308 - Erika Ender: Everybody Has Talent

Transcript

You're not alone. Over half of Irish men avoid intimacy due to erectile dysfunction. So take action. Ask your pharmacist if Viagra Connect is suitable for you. No prescription necessary. Brought to you by Viatris Ireland, Viagra Connect helps you get and keep an erection. Contains sildenafil for men aged 18 and over. Maximum dosage, 1 50 milligram tablet a day. Always read the label. Buy online at viagra connect dot ie, subject to suitability. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Today on the James Altucher Show. I wish when I was starting out, I had the chance to overhear conversations between 2 entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out during a difficult time like this, what problems are there out there, what solutions for those problems could we create? And how to not make millions, not to start new businesses, but what problems could we personally solve? And how can we do it based on our prior experiences, our network? What forces do we have to bring together to solve these problems, what are the next steps. And so that's why I love it when I have Sampar on because we start off just like continuing a conversation about, hey, here are the problems I'm trying to solve. Can I help you? Can you help me? Let's riff. Let's just brainstorm on more and more problems and issues and solutions and how we would execute on these things and on and on. It's just like retaking entrepreneur 101 when I talk to Sam, and it's just nonstop brainstorming of ideas. So please give me feedback on on this one and the last podcast with Sam. Sam's gonna be a regular guest, and we're just gonna talk about solving problems, building companies. And, yes, that leads to making money. Hopefully, not just for us, but for all of us. So here's the the latest podcast with Sam Parr. Very excited. Not only am I very excited about this, but I had to delay this releasing this one because I will talk about an idea that I've been heavily, heavily working on for a new business I'm creating. Enjoy the podcast. I'm driving home from, from Texas. I had to go to Austin. Here, sir. Show James real quick. Pick up the camera. Look. Look where I am. It's a 110 degrees. I don't know how anything can live. Like, I don't under I don't I'm not a scientist, but I I'm I'm shocked if any living virus can live in this heat. I don't understand how people can. Like, Phoenix is you're you're probably near Phoenix. Right? So it's a 110 degrees. I drove I drove through there. It was so hot. Like, it was crazy. Yeah. I I don't understand. There's a famous song that I like, and they say, why lizards live in Scottsdale, Arizona, I I understand. But why people do and call it home, I'll never understand. And that's how I feel right now. And what were you doing in Austin? I have an office there, and I had to go and check-in with everyone. And I wanted to get out of California. How come you wanted to get out of California? I was quarantined up, and it was cold. And I was like, I need a like, I need space. So I rented a a pretty big house in Austin. I told you I told you to do it. I went and did it. Yeah. I did it as well. After talking to you, like, literally, like, the day after, I'm in Key Biscayne, Florida. Are you really? Yeah. That's why there's, like, light and greenery right behind me. This I have sight unseen. I've never even been to Key Biscayne, Florida. Sight unseen. We went on a real estate site, and we rent we got a year rent. So That's awesome. Are we Yeah. Are we are we recording? This is this is funny. Yeah. We're we're live? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What what what is what where where in Florida? Key Biscayne. It's like a key, like, slightly south of Miami. That's awesome. That's fantastic. So once I got off the phone with you the other time that I did the same thing, I went I've been I was in Texas for, 3 or 4 weeks. Yeah. You know, it was smart because not only for kind of the you know, looking at the economic factors of what's gonna happen to 1st tier cities versus 2nd tier cities, which is what we talked about the last time, but just I don't know if you felt this way, but, like, New York City was getting kind of depressing. Well and and since we last talked, all the, George Floyd stuff happened, and it got even worse. Yeah. And then there was kind of this hypocrisy that happened on top of it. Like, fine. I'm fine, you know, with the peaceful protests. In fact, Robin, my wife, and I, we went even went to, some of the protests with our kids. But, you know, I also run a bar slash comedy club, and we were shut down having a socially distant outdoor comedy show while 50,000 people were gathering downtown to protest. Like and you can't get angry about this stuff because it's silly. Like, what am I gonna do? Call up the government and say, nah. Like, so I just did just you know, you have to take action when you're angry, and this was the action we took. Good. And so do you have your apartment there anymore? Yeah. We kept the apartment in New York. I mean, my kids are there. They're they're all, you know, older, so they're doing their thing. And just Robin and I moved down here for you know, we'll go back and forth. Did you fly? I flew. Yeah. And it's funny. A lot of people ask me, are you are you afraid of flying? But, no. You flew normal, commercial? Yeah. Wait. Is that why you drove? Yeah. I didn't fly. I drove to Austin, and I brought my big pit bull, my huge dog, and, I'm on my way back to California. But Austin Austin's a great second tier city, and I gotta I I couldn't I mean, I have a lot of friends in Austin. I have a lot of friends in South Florida, but, also, I kind of like the lockdown lifestyle. Like, I like being indoors all day and not going out and doing remote podcasts, and I just don't like the lockdown environment outside. Like, I don't like the way people are are arguing with each other, how media is, how social media is. I give you full credit. Like, you were you were calling it. And I think you're right. Like, I look around New York City, and it just feels depressing and all the reasons for being in and I I'm not trashing New York City, and and there's also the counterargument that New York City always bounces back. But the key reasons for being there, business, culture, food, all you know, networking, all those reasons are at least temporarily gone, and who knows how long they'll be gone. Yeah. It's gonna change. My, my father-in-law who lives in New York City is gonna be moving to spending a lot of time in Florida now. You just think about, like, the taxes and stuff like that. You're like, what's the point right now? Yeah. I don't know when things bounce back, and I don't know when things stop getting more negative. Like, the trend of news is getting more and more negative. If if you think about this decade, January 1, Australian wildfires, but you don't even remember that. Like, whatever did those wildfires go out? Yeah. The the who it it didn't even register. Right. Then January 3rd, World War 3 with Iran, then then Iran disappeared, and it was all impeachment hearings, then coronavirus, then these protests, and then who knows what's next? Everything's going crazy. Yeah. It is nuts. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was about, like, trends and business opportunities that you're seeing with all this going on. Yeah. Happy to talk. Let's let's exchange ideas. Alright. So here's something that's interesting to me. I have a whole list too. Oh, okay. I don't have a I have a list of my brain. We'll see if I can write off you off. Okay. Hay.com. Did you say hay.com? I did. It's like, but I I only for a few seconds. It's basically, like, another email. It's like a super superhuman or or proton. Yeah. So I'll try to give the background to your listeners. So, basically, AOL people paid money for AOL, and one of the things that they got with their $10 a month was an AOL email account, and a lot of people still use it. Do you know that AOL still makes roughly $600,000,000 a year from their email subscription? I I only know that from seeing you post about it on either Facebook or Twitter. Yeah. So, like, it's still quite a thing. And so over the past 2 years, 2 new email services that I know of have launched. The first is Superhuman, and the whole shtick behind that is that they you never use a mouse, so it's all, keyboard stuff, which is generally faster, though it is tougher to learn. And then the second thing is it's all about getting to inbox 0. So they have a variety of features to help you do that. Now yesterday, Jason Fried, founder of 37 signals, which is a, world renowned Yeah. Product or, I mean, they have a they have a product called Basecamp, but then he's just kinda famous for his interesting philosophies on business, which some people like, some people don't. And his whole shtick is craftsmanship, so he, like, works really hard to make something perfect. And so he launched hey.com, and this this whole premise is similar to what this is why I wanted to bring it up. First of all, it's all about making your email inbox less clutter and less noisy. But secondly, it's all about privacy. And so they, they they ban any type of tracking. So you know when you send a newsletter, you could see you have a 50% open open rate. You're not gonna see that with hey.com users. They also don't sell any advertising in their email. They don't sell any of the data, which Yahoo, Gmail, and all that do. And, the buzz on Twitter amongst our, like, somewhat elitist tech friend nerds, which we run-in that same circle, it's blowing up. Hey.com is blowing up. And it's a little similar sentiment than what you've said, which is I'm a I don't wanna I don't wanna be on social media that much right now. I don't want more noise. I don't want anyone spying on me. Things like that. Are you what do you think about this? Do you think this is gonna actually take off? Like, Well, you know, it's an interesting thing because the I always wonder about the privacy issue. The privacy issue is spoken about a lot, but when I talk to, like, when I talk to, like, you or my friends in tech, everybody talks about privacy. If I go to Cincinnati and I'm at the Skyline Chile, you know, eating whatever and talking to the waiter or waitress, they don't even know what privacy is. So I always wonder if this is just, like, kind of always, sort of, you you know, libertarian tech thing? Because or or is this something that people actually care about? Like, I care about it, and you care about it, but as a product, do do 300,000,000 other people care about it? Okay. Well, let me give you a data point. So I asked myself that too, which is, like, do I just care about it? Because I work on things that, like, control the Internet a little bit, and I understand how it works and how, like, vulnerable people are. But I, spoke to Tim Westergen, the founder of Pandora. And one of the Pandora is very middle America Yeah. Range a a mainstream product. And so he, he sees a lot of insights. And he told me that the average American, which or the average Pandora user, which is a typical, like, someone in, Skyline a a dentist who plays Pandora in the background, in Cincinnati, Ohio, they are nervous about privacy, and they actually he's noticed that people would not sign up because, like, for privacy reasons. But here's here's, another counterpoint. So, like, you're considering Texas from California and part of the and I'm considering Florida from New York. And part of the reason is, as you even brought up, there's no state taxes in these two states. So it used to be the IRS would look at your utility bills and so on and try to figure out if you're really a resident of New York or a resident of Texas or Florida. So now, though, they they will subpoena your phone records, and they see the towers at any given moment that your phone is attaching to, to get its signal, and that's how they determine whether you're spending more time in Florida or California or Texas or New York. And our privacy is compromised. I I bring that up just as one example of all the many ways our compromise is our privacy is compromised in so many ways. And particularly now, when they start doing contact tracing like, in New York City, new law just passed as of today. Everybody who goes into a residential building has to sign in to that building and show ID because they yeah. Because they need to know who your visitors are to see if just in case you get coronavirus, supposedly, they contact and they know everybody who you've seen. So I don't know if anything really we could try to fight this battle, but I don't know. It it feel it already feels like minority report. Like, I don't know if we're gonna win this battle. Well, I don't know either, but I do know I could build some cool stuff that, maybe will help fight it just a little bit, and I could probably make a lot of money along the way. Right. And so the the question is, like so when I look at my email and and and and let's say I do care about privacy. So that's great. Oh, you're gonna give me privacy? That's great. You're gonna By the way, that's not that's not their only shtick, but it is a big one. Right. Like so and I like the fact that it doesn't track me on the newsletters because I what I would like is some way you know, you mentioned this in in your trends letter today, actually, that organization is is becoming on top of people's minds. Maybe because they've been locked in, so it's been harder to be organized. But if I look away from my Gmail for an hour, I don't even know so many emails go by. I don't even know what happened. So if there's a better way to actually organize my emails okay. Here are the ones that are obviously and and Gmail tries to do this, but here are the ones that are obviously personal messages. Here's the ones that are obviously newsletters, and you've opened them 12 times in the past, so we like them. And here's the ones that you don't really care about, but you might wanna look at later or or not. Like and Gmail tries to do this, but I wish there was, like, better technology for that. So do you think, hey, satisfies that? I think that it is my prediction is that they're gonna okay. So when predicting, like, this trend, I I have to really work hard to get out of my bubble and think, like, are am I just being, like, a tech libertarian elitist who has fur only has first world problems, or is this, like, actually an issue that everyone or a lot of people worry about? And my prediction, I think, is that, yes, more people are gonna worry about that. And if yes, I think that people who are users of hey.com, it's gonna be like this weird email service that people are gonna brag about that they're part of this cult where you can't be tracked. And so here I'll give you another example. I would love I wanna talk I wanna keep talking about hey.com because what I what I wanna ask you is what other services can we do this to? But here's another one that people are doing it too, which is search. DuckDuckGo. I am driving Right. Well well, also so when you said hey.com and you described it, the first thing I thought was, why doesn't duck.com, you know, by the way, they they they Google gave him duck.com, the the URL. But why doesn't, duck.go, just do this email? It sounds like it fits right into their idea. Well, I think that the the you have to look at the founder DNA, which is, like, the guys at HEY are, like, very consumer y product focus. And I think that Gabe at, Duck is that what it's called now? Duck Duck? He probably still calls it Duck.go, but I know Google officially gave him the URL duck.com. Cool. Cool. Well, I well, I think that it's not in his DNA to, like, launch this launch, like, a new subscription thing. But I'm telling you, James, I'm driving through rural Texas, rural Arizona, which have a a mix of of union liberals and, like, very strong Trump lover Republicans. There there is a ton of DuckDuckGo, billboards all over the place. Really? All over the place. I've seen Interesting. I'm not exaggerating. I've seen 40 of them, yesterday driving in rural in the rural area. And if you go to DuckDuckGo is interesting. You can actually Google DuckDuck I'm saying Google it. DuckDuckGoogle DuckDuckGo, like, usage, and they have a dashboard where you could see their search queries per month. It is growing exponential exponentially. Like, if you look that up, I don't know how many I can't remember how many there are, but it's many, many, many billions, and it's been the it's a hockey stick growth. No. I mean, I, I've had Gabe on a couple of times on the podcast, and he's he's loving life. Like, Duck I mean, that's basically the only competitor of Google at the moment in terms of, you know, they're they're different from Google, and they're not trying to be Google, and they're actually now more than just a blip in search. So, yeah, it's worth a try. The only thing I would say is try to find other services that would be fun for the user so that I can say, hey. Not only am I avoiding something negative like privacy, but I'm also enjoying something positive. Can you figure out how to improve it with your phone? Yeah. That's interesting. So maybe if I'm like, you're passing by, like, Arizona, maybe I don't know, but this feels like a privacy thing. I was gonna suggest, like, you get your you know, you you know, you get reminded of what emails you've gotten in the past that you've read from people who live in Arizona, but then that's like an invasion of privacy. It is. Well, what I would what I think is interesting is I think that, I've I've seen a few folks try to do this with the they try to build these flip phones and make them, more common, and, I actually am bullish on that. I think that, flip phones, dumb phones, we'll call them dumb phones, are gonna be a lot more popular than they are now. Well, that could be because, again, look at that, example where they they know where you are at all times because of how your smartphone is connecting to the Internet. You know, maybe with flip phones, it's easier to just turn it off. So and you could have multiple dumb phones. You know, you have your one in one state, you have another in another state, and so on, and that's how you keep your your privacy. But, I'm trying to think, like, what I the ideal things I would like in a in a phone. So here's here's one thing. I always particularly, I noticed this during this lockdown. I always wanna drop a note to people and, you know, maybe people I haven't heard from in a while and just say, hey. How's it going? You know, haven't heard from you in a while. Or, hey. I'm just checking in. You okay during this time? And it would be neat if there was a a an email service that reminded me of essentially who are the people I've, through the years, kept an email contact with. And now I can have you know, it just pops up. Hey. You wanna do kind of, like, your hey networking for the day. And in 3 seconds, I can I could just drop a note and keep in touch with 4 different people I haven't, spoken to in 6 months? So that's, like, a positive service. That's a good one. I like that one. That that those, that would be in the form of, like, a e like, a you you know what are shockingly large businesses is Chrome plug ins and, I believe, email plug ins like, Gmail plug ins go in the category of Chrome plug ins. Right. But I never use I never use plug ins. I'm always afraid of the security on plug ins. So I would rather you have it built into an email service that, hey. I'd like to do some basic networking through this email service. That's interesting. I like that. Another interesting thing about Hey is well, first of all okay. So this whole thing of, like, privacy and also, there's definitely a touch of exclusivity with Hey. You know, like, having james@hey.com is pretty neat. The the they've done a good job of doing that. But what are other services that we kinda forget even, like, that we're, like, wait a minute. It doesn't have to be this way. You can you can change this. Like, email's 1, search is another. And not only, like, you can change this to fit, but you could also charge people money for it. Again, I think I think kind of your social map. Like, let's say, oh, I haven't talked to, you know, Sam in 6 months, and, do and it pops up like, hey. Do you wanna kind of just do a your brief three second networking with Sam? And then I know my social map with you. Like, Sam and you both know this person, and it's because we both have been in the same thread with some other person, so maybe it pops up other stuff. I just I keep thinking of networking because I'm such a lousy networker. And, you know, maybe, again, you know, helping me understand my own networking habits a little better and improving them seems like it should be a part of email because that is how I network. That's interesting. Do you remember it branched out? Yeah. Is that the one was that, like, an idea map, or was that no or was that, like, a a a kind of a LinkedIn sort of, map? Yeah. So there's this crew of guys. Their name is James Currier and Rick Marini. And, I've met them a while ago, and, basically, they launched this company called Tickle. Do you remember Tickle? No. It was it was dumb, to be honest. But what they revolutionized and this was what year was this? This was maybe before 2000. What they revolutionized was, they basically made all these, like, things where you, like, click a button and you invite all your email contacts. So they, like, they revolutionized, like, the virality loops is what they were really early pioneers of. And so they sold this company, Tickle, to it was like a I think Tickle was, they made, like, quizzes, like, which Harry Potter character are you? So I don't know how it made money, but they sold it for a $100,000,000. And then they did the same thing with branched out, and it was exactly what you're describing. And they went from 0 to, like, 60,000,000 users literally in 8 months. And they did what you were describing. And then after they got to, like I think they got to 80,000,000 users, it it it crashed because it was a stupid product, but the Vireality Loops was crazy. And the whole premise was you have LinkedIn, you have Gmail, you have Facebook, you have Twitter, but it's still quite hard to imagine, who do I know in my network? Who does x, y, and z? Or who does my network know, and how can I connect with them? That was the whole problem they were solving. And so for this idea that you're thinking about, it's pretty it it is quite interesting. I would definitely wanna research branched out and see, like, where they screwed up because it was quite interesting. Yeah. Or or, actually and this goes along with your your newsletter from today. Is there an auto commerce aspect here? Like, just analyzing your emails. And, again, not from a privacy perspective because it'll just be private to you and and the software. But, oh, you know, James, we saw that, you know, oh, you got an Amazon receipt for toilet paper, a month ago. Do you wanna do a reorder? So so the auto commerce happens within the email as opposed to giving your data to all these other auto commerce solutions. So I I haven't read our trends email because I've been I've been on the road. Yeah. And I I need to read it and see if they've mentioned this. But do you know that when you go to They mentioned, hey, by the way. Yeah. I well, because I was talking to our writers about it, but I haven't even when I when I when they send it out, I read it for the first time, and I I'm I'm like a user. I am a user. Did you know that when you go to Kroger or Safeway or where where Publix, you know how you enter in your phone number to get a deal? Yeah. They're really, you know, tracking all of your buying patterns so they can understand inventory and preferences and things like that. And have you heard the story about a 16 year old girl who Target was sending her pregnancy, like, baby diaper ads and s**t like that. And the father was like I don't know if the story is true, but they this is, like, a story in about habits. And the father was like, hey, Target. Why are you sending my my daughter's 15 or 16. She's not pregnant. And it turns out that she was pregnant, but she hadn't told him yet. And she was a month pregnant, and they knew that because she was buying, like, a a vacuum or something like that where they're like, the correlation between what you are buying now shows that you are 2 weeks pregnant. Like, have you heard this story? No. I haven't, but I I know that stuff like that is certainly possible because whatever you search for, it sees the other people in your house, and it's those search ads show up on those on their searches as well. Yeah. So it's quite, they can predict the these things. But, also, I there's a law where so Publix I'm trying to you're you're in Florida, so you have Publix. There's Kroger. There's, Safeway. They track all of your your buying history, and you can actually email them and say, hey. Give me my records, and they have to give you their your records. Oh, wow. And so I've always thought I'm like, there how can I use this information, you know, for as a business? And sometimes I'm like, I wonder if people would pay money if I could just wipe all that stuff. Well well, here's here's a company I know that's, it's based in Austin, actually. So they use public records about so so every time you buy a car, of course, it's registered with the state. They know when you buy it. They know what you buy. They know where you bought it. So this company gets all this data from all 50 states, and then car dealerships subscribe to their data. So, let's say I'm a car dealership. I know that, you know, Sam bought a buys a Toyota Prius every 2 years, and 2 years are coming up. He usually buys it at the car dealership down the street. So I but I I'm subscribed to this company, so I will proactively call you a month in advance of when you usually buy the your next Toyota Prius, and I'll say, hey, man. We can buy we can get it for you 40% off. Those other guys have been ripping you off. So they use this public data. They where where where do they get the data? They get it from, the DMV? Yeah. The DMV and every state, and it's all public information. And they just, like and they and they just organize it. Well, they organize it, and they do AI. They kinda they predict, when you're likely to buy because it might not be every 2 years. I'm giving you a very simple example. It might be when certain events happen or certain life events. What's the name of this company? I actually don't know. It's a cousin of mine. So So it's just he's always he's always talking to me about it. I've never asked them the name of the company. Does it work? Yeah. Yeah. It works. He's he's, they've got, like, tens of 1,000,000 in revenues and car dealerships, you know, all over the country. I mean, he helped my wife buy rent a car when we moved here because he every he deals with every car car dealership in the country. And it's, you know, AI combined with big data, and he uses it to predict your car buying behavior so that dealerships can win you over. So imagine if you got all this data from the supermarkets, you know, if the supermarket could you could recommend, hey, Winn Dixie. Kroger's has got your your your customers in your area, but this guy always buys, like, you know, a $100 worth of stuff at the beginning of every month, toothpaste, this, this. You could even offer a subscription crate of these things to that customer. So, potentially, you could do the same type of company using big data and and AI. That's crazy fascinating. Hey.com can do it. Like, Hey.com can get all this data. So it's not like you're reliant on someone who's selling your data back and forth. Hey.com can actually, you know, bring all of this stuff in house, meaning in your own email box, and do these recommendations for you. That's super fascinating. And maybe maybe even negotiate with, so hey.com could say, I've got 50 potential, buyers that go to Safeway every month on this day, but how about I contact them for you? I'm not telling you who they are, but how about I contact them for you, for a price and try to get all 50 to go to Kroger's instead of Safeway? That's super fascinating. I mean, I think that there's so much opportunity in I think the things that we're discussing, I think there is this thing boiling up of, about the combination of, like, we've discovered opportunities based just based off of using people's buying patterns and data and things like that. But I think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities of people who wanna protect that data. Because I could tell you right now, I would pay money if and if you could prove that you could just just wipe me. Like, I don't wanna be on I don't wanna be tracked like that. And I don't even know how I the the to be frank, it probably helps me that I'm being tracked. Yeah. In most cases, it does. Right? Like, you want a a car dealership 2 car dealerships to compete for you instead of you just blindly going to the same one who takes advantage of you. So so in those situations, the fact that people know your data help you. But I'm just thinking in terms of helping your you know, like, if I let let's say I use hey.com. Wouldn't it be great if using hey.com, not only behind the scenes protected my privacy, but in a positive way made my networking better and made my e you know, my my commerce cheaper and more efficient. Have you heard of Reportive? No. So what you're discussing, I never really thought about, but it actually makes a ton of sense. So in 2,011, there was this tool called Reportive. This guy named Rahul invented it. Rahul was from he's an Indian guy from England who lived in America, and then his cofounder was named Martin. He's an English guy who lived in America. And they, the whole premise was that you can it's you plug it into your Gmail, and if James emails me, and I've never talked to you before, your information James come James' information comes up so I could see his LinkedIn profile, his Facebook, his, work title, things like that. Do you know what I'm talking about now that I'm mentioning it? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I I was also thinking, why don't you do the same thing for for hey? So I'll let and and maybe not even if if you never talk to me. What about if I could like, if Sam emails me, maybe I should see his latest tweets. Well, let me tell you why this is interesting. So Rapportive, now they were acquired by LinkedIn for $15,000,000. Now that service is a commodity. Every there's, like, a 1,000 services that do the same thing. But do you wanna know what Rahul's second company is after Reportive? Tell me. Superhuman. Yeah. So he knows exactly where all the data is. He know he he so the way that you're you're think superhuman is a hey, competitor. It's a email service. The this idea of, like, networking and email, it it is quite fascinating. I think it's a it's an incredibly complicated challenge to figure out how those are gonna connect and become something that people love and use. But this, like, kinda academic exercise of under figuring out how they connect is quite quite fascinating. But if you think about it, you you do your networking through email. There's no reason they shouldn't connect. Like, it's odd that they that they're that we think of them as separate concepts. So it's like yeah. Hey. I agree. I agree. I just don't know how that would work. Yeah. I think for for me, my big problem is is that I lose track of people. And so what I typically do manually is I'll look back through my email 7 years ago. And if there's someone who sent me an email and I never responded, I'll respond as if it's as if they just sent me an email yesterday. And so I'll do this manually, and that usually kind of wakes up the connection again. You did that. I did that to you. Yeah. You, like, replied, like, over a 5 year old email. Yeah. From 2014. Do you wanna let me tell you a funny story. I got this email in 2014 from this guy, and it my friend intro intro ed me, like, hey. It was no. Sorry. 14 or maybe it was sorry. 17, 2017 or 16. And he said, hey. My friend's gonna run for the president. I was like, and you should cover him in the hustle. And I'm like, president of what? And he's like, America. And the guy chimes in the and he goes, hey. It's me. I would love if I you could interview me. I'm running for president. And I was like, dude, like, no. You're gonna make me look an idiot. I'm interviewing some wacko who's gonna run for president. Well, it was Andrew Yang. Oh my god. And I had that email from, like, 2016 or whenever it was when he said he was gonna run for president, and I was you're stupid. You're you're, like, you look like a crazy person. So so imagine this. I I wanted to reply to him, like, in 2020, but, like, I see you on TV. You are right. I was wrong. I'm sorry. No. No. But but imagine imagine if you had replied, okay. I'll interview you. Like, people kinda respond to humor. So I I know. That's what I was gonna reply with. And when you told me your story, I'm like, I gotta do that with Andrew Yang. Like like, one time in, like, 2004, I had a reader that for my birthday bought the domain name, jamesalticher.com. I didn't own my name. And I didn't think I needed it, so I never replied to him. And so in 2010, I finally hit reply on that 2004 email, and I said, okay. Thanks. I'll just send it over to, you know, GoDaddy. And so I rep I replied as if he had just said this yesterday, and we became friends after that because, like, the humor aspect, you know, kicked in. And and that Did he try to get get paid? No. No. No. He's like, that's the longest time between responses I've ever seen. Here's the domain name. And so that works. And so you could imagine so, okay, so so that made me think of something when you said Andrew Yang. Imagine if someone writes to me who I don't know. Like, you didn't know this guy, and he's he's on the thread. And then suddenly there's a news spike about that name. It would be good if hey.com notified me. Hey. You know, someone who was in this guy, Andrew Yang, who was in your email thread 3 years ago, suddenly there's a there's a a 6000% spike in news stories about him. Here's the email you didn't respond to. Boom. That's easy to do, and that would be a positive service that I I would love for my email provider. I think that the as we're talking about this, the idea of superhuman, the idea of, hey. And if there's any technical folks out there listening or people who are good enough to lead a technical team, I think that the opportunity for these services like, to me, this is like Bitcoin in 2011. Like, it's a you could launch something so s**tty. The market's gonna pull something amazing out of you that and, like, the the likelihood of failing is quite low, I feel like, even if your product is bad with these email services. With with with like and, again, I appreciate, and it's a good thing, the privacy stuff. But like you said, sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's it's neutral to you, to your life, and it's also it's behind the scenes, so you're not really all that clear how it's helping you. But if if if if someone could build that, but then include some positive services, like, you know, the report of style features or these networking style features or, you know, and we we've listed, like, 3 or 4 different, networking techniques that could be used. It's it seems like or or this a these, you know, automated commerce features. So, oh, you got, like, you know, all these Amazon receipts a month ago for toilet paper, paper towels, soup cans. Do you wanna, reorder? Or let's say I'm in Florida. Hurricane's coming. You know? Hey. Sends me an email. Hurricane's coming. Do you wanna load up on Campbell's Soup Cans like everybody else does during a hurricane? You know, stuff like that. Like, you know, you it kind of extrapolates from common behavior and and, does automated commerce for you. Or or actually then negotiates with by sending emails or or negotiate somehow with the with the automatically with the grocery stores or whoever to get the best prices. So, god, I love talking about email. Now I I'm on board with all that. Do you wanna hear another alternative, which is But I'll I'll add one I'll add one more thing. I would combine the idea of, hey, with the idea of, community and get somehow get SMS in there. So let's say, you know, Sam's a busy guy. He travels. I know he doesn't really open up email all that much, but I know just because everybody does, you probably open up 98% of your SMS text messages. It would be good once you send me something on hey and I sign up for hey and I put in my phone number. Will I allow my friends to text me? Maybe, you know, hey could combine with some, you know, texting features as well. Make it a a kind of a I don't know what you would call that. More like a tighter email service so it's more likely people will see my messages. Yeah. The the the fact that text is so separate from email is quite crazy. Yeah. And just like the fact that we're going back to email now for a lot of things, we're going like, I use email as my search engine. So if I'm looking for Andrew Yang, I'm gonna search my my Gmail database of 300,000 messages before I go on to Google. So, you know, we'll we'll eventually, we're gonna go beyond that. We're gonna go more to texting, but texting's kind of controlled now by all the phone networks. It's it's almost an antiquated thing and needs to be upgraded. If I'm able to kind of combine how I use texting with email, that's an enormous thing, which is why something like Twitter got big because, originally, that was thought of as an SMS service. And it's why this community, service is is which is still in beta is gonna get probably will get big. Have you used okay. So, for all the listeners, AMP from Google, you know what that is? Accelerated Mobile Pages? You know how, like, let's say you go on Safari or you go on Google Chrome on your phone and you type in Trump, on the top results, you're gonna see Google News, and then you're gonna see a bunch of other normal results. And there's a little lightning bolt next to it. And you click it, and it's a really fast page. You you do you know what I'm talking about? No. I haven't seen that. It's it's it's a it's a thing. It's a it's a big thing. I mean, it doesn't like some, like, small thing that I'm talking about. So it's called Accelerated Mobile Pages, and it only works on your phone. And it's like, you never clicked a news article and it loads really quick? What the publishers do is they you have to install this line of code, and Google says, alright. Anyone who has this code, we're gonna rank you higher in search because this is a faster mobile experience for users. Well, what Google released, about a year ago, and it's still just it's just now barely out of beta, is they're doing ex, AMP emails. And so what's gonna happen is you're gonna be able to interact with your email. You're gonna be able to, like, swipe in your email in your inbox. And I think that that technology is gonna, I think, change the world. Like, this is how big of a deal this is gonna be, because you're gonna be able to buy stuff in email, or you're gonna see something on your phone in your email, and you're gonna click you're gonna just gonna click one button, and you're gonna purchase that in email. You know? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And and so I think that anyone who, is interested in this, I would go and research this technology. I think it's actually gonna be really, really, really cool for you to add stuff to cart or change the size of a shirt in email or So, like, for instance, there's a confirmation of an order and you decide to change or, like, what what kind of email will you get? So okay. So here's the simplistic version, which is you buy t shirts from J Crew. They're gonna send you an email every once in a while and says, hey. We have a a new thing of t shirts. And you go through and you you pull up your email, and it says, alert. J Crew has new shirts. And you just look at it, and you can see the shirts, the colors, the sizes. And in the email, you're not clicking off to a new website. You do all of that in there, and you just click, like, your your fingerprint thing and boom, bought. My wife just told me you could do this for upselling Yeah. That's a good idea. Or abandon cart stuff. So if you abandon your cart, it's like, hey. Look. You almost finished your order, and then you get the email, but you literally just tap a button and you've you you buy right there on the spot. This is actually gonna change, I think how a lot of like, you're never gonna go to you're you're not gonna go to a website ever again. Imagine that same concept would apply to text where the open rate is 90% instead of 10%. So, like, for instance, when I get an email from Amazon, I don't ever open it. But if I get a text, I open it just because it's a text. I think text right now is underutilized. I agree email's underutilized with all these features that we're talking about, but text is even more underutilized. It's like we're still texting the way we texted, you know, 15 years ago. I completely agree. Are you guys, when we talked about newsletters last time, everyone loved it. But with your company, are you guys using text at all? I, like, get nervous to use texting. Are you guys using it? No. But I am, for first off, I just think from from a pure perspective, like, if someone's listening to this, there's so many opportunities for subscription newsletters, but substack.com is is this amazing site where within 5 minutes, you could set up a 4 pay subscription newsletter. This never existed before despite the the ease of the technology. No one had ever created this before. But I do think texting should be should be used as a marketing tool. There's all sorts of regulations, but, you know, companies like Community are getting through those regulations, and I think it's I think it's worth it because, again Yeah. Did you do do you use Community? I'm about to start within the next day. I just kind of got onboarded to their beta. It's so expensive. I don't even know. I've, are you are you in the beta? Or we went through I got invited to basically, so commute is it community.com? Yeah. Community.com is the service where I hate saying this. I think it was, like, only for influencers at first. Basically, you have to have, like, a large following, and you put in your Twitter handle, like, text this number, and I will send you my updates whenever. And so, for somehow, because I have a Twitter following, I think I got invited to use it. And I went through the thing, and I it was, like, $3 a month, I think. I don't remember what it was, and I was like, I don't wanna, like, I don't wanna have to be dedicated. I don't wanna have to talk to people all the time. You should try again because maybe they're not maybe they opened it up for free now. So I haven't seen anything about pricing. I should use it. I think it's cool. I just didn't want, like, another thing that I had to, do regularly. Yeah. But at the same time, like, if you're if you're a newsletter purveyor, which you are, then, again, you know, your open rates on the newsletter, I I don't know what they are, but the average newsletter is about 15 to 20%. And Ours is, like, 55. It's quite high, but a 98 would be awesome. Yeah. Well, I mean, 55 is huge because, you guys do provide huge value. Like I said the last time, I would say, you know, the hustle, trends, and for me, I check out Morning Brew. These are, like, the main newsletters I do, I read every day. So, and I get tons of newsletters. But, yeah, 98% is is huge value. Texting is just, in general, like, a much higher open rate. And, you know, there's more regulations, but there's regulations involving email newsletters as well. Yeah. I don't try to, but you can definitely get around a lot of those regulations as well. Yeah. And so, like, imagine if, hey, like, my closest friends are the ones who are willing to share their phone numbers or I have their phone numbers. You You know? Like, let's say I first sign up for hey, and I send you an email, and it just pops up a window. You cool with sending you know, having, Sam, access your phone number. Now, boom, I can you can either text me or I could text you or email you all through hey. That seems like a a a positive service that adds to my life as well. I'm into it. I like I like all the I like this line of thinking. Do you have, do you have even you said you had a list of ideas. What else were you thinking about? Well, I was gonna ask you about some ideas. Oh, I can can I tell you one alright. Can I tell you one that's, like, totally not like any of this stuff? Well, maybe I could I could connect it in a weird way. Okay. But do you have good posture? Medium. I did yoga for a long time. That probably helped my posture. Have you worked on it? Yeah. With yoga. But I don't I haven't done yoga in a long time. So I started reading this book called The Happy Body. Have you heard of The Happy Body? No. It's very, very interesting. And so, basically, I on one of my podcasts, I just mentioned that I had scoliosis, which basically just means one shoulder leans the other way. It's just not good posture. And it's not s**tty for aesthetic. I mean, it makes you look bad, but it's just, like, unhealthy, like, that your body doesn't work the way it does. And and and, basically, it all comes down to is the fact that we're sitting in front of our computers with our head down all the time. And I started reading The Happy Body, and it's written by this Polish weightlifter who was a world record holder at a variety of Olympic lifts. And then he was like, wait. Like, having all this muscle, I don't really need it. You don't, you know, you don't need to be that strong. You you need to be like a like, you need to be like the perfect amount of strong and have the perfect amount of muscle, which isn't that much. But you really need to be able to put your hands above your shoulders and squat and have thoracic spine flexibility and all this stuff. And I've started doing these exercises, and it's quite life changing, to be honest. And I what I what I think is gonna happen is I think that there's gonna be a variety of headspace and calm style apps, but for, posture and, Yeah. You can imagine, like, a Fitbit of posture. I think that we're gonna see that a lot because I think that as people are working from home, they're starting to optimize their work their workstation setups, and, I think we're gonna see a lot of that. And and then and and I think we're gonna see that change and become quite popular. You know, my my problem always is there's I don't have that many needs, meaning, like, I don't really go out of my way to buy clothes or you know, maybe the only thing I ever purchase is books, And I don't drive a car. I don't really deal with my living situation that much. That's why I live just in Airbnb for for years until, essentially, until I got married and so on. And so, it's it's almost hard for me to kind of come up with all these, you know like, I don't really care so much about many things that other people like, I don't care how many steps I walk per day. And Why? Why don't you care about your body, like, your shell? Well, I I do, but I know that I I do all the basics. So I eat well. I sleep 8 hours a day. I don't need a device to tell me how many hours to sleep. I I know how to eat well. And, you know, movement, I know that it's good to get outside and do exercise, you know, at least, you know, sometime per day. So it's not like and like you said, you don't have to overdo it in any direction. So I figured that it and I I understand, you know, measure what matters, but and I do to some extent, but I'm able to it's not that hard. I'm able to know. Did I sleep 8 hours? I'm able to know. Did I did I eat, pretty did I snack, or did I eat well today? I'm able to know. Did I do some exercise today? So I don't really like to gamify everything because then it's it's a stress. I'm not trying to gamify it. I'm trying to be 80 years old and not fall over and get hurt. I agree. So maybe something like that's useful, but I I always feel like I kind of think about that anyway without having to, like, rely on, an but may but maybe but I see the use for it. It's just it's kind of like a a second degree away from how I normally think. Whereas I'm more I'm more likely to think about, like, what we were talking about with hey. I'm more likely to think of what can help me live a better life. Oh, I just spent 6 weeks not communicating with anybody. It should pop up a a reminder more than you know, and Gmail pops up some reminders like that, but I need even better, like, smarter reminders or or smarter, you know, automated commerce reminders and so on, things like that. Or I'd like more information. Like, oh, this guy just emailed me and wants to advertise on my podcast. Who is he? Well, I have to go separately to another window and Google them and see if they're legit or not. I'd like to know maybe within the email whether this is legit. So stuff like that that actually improves my life, that's particular to me. Or, you know, like, right now, we're recording this on SquadCast. Well, it's a shame to me that there's not video on both sides. You know, we're gonna release the audio of this podcast, but and we see each other, but SquadCast doesn't record the video. So, you know, stuff like that that makes the my very particular job or the things I do during the day better is what always, attracts me. So did you did yeah. Did you have a list of ideas that were or or or one idea that was in vain or or in line with that? Yeah. So I'm I'm building right now. Imagine Zoom, but, you know, a ton more features like okay. The the, obviously, the audio recording on both sides, which which SquadCast has, which we're using right now, video recording on both sides, and progressive uploading. So even even Zencastr is gonna not gonna do progressive. They they're gonna do video on both sides, but they're gonna do, not progressive uploading, but just recording on both sides and then uploading at the end. And, also, I'd like some filters, when I'm doing a podcast, like Instagram style filters, particularly if I'm doing meetings. And and I could imagine choosing their the right filter for the meeting for a video remote meeting, and that's not baked into any software. The other thing is I know all sort you know, I run a comedy club, so I know there's been thousands of Zoom comedy events. I even know there's been Zoom opera singing events and all sorts of events now on Zoom. You know, there's better event organizing and even ticketing inside and and even social networking and discovery inside a video conferencing platform. So what do you mean you started this? So I I got a bunch of programmers. I'm a programmer and started building it. So we're we're almost done building our version of this. How many people did you employ? It's about 4 right now. Are they American? Yeah. Yeah. All because I've I've built companies using non American, and, you know, nothing wrong with that, but it's harder to gauge the skill level, and it's harder to keep in touch. So How many what what did you how much did you fund this with? Can you say that? Yeah. Over you know, it's it's kind of in process, but, like, initial funding is, like, around a 100. So it's not That's it? Yeah. Because of, it's not taking long for anybody, and I gave equity out. So I'm not I'm not a hog on equity. And, and, you know, there's there's room for this because Zoom is not a competitor. Right? Because they're still absorbing 600,000,000 new users. So they've got they've got their own issues. When is this gonna launch? Hopefully within the next few weeks. And are you who runs choose yourself, what do you call it? Choose yourself financial or choose choose what do you whatever what do you Financial. So that's a whole that's Agora. It's a whole other company. I'm not really involved in the management of that at all. I mean, I was initially, but I sold that. So I'm not I'm not you know, and I I go This is your gig, your full time gig than this competitor. I have a lot of full time gigs, but, yeah, it's one of them. Wow. Who's the head of product? Like, who's the product decision maker? It's me and the main programmer. So, you know, we we both been coming up with the features. And and and Jay, up top over here, the audio engineer has been, because he because we're gonna have you know, we're gonna put audio mixing in, so in real time. So Zencastr has audio mixing postproduction, but not during real time. I I'm I think that this is another idea where even if you suck, you're probably gonna be successful. Although, I don't think you will suck, but I'm more so amazed at how fast and cheap you're you made this. Well, because there's a lot of open saw source software, so the real key thing is the features. So and and kind of how you you know, you think about what the areas were domain experts in. So you're a domain expert in in email, and you've been doing podcasting. I'm I'm a domain expert in podcasting, so I know very detailed after thousands and thousands of podcasts, what features I need. But, also, as an event organizer, I know very detailed, what features I need. And I've been an investor in, like you know, I was an investor in Ticketfly, so I understand ticketing and microcommerce and and and and things like that. So, you could imagine in a in a Zoom comedy event, what if I wanted to tip somebody? So that could happen through the software. So there's all sorts of know that the tipping feature of Twitch, like, is, like, drives 100 of 1,000,000 in revenue? I Yeah. I didn't think that was a a I if someone told me tipping, I'm like, that's stupid. That's just ridiculous. Huge because think about it. How do you make money on YouTube? You could only make money on YouTube if you have millions of followers, but there are there are plenty of people who have no followers, but they'll have a video that has millions of views, but they can't monetize it because they've never monetized before. It would be good if YouTube, for instance, had a tipping feature. So but if if you have a video conferencing software that combines social networking so that videos could remain on the platform somewhat, and or podcasts or events or meetings or whatever, and then there's discoverability, which doesn't happen on any video conferencing. Like, if I wanna know about a virtual comedy event, for instance, someone has to send me an email. I'd like to be able to find it through the platform, but Zoom doesn't even know who I am. So, there's no social networking in any video conferencing platform, so adding even just a few of those features is, like, a huge win compared to everything out there. So so there's kinda, like, old school stuff that needs new better features like podcasting, and then there's new stuff, like, none no video conferencing platform has any sense of social networking except for maybe, like, Skype vaguely. But, it's just a No. But I know I know exactly what you mean. It doesn't do a good No. It's just like messaging and and whatever. So, and then there's also, like, these, you know, microcommerce things like Venmo and stuff that has small social, media features. But, again, video conferencing has not really been integrated into combined with social networking at all, and we see now with this lockdown that it should be. Like, I have to read about Zoom events on my friend's Facebook wall as opposed to having it within the platform. So, you know, that's that's a problem. But and, you know, in some of the features you mentioned even with, hey, could be interesting if there's, you know, oh, you know, I wake up and I see on my on my video conferencing calendar, oh, your friend Sam is having a a an ask me anything about startups today on Zoom at 2 PM. Do you wanna have us record it, or do you wanna attend it? Stuff like that. Yeah. I'm very fascinated by these things. I like yeah. I think that, there's so much opportunity out there. It's just so much Yeah. And, look, and the world's changing. Like, for instance, right now, okay, what what am I this is non tech at all. Right? So what am I wearing right now? It looks like I'm wearing a a shirt, but I'm actually wearing pajamas. I've worn nothing but pajamas for the past 30 days. I, I've I've What are those called? They're just pajamas. I'm doing just this is more this is more in the Well, what's that brand? It looks like a jacket. I don't even know. My wife got it. Yeah. It looks like a button down shirt or whatever. My wife got it. We've been I've been trying out all sorts of pajamas, for the past 30 days. I've gone out to I've gone out to eat at restaurants. I went protesting in New York wearing pajamas. I performed comedy wearing pajamas. Well, what does that word pajamas even mean? Does that just mean cotton all all pop up? Cotton or linen, but it's also by definition, it's just the most comfortable clothes you're gonna wear during the day. You could sleep in pajamas. You don't sleep in a suit. You don't sleep in a button down shirt with a tie. You don't sleep in your Brooks Brothers slacks or whatever. But, you do sleep in, like, cotton or linen, you know, light, pajamas. And so there's a combine it with another eye. And so, again, we're living in this lockdown environment that's not necessarily even if it goes away, even if we all, quote, unquote, go back to work, we're now gonna be home more than than we used to be. So having, you know, having, a sense you know, pajamas are gonna be more commonly worn, so why not have them as outerwear as well as innerwear? So nobody does designs on pajamas as if they're outerwear. But here's the other thing too. So there's and there's brands that do this, copper infused pajamas. So copper is an antiviral and antibacterial metal just like silver is. So silver the reason why you have the reason why you eat with silverware is because it disinfects the food on the way to your mouth, and it's antibacterial. So think about copper you know, in a coronavirus scared world, think about copper infused fabrics to make your pajamas, so you're so so it's acceptable now to more acceptable to wear your pajamas, your nicely designed pajamas that are copper infused outdoors. So I've been thinking of Have you have you do you know what JD Power is? No. Basically, it's like when you see, like, Chevy has a commercial and, like, we won the JD Power award for x y z. And it's kind of a scam a little bit, but it's like a certification. It's kinda like, you know how, like, in order to have organic, like, to be organic certified organic, it's like you, like, jump through these hoops, and it's like, alright. We've labeled you as organic. Do you think that, and JD Power does the same thing. It's like, we are JD Power. Like, I don't and I don't even know what it means. But do you think that this is gonna happen with, how clean restaurants are or how clean like, is there gonna be, like, this corona like, this bacteria certification for product? A 100%. So so what you just talked about, there's so many different business models that I've been thinking about around that. So yes. Which, by the way, that model is, like, one of the most profitable models there is because you're selling your just stamp and but it's incredibly hard to stay truthful and ethical. And just think about it from a corporate level, even more than a small business level. Fortune 500 companies spend over a $100,000,000,000 on all kinds of compliance. So compliance in general like, the word compliance is already in Fortune 500 budgets. So now if you go to an HR department of Procter and Gamble and you say, listen, we're the coronavirus compliance experts. We'll come in and give you a free talk and guide how you can be coronavirus compliant state by state, what are all the regulations, what you need to do, and then, you know, that gets you into the discussion with them. And then you say, okay. For x price, we'll come in every month and make sure you're coronavirus compliant. For another price, we'll sell you a subscription basket for all your branches or divisions or whatever. Here's all the tools you need for coronavirus compliance. Like, here's the ultraviolet lights. Here's the correctly approved sanitizing, and then we'll certify you. I think that's a a a $1,000,000,000 biz multibillion dollar industry, but since it's wide open right now, like, there are 0 businesses in the space, it's a huge Yeah. Like, are people gonna do this for, like, grocery stores or restaurants or hotels? Everything. A 100% everything. And you could start right now whether you're a 16 year old kid or you're a lawyer or whatever. Like, if you're a kid, I would go to every restaurant in your local town and say, well, we'll here's our checklist. We'll make sure you're coronavirus compliant every week, and we'll put we'll put this up. And by the way, we advertise in the local paper and and list all the coronavirus compliant stores. So, and but if you don't use us, here's a subscription basket that you need, with the most coronavirus compliant, materials. Like, here's the masks. Here's the gloves. Here's the wipes. What surely, like, China and Japan and Korea have had a history of SARS and all this other stuff. What did I wonder what they do. I would love to, like, research, the Asian countries and, or Asia and see how they've adapted to this because surely because, like, there's been a multiple epidemic or a pandemic. Yeah. I wonder how how what they've done. Well, a couple of things. One is is they're more culturally compliant anyway, which is why they didn't kind of have regulations to lock people down as much as the US did. But the other thing is we're passing the US is the one passing laws about this, and it's state by state, so it's difficult to comply. And the other thing the the third thing is there's technology now that that you weren't even aware of for 3 or 4 months. Nobody in the world was aware of. Like, ultraviolet light might have an effect on coronavirus, you know, on surfaces. So we know now a little bit more about what kills viruses versus what kills bacteria. You know, we know day by day, the research is getting updated on masks. So the idea of a subscription kit and and and, you know, up to date maintenance and people actually physically doing the compliance or people doing the certification. All of these things are either separate businesses or one business depending on what you wanna do, but it's it's absolutely a a a 10 to a $100,000,000,000 industry that hasn't there hasn't even been $1 in revenues created yet. So God. I'm getting I'm getting so greedy just thinking about all this. I'm like Like, just imagine this a subscription crate. Like, every month, we'll send you 20 masks. We'll send you 20 gloves. Here's the the ultraviolet light you need. Here's the, the the copper infused sheets for your bed. Here's, you know, the the right scrub for your services. So when you just need a new one every month because the old ones are dirty. So just that crate alone, people will pay for. God. That's fascinating. I, I'll I've gotta, I'll have to log off for the next handful of minutes, but I had a question for you about newsletters. It's something that we talked about last time, and people emailed me with questions. And so I I I think it was fascinating. So with with our our trends thing, it's pretty cool. And what we're gonna do so it's like a paid newsletter, but our community is actually more popular. So, eventually, we're gonna launch, like, this, higher end peer group type of service thing. But with with newsletters, with your guys' paid newsletters, was it as simple as just having, like, a a a a a niche writer, and you just did paid marketing to it? And it was that was it that simple? Yeah. I mean, I was the niche writer, and I and, you know, the other thing is I had an an audience. So I think the key thing, which you know already, but the key thing is 99% of your content should be free. Like and even by the way, usually your best content should be free, but then very highly specialized content, which you do with trends is is what you charge for, and you could charge a lot because it's so specialized. But I'm also now more in favor of ins like, you have sponsors on on your newsletter. Right? I I believe, or maybe I'm confusing with with one rule a little bit. Yeah. No. We have advertising. But but I like I I don't like the ad model. I like, I hate the ad model. But even on free, I like the affiliate ad model. You make a lot more money with affiliate ads. So you could still say this is sponsored, but if you're if you're writing something on, hey. Social media agencies are trending now. There's there's 55 courses out there on how to create the best social media agency. Pick the best one and be in a do an affiliate deal with them as opposed to getting them as a sponsor. So then it's more in your control who you put as an advertiser, and you could speak directly to it. Like, I chose this because and you do a 5050 split on their on their course. You can make, like, 5 x the money. Are you we charge $300 a year for our newsletter. What what did you find was the optimal price? It's at $300 a year, it's hard to buy like, spend money to acquire customers. Yeah. I think $300 a year in now everybody's got a different opinion and every and and everybody The what I like about trends, you're saying you charge $300 a year for trends. Right? Yeah. So $300 so so trends is good because it's actionable. Like, I expect to read trends and come up with a business idea. Just like on a stock market newsletter, that's a maybe slightly more actionable, but trends is still actionable in that, oh, this is a business idea? Okay. And he's telling me exactly how do I how to do it? Okay. That's worth it. But $300 is sort of known as, dead man's land. That's what I thought. It's like a $100 or $2,000. Yeah. I think I think that's right. So so almost it's like trend should be your $100 one or your $90 one, and then upsells from that should be your 2,001. And and by the way, you have multiple 2,000 ones, and then you have an alliance, product which combines for life all the $2,000 ones. So it's a one time fee plus small maintenance, and then that's, you know, maybe 6,000 but discounted to 4,000, you know, something like that. Yeah. So what what I think what I wanna build I think what we're gonna build is I I think lowering the price of trends is actually the a good idea. And then, do you know, YPO and Vistage and things like that? No. YPO stands for Young's president or Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know YPO. Or EO, which is I I don't know what it stands for, but EO is a thing. Do you know what Vistage is? It's like a CEO network of, like, 25,000 CEOs, and you pay a fee and you get act and you have a a a networking group, a peer group. I think we're gonna launch something similar to that. I think that's the move. I'm very fascinated with these private networking groups that are not open to the public. Yeah. Look at, like, Podcaster's Paradise. Do you know Podcaster's Paradise? Well, I know. I don't subscribe. Is it awesome? It's good. Yeah. John Lee Dumas, and it's $2,000 to join. And it's got this thousands of people who have joined. So, like, a 4 pay Facebook group is also a good idea versus there's no newsletter attached to it either. So, like, you know, right right now, I get the Trends newsletter, but I get the benefit of if, you know, somebody just asked on in your Trends Facebook group today, what are some other high margin products like perfumes? And just looking down the comments of that question, I learned an enormous amount. Like, this is why perfumes are high margin. This is a better way to attack the situation. Here are some other products, like, you know, edible, gummies is another high margin product. Golf balls cost 11¢ to make, and you sell them for a dollar 50 each. I didn't know that. And so there's value to your your trans Facebook group outside of I didn't even know I was gonna get that value outside of your newsletter. So Right? That's why I'm like, oh, the networking is way cooler. Yeah. People would be shocked at how many people would buy a $2,000 newsletter. I I remember, like, if you told me that 2 years ago, I'd be like, what? Now you're you're I'm I'm not surprised anymore. But by the way, even if you don't need as many, you need 7 times less. Right? And and by the way, when you want to really sell, you discount. So, you know, every now and then you'll have discounts. And, like, you know, trends, I don't think you wanna make trends so expensive because it's such a it it's so valuable and you want a a a large audience for it to so people could see the kind of value you deliver when you pay. But then the the group itself or, you know, okay. Maybe I wanna see maybe I wanna have access to your the the best core like like, you'll say something like in in the trends newsletter, oh, airline c**ktail kits are a thing. That was cool. Right? You saw that one. But, like, what I wanna know is what does that even mean? Like, how would I make that business so I would pay for a higher end product so that every single thing you mentioned in trends, I get 10 steps on how to make that business. I would a 100% pay $2,000 for that. So, like but now you kinda gave me the work. You just gave me a great idea, and you said this is a great idea. But now I've gotta do a 100% of the work to figure it out when I don't know. How am I how am I gonna make, like, a subscription airline c**ktail kit? Like, I would pay if you ever if even half the things you mentioned in trends, I or or or or hustle, I could then learn how to do. Even if I don't do it, by the way, because, you know, when people buy newsletters that are actionable, they don't normally, they don't take the actions. They just like knowing more than other people. So that's why they pay. They they want c**ktail party conversation. God. This is awesome. Did, did the last podcast we do together, did people like it? Oh, yeah. They I I think we gotta do a regular thing, by the way. I think you I'll do this regularly because whenever so, like, I was planning stuff that I was gonna bring up on here, but now, like, I'm leaving this I'm leaving this conversation incredibly inspired. I'm like, it sucks there's so little time in the day. And, by the way, I haven't gotten to any of the questions I wanted to ask you. So we gotta we gotta res we gotta schedule now for our next one because okay. You gave me an idea today or or I shouldn't say you. The, one of the things in in the trends group. I had never even saw this concept of minimalist wallet pads before. So, you know, all Huge. Minimalist wallets. So what's what's it called? What I don't know. I didn't even see it. Did we talk about what's the one that starts with an r? Ridge. Ridge Wallet. Yeah. They're huge. I Oh, yeah. I know Ridge Wallet because a lot of, a lot of common a lot of comedy podcasts actually, Ridge Wallet sponsors. So Yeah. I know Ridge. Do you have a minimalist wallet? Yeah. Is my wallet What what's the concept? Is that there's not that much leather or what? I mean, I looked it up. I clicked on the link, and I looked and I saw on Amazon they're selling it, but then they gave me an idea. Yeah. What's your idea? So my so so I, you know, I've written about in many of my books, my concept of how to exercise the idea muscle, and and you write 10 ideas a day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and and I've done I've been doing this for years years. It's given me it's every oh, so that's a minimalist wallet. What makes it minimalist? I can only keep a few things in here. So, like, a few bills and, like, your cards? Yeah. I've got just I I only have this because I'm traveling. I probably have I have $200 and 5 or 6 cards. That's it. Right. So so so a lot of my readers subscribe to my concept of in order to be creative, it helps you know, you wanna kind of You got flex. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna you wanna build the ditch before it rains. So so you have to exercise your idea muscle every day, and I always say waiters pads are great. Just functionally, they're the form factor's great. Functionally, they're great. They look good. And so I wanted to create, minimalist wallets with the form factor and functionality of waiters pads, and so people could also write their ideas on. So it gives you even more incentive to not I'm always afraid to get a wallet because I'll lose it. Wait. You don't have a wallet? I don't have a wallet. I've never had a wallet. God. Every girlfriend I've ever had has bought me a wallet as a gift, and I've never used it because I'll lose my wallet. Well, have you you've you've seen this. Right? No. What's that? It's called a Tile, and, it I keep it it's the size of a credit card, and I keep it in my wallet, and it's attached to my phone. And so if I lose my phone, I just double click this, and it my phone makes a buzz noise. And then if I lose my wallet, I double tap my phone, and my wallet makes a noise. I I love that. But so my thinking was and I'll I'll even steal that idea. But my thinking was combine the idea of a waiter's pad with the minimalist wallets because there's a little bit extra room now because they're minimalist. And so people could every time they pull out their wallet to pay for something, they're reminded to exercise their idea muscle, and it'll it'll look pretty. It'll have nice branding, and, it'll keep you more attached to the wallet. So for someone like me, I won't lose it and even have to go through the whole, you know, functionality of Tile to find it. So but just small things like like that. And Your fans are gonna buy that so much. Believe it or not, I'm I'm excited about the video stuff, but I'm excited about the pajamas, but we'll see. I've got a whole branding of that as well. But there's all sorts of stuff. And then the coronavirus compliance, I wish I was excited about it, but I'm not. But that is to me the clearest way to build a business you could sell for 10 to a 100,000,000 within the next couple years. Like, there's there's I I think that's a money making machine, and it's so you don't even need a website. Right? I mean, you need need a website. You need a phone. Yeah. And you could and you could imagine doing LinkedIn marketing to every HR manager on the planet. So it's you're going to get business and, you know but I'm just I'm I don't like to do things I'm not interested in. Same. But, you know you know, the other thing is next time, let's talk more about, online education because I think there's huge opportunities there. And I've got some good insight. I just did a course recently, and, I've got mixed feelings. What was the course on? It was called the ideation boot camp, and I went through my research process of, like, finding opportunities and ideas. And, it was very profitable, and the ratings were high, but I did not like doing it. Yeah. It's it's interesting. But then so so there of course, there's the idea of making online courses, and I I have, for instance, an online course in self publishing. Same experience. Like, I would have rather have had affiliated with an online course on self publishing instead of creating one. But I do think this is relates back to certification. As higher education moves online, which it will. Right? Like, they now project there's gonna be 15% less students in college next year than than the year before. So there's people still need to learn skills. So online education kids? College age? All between 18 and 22. Oh, god. So so so I am I am massively in in tune with this. I also was an investor in Teachable. I've been involved in other you know, I built online courses. Oh, I just had dinner with, Encore in Austin a few days ago. Yeah. So Encore, I was I was an investor. So, Were you in their seed round? I was, not in a big way, though. So I didn't I didn't benefit like the way Encore did, but but I benefit. I made money. But, you know, so there's there's it's already a glut of online schools, but the idea of, doing kind of certifications and almost like nano degrees across platforms, you know, and and accreditation in such a way that the big companies will respect this just as much as they respect a degree from, let's say, Quinnipiac College, would be interesting. I mentioned Quinnipiac specifically because no one's ever heard of it. Never heard of that. And yet Google will hire you if you went there, but they might not hire you if you, took a course on Coursera. Where'd your kids go? Well, one is about to graduate, college in London. It's a colleges in London are 3 years, and they're much cheaper. One dropped out. Thank god. Because I I she wanted to be she wants to be, an actor, and my view to her was why take s**tty acting classes from a college when you could actually move to New York City and act? And do it. Another one is gonna take a a gap year and maybe never go, and she's already doing her side hustles on Etsy and Shopify and so on. Another one is not gonna go at all, and she's into photography. There's no reason for her to go. And, another one is is unfortunately gonna go next year. She's starting, but I'm praying that they just don't open up this one. She's gonna go to Columbia. So Wow. Well, you have all girls? 5 girls? Four girls and 1 guy. You have, your your family is as interesting as your per as your life. You are just the weirdest, strangest, oddest, but most interesting person I know. Like, most fathers would not just the way you answered that question was so not typical. Well, you know, the thing is I realized early on that even though I believe strongly in this, I'm you know, this is not the fight when they're 18 to have with them because they'll never speak to me again, and I want to be there for them when they're 26. But fortunately, just by representing my beliefs, it's kind of swayed, you know, at least 3 of them, you know, and maybe the 4th. We'll see. But it's actually on on Patriot Act. You know, Hasan Minhaj's show on Netflix, Patriot Act? He, he he his last one this past Sunday was on is college worth it? And there's a little video clip of me talking about why college is not worth it. Wow. So he he calls me an a*****e in there, but that's okay. That's awesome. Who? Hey. It's PR. I've gotta I've gotta run. I've been sitting in the look. I've been sitting in this car, and I'm actually gonna buy a nice car like this because this is awesome doing podcast is podcasts in here. But The podcast won't be all. Yeah. Exactly. Can I come back on again, like, in the next few weeks? Because this is exciting for me. We'll do the whole thing. And can we record what I'm about to say? Can you guys, my Twitter handle is the Sam Parr. So it's the word the and then the word Sam, s a m, and then the word parr, p a r r. I would love you guys to tweet at me and let me know what you think about this because I like this, and I wanna come back again and make, it valuable for people. And so I wanna figure out what, what was good and what wasn't, and how can I how I can make it better? Yeah. Alright. Good. Yeah. Because we got a lot of, feedback on the last one. More more feedback than I usually get. It was good. Great. Well, this is exciting for me.