to get done. And I think it's only two years in. I think he's going to do 8 million in revenue this year. And it's like a service that's subscriptions. It's like a subscription consultancy almost. And he's killing it. It's a crazy company with huge margins.
Steph Smith (0:51:37-0:51:41): Damn. I have it pulled up. Your digital security sidekick.
Sam Parr (0:51:41-0:51:45): Yeah. When I see companies like this, I think, like, I'm in the wrong.
Shaan Puri (0:51:45-0:52:16): We were talking to somebody that was doing this. I wanted to do this for rich people. It was like just an overall security audit for rich people and everything. Like your house security, your bank account security, your crypto security. Just somebody who's going to come in and try to just poke holes in your stuff. And at a certain dollar amount of net worth, it definitely makes sense. And you're not the expert. And you have more to lose than you have than the cost of the service. You have a lot more to lose. It's like asymmetric downside, basically.
Sam Parr (0:52:18-0:53:07): I've reached out to tons of people I've reached out to tons of people doing it. And the problem that I saw is that a lot of them, they're all like ex military guys, too. And so I remember I was talking to I was like, pomp after the show. I was like, what do you do for security? Can you walk me through it? He goes, oh, I got this guy named Chad. We need this, this, and this. And then I talked to Chad and it's a little bit mom and pop. It's not like just like I could just log in and you could just tell me what to do or it can just get done. There's no plaid or whatever, that other software where you just log in with your bank accounts and it just does what you need to do. It was very much a manual process, and it was like 15 grand. And this person's going to do this. And so I do actually agree with you. I do think this is like a fragmented it's a fragmented service. And I think that one great company can do all the stuff you need to do.
Shaan Puri (0:53:07-0:53:20): Let's hit some of these other random trends you have. Don't mention the one I wrote. Don't mention because I got something in that space. Don't mention that one, but do some of these other ones. Let's start with a mouth tape.
Steph Smith (0:53:20-0:53:32): Yeah, so mouth tape. I first heard about this like six months ago because some guy on Twitter was like, I tape my mouth shut every night for the last six months. Best thing I've ever done, dude.
Shaan Puri (0:53:32-0:53:37): The hostage tape guy will not be aggressive with it.
Sam Parr (0:53:37-0:53:48): We have this guy who's got a company he called Hostage Tape, and it's just tape for your mouth. And he told me he's going to launch it. And I'm like, this is dumb. And then six months later, he's like, $500,000 in sales.
Shaan Puri (0:53:48-0:53:48): Yeah.
Sam Parr (0:53:48-0:53:54): I'm like, great. And then he's like, a year later, $2 million in sales, and he's, like, just rubbing it into my face.
Steph Smith (0:53:54-0:54:07): I don't think he's an official sponsor, but Andrew Huberman has been talking about it. And in my household, we like to call him Father Drew as a joke. But if Father Drew promotes something in this day and age yeah, he's like.
Shaan Puri (0:54:07-0:54:12): Bro oprah in a way where if he says bro science oprah. If he says it's good, you're just.
Steph Smith (0:54:12-0:54:24): Going to get a huge, like yeah, I don't know where this goes. I don't know what opportunity there is other than going and selling some mouth tape. Maybe rebranding it. But that's one trend.
Sam Parr (0:54:24-0:54:33): This guy's company is called hostage tape. I saw this is the worst thing ever. This is awful. What do you do? But he's privy to that was your.
Shaan Puri (0:54:33-0:54:35): Weight loss idea, remember? Wasn't it called hostage?
Sam Parr (0:54:36-0:54:41): Yeah, a hostage SF, where I kidnap you and just don't feed you for four weeks.
Steph Smith (0:54:41-0:54:43): You should partner.
Sam Parr (0:54:46-0:54:49): This guy's crazy. So whatever, kudos to him.
Steph Smith (0:54:49-0:54:55): Yeah, but I guess we didn't even mention do you guys understand what's good about mouth tape?
Shaan Puri (0:54:55-0:55:00): It makes you breathe through your nose. And breathing through your nose is better for you than breathing through your mouth.
Steph Smith (0:55:00-0:55:11): Okay. Speaking of health benefits, another trend that I would love to see take off, because then I would have called it is lupini beans. Like, health.
Sam Parr (0:55:11-0:55:13): Haven't you been talking about this bean forever?
Steph Smith (0:55:14-0:55:20): For the last year, I went into, I don't know, all the American grocery stores.
Sam Parr (0:55:20-0:55:22): Like the high protein bean.
Steph Smith (0:55:22-0:55:23): Yeah. So it's got dude, you've been talking.
Sam Parr (0:55:23-0:55:27): About this to me forever. You keep telling me about this bean. I've been out with you a bunch of times.
Steph Smith (0:55:27-0:56:05): You always have more protein than chickpeas or two times more fiber than Edamame. 80% fewer calories than almonds, 60% fewer carbs than pistachios, 35 grams per serving. Obviously they cherry picked this data and compared to the best option for them. But these beans, I think they're, like, originally from Italy or they're popular there. But I just have seen this over and over and over as someone who traveled a lot where, like, Edamame. Edamame was not popular in North America 2030 years ago, no one knew what it was. Right. It came from Asia. And so now when you go to restaurants, it's like a very short thing.
Shaan Puri (0:56:05-0:56:08): How would you like to invest in the next set of honor?
Steph Smith (0:56:11-0:56:19): Sam, do you remember when Bobby at Hustlecon would go around pitching people joke and he's like his pitch tuna water.
Sam Parr (0:56:19-0:56:21): No, I thought it was hot dog water.
Steph Smith (0:56:21-0:56:22): It was tuna water.
Sam Parr (0:56:25-0:56:28): Dude, have you guys had chickpea pasta?
Shaan Puri (0:56:28-0:56:28): Of course.
Steph Smith (0:56:28-0:56:29): I don't like it.
Sam Parr (0:56:29-0:56:34): Makes you fart like crazy, man. It'll give you the number.
Shaan Puri (0:56:34-0:56:48): 340 percent as many calories as almonds, but 70% more gas that's the Lupin DB pitch. Okay. So you've been calling this for a little while. This seems like a good D to C product idea, to be honest.
Steph Smith (0:56:48-0:56:51): There's, like, one company doing it, this.
Shaan Puri (0:56:51-0:56:52): One brahm or whatever.
Steph Smith (0:56:52-0:57:07): Yeah, brahmi. They also do, I think, the chickpea pasta. But I just think maybe there's something in the supply chain or, like, how hard it is to procure this stuff. But to me, they're pretty cheap. They taste really good.
Sam Parr (0:57:07-0:57:08): You eat them plain.
Steph Smith (0:57:08-0:57:14): Well, at least this company will do flavored versions. So they'll do, like, rosemary, garlic, or.
Sam Parr (0:57:14-0:57:15): Does it give you gas?
Steph Smith (0:57:15-0:57:19): I don't think so. I didn't do an A B test.
Sam Parr (0:57:19-0:57:22): You can admit I don't think you did.
Shaan Puri (0:57:22-0:57:31): It's a safe space. Seems like you can say it for every episode. Okay.
Sam Parr (0:57:31-0:57:32): All right, I'm going to buy some.
Shaan Puri (0:57:32-0:57:48): I like this idea. Yeah. I'm going to try these out and see how I feel about it. By the way, this is the type of product that when we say on MFM, there's going to be 13 people that start this for six weeks, and then nobody six months later will be doing it for whatever reason.
Sam Parr (0:57:48-0:57:55): And the same people that tell us they're going to come back in eight weeks and they're going to say, actually, what do you think about this idea?
Shaan Puri (0:57:55-0:58:03): Yeah, if my DM history has four different ideas from you that you were pitching me for investment, it's probably not going to work out.
Steph Smith (0:58:03-0:58:04): It's a no forever.
Shaan Puri (0:58:05-0:58:07): You got the forever. No.
Sam Parr (0:58:10-0:58:13): I'm feeling that line. This is a no forever.
Steph Smith (0:58:17-0:58:24): Can we do one more around these Advent calendars? Because I feel like that's another case where, like, I don't know, someone in the community is going to jump on.
Sam Parr (0:58:24-0:58:25): Sean, do you even know what admin.
Shaan Puri (0:58:25-0:58:28): Is this some, like, Catholic shit. What is this?
Sam Parr (0:58:28-0:58:43): Yeah. This is as Catholic. As Catholic. Can get advent in December. Catholics. I'm Catholic. Are you Catholic, Seth? No, heathen.
Steph Smith (0:58:43-0:58:43): Sorry.
Sam Parr (0:58:46-0:59:24): The Catholics. Yeah, you're not one of us, but it's okay. We have Lent, which is, like, 40 days, and that was when Jesus walked around in the desert, and you're not supposed to eat meat and shit like that. And then we have Advent, which is the 30 days leading up to Christmas. And oftentimes there's an Advent calendar where it tells a story about what Mary and Joseph, Jesus's parents, like, what they did with the donkey and the mule and how they got all these gifts from people, whatever. It tells that story. And each day you open up the calendar. It's like the kid's favorite thing. There's a piece of chocolate in the calendar?
Steph Smith (0:59:24-0:59:33): Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the Advent calendars at some point. It was a religious thing. Then capitalism got involved, and then every day, kids are opening a little chocolate.
Shaan Puri (0:59:33-0:59:40): I swear, my whole I thought the Advent calendar was those little calendars that are like, you peel it and there's like, peel the calendar for each day.
Steph Smith (0:59:40-0:59:40): Oh, yeah.
Shaan Puri (0:59:40-0:59:45): I've been walking around thinking that's what an Advent calendar is. For a long time, my whole life.
Sam Parr (0:59:45-0:59:47): I would say this one, you like, peel back.
Shaan Puri (0:59:47-0:59:49): It's always chocolate inside. That's the idea.
Steph Smith (0:59:50-0:59:57): Usually that one you get at like Target or whatever. And yeah, it's like a couple of dollars, but it's like the most simple. You buy it for your kids.
Shaan Puri (0:59:57-0:59:58): So what's your idea here, Seth?
Steph Smith (0:59:59-1:00:01): The better advent calendar.
Sam Parr (1:00:05-1:00:06): Five minute ad?
Steph Smith (1:00:08-1:00:12): No. So this comes from I got to give this guy namazaki, Paul.
Sam Parr (1:00:14-1:00:16): He doesn't sound like a Catholic.
Steph Smith (1:00:16-1:00:50): No, this is it. I don't think this has to do with religion, but I actually got this for Cal this past year because here's the thing. Advent calendars? Yeah, I guess it was tied to religion, but they happen around the holidays, and so people are scrambling to figure out last minute, like, what should I get my family as a gift? That's kind of thoughtful, but fun. And a lot of people get Advent calendars, but they get these shitty versions that are like expired milk chocolate from the year before. What Paul did is he created this sake calendar. And so if you click, that's the.
Sam Parr (1:00:50-1:00:52): Best way to celebrate Jesus's birth, too.
Steph Smith (1:00:54-1:02:05): He created this sake calendar where basically every day for the month of December, or you can use it after you open your little Advent calendar, but it's not little. It's like the size of a printer kind of thing. And you get this special sake that he has handpicked from Japan. This is partially like his job, his existing business, and he sells them for $300. And every year he sells 500 of them, which he caps. And you do the math, that's like $150,000 just from that one drop for him. And he doesn't get that much traffic. Like, if you look at his existing site, gets like 2000 visits per month. So not something he would typically be able to make much money from. But that's one example that just got me thinking, especially since we're like, what, six months ahead of Christmas? What Advent calendars is the my first million community. What are you going to make that is way cooler than the expired milk chocolate? I mean, I've seen some stuff like hot sauce calendars, Lego calendars, but it's got to be something that someone can open either for twelve days because some people do the twelve days of Christmas or all of December.
Sam Parr (1:02:06-1:02:28): This is actually cool. Yeah, I actually think this is really cute and cool and awesome. You have a picture of this person who has a binder full of condiments, like individual packets. And I see your vision here. This is actually cool. I smell what you're stepping in, and I think it's awesome.
Steph Smith (1:02:28-1:02:31): Well, the tweet you're talking about, Sam.
Shaan Puri (1:02:31-1:02:32): What is that phrase?
Steph Smith (1:02:33-1:03:01): Is this girl Nicole, who says her tweet just says, organize my sauces. And it's like, do you guys remember if you collected playing cards back in the day or coins? They had those binders. Yeah. With the little I don't even know what they're called, but this tweet got 468,000 likes. I think it's probably one of the most popular tweets of all time. And it's just her organizing her sauces from around the world.
Shaan Puri (1:03:01-1:03:04): So these are not for use. This is just like collections.
Steph Smith (1:03:05-1:03:09): That one is for a collection. I feel like the Advent calendar, it would be for use.
Shaan Puri (1:03:09-1:03:11): Yeah. Wow, this is crazy.
Sam Parr (1:03:12-1:03:24): What I like about you, Steph, is like, you find things that I would just scroll by, but you're pretty good at finding interesting things and applying them, connecting to five other things. Yeah.
Shaan Puri (1:03:24-1:03:30): When I scroll past something and I think, this is stupid, you write that thing down and make it sound smart. It's amazing.
Steph Smith (1:03:30-1:03:35): I waste my time curating an Evernote that is just full of random Internet shit.
Sam Parr (1:03:36-1:04:06): But what you do something that's different is you actually remember it. So I bookmark so much stuff, and then I just forget all about it. You actually remember it, and then it's just the difference between good and great in terms of whatever the skill set is that we have. You actually are organized. What makes someone good versus great is, like, being organized. You are very organized with this stuff, and that actually helps your thought process, I would think. When are you just going to bail and start creating some of this stuff?
Steph Smith (1:04:06-1:04:43): I feel like you started this train, Sam. So before I joined the Hustle, I was working at a company, and in my last year at that company, I said and I must have been, what, 24 or something? Yeah. Around that. I was like, next. This is the last job I'll have. Right. Like, after this, I'll go and do my own thing, but then ever since then, I just keep getting offered really cool stuff that I get to more money. Well, I get to be paid to go research trends and go down these Internet rabbit holes that I'd be doing anyway. Okay, great. Oh, we got acquired. Now I'm at HubSpot, and I get to build this cool crater program. Okay, great.
Sam Parr (1:04:43-1:04:44): And more money.
Steph Smith (1:04:46-1:04:50): Now I'm at a 16 Z. I get to talk to interesting people and more money.
Shaan Puri (1:04:52-1:04:56): I got to meet this interesting person with more money in my pocket. It was amazing.
Sam Parr (1:04:59-1:05:07): You're learning this sepsis sitting there. She's like, how could I get the things that are in their bank account to my bank account?
Shaan Puri (1:05:08-1:05:25): My daughter does this thing where she's three years old, and she says this thing where she goes, this is my best day ever. And I'm like, she might actually be telling the truth. This might have been, like, the best day ever for her. This is the one. That's how I feel whenever she gets a raise at this is my best day ever, guys.
Sam Parr (1:05:30-1:05:42): Steph, you and I were talking about how much money you've had. We were going through an exercise of, like, at 20, we had this at 23. You've had a nice run. You've had a very nice run.
Steph Smith (1:05:42-1:05:54): A very nice run compared to where I came from. So, yeah, like you were saying earlier, Sean, if like, 21 year old me would have said, this is where you'll be, this is how much you'll make, these are, like, the opportunities you'll have. Yeah, it's pretty wild.
Sam Parr (1:05:54-1:05:56): Are you even 30?
Steph Smith (1:05:56-1:05:56): No.
Sam Parr (1:05:56-1:05:57): Oh, my God.
Shaan Puri (1:05:58-1:06:02): What would 20 year old year old you say? What would the reaction be?
Steph Smith (1:06:02-1:06:28): Well, it's funny because I feel like I still have throughout my whole life because I didn't grow up very wealthy. It was very money orientation. Not that I need that much, but just like, oh, my gosh, you have that much money. Go buy a car, go buy nice clothes, go use the money that you've always wanted but never had. But it's funny because now that I have more money, I'm still just as cheap as I ever was. I don't know if that stuff ever leaves you.
Sam Parr (1:06:28-1:06:33): Sean, do you know that Steph's half Taiwan?
Steph Smith (1:06:33-1:06:34): My mom's from Taiwan. Yeah.
Sam Parr (1:06:34-1:06:35): Do you know that?
Shaan Puri (1:06:35-1:06:37): No, I didn't know that.
Sam Parr (1:06:38-1:06:40): Super special or what?
Shaan Puri (1:06:40-1:06:41): Why are you telling me that?
Sam Parr (1:06:42-1:06:50): At our old company, when someone found that out, and I was like, yeah, I could see that. There was like people like, Steph, why are you lying to us? You're Canadian.
Steph Smith (1:06:50-1:06:54): I've had some well, Canadians not I know.
Sam Parr (1:06:54-1:06:58): That was the joke. They're like, quit lying. Why are you lying about being Taiwanese?
Steph Smith (1:06:58-1:07:17): Jordan was like, so there's a huge spectrum. I don't know why what it is about the way I look, but some people, when they hear that I'm half Asian, are like, oh, yeah, of course I knew that. And then other people are truly shocked. Jordan was one of those. And he went to Sam or no, he asked me, and he was like, does Sam know this.
Shaan Puri (1:07:19-1:07:31): Your secret thing that tells you more about them than about the way you look? It's just like, what is their level of exposure to different races versus anything to do with you?
Steph Smith (1:07:32-1:07:32): Yeah.
Shaan Puri (1:07:32-1:07:58): By the way, this thing about being cheap. I was reading the story yesterday about this guy who made a bunch of money, and they're like, what was your first purchase? He goes, I hired a consultant to help me spend money. And he goes, I had learned over 25 years how to make money. It took me a long time to learn how to make money, and I was just very honest with myself that I have no idea how to spend money. And I could shorten that learning curve if I get a coach to help me spend money.
Sam Parr (1:07:58-1:08:04): What was this coach called? A wife. I'll be here all night.
Steph Smith (1:08:04-1:08:11): I was going to say, isn't that, like, remiss thing too? I feel like he talks about that all the time. Right? You got to learn to spend it's.
Sam Parr (1:08:11-1:08:14): Like it takes reps. What was the coach actually called?
Shaan Puri (1:08:15-1:08:21): I don't know. I don't know. Actual job title, but spending consultant, let's call it.
Sam Parr (1:08:21-1:08:23): But what do they teach you how to do?
Shaan Puri (1:08:24-1:09:55): I don't know. He didn't go into details on exactly what the guy said, but let's just pretend for a minute that he did. I would imagine he does two things. One is figures out where your psychology screwed up about money, because everybody's got like, this. It's like, you know, people have, like, body dysmorphia. I think everybody has bank account dysmorphia too. You think you need more money than you need. Even when you have money, you still act like you don't have money. It's like all this weird stuff. It's like, dude, you're fit now. Why do you still think you're fat? You have to sort of retrain yourself to see something different in the mirror. I think that's part of it. Just talking to figure out what are the ways your brain is a little screwed up about money, let's identify that first. Some people spend too much. Some people don't spend at all. And then I think the second thing would be like, all right, what do you really want? So let's try to outline your dream lifestyle or the things you really want. Identify those, and then let's calculate, like, okay, how much those costs? Could you afford those now? Could you afford a step in that direction and giving you the encouragement to pull the trigger on the things that you actually want? Or setting certain rules, like, you have to spend this much per month. What are you going to spend it on? And also on the protective downsides. It's like, hey, we're going to set aside this amount of money so that your safety reflex is satisfied. We agree that logic, by all logic, this amount of money being here untouched means you're safe. Okay, cool. So now we can talk about this other spending part without triggering your fight or flight mode around your fear of financial safety.
Sam Parr (1:09:56-1:10:00): Where was this article? Yeah, I want to look this up. I need one of these things.
Shaan Puri (1:10:00-1:10:04): Yeah, you should look it up. I don't know. I don't know if this exists. Maybe it's the job of the future.
Steph Smith (1:10:04-1:10:30): I don't know if his recent episodes are the same, but Ramit's early podcast episodes would do this, right? They talk to millionaires who are fretting about $8 blueberries at Whole Foods. Or, like, I remember one episode where this guy was like, I think had at least $10 million and was picking up a stroller on the side of the road, things like that, where it's like, clearly, yeah, you haven't upgraded your thinking or your mindset to where you are.
Sam Parr (1:10:30-1:10:57): Dude, I just made $400 selling used gym equipment from some stuff I'm not using. And I'm like, this is my best day ever. I feel more happy about that $400 than I do making much larger sums. Yeah, and the best part is that I paid $300 for it five years ago. Now I got $400, and it's like the best high.
Shaan Puri (1:10:57-1:11:46): I read this thing that was like this guy Timer who created he's got this company called Causal, and it's like this Excel competitor, but he has this blog post I really liked where he was like he was trying to figure out in a nerdy way how to decide if you should buy something or not. And so he's like, will I break everything down into kind of like I don't remember the exact message, but it was something like this. It was like the frequency of how frequently am I going to get the benefit of this? And then, what's the magnitude of the benefit? And so he's like something that's it doesn't have to be a big ship, but if it's going to happen all the time or like ten times a day or something like that. I bought a phone case that just feels better in my hand, and it was like a great purchase because the hand feel of my phone is something I am touching my phone all the time and just making that feel a little smoother, a little better was like.
Sam Parr (1:11:46-1:11:49): Dude, what's that case called? By the way, I'm looking very good.
Shaan Puri (1:11:49-1:11:51): Let me look up hand feel.
Steph Smith (1:11:52-1:11:54): Do we know how much it costs?
Shaan Puri (1:11:54-1:13:23): Yeah. Is it going to be pre plugged for you guys? Moaz, I think, is the name of it, but it's got this, like this is not like plastic feel. So this feel right here is like almost like the feel of a basketball. It's almost like attraction kind of like feel. Because I was like, I hate the plastic feel of cases. I think that feels cheap, and I don't enjoy it. I didn't want the leather ones either, so I was like, what else is there? And found that. And so he identifies, like, if you're going to do it, if it's going to be frequent, then the magnitude needs to be less. If it's going to be infrequent, then the magnitude of the joy it brings is going to need to be high. And you can kind of multiply those two together to figure out the value of that item. And then you sort of say, okay, that's the value to me, and then what's the price to me? And you sort of use that to figure out where should you spend versus not. And what people mostly get wrong in that is they undercount frequency. So like, a better pillow or something like that is great because you're going to sleep on it every single night versus a Louis Vuitton bag that's going to sit in your closet. Like, my wife's bought a Louis Vuitton bag, and she literally never takes out. She doesn't want it to get messed up. It's like, wow, that's the most expensive $6,000 thing that just sits in a closet for no reason versus things that you get joy out of all the time. And so I bet if you guys looked at what's the best purchase you made or you're most satisfied with this year, it's probably something that you interact with somewhat frequently, or it was, like, a one off, life changing experience that was just, like, crazy magnitude.
Steph Smith (1:13:23-1:13:24): Yeah.
Sam Parr (1:13:24-1:13:29): What was that article called? I want to read. I need some good money therapy in my life.
Steph Smith (1:13:29-1:13:31): Money Therapist. That's the title.
Sam Parr (1:13:31-1:13:41): Yeah. I need some good money. Therapy. Yes. Send me an article. But, Steph, I appreciate you doing this. You're always coming with fire. You're a Twitter person still, right?
Steph Smith (1:13:42-1:13:50): Steph Smith IO is the handle. And if you want to support my day job, go listen to the A 16 Z podcast. We're doing some cool stuff there.
Sam Parr (1:13:50-1:13:53): That's just what it's called, a 16 Z podcast, right?
Steph Smith (1:13:53-1:13:53): Yes.
Sam Parr (1:13:54-1:13:55): All right. We appreciate you. Thank you.
Steph Smith (1:13:55-1:13:56): Thank you.
Shaan Puri (1:14:00-1:14:10): I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like, no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back. Aglight.