3 Profitable Business Ideas You Should Start in 2022, Dog Food Billionaires, and Focusing on the Next Step with Steph Smith

okay first thing super quick so have you guys heard of this twitter account it's called new york times first said you heard a it no okay so it's kind of just like this fun little twitter account where they track all of the articles being published by the new york times and then they find words that are published for the first time and it's just kind of like a fun thing because i'll send you guys this all i'll post it in the dock this is a link to a couple of the ones that they published so like dead ass for example it was a word like first found in the new york times march twenty nineteen doom scrolling may twenty twenty tech pro apparently was january twenty twenty two like that surprises me so this is just kind of like a fun thing but i was thinking that this should exist for jobs so on indeed or glass store or something there's a really really quick transition period these days between like just completely new jobs coming to market and i think there should be an account that tracks these like oh this is the first time i've seen like i don't know where i saw this but there's like professional falcon like what who does that how much should they i get paid i don't know but i'm surprised know it exists and i'm sure there's many more practical jobs out there that are coming to market that people should know about and so someone should just create the equivalent of this instead of the new york times it should be for indeed brother how do they do this great i track this how do they track every word and check if it's ever been said before i think it's just scraper i mean i don't know exactly how they set it up but i don't think it would actually be the this has two hundred thousand followers so for that person out there has just been grinding trying to put out great content that has like three thousand followers just no you could've have been tweeting like single word things from the new york times and gotten two hundred thousand followers i actually think that's a great idea have you guys seen the remember how we talked about this kid that was tracking elon musk's private jet jet on twitter now he's tracking all the private jets and private yachts of all the russian oli yes great pivot and see shout shout you great job also elon offered him five thousand dollars and you turned it down he's like no i'm gonna keep him doing my thing but both of his accounts have a lot of for elon stop tracking him yeah stop yeah i guess elon was like i don't want people to know where i am what a stupid thing if you're gonna if you're gonna come and offer someone money do it right five thousand dollars best not miss a love that's how you shouldn't reply five grand i think this is cool stuff i actually think this is a wonderful idea i also think that companies would pay for this right as in like companies that have competitors want to know what their competitors are doing and so like we're launching something at hubspot soon and i've already gotten in an email from someone who works at tech crunch shoes like hey saw this on your site or like they basically dug something up that we publish they're like what's going on here and imagine you had the same thing where you're like oh i saw like salesforce is you know hiring for these roles or i didn't know that was a role at netflix i think companies would pay for that intel that's actually a crazy fascinating if you could aggregate like let's say that you're in the when when when i was at the hustle i cared about what like there's like thirty companies that i cared about what they were doing it would be kind of interesting to act if i would've have paid a monthly fee and i would've have gotten a daily email with like the movement in people's job just job listings yeah that's that's what i was gonna say i don't think it's so interesting like the the falcon or whatever i go whatever someone made up a random job but oh like we see this a lot where it's like oh netflix is hiring a web three engineer that means they're probably trying to explore or something in that space and so you can kinda get a sense of what direction somebody's going oh they're hiring enterprise sales okay they're trying to go up market right so there's a competitive intelligence that comes from these but i think that i do think that exists i've seen people tracking these i don't know if they're just doing it for their own fun or if there's like a service that tracks that but it is kinda interesting i like that alright what else you got steph oh by the way i should say one more thing i love more think about this a hilarious story i went into work one day and my buddy neil who like a programmer at our company he was standing at the coffee machine making a coffee was like ten am and i hadn't even said anything to him yet we were just standing next to each other and he just goes these are my first words the he's like he he realized he hadn't spoke that day yet we he like got to work onto to the coffee scene and like had started program we like his commute he didn't talk to anybody he's at his desk he didn't talk his he's just start him these are my first words and i thought that shit was so funny and it actually this is great when he said that i realized how funny neil is and so we've replaced our marketing person with neil he's our i felt i iphone program and he wrote all of the release notes for our apps because he was just hilarious and he was like hilarious but these are my first words i'll i'll never forget that how does that relate relate to because it's like a word tracker you know the first time the new york time said this word that's how i thought that first time neil just like just interesting think about what are your first words every day you're right like what's coming entrepreneur about for the first time every day right that's mine's usually like like a gru it's like a fuck when i say it you know what mean i gosh no sam yours is always just sup to everyone to sup i i always say sup yeah or i just like am sore from exercise or something i'm and i'm like oh fuck it's usually my first word well that's fucking a lot alright and then i forgot to tell you this but this is the most important thing i can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier to be honest with you because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now and you haven't gone and subscribe to the my first million podcast wherever ever you get get your podcast then that's the thing you gotta do there's nothing more important than doing that right now and don't do it because i said to do it do it because you wanna do do because that's who you are alright what else are you guys that i guess related to companies hiring so you guys know mischief right it's this like company that does these crazy stunt they're on i think stunt number seventy and i they're latest stunt i thought was really interesting and relates to this idea of just like creative hiring so if you scroll down tell me about what mischief is i don't entirely get it because they raised funding but you explain what they are i'm like who what grown adult would trust this tie all the money it's like south or saturday live it's a weekly show it's like a weekly sketch but it's just done through code they make a website instead of like a video making a joke make a website that's joke yeah but is it exactly does it make money i think it does i don't know how much they've made they've raised three and a half million dollars so i don't know like you're saying i don't know who those investors are what they're looking from mischief but just to give like two examples so one of them recently was i think it's like called tu and i don't know why it's called that but basically it's called the game of death online which you sign up you didn't account and you pay ten dollars to join the game and all you have to do is log in daily to stay alive and the last person who stays alive gets all of the money so it's just kind of like these silly quirky games but the last one they did was they also do like commentary through their game so it was a commentary on in this case the msa sat so they got people to pay fifty dollars to take the msa sat and the highest score when it's basically like a a their version of the sat and the person who got the highest score won the entire pod so they didn't actually have that many people did it they had five hundred people who did it but it reminded me of something you guys talk about on the pod have talked about on the pod which is you know the power of like crowds sourcing things like spacex if they want to develop some new technology they put out some competition and that tends to attract more interesting people than you know if they hire a bunch of recruiters to go you know find the people in theory they're looking for example the example i think you're thinking about is they were trying to figure out some like what they trying to like decode some protein or something that helped with this aids medication and they like turn it into a video game and they'd spent ten years trying to solve it and then like a bunch of video gamers got it down in like three weeks yeah well there's the spacex what's what's the spacex challenge the one that everyone knows about xp price it's just like they're that's not from space yeah but there's also yeah that's like a a version of that where they basically just put out the bounty and then let people let anybody sort of enter to tread win okay there's a i feel like there's another one that spacex us but in any case like what i'm getting at is all i mean we work for hubspot there's all these companies that are trying to attract like quote unquote top talent and they're doing it in a way that in most cases like true top talent like are you gonna want to be like dm on linkedin and go through like a traditional in interview process like in most cases no and so my question is why isn't there like a really like mischief style recruiting agency that puts out these challenges that the smartest people in the internet are like stoked to solve just out of the cheer pride that they then can funnel potentially into these companies maybe it's the case that these people just like would never wanna work for these larger companies but i just wonder why there isn't a more creative route i have something recruiting i have something for you so this is one of the very first articles the hustle ever wrote i don't even know if you can google it anymore it was literally like we wrote it like two weeks after starting and it was about my friend named max and if you google ben the hustle google interview or the hustle secret google interview so my friend max was teaching himself something i i i gotta remember all the details this was like six years ago he he was learning some type of coding some type of language it was and it was like a rare language and he was typing in all these things on google like what does blank mean how do you do blank and after a while his his chrome browser like went like look like the matrix that it said you look like you might belong to one of us and it and it it says we've noticed that you've been googling a lot about this type of language and we are hiring for that would you be interested in applying here that's and very few people ever saw this but we wrote an article about this this article got seen by millions of people what's it say ben what was the language google has a secret interview process and it landed me a job that's that one and he ended up working there and it worked it worked and it was why that's dope and you know only google to do that because they own the browser in the search engine but but what if you were just like what what if there was just like a app that just sat on your computer that basically tracked everything you did i know sounds great but like gave you job opportunities based what you do on your computer right like if it knows that steph is in all these different like subreddit and it's i and she's like looking at google trends and all the stuff that's like a signal for what type of person you are like it's actually like a much higher quality signal in theory then any job interview you could do where you're just trying to like present yourself as a certain way versus what what you actually do on the internet right like oh you spend a lot of time in excel or what what you actually do in your computer it's like you spend a lot of time in excel you know so we've seen we've seen what your capabilities are okay if you're doing macros as and example you could probably qualify for certain types of jobs it's so i wonder if there's like a thing you could do like for college students like hey put this on your computer and like do you want your first job out of college like we'll we'll help figure out what that job should be we'll help get you like a job opportunity just by putting this like tracker on your computer quick interruption do me a favor scroll down and you're gonna see a link to the hustle you wanna stay up to date on the tech and business news you need to know check out the hustle the daily email i used to help write it i love it so check it out scroll down below sounds very not i the yeah i mean i know it's always like a oh tracking everything on your computer thing but the reason i thought of this is because i watched the q on documentary and in it they have if you guys heard of like sake three three zero one no no no it it's they covered it in the documentary but basically it was like the epitome of these like crazy online puzzles i think there's been three of them the first two were solved the third one still has not been solved and they are like you know there's there's like a picture online and there's like a message and encrypted in that message there's a bunch of numbers and then you have to know like go to another website and put it in the point is a lot of people thought that this was actually a recruitment tool for like either the nsa or the cia and so i was like man there should be something maybe not that crazy but something like that on time for company one of those i did this in college we found this website and it was like know it said some like vague thing it was like the game has only begun but have you realized that it like i haven't realized that it's begun yet and it's like you have to like right click view source and then in the source code there's a url you go to that url and then it downloads an audio file you listen the audio file it sounds like nothing you listen to it backwards all of a sudden it gives you coordinates you go to those coordinates on a map the map will lesion and it was like a fifty part game like mister game and me all my friends got totally obsessed with this we spent like hours and hours and hours calls i don't remember want them to get named this is what i can call this is like fifteen years ago but like the i remember at the end the the last puzzle we could never solve and i think the guy just made an un unfavorable puzzle like i just think there was no solution his name was mister wiggle or mister sq or some shit like that and he he had this puzzle that was like the ensemble thing at the end but it was so much fun and actually now that i think about it that is actually a great like filter and barometer for who might be good at certain times of what types of work like the pro type of person that would do that for fun and solve that problem i would love to hire that person right because i know what could you could you be like there's this off like if you're that game maker mister wiggle or whatever like could you like do that as a service for a variety of companies and like make these games like hey we're gonna try and find you but i bet it's like hey i bet we're we're gonna do this thing this in this thing and i bet you we're gonna get you twenty new applicants every month yeah to seal games but they're gonna be high high quality steph what's what's newly so newly have either of you guys heard yeah of newly n u u l y i think with this is just a quick one but basically so it's this company that is part of the urban outfitters subsidiary so urban owns urban outfitters anthropology free people and newly and n is a different take so all those other businesses sell clothes in a very traditional way what n is is a rental business so every month they send you six items you choose those six items on your own they send them to you you get to rent them for a month and then at the end of the month you have the option to keep them at honestly a pretty discounted rate somewhere between like fifteen to sometimes up to sixty percent and they a ton of brands in there including their own brands and the reason i thought this was interesting is you know there's other rental clothing services out there but this is tacked on to existing businesses that weren't renting clothes and it spoke to me because it was kind of similar to what amazon done turning a cost center into something that maybe in this case isn't in a profit center but is way more profitable i think than the traditional clothing business that they have so if you guys remember i think was it mark lo or one of your guests talked about just how many returns there are for clothing it's let me just pull up a stat right here twenty percent right yeah exactly and a return with clothing can cost up sixty six percent of the the cost of an item so actually a lot of these closing stores were just saying like look you can you can just keep the stuff you don't even have to send back the item in this case newly not only doesn't have to like send items to people and and not have them return because it's so expensive i'm paying newly to rent these clothes so they're not losing money on the rental they're now making money on the rental and they've structured in a way where it's actually really compelling and so i think news is i don't know the exact size of it now but at least where i live i run into like at my c working space all of the girls there are wearing newly and i just like i wonder how this can be applied to other businesses so like what are those cost center that could actually be turned into a profit center sean what's the return rate on the things that you're involved in through investments or whatever versus way lower way lower the twenty percent so like you know more like i and i don't know if that's i don't know that number is like what percent of your orders get returned or what percent of your revenue what what what what percent of revenue is cost of returns so i'm not sure exactly what that what that meant to quote but you know of course any return is like a drain on the business and so you you know any way that you could turn returns into into either a neutral or profitable thing would be would be kind of amazing what do brands do with return to clothing or returned items they kind of like so typically you sort of like there's like a it's like an right so the patient comes in and it's like okay it's it's it's it's a lost cause you just gotta dump it or right or where it's like oh this could be patched up okay so you just need to like re tag it it's in good condition re tag it put it back in a back in packaging it's all good to go sometimes you have to like clean it steam it whatever like and in fact there's a guy sonny who follows us on twitter and listens to the pod and he has this thing called rock returns so i think he had a e commerce brand he had like a suit brand like a nice men's suit brand and returns were kind kinda like killing them because it's like a very kinda like heavy thing to ship and it's an expensive product and he's like well what am i supposed to do with this and his three p like his warehouse was not like they weren't willing to like rep process the the suit and he couldn't he couldn't send out a questionable suit so he had to know that this is like if it did get if it is gonna be sent back out it's in good condition and so he actually created his own returns warehouse he's doing it for himself and now a bunch of other the brands right same as the aws model so he turned his cost center angel profit center and i think this business is better than his e commerce business overall and he's just becoming an expert of like oh yeah like here's the efficient way to handle returns and now he's doing it for himself and a whole bunch of other e commerce brands and and he's like nerd out about it hardcore corey like dude i found this new way of like steaming the thing that like makes it you know where we get extra ten percent of them back into circulation because they're you know they're better now or like we could turn it around at this cost and they just charge like a cost per return processed basically for for for the brands damn has because usually what makes you good at processing returns is not the same thing as what gets you good at like warehouse a general warehouse with a bunch of pallet and boxes and shipping orders out it's like takes like a different skill set in a way mh can we talk about one other idea yeah so what you talked about sean reminded me of so there's all this real estate and i'm sure this is like a overdo idea but there's all this real estate that people have access to and not everyone knows what it can be use for so maybe it could be used for a fulfillment center maybe your garage could be rented out and there's a couple of examples that i i came upon that i thought were interesting and i wonder if someone could aggregate all of these different ways that real estate or parts of real estate can be used to to gain some so let me give you a couple of examples a lot of people have heard of solar panels so companies will pay you so that you can install solar panels on your roof you'll get into the licensing agreement and they'll make money off of that that's why they'll often install it for free another example is churches so apparently due to the height of churches and specifically the staples on churches different telecom companies will pay these churches for access to their staples so an example is the national cathedral in washington is paid guess how much actually guess how much they're paid by motorola every single year i would've have thought like a thousand a month so hundred thousand a year just for access to their two hundred and thirty four foot tower and some churches are even buildings staples they don't even have a people but they're like look i heard this other church is getting a hundred k a year we want that so that's another example one final example i'll share is surf flying my partner he serves all the time he uses these surf camps so check you know how the waves are every day well where are these surf camps apparently they're actually in people's backyard so if you have a backyard that is in a strategic area to see the surf you can either sign up yourself or you can recommend or refer people to be like a surf cam house and they'll come they'll install it and then i believe you get i'm not actually sure in this case how much but you get paid a certain amount to have that surf cam in your backyard so those are three examples i'm sure there's many more but i feel like there should be a site that says like oh you've got a house in this area you have a roof that gets this much sunlight or it's this tall or it's this much square footage would would you go as far as to put this into cars too one time years ago sean and i listened to this pitch of this guy who created a you know how cab cab have like advertising on top of their car he was doing that for uber drivers and i don't actually know i i see him everywhere but i don't know how the business what happened with business right would huge so so they definitely got some traction i think it's like a multi hundred million dollar company house called firefly wow wow yeah and there's another one that has like the screens have you guys been in uber where it's like the back screen and it's just playing ads those ones are i feel like the execution on that has been terrible but like that's another example where it's like oh you actually have valuable real estate which is the back of this car seat because you have so i have a idea for you new side project for you it's called the side hustle generator i we'll put it on the my first million podcast website and it's a side hustle generator all it's just a giant quiz that leads you into a list of potential side hustle you could be ethical applicable for so you're like you you know in your thing it's like do you do you own a church you know do you do you watch surf do you do you have a car that you don't use all the time right like there's all these different ways because i think you know people people don't realize the number of opportunities that are like literally at their fingertips it's like do you own a phone do you know you get paid to test websites for companies all you other do is just go to the website and just talk out loud as you try to use their website user her testing dot com right like my my mom didn't know that and then she knows that and that like kinda like changed her life a little bit right she like all of a sudden had this thing she could do every day that kept her busy that made her some money and she enjoyed it then you know airbnb i remember telling my parents about airbnb it's like you know took some you know somebody had to educate them about it but now they make six figures a year airbnb being their home and so there's like how many of these parents do yeah where do they go they'll just go like you know to a hotel they'll go to in vacation they'll just leave the city they'll come to my house they'll go anywhere like they don't they don't care the because because they can get like you know seven hundred to eight hundred dollars a night for their home and they'll go rent a hotel you know if forty minutes away or you know hour they'll go to wine or whatever and rent don't tell for two hundred dollars and they you know they pocket the difference did you guys remember the company about stuff you do the penny hoard yep so the penny hoard started as a blog it started by this guy named kyle he spoke at one of our events he's a cool dude and then his business partner as a friend of mine and anyway he started it in two thousand twelve and he started it where he would just talk about all the side hustle he was doing so for example he would go and task grab it and like get people's groceries and he would talk about how much money he was making he would become an insta driver he would talk about how much money making he would do uber driver and how much money he was making and he got really good at getting traffic and eventually he got uber goes hey for every new driver you refer to us we'll give you two thousand dollars insta did the same thing task rep did the same thing you user testing did the same thing and then like a person who like you need to answer surveys and so that's what he did and he built this business this digital ad business he when he came to the event he brought his dog and i like oh how get your dog on the plane and he goes oh i fly private and i was like what are you crushing at that hard he goes yeah we bootstrap it and and we'll do about seventy million in revenue this year and he owned one hundred percent of the company and he recently sold it for forget the exact number but it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the whole premise was just on like talking about ways that you can make it was mostly lower income people like people like like maybe a mom who's just trying to like make ends meet with just like ten hours as she has available instead of taking care kids and he killed it this business crushed it you never heard of the penny holder sean i heard i've heard it from me but never went to it so i never like used it it's just a wordpress blog that's all it is sorry i was looking all stock and realizing how many interesting ideas there are on here steph if we have to do it two part so yeah let's we'll bang out a couple more let's get give us one more i'll come back i mean was the worst ideas in the middle of the list was the best ideas that's why i feedback to you well why don't you tell me what what's an interesting one that you you have look i'm looking at some of these like trend success stories i think those are pretty interesting that's one i was kinda looking at just at the moment which one of those is your favorite oh well i feel like okay so let's call out a couple of them quick so last time i was on i talked about like this idea of like ur list is my opportunities couple people have actually taken action on that they've created these sites that identify the healthiest versions of not very healthy things so one guy started a tiktok it got hundreds of thousands of views in the first few days and then someone else tweeted about this actually just just last night let me see what they did they're called fast food cravings where basically the headline says eat what you want not what you can and it lets you like put in a specific restaurant and find the healthiest version of the food at that restaurant we talked about insider trading at on one of the very first episodes i was on and this discuss after that episode i think this actually existed before the episode but connor dm me and he was like so there are these sites that track insider trades but there are specific types of insider trades that are more interesting than others and specifically it's stock grants to executives it's not obviously a sure thing but he said he was like typically what that signals is the company trying to you know invest in a particular thing if they executives hit certain targets it's generally a good sign obviously not investment advice but he created this community called spring loading and what he does is he started a scraper that looks for all the insider trades but then specifically vet them for this particular aspect like is the company granting a butt load of stock to a group of executives and he just he's he basically shares these and then he i show shared an example in the chat but he basically he sends the financial report he sends the grant details then he summarizes it he says look these people are getting this grant this is what i have you know what additional information i and then he gives a conviction rating so some of his conviction ratings are like one like guys this is is probably nothing maybe something if you wanna take a bet go for it some of them he's like this is a five so i i shared one again not investment advice but he shared one for example for cloudflare a little bit ago obviously with all the other tech companies is tanked recently but he was like this is one of the biggest performance grants i've ever seen with pretty massive price targets i don't think there's any news in the near future but i do believe that cloudflare has massive potential and the stock is down thirty five percent over the last month and then he shares again the the exact grant values what targets they need to hit so for example these execs have different price targets similar to you know you guys discuss like elon musk's like crazy price targets if they hit i think cloudflare today is at ninety five dollars or something like that their first price target is one hundred and fifty six dollars and it goes all the way up to nine hundred and seventy nine dollars so this is what these execs internally are tracking towards so i know i thought that was like another interesting example i think he's i think this community is pretty successful he's charging people month by this idea did you bet on this i haven't cal my partner he's been in the community he did actually it's i mean again not financial advice but he bet on one and i can't remember what company it was but it did one one day like go up that's all i need but this was obviously also in the don't no don't even tell me more actually just leave it figure and i'm it's done i don't out don't need anything else well i was gonna say i definitely like don't want people go go and gambling their money on on that one anecdote but it is interesting to even just like be in there and and what i found because i'll just like dabble them community i haven't placed any bets but to see what like i i'm learning about a bunch of different companies that i've never heard of i'm seeing like how these different companies are structuring stock grants and like why and someone commenting on it and then of course there's just a like a bunch of a bunch of people commenting like are you betting like oh shit like i'm fifty percent down like how are you doing and it's so it's kind of like a fun community as well i can have this is august have a like a like a degenerate like budget or like a learner budget where it's like okay this is my fuck around with money that i can i can try different things or do you guys not do that same you're shaking head no i don't but but do you it sounds like you do i do yeah how much well just talk about like in percentage terms so it's like you know what would that be it's like don't do percentage terms like literally how much like like fifth fifty thousand dollars no more than that wow yeah for sure and so what will you do with that what's an example of your of of a dumb of a risky thing that you've done like i think i told the story before but i remember watching are so the the idea with these is i'll just tell the story of first i watched a youtube video of this guy no idea who this guy is some wall street some some hedge fund guy basically he's a prolific short trader this was kinda of the vibe i got from the video couldn't tell you how tall tell you his name couldn't tell you what he do this track was like i looked reasonable enough and he basically was like he's like yeah i'm he's like my short pick in of the year is toot role and and he's i was like i was listening i was wife like toot roll i didn't realize it's a public stock he's like toot roll he's like first of all who the hell eats toot roll he's like do think toot year rolls is growing he's like no they'll be eat toot rolls are like you know fifty and up they're they're dying market kids don't want toot roll nowadays they want like all these other candies he's like has zero innovation they refuse to change their product and they don't come out with anything new he's like and then it's also poorly run and not gonna be solo was like owned by some woman who was like i think it's owned by like a ninety two year old she passed away now but at the this was like five years ago or something like that like that that this happened i don't know when this was this is a while back and remember watching that video and i was like oh this gonna totally right tensor is fucking a dead i went that day and i've bet a good toot roll i've made a bunch of money each of them this like zero thought process zero diligence like just like take a take a punt and you know do something on a whim and so that was the first time i realized like actually i want a designated budget and with crypto this has became like you know kind of a necessity with crypto you basically have like you have so many new things that are all interesting and you can't get to high conviction because they're new is rapidly evolving like the opportunities in front of you today and so you don't have time to diligence all these you don't have time to get to high conviction but you do know like where you know you can sort of send certain signals like if a bunch of smart people are looking at it if you see you know developer activity in that space if the premise is like you know interesting it might hit might not hit whatever you you could basically take punt on things in crypto and you get paid off unlike the stock market right i on the toot rule thing i made like i don't know twenty thirty five percent something like that in crypto you can make like twenty x when you're right on these things and so we crypto the the odds just shift in your favor where yeah it's super fast moving and things can go to zero but the the upside when you hit is why it pays for all of your other bad bets and so i basically created a budget because i was like i can't i can't overthink this i need to i need to intentionally overthink this so what does that mean like there's been is the last five years have been so many examples of things that i've i've come across my radar in crypto that i don't take action on because i feel like i don't have enough information to make an educated decision and actually if i just made uneducated decisions i would've have done far better than my like uneducated decisions turned out to be because the space is just where there's a lot of progress being made and you you can't keep up with all the different projects all different tokens so i basically set out a budget where i said if somebody tells me something that's interesting i have money that i could just like dump into that it's a small amount of money i don't care if that money that money goes to zero and i'm not putting it all into one so i'm taking like a portfolio of these and other than let's to see what that happens and in doing so i could actually learn how these things work and so you know like i one the other day and i put in the milk road explaining literally step by step what this what this project was and why why i'm going into it and how i have no idea of this is like a great idea of bad idea i didn't audit the security of the project like did enough time for all that i'm just like trying to learn how these things work and i'm putting small bets in a bunch different areas with money that i'm i can afford to lose do you do that stuff so i don't cal does i think it's smart though because like sean's saying these are the type of investment where like if you don't have money s surrendered for this it's gonna it's gonna capture your psychology that's actually why i don't dabble in these things but he's done that a lot for n entities right so at first he was like steph i'm just gonna buy one obviously he's bought more since then but he he has a certain amount and like that's all he's willing to invest if it goes to zero he's happy with it but he's also probably sold a lot too early because he has a concentrated amount so he's like i gotta sell this to buy another thing sean did you get into proof i feel like that was a big no i i didn't do proof like that's a that's a great example of one where i'm like oh interesting kevin rose is doing this n entity thing i should i should you know i just take a punt right like i i'm seeing this before most people i should go in and like again like with these things it's not gonna it's not like gonna go to zero quote quote it's like you know so i can trade out of the thing if i want to you know three months from now but like to weigh each to i want every decision to be heavy and and i you have you guys seen this meme that's like the it's like the curve i think it's called like the mid wit meme it's basically like there's an idiot on one side there's a genius like like so on one side is the idiot he looks like a troll it looks like you know it's like whatever trek and on the other side there's like a jedi master and then the middle which is like the top of the curve is like the average person and it's like you know like for example like oh like the idiot would be like oh that monkey looks like that's a cool looking monkey i'll buy alright the genius is like oh this you know this has a chance to be iconic you know like like whatever iconic feet buy like didn't think about it more than that and then they're like middle guys like you know but why would anybody buy this picture of a monkey and like how how do that economics work and they like try to like analyze the whole fucking thing and they're a they're just paralyzed there's some sort of analysis paralysis where they don't they don't take action on anything and then they overthink things so they miss the like the big simple opportunities out in front of them a lot of times and i heard the guy from yc who michael s talking about this he goes he goes this is often in this case with startup up ideas he goes a beginner like you know you out of college and you don't know anything about anything you just think it's all like you don't you don't know ops hard it's gonna be you don't know what you don't know how to vet opportunity just be like oh that sounds cool like let me try that and then same thing with the jedi master the jedi masters is like oh like you know would it be cool if we could take a rocket to mars let's try that you know like that's also the like you don't need to analyze it beyond that at the beginning it's like the this fundamental decision is is very simple and then like the person that he's like the person i hate talk talking to is like the second time founder who's trying to like over optimize their cap table and like try to get like really complicated about the like the valuation and this and then that and then they're trying to do like this lean start validation about every single thing and it's like that's the hardest person to deal with because they're they know too much but not enough to know how to keep it simple and he's talking about like the best ideas the best startup up ideas they go to that that that idiot genius category where it's like you know like should make cars that are electric you know like she we should sell books are lot like yeah well what if you can buy a book online and it's like that's it right you don't need to go do much further than that what's what's that video called i it's a it's one of the y comb it's it's michael si and this guy dalton and caldwell they do like a split screen side by side and they just talk about something for thirty minutes and this is one of them i don't remember the name of the do you know the name of the title i wanna look and find it real quick while while you guys talking but i don't know what would do way leaving that like this idea of sort of like idiot genius like don't overthink it thing well i just did the idea i i just did the idea we'll go ahead step let to go first well i was just gonna say quickly like yes i believe it and yes i think it it applies like different things so i would say i'm the like would you call it like mid twitch or something mid somewhere in the middle for like mid wit in in finance that's why i don't dabble because i'm like i over analyze things i hear one piece of news i'm out kinda kinda deal but i think it applies to up like with startups ups i think i'm maybe not that with other things i certainly am like just just terrible and so i think it i our the was a great example of this right like he saw n entities i was like oh that looks cool like i'm gonna buy one i'm gonna make one which i make it of i don't know like this i one this diagram i already have like yeah it's like the simplest shit and the guys millions of dollars this year on how much how much think he's made off those how much you think he's made on is he do you think he's like wildly wealthy from those i don't know you know he he's done well for sure i think you know he he bought apes he bought you know he bought a punk i i i think he's bought some of the like the projects that went up from like for sure you know and plural like you said like apes not not like one eight he's he's bought multiple of all i think this sort like priced at like you know i whatever like a thousand dollars like you know eighteen months ago and now each one is worth like you know two hundred fifty five hundred thousand dollars so don't know if he hell i don't know what what it was but even just the the stuff he made right like i don't know a lot of people that are like oh web three the meta i need to create an empty project needs to have this and that and utility blah blah he's like hey i mint it a picture of like a you know i think that says not like not like right click save as you know it's it's kinda like just make it fun of the space sold for like fifty thousand dollars like do that in an afternoon and that's like the the mid you know instead of being the mid with over analyzer logical you know processor of all all things you know he went to the kind of the idiot genius zone and just took a punt and it because he's in the idiot genius don't it's not heavy it doesn't take a long of time or energy or money to like try it and so i i specifically carved out a portion of my investing budget to say look this is my my gamble like you know i'll get rid of my gambling energy i'll learn by doing this because i'll get do things that i wouldn't otherwise do and off have skin in the game so i'll actually pay attention to it and like who knows you know maybe maybe i'll have some have some hits out of this and i bet i honestly think that part of my portfolio is gonna do better than the the the well thought through quote unquote part of my portfolio but by the way sam i think you do this really well when people like i've seen people come to you they're like sam i'm thinking of like starting this business and like i wanna cover this topic and i wanna blog and and all this stuff and you're like alright like what's your first step or like you you'll be like just right or something like that which just like simplifies to the like idiot jedi like just do the thing not like over analyzing the like fifty startup articles samsung dying dog you just needed to he goes randy jackson on them well i get i just get frustrated i think because i think that like i think that it's good so if like building a business is step zero to ten and ten is like you're this billionaire or like your vision has been achieved you know you you you own all this property whatever that it is it's good to have number ten and then a lot of people are like alright that's step number ten and then like steps three four five six seven eight nine i gotta figure those out in my mind i'm like no well it's the only thing that's important is ten and one and one after you get done with one you'll figure out number two just but until you get to number two don't even think about worrying about number three it it's not important dude i have i have the same exact thing i i call it a b z it literally like word for word your thing and i i i went on jack's to jack's community he asked me to give a talk and to his like visualize value community and i this was the one thing i told them i go you you have you're at a that's where you are z is the vision it's the dream it's good to have that it's good to know what that is right that's like the north star and like without that you know you don't really have the motivation i everyone really understand like what the hell you're trying to do but wherever everybody gets paralyzed they think they need to know a step b c d e f g h i and it's like and then they get paralyzed or they start thinking about step d when they haven't even done you know a to b yet and so i go a b it's all you ever need it's like where you are you gotta know that accurately the next thing you need to do you need to know that and then you need to know the and vision and everything else is irrelevant like just do that and so you just literally said the same thing with your own like with numbers basically instead it's it's awesome greg like great minds think like i mean that's exactly how i feel because every time i've ever had any bit of success or even when i've like done something and it didn't work out i just think that like if you just start and you're gonna see so many things that you didn't even expect or realize were an opportunity great and or that weren't an opportunity you're like oh i thought this it's actually way different but that's cool or that's not cool we gotta quit you know what i mean and you just that's why you just have to do something i have this and i get really frustrated with action i've been saying this lately i love thin books and quick silence and so what does that mean like a i love a thin did you make that yeah i love a thin book because a thin book is like a simple idea presented without the fluff and that's it that's the value you know don't don't try to you don't need a thick book for everything so i'm a big fan of thin books now and then the other one is a quick silence which is i call my buddy sue about every business question i have basically it's like oh starting the milk road hey what do think about this and then there's a quick silence it's like he says his thing it's obvious that's the answer and i was like building up in my head i need to like oh man i really wanna sit down with him and talk it's like within three minutes or we've reached a good pause it's like well i guess nothing else really matters so we go do that right yep alright well i guess i'll just probably do that obviously get a calculator later and like and so that quick silence to me is like now what i want whereas is i used to wanna fill that silence with more detail more analysis more planning more nuance more like if then statements and like you don't really need any of that like we talk by the end of my sentence he says his sentence sorry for guess we didn't really need to call i guess could've just done a test and you know like i guess i kinda knew this to begin with like maybe i didn't need to call you right but that quick silence is really showing me like that's when i'm on the right track is when i get it either a thin book or a quick silence is like when i'm on the right track and when i need more answers typically i'm just i'm i'm actually going in the wrong direction altogether to the that reminds me from coding if you if you run into an error and you're on like stack overflow or something and you're just like you're you can't find your answer it's probably because you're googling the wrong thing like you've completely messed it up you're in the complete wrong direction and i feel like that applies in in most cases if you find yourself asking like ten questions it's like hold up like you are you're just like going in the complete opposite direction that you should be like pull back and revisit how many people reach out to you after each one of these episodes goes live stuff and said that they like wanna pitch you on something or they wanna recruit you to come join something it grows and some of your buddies reach out which is always fun but i i feel like i'm talking about what when was talking help i don't wanna drop anything dummy that sounds like a story what it what's buying back no no i just mean like it it's it's cool because well also i i should say like some people that i've really looked up to i wanna call out their names because i don't obviously these are like private messages but people that i've looked up to that i was like oh i used to read your stuff or like i've literally read your book or like i from same country i'm not naming eddie names but it's been cool and it's grown obviously because you guys have grown the pod a lot so yeah that's it well there's few people i'll get a fist fight over you are one of them stuff so let me know who who you haven't broken your contract sam you're good good well good i'm happy you came you have so much more to cover i think we should wrap up here though yeah sorry i actually apologize who listen to this because steph had a bunch of gold and i feel like i took it at least really random directions so to make up for it we're gonna do is a second part or steph if you'll come back and we'll do more of these ideas fire and i'll shut up yeah i'm down let's do it