3 Startup Ideas: Mouse Jigglers, Employee Monitoring Softwares and Photoshop Copycats

alright so here's the deal i have an update on a story that we talked about about two years ago partially i wanna like tell you something cool partially i just wanna nerd out with you on this topic because i'm shocked by it i feel like i could rude to where to know i could be what i want to from at all then it like a days off on a road let's try so the pandemic hits in what two thousand twenty one we all go remote and you and i start talking about something that was fascinating so basically there's this weird venn diagram of m mfa listeners there's this shit head and then there's this ambitious person and they overlap to create these ambitious shit heads and what do ambitious shit heads do during the pandemic when we all go remote they do this thing called over employed have you heard of over employment i think is over employed when you basically one guy has three jobs but the three jobs don't know each other yeah it's like a culture it's like this tactic it's the strategy i don't know what you call it but it's very weird and it explodes and basically a small group of people they go and get multiple jobs because they're like dude i'm working at airbnb i'm only working twenty hours a week i get paid a hundred and fifty thousand dollars i definitely can also try and get a job at facebook right working remote was the key unlock right it was the key unlock where they could kind of hide and this story we talked about the wall street journal in new york times has talked about it's kind of been popular but i have an update on this story and it's very fascinating to me so last week wells fargo made an announcement where a couple dozen of their employees specifically ones who worked in the wealth management unit they laid them all off and they laid them off because they found that they were using these devices that you put your mouse on top of and it's almost like a treadmill and it makes it seem like the mouse is constantly moving on their computer and they also did it with keypad where they had this device above their keyboard where it was typing stuff and the reason they did that is because what has happened recently since the pandemic is there's been software that has absolutely loaded where it monitors employees work now this has already existed in remote first companies but now many people are remote and this type of software has exploded to the point where something like fifty percent of all employers who have remote workers use some type of spy software that's not the right you what i like some type of like productivity detection monitoring yeah spy software is more realistic but that's but that's like interesting but alright and so back to that venn diagram of shit heads and ambitious people here's what they're doing they're using these things i'm gonna tell you all about them where they're exactly what what what the wells fargo folks were using where they're like a treadmill for your mouse so they're called mouse jig and they're it's crazy now there's a company called up staff and t i think it's called there's two of them they have something like five thousand companies amongst them and they are employee tracking software and they did this survey where they looked at a million of their customers or a million users using their spine tracking software and they found that roughly seven percent of the million people who are using this software who are using these mouse jig or something like it and then the one of the ceos at the companies they go the true number is actually probably almost certainly higher because they found out that they like were kinda of being really conservative about this and i was shocked this market is so much bigger than i ever thought and i wanna tell you about a few people who are winning in this market the first one on amazon go to tech eight so the word tech and then the number eight usa so tech eight usa this is another mouse jig by the way mouse jig is my new go to dis for somebody who works at a computer all day oh he's just a mouse it's the best so there's this company called tech eight usa they're based in austin texas and what they do is you can buy these things for like thirty or forty dollars and you can like add like a cool design to it like what they're doing is their basic cro they're they're selling these like kinda fraud to like help helping you to commit fraud or do something a little bit strange and you could add like a cool like usa flag to it or you gonna best sales whichever ever look at this thing the in the product description the last one a thoughtful gift for loved ones our undetectable mouse mover makes excellent gifts for anybody who spends a long time at their computer whether it's a hardworking professional or a dedicated student who values convenience and efficiency this mouse juggle is a practical and thoughtful present show your appreciation help them stay productive and stress free it's sort of like it's sort of like when the vape makers like when i was in high school we would vape machines when weed was still illegal and like they're like yeah it's for tobacco but like they put like a they somehow use like the equivalent of a wink in all of their like description door look at this like picture it's like balance your work life and it just shows high someone's computer and the mouse jig just brent like the person not sitting there the mouse jig was just moving the thing and it that says walk the dog relax what are the flowers have a party with friends while your mouse does the work for you it's insane and so look at this one they have a really proud made in austin type of like vibe by the way was there any doubt that the laziness device would be made in america like of course it's made here like we we didn't think it was gonna be made in china this thing's gonna be made here well and i looked up like i was trying to figure out who's the founder and like it's like a weird business where they don't talk about it and i also think it's maybe weird to be making these devices particularly if your company is remote like the ceo of this company is like yeah not a chance we're not gonna go remote but it's really fascinating that this business is i think thriving so tech eight usa one of the winners in this category did they stole your dating profile smart beautiful undetectable how's yours how dare they it's pretty funny that that's that that's a thing the second thing that's thriving and this is the third thing is the most interesting but i'm tell you a quick one about hub staff so hub staff is a software company that does the tracking to see if you're using these devices the guy started it in like two thousand nineteen as like a side project and if you google hub staff revenue way not to be confused with today's sponsor to the ad alright we're back so hubs staff the guy if google hub staff revenue you'll see that he started i think in nineteen or twenty pre pandemic and it was like a side project for him oh no way twenty two million in arr yeah and when he started it he's like i just hit ten thousand and mr r i just hit fifty thousand in mr r and then on any indie hackers he's like i just hit hundred thousand in an mr pandemic hits explodes to where now it's doing twenty two million in in recurring revenue who knows what's that that's worth but for sure nine figures and it started as a side project and he needs to completely exploded his business totally busy exploding because it he used to be building in public like he had a bare metrics page and if you go to their public dashboard down it's gone it it got too big too big to be need to need to to grow in public here but this is super impressive so this is twenty million plus arr he started this during the pandemic that is so smart awesome right and it looks like it's got you know fifteen thousand plus pan customers wow that's impressive do by the way we impressive something like this like for hampton would you install something like this because i'm not gonna lie i'm more afraid of this than i am like my wife cheating on me you know what i mean like it would break my little heart to find out that somebody on my one of my teams is just running three jobs they got a mouse jig all day and that would really make me sad and it kinda makes me wanna use something like this to find out if someone's cheating on me yeah i think i'm i'm open to it i like to think that i'm our company is small enough that and we like i would you would know but yeah like it's it's a very questionable like i i i i have to ask myself what i be open to this and the answer is definitely maybe like i'm not like against it the answer is yes soon and yeah so it's interesting now let me tell you the third winner of this whole thing so there was a subreddit called over employed an over employed at the time when we talked about it i think they are at twenty or thirty thousand members on subreddit on that subreddit and it was basically to have this whole vernacular of like my j one my j two my j three it mean their job one job and they have all these like phrases and things like that well the moderator of that subreddit launched a website called over employee dot com and if you go to that website he talks about his background and why he started it he also refers you to like personal finance tools which is like an affiliate play for him and he talks about like he reviews different mouse jiggle and things like that which is like a clear affiliate play however he has a community the community is partially free partially paid it costs three hundred dollars a year i'm not sure how what percentage of people paid three hundred dollars but it's a discord community he has sixty thousand members on his discord of people who are following the over employed like lifestyle and i went and try to track this guy down his name's is isaac and he you don't know his last name but his linkedin he calls himself a career poly and he has a whole blog all about over employee dot com and it who's was the guy isaac what what's his name he doesn't say so his you just it's just isaac because he tells the story about how he had three different jobs and how he got pissed off and this and it's like an us versus them like founder story but it's kind of weird right because you're not breaking the law probably but you're definitely doing something that you're probably slightly ashamed of or at least as an employer i would be unhappy with and so it's this whole community this sub culture of people that's significantly larger than i ever imagined and they're talking about these things openly and it's very fascinating i went to the website welcome to the secret door to financial freedom insane i've always wanted the secret door and and he's tapped into my needs this is crazy work two remote jobs reach financial freedom that's the the slogan for this website this is crazy dude it's not crazy that this like i knew this was happening but the sam park special here was to go back and check back in on this thing that we talked about two years ago and go find this guy's blog and community and hub staff at the twenty two million in arr it's crazy that there's a whole ecosystem that ecosystem come come up around this one lifestyle like you had the four hour workweek which is a delegation automation and basically like eighty twenty prioritization and now you have over employed which is like the messed up cousin to the four hour workweek week where he's like look just a lot of your lot of your company you're gonna work the same eight hours but for three different companies that i i'm i'm surprised i'm surprised i'm not surprised at the same time at how populated this is and let me give you one more and what i'm about to show you it's kinda like the equivalent of teaching your children about safe sex but really hoping that they don't do it like they don't have sex until whatever then they're like sex sounds awesome i'm gonna go do it because there's this guy called and i linked to it at the very bottom of this section it's called the over employed guy dot com and he i i clicked the about page and he has this long history of like how he got j one j two j three and part of the story he's got this quote he's like i had a bad job and i was upset frustrated one of more money and then it wasn't until i heard the host of my first million mentioned this new trend of people in tech working doing multiple jobs simultaneously but i was woken up to this badass community and this is like the second largest site amongst the over employee i this guy's logo by the way it's to do to three laptops open i think that's one of the the cardinal rules of this is like you must use one machine per thing because they're gonna be tracking you so you have to have different laptops and he's wearing a hoodie in a mask in where it's like clearly we all kind of agree that this is a little bit strange that you're doing this and so i wanted to bring this story up because i'm not shocked but i'm still shocked well also can i get your take on this because if somebody's listening to this this is back to the safe sex thing somebody's listening to this you know we find it fascinating that this going on but me and you have zero desire to do this zero and maybe that's because alright we kind of already made it in a way we sold our companies we we don't we don't have any jobs so we don't need we don't need a job period but if you were young again would you do this like if you were just working at one job and you saw this would you be tempted to go down this path no i mean i would be tempted like i'm tempted to do anything bad like drugs but like at the like in the back of my head i'm like i this is wrong i know i think it's wrong i think that i would not be career molly yeah like i i like maybe occasionally it's alright but you oftentimes regret no this goes against my ethical code i am not i'm not in favor of this or are you no not at all not at not just the ethical side because the ethical side i think it sounds okay but i i've like a relationship with the people i work with you know what i mean like it's not a something that this nameless face less giant big corp but that doesn't care about me like i've always worked in you know usually smaller environments where you know we're a team on a mission together and if i was doing some other mission while we're on our mission that would feel like i like a pretty deep betrayal but that's just i always worked and that type of environment the second thing though is i just don't think it's good tragedy i think it's a bad strategy if you are willing to be clever and and hardworking enough to figure this out like dog just just either start your own business or crush it at one job and you'll make more money and work less than you will having to do this like thing and have to juggle this in your subconscious at all times about these lies that you're living right like living a lies is very taxing emotionally but also you don't need to do this like one great job or one big effort if you're it's your own company we'll pay off like go just go up the ladder in your own company or start your own company if you're willing to do all this shit i i just think it's batch strategy it goes back to the the thing i said the other day like the dumbest person in the world is a professional blackjack player if you're smart enough to be a professional black next share player but you're dumb enough to use it on a game that's rigged against you like that's on you you you are the the the the wrong middle of the venn diagram of super smart and hardworking working and picks terrible games and i think this is an example of that you are super smart and hardworking working to to figure this out to set this up but you're playing a dumb game and what's the thing play stupid games win stupid prizes that's to me that's what this is to me i don't wanna j one j two j three that's that's a bad idea i remember in high school i had this buddy who basically took a a water bottle like a e or whatever water bottle and they un did the logo like they took the plastic off of the bottle and then on the inside they wrote all the equations for the math test that they needed to memorize right and it was beautifully done it was the hand handwriting was perfect the equations were even it sometimes in code in case they got caught that you couldn't decipher it and i was like how long that take it's like it took hours but like i made this perfect thing and i remember thinking like you could've have just studied like if you this studied it's like you would've have got you probably the yeah all could would be the same and it's it's way less risk that's sort of like what's going on here exactly perfect analogy perfect story so that's my story on over employed i thought it was fascinating do we have a guy by the way today's sponsor who was over employed a little bit where we had a side hobby was that a good transition that's pretty a good transition alright so speaking of over employed we could've of doing multiple things when i first heard about what the ceo was doing i kinda grown because i invested in this company and the company was doing well and then the ceo launches a news newsletter and i'm like bro why do you need a newsletter do you really need a newsletter and it's excuse because today's sponsor is b h they make the easiest platform to create newsletter so on what handed it made sense he was using his own product and that's the seemed cute but i didn't really fully get it until i talked to him i tried to understand why is he doing this and so this is the story of of tyler starting big desk energy so basically we've talked about this before there's a great playlist on spotify if you need work music called big desk energy and this guy tyler dan founder of b h and he just made a playlist of songs he listens as to while he works and i like music but i have poor so i used to use this thing all the time because i was like great i i don't know how to find cool music like tyler's is kind of a cool guy cool second guy he's a young guy he's like a new york manhattan hip kid yeah but he like he lives in the on the beats somewhere like he's he's a cool dude so i got to borrow his music i was using his playlist but then his playlist became a newsletter okay interesting why and now it has he was like i wanna do this because i wanna dog food my own product i wanna build in public and i wanna just live and breathe them all the pain points of my customers so that i could be better at building product when he said that i realized oh this makes a lot of sense because too many times do the product builders get so busy they get disconnected from the actual product usage they now y'all give is every night my kids i don't put them to my wife puts our kids to bed we have like a new bedtime routine where she's able to do all three kids at once and so the two older kids they wanna eat fruit in bed every night no matter what we fed them for dinner they're like we have fruit okay so i've just is like twenty minute fruit cutting exercise i'm cutting apples and grapes and strawberries i put it in a bowl i make it look nice i go deliver it to the bed they're so excited they're watching their their little bedtime stories or whatever and they eat the fruit and i've been doing this for like three weeks now and then finally yesterday my daughter was just like hey can mama cut the fruit and i was like what why that always cuts the fruit what do you mean and she's like well you do it bad like what do you mean she goes well you do it like the way you cut the strawberries he's like i can't eat it like that they're too big and i was like what do you mean why didn't you say anything she's was like well you're not there you're downstairs cutting the fruit and then you handed it to me and like by the time i try to eat you're not there for me to tell you and so for three weeks i had there's no feedback loop i didn't know how she likes her strawberries cut and for two when p ceos that's that's been with their product they don't know how the customers like the strawberries cut and one thing that tyler did those very very smart for bee was launch own news newsletter figure out how to grow to thirty thousand figure out how to monetize it do all of the things that a user of his product would wanna do he did it as the ceo and he told me that has been huge for them on their product development because now he could just look at the map and be like that shit doesn't matter these things do because he's actually lived at breathe he knows how the users want their strawberries cut well anne he built a lot of this at morning brew which is they like took a lot of like what they learned there but even then he was just the growth guy he wasn't the guy actually writing the thing sending the thing getting the feedback from customers it's very different when you fully play it out so the guys cool they've got taste this is awesome oh yeah this is all built in b alright this is pretty badass ass alright i'm on board i just signed up so if you wanna create a newsletter or you wanna grow your newsletter go to b dot com b e e h i i v dot com by the way derek sieve you know him yeah he said something once that i really loved he use i made this tool that was for hosting your own website and they was like why was that the biggest business opportunity he goes no it was a magnet because i realized that anybody who has a cool personal website and who cares enough to make a personal website you're my people he's was like so i just made a tool that was useful for them it's not even that expensive it's pretty cheap i undercut the market price not the best business in the world but it was amazing because it brought all these people who i i realized that's the highest like signal thing if you have your own personal website i probably fuck with you like i i i like you my signal if i like you is if you have an income north of two million dollars and also you listen to kid rock if you do those two things if you do those two things you're me you're probably interesting alright what do you got i wanted to read you something so i think here's another little life hack for you one of the great things about the internet is it is such a wide buffet of content and i think a mistake most people make is that they go to the fast food chains of the internet you go to your facebook your instagram your tiktok and that's you just make a diet a content diet of only getting information from big fast food chains social networks i'm a believer that your info diet matters do you agree with that is that something you think about or or care about yeah my fear is getting influenced by the wrong people and i know that you've talked about this info diet for a long time and it kind of influenced to me yeah and i thought i had this thing i said i'm i'm i'm going on the intentional internet which is basically i'm not gonna just eat whatever the a feeds me when i log in or open up a tab i'm gonna think about like what am i trying to get out of this session right now and then i start opening it up kindle or i start opening up different things it's the intentional internet so i have this idea i'm gonna create this like food pyramid of like the info diet so the way the food pyramid was like you know you have your carbohydrates or proteins your da whatever i think there's the same thing for the info diet which is there's probably some plans you should have some proportions you should have of different types of information if you wanna really like feed your brain in a way that's gonna make a brain healthier one of the cool super foods i'll call it like kale like these nutrient dense super foods is find a baller and then go find their early blog before they made it i love doing that so i doing this over the weekend and then man and ben we were looking up and we looked up do know what brian compliment is is he a famous vc no there is a josh compliment i think brian compliment is the guy who created billions yeah yeah yeah yeah he's he's like a show runner in hollywood yeah and so we were we were talking about frank kaufman for this other thing and then we went and we looked up like does he publish anywhere does he post his thoughts anywhere and we went and we looked up and you're basically wanna find things that are like you know five plus years old and it's his blog it's his old interview it's the that course she taught at nyu you try to find something like that so you have to give a shout out to his blog brian compliment dot com it's just a plain white and black blog this is an awesome find and they're very simple post they're not like either the they're not the most mind blowing things either which is in itself kind of an interesting thing it's like wow this guy who achieved so much it's not like he's writing the shakespeare genius stuff that i couldn't have thought it's like wow this is a guy kinda like me that made it in a really unique way so anyways i'm gonna i'm gonna read you the one post write what fa you that's the title so i'm a read it to he goes the seems simple right of course we should write about what fa us so what we ob obsessed over but so many people approach writing and especially screen writing as if it could be game figure it out or strategize and if you're somebody who could do that congratulations rock on although i wouldn't waste that kind of strategic brain power on show business there's problems to be solved out there in the real world if you're that person go figure out how to arbitrage energy resources in a way that motivates buyers and sellers to create a more market or something i don't know because i don't think of it that way but obviously you do for the rest of us we need to calculate less we need to look inside to find our subject matter or outside of the world we see but through a prism of enthusiasm prism of enthusiasm he says meaning we must find subjects that are personally animating inspiring and engaging to us because once we do we have a shot in making them inspiring and engaging for others as well because when the story is important to you when it fa you when the passion is tangible the reader senses it and without even knowing why it gives you the benefit of a doubt you have a story tell of course and it still takes an enormous amount of effort and concentration but the huge collateral benefit of telling stories that genuinely fa you is this forcing yourself to sit down and actually do the work is much easier than when you're writing something because you think it's marketable because you think it could sell or it's in a genre that's currently in demand so calculate less right your obsessions and have a better chance of a getting something really written and b turning your screen play into something that excites and engages the reader this is awesome and he did this in two thousand thirteen over ten years ago yes and i think this same advice by the way works for businesses as well there's one way of doing business which is the calculated strategic approach you look at markets you create a market map you try to identify gap and then you're gonna reverse engineer or something and then you're gonna try to do demand testing and ab testing and you're trying to validate your idea and blah blah blah blah blah and the other is you work on things to fa you either it's a new technology that you think is really cool or it's a new lifestyle that's being you know promoted that you're curious about you're fascinated by maybe there's not enough products for people who want that lifestyle or maybe it's a problem that you have that you kinda get obsessed over you're like wait a minute am i crazy why am i the only one who's not okay with things the status quo here like that's where the greatest companies get built and the greatest successes is and it's actually easier it's easier because you're excited about it and it's easier because you actually care about the problem you're gonna actually figure out the solution and so i just thought that this was awesome advice for content look at today's podcast like i'm telling you about a you know a eleven year old blog post and you're telling me about a subreddit that's popping off and this these these bloggers that are over employed like the reason this podcast works because we talk about one fa us and it's because of that it's not something anybody could compete with because nobody else has the same weird taste palette that we have but if they did their weird takes they would find their audience and it's really hard to stay unique as you get bigger whether whatever you're doing as it gets more successful everyone wants you to tone it down and it's incredibly challenging to not given to that we have this right now you see it that me and slack i'm on a rampage because i'm like dude our titles and thumbnails that are on youtube are two youtube optimized they're calculated it's this is gonna get somebody to click instead of this is how we want it to feel or this is what would make me interested it's like no no what would make the mass populous interested i was like maybe we don't necessarily need the mass pop maybe we need the type of people that we wanna attract they're the ones that are gonna actually like the podcast because they're the ones that actually will will resonate within stick with it and i think that we've have made a mistake in in part of our world which is i don't think i think we kept the content pretty pure and sacred to what we want but i think the packaging we've sort of still tried to sell out and calculate and try to like maximize clicks and views not trying to roll that back yeah i agree with that by the way and that's also why i like a lot of youtubers because there's not a committee usually it's just one person where he's like this is my show i'm gonna do whatever hell i wanna do right like there's this guy i followed named whistle diesel he's this guy he's not a kid anymore but he's this guy in indiana and does the stupid as craziest stuff and he's hilarious but he's a representation of like the most interesting youtubers who don't really they don't really sell out and they keep it real and ae makes him way more successful yeah i i love it let me give you an example of a person who fits this mold but wonderfully so you and i are a fan of peter levels he fits this mold perfectly i saw that he shared something recently and i went down this rabbit hole so there's this guy i'm gonna struggle to say his name big time i i believe he's french i i don't know exactly clement kill i can't say his david dude i look at his dave would you see it honestly i was gonna make funny but that is not any pick pick peter pick peter i think as davis pick peter so listen to what this guy did so i looked at his website his website is kind of hard to figure out so he was a or he is a dj like a dj in clubs but i guess while he was dj and try to pay the bill bills he was also a software developer where he would like make random software he just released something two or three days ago that's amazing so this is sick yes so let me tell the the story a little bit so we talked about photo p so photo p is a free basically i i'll call it a clone of photoshop but i don't know if it's exactly a clone but it definitely started that way so photo p is a free version of photoshop created by his guy named ivan and ivan was he's one of these indie hacker guys where he was really open about it so he built this photoshop clone which is obviously photoshop is huge and it took off right away and i think in two thousand twenty one he posted that he made a million dollars in revenue ninety percent of that being ads and then two thousand twenty three he said that he was now making close to three hundred thousand dollars a month from this photo p website and it's huge it blew up it has fifteen million visitors a month yeah massive massive massive massive and for all i know which is one person well this other guy we're gonna call him coma because i can't say his last name what photo p did to photoshop he did with adobe after effects and he calls it pi move for peak mo what do how do you think you pronounce that i have no idea peak move i don't know peak mo so you'll have it's p i k i m o v and you have to go to this website so basically this guy he posted it on hacker news then he posted it on reddit and twitter and it blew up on all three of those places and he said basically he was like i'm on this linux machine and i've been trying to like use the photo after effect and it wasn't really working and it wasn't doing what i needed to do so for the last year i basically just built this version of it for myself and it's free and now i'm letting the world use it and he was very under with his announcement he was like so here's this thing you guys can use this on twitter it gets something like two million views hacker news that's the number one post reddit it's massive it's completely blown up and it is so awesome that one person built this thing so you went to the website what did you see it i mean it looks like after effects and it just says free it free alternative to editors such as adobe after effects web based nothing to install works on windows mac and linux you could do everything you could do it after effects and your files stay your computer they're not uploaded to a server we talked about photo i we've talked about photo be a few times is one of the earliest episodes of this podcast yes you you had showed me photo b i showed you don't remember what it was but that was a kind of like a miracle looking product these are like the radioactive indie indie hackers like the indie hackers they got bit by the bug and now have super superpower where one man can recreate all of photoshop like every feature of photoshop in a browser and it actually works and he's willing to give it away for free and just maintain it himself for the rest of his life and now somebody's doing it with after effects this is super impressive it's incredibly impressive and he tells the story where on twitter people are like this is amazing how on earth did you do this and he's like i just did it on nights and weekends by myself and i figured it out dude this is sick by the way completely at this sun sucks somebody and hacker news the comics i go as a motion designer i'm curious what featured what features does this have that after effects doesn't and then somebody came in and says i'd say the main feature it lacks is that there's a subscription payment requirement so good it it's awesome and it was a total under overwhelming launch and that he didn't like over hype it he just said he put it out in the world but it was one of those products that you go to it and you're like it's sort of like seeing like a huge lego setup where you're like yes yeah what a great analogy the fact that you spent a year putting this together i'm impressed i don't have to know anything about this but this is just epic just for being epic right do you know what i mean instant internet respect for for this this is so impressed i'm never gonna use this because i don't use after effects anymore thank god but this is awesome this guy has my internal respect and i'm glad we're sharing it i'm gonna tweet this at all also so this is so it's really awesome and if you google his name you can't find photos of him so most all of his photos they're not even like avatars they're just like silly they're like i think it's a a sharper a whale or something it's his avatar like you really can't find a lot of pictures about this guy and if you go to his website there's nothing there he did barely explains who he is and so this is like a true one of one these rare individuals that i particularly love and i know you love too where it's like these this almost it's almost like a hacker but they're not doing anything wrong do you know what i mean right it's it's like a weird sub culture of people that i'm obsessed with where they're they're artists who know how to program it's basically what they are and you can't find anything about this guy it's like he's doing it almost for art sake how long did it take him to make this do you know it he said early two thousand twenty three so that would be year and a half a year very talented that's cool it looks great i don't know anything about after effects because i don't use it either but i go to the website and i'm like this is special do you what i mean okay oh wow okay alright i'm impressed this is great okay what do you want me to do i have two topics you pick the ryan ser show or self driving car experience self driving car for sure okay so self driving car so i went into san francisco last week for a couple meetings and the new way moe way app has now open for everybody so don't know are you like fully in the loop of what's going on basically there's there's actual self driving cars that just drive around san francisco like taxis and it's happening and it's not like limited or fake in some way it's on a demo you push a button it shows up it's got your name written on the top of it you push unlock it opens up there's no driver in there you get it and it takes you to your destination it is magic i think it's awesome it works super well i would have been pretty nervous to get inside this but i had so many friends who've been using it because they were in the bay the private beta that were like dude this thing is so good it's so good it's better than tesla's autopilot by far this is this is really really good so i got in i feel like here's a couple of thoughts on this i don't know exactly what i wanna say but i just wanted to come to you with a few through random thoughts you tell me you helped me make sense of this so the first thought is just i can't believe this is happening like i can't believe in my lifetime this is just gonna happen where we're just gonna shift from like nobody drives cars and it's so obvious the first time you get in one like i had to take an uber back and literally it was comic it was like the worst uber experience you could have it was like a hundred degrees in the car he wouldn't open the windows and he wouldn't turn on the ac and every time i to ask him a question he was like super grumpy and i was like i just never wanna have a driver in the car again i just i went from the way moe seamless private you know fully in your control autonomous experience to like back to what felt like a rick shot in india like it felt terrible and so i can't believe this is happening i feel like this should be a much bigger deal and nobody's really talking about it it's not that is a secret but i feel like nobody cares that's very strange to me because the coolest ai thing that it that's gonna happen is that the cars are gonna drive themselves and then we're just gonna sleep eat play video games and chill inside cars from now on and nobody's gonna get in car accidents that's gonna be amazing and i feel like nobody's really excited that we're now like right here on the cusp because if this can do this all throughout san francisco it's san francisco is kind of a complicated place like it's the city street there's people walking at jay walk everywhere there's construction that's that means it's gonna work in a lot of places so i can't believe this happening i was surprised that it cost as much or more than an uber and i was totally fine with it i thought that the whole point of this self driving car was gonna be that is gonna be cheaper and i think eventually it will but right now these cars are very expensive but i was more than happy to pay a premium to go in the driverless experience which was very surprising to me because i thought the reason i would want it was because it's it's less expensive it's just better and i mean i i don't mind paying more how much more expensive was it like twenty thirty percent more expensive oh that's nothing yeah not not bad obviously there's a little bit you know the sub small hiccups meaning it's like more polite so for example if you're standing right there it won't just stop in the middle of the road block everybody's traffic just to let you in it'll like try to it'll go up thirty feet and pull over as you gotta walk thirty feet and you're like i can't believe i couldn't just stop all of the street traffic to get into my car so there's a little things like that that are kind of annoying but actually understandable but man i was impressed have you been in one of these no but i i'm looking forward to it because i have a tesla and i hate my tesla i think tesla is a horrible car i hate which one do you have the x and i think it's horrible but there's one feature about it that makes it absolutely worth it which is the self driving stuff which you keep your hands on there but i drive that car all the time and i only use the self driving i am significantly more comfortable with that than my wife or me driving the car i think i think it is way safer so from now on all of the cars that i'm buying in the future are gonna have some type of driverless assist and it's so much better let me correct you in the future you're just not gonna buy cars you're just gonna push a button and the car is gonna take you where you want you're never gonna need to own a car yeah i could see that and so there's something like forty thousand deaths in america from car accidents and i i i there people will still die because of this but it's gonna be drastically reduced additionally if you've ever been in traffic have you ever like studied what causes traffic sure haven't well like it's like a like like if you ever see like those weird gifs or on like how stuff works will you'll be like here's how like a traffic jam starts and you see like one person abruptly stop which causes another person to abruptly stop and then like it's like a trait train chain reaction and it's like a really weird it's more of a a psychological problem almost than anything where you're like wait why is this person stopping which caused this called this and it's really fascinating but when you think about traffic that could basically be not solved for but incredibly improved upon because your margin of air it it's not a human making that mistake you're like no i know i can drive within ten feet of the driver in front of me because i know that i'm like i'm not just gonna hit the break too late whatever that's gonna be solved we're gonna save hours and hours and hours every month because of this type of stuff and let alone the lack of death so i'm like incredibly excited about it yeah and parking you know kinda cards i've only like a sub ten percent utilization rate meaning ninety percent of the time a car just sitting idle doing nothing and that's gonna change because if a car can drive itself it's gonna go in instead of sitting idle it's gonna go and earn money for you it's gonna go drop people off and earn cash and it's not gonna be stay parked so when utilization rate goes up you don't need as many cars total because now each car is being used more so now you have way less cars being used way more which means way less parking which means way less buying cars it's a it's a big change that's coming right in in addition to the lifestyle change of we got a self driving car and you're talking about like you know you have to keep your hands on the wheel for the way more thing you're just in the back you just chilling the wheel is just turning in itself if you don't even you don't look outside we had a full meeting and we could talk about numbers and everything because there's no driver sitting there and we just it was a productive twenty minutes it was great and if i wanted to just sleep i could just fully slept i could've have done anything that's that's amazing because i don't know how much time the average person spends in a car but like an average probably ninety rights it's probably like of the people who really have a commute they're probably spending like two three hours a day in a car versus you know what will become you know either an incredibly productive or relaxing time to be going from one place to another i i i remember i would explain this to my parents are or in laws and they're like aren't you afraid that you're in this machine and it's controlling thing and i always say well no because at least i'm sitting at the wheel so i could take over so there's like i'm part of the loop but number two it's like well are you afraid when you get into an elevator right like i'm not i'm not afraid when i get an elevator i trust that button it's gonna do the right thing it's gonna bring me where i wanna go it's not just gonna drop me i'm also not afraid when i fly in an airplane you know the pilot is sitting there at the seat but it's like an pilot plane no i'm not afraid now i i am not a little bit nervous because the technology is new but like in ten years when or a lot of times doable like this is never gonna be like no it's gonna be a thing in ten years it's gonna be significantly better than it is now and it's pretty good now so yeah i'm not afraid of it at all and i'm incredibly bullish from now on all the cars that i buy on a daily basis are all gonna be the have some type of driver assist like you use it on your tesla and you're like this is the way the world should be at least that's why i think what about this which one you wanna do let we do one more with let's do ryan answer show so i binge watched the new it's called owning manhattan it's just like a random netflix show it's nothing like super special no most of don't care about it i i liked it it wasn't like the best ever but i i happened to binge watch it i stayed up like four for the morning watch so who's this guy i just know he's a a silver hair guy that sells real estate yeah he's a real estate broker and he was one of the kind of high end brokers in new york he got famous because he was on a show called million dollar listing since i think he was like twenty five years old so he spent basically a decade on tv but it was like bravo tv and it was him in a bunch of other brokers and what happened is he leaves the show in like the tenth season and he takes a little break and then he comes back with his own netflix show and obviously it was kind of like selling sunset was his huge hit reality show and the genre of like real estate reality became like a thing they're selling o they're selling miami they're selling sunset there's like a whole bunch of these like real estate shows so he comes back and he's got one called owning manhattan and it's basically the story is ryan ser who's like the ryan sea crest of like a real estate world he's like this super good you know super good looking guy who loves to be on tv he's just made for tv who's got great skin and sells real estate that's the guy and so he takes the show and he's d quest is basically he leaves he he left his brokerage he starts his own brokerage firm so you know you have so and have compass and he's trying to create sarah like his own brokerage and he hires up like two hundred or three hundred agents now and the show is following him trying to go trying to become the number one brokerage firm in new york and i think they only serve like the new york area they're not even they're not nationwide he's just trying to become number one in new york which is the number one real estate market in the world and i gotta say the show is pretty interesting and it's interesting for a couple reasons number one you know he's he's good at tv meaning he's kind of obnoxious but it grows on you he's like obnoxious but then it starts to get better but also all the agents you know it's a perfect cocktail it's like you have house porn luxury like luxury real estate you have big dollars flying around deals that are closing or not closing then you have the agents who are like you know peacock they each have try to have their own brand and personality and try to be the best in their own way and then you have the drama of like a a soap opera or like a you know reality obnoxious like it's almost like his style like his style is you he tries to do cocky funny basically i don't know have to do bad impression of it but he'll be like like real estate is hard not for me i mean i make it look easy but for other people it's hard and he like every interview he's doing that and so at first you're just like i don't whatever but over time you know you do get you get to see the guy sweat because the guy you know the way the show makes a feel is that he's hanging on by a thread each each of these deals has to go through otherwise bad things happen which is yeah just normal tv drama he gives off the vibe that he's like super alpha where it's almost like you have a stereotype in your head of like a like a high roller hedge fund guy but for real estate yeah and also kinda metro also so he's not like just macho he's he's like hey he's he's like kinda got like both sides of it where he's like kinda like at the style and the fashion and the like the the light touch but then he's also like a cut through of killer trying to win he's like a wake up at five am workout eat healthy at the office by seven know what mean he's like that type guy where he's just like he he's intense exactly and so i i wanted to read you what so why did i wanna share this really there's two things i wanted to share first is hey it's a tv show i like if you're looking for tv show you might like this one that's the little thing but the bigger thing would be there's a moment in the episode so are in the show so he i'll just give away a little bit of the show so there's one young agent who's basically the kind of like controversial guy on the scene he's talented but he's an asshole right okay that's a great character so this guy who's like fully t up he used to be like a model in norway or something like that and so super good looking super tat up guy who's super cocky and arrogant he's only twenty five years old but he's he's like well why would he's like if you're young if you made it on youtube or you're a rapper or whatever he's like you don't wanna buy from this like and he's like talking about his coworker he's like some like bald headed used car salesman when looking guy in a in a cheap suit you wanna buy for me he's like i'm just the next generation like people wanna the the next generation of rich people wanna buy with me and so he's he's like very cocky and whatever and ryan believes in this guy because he's clearly talented but he's also like dude why are you such like a jerk around the office you're making my life hard about being a jerk his name is jonathan i'm looking at jonathan and he rides a motorcycle everywhere and he's by the way guys fantastically dressed at all times like i i tried to find this guy's like stylist like who is this guy's thanos because these guy's guys got great sauce dude he's he has neck tattoos i'm not buying real estate from a neck tattoo guy but you kinda want to like it's kinda like when the bad boy likes you yeah yeah all of us were like me yeah he's given me attention there there's a certain party you that wants that dude if you have a tattoo that goes over your adam's apple i don't know like i don't i don't know that's the line yeah like i i'd wanna hang out with you baby but i don't know if i wanna do business with you i mean you you clearly have a visible in a turtle where you got problems alright and what about this guy so there's a scene at the and i thought there's was a great quote so ryan is kinda confronting this guy because he's been you know causing in a bunch of drama and he says something i thought it was just really great he goes you spend so much of your time trying to get noticed instead of spending your time trying to be great if you spent half the time just trying to be great you'd be so great that everybody would have to notice you and i just thought that was just a wonderful line a wonderful quote that i feel like i could've have you know forwarded that in a insulting way to like ten people i know in life people who were very active on social media and it's like instead of trying so hard to get noticed just try to be great if you spent half the time just just trying to be great you would be so great that everybody would have to notice you like that guy who did the after effects thing he he could have tried to be you know promoting himself and blogging and doing all this stuff and instead he just did one great thing and we all have to notice that and we all have to follow him and we want to be be a part of this guy's world versus him trying to push his agenda out there and i just thought that was a great quote that a lot of people need to hear i am i'm gonna read between the lines here are you becoming intros ineffective lately is this like a thing are you you're you're are you trying to work through like what type of man you wanna be because i kind of i kind of like it to be honest of doing the work as they say you know someone made a comment to me where they said like you know sam i could tell what phase of life you and because i listened to the podcast and to hear what you're talking about and who you're getting influenced by they were like before you're having children before you even said that you're gonna have a kid like i kinda guessed it based on what you're talking about i'm kinda doing the same with you where it's actually exciting to see like the quotes or in this case the quote that you're interested in in in you're like thinking like that's how i should live my life a little bit more do you know what i mean of course and i think that that's cool if you spot it you got it is the the rule right and it's like i think this is insightful because i have the problem that this insight cures right it resonates with me because it's a part of this that is true for me and true for people i know that i care about you know that i wanna you know i i wish i could you know shake them to hear it too and so yeah i'm very into you also if you read the comments of our youtube you also have a large fan base of young man who look up to and think get you're cool which you are cool they would be shocked at how basic bitch your tv choices are because you you are you so true sean and my wife will like text about like the challenge or like i know you're a bachelor guy or whatever this i don't know what these shows are but you that i love that this is the one part of you where you are a mainstream type of person and you're into this stuff i just try to keep in touch with the common folk you know yeah i don't know if this is common folk but i love how simple some of your tastes are look you're a very complex person with deep taste in or and a in a rich personality but this is the one part but you're you're just like the rest of us i everybody's like that right you like to go build legos in your free time like when we are when the light we we wanna switch the light off we don't wanna just dim we want it off it's like i when i wanna relax i wanna go mindless i wanna veg i wanna just i wanna go completely and indulge in a in a non intellectual pursuit because i already do it and even then you could see like i somehow turned that into like podcast content and lessons for life when i'm supposed to just be looking at people's pretty outfits and stuff and you i can't really fully turn it off but i try to i try to go and and just do the stuff that i truly enjoy without trying to make it also be cool and intelligent this guy ryan by the way he gives off so i've seen him talk before and i found him i found him very off putting at first where i'm like i feel like you're like rent card owner or something you're gonna like sell me something or you're trying to scam me and then i got to know him and i'm like oh no you're i think you're the real deal you're you're just intense and you're you're you're a legit he has a company called sell it so sell it dot com have you seen sell it dot com no so basically it's like a course in one on one training business that you give to your real estate agents and that could go one of two ways it could come off like scam and and kinda bottom feeder type of stuff when i go to the website i do not get that vibe at all i get like it's like it's legit so he owns i believe his real estate brokerage term is incredibly successful but this company i've heard rumors that this business is doing something like thirty or forty million dollars a year in revenue and he's building up like a legit media empire of courses yeah brexit i buried the lead of why i wanted to talk about the show the reason why i'm talking to the show i watched it and i go oh my god he's doing the kardashian model yeah but instead of selling like nine dollar lip gloss he's selling nine million dollar apartments this is genius and what i mean by that is he is using the netflix show as the greatest marketing vehicle for his own agency so it's like he he has hit media that creates you know more business and it is perfect content market fit and i just thought wow this is incredible this is just like the kardashians have done where they use media to then build their their beauty empire he's doing this to build his real estate empire or his sales empire and the the the the funniest tweet i saw on this with somebody goes the greatest sale that friends i never did was selling netflix in eight eight hour info commercial without them realizing it because the show is an info commercial for him for his brokerage for his agents and it is gonna be it's tremendous right it's the way that hubspot treats this podcast it's negative c this show entertain you and it's profitable for them so it's good media and good business and once i saw this i was like wow applying that to one of the highest ticket items in the world a home the luxury homes at that that is a very very powerful combination and you're just gonna keep seeing examples of this content market fit happening where people can figure out a way to make really juicy standalone entertainment on its own that is going to then inherently market you in your business this is you know an incredible job of that and you and i he you're really close to this person he bought his apartment i think from him from ryan yeah yeah we a couple of friends that bought from him yeah and i asked my buddy or our buddies about the experience and they're like yeah he showed up and he was there like show me around this eight million dollar apartment and it he was real like he was he was like actually doing the work and so i think this guy's a workhorse yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly the new york new york energy right the new york hardcore core overdrive over work personality yeah no i i a big fan of this guy he's he definitely was one of the types of people who i i learned about them and i'm like i'm not i don't like you at all and then i start learning more and more i'm like oh you're awesome you're legit yeah you come to respect the hustle i respect this guy a lot i think he's the man i think that kinda like having i've said this before but it's kinda like having him an and an adam's apple tattoo not for me but i still respect it that's kinda like what this guy is where i'm like i can't imagine grinding that hard because he gets after it but i love that he exists and he does so yeah i'm i i actually do like this guy a lot alright right on i think that's it alright that's a pod i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a travel never looking back