3 Stories Of People Making Millions In Weird Ways

alright sean there's a documentary that r and i r and i were texting about did you see it it was called martha it was on netflix it was about martha stewart i haven't seen it but i actually don't know really anything about great this is so great because martha stewart was up beast i feel like i could rule to where to i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a road less travel night i really couldn't tell you five things about martha stewart like was she kind of the first influencer like data celebrity influencer then started launching products or what's the story martha stewart was a killer she was a total shark she was way shark if you only know her as her put together image of like this like housewife who cooks everything i'm gonna say is gonna blow your mind because she was a total shark so i'm gonna give you a little bit of her background so basically she's born and raised up in the east coast she goes to columbia university while she's going to school she becomes a model because she was a cute woman when she was young yeah yeah wow she was fantastic yeah good very very pretty woman yeah go martha she gets married at a young age like nineteen or twenty years old but graduates columbia and her father law helps her get a job as a stock broker and by the way she studied architectural like history or something like that at columbia nothing to do with stocks and so at the age of like twenty four twenty five she gets this job and you're probably wondering how on earth did martha stewart become a stock broker well i am wondering would her father law first met her he was like you have this like it factor like you are so charming you are so put together because she had this vibe at a very young age in her twenties like she dressed fantastically she was very charismatic she was clearly driven and hardworking and this small like ten person operation that was a stock bro comp brokerage they needed a sales a a salesperson and it was all met at the time i think this was in the sixties it was all dudes it was a very male dominated industry but she comes into this interview and eventually works there and they comment on how her she's dressed like perfectly like so perfectly that you're sort of intimidated when you first meet her because she's like perfectly put together but then she's like really charming and warm and you're like oh i i i like you and so she starts like as a salesperson basically at the stock company really working at with with with clients and and getting them to like trust them and things like that and she kills it and so listen to this at the age of twenty six according to this documentary she said she was making a hundred and thirty five thousand dollars a year which equivalent today is a million dollars a year at the age of twenty six as a stock broker pretty crazy that she went from being a model to a stock broker and that short amount of time and she kills it and she does it for like six or seven years like it's like a legitimate career for her and she suggests that one of her clients buy this stock that was like a dollar and it went to like ten bucks so it killed it then they bought a little bit more and it goes something huge like to fifty it was like this massive stock and it made these clients all this money but then the fifty dollar stock goes right back down to like eight or ten bucks and so technically her client had still made a bunch of money but that roller closer ride of like making a little bit of money than making a ton of money than losing a ton of money it like left her kind of distraught and so she bailed because of that like journey and so she quit and so in the when she's like thirty years old or late twenties she moves out to actually where i'm living out at west connecticut she's was like you know i wanna have a kid i wanna like try this housewife life whatever and do this thing and she moves out here and she sits around for a very short amount of time and she's like alright i gotta do something like i can't just sit here and so they buy this like kinda shitty house at she like totally turns around and redo dust the whole thing all by herself she paints it she builds this beautiful garden she learns how to raise coat goats and chickens and like plant her own garden and like creates this amazing like a state out in west connecticut which now it's fancy back then it wasn't particularly fancy and so eventually she gets really into this and she's like you i kinda like this housewife life what if i start hosting some dinner parties and she creates these lavish amazing dinner parties and eventually all these rich guys who come are like hey do you wanna like cater my party and so that's what she starts doing and so she builds a business as a cater that she said made her a millionaire and her whole stick back then for this catering business where she goes i'm gonna make everything by scratch and so west connecticut where about an hour and ten minutes from new york city at this time people start realizing that she could actually operate on like three or four hours of sleep and so she would go to like catering the catering business by the way it's like that's like the hardest thing on her earth right you know you're it's brutal it's a really hard business to pull off and so she was famous for going to the farmers markets in new york at four am getting all of her produce and then going in the morning and baking all of her food and so her famous is saying as her catering business was basically i make everything from scratch and not only does she suggest make stuff from scratch one time she saw this brochure that like was doing a recreation of like the pilgrims thanksgiving and there was like a basket of fruit that was like overflowing and she was like that's what i'm gonna do and so she was famous for creating these like char boards of like overflowing meats and fruits and she said something that was actually really inspiring she was like i wanted to turn this into experience and like i wanted to make this like fruit board she was like it sounds trivial but that was my art and i was gonna make like these baskets of fruit over flow with strawberries to show that this table is where like generosity like like you know like an abundance and all this stuff and it's a massive hit she builds us into a big business to the point where a few years in she goes and she caters a i think it was like penguin publishing or something like that like one of these publishers party she caters it and it's a really big deal you know she's doing like the met all these museum and art museums in new york and this is a a big deal she's doing this catering company or this publishing company and they start talking to her and they're like dude you are amazing do you wanna write a cookbook for us and so she does and it takes her like a few years like three or four years because she's super hands on on writing this book and they were like hey so we're what you to do is cookbook just put in a bunch of recipes it's a black and white photos and she was a nobody and she goes not a chance we're doing colored photos and we're actually gonna do like five hundred photos and just give me the budget i'll go ahead and i'm gonna like hire a photographer friend and we're gonna go and like organize all these photos and take all these a lavish photos at my house that i made because we're gonna make this like the martha stewart cookbook where at the time typically it just been recipe she was like no we're gonna add in about like my lifestyle we're gonna have these photos one of the photos and this is like her kitchen look how lavish that is like what do you see the the most full kitchen i've ever seen there's literally nine thousand pots and pants hanging above above and then she's surround she's like her kitchen looks like a board yeah it looks like an overflowing board but she's one of she's like a piece of salami me in the middle and that's like the whole her whole s basically she she says this she's like i'm gonna sell perfection because she was she was a perfection she was actually a pain in the ass to work for and the first book was called entertaining and it was about like entertaining gas basically yeah and like creating an atmosphere of like warmth and things like that and it was a massive hit it sold six hundred fifty thousand copies what what do you think nick gray is the new martha stewart i'm just gonna put that out here what nick is doing with the two hour cocktail up party i think he's just a he's just a young martha of stewart right now yeah well and she was like one of the early influencers because this was in the eighties this is when like mass media is really becoming a thing and it's a massive hit and so like these women by these books because it's not just about cooking it's about like being better being aspirational like perfect a craft and she sold the shit out of this life lifestyle and it was her lifestyle and she basically said in the documentary she was like i had visions early on of creating this martha stewart media company all about me because i'm great like i am what she like she's like she was very confident about that opening up the business i'm like alright mark stewart media company it's about me next page because i'm great next page but she what i mean she was so like there's a lot of bad stuff that has gone on like basically her husband sheets on her she sheets on her husband her daughter's like dude she was a cold mom people complain working for they're like dude she's just a fucking asshole and she was like throughout the documentary they get her on camera being rude to her employees and so yeah she's like a perfection and she she she was like i'm not i'm not sorry for that i'm a perfection ness wait forward through the business side so she does the cookbook cookbook to hit massive hit and eventually one thing leads to another where kmart which was just like k today back then it was like you know lower lower status store she partners with them to create like a line of bedding and people are like shocked if they're like why would this upscale woman do this and it turned out to be a great move it was really cool and then she partners with time and she creates a series of magazines and she's the editor of the magazine it goes really well but she's like i wanna own the sun bitch and so she raises eighty five million dollars and she buys the magazine and three or four years later takes it public and i show the financials of her business it was i think what's was called martha stewart i'm omni media basically the she buys the business that if like something like three years later takes it public the in year three it's doing a hundred and thirty million dollars a year in nineteen ninety seven a hundred and thirty million dollars in revenue and it's a behemoth of a business so basically they've got the tv show they have tons and tons of magazines they have merchandising like the kmart deal it just crush it and it goes public and she becomes the first ever self made women's billionaire in in america and just annihilate it but then something really bad happens so basically she's worth like four hundred five hundred six hundred million at this point because the stock was going up and down apparently she calls her stock broker she's like hey i want you to sell this one stock so she sells this one stock and it she made like thirty grand off of it turns out a lot of people think that it was inside trading and so the doj like interviews her and figures out this whole thing and does this massive investigation turns out the charges are of of of insert trading or dropped they're like you did not insert trade however so sorry she sold her own stock or she sold sorry just a different just a a a stop in only thirty k so why was it a big deal anyway it was so it was a big deal because we're just we're we're basically there was like en ron and a bunch of things like this were happening at the time and the doj was like any insider trading any like corruption we're gonna go we're going like really hard against all of this and so she like sell some stock it's suspicious turns out that this the ceo of this of the company who stocks she sold he was in fact corrupt and they're were like but you knew him what was going on you knew that this drug wasn't gonna pass you sell the stock whatever the doj investigates her and they're like you actually that looks clean it looks like you didn't know anything however when we interviewed you you told us some small fact about how you were on a schedule to sell this stock turns out you weren't on a schedule and so you lied to us and so we are gonna put you in federal pen penetration for five months for lying not for insider trading but for lying about this like somewhat not that big a deal fact and so kinda bullshit kinda not like she did lie but like she got five months in the federal and she's like fifty years old and at the time when all this trial shit happened that's when we realized that martha stewart she's she's kinda bad she's she's she's she's she's bad because there's all these stories where the it comes out she's a little rude it's so for example her stock broker has this assistant who would talk to martha mostly and like there's examples of like of the stock assistant being like dude she was the mean person ever for example one time she called then i had to put her on hold and i go back to talk to her she goes hey if you don't change that waiting music that tac waiting music by the next time i call i'm gonna have you fired and just hung just like hung up like there's like repeatedly like a bunch of stories where she just did she was not like very kind to people and that kinda swayed public opinion of her she goes to jail for five months and it sucked it sucked for her it was not good she gets out of jail and she ends up doing justin bieber roast which again changed public perception of her because at this point everyone was like man it's kinda of fun seeing martha stewart kinda of downfall because she perfect woman like f her kinda nice like it brings brings me up to see this i knew she went so perfect yeah but she roast justin bieber and she's just like hilarious she talks about how she like shank bitches in prison and how she like made this shank with just like a piece of pencil and some bubble gum and you could do one too at home i'll show you how like it like kinda human eyes there was pretty cool but her getting arrested it decimated the stock so she was like on the documentary she was like i think would've have been worth ten billion dollars but when i got arrested my stock went way down we ended they ended up selling the company for like three hundred million dollars and it was kinda like the it could've have been like a great company but it kinda wasn't however throughout this whole thing this whole documentary martha like has shown time and time again she's a bad bad woman like and in in all sense of the word as in like she's brutal she's smart she's con there's time is only going up in your books that's all i'm hearing all i'm hearing is like let's just summarize good looking lady already off to a good start then goes from model to sales slash stock broker alright amazing one interesting thing that's cool two interesting things you have my attention third interesting thing self made and first kind of major tread wife influencer does the cookbook does it her way is ruthless with the details is has is it has a no nonsense attitude she's a stick these are all i mean these are your safe for dude like these are all the things that you enjoy so this is really up your alley like i mean like how do you feel about martha stewart right now because it sounds like even when she's bad it just made her more good in your books sorta i mean she paid the price so basically like her husband left her her kids like she's got a bad relationship with her children because of the way she behaved and she basically she's eighty three now by the way i didn't realize how old she was and like she hasn't had a relationship since her husband and her broke up so she paid the price she there's a cost to be the boss you know and she paid it but she is in fact the boss so i do have a lot of respect for her and i also think that there's downsides to achieve what she achieved but i'm shocked you didn't know that did you know any of this like how she's like it's not really i knew she had like a cookbook or was on tv and that she sold like stuff to women that's kind of the the extent of what i knew about martha the stewart dude she's great and so another big takeaway and i'll wrap up here is how big of a company you could start and and have just off the back of one person like it was the martha stewart brand and she was like into that like a lot of people would be fearful of like having that burden having that on the your back of like literally a thousand plus employees and billions of dollars of of value and she was totally into it and she loved it and i love those types of personalities right but it sounds like this company wasn't that good and your numbers table here you know by two thousand and one it says total revenue two hundred ninety five million net income twenty one million which is obviously that's good that's not nothing but that's not a ten billion dollar company to make twenty one million a year of of net income and then it says from two thousand and three to two thousand and fifteen which is like three presidents it says consecutive annual losses every year except for one year so was this really a good business or was this actually just a lot of work for nothing no it it was good i mean you have to think of a few things one you know it was making three hundred million dollars a year in revenue and a lot of it came from publishing and publishing means subscription magazines so like that's like pretty good but then the internet came and just completely like obliterated that industry i mean that was like magazines are probably like the worst industry to be in so like yeah there's a lot of what ifs and the timing was such that she got arrested and also like you know amazon was created and the internet was created so yeah there's a lot of like what ifs but i feel like if she was i think she was like thirty years too early like i think if she had the internet she could've have become a juggernaut because it sounds like her talent and her ruthless that combination was gonna serve her well and it just she needed the she needed a better medium if she could've have just owned her own instagram and tiktok channels and built everything off the back of that you know what she i think she would've have been the number one sort of like women's or mom influence or is she arguably was that any anyways of her era but the market a hundred x yeah yeah i mean and like i think a lot of these like big celebrities i think it was a little bit easier to be a big celebrity in the eighties nineties and early two thousands because there was less of them now anyone with the cell phone can become a celebrity in like six or twelve months so it's hard to say but but by the way her business her business still do like a billion a year in sales okay gotcha the you have something in your notes here typical day of sixty year old martha stewart yeah read that it says she's sixty but she looks a decade younger she's she's been up since four thirty am she answers her email at five takes a three mile walk with her trainer at six she tours her garden at seven as but she towards her garden she's thrilled to discover a duck and thirteen duckling in the swimming pool by seven thirty she's whipping up corn rule for a visiting water i don't even know what any of these words are animal and animal building it wooden ramp to help them get in and out of the pool a duck okay she's doing all this stuff for a duck her tv crew arrives at eight hair and make up a thirty and then she's shooting her tv segment by nine am yeah she's crazy dude i literally woke up like nineteen minutes ago and i rolled out a bed and i put on this hat and then i started e play i don't think i don't think i'm built for this she's a machine you know how like people say stories of like how trump can only operate on three hours of sleep that's like a real thing by the way there's like a it's like i forget what the name it it's like a thing she's another person that she's famous for only sleeping like three hours a night perfect segue can i tell you what my best topic was that i wanted to talk to you about yeah oz zen for sleep so there's a guy his blog is isaac dot net and he wrote this post about sleepless and he basically says that there is a set of people that are famous who have the short sleeper genes a set of genes for where you know about four to five hours a night is a full night's rest for them and he says that you know mo are thomas edison sig freud margaret that obama and he's like even my my lab lab mate this guy's a a researcher he's like have this thing called short sleeper syndrome and people thought that short sleeper syndrome would be you sleep less and maybe you're able to operate that way but you know it's gotta be bad for you sleep we know is sort of the best thing for you it restores the brain and the body and all your function and so these people must be dying younger and have more disease right and it's like no actually they don't these people just simply have the benefit without the cost they sleep you know they need about three hours less sleep than the rest of us but they they don't pay the price in terms of you know the health consequences of that and so he goes on this post and he basically outlines that we who who are these people by the way in this photo so he says you know my favorite families this family called the johnson's from utah and the johnson's from utah are a set of researchers and i think a bunch of them have this short sleeper genetic makeup and so they've been researching this for a while and it's about you know one percent of people have this thing where you're you don't need as much sleep and it does not seem detrimental to your health or your productivity and they've studied why is this what is is it one gene is it not and they've basically like there's four kind of like protein changes that they've noticed you know variations in the glut receptor g one blah blah blah so there's these four things and then they've done some tests in mice and others where they do like knockout so they'll they'll knock out one of the genes and they'll they'll see if it you know makes the the mouse sleep less or sleep more and they and can you do that so to a like when you say knockout out does that mean like you're a living being or when they reproduce a living being you that's how the body works you could just like i i i i said that with so much confidence for somebody who has no idea but i think that you could do that i'm a bio you could check that yeah that that's a fact jack but i don't know if you could i know if this done at the embryo or in the living thing but the point is they've tested this in mouse models mouse models don't know always is apply to human models so there's some question there but the the researchers were points out actually you know usually when mouse model when when things that work in mice don't work in humans it's because they tried it and it worked for the first time in mice and then it it takes a long time to even try it in humans and maybe it won't work is like in this case we're observing it actually in humans and that we went back to mice and tried to recreate that those genetic mutations with those genetic genetic changes and so this is really exciting so what he's talking about is like in the same way that we found drugs like oz which could modify your appetite it could change your your need for food in a way that had all these downstream health benefit right you change your need for food you reduce your need for food now you eat less obesity goes down they've seen that it you know helps with things like addiction to alcohol there's like all these other like things that people are noticing with these that's the oz olympic case this guy saying you could do the same with sleep like if this guy isaac is he the researcher or is he just blogging on this he's a researcher who is blogging about this wow got it and he's basically saying that like potentially we could create something that does the same thing that how oz reduce your need for food that we could reduce your need for sleep in and make you mirror these people who have this already where they don't suffer the consequences of less sleep and he's like you know you do the math and you're like if you're saving three or four hours a night of sleep you basically it's like the world's best longevity trade so what most people trying to do with longevity is like oh if i'm living till eighty can i lived till ninety if i'm living ninety can i live to a hundred hundred hundred ten and they're trying to push off the like that last marginal decade of tour health where you can't walk as much you can't see as well you know if you're in pain and all that stuff you're trying to push that back as far as you can this would make you so that you actually just live better like the days where you're healthy you have more days you're awake for more of the time and it's the equivalent of an extra ten years but you get the ten years not at the end you get it sort of all along the way while you're in your best health of your life and that would be the promise of this and so how exciting is that i feel like the it's possible that somebody gonna make an oz for sleep and it's gonna allow us to instead of needing eight hours i can sleep for five and feel just as good as i would on it he says it this is like adding ten more years to your life in eighty year lifespan eight hours a days of sleep compared to eighty year eighty years with four hours of sleep that's ten years this is amazing and on top of that by the way there's people who said to suffer from insomnia and narcolepsy and like there's all these actual like sleep apnea there's all these things that affect people sleep maybe you could alleviate those along the way right like if you know there's there's thousands of americans who have those problems could you also improve those okay first of all this is amazing this is a great fight i'm reading his blog his writing is really great it doesn't write like this is why i shocked that he's the researcher because he's i think like there's like a quote goes this is crazy like but he they don't they don't normally say things like that yeah they don't have personalities usually this is profound implications by the way he's twenty two years old he's a phd student at mit exploring brain simulations as alternative path to beneficial ai and in the past he skipped out of high school in rural austria to graduate early in his gap year he created a one million dollar profit and ran the most viral conference of the year that had sam alt and others come he's self taught mandarin last year and did his undergrad at berkeley in two years guys a winner doing well and he owns isaac dot net you'd like great down my name yeah isaac with a k this guy's great man what what i was gonna say was is this i've never and i've i've heard of you know that that jean a little bit that you're discussing but it's just funny that there's just some kid with a a twenty two year old with a personal blog and this is the first time that i've ever heard about this is this that's what i'm saying is fascinating but if he if he's just talking about his blog is this like something that actually has like why is there not more press or or press releases on this topic be that is it actually literally now we just broke it dude this was the tipping point you're gonna see other people working on this you're gonna see people talking about this there's gonna be misinformation everywhere it's gonna be great the story is awesome just because i like isaac and also i would like to do i would like to not sleep would you rather be skinny like oz zen pic and not in eat less or be like or whatever you i could sleep only five hours instead of eight i'm gonna give a shit i would be the fat man on earth to do that i was joking for like that is that is a way better superpower to need less sleep to get back three hours of time every day that's debatable i think that people will always prefer to be skinny over sleep leslie people are dumb that's so dumb if they if they prefer to be sued like have an extra three hours of life every day if the average twenty five old if you're like look hot or live to ninety versus eighty they're gonna choose hot over sleep any day the week well this is why we don't ask twenty five year olds questions the the the the brain is not fully formed yet this is a great sign his blog according to similar web just shot up to a hundred and twenty five thousand visitors in october what did he like before it was published this in november so that's kinda cool the so ben found this and he sent it to our friends our friend invested in a company that made a gl one drug and like sold for billions of dollars and so he sent this to him because he's like oh you like you did that early oz olympic thing before oz was like a known thing like seven years before he invested in this company that was gonna work on on that and it paid off in a big way so he sent it to him and that guy was like i don't know how you found this this is the best thing i've read all year like i'm so excited about what you just sent me and it was such a great example of ben being ben where ben has on one side a really curated feed where he'll find interesting things like this and he'll be fought he doesn't follow many people but he'll be following a guy like the isaac guy and then he knows who to route the information to and it's he's like a he's like fedex like he doesn't touch the package like when i when i get this i immediately start doing research i write notes i go talk about it i'm not passing it to somebody smarter ben's like he he's like a fedex guy the package comes off the conveyor belt he grabs the box toss in the truck drives it to the address drops it off and doesn't ask any few questions all what's inside he just knows that's useful for you i think this is useful for you and he just does that all day i had him like add me to all these group chats like he he was always texting people but i said y just add me i just wanna be a part of these so now i'm in probably like sixty group chats where it's me ben in a mutual like acquaintance or friend and he's just doing this all day just routing packets to each to different people about yeah i think you're into this kind of thing the that that's ridiculous how is he gonna monetize it can he ever monetize this yeah dude we monetize this phenomenally this is the secret of ben he just tries to be useful and then he'll be like hey yeah remember that guy like you met a year ago who you then didn't talk to ever again i'm like yeah i think so i think remember like was cool he's like yeah i've been texting him you know we text daily and he's got this new thing and he's taking off and like he wants us to invest he's not letting anyone else in and then we invest in is is incredible how this karma just comes back tenfold for ben and he never asks for anything he never asks it's amazing he text me like a fair bit like just like solve this thing you might like it like you know i so i'm the recipient of some of these things and i i hate texting like i hate like being at my computer and like constantly having to go back and forth with ten different people which is how a lot of people's computers look right now where you're like it's between slack and messages you're just like going back and forth with fifteen or twenty people at all times and you're like what did i do all day today i just like chatted i just sit at it it tastes and so i don't like doing it do you fall into that trap like throughout the day we you're like dude i just like texted people all day yeah i like slack because i like my projects that i'm working going but i don't text much i'm a very bad text and if anyone's out there who's texting me i really apologize i i probably have not texted you back so i'm i'm prolific bad at it ben is prolific great at it and that combination has really helped the company just really helped and now people don't did bypass me altogether they go to him and it hurts my feeling sometimes i'm like wait i thought i was friends with this person but now i understand why because he's just a better person he's a better texture in fact teach you he he was like i need to make a shirt called i reply he because because that's my thing dude i reply as so i could say it's pretty easy and i was like you should write like the modern day how to win friends and influence people because that's what he does he wins friends and influences people with the most basic the most basic of things and i was like you you couldn't sell a like the thing you do creates like tons of value like tens of millions of dollars of value for us you couldn't even teach people this because you you would say what you do out loud and they'd be like that was it i showed up for the seminar for that that's basic it's basic as hell and but that's what he does and it works that's insane i think it's funny i you by the by the way google isaac freeman very good looking young stylish black dude these guy's got it all those guy's got it all this guy's if he just becomes an astronaut he's basically the modern day james fine oh man i got like cool glasses and a jawline line fuck yeah game him over you said you had a bunch of exciting things you wanna do it the way you know we don't judge a book by its cover so like you know looks looks do matter let's be clear we try not to judge people by their looks first but once we take a look at what you do we then go take a look at how you look and it either is like a plus a hundred or it's a minus hundred it's a huge multiplier on my opinion of you and how much i'm gonna remember you afterwards i will never forget this guy yeah like if he were do looking i'd be like yeah makes sense racks out and then i see what he looks like and i'm like oh right it's tough to be like looking at but by the way most people when they have an avatar as they're twitter profile it's because they're goofy if you're looking in the avatar is yeah better looking than i'm making me question everything like there's the reason i have a cartoon profile picture alright look at me if you're on youtube look at me this is why i have a cartoon profile picture okay that's the that's the rule it's like a when someone quotes your revenue they would have said profit if they had it right if somebody talks about users they would have quoted revenue if they had it normally if somebody got the looks they're gonna put their face as the profile picture this guy def defines all all convention i asked someone what the revenue was recently and they were like eight figures if you include the dot zero zero yeah i know it's like it's like that's pretty funny it was was that was pretty good you wanna do another thing yeah alright i got some cool stuff oh you gotta do this market whale okay yeah this alright so this is the billy of the week cue the music million dollars isn't cool you know what's it's cool a billion dollars so you've heard the story i think but can i just explain a little bit of the detail here amazing i read i read about it a little bit do do we even know who this person is yeah so the election was happening what ten days ago or so and the big news was sort i guess like there's a battle going on there's republicans versus democrats gray the trump and kamala looked gray they were supposed to be dead but there was there was an under card to the paper view and so who was the under card okay trump and kamala or the main event then i think the under card a lot of it was like mainstream media versus social media right you had like twitter and blogs versus msnbc and whatever and they were they were giving you different narratives right and so you know joe trump and vance go on joe rogan kamala goes on saturday not live and you know the view or sixty minutes like you know these like traditional media so that was one battle that was going on by the way who would have thought like you seen like theo von swing being like a needle mover insane right i was saying this so i think that going on the avant needs to be part of the national standard for an election like i need to know if my president gonna be a good hang or not and i think theo is the the one who could save us there yeah that was insane so under that then you have like the billionaire backers you got elon on one side you got more cuban on the other it's like they're going around they're promoting they're using their money and their voice to to do what was the other battles one of the other battles was polls versus crypto prediction markets so the polls were telling a story at the time pre election the polls were saying and razor thin margin toss up these swing states too close to call it's a fifty fifty election right now like we don't we it's is too hard to tell who's gonna win and the prediction markets which were people betting money we're saying something different they were saying sixty five thirty five trump gonna win and they're different things right a poll is you know you go out and ask people who are you're gonna vote for a prediction market is who's gonna get the most votes so they do tell different things but the reality is still the same which is that if the polls were accurate that it was a fifty fifty toss up it's gonna be a razor thin margin then the betting market shouldn't have such a big sprint there shouldn't be a a big favorite versus a a a a a big under underdog and what was the poly market spread i think it was like seventy five twenty five no it was little less about it was about sixty three trump but then it got to sixty five and then like as the election started when the news was saying you know we're still it's still too early the the odds were just jet in trump's direction they they were they they knew earlier than than the the the exit polls or the the news was willing to report about how much of a landslide this was gonna be trump which it was okay so before it happened there was a question of like is the prediction market actually predictive and there was some legitimate skepticism so the pros mean was the betting market versus the pole market the betting it's just like even just a alone should we be should we care what poly market says and on one body market being the platform where you could get to betting markets exactly and so you the plus side would be to say well these are people betting their own money so skin in the game and so if you see a lot more action coming and on one side that means the sort of the wisdom of the crowds and the actual free market believes the odds are are this and that might be better than just the polls where people say they're just saying what they're gonna vote for and it's a small sample but who knows maybe they're lying maybe it's just too small of a sample to know maybe it's not indicative of there's no skin in the game there so on one hand you said skin in the on the other hand you would say poly market never heard of it banned in the us so all the betting action was from international so through over three billion dollars is bet on the election none of this was americans because you can't use poly market in america then it's also crypto holders because poly market is a crypto betting thing so you're like maybe there's a bias crypto holders or more libertarian maybe they're gonna go more more right right right leaning and so it's what and pro crypto yes so it's was like maybe they're voting on what they wished for and not what it actually is okay so there were some some question marks then there was one more than the the news came out and said you know we can't trust poly market because it's manipulated manipulated how it's manipulated because a couple of whales are betting heavily on trump and that's swinging the odds so it's actually there's not what the the the crowds think it's really a couple of whales that are influencing this and they saw and you you can see on poly market the like can i like oh someone just put this million dollar bed i can go on poly market right now and look at the top ten better and what they are bet on how much volume they bet this year and how much their p and l is are they up or down so t four i think is the biggest one on the platform and he has made a profit of twenty two million dollars this year is so that's that was one that's one user but you can go user by user and you can see this guy just betting on everything or these guy's one huge bed or whatever right so you can go look at anybody any any better p l on on poly market so what they found was they were like hey there's a couple of bets here that were in the tens of millions on trump and actually it all came from the same guy and what they were thinking was that there's four big accounts that bet twenty eight million and actually it turns out now after the fact the guy came out and said it he had eleven accounts and he he bet forty something million and he forty fifty million and he'd made about eighty million dollars of profit actually sorry i don't know the is that bed amounts but i know he made about he made eighty million dollars profit in the end a french guy i think a french guy so they're were it was this french whale and the story behind it's pretty interesting because this guy was a traitor he's like i can he's in finance he lived in the us at one point but basically he's like he's like i'm trying to rename remain anonymous i'm trying to the way how would on earth with a journalist finest this person that seems really hard that's a great scoop so on poly market you could see the bets so you can go see wow there's is huge bet then you go look at the account you try to figure out whose wallet is this and because crypto is there's a public ledger you can actually trace back and try to find it and there's a company called chain analysis do you know chain analysis i've heard of it it's just like as a headline there basically the the government goes to chain analysis and says we need to know who owns this wallet and they can go and do the forensic analysis of every transaction that wallet done and tries to figure out the root wallet and who owns that wallet and so that's and and this like a ten billion dollar company channel we have to do a breakdown of this company this sounds fun yeah they're they're a fascinating company and so they came out and they did this analysis and there's like this web of the accounts and like so tickets this is like all the best stuff like crime and crypto stories are the best stories and so like working at this probably to be super exciting so so i know but you know what i mean totally so they come out and they say alright well dude how did you know why did you make such a massive bet on trump and this is where the story gets really interesting he says he he's like i didn't trust the polls but i trust polling what do you mean he goes i commissioned my own polls there's a french guy who commissioned polls in america to inform his own bet and what he did was he paid a polling company and he said i want you to go and i want you to ask them but don't ask them who they vote who they're are gonna vote for because that's what paul's often asked that is what what traditional polls are you likely to vote if you're gonna vote who who you likely gonna vote for are you certain of that you know whatever so there anything that's gonna change your mind which you i think they also ask who do i think they ask it in a weird way as well i think they also ask who do you think your friend is gonna vote for exactly what this guy did oh so this guy did was called the neighbor method and what he says is he says don't ask them who they're gonna vote for i don't wanna the people are indirect people don't wanna reveal their own preferences but if you ask them a specific question which is who do you expect your neighbor to vote for they will indirectly reveal their own preferences and what they believe is gonna happen and he believed that the neighbor method is a more predictive method and when he did this he commissioned this poll paid a pulse paid a major us polls to go do these polls for him just like you know the dnc and the rn and c they'll pay polls to go run their independent polls that are they're not reporting to the public and he wanted him to measure this neighbor effect and what he found was that the results were quote mind blowing to the favor of trump it showed a trump landslide and so he thought now this is mis price the media is telling you that this is fifty fifty razor thin but actually my polling is showing that actually there's gonna be a a major landslide slide for trump it's overwhelmingly in favor of trump so now the bet is mis price so he places this huge bet on trump and it turns out he's correct and his final quote was you know public opinion would have been better prepared if the latest polls had measured using the neighbor effect and he specifically didn't just bet on the overall victory he bet on specific swing states where he thought this people think this state is closer than it's actually gonna be it's gonna be more in favor trump using this neighbor method which is just insane and of course the man market this guy had nailed it like just two words bon jaw like yeah yeah fucking aid first of all what i respect about this is everything go i don't respect everything about it i don't love i don't love gambling like this but people who have conviction on something like they do their own analysis and they're like no this is the answer even though all the quote smart people or everyone's the the establishment is saying this but i i did my own research and then that he did the big part which is he bet thirty million dollars or whatever of his own money i think that is like those types of people fa me because that takes so much conviction yeah exactly this is i mean the guts that it the the the brains and the guts right the and that that's how i think the theme of the year is like you see someone like elon who basically swings the election who catches a rocket out of you know catches a rocket with some chopsticks you know is working on self driving cars helps c profound open ai which is changing the world the guy just you know like firing on all cylinders and it's like why what is it what is different about this guy and it's the combination of the brain and the balls right like there are other people as smart elon musk there are other people who have you know the risk taking you know guts elon musk but the combination is rare and then you add on top of that the willingness to you know absolutely work to the bone as well right and then you add on top of that like sacrifice your own life yeah you so he's you know top point one percent in like five things and then it's like oh if you just multiply point one percent times you know five times over and over again you end up with like one and ten billion which is like oh that's actually the ratio we do have one elon out of the entire human population i thought it i was impressive i was like just a timberlake you can sing dance and act and you're funny like you know what i mean it's super bad eli just really stepped it up it's be great cool is poly market gonna sustain after this of course not right okay so i've been a big poly market it i was using poly market before they banned it like you know way back in the day also a little bit dji yeah but i think a lot of people are okay i how much money have you and you've first by the way you called this gambling i don't believe that this is gambling betting spot recognition well like for example you won't stop do you believe that you're gambling gambling when you when you buy a stock i guess what do what are you doing when you buy a stock right like yeah you are i guess i guess you would have to say that there's it's not as binary but there's levels or like there's it's it's a scale so but yeah you are just like if you buy car q and i it exists on a spectrum yes so so like you know the the with the stock the chart the you know the the old fashioned way of looking at it is i'm not i'm not gambling i'm buying a piece of ownership in a company that produces goods and for a like yeah alright cool nobody really in practice treats it like that meaning you're not sitting there like you you know you're you're not sitting there waiting for dividends you're not you're not trying to you know own this piece of this company because you think it's gonna you know exit at a later date when it's a public stock already right like you're basically saying i believe that you know the future earnings of this company are gonna be x and that that's why owning this is good because the the share price is gonna go up because their earnings are gonna go up and they're maybe gonna go up at a faster rate than the current price of the earning current price in the stock indicates that's what you you're supposed to buy right you're supposed to buy a buy a stock that you think is gonna you know appreciate over time i think that poly market has the ability to do that in a bunch of interesting ways so first there are the other speculation slash betting gambling type of use cases so speculating on prices of things speculating on sports game you know sports outcomes of games right like sports betting is obviously a huge deal so there's those use cases there is an interesting thing so i'm guessing you didn't read metallic blog recently about about this that's an accurate guess vital metallic who's the creator of ethereum i wrote a great blog post metallic one of my favorite entrepreneurs and thinkers on the planet so the blog is called i guess from prediction markets into into finance info finance so he's he he's like you know i have written a lot and i've supported poly market and many of you who know me might be surprised by this because metallic is sort of notoriously like not into the like crypto casino side of of life like he's not price based not trying to get rich as says like his primary motivation it's kinda like a p he's a p and so like it'd be like why why do you care so much about these like prediction markets as people gambling who cares and he's like because i don't see it as that i actually think that there's another category here that's overlooked and it's called infinite info finance information finance and he gives some examples so he's like poly market was two things at once he goes on one hand it's a betting site for the few people that want it bet and gamble but for the rest of us we could look at how the gambler are betting and that would it for them it's served as a news site it was like oh wow trump is doing better trump is improving in the same way that the polls are supposed to be part of the news the british markets were actually better news information so it was information finance he's like that's the first level which was even if you're not participating in the betting trying to trying to make a book it is very useful that other people are doing that because it it's a new it's another source of information because he's like it's not it should not be the only source of information but it should be another one he talks about the elections in venezuela how like you know basically he was watching how people were protesting how it was getting manipulated and blah blah how poly market was actually a very useful source of information for him in understanding what was going on in venezuela from an information informational point of alright that was what then he's like okay what's the other use case he's like so imagine a company so like you know i don't know if you saw like chipotle or starbucks like starbucks just hired the chipotle ceo did you see that yeah and he's the headline is that he's working from home even though he's making everyone else go back to work right yeah and he's like private jet in and out but like this guy's kinda famous for like he trims the menu he cuts costs and he like he basically improves margins that's what this guy's known for and so the amazing thing is that guy he's that he's that guy and and so like he's him when it comes to markets because when he switched teams they paid him a bunch of money and i was like wow what a huge stock package for a ceo's was like a hundred million dollars or whatever whatever the number was but the stock jumped like twenty billion dollars or something like it was like i'm making up numbers here because i i didn't plan to talk about this but like the stock jumped in it disproportionate way it based on just the news that this guy was coming over and so like it was a great trade for them to over pay this guy this talent because it immediately improve the the overall value of the company just the news of him joining and so metallic actually was like just like there's today we're looking at these as prediction markets you could actually use this as a decision market meaning a company or a group of people could set could basically in the way that that guy theo paid for a private poll to get information you could actually set up a prediction market and say a decision market and say should we hire the ceo or what will the dot should be what will the share price be in six months if we hire brian nichols and if the share price expectation is really high it tells you in advance without having to hire him yet what the market reaction is gonna be to making this decision does that make sense so yeah they actually create decision markets and it would be worth basically paying to paying participants to go pick a aside and make a bet in order to gather information that would help you make a better decision about what you're gonna do and so he's like that there's you can actually improve judgment if you were to if you were to make this decision and so i i thought that was pretty interesting and he talks about he goes through you know how this might how info finance might affect all these other things so for example scientific peer review so right now in science you submit a paper and he there's something called the replication crisis which is that famous results that end up being you know going into books and in the news or whatever then they can't be reproduced that study can't be reproduced it's like is it even like the definition of good science is that it's a reproducible experiment but that's not happening and in fact there's not really a big incentive to go reproduce these because the incentive is come out with a new finding you get published you get the glory you get the funding for your lab spending your resources to reproduce it us somebody else's science somebody else's big news it's not really good use of time and he talks about how prediction markets could actually create incentives for people to go and try to reproduce these studies because you could have people betting on if this is reproducible or not and so you you'll you'll be able to profit off of knowing that this this is gonna be reproduced or not so this it's pretty interesting to see how that might be applied in all these other ways i haven't read this other than what you just told me and skimming it here first of all this is like an amazing blog post i need to go read this second if you go to his blog if you go to it like his other posts he's publishes like a in post like every three days how amazing is this that we have access to a genius like this who just like shares his thoughts and and by the way they're like if you read just the headlines and then click the articles they are not just like half ass block these are like in things that he's publishing a shit ton how special of a era art do we have or we can like go and just read his thoughts that you can access to this yeah and the beautiful thing about his stuff which is i think hard to because you know i was thinking about this with podcast podcasts it's amazing now that there's podcast podcasts with you know like when we started this i felt like there was a slight differentiator in the business podcast space because we were not just journalist nor were we like never has been we had like done it we had started many companies or where maybe handled and with you know sold companies we had done real things and so that was kinda like interesting oh what if you actually had a podcast from on from entrepreneurs who were actually like more successful than the average podcast i'd say i think you're looking for the term for us by us we food reboot it yeah but now you you have all in you have now you get to see billionaires you know doing this read redevelopment has a podcast you z is going on podcast there's like who doesn't have a podcast at this point right and i think that's really cool and the same thing happening in sports athlete current athletes past athletes now have sports podcast podcasts whereas before the only sports spots you get was like you know hardcore fan and his in his base mom's basement you know ranting about his team or you know a journalist and now you have this like this third thing and the third thing is like somebody who's actually been there and done that who gives their perspective not say it's always better but like it's interesting that that's now another good one possible to us yeah but the problem with something like let's say all in or or other podcasts like that is like you have to always parse the agenda so it's like wow this guy's really bearish on nuclear and really pro solar that you go look into cha profile and it's like oh wow i just made like enormous bets on solar and like that's just he's talking his book in a way right and it's okay it's okay to talk your book but it's you have to constantly do that like underwriting yourself as a listener to be like are they you know what's the bias here yeah the beautiful thing about metallic is that the guy is such an uber nerd that like you can actually take him at face value and it's so nice to have somebody you could take at face value and other people might disagree i don't care i take him at face value and i followed this guy for like you know be ears straight now and this guy's done nothing to make me think he's just trying to pump his bags in fact he actively does things against his bags you know not pumping a theory or talking about what where it lacks or what's slow about it and you know under promising what it's gonna be and i think that that is that that's great that we have access this guy who is not trying to take something from us in the process that's a very good speech on this guy i'm i'm gonna like i don't even think you could subscribe to his like i don't there's not even an email form dude his blog like so he publishes on alright so listen october twenty ninth october twenty sixth october twenty third october twentieth he's been writing these posts a lot and those posts that i just said i just put into a word counter one of them was six thousand words now i don't know like i don't know how hope bitcoin dramatic look you just gave me when you said that like i was supposed to like audibly gasp do that so much work i've read a lot of blog posts a six thousand word blog posts would take me forty hours probably right it's so much of work with you when you are this guy and you create a ethereum is it one of the things where like you've created it and you can now walk away or is it like is it like a house and you gotta like maintain it no he's actively working on it like i don't is it like a thing where you're like i mean it's bigger than just him obviously but like yeah he's he's yeah actively dedicated like re roof it every everyone in tomorrow i don't know how these things work like ethereum i don't know like did you it ethereum was like a ten year road roadmap and so he's just it's not even like re roofing it it's like building a hotel one floor at a time and people are staying in the hotel but you told them from the beginning this is a fifty story hotel and i i haven't even built all those other things that we're gonna need in order for this to work like there's no elevators yet i know we're gonna make elevators for now we take stairs so that's like transaction fees and all that the reason i'm asking is how on earth is he writing this much stuff while doing like a full time job because if ethereum doesn't work like that it's not like he's sitting there coding all day or managing people like it's not a company it's like a non nonprofit foundation open source project of which he's like a steward and champion but he's not like he doesn't have like twenty five direct reports you know what i mean he have a girlfriend or wife yet i'm not sure i've seen a bunch of pictures but it's so hard with him to tell what's a meme and what's like reality because he's like so meme about like when bitcoin when if they're in price goes down and then they post him pictures of him they're like goddamn it it's because he has a girlfriend by the way is like is his girlfriend just gonna be like which way is it gonna go so it's november thirteenth for recording this exactly one month ago i came on this podcast and i said sam can i give you my one minute case for bitcoin and you literally rolls your eyes and audibly grown at me and said haven't she already done that like you are you're talking about why like bitcoin again i just wanna say the price is up forty seven percent since i did that ramp alright well are are you like that are you like dude are you the french guide did you you had you were were you smart or just or were you smart and balls z or just go back and listen to it it's in the absence since called did the critter bitcoin get un masse at the thirty minute mark thirty minutes when not debating if you said that i'm saying did you listen to the case and say and did i get lucky or was i mark did i have all reason i'm asking what i'm asking is did you make the bet doug oh of course what do you i mean what what what i'm saying is did you just say it was gonna be good or did you actually invest your own money and dude on poly market in the game does and does gambling on poly market mean you have bitcoin well it's like poly market versus a poll a poll is just so what you're gonna do poly market is putting your money up saying what what you think is gonna actually happen i put my money up and thought what it said what i thought was gonna happen yeah i mean it's had a hell of a run almost as good as pal or everything's fucking crazy right now though like everything when i this all too crazy everything's too crazy like it it wouldn't be i don't know anything about anything but it seems like it'd be a good time to make the opposite prediction so yeah you were right it's just like how long are you gonna be right for right now everything is just like insane yeah yeah and of course these are like you know one month fluctuations are or nothing but i i guess the the thing i the reason i thought it was bullish was because it was the same reason that the thing is pumping right now because there was a whole bunch of like big things like for example that the government was gonna be pro pro bitcoin which was always the biggest risk of bitcoin was like oh even if it's even if you're right about that technology being better the government will never allow this and i was like to the guy i was just gonna become president is saying not only will he allow it he's bought and sold by the crypto donors now and both both sides are and like don't know if you saw the congress and like whatever house representative a senate all that shit there's like there's like a hundred and forty pro crypto people now like in in active government which is like you know that number was was zero know seven years ago and i just felt like these things were not priced in properly now they're talking about a bitcoin strategic reserve for the country itself is like there these things once you'd go in it's it's almost impossible to unwind these things and i just thought that when a top two or three risk gets der risked that should change your your underwriting on the price and i thought that that wasn't happening for some reason the price was flat and people weren't paying attention to that one fact what a world so in summary i was right thank you you were you were right you you absolutely were right everything is insane at the moment i hope you're prediction will be true for many many many more months and many more years but it's definitely making me nervous at the moment everything is insane is that where we end that's where we in has it been a fantastic podcast to martha stewart to bitcoin to the poly market whale that's called thank you for your service hot hot heat the hot hot heat was served you're welcome alright that's it that's the odd i feel like got rude wear i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking back