this episode is brought to you by Super Side. There are always on design company that delivers great design at scale fast, affordably and within 24 hours, go to super side dot com slash m f m m f m as in my 1st 1,000,000 So super side dot com slash am FM to check him out. How are you?

I'm great. Um, I upgraded my internet. Hopefully it looks better called Comcast now. Paid 60 bucks a month and just call them. And with the click of a button, I paid them more money and my internet was supposed to improve. We'll see

if it happens. Like

mad. Great, great business to be in.

I'm excited to talk to you. Feel like it's been a little while. I got a bunch of ran them topics to talk about. How about you? Do you have anything that was

top of mind for you? Yeah, Well, I know about all this stuff that you are a lot of the stuff that you have been here like I know it to the point. I wasn't sure if I wrote it or you wrote

it. That's the best. Okay, great. Okay. So I'm gonna start with. Let's pick one. That's that's interesting. Okay, so how about how about we start with this one? So somebody was Somebody tweeted this and I saw it, and I was like, This is pretty smart. So a lot of people right now are talking about Corona virus. How does the world gonna change? And lots of speculation. I think everybody sort of agrees.

Okay. Handshakes. You know, Mike, about the window for a bit. Live sports. It was gonna be a little tough. So there's there's some things that we know we're going to change. And there's some things that you can't really predict their sort of second order effects. And so somebody reached out and they have put together this. They had, like, a group of people had put together this thing called the second order effects of cocoa of it. I thought it was great. I'm gonna find the pdf, and I'm gonna link in the description here. I know one of the creators was, um, this guy that I've met one time super super smart guy he created Are you a Harry Potter fan?

No, but I know I mean, I'm not not a fan, but I don't buy the stuff.

Seen the movie? He created the site back in the day called Muggle Net, which

was No. Yeah, I know that guy. He also created Ah. Oh, my God. Popper, but was a viral content,

not OMG pop, but, um, he's

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know about him. Tell

me his name. Trying to find that I can't believe I forgot it. Um, every sport. So

they started sports media. Yeah, Yeah, I know. I know about him. Well, I think his business going

back is the one you're thinking about.

That's right. So he started a chain of viral websites, and they got really popular, but like everything in that era, I that it just crashed.

But if I met this guy once, and I was like, Oh, my God, if I could just bet on this guy's like lifetime earnings, I would bet right away like this guy's. This guy's really,

really sharp. Yeah, he he's kind of like a almost a little genius. E Yeah, I

like when you say you want, because it means, like, kind of hard to talk to,

like he's a little GDC. But when I read about him. Like, Why are you doing these viral sites like you do anything?

Yeah, I bet he will. I bet he's gonna be one of those people that transitions from like, Yeah, I first created these, You know, the Harry Potter fan site that became number one. Then I created this viral Twitter account of the viral mean website. So and then I, like, solve climate change like that's what this guy's career should look like. It all goes well.

He's cool. So anyway,

what? Him in a group of people created this thing that was, like, second order effects. They were basically like, OK, you know, for example, what the second order effects everyone knows the first order effective Corona virus, you know, is wild. First order effect. You shelter in place looking. But the second order effect of that is like, are people gonna have more babies? Are divorce is going to go up because you're at home eyes grocery delivery gonna take off because of that. And there's,

like, 1/3 order effect. Okay, Grocery delivery takes off. They need against cards hiring hundreds of thousands of delivery people. Okay. What happens when all those people go to that job now they need health care system for a gig worker becomes more important. So there's, like, these knock on effects. And so for a business person you want to think about, OK, oftentimes the biggest impact to the biggest opportunities are in the second and third order effects. Because you can start doing work now and then. As this plays out those things, those markets are growing rapidly,

but you can kind of predict them. So a classic example of this was you probably know this better than I do. There's some story like the highway system was built for something like it was built for. I forget what it was like military purposes or something like that. Um, but the second order effect was that, like Walmart, basically, it was like, Oh, people are gonna exit and want to get, you know, buy stuff, get little, get food, get drinks a lot.

So the whole retards got faster. Cars get faster. The retail system takes off because now there's a highway interconnect system, blah blah, blah. So there's a second order effects. So one of them that I just thought was kind of interesting was this idea of drive through on drivin. So now that movie theaters are like, sort of going bankrupt because all their chairs are so close to each other that people like people are gonna go back to the movies. Movies were already kind of struggling, and this might be the knockout blow. And so people are talking about drive in theaters. Is that gonna be a thing? I could see it. I could see, you know,

sort of rising on top of that you have drive through. So how do you sort of minimized contact? Well, drive through caffeine. So there's some coffee shops that are like the photos I saw on Twitter. You know, the line is out the door. I've never seen a line this long except for Chick fil A. And so, like, what's this four? And it's basically just drive through caffeine. And so I'm pretty bullish on this. If somebody was right now, they had, like,

nine franchises that they were doing well and there were a drive through coffee concept. I would, you know, be very, very bullish on this thing. Expanding and growing from 9 to 200 locations over the next two years because I think the need for this is gonna go up. What do you think about that?

Okay, So what do I think? First of all, are people gonna change your behavior forever? Let's let's talk about that. Like our is shaking hands. Gotta go away. Um, certainly. Now, like, I don't want to do a lot of that stuff, but is that gonna change your behavior forever? I don't know. Um, what's the what's in it now? Like,

what can we compare this to, like World War Two? I mean, September 11th. Like when I see when I hear Low Plains, I get scared.

So, like, I don't know, TSA clearance. Right. So, like, you used to be able to just walk into an airport, take a ticket that didn't even have your name on it and board any plane, and it took you five minutes to get from the check in desk tiu the gate, and now it's like, you know, security buffer in an hour, you have to have your i d. It's gotta have your name on it. If your name sounds a little sketch, hope you're come to the special room and get checked. The world changed forever from that,

sure, but we're also talking. So September 11th was definitely, like a lot of, like force change, like TSA. But then what we're discussing is, like, unforced change. Like when you and I see each other. Are we gonna hug? Are we gonna high five? Are we gonna get now? Like you don't mean it was like, Yeah, like, how far away are we gonna say?

So I I would imagine that some of these consumer behaviors are a little bit more analogous. Analogous to that? Um I don't know, ma'am. Um, will we change? I think so. I think that at least for three

years, something is gonna change. The question is, what's gonna change and how long is it gonna change? Or is it gonna be sort of a temporary precaution that goes away

well, so look you. How long did you live in China? For? Two years. Maybe not long enough. Maybe. Maybe long enough to when? When they went through. They've had, uh, not I don't know if I've had pandemics, but they've had ah, variety of outbreaks of things like this has is

their behavior. Do you like the masks is a great example. So, like mask quite common in Asia to be something you just generally wear out and nobody even bats I or seasonally like when it's flu season. Yeah. Everyone mask up. I'm not trying to get the flu and, you know, you don't see that here, but will you? Maybe you will. I got I would I would expect.

Do they go to crowded movie theaters?

They dio Yeah, just about everywhere in China. You can't avoid a crowd, but you have, like, a 1,000,000,000 people in a small city says it's very There's crowds everywhere in China, but people do behave quite differently than they do here. Gloves, gloves are very short common there that people here don't wear gloves just on the day to day life.

Right? So, yes, I do agree. I think things going to change. I think specifically big cities, they're gonna I mean, I'm biased because it's directly impacts me. I think cities are going. Our cities are different, right? I do think that work is gonna be different. We were getting rid of our office in San Francisco.

Exactly. So you know, there's all these sort of second order third order effects. Example of a second order effect of the TSX. So first order effect is TSA Second order effect is people selling toothpaste in three ounce bottles because that's what you need now to get through the right that became a market. Where before, Who wants this tiny little bottle? And so you know from I'm just trying to keep it from a business perspective because, you know, from a medical, scientific and cultural perspective, you don't listen to me was another people. But from a business perspective, I think that there are it is worth, you know, taking a pen, go into a whiteboard and starting to map out.

Okay, if this then that and then if that, then what? And the what is where your business opportunity lies. And if you're looking for that, it's just a way to guess and check, even if you're not gonna go do those things, the only way to get your got to be good is to predict a bunch of times and be wrong or right on. We go revisit those, and so I often do this moral

predictable. So let's talk about some talk about some of these predictions here, I pulled it up. So some of these predictions here are eso Jim's air going to go away are significantly go away and which means innovation in home exercise. Obviously, that's like a doc, That's what were you thinking? That's like, Yeah, that's I mean, that's not even a question, right?

Well, I don't think Jim's gonna go away necessarily, but yeah, people are going to whatever the home exercise market was versus gyms, it's gonna eat more share.

Are you exercising?

Yeah, but it's, you know, actually, at home as much as they do at the gym, which is like a week on both

fronts. Um, heavy about food. That's interesting. Funerals? I don't know. Um, cities will become less popular. That's one of his predictions. Suburbs and rural become more popular

like a little girl. We came out today and was like camping and RV ing is gonna go on the rise because people still want to travel, but they're not gonna want to travel in dense areas, staying and hope. Maybe maybe staying in hotels are unclean. They're being

abused. Yeah, I just rented an RV. Eso I'm gonna do a three week cross country trip for my birthday in June s Oh, yeah, I'm I love that. I completely agree. I've never understood that the first place anyway, Americans are kind of interesting whenever they like, want to do a gap year like travel for a honeymoon wherever they always want to go outside the country. I'm like dog like lets you should explore here. It's way easier and we have everything. That's what's interesting about America is that we have every time. I think we're the only country that has every geography, every climate. So anyway, another thing that he talks about his virtual tours and virtual museums. So on trends, we had talked about a company that was crushing it with virtual museums, and we also talked about a company that was doing Ah because they called the VR

thing. I remember the name of it, but I know what

you're talking about. Sandy are, is that wasn't sandbox on? Yeah, I think it's great. Struggling with

yard, you have to go to a physical place where headset that somebody else wore an hour before and you know it is in person and they placed their locations and moles and they're supposed to foot traffic from the malt. So foot traffic is dead. Nobody wants to wear, ah, device that somebody else just war. And, you know, in general this is, like, sort of a fringe behavior anyways. And so I talked, you know, I heard from them that, you know, they had to be really conscious about how they're going to this. I think they did some layoffs and whatnot,

but they you know, they have to figure out how are we going to survive And what is the New World look like? And so, unfortunately, some great ideas and great businesses, you know, some markets got punted back a year or 24 years or whatever it is. And some markets got pulled forward, like is my friend Chris from first base. And they do remote work set up. So you you know, everybody now at home. But this wasn't the case when I started advising him. When I started advising him, I was like, Hey,

I think cos you're gonna be going remote more if you ever about employees. They need a desk and a chair, and they need a webcam and microphone so they can work effectively, remotely. Maybe companies will pay to give them a home deaths. And I was like, I don't know, maybe they'll pay. Maybe they won't. And then boom, this thing happened. And like his waitlist has exploded thousands of companies signing out and he can't handle demand. And now every company has to have ah, person, like, you know,

at the head of HR whatever that is planning, how are we gonna have so many employees remote? And also Hey, this is actually wrote thing actually kind of works. Why are we paying so much for our office? Let's just do this. This is way cheaper. And so, you know, the world has changed for him. His market got accelerated by

four years. Yeah, I That's incredibly fascinating. I, uh, when I think we should do is we should just linked to this. This document is dance. There is no way that weaken for

us, but I think it's cool. I think it's cool that somebody did this and that they just published as a Google doc that anybody can access. I think that's just like a cool way of going about things and also one that I like on here. One more that I like is church. So, like, you know, church is one of the super spreader type of places where everyone congregates. People often hug or shake hands or touch, and it can spread throughout a community rapidly. If you you have churches open. And so how are people going to do this, right? This church Go away? No. Are people gonna go in six feet six feet apart?

Maybe. I don't know. And so I'm of the opinion that church life dreaming for churches is going to be a very big deal. I've been in the life caring for wild. So maybe it's one of those situations where you know, to a hammer, everything is a nail. And for me, everything could be livestreamed. But

I definitely right.

Church is one of those things. That's every Sunday so people can build a habit. And, you know, the experience of a live stream sermon is pretty much just as good as being there. It's not that much worse. In fact, in many ways, more convenient, and you have all the sort of community features, like chat or donations. I mean, that's like what the twitch product is, for example, and I researched. And there's a platform called Church Online now, or something like that church,

online platform, some some horrible name like that. I just looked like a pastor's when you learn programming in his spare time and, like, you know, sat in the pews and coated this thing up like it is so, you know, unbranded it backwards in a way. But he said, they have seven million members or something crazy, and, you know, I guarantee that's not the best thing that's out there. So for me, you know, digital faith is a big thing.

Whether that's sort of like a next door for churches. I don't know what that means, but sounds provocative. I like it. Is it? Is it twitch for churches is you know, what is it? And so I would be if I was If that meant something to me of religion meant something to me, I'd be like, Now is my time. I need to combine technology with community building and religion, and I need to bring these these rule institutions

all my I, uh I'm very to see what happens with all that stuff. Speaking of this, Corona stuff you have on our she that you want to talk about outdoorsy. Um, I would like that as well.

You talked about it, but I don't really know shit about it. I just put it on there because I'm, like, interesting. And I didn't do any research. So

you tell me about it. Okay? Let me, uh The good thing about us doing this remotely is my computers right in front of us. Okay. So outdoorsy. It's a ah, it's a appeared appear market. This is the exact description, Peter Peer marketplace to disrupt the $32 billion recreational vehicle industry. Okay, so they've raised $75 million. Raised a lot of money.

This is what your nose to rent. You're clearly you said you just rented RV.

No, because I think I'm gonna drive from San Francisco in New York and then maybe fly back. I have I have to figure it out. I technically haven't rented. I have a lot of outgoing quote, So I've got people are gonna be sending me back. Quote. So I think for outdoors these kind of Airbnb where you submit it, sometimes you gotta get approved. Um, and so anyway outdoors. He's interesting. If you want to learn about this industry, there's actually what's that guy's name, who is on the TV show called Profit Markets

Markets. Something that market the prophet I've watched like date

episodes. Leona's little You Are No Li Mon and something like that went away. A lot of people don't know this, but Marcus is actually I don't know if he's the founder. I think he, like aggregated a bunch of companies together. So he's the CEO and chairman of Camping World, Good Sam Enterprises, Dander outdoors and the House board shop. Basically, all of this is around RV and camping, and you can actually go and read about this company. Um, and a lot of their information is public, so you can kind of see huge business, many, many hundreds,

millions of dollars in revenue, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars in income. And so what outdoors he's doing is baby is basically kind of screwing up that model, and I love it. I don't know. Do you know what their revenue

is? I don't know outdoors. Whose revenue? I think it's quite high. If I remember correctly, it's over 100 million. Just a quick check, missy. Yeah. Look, I believe 125 million in 2019. Jesus Christ. Okay, but

there's a different between revenue. And is that the revenue or the

gross bookings? That might either. Jeonnam, let's assume for a second gene, because marketplaces love to do that. So let's say, you know, there

you take 10.

Exactly. 32 million. Is there cake Levy?

Yeah. So they're just exploding right now.

Yeah, this is I mean, there's a great business, and, you know, we talked about before. Hey. Marketplaces air. Great. What are the fringe or niche market places? And this is one of them, right? Renting RVs, you know. And now now is the time and said they I think they're going to ride a wave of interest as people sort of crave being outdoors, crave travel, but need to be away from others.

How about hit camp? Are you familiar with hip camp?

Yeah. They're like the same idea right there, like a turnkey. Glamping.

Is that right? Camping. Camping experience

is camping in the way that I don't do it where I'm like. All right. Do I wanna learn out of camp and let go get a Are you my membership and by, like, hundreds of dollars of stuff and then be, like, wet all night like now, Ammunition that. But this is like, Hey, you know, sleeping this instagram worthy tent is what I remember of it.

Yeah, it can be as easy as that, or it can be as difficult. You could make it as difficult, soft or hard as you want, right? Yeah. So you could just, like, go and rent like a cabin which isn't probably camping, but Or you could just, like, get a plot of, like, an area of land. And, uh,

apparently they're moving as well. So they've raised about $50 million. And what's interesting is if you told me about his head camp about two years ago, I'd be like, This is not interesting, but it is kind of interesting. And there's a I don't know if this is a company, but okay, So, like, I am like, I'm like a habit. I keep referring to this type of stuff, But what I always like to do is I like to look at comparables, and I like to look at public information so Do you know what Ko

is? Never

heard of it. Okay, so K away. I don't know what it stands for, actually, but what it is, is it's a Ah, it's a it's a nonprofit, and they have campgrounds throughout the country. And if you go to, um, like in Colorado, they're all over the place. You'll be on the highway and you'll see in the same place you see signs for food. You'll see a que away sign. And what that means is, if you're a member,

you can number. I think it's like $20 a year super cheap. You can camp there either for free or for five bucks tonight. It's really cheap. And, um, I used Teoh use it all the time when I was traveling. And so, according to ah, some analysts are, I think, the privately owned nonprofit they do about $40 million a year in sales, and they charge, like, five

bucks, right? It's like

dirt, Um, and so if you want to learn about that business, look up K away. That's probably the best Cup comparable. Um, it's a camp we've shown. You've never heard of K Away,

Never like now looks great. Seems like an obvious idea. Fantastic,

but the what's interesting to me. What I love doing is I love looking at these older things, like a away like Boy Scouts. And it's like retro me the demand. And that kind of gives me an idea. And then if you just, like, add add ons and operated in A in a way where you prioritize revenue and profit, then things get super interesting. It's OK. Away is a really cool one toe look at its Yeah, it's an interesting group, and I also think that in terms of our V, I would look at Ah, Marcus, Leona Leo, Mrs Companies, right? And you get a lot of that information is out there.

I love it. I love hearing about businesses that I've never heard of that are successful. I feel like there's a like my brain, I feel like is organized like there's ah ah, set of hangers and every hanger. I could just hang another, like business or business model onto, and then that's just mapped in my brain. And then when I see something new, I'm like, Oh, is this a new hangar or do I just attach this toe one that already exists, and I start to see a pattern of like, Oh, yeah, there's five things that are just like this. And so that's what I see when I love hearing about new things. This is just another thing to hang into

my brain. Have you updated your home at all while you've been at your

house? I had built a home office right before Kobe because I was planning to work remotely anyways, for the month of month of March, which has happened to be, like, covet. Um, so that's been like the only home upgrade. And then shit started breaking. My dishwasher broke, my dryer broke as I'm like, That's not an upgrade. Yeah, that's it. I started going to the pork every single day, and I bought these little like, tiny foldout park chairs,

and I have actually seen several friends buying the same product called Click See. Like you, it's a you know, whatever Park chair, like you got a soccer game, you want to watch and you just want to unfold. But the key is how small and discreet can you make the fold in versus like Oh, fuck, I'm carrying a chair all the way to the part, and I was gonna arrive soon. But I've seen like I've seen three different people I know mentioned this thing and I bought it myself to Before that

I have began spending. So I think I'm saving like I haven't actually Ever since the stock market crash, I have refused to log into my accounts. Everything right? Yeah, I sold

E like they dio good means go long.

So, like, my philosophy was I was like, Man, there's gonna be, like, dead bodies in the streets of New York and that's gonna scare Wall Street and that someone's gonna take a picture of, like, a body in the like a in the like, unopened van with bodies, and it's gonna flip people out and they're gonna, like, say, self so self. And that happened. There was, like,

videos of like these, like ice trucks with, like, bodies in there and nothing happened. And that the day I saw that picture was like, I'm out right, and it took off a week after, and so I'm still sitting on a lot of cash and I've lost a lot of money and I hope I don't hope

this you have been proven

right. That goes down. Yeah. If it goes down and get back in eso I anyway, I haven't logged in. I usually use I use personal capital and I log in all the time to check my finances. I've not logged in, so I don't entirely know what's going on, but I, uh, the other day I went and bought, like, eight or maybe $1000 worth of artwork because I'm like, I haven't bought anything and forever. I'm just gonna by exactly what I want, because I know pretty cheap and I just haven't been buying shit.

Have you been by, like, crazy dude, cause I shop online and now I lost track of, like, time in space. So I'm just buying things. And then there's stuff arriving, and it's like, if you can't go anywhere, the next most interesting thing is like, someone comes at your door and leaves a mystery box at the at the front. You're like, Oh, shit. What I ordered nine days ago, I don't know.

I'm excited to go see what it is like this moment of fun. So I keep giving myself that gift, but yeah, buying a lot of stuff. Also, all the delivery stuff is, like, super expensive. Some like post mating and insta carting. And it's like, you know, $400 for groceries or something crazy. So I don't know. That's just sf thing, or I don't know

what's going on, can we? All right, I want to talk about this Mark Leonard guy who you have. But before we get to that, have a good say way, which is I'm going to get rid of these map. Okay? So little people listening. I have a background. I got maps and which apparently, is like a super basic thing to do. I didn't know that, but I have to. Lewis, it is like basic with a capital B, ST Louis,

Nashville or no ST Louis, New York, San Francisco. Me, my wife are from those areas, and ah, I'm going to switch it up. So I have a wall of people who I I am fired by. Yeah. So let me tell you how I have I have Steve Prefontaine. You know who that is? Heard? There's a movie bottom. That's really great. You want to be a runner to like it, But he was Ah,

he was a runner. Oregon. He was the first person aware Nike. So Bill Bowerman was the coach of Oregon. Track of field. His pupil has his athlete. Was Phil Knight together? They partnered and made shoes together. Steve Prefontaine was probably the first person at war. Um, he was one of and he was definitely the first sponsored athlete. And he was kind of a badass runner where he was like he was, like, kind of like a full clip. So you would say Shit like to give anything less than your best? A sacrifice,

your gift. She said all this inspiration stuff. But he died when he was 2026 he was just kind of rebelled out of cause then I have behind. Anyway, he was drinking and driving and flipped over and crashed his car and suffocated. Okay, so pretty try. Very tragic. But he lived fast, died young, and he was really tragic because I got fourth of the Olympics when he was a favorite, even though he was only 23 anyway, it was a big deal. He's also, like, really good looking,

so it's like, easy to, like. Admire him. Um,

props to you for admitting that That's part of the appeal. All right, great.

Yeah. He's like he's, like, you know, romantic. Kind of that type of thing. Like, you kind of look good. Then I have Eazy E and Dr Dre. They're interesting to me. Because when Eazy E was only 23 24 25 something like that, he created ruthless records, which went on to become a huge business, like hundreds of millions of dollars a year in sales. And he was just like a kid from Compton who knew nothing didn't deserve to be there. Are you know, like on paper,

like, What are you doing here, anyway? They achieved Dr Dre. Fucking change culture in in a variety of ways. Then I have Felix Dennis and Ted Turner touch under started. Ah, CNN. I like him. Felix. Dennis. He started ah, media company. And he was like Richard Branson, but more vulgar Google him. And then I have got three more.

I've got Mike Tyson. I love Mike Tyson. He screwed up so many times in his life. He's done a good job of being ferocious and kind of coming back and then I've got to pack. And then I

think that za amazing Great. Oh Nadya's maybe. All right.

So you have, like, love Nate

the Earth You have, like the intimidators rode you like and say that the majority of your people fight for a living or like should fight,

not intimidators rope. But I'm incredibly fascinated with people who are bold people who on paper should have done nothing and they didn't. There are really good at having bold ideas. But then also, we're having fun along the way. So that's what I like. Like Ted Turner. I think he was a Southerner. He stick out. But he had a bold idea, and he laughed along the way. So I'm always fascinated by that.

I went Teoh Sally's house, our friends silly, and he had this on his walls like Like, who are these people? Why have these pictures? That's not your family. And I was like, because if the 1st 1 is always Hillary Clinton, I was like, Why did I figure Hillary Clinton on your wall? He's like, Oh, thes air people I admire. He had seven photos, and I only knew like three of the people told me the other before in the story, and it was like Hillary. I was like,

whoever you know, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King or something like that was a really cool idea. I was like, You know, I guess that's cool. Like, you know, you walk out your bedroom every day and then go to your office or wherever

you're going. What does he admire about Hillary Clinton? Hillary Clinton?

Suli don't seem to you like Hillary Clinton. I have no idea why. You just think she's also said have, like right? OK, yes, Uh,

I mean, not even just say like that. She's not awesome, but I didn't think that she was wonderful enough. That's exactly what Indian entrepreneur,

So But I was like, I don't want to sit here and hate on Hillary. I don't hate Hillary, but I am so surprised she made it to your wall like that is a very good sense. I definitely disagree with that lead. Yeah,

Yeah, it's just like mediocre. Maybe, Um,

all right, this episode is brought to you by Super side. All right, so here's the deal. I'm incredibly impatient. Horribly, horribly. impatient. And if I get an idea at midnight by 8 a.m. the next day, I want it done, you know? But that's really hard, because if something needs to be designed, where am I gonna find designer at midnight? To try to make this thing could bring it to life. So you know, I don't think I'm alone.

Other startups, even huge companies, need design help fast, and they just don't have the internal resource is or expertise to get it done. So how do you get reliable designed done without dealing with the expensive agencies and lots of freelancers you use Super Side. That's our sponsor for this week. Just go to super side dot com slash m f m and tell them what you want. They have a team of designers. I could get it done fast. You know they are 20 times faster than hiring, you know, hiring a designer and 50% more affordable than a traditional agency. So if you need high quality design done fast, try super side. Lots of fast growing teams that are stretched are using them already. Check him out supersized dot com slash FM. I've used it before I love him. Check it out.

So let's talk about this guy consolation. So I know a bit about them. Sean, put this on. Here is Billy of the week is Mark Leonard. You want Theo in the back

way? Sometimes is this billionaire of the week. So the Billy of the week is Mark Leonard Constellation Software. So I had heard about this from a few people because they do something that, you know, we had Andrew Wilkinson on here and he buys Internet businesses and sort of has this conglomerate of a small Internet business that has collected that are now, you know, let's call it $100 million worth or maybe a little more, a little less. And that's a fantastic success. So this guy, Mark Leonard, did that like he's Andrews Daddy, you know, like he his companies were $31 billion. What they do is they buy software companies and they rolled him up, sort of.

They try to be a perpetual owner, so they're not like they're not private equity where they're doing the leveraged buyout of trying to flip, you know, but it's getting it, flip it or whatever they tried to just own the thing for a long period of time and have the cash flows. And so what I like about this guy, what was cool was this guy's like a Satoshi Nakamoto of boring business is, so he nobody knows shit about this guy. You can't

find a photo of Wait, what's that? Reference is going to get the Bitcoin kind. Yeah, you just don't know a lot about

S o this guy. You can't find photos of them. He doesn't do public appearances. He doesn't really talk. He writes his annual letter on do you know? But so I was reading, like, kind of the definitive thing about him because I wanted to learn. And it's like all we know is this guy's born in 1956. Maybe in South Africa, maybe in England. I was like, What the fuck? We don't even know whether we're this guy's from and, you know, he wrote on his bio. He's like there was a VC.

But before that, he said I was a banker evaluator, a mason and grave digger, a dog handler on bouncer, a sapper and wind energy researcher. I particularly enjoyed the bouncing button early retirement was necessary. So I love it that I don't know anything about this guy. But we game on, I think, half those air like a joke. But here's their business. So they buy in the early on that by they bought businesses that were, you know, 2 to $4 million acquisition targets, very small acquisitions,

which is which is on paper, you would say That's asked. Nine. My

earliest chump change. Okay, you know, small ball. But small balls turned into sort of big league returns. And so, you know, this data is out of date now, because when the article I was reading was like, Hey, this guy has, you know, done really well they did last year. They had 1.2 billion in sales, 20% margins. They're doing 10 to 20 acquisitions a year, and at that time, the market campus five billion. I looked at it while I was reading the article. It's now 31 billion, and so if you just invested guys,

they have a $31 billion valuation of only 1.2, and

that was the old one when they were at five billion Market cap. Now, there are 31 billion mark. So you know, if the ratio sort of held, held the same and be whenever 67 billion in sales, which because of what it is now. But, um, I love that this guy's mysterious

I love dude. It's only it's only three billion. Their sales were only $3 billion. A lot of money, but that's not just got

a good little I wonder. I wonder why it's on such a run up because you could see the stock charges like it's going up like crazy. Then they can use that money for acquisitions. And this guy, he writes these annual letters that are actually pretty interesting. So, like, if you're like me, you I like to read basis his annual letter. I like to read Warren Buffett's annual letters. This guy's a new one. I'm adding to the sort of arsenal of annual letters, and he has lots of really interesting sort of views on business and then of which are like, totally groundbreaking. But he does something that I think most people failed to do, which is the same thing Warren Buffett does, which will take a very simple principle that everybody would nod their head and agree with and then,

like, actually stick to it and do it for, like, 40 years on days like a winning formula. Most people you know, not their head, and then go do some other shit and they get their lack of discipline and lack of focus. And so I also like, you know, trying to read a little bit more about the company. And they have sort of, ah, focus on what they call vertical software so they'll go for like within one vertical are they looked at this? And, hey, some companies are horizontal,

like a slack every company can use lack as a messaging service, and slack will be a multibillion dollar company. But what about all these vertical things that are like better software, specifically, Taylor's offer for You know what? If you're a golf club, you need to manage bookings, tee times, memberships and whatever else every golf club you will pretty much use whatever the best software is, and they'll pay for it everybody every month, reliably in. They'll never shown. So they'll buy like that clubhouse software the by Healthcare's offer, public transits offer law software, and that's been. Their focus has changed over time. But when I was reading about him, they try to consolidate vertical market software, which I thought was a pretty interesting approach. What do you think?

This guy? I love it. I'm reading about what you have here. So I love doing these things and I love that what he's doing, and I actually I'm gonna bring up a different point. I don't want to dress it. Yeah, but I want o after opinion of it in a second, but more so. What I'm interested in is tonight I don't wanna refer to like things I treated. That's on super lame. But I was tweeting earlier about how I hired an operator. So basically, Adam Ryan works at the company, and he kind of handles a lot of the operational stuff. And I work sometimes down in the weeds, sometimes high above revisions up, and it's hard finding someone who's competent to run a business. And so, if this if this guy if he might have just salmon cos he has, it could be like 200

right? So I don't know if their model one with everything, keep the existing management or if they replace them. I'm not 100% sure what they do. I'm sure there's on some makes and blend their, um One thing I saw that was interesting was S O they like Berkshire Hathaway. The execs of the companies do not get share options as their compensation, which basically, you know, incentivizes you just boost the share prices as you as much as you can, which is often somewhat short term. So instead they take, you know, 75% of their after tax bonus, and they could buy shares on the open market. And then those shares are held in escrow for four years. So if the shares if the stock is overvalued because they're sort of temporarily pumping enthusiasm,

energy or doing buybacks or whatever, they're buying overvalued stock. And so I don't know, this is perfect, cause maybe the other thing happens where they actually, you know, when they're about to buy, they sort of bad news dips the state share price temporarily, they could buy it on the discounts. I'm not sure if any incentive system is perfect, but I thought it was interesting that they thought through How should we compensate everybody and and not sort of followed the traditional playbook. So I want to dig in Mawr. I've only just scratched the surface of this guy. There's a lot to learn here. But I wanted to bring it up because I think it's very interesting, and I like that he's, ah, sort of mysterious character. I think that

adds to it. So here's an interesting take away and And this what I'm about to say actually kind of changed my business game and I'm gonna name drop here. But when Tim Ferriss invested in us, he told me he goes. One thing that I've learned from, I don't know who he learned it from, but he goes. There's a saying that I like to use. Call them. Did he? I think he called it in verse incentives or basically the ideas. If you when you incentivize employees to do something, you need to actually have a non opposite incentive. That mixture is bound. So, for example, if you're gonna tell your sales team you have a quota of this number and it's huge.

You also have to have an incentive kind of like revenue collection, which means you only go after quality people who can pay bills or from retention, which is you only get paid if you sell people, and you're you treat them well and contact basically. And so, yeah, a counter incentives. I think that's what they call the, um And that actually changed the game for me a lot. Because what I've noticed is with people, if you give driven people incentives, the right type of person will fail to get that done. And you want those impede you? You want those people? But you actually really need, like,

that second incentive in order to make sure that its quality and quantity Um and so I love this incentive. Um, but what I want to know is, how on earth did they recruit all these people who are talented enough to run a business? I've hired CEOs for ah, a handful of small businesses that I've had most all except for one or two have been horrible. Um, and which may be about hiring, but I think it was also it's really hard to find these steps of people. And so, in my mind, this company constellation, they're more like a recruiting company than innovative

software company. Yeah, I think that that is sort of the make or break. We think you also invested in in our friends who are doing it during ventures on. And so these guys are basically starting a modern day version of Constellation or what Andrew's doing or whatever, where they're fine companies told forever, that have strong cash flows and they want to own great businesses. And, you know, they've already closed. They put the first business they bought was a business council. Ironically, I believe this was sort of outside the model, which is, you know, much my point earlier. Say a simple thing,

not your head and agree, and then go fucking do it. I think that they did not do that with Up Council because the council was not a great business. It was a potentially great business, but it was currently sort of rocky waters, but they got that It's such a great deal, and they structured the deal in such a smart way that I think they'll still end up making a lot of money from it. But anyways, you know they're doing the same same sort of thing, and their biggest challenges is how do you find operators. So when they bought up council, you know, the CEO that they placed was, you know, uh, you know,

somebody Xavier have worked with and new knew very, very well if they brought in a team cooperated. But you know, they're pulling from their personal networks. That's what Andrew said he did as well. Which was he pulled from people he knew or had worked with before in the past. But I think that is the the largest challenge with this business model is being able to maintain, keep a great business, a great business by having good operators in place. Because when you buy out the owner, sometimes you may lose that great operations.

And if this interest you, I think that there's a few giants that you can look up and one of them is Alta Vista or not all TV. So that's Ah, not that obvious equity. It's owned by this guy named Robert Moore. I believe he's the richest black man in America. Uh, he's the guy who's famous for on the way. What? My witch. Um, he's well, he's the guy who's famous for paying the tuition of everyone at Morehouse when he gave a ah ah and address. He said, By the way, all your guys debt paid off. So he's he's cool,

but that's what he does. He does the same thing as does Trilogy software. So look up, Joe Lama to we've talked about, um all right, you want to talk about, um Oh, here's why I don't talk about OK, so there's these companies, like Tesla and basically a lot of stuff that Ellen does, which is like this, like, super sexy stuff. I mean, I'm not interested in it, but it is quite sexy to say you're going to send a a Ah,

you're to go to Mars or Ukraine, these cars that are neat and fun and that whenever I think about these companies, they're like the coolest companies where you create a hype video at the end of the year and you see everything they've done. And you're like, Oh, my God, that's so sick. Like when they created like, a video of you on celebrating the one of his rockets, taking off house like, um, and so anyway, constantly,

he doesn't do a video him, like looking at his golf club software,

right and It's pretty boring. Um, but it's still fascinating because, like, a fun puzzle. How do you, Sean, about, like, where your aspirations like, Do you say I want to do something that's full of excitement, or do you find excitement

in the boring? So I used to be pretty hardcore about this where I was like, Dude, the only thing worth doing, like if I'm going to spend my time And I used to be really, like, dismissive of people who were wasting their time doing things that we're not sort of the peak of the peak. So I was like, Okay, um, if I'm going to do, why would I do a job when I can own my own business? That was like, Why would I own a small business when I can own a big business? They're both gonna take up all my energy, my time, and it's like I'm going to a big business.

Why would I do a boring thing? Minus will do an exciting thing, and that train of logic made sense to me and I did that. So that monkey infernal it was. We're here to try to create the next hit consumer thing we don't give a shit that that's low odds of success we want to create. You know, Michael had created Bebo and which was like, sort of like almost Facebook. He had, like, come within sort of inches of creating a Facebook, but instead ended up in the MySpace pile and, you know, did well financially. But he didn't change culture. And so we were like,

Dude, we could do this. We could change culture. And so we tried every messaging app, live streaming. We tried all the different consumer things and failed like crazy, you know, even things that, like, kind of worked. They ultimately were not successful because there was, They were so home run driven. There were Grand Slam drip. So I backed off that I backed off that maybe because I'm just burnt, Dude, I just want to get winds like I don't need to change culture like I need to change my bank account and my lifestyle like so I don't know to what extent I'm,

um it's like I can frame it either way and my more mature because I'm like, Look, I don't have not attracted to the sexiness of it. I just want to build, you know, great things, great businesses. Or am I just fearful and burnt out from failure? It's hard to say for me, right? But my view, it definitely has changed. We're now I'm like, Oh, that you want path? I don't know. That sounds like a lot of effort. Why don't I just do this simple thing that's gonna like work?

Yeah, and part of me is like, OK, I I agree. And I I agree. And I am the same. And then the other part is like, Yeah, dude, but you're just kind of being like a process like, what were the 12 year old and you like? Think is awesome. Um, And everyone so well, you gotta listen to that. And so I don't know how I feel, like because the other day I was thinking about making a purchase,

and I, um I sound like a like a kind of entitled rich dude right now, which I'm not implying I'm either of those things, but I was gonna buy, like, a car, like a cool car, and it wasn't expensive. It was like a $10,000 car, and it was not practical and I was like weighing the pros and cons of it. And then I was like, Yeah, but here's this pro, which is like, this is fun and cool and I wanted to write, um,

right And I've like, but I could become such an old man like where? I'm not just doing shit just cause it's exciting. And I do think that, like you, we have to give in to those urges a little bit more.

You want Reece Anyway, about this, I think on hot first you're OK. I know where it was, but he was talking about He was like, Yeah, like Warren Buffett. Like he's like, I'm not a huge fan of the guy, not the biggest fan, but he didn't say dislike him, but he was like, You know what he does. He's a capital allocator. Like he spends his time trying to figure out. Do I buy Pepsi? Boring T.

Yeah. He's like he's put $10 billion into Pepsi or coke. Look, that's boring to me. Like I want to change the world. And, you know, I'm gonna make cars electrics that we don't have to depend on fossil fuels, and I'm gonna get us to Mars. So we're interplanetary species Do Merrill link so that our brain can control, You know, you know, are breaking download information and upload information like we're a computer in the brain and I'm going to boring company cause I fucking hate traffic and I want to get, you know, from place to place in 15 minutes rather than two hours. And I'm like,

OK, you know, respect. Like when you hear that you're like, Yeah, that does seem like the maximum of winning. But, you know, I guess my view is my views have brought in, But I'm like you were when I hear myself saying I'm like, Don't be a pussy, Do just like come on, go for it Don't do what you would do at the beginning You know, like don't don't lose that sort of dream just because of practicality.

So I'm a fan of motor sports and motorcycles and I like I like some of these adrenaline stuff. I like whole portions and all these exciting things, and I see these guys on YouTube like Ken Block, and he's got this, like, compound or I'll see like Travis Pastrana and he's at this compound just like grown up playground. And I'm like, 01 day, that would be cool. And then I'm like, No, no, no, no. Now, like, why did I just do that shit now? And I So I constantly have to battle that in my head. And so it sounds like you're

saying it is about I have

what's prudent like prudent versus, like excites

on the balance between the two. Um okay, let's let's leave with one or two little ideas real quick. All right, so I have one idea. So are you familiar with Pin Duo Duo? You know, this is one of the largest companies in China. I think like a $30 billion company that grew in the last four years or so. All those numbers could be wrong, but you get the idea big ass Chinese company. So what the hell has been todo todo is like Groupon, but it's with your friends. So what happens is you go on pin duo duo and there's like an item the number one selling item tissue boxes number two selling item is like a vacuum or some shit, but it will be like tissue boxes. Here's the stage boxes you can get them for, Let's say,

$20. You can get these Fisher boxes, but if you buy with your friends, you can all get him for eight. And it's like create a team to buy. And so you see the item you want. You create a team. The way you created team is it just gives you a link, and you share that link through. We chat or whatever your messaging gaps are. And if your friends like, yeah, cool, I'll join the group I'll buy at eight. Um, like I'll pitch,

I will contribute to the call is helping you get a lower price and I get a lower price to. And so there's this team buys, basically. So this thing has become really, really popular in China, and I don't think it's become popular really anywhere else. I know there's a couple of companies trying to do this in India as well, and like, you know, God knows Indians love a good discount. So I do think this will work in India as well. But I was thinking about this. I was like, OK, you know, if I was an entrepreneur,

uh, you know, just sitting on my you know, my desk. And there was nothing on my desk. I would just write the word pin duo Duo four X and I would just figure out what the hell exes. It's been a day on that brain store and

so so love it. Can I give me sure you don't want me? Oh, I know. I like. Listen to it. While you're talking, I'm like it might have my brain a pleasant so, you know, tilt tilt got tilt fault.

It was couple Looker. It was called, um, crowd

till eso James tried to launch this. He raised a lot of money, crashed and burned, and

then another crowd till was crowded. It was not a discount. It was just Hey, we need $500 for a kegger. Everybody pitching your 10 bucks if you're gonna come to the party. So it was a way Teoh collect millions, but it wasn't

discounted. You're right. So let's get rid of them. Drop, You know, drop. Formerly known

as master out. They do this, right?

So I have a Yeah, kind of. It's similar, you know, I think to make this work, it's all about the packaging in the positioning like so mass drop, and this other company can offer the same technology and do the same thing. But you really got it is really You've gotta get that angle exactly right, I think. And, ah, mass drop is trying this and from my friends who have inside information, which I don't have. They claim that mass drop is booming. Mashup has raised close to 50 million bucks. And, um,

everyone I talked to who is knows what the space says, that it's a sleeper and it's doing wonderful and they do a little bit similar stuff. So I think that's cool. Another bit of information is something like masterclass. So masterclass actually allows you to share passwords. One or two people, um, and someone someone in our trends group posted about it and said, like Hey, doesn't want to split masterclass with me and it was our most engaged post every right. And so I completely see the validation here. This

is incredible. So on back in the day, I think route was like this and there was a mother's where it's like, Hey, this TV is, you know, cheap. And it wasn't exactly like it wasn't exciting. Same. I think the magic of this is that gets your actual friend group that you used to do this. So with the problem of Groupon and all these others is, you get to deal hunters. So there's just this population of deal hunters. They're getting everything at a discount, and they're not necessarily like the best customers. Long term, they're not retaining long term all that.

So what's cool about this is you know, one of the challenges for any business is you have to acquire customers. So here's how I would do this today. I think you can create Pin Duo Duo for Shopify. What is that? So there's all the shop of five stores. Let's call it 100,000 Shopify stores. Every single one of the top five stores wants more customers. They will try to get those customers through either Google s CEO or Facebook ads, two primary ways and then word of mouth. Let's say it's beyond that, so you know they go and they go to Facebook and they'll pay $15 for a customer to come purchase from them. If they want another customer, they gotta go pay another $15. That's unfortunate, right?

They'll offer discounts and they'll try to do a referral program or whatever. What I think they should do is one of the largest sort of booms in Shopify. Is this thing called after pay or a firm, which basically says, Hey, when you're checking out instead of paying $85 for this, you can do monthly payments for $9 that increase the check out rate because people can palette $9 a month better than even do $90 today upfront and so adding an after pay button increased sales. I think if you added a by together, save together, but you would increase sales of way it works is you're about to check out and it says, Great, you can either have this item for $80. But if you get five friends to buy, you all get it for 60 your you all get it for 50 or whatever it ISS. Some discount there and you basically are saying rather than paying $15 per customer and Facebook ads, I will pay you know 15 l paid $10 right now to discount this item for you because you're gonna go acquire five customers for me,

right? So, like if I reduced it and I'm, you know, basically producing like my costs by my revenue by 2020 bucks per customer, I'm able to sort of acquire customers for a new channel besides Facebook ads, which is sort of steadily price rising over time and also the way that if you get introduced to a product through a friend, I think you spoke to sort of have a better relationship with the product and better experience, better retention then if you are only being advertised through by the company, so I would

try it. I think this is I think this is the best. It's very hard, very hard because you have toe, you're building something from scratch here, and it's all about like, this is this is definitely a all or nothing Pepe thing in my mind where you have to get the position really, really right. And But I think if you do, you're on to something,

and I

think, you know, it's kind of it's kind of like a live streaming thing. It's like life streaming isn't like, hard to make. I mean, there's so many of them. But you really gotta find that

angle that I get gets people. There's more big business than small, certain success, big business most likely to fail. The other thing that I think is interesting here. I think I know nothing about Shopify, and I was like, OK, what other buttons wouldn't put it? Check out that active basically offered.

That's a great that's a great

framework. So, like, for example, in mobile games they do this all the time. You run out of lives and it's like, Hey, you could buy another life. You can share this with a friend and get another life, or you can watch this 32nd ad and get in life So mobile games are like, you know, it's like a little, you know, wizard, sitting inside a slot machine, just trying to figure how to take your money, your time or attention,

and they've optimized the shit out of this. And so what can you learn from that? So maybe if you're a Shopify, you have a Shopify store. Maybe there's a plug in that you could add to your check out, which says, Hey, if you want an extra, you know dollar off for $2 off. Just click this button and like us on instagram that boom. Now my instagram is growing with every customer that joints or whatever.

Yeah, there's a bunch of there's definitely much of tools that allow you to do that. But

I entered the most popular wanted email like Give us your email and you get you get a 15% off or whatever and I think that's cool. That's like level level one. But like this idea of team buying of sharing to your instagram liking out on Instagram, I think there's just more things that you could do at the check out page that would say, How do I get your time, money or attention in some way that you're not currently giving me on? And so I don't know if there's there's a lot there because Shopify so big now that if you build something that works on Shopify, you can build a you know, $10,000,020 million business pretty quickly because every store will just adopt these like best practices

fairly quickly. I think the first thing your time out group buying is incredibly interesting. I've always thought that Groupon I loved Groupon. I think that Ah, their valuation is shit. And I'm like that there's gotta be a better way to make that happen on I love Groupon I love group on. I'm also familiar with AP Sumo, which does group discounting for software and then social staff. I think it's called great companies.

What a comparable Where else could you do group buying? Is there any other like sort of space? Like Absolute was a great example where they're like, OK, cool sort of software are there like I don't know. Yeah. I mean, like, Well, could you

do this? You Well, so a lot of this stuff has been tried and it doesn't always work, but you definitely could dio I mean, this is what kick starters, right? You go with bran and Bran. They're like Captain Tilt. We have to cross this threshold and I don't know what it could work for. And I have to really think about it. I just I feel so ignorant on what

works way of thing about it is it works better when the thing costs the maker nothing. Then when the when it cost to make or something right. So software is great because every incremental sale off a piece of software costs the maker. Zero vs like if it's a physical items like, Well, now every TV. If the more people that buy this, the more people more TV's, I have to sell at a loss. And so I think digital works better than physical. That's one like premise I would make. I would I would hold, Um, when it comes to this and on the other one is like where they don't know if it works better for low price, probably higher priced items because a the discount matters and be Maybe there's just more margin, you know, to be captured even after discount versus and low price items. And maybe you would be looking for sort of high price digital digital services

software. Yeah, I mean, I think that you could definitely. What about using it? So what? I would want to use it for what businesses by eso like, for example, I want to buy Pitchbook, but it's 20 grand a year, and I'm not going to use it that much, but I would love to split it with someone, so I think That's incredibly interesting. One weird idea is I think that I would want to figure out a way to use it for lawyers. So instead of having a legal firm, um, be my lawyer. I split, ah, lawyer with you

and five other people that that's a great name. Split it or split would be a great name for a company that was trying to do. This is like a You could do this, but or you want to split it with four others and hit you all save.

You have to have a ton of volume to make this work

way you could make. That is, if you make it to that cool, let's say the price is 100 bucks. And if I'm going to split it with five people, I think what ends up happening is that everybody gets it for less than 100. But the total adds up to more than 100 right? Like like the total I end up making mawr than I would have off of a single customer paying full price by letting great what it first for 70 and I get 1 40 you get hundreds, like how personal trainer does group training there, like If you want one on one, it's $100 an hour. If there's two of you guys, you each pay 70 bucks an hour, and it's like I now make more

per hour. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. I love split it. I'm never gonna create this because that it seems way too hard. But I understand the need in the problem, and I would love to be involved in as a customer. Some

capacity. Great coming. All right. Splitting banks. Just brainstorming will be back in a couple days with another brainstorm. People said You can't keep up this pace. How can you keep coming up with new ideas every week, twice a week? Are you crazy? But they don't understand. They don't know how this brain

works if you spend enough time doing it, which we definitely don't always do. But a lot of times we do, it is not

if you lower the bar on what you call an interesting or good idea eso you have several things, you lower the expectations and practice that is the that is the criteria.

It's that easy. Leave us a review.