6 Business Ideas To Start In 2023: Mouth Tape, Lupini Beans & More (#459)

Real Estate, Pay Transparency, Jobs of the Future - May 25, 2023 (almost 2 years ago) • 01:13:40

This My First Million episode features returning guest Steph Smith, who discusses trends and potential business ideas. She shares her observations on the changing landscape of work and real estate, sparking a conversation about the future of various industries. The discussion touches upon personal finance, career paths, and the impact of technology on various aspects of life.

Fractional Real Estate: Steph suggests repurposing vacant commercial real estate for temporary uses like yoga studios or rage rooms, citing the example of Temple Immersive, a nightclub that hosts other activities during the week. Sam and Shaan discuss Raleigh Williams' success with escape rooms, starting with a mobile escape room in a bus and expanding to include trampoline parks and axe throwing.
Pay Transparency: Steph highlights Hannah Williams' success on TikTok and Instagram, where she asks people about their salaries. Williams has capitalized on recent pay transparency laws by creating a personal brand around salary information, generating substantial income through affiliate links, workshops, and a salary database. Shaan mentions Levels.fyi, a similar platform for tech salaries.
Over-the-Counter Hearing Aids: The FDA's decision to allow over-the-counter hearing aid sales prompts a discussion about the industry. Steph notes that most hearing aids are already 3D printed, and Shaan mentions the potential of direct-to-consumer hearing aid brands. This leads to a conversation about the surprising applications of 3D printing in medicine, such as creating custom implants.
Jobs of the Future: Steph proposes the concept of a "Steph's List" to crowdsource ideas for emerging job roles. She revisits her previous suggestion of a Chief Automation Officer to help companies implement technology effectively. Shaan suggests a "collaboration expert" to improve team dynamics and communication, similar to a team therapist. Sam criticizes the often-misunderstood role of community manager. Shaan proposes the concept of a "band manager" for podcasters and YouTubers to handle various business and community aspects. Steph introduces the roles of Head of Remote, to optimize remote work practices, and Cyber Actuary, to assess risks related to cybercrime and online activities.
Food Trends: Steph suggests the potential of lupini beans as the next health food trend, comparing their nutritional value to other popular snacks. The conversation then shifts to David Friedberg's Cana, a device that could create various drinks from flavor cartridges. The project's cancellation despite Friedberg's prominence sparks speculation about the reasons behind its failure.
Advent Calendars: Steph proposes creating niche advent calendars as a business idea, citing the success of a sake advent calendar. This sparks a discussion about the potential for various themed advent calendars beyond traditional chocolate.
Personal Finance and Spending: The discussion concludes with a conversation about the challenges of spending money wisely. Shaan shares a story about someone hiring a consultant to help them spend money effectively. This leads to a discussion about Ramit Sethi's advice on learning how to spend and Shaan's mention of a framework for evaluating purchases based on frequency and magnitude of joy.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	D to C hearing aids. I think that's actually going to be a big deal.
00:03	Sam Parr	They were profitable.
00:05	Shaan Puri	I mean, I'm just turning you on. Yeah, they were... oh.
00:08	Sam Parr	Totally. More again, are they Mormons? Oh my God, how far away from the coast do they live?
00:18	Shaan Puri	Are they inland?
00:31	Sam Parr	Alright, we're here. Steph Smith's here.
00:34	Shaan Puri	One of the all-time favorite guests! This is, I think, appearance number six. So if you love this one, go listen to the other five that Steph's done. Steph is great because she brings a dossier. I can't even call it a document; it should be on Google Dossier.com because it is a 15-page document of trends, ideas, and small observations that might become something. This makes you essentially the perfect MFM guest. You're also cool and fun to hang out with, so thank you for coming back!
01:08	Steph Smith	Yeah, it's good to be here. Every time I come on, I get way more nervous than any other appearance because you guys hype me up like that.
01:13	Sam Parr	Sean, do you know how I met Steph?
01:16	Shaan Puri	No, tell me the story.
01:18	Sam Parr	I will forever take credit for Steph Smith's career. It has nothing to do with how hard she works.
01:23	Steph Smith	What I do.
01:24	Sam Parr	No matter how hard she works, no matter how smart she is, it's all of me. I've... I... I'm a couple of... So basically, she had this blog. It still is: step smith dot io.
01:35	Steph Smith	Yep.
01:36	Sam Parr	It's... it was a really good blog. She had this headline, and the headline was, "To be great, just be good consistently." Is that it, Steph?
01:43	Steph Smith	Basically.
01:44	Sam Parr	What was it? What is it exactly?
01:46	Steph Smith	Yeah, it's like, "How to be great?" Just be great repeatedly.
01:50	Sam Parr	Being good repeatedly.
01:51	Steph Smith	Oh yes, be good.
01:52	Sam Parr	And I was like... I DM'ed her. I was like, "Steph, this is the best headline I've ever read. This is a really good headline." Like, "We're launching this thing called Trends. Do you want to join us?" And she was like, "Maybe." And I was like, "Look, come work for us for a couple years, and I have a feeling you're gonna go and leave us, and that's totally cool. Come do like a tour of duty." Now it's been about a year and a half, maybe a year since she's left. She's at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the biggest VC firms in the world. How is that going?
02:18	Steph Smith	It's going great! Yeah, we just hired a producer, which is nice because for a while, I was kind of hacking it together myself. But yeah, I feel like the podcast is finally taking off. We're trying a bunch of different formats. It's actually like I'm easing into it. I'm finally having fun! When I listen to "My First Million," you can tell you guys talk about it. It's like the best job in the world. I'm finally easing into that, which is nice.
02:40	Sam Parr	What's it like working there? I mean, when I think about working there, I think of the TV show "1,000,000,000," you know? Like, it's just fun stuff all the time. But is it just normal company bullshit? I mean, is it more of a normal job than I think, or is it as spectacular as I would imagine?
02:57	Steph Smith	I mean, it's kind of both. Because day to day, it's totally normal. You're just doing your job; you're just doing work.
03:02	Shaan Puri	Do you go into an office, or are you remote?
03:04	Steph Smith	I'm remote. They do have offices, and I go in every so often. I started working remotely a year into my career, and for the last 8 years or so, I've never had an office. So, it's like a novelty for me. Everyone else is sick of the office, and I'm like, "Oh, candy bars!"
03:19	Shaan Puri	You're like, "Oh, you just sit here all day? Wow." Yeah, you can't leave this box.
03:25	Steph Smith	I know, it's crazy! I'm like, "Oh, a call booth? How special!"
03:28	Shaan Puri	I think the way Sam talks about when his wife, Sarah, worked at Facebook is interesting. He mentions that when you work at a place, you just sort of get used to everything and optimize for convenience. For example, he says, "Oh, the all-hands meeting's on. I can either go down to the cafeteria and listen to it, or they have a streaming option because there's plays all around the world." He thinks, "Alright, whatever. I'll just stream it from my desk. Yeah, that's easier. I'll eat my salad here." But Sam was like, "No, you need to go sit front row with a pen and pad. When he says, 'Any questions?' you need to jump out of your chair and just ask him a question every single week until he invites us over for dinner." That was basically Sam's master plan.
04:04	Steph Smith	Until you're his best friend.
04:05	Shaan Puri	I kind of think you should be doing the same thing. Like, what's the point of working at Andreessen Horowitz unless you're just at the office every day waiting for some awesome Marc Andreessen moment to happen? Or just like you're there when he yells at somebody and it just goes off. Or, you know, they're doing a blood... like the 12-year-old's coming to give them blood and you're like, "Yes! This is the weirdness I came here for." It's like...
04:29	Sam Parr	It's like every movie ever where there's the big boss at the conference table. It's like, "Who... what channel has put this together?" Then the manager's like, "Oh, one of my guys. Bring your guy here. Let me talk to that person." Or like Marc Andreessen's going to say, "You know, who thought to do this? The number on this is blankety blank." And you say, "Actually, sir, it's 6473." "What did you say?" "It's 6473. Because this... come with me."
04:54	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like, "Who?" For six weeks, I've been leaving crumbs in the kitchen to see if anybody would clean it up. Finally, somebody did! Let's pull up the security footage. It was Steph Smith. You're promoted! You're at the top now. And this is the fanfic. This is what I think is going to happen if you... but you just gotta be there. I can't believe you're not there every day. You should be.
05:11	Steph Smith	Every day in the office.
05:12	Shaan Puri	The real upside of your job is not your salary. It's that you can go hang out with some of the smartest people in the world. But you gotta do the hangout part, not just when we're on calls. That we don't.
05:21	Steph Smith	Gotta hover, yeah.
05:22	Shaan Puri	You got.
05:22	Steph Smith	You're right. I gotta hover around the office.
05:24	Shaan Puri	Just like you do on the internet, you gotta lurk.
05:26	Sam Parr	You gotta be.
05:27	Shaan Puri	A lady girl.
05:28	Shaan Puri	If you told your 21-year-old self that you would be in this position, would you just stay home and do your own thing? Or would you go there, hang out, and lurk, being serendipitous about what’s going to happen? You know, the 21-year-old you would be like, "Oh, I'm definitely going in! I'm going to meet these people and see what's up." But I think it's easy later to be casual about it.
05:50	Steph Smith	Yeah, I gotta embrace it. I feel like Sam. If you're in the office, you'd go up to someone grabbing a snack and be like, "Hey, what's up? How's it going?" And I'm like, so awkward. I'm like, "Oh..."
05:59	Shaan Puri	You need to be in a romantic comedy, bumping into everybody and dropping all the papers that you're holding. Then, you can say, "Let's clean this up."
06:05	Shaan Puri	Up together, like not even for the romance.
06:08	Shaan Puri	Just to create a little intersection between you and these people... Yeah, when I was at Twitch, when we got acquired, I literally told people there openly, "I'm not here to do my job. I'm going to find whatever the most interesting things are happening here, and I'm just going to go be in those meetings and do that." You're not going to be in...
06:27	Sam Parr	The top right.
06:28	Shaan Puri	Like, it worked amazingly. You're friends with Emmett? Yeah, me and Emmett. You know, I got to the point where I was like, "This is the most interesting guy in this building." So anytime it was like, "You need to go talk to Jerry on the 4th floor," I was like, "Nah, I think I'm just gonna hang out with Emmett." I'm just gonna stay in the meeting. We do the meeting with Emmett, and everybody gets up and leaves. I'm just gonna stay there on my laptop. The next group walks in, and I'm still there. I'm just gonna hang out and see what happens. No one's gonna say anything. I remember when Ninja got poached. The top streamer on Twitch got poached, and there were secret meetings happening about what we should do. Should we counteroffer? What is it? It's like a code red moment. But I wasn't in those meetings, so I just wrote up a plan and sent it to three top executives. I was like, "Here's the plan for Ninja. I know I'm not even on the team." Then they were like, "Attend this meeting tonight at 8 PM." I was like, "I'm in!" I got into the cool stuff by just not doing my job. That's my recommendation to you: if you're gonna be around these 9,000 IQ people, that's the real upside of your job. Don't do your actual job; do the job of hanging out.
07:30	Sam Parr	Speaking of which, Steph, do you think that the talent there is actually significantly smarter than at any other decent tech company?
07:41	Steph Smith	I would say yes. I would say I've worked at, I mean, not that many companies, but it's...
07:45	Shaan Puri	A direct shot at you, Sam. He's just only really able to work for you and market people.
07:49	Steph Smith	I work.
07:50	Sam Parr	For taking care of yourself.
07:51	Steph Smith	I have worked at least five companies where I've been a full-time employee, and I would say yes.
07:57	Shaan Puri	She's like, "My previous job was a lot of checkers, and now I'm playing chess."
08:03	Sam Parr	What the fuck do those geniuses know about newsletters?
08:05	Shaan Puri	Well, you know that's how something gets bigger than this. You were like, "Oh, I get nervous for this more than anything else." I'm curious, do you feel nervous when you are in one of these... like a16z [Andreessen Horowitz] meetings? Are you like, "Oh, these are the people I used to follow on Twitter and stuff like that," and now I'm in this room?
08:21	Steph Smith	Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's an element too where I don't represent the company running this podcast. But in a way, the podcast is like an asset to the firm. They hired... I mean, I'm glad they did, but they hired a 29-year-old who, candidly, feels a little out of place amongst these people who have been, you know, like Marc Andreessen, who basically invented the internet. He created the first wide-scale browser. So, I do feel sometimes a little out of place, but I feel like I'm a year in and I'm getting used to it.
08:51	Shaan Puri	I think you should give yourself more credit. You're cooler than everybody I've met at a 6 and C. So, you know, I think they are lucky to have you, as far as I'm concerned.
09:00	Steph Smith	I'm gonna bring in one of those neat gray name tags that says "Cooler Than You." Sean thinks I'm cooler than everyone here.
09:06	Sam Parr	Exactly. This is why I knew she was a good hire. Because I was like, in my head, I was like, "Oh, she doesn't understand how good..."
09:13	Shaan Puri	She is.
09:15	Sam Parr	I'm like, "This is a deal. I got them, got them." She doesn't know yet. Seth, where do you want to go from here?
09:24	Steph Smith	Let's just start with the first idea. I think this one is really interesting because right now, a lot of people listening know that there's this issue with commercial real estate. All these office buildings, you know, are up for sale or at least people are leaving.
09:41	Shaan Puri	Like, the highest level of vacancy ever, basically. Especially in cities like San Francisco, where I think there's like 35% vacancy and it's going up as soon as people's leases roll off. As soon as they can get out of their lease, they will. So, it's just a disaster.
10:00	Sam Parr	Exactly this thing.
10:01	Steph Smith	So, a lot of people think, "Okay, well then let's go change, let's swap that commercial real estate for homes, apartments, etc." That makes sense. But I think there's this huge opportunity for fractional real estate. So, click one of where it says "see here," click one of those and tell me what you see.
10:19	Sam Parr	Alright, Sean, you wanna go?
10:21	Shaan Puri	I'll describe it... I'll just grab it. So, it looks like something called Temple Immersive. It basically looks like a yoga class of some kind. It's dimly lit with candles, looks like a hot yoga class. But then on the roof, there's this crazy visual where it looks like you're in the forest. The whole thing just looks super cool.
10:38	Steph Smith	Where do you think this is? What is this building?
10:41	Shaan Puri	I mean, I have no idea. This looks a lot... I mean, this looks like the lobby of an office building in a way. It's like huge.
10:47	Sam Parr	But they make it look like a temple.
10:49	Steph Smith	Yeah, so this is a club.
10:50	Shaan Puri	Night club.
10:50	Steph Smith	During the night, a nightclub... So, I mean, this is just one example, obviously, of where real estate is used. From what? Saturdays, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
11:00	Shaan Puri	That's it.
11:01	Steph Smith	From like 7 PM to 2 AM, and then throughout the week, it's not used at all. The thing that I found fascinating is that I went to this place called Temple Immersive in San Francisco. I talked to the woman there, and I asked, "How did you find this? Did you reach out to a bunch of clubs?" They replied, "No, the club reached out to us." I guess it makes sense, but this club has all this real estate that's being unused. I was just thinking about what other applications this could have elsewhere. In any city, someone could contact a bunch of clubs and link them up with yoga studios, Pilates studios, etc. But then I was also thinking, what else could this real estate be used for? Another trend that's been taking off is rage rooms. Have you guys heard of rage rooms?
11:48	Sam Parr	No, but I like to remember you guys. Smash!
11:49	Shaan Puri	It’s right.
11:51	Steph Smith	Yeah, there's one in San Francisco as well, but basically, people...
11:56	Shaan Puri	Are you angry?
11:57	Steph Smith	They're losing their jobs.
11:59	Sam Parr	Is it like the Rage Room Festival or like the Market Street Market?
12:05	Steph Smith	The city is the rage room.
12:06	Sam Parr	Yeah, CVS is doing a rebrand. Okay, what is this "rage room" shit?
12:16	Steph Smith	So, people will literally go and, yeah, like Sean said, you just smash it. They’ll give you a bunch of plates, old electronics, and other stuff. I think depending on what you choose, you pay a different amount. You just get a session in this empty room, and you get to smash stuff, which you just don’t get to do in normal life. I was thinking, you know, not just a yoga studio, but a lot of this real estate could be converted. Like, go convert a club during the week to a rage room. People would...
12:47	Sam Parr	I think I have always thought that these little things wouldn't be that interesting. But we have this member of Hampton, and he's tweeting about it. His name's Raleigh Williams. I was just going to bring him up.
12:56	Shaan Puri	Yep.
12:57	Sam Parr	Dude, so he... I think he's in Utah and he created it. It's like, I don't know, I thought "escape room" was like a brand, but I think it's also like the style.
13:07	Shaan Puri	Mhmm.
13:08	Sam Parr	And so, he created a version of an escape room. And what did he do, Sean? He sold it for about $30,000,000.
13:15	Shaan Puri	Created a business, he sold it for $26,000,000. What he says is basically he's at a law firm and he doesn't love his job. He's like, "Okay, should I do something else? What should I do?" He reads an article that talks about how lucrative escape rooms were. This was back in 2015 when escape rooms were really like just sort of the new trend. It was the new, new... like froyo, basically. So, he looks it up, finds out how much money these make, and he's like, "Okay, I think this is a good business." But he doesn't have enough money to go build it out. In the true entrepreneurial spirit, he doesn't let the lack of resources stop him. He becomes resourceful. He's like, "Alright, can I build an escape room inside this abandoned bus?" So, he goes and buys this 1984 Bluebird bus and converts the inside into an escape room. Now he's got an escape room on wheels! He could drive it up to companies' offices and do the corporate off-site right there. It wasn't perfect in the sense that if it was a hot day or a cold day, it kind of sucked to be inside of it. But other than that, it was super efficient because it allowed him to get real cash flow going. I think he said the bus itself was making like $5,000 or $10,000 a month in free cash flow. So, he starts opening up more. He builds out his first real one, opens 5 or 6 more, or whatever. Then he starts adding to the back of it, so there's real estate. He's getting the real estate with the escape room and getting more space. He created a trampoline park and axe throwing. So basically, just like this kind of out-of-home entertainment is what we call this category. He just bundles these together and over that...
14:53	Shaan Puri	From around 2015 to 2020, he built this thing up and then started selling them off. He's selling off in chunks or pieces, and he basically said that he made $26 million doing this. I think it was through a combination of the sale plus the distributions along the way, but I might be wrong. Maybe it's both. He said he had... let's see... he spent $10 million building these out, and over the years, there was about $20 million in distributions from [the investments].
15:20	Sam Parr	From Boston.
15:21	Shaan Puri	So, you know, kind of an amazing outcome and amazing return for this guy.
15:25	Sam Parr	Thanks, sir. Yeah, I didn't think that these would be good. Then I met him and I started learning about him.
15:30	Shaan Puri	He's a nice dude too. People should go follow him on Twitter.
15:32	Sam Parr	How do you know him?
15:33	Shaan Puri	I just know him through Twitter. I've been going back and forth with him a little bit, and then he listens to the podcast. So, you know, he had reached out at some point.
15:43	Sam Parr	Steph, talk about this pay transparency thing. This interests me a lot.
15:47	Steph Smith	Yeah, so in the last couple of years, there have been a bunch of laws that have changed across states. I think Colorado is maybe the most well-known, where companies have to, depending on the state, disclose certain aspects of a job related to pay. Right? So it might be a range that a specific job requires. Also, things like even if you're in a job, you can request your band and know why you're paid a certain amount and how you compare to others across the company. So that's changing. It's still changing; it's very much in flux. I think there's at least a dozen states that now require you to share those pay ranges. For example, this one girl, Hannah Williams, she's 26, so super young. She quit her job making about $115,000 a year. In the last year, she has just been doing the kind of "man on the street" segment, and all she does is go up and ask people, "Hey, what do you do? How much do you make?" Her social accounts have blown up! She has over 1,000,000 followers on TikTok and 450,000 on Instagram, and she's on other channels as well. An article was written about her in January, and she had already made $600,000 since her switch. I'm sure she's made way more now with the accounts being the size they are. But this is one of the cases we've talked about before. When there's a regulation change, there's a rule change, a line in the sand is drawn, and then that has implications. This one is so far-ranging, right? Because it impacts any job within these given states.
17:28	Sam Parr	So, if you go to her profile, she's doing a really good job. You go to her profile on TikTok and click that link that says "Stan." Check this out: here’s how she’s making money. The top link is an Indeed link where it says, "Get a job as a nurse," so she’s getting an affiliate commission from that. Then, she has a market research guide, which is about learning how much you should be making. I guess that’s so she can collect emails. Next, there’s a link to attend workshops in Los Angeles and New York City. She partnered with Capital One to do local seminars at their banks, since some of their banks have cafes. Additionally, I believe she has a subscription database where you can see individual salary data packed with contextual information. This woman is awesome! This is how you do it. Also, Shadi, this is how you do it.
18:18	Shaan Puri	And Sam invested in Stan. So, good, good use of Stan here for putting a link in the bio that lets you make a bunch of money. Yeah, this is cool. We've talked about Levels, that FYI on the pod before, which is a similar concept. It's like crowdsourcing salary info. So, if you're an engineer at Facebook, you can go find out, "Am I getting paid what other L4 engineers get paid? Or should I be working at Google, and what would I get paid if I was over there?" I think they're doing an awesome job at this. When we had mentioned this on the pod, somebody did this for doctors. They were like, "Hey, we think we should do this for nurses and doctors." Then they were like, "Hey, we're med students," and so they went and did this for doctors and created a database. I think they got acquired by Levels actually after hearing it on the pod and then taking action on it. So, I definitely think that there's opportunity here. And I like, Sam, what do you call it? Regulatory inflections? Regulatory inflections... inflections.
19:14	Sam Parr	Is the "I" word the inflections? Inflections occur anytime there's a law change. There are multiple types of inflections. First, there's the tech inflection, which is like how Uber exists because everyone now has an iPhone and GPS in their phone. Then, there are cultural inflections, such as how teens feel comfortable filming themselves. Lastly, there are regulatory inflections, which include changes like a drug becoming legal, a patent about to expire, or new requirements in Colorado where you have to disclose your salary band. This, in turn, opens up new opportunities. So, this is...
19:44	Shaan Puri	Another one you have here that...
19:45	Steph Smith	I was going to say... So, you guys have talked about hearing aids on the pod before. As of October, the FDA relaxed their rule, which basically meant hearing aids could be sold over the counter.
19:55	Shaan Puri	Which is bullshit.
19:56	Sam Parr	That they're not sold over the counter... it's fucking bullshit. Like, it's been bothering me so much that, and glucose monitors... I'm amazed that they're not sold over the counter. I've been trying to get a hearing aid, and they make me go to all these appointments, and I miss them. It pisses me off. Yes.
20:10	Steph Smith	Another fun fact about hearing aids, which I feel is interrelated to the fact that they can... Is it now already that they can be sold over the counter, or is it this coming October? No, no.
20:20	Shaan Puri	They can, okay.
20:21	Steph Smith	So, they already can, but apparently 99% of hearing aids, or custom hearing aids, are 3D printed already. There are a few companies that basically own this market currently. The reason I love this is because 3D printing is the epitome of the tech hype cycle. It started in the eighties, then got way overhyped and wasn't ready. Everyone thought it was dead, but it's come back in these really niche places like hearing aids. We talked to people on trends a while ago that were using 3D printing for dental implants.
20:55	Shaan Puri	Yep.
20:55	Steph Smith	Things like that... I feel like it's something that is actually overlooked because people say, "3D printing is dead."
21:03	Sam Parr	Wait, what are you saying? You said "yep" as if you know people doing this for teeth.
21:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, one of my best friends from college, he's a surgeon. He's an ENT surgeon, which stands for ear, nose, and throat. While he was in med school—this is like over the past eight years or so—he's been in school forever. I asked him, "How's it going?" He said, "Oh, you know, it's fine, but I'm having the most fun because now I run Duke's 3D printing facility." I was like, "3D printing? Like just for engineering? Are you making toys or what are you doing?" He replied, "No, like the medical 3D printing." I was surprised and said, "Wait, I thought 3D printing wasn't even a thing for normal stuff. You guys are already using it in medicine?" He said, "Dude, I surgically implanted part of a skull that I 3D printed the other day. We take your jaw shape and then we're able to create the perfect shape that we needed for this implant in this surgical process." I was amazed and said, "Wow, I had no idea!" It's interesting because some technologies take forever to get into medicine due to the high stakes involved. For some, medicine is the only justification for putting in the time and money it takes to get the technology to work. I think that's kind of where 3D printing has gone. It started as a hobbyist thing, but the real commercialization has happened on the medical side. I think the same thing is happening with VR. People have been doing the hobby thing for a long time, but one of the better, more commercial use cases of VR is in doctor training and pilot training—things like that. You know, imagining...
22:42	Steph Smith	Instruction
22:43	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. Anything where you need to sort of visualize and plan something, it's worth the money to develop a really high-quality VR simulation. It's cheaper than doing a real prototype of it.
22:56	Sam Parr	Damn, I didn't know you... I didn't know you had this side of you.
22:59	Shaan Puri	I got friends in... I got friends in hospitals, as they say.
23:02	Sam Parr	Well, you're Indian. Of course, you do. You're the odd man out. But you know, you've been shilling Web 3 for years. Turns out, you're a practical guy as well.
23:13	Shaan Puri	Who put the blockchain in your brain, baby?
23:16	Sam Parr	Yes, do this step.
23:19	Shaan Puri	Of course, the hearing aid thing. I met these guys that were doing $7,000,000 a month in sales on their hearing aid brand that I had never heard of. I was like, "Oh, maybe this makes a lot of sense actually." Like, D2C hearing aids? I think that's actually going to be a big deal.
23:35	Sam Parr	Was it bootstrapped?
23:37	Shaan Puri	They... I don't know if they're fully bootstrapped, but like, yeah, they're not like venture-backed. It's like, but they made a profit, and then like their uncle gave them some money to keep scaling it. That's... that seemed like that sort of vibe.
23:47	Sam Parr	They were profitable.
23:49	Shaan Puri	I mean, I'm just turning you on. Yeah, they were.
23:52	Sam Parr	Oh, totally! Low, say it again. Are they Mormon? Oh my God, how far away from the coast do they live?
24:02	Shaan Puri	Are they inland?
24:05	Sam Parr	Alright, let's.
24:09	Steph Smith	Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? Yeah, see, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: grow better.
24:24	Sam Parr	We have two things. Sean, do you want to go first?
24:26	Shaan Puri	I gotta come clean. I have a very late disclaimer I need to give. So, a few episodes ago, maybe like 4 or 5 episodes ago, we talked about a business idea that was like a children's play space. Basically, you go there and it's just a place to play. You pay a membership fee and you get to play with all these cool toys inside. Anyways, I was like, "Oh, it turns out this is an interesting business. It's a franchise thing," blah blah blah. Anyways, my...
24:52	Sam Parr	You just went there. You didn't know anything about it.
24:54	Shaan Puri	Go there. Ben went there, my business partner, and he was telling me about it. He said, "Yeah, like, you know, I was talking to the guy, and here's their occupancy. If that's true, then here's what they would be making." Well, I went and looked at the website, and before and after, basically, meetings—like bookings to inquire about a franchise—got booked out for like four and a half months after the pod. I just want to say, I have no idea if this is a good business or not. That was an estimate; that was a single experience. It was a "Hey, this is kind of cool; that could make money." I do not endorse this. I don't know if it's good or bad; I can't say either way. I really hope that a bunch of people didn't go buy franchises of this thing thinking that I was vouching for this. So I just had to say that because I saw all those meetings get booked, and I got a little nervous. I was like, "Oh wait, this is not a—I can't cosign this. I can't vouch for this either direction." I just needed to say that upfront, so please don't mortgage the house and go buy a franchise of this thing.
25:52	Sam Parr	Did they reach out to you?
25:53	Shaan Puri	No, they didn't. No, I don't think they knew what happened.
25:58	Sam Parr	That MFM effect... Well, the second thing is, we have these sources. Whenever I'm about to talk about something health-related, or in your case, franchise-related or real estate-related, we have like three or four buddies who will text and say, "Hey, we're thinking about talking about this. What's your opinion on X, Y, and Z?" They'll kind of give us some insight. One of those guys is named Adam Bornstein. I met Adam because he basically ran a lot of Tim Ferriss' stuff. One time, he had this conference called 212, and he invited me to go. They would rent out the Four Seasons, and one time I checked into my room. It was so big that I called down to the front desk and asked, "Hey, who do I share this room with?" It was a 4,000 square foot Four Seasons penthouse—the presidential suite—that had like a 16-person dining table and a movie theater. That's how I met Adam; he invited me to come to his event. I've always asked him for help with stuff. Well, he just had a book come out called You Can't Screw This Up. I'm trying to think of the best way to summarize it, but it's basically in the style of Ryan Holiday, James Clear, and Tim Ferriss. It's that kind of writing—simple hacks, but I don't mean it in a bad way. These are simple hacks on how you can create healthier diet habits. The book is called You Can't Screw This Up. He also worked with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wrote the foreword. So, I just want to give a shout-out to Adam; he's a friend of the pod.
27:25	Shaan Puri	Let's do this. Jobs of the future, I think this is a good one. Yeah, and I also love that you're branding this as "Steph's List." Well done!
27:32	Steph Smith	Wait a minute... Take your... My dad off work? I had to... I love Sarah's list, but yeah, this all comes from, I guess, two things: 1. People think AI is taking all of our jobs. 2. I personally don't fully agree with that. We don't need to dive into that.
27:45	Sam Parr	Well, what's the official stance at a16z right now? Is that how you guys are doing it?
27:51	Steph Smith	A 16Z, but we're tech ops.
27:55	Sam Parr	Do they just, like, is there a poster where it said, "Web 3 is the future"? They just put an "X" over it and wrote "AI"?
28:02	Steph Smith	No comment, no comment. But what I'll say is, even on this podcast, I've talked about different jobs that don't quite exist or maybe are starting to exist. I've talked about Chief Automation Officers. Sean, you've talked about this idea of a mental fitness coach. I guess this idea of Steph's list is partially to share a few ideas today, but I also want to hear from the listeners. What are the jobs that you think are, as some people might say, a little more antifragile? Also, what are the types of things we would have talked about in trends that don't quite exist yet or are still early?
28:39	Shaan Puri	With the stat you have here, I think it actually makes it clear that these aren't just cute things on the fringe. It's like, no, this is the future.
28:49	Steph Smith	Yeah, so apparently 85% of employment growth in the last 80 years came from new jobs. Specifically, between 1940 and today, 85% of employment growth came from jobs that did not exist in 1940.
29:04	Sam Parr	Did they not exist because AI didn't exist? Or did they not exist because it's by new companies, like new businesses that are... [incomplete thought].
29:12	Shaan Puri	The job title didn't exist, is what you're saying?
29:14	Steph Smith	Yep, so even simple examples of this that I think anyone can recognize from even the last few decades: before 2008 and 2009, the idea of a social media manager did not exist. The idea of a UX designer did not exist either. Those are jobs that truly, like, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people now do. There are going to be versions of this. I think it's a little more brain-racking to figure out in the age of AI because you can always ask, "Oh, well, is this gonna disappear in 3 years instead of 30?" But I think there are maybe frameworks to think about this. For example, I think drones are kind of hitting that stage. We talked about 3D printing hitting that stage where a lot of consumers own drones, but a lot of companies are also starting to use drones. So, like, what within that industry could exist? It could be like drone technicians. If there are a lot of drones, people are going to need to fix those drones. Is there like drone traffic control? There is aircraft traffic control, so why wouldn't there be?
30:20	Shaan Puri	Safety inspector charging installation... blah blah blah.
30:23	Steph Smith	Exactly, exactly. So my question for you guys is: Is there anything on your radar?
30:29	Shaan Puri	Well, let's start with the ones you talked about before. You said it quickly, but I think it's worth repeating because you were on, I don't know, a year ago when you said it. So, Chief Automation Officer. When you said that at that time, this was definitely pre-AI being like the thing that everybody's talking about. What does a Chief Automation Officer do, and why did you think that was a cool job? Like, a job of the future?
30:50	Steph Smith	Yeah, so I mean a lot of companies will have a CTO. The CTO typically, though, is so wrapped up in like, "What's our infrastructure? What's our cybersecurity? How are we tackling that? How are we keeping our company safe? Our data safe?" What they often aren't focused on—and maybe some people would argue this is the role of the COO—is how do I actually take the technology that exists today, like AI, and enable every single person within my company to understand how to up-level their jobs? Right? So, like, to become three times more productive. Because most of those people, unfortunately, either aren't plugged into the technology, don't have the excitement to actually implement it within their job, or honestly, it's just one of those things: you don't know what you don't know.
31:39	Sam Parr	Let me give you a compliment. I remember that podcast we did where you talked about that. At Hampton, the first hire we made was an automation expert.
31:49	Steph Smith	Really.
31:50	Sam Parr	The very first hire, his name's Grant. All he does is automate stuff. So, he's basically a Zapier and Airtable expert.
31:58	Steph Smith	Yes.
31:58	Sam Parr	And because one of our values early on was, "We want to grow to be big, but we don't want to have to hire loads of people," we decided to start automating stuff right away. It was because of that conversation that the very first hire we made was an automation expert.
32:11	Steph Smith	That's awesome.
32:12	Sam Parr	And you know what? It is fucking awesome. And it is awesome.
32:15	Shaan Puri	Bottleneck is not typically about creating new things. It's that you're basically bridging a gap between...
32:22	Sam Parr	Usually, I use duct tape for a ton of stuff.
32:24	Shaan Puri	The process we're doing is kind of tedious, manual, repetitive, or low value-add, but it needs to be done. There are tools that could do that if you knew they existed and how to pipe them together and stitch them together so that they actually work. What this person does, and I do this at our company almost by accident, is for our e-commerce companies. I just discovered yesterday that there's somebody who has to spend hours a week just square cropping photos so that they look better in Shopify from what the photographer gives them. I was like, "Wait, you do this for how many pictures?" And they're like, "Yeah, it sucks." I said, "You know, there's this tool that will just bulk upload and do that. Then it'll pipe it to you here in Slack, and you can see... we'll use a different tool to pipe it into Slack, and you'll see if there's one that's off. You could just kind of skim this with your eyes, and you'll just be able to fix the one that's not good. But 98% of them will just be done well the first time automatically by this one tool." And they're like, "Oh shit, that's like... you know, thank you! That saves me a bunch of time, and now I can go do things that are actually going to drive a little more growth versus just some bullshit that had to be done." How many of those are there in every company? There's a ton of those. And I've...
33:38	Sam Parr	The problem, Sean, is that even if hypothetically you only have 10 people - even though you've been at 10 people for 3 years - just 10 people has created enough habit that even getting an automation person in now would be like, "Oh man, where do I start?" So doing it with 10,000 people is like an impossible task. That's why we were like, "Let's get this right away. Let's do this right away."
34:01	Steph Smith	There should be like a ratio. For every 10 employees you have, you should have 1 person who knows how to automate. Not necessarily a Chief Automation Officer, but someone who can work with teams. They literally do user interviews. They sit down and say, "Hey, let me shadow you for a day. Let me just see what you do." From there, I bet anyone, myself included, who tries to automate what they can would pick up so many things, like, "Why are you doing that at all?"
34:26	Shaan Puri	So, I think you should also have this for team collaboration. Have you guys ever read the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
34:34	Sam Parr	Yeah, by Patrick something.
34:36	Shaan Puri	I don't even know who it is. It's a great book. Honestly, I love that book.
34:38	Sam Parr	I think other people are the narrative director.
34:40	Shaan Puri	Right. Other people, I think, don't really like it. It's kind of like fiction. It's a business advice book, but it's written as a fictional story, which is cool because that's not usually how those are written. It basically describes a company, you know, whatever, Acme Inc., and they go to this team off-site to figure something out. Then you have these four or five personalities, or whatever, and it shows the different ways that a team can be dysfunctional. Once I worked in a bigger team. You know, I've worked in kind of like two-person teams, and that's what I'm in now.
35:11	Sam Parr	Well, I think the takeaway is... or the reason the book is called that is because successful teams all look different. But every dysfunctional company looks the same.
35:22	Shaan Puri	The same.
35:22	Sam Parr	The same, yeah. And here are the five things that they all have in mind.
35:24	Shaan Puri	Exactly. You kind of identify them, but he identifies it, and the way the book's written is kind of cool. I think it's sort of like... here's a situation. They have two people who both have valid perspectives, or one person doesn't realize that the thing they're saying is causing the other people to feel a certain way and causing all these second-order effects. Anyways, it's a good book for management, I guess. But I guess my real takeaway is that I've been in a bunch of companies where they do these things. It's like... shit builds up, and then they're like, "We need an executive coach. We need a team off-site. We need to break down all this scar tissue that's being built and the dysfunction and resentment that's in the team." All these things are not allowing us to perform at our best. I actually think that companies should embed this in the company. I think there should be somebody that floats around, basically like the "chicken billions," who's like the team psychologist or whatever. It's sort of like that, but instead of one-on-one...
36:19	Sam Parr	What's her name? Therapy. I love that lady.
36:21	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I stopped watching the show after Season 1, so I forgot, but she's awesome. She's Wendy Rose. So basically, instead of that, it's somebody who just sits in meetings and takes notes. Every week, they just deliver feedback like, "Sam, do you know that you do this and you say that? That's making these people feel this way." And then when they walk out of the room, you know they're not going to do the thing you want in the way you want because of how you said it. Or this person just didn't have that information and they were put on the spot. Maybe you should put in a process that gets the information in a dashboard that everybody sees beforehand or whatever, right? It's about identifying dysfunction. Because let's say for every 10 people you hire, if you can make that team 10% more efficient, you've basically created one extra employee without that payroll. So I think that the numbers would show a positive ROI if you had this. I'm surprised this doesn't exist. I think that's a kind of job of the future: a collaboration expert. Someone who acts as an internal compass, a team compass, to figure out how to improve collaboration.
37:29	Sam Parr	Where are the people? The word is "doula." You gotta use that word, "doula," here.
37:33	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I guess I'll just keep you as a doula as a guy and pissing everybody off.
37:38	Steph Smith	Sam, what do you think? Are there any jobs that stand out to you? What are you guys hiring for?
37:45	Sam Parr	I don't know, but nothing like some of the ones that are like bullshit that you see out there. Then I see their titles and I'm like, "Oh, you're not actually good at that." As for "Community Manager," it's a title that I actually don't think most people know how to build a community. So that's kind of like a nonsense one.
38:04	Shaan Puri	We have one from the podcast that we've talked about. We have a podcast producer, Ben Wilson, right now. People will have a social media manager; they have all these different functions. But what I told the team was, "I think we just need a band manager." It's basically like...
38:21	Sam Parr	Yeah.
38:21	Shaan Puri	If podcasts are as they get more successful, they're kind of like a band. You have the talent; they're the face. They get on stage and perform, and there's all this stuff that needs to be done. Whether it's like, "We're going on tour," or "We want to sell merch," or "We want to develop this cult following of fans that just love us because we do dope stuff that is fan service, fan love." Then you have the recording stuff that has to get done. You kind of just need somebody who's like a hybrid of a business manager or an agent, as well as someone who has the community-building skills of a community manager.
38:52	Sam Parr	mhmm
38:52	Shaan Puri	And that's what a band manager is for bands. I think that you're going to see this more for podcasts and YouTubers. It's a role that's sort of like the band manager. Like the Nelk Boys and whatever, they have that. But most others don't have it underneath them.
39:08	Sam Parr	Oh yeah.
39:08	Shaan Puri	For
39:08	Sam Parr	Sure, what are the lists that you have here? Head of Remote and then Cyber Actuary. What are those?
39:14	Steph Smith	So, the Head of Remote is kind of similar to the thing that you mentioned, Sean. But there's so much dysfunction at companies, especially those that transition from being non-remote to remote. They just copy and paste a bunch of things from the office. They don't actually know how to build a remote organization from the ground up or how to do things asynchronously. It's kind of crazy when you think about how macro a shift that is for thousands of people to be doing things one way and then switching to a totally new way, all without any expertise from someone to actually guide that. So, that's the idea of Head of Remote, and some companies already have this.
39:51	Shaan Puri	Like a real remote work officer, or RWO, what would they do? It's like, well, people in our company need to have a good home setup. Sam, you talked about this. We need to not look like "dog shit" on camera, whether internally or with our clients and customers. So, how do we make sure everybody's got a good Zoom setup? Secondly, how do we create some best practices around remote working? How do we do things differently now that we're not all in the office and can just look at each other and talk quickly? How do we set boundaries for different time zones? How do we plan meetings? You know, all of that I think is definitely important.
40:28	Steph Smith	Based pay... I mean, isn't this crazy? Like, to your idea with Hampton Sam and the nice background. The same companies that had these really strict clothing rules—like, you have to show up in a suit and you have to look this way—are letting people sit with their MacBook under their chin, with a dirty background behind them, showing up to their business meetings trying to win a client. It's like, where's your digital suit? They don't care. They don't even think about that because it's so outside of their field of view. But that's just one example, and I think...
41:01	Sam Parr	Guys do that in an A16C because, like, when I imagine an A16C, I'm like, "That's a khaki pants type of place."
41:08	Steph Smith	Well, I don't think we have a clothing code, but we do have...
41:14	Sam Parr	Lululemon's ABC pants are like the official pants of "Man Band Valley."
41:19	Steph Smith	Yeah, here's something that A16Z does that I never put together as related to this, but their design team will create, every quarter, these beautiful Zoom backgrounds that the company uses. They actually look good, you know? I feel like a lot of Zoom backgrounds are like the company's logo kind of awkwardly photoshopped in the background.
41:40	Sam Parr	It looks like around...
41:41	Steph Smith	The corner... and they, again, refresh them every quarter. Everyone has access to them, so there's at least that visual consistency. But I don't know if we have a clothing code.
41:52	Sam Parr	I hope some of your bosses and employees listen to this. I just want them to hear me say this: it is me and Sean making fun of you guys, not Steph, just Wyatt.
42:12	Shaan Puri	That's what I thought you were about to do, but you were trying to cover.
42:15	Steph Smith	Sam's version is like, "Look at me," and he's like, "You're great."
42:19	Sam Parr	Yeah.
42:19	Shaan Puri	You're so smart. No one believes in you more than I do. Well...
42:26	Sam Parr	I had a friend that lived in China, and I used to text him all the time. I'd be like, "Dude, your government sucks! What's going on with that?" Then I would reply with, "By the way, whoever's reading this, it is me saying this, not them."
42:41	Shaan Puri	Yeah, don't disappear my friend. I'm glad they invest in the cool Zoom backgrounds and stuff, you know? They got, I think, like $700 million in management fees. Those management fees gotta go somewhere, so I'm glad they're putting them to good use.
42:56	Steph Smith	Yeah, but I mean just to summarize on the head of remote thing, think about it this way: there are all these macro tech trends, right? Like remote work, AI, automation, and cybersecurity. Right? The idea of a Chief Security Officer didn't exist like 10 years ago. That role became such an important concept, especially within tech firms.
43:20	Shaan Puri	What's this?
43:20	Steph Smith	So.
43:21	Sam Parr	And what's this food engineer one?
43:23	Steph Smith	Well, I wanted to ask you guys about this because...
43:25	Sam Parr	Yeah, we never talked about this.
43:27	Steph Smith	Hannah, do you guys remember that? Yeah, I was so hyped about it. I know, but I still think the concept of a food engineer will exist.
43:35	Sam Parr	I
43:36	Steph Smith	Think this one's a little further out.
43:37	Sam Parr	So, give this story, Sean.
43:38	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so a lot of people know David Friedberg now because he's on the All In podcast. He kind of got a lot more popular or famous. This awesome guy used to work at Google and created this thing called the Production Board, which is his incubator startup studio. They build things that are kind of like hard tech, so it's things that interface with the real world. They have hardware; they're making food or creating biological substances. They're creating real-world things. He had this company called Cana that he created, which was basically like the Coke Freestyle machine for your kitchen. You would have this device, this Nespresso machine, that sits on your countertop and can make like a thousand different drinks exactly to your specification using basically the equivalent of a printer cartridge. So, you put in this cartridge that's got all these micro flavors, then you hook it up to your water supply. It takes water, makes it cold, hot, or bubbly, and then it pipes in the exact dose of flavor to create whatever drink you want. You want tea? Here, you can make hot tea. You want sparkling water that's flavored like blackberry? Boom, done! It was this awesome idea. It would also be good for the world in a way because a lot of the supply chain is basically spent bottling water or soda, putting it in cans, putting it on shelves, wrapping it in cardboard, transporting it to the store, transporting it to your house, and then transporting the trash to the dump. I was like, "Dude, what if we just took the water supply everybody already has to their home and let you make whatever drink you want?" Very cool idea. Then, out of nowhere, it just suddenly got canceled. They were like, "Unfortunately, to scale up, we needed a lot of money, and in this funding environment, we couldn't do it."
45:23	Sam Parr	That's a bullshit excuse. Who can't raise... I mean, I...
45:26	Steph Smith	They've got like the top tech podcast in the world. An interesting way of framing that idea is that it came from the research they had done. They realized that basically every drink out there, whether it was tea, wine, or beer, is 95% water. Not just 95% water, but even the chemicals that go into it. I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like there are only about 30...
45:51	Shaan Puri	or
45:51	Steph Smith	So, flavors... yeah, you need to basically generate every taste. But, yeah, I don't know, maybe something for sure.
45:57	Shaan Puri	We should get him on, or I'm going to tweet at him. I want to know what really happened. Not just the scandal, but tell me more. Clearly, he could sneeze and raise $30,000,000 for an idea. So, I'm surprised if it wasn't like that.
46:11	Sam Parr	His sneeze... his sneeze will be lovely flavors too.
46:14	Shaan Puri	I mean, I feel like he must not have believed. Meaning, like, the team must have realized it's not feasible or something like that. Or they must have proven that the thing is not feasible or non-economic in some way for them to not be able to raise money. Because just on the concept, I feel like they could have raised more money.
46:31	Shaan Puri	Mhmm.
46:31	Sam Parr	So.
46:31	Shaan Puri	So, I think, you know, that's an interesting one. What went wrong? But...
46:34	Sam Parr	He said that he was going to send us one. Then, like, his assistant or someone at the company was talking to us, and they just quit.
46:40	Shaan Puri	Replying... They didn't send us one. They were like, "We want you guys..." Basically, their idea was: if you could make any drink flavor on the spot, then what happens to drink brands? His idea was that drink brands become software, so they just become brands. Yeah.
46:51	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah.
46:52	Shaan Puri	We would create a drink flavor, you know, Sam's almighty root beer or whatever. It would just be like a specific dosage of flavors that somebody could buy for a dollar from their own can machine. It would dispense the drink, and we would make money for every one of those flavors sold, basically every one of those drinks sold. That was the kind of the concept. So they wanted us to make one, and they were like, "Come down to the facilities." We never got around to doing it, and now it's gone.
47:20	Sam Parr	Did you guys see the freestyle machine for condiments?
47:23	Shaan Puri	Yes, I did see this.
47:24	Sam Parr	Dude, sign me up! Sign me up, dude. This stuff...
47:28	Steph Smith	Have you been to hot pot in Asia, where they have the sauce bars?
47:32	Shaan Puri	No, no. Tell us that.
47:34	Steph Smith	It's well, if you go to hot pot in Taiwan, like they're literally there will be...
47:37	Sam Parr	Hot pot is a style of food.
47:41	Steph Smith	Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, so basically you get a big pot of hot water. They give you broth of a certain sort, and then you basically go shopping on this wall. You pick, "Oh, I want some noodles, I want some beef," whatever. You pick it out, and then you basically cook your own soup. But as part of that, they have rice and other things, and they typically have this huge sauce bar with maybe 20 to 30 different options, like garlic, ginger, soy sauce, ponzu sauce, whatever. You make your own sauce. So when I saw this coming, I was like, "This is genius!" Because this exists in Asia, but only in these hot pot locations, right?
48:21	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I kind of love this. I really do want the future of food to be a lot more interesting. I think it's going to be. You have so many jobs, like food engineer. I got that one. Cyber actuary... what does that one mean? Have you explained that one?
48:34	Steph Smith	Yeah, so basically, I mean, a lot of people, even if we relate this back to AI, are worried that there's just going to be a lot more cyber "crime." People replicating your voice, getting your bank details... I think this idea of being a cyber actuary is basically that actuaries assess risk for anything. Right? How risky is it for us to deploy this celebrity's voice in this way? How risky is it for us to, I don't know, open source our new LLM? There are going to be all these implications of things becoming a lot more online, if they aren't already. Right? So this idea of a cyber actuary is like, there's already a ton of actuaries that figure out how much insurance should cost in the typical world. Like, if you buy a flight. I think there's just this huge white space around risk that people have not calculated yet.
49:30	Sam Parr	Did I tell you guys about Eden Data? No? So, I met him because he's joined Hampton. His name's Taylor, and I don't know if he was playing up to my ego, Steph, but he told me he created this because of an article that one of us wrote on trends. I don't know if that's true or not, but he launched this thing called Eden Data, and in just two years, it's now doing like $6 or $7 million in revenue. Basically, what they do is if you are a smallish startup, so like 50 to 100 people, you have to have a certain type of compliance in order to sell software to enterprise companies. The service that he provides is, and this is like an oversimplification, but there's basically a checklist of all the things that you need to do, around 50 to 100 items. A lot of these startups can't afford a full-time Chief Security Officer, so instead, they pay Eden Data $7,000 to $10,000 a month. He has a team of outsourced people overseas who go through your website and your entire checklist to make sure that all 50 or 100 things are done. They have templates to do it, and then they stay on top of it and monitor it in case any changes need to happen. So now, when you go and pitch to an enterprise company to sell your software, even though you're a small startup, you've already done all the necessary compliance work. I think it's only two years in, and I believe it's going to do $8 million in revenue this year. It's a subscription service, almost like a subscription consultancy, and he's killing it. It's a crazy company with huge margins.
50:59	Steph Smith	Damn, I have it pulled up: your digital security sidekick.
51:04	Sam Parr	Yeah, when I see companies like this, I think, "I'm in the wrong way."
51:07	Shaan Puri	To speak to somebody who was doing this, or wanted to do this for rich people, it was like an overall security audit for wealthy individuals. This includes everything: your house security, your bank account security, your crypto security. It's just someone who's going to come in and try to poke holes in your systems. At a certain dollar amount of net worth, it definitely makes sense. You're not the expert, and you have more to lose than the cost of the service. You have a lot more to lose—it's basically an asymmetric downside. I think that...
51:41	Sam Parr	I've reached out to tons of people doing it, and the problem that I saw is that a lot of them are ex-military guys too. I remember I was talking to Pomp, and after the show, I asked him, "What do you do for security? Can you walk me through it?" He said, "Oh, I got this guy named Chad. We need this, this, and this." Then I talked to Chad, and it's a little bit mom-and-pop. It's not like I can just log in and you could tell me what to do or it can just get done. There’s no like Plaid or whatever that other software is where you just log in with your bank accounts and it just does what you need to do. It was very much a manual process, and it was like $15, and this person's going to do this. So, I do actually agree with you. I think there's a start. I do think this is a fragmented service, and I believe that one great company can do all the stuff you need to do.
52:30	Shaan Puri	Let's hit some of these other random trends you have. Don't mention the one I wrote because I got something in that space, so don't mention that one. But do some of these other ones. Let's start with mouth tape.
52:43	Steph Smith	Yeah, so mouth tape. I first heard about this like 6 months ago because some guy on Twitter was like, "I tape my mouth shut every night for the last 6 months."
52:52	Shaan Puri	Hostage tape
52:53	Steph Smith	Best thing I've ever done.
52:54	Sam Parr	The hot dude, the hostage tape guy, will not.
52:57	Shaan Puri	Stop DMing me so aggressively with it. He...
53:00	Sam Parr	We have this guy who's got a company. He called it "Hostage Tape," and it's just tape for your mouth. He told me he's going to launch it, and I'm like, "This is dumb." Then 6 months later, he's like, "$500,000 in sales." Yeah, I'm like, "Great." And then a year later, "$2,000,000 in sales." And he's just rubbing it in my face.
53:17	Steph Smith	I don't think he's an official sponsor, but Andrew Huberman has been talking about it. In my household, we like to call him "Father Drew" as a joke. But if Father Drew promotes something in this day and age, people will buy it.
53:30	Shaan Puri	Pro Oprah in a way where, like, if he says "bro science" or if he says it's good, you're just going to get a huge spike.
53:37	Steph Smith	Yeah, so that's the thing. I mean, these are just like... I don't know where this goes. I don't know what opportunity there is other than going and selling some mouth tape. Maybe rebranding it, but that's one trend.
53:47	Sam Parr	This guy's company is called Hostage Tape. When I first saw it, I thought, "Oh, this is the worst thing ever. This is awful! What do you do?" But he's proving us wrong.
53:55	Shaan Puri	Your weight loss idea, remember? Wasn't it called "Hostage"?
53:58	Sam Parr	Yeah, a hostage situation, right? Kidnap you and just don't feed you for four weeks.
54:04	Steph Smith	You should partner.
54:09	Sam Parr	This guy's crazy, so whatever, kudos to him.
54:12	Steph Smith	Yeah, but I guess we didn't even mention: do you guys understand what's good about mouth tape?
54:18	Shaan Puri	Well, it makes you breathe through your nose, and breathing through your nose is better for you than breathing through your mouth.
54:23	Steph Smith	Okay, speaking of health benefits, another trend that I would love to see take off—because then I would have called it—is lupini beans. So, haven't you heard?
54:32	Shaan Puri	Of it.
54:32	Steph Smith	People like health.
54:34	Sam Parr	Haven't you been talking about this bean forever?
54:36	Steph Smith	For the last year, I just got... I went into a... I don't know... all the American grocery.
54:42	Sam Parr	Stores like Ralph's and Company Bean.
54:44	Steph Smith	Yeah, so it's got.
54:45	Sam Parr	Dude, you've been talking about this to me forever. You keep telling me about this bean. I've been out with you a bunch of times.
54:50	Steph Smith	Always come in more protein than chickpeas, 2% or 2 times more fiber than edamame, 80% fewer calories than almonds, and 60% fewer carbs than pistachios. 35 grams per serving. Obviously, they cherry-picked this data and compared it to the best option for them. But these beans, I think they're originally from Italy or they're popular there. I have just seen this over and over as someone who traveled a lot. Edamame was not popular in North America 20 or 30 years ago; no one knew what it was, right? It came from Asia. Now, when you go to restaurants, it's like a very...
55:26	Shaan Puri	How would you like to invest in the next set of omni?
55:34	Steph Smith	Sam, do you remember when Bobby at Hustle Con would go around pitching people as a joke? He was like, "His pitch is tuna water too."
55:42	Sam Parr	No, I thought it was hot dog water.
55:43	Steph Smith	It was tuna water.
55:48	Sam Parr	Dude, have you guys had chickpea pasta?
55:50	Shaan Puri	Of course.
55:51	Steph Smith	I don't like it.
55:52	Sam Parr	It makes you fart like crazy, man. It just... it'll give you the number 3.
55:57	Shaan Puri	7... like, 40% of the calories is almonds, but 70% more gas. It's like, that's the lupinib's, you know, pitch. Okay, so you've been calling this for a little while. I see. I mean, this seems like a good direct-to-consumer (DTC) product idea, to be honest.
56:11	Steph Smith	There's like one company doing it.
56:13	Shaan Puri	This one, bam, or whatever.
56:15	Steph Smith	Yeah, Brahmi. They also do, I think, the chickpea pasta. But I just think maybe there's something in the supply chain or like how hard it is to, you know, procure this stuff. But no, to me, they're pretty cheap and they taste really good.
56:30	Sam Parr	You eat them plain.
56:31	Steph Smith	Well, at least this company will do flavored versions. So they'll do things like rosemary garlic or...
56:36	Sam Parr	Does it give you gas?
56:38	Steph Smith	I don't think so.
56:39	Sam Parr	You can, I...
56:40	Steph Smith	I didn't do an A/B test, so you...
56:41	Sam Parr	Can you admit it?
56:44	Steph Smith	Don't think they did.
56:45	Shaan Puri	It's a safe space.
56:48	Steph Smith	It seems like you can say it.
56:49	Shaan Puri	Same for every episode. It's a...
56:52	Sam Parr	Very great idea! Okay, alright, I'm gonna buy some of it.
56:55	Shaan Puri	This stuff.
56:55	Shaan Puri	This idea... yeah, I'm gonna try these out and see how I feel about it. By the way, this is a type of product that when we say on MFM, there's gonna be 13 people that start this for 6 weeks. Then, yeah, nobody 6 months later will be doing it for whatever reason. It's like...
57:11	Sam Parr	And the same people that tell us they're going to come back in 8 weeks, and they're going to say, "Actually, what do you think about this idea?"
57:18	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like if my DM history has four different ideas from you that you were pitching me for investment, it's probably not gonna work out. Sorry.
57:25	Steph Smith	It's a no forever.
57:27	Sam Parr	It's exactly... you got the "no forever." Yeah, I'm stealing that line: "this is a no forever."
57:39	Steph Smith	Let's do... can we do one more around these advent calendars? Because I feel like that's another case where, like, I don't know, someone in the community is going to jump on this.
57:47	Sam Parr	Sean, do you even know what Advent is?
57:48	Shaan Puri	Is this some kind of Catholic thing? What is this?
57:51	Shaan Puri	Oh yeah.
57:52	Sam Parr	This is as Catholic as Catholic.
57:55	Shaan Puri	What is it?
57:57	Sam Parr	Is Advent. Advent's in December. So, we Catholics... I'm Catholic. Are you Catholic, Steph? No? Heathen, sorry. So, the Catholics... yeah, you're not one of us, but it's okay. We have Lent, which is like 40 days. That was when Jesus walked around in the desert. You're not supposed to eat meat and stuff like that. Then we have Advent, which is the 30 days leading up to Christmas. Oftentimes, there's an Advent calendar that tells a story about what Mary and Joseph, Jesus' parents, did with the donkey and the mule and how they got all these gifts from people. It tells that story, and each day you open up the calendar. It's like the kids' favorite thing; there's a piece of chocolate in the calendar.
58:47	Steph Smith	Yeah, I'm sure you've seen the advent calendars, like at some? It was a religious thing, then capitalism got involved. And then, you know, every day kids are opening a little chocolate.
58:55	Shaan Puri	I swear my whole life, the advent calendar was those little calendars that you peel. There's like a piece you peel for each day.
59:02	Steph Smith	Oh, yeah. Yeah.
59:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I've been walking around because that's what an advent calendar is for. For a long time, my whole life, I would say.
59:09	Sam Parr	This one, you like peel back.
59:10	Shaan Puri	Always chocolate inside. That's the idea.
59:12	Sam Parr	Usually, that's the...
59:13	Steph Smith	One you get at like Target or whatever. Yeah, it's like a couple of dollars, but it's the most simple. You buy it for your kids.
59:19	Shaan Puri	So, what's your idea here, Seth?
59:21	Steph Smith	The better advent calendar is my idea.
59:24	Shaan Puri	I just... I like the advent calendar.
59:28	Sam Parr	5-minute abs? Yeah, no.
59:31	Steph Smith	So, this comes from... I gotta give this guy, Namazake Paul Crest.
59:36	Sam Parr	He... he doesn't sound like a Catholic.
59:38	Steph Smith	No, no, no, no. So this is it. I don't think this has to do with religion, but I actually got this for Cal this past year. Here's the thing: Advent calendars, yeah, I guess they were tied to religion, but they happen around the holidays. People are scrambling to figure out last minute what they should get their family as a gift that's kind of thoughtful but fun. A lot of people get Advent calendars, but they get these like shitty versions that are like, you know, expired milk chocolate from the year before. What Paul did is he created this sake calendar. And so if you click...
01:00:12	Shaan Puri	That's.
01:00:12	Sam Parr	That's the best way to celebrate Jesus' birth too.
01:00:16	Steph Smith	He created this sake calendar where basically every day for the month of December, or you can use it after you open your little advent calendar. But it's not little; it's like the size of a printer kind of thing. You get this special sake that he has handpicked from Japan. This is partially like his job, his existing business, and he sells them for $300. Every year, he sells 500 of them, which he caps. You do the math: that's like $150,000 just from that one drop.
01:00:50	Sam Parr	For him, that's crazy.
01:00:51	Steph Smith	And he doesn't get that much traffic. If you look at his existing site, it's like 2,000 visits per month. So, not something he would typically be able to make much money from. But that's one example that just got me thinking, especially since we're, like, what, 6 months ahead of Christmas? What advent calendars is the My First Million community going to make that are way cooler than the expired milk chocolate? I mean, I've seen some stuff like hot sauce calendars and Lego calendars, but it's gotta be something that someone can open either for 12 days, because some people do the 12 days of Christmas, or all of December.
01:01:28	Sam Parr	This is actually cool. Yeah, I actually think this is... this is really cute and cool and awesome. You have a picture of this person who has a binder full of condiments, like individual packaged packets. I see your vision here. This is actually cool. I see... I smell what you're stepping in, and I think it's awesome.
01:01:50	Steph Smith	Well, this... so the tweet you're talking about, Sam, what is that phrase? It's this girl, Nicole, who says her tweet just says, "Organize my sauces." It's like, do you guys remember, you know, if you collected like playing cards back in the day or coins? They had those...
01:02:08	Sam Parr	Binders with the little... yeah.
01:02:10	Steph Smith	With the little... I don't even know what they're called, but this tweet got 468,000 likes. I think it's probably one of the most popular tweets of all time, and it's just her organizing her sauces from around the world.
01:02:24	Shaan Puri	So, these are not for use. This is just like collections.
01:02:27	Steph Smith	That one is for a collection. I feel like the advent calendar would be for use.
01:02:32	Shaan Puri	Wow, this is crazy.
01:02:35	Sam Parr	What I like about you, Steph, is that you find things that I would just scroll by. You're pretty good at finding interesting things and applying them, like connecting them to five other things.
01:02:46	Shaan Puri	Yeah, when I scroll past something and I think, "This is stupid," you write that thing down and make it sound smart. It's amazing.
01:02:53	Steph Smith	I waste my time curating an Evernote that is just full of random internet stuff.
01:02:58	Sam Parr	But what you do that's different is you actually remember it. I bookmark so much stuff and then I just forget all about it. You actually remember it, and that's just the difference between good and great in terms of whatever the skill set is that we have. You are very, very organized with this stuff, and that actually helps your thought process, I would think. When are you, dude, just going to bail and start creating some of this stuff?
01:03:29	Steph Smith	I feel like you started this train, Sam. Before I joined the hustle, I was working at a company. In my last year at that company, I said—I must have been what, 24? Something like that. I was like, "Next, this is the last job I'll have." Right? After this, I'll go and do my own thing. But then, ever since then, I just kept getting offered really cool stuff. I'm like, "Oh, I get to make more money? Well, I get to be paid to research trends and go down these internet rabbit holes that I'd be doing anyway." Okay, great! Oh, we got acquired, and now I'm at HubSpot. I get to build this cool creator program. Okay, great!
01:04:06	Sam Parr	and more money.
01:04:08	Steph Smith	Now I'm at a 16Z. I get to talk to interesting people.
01:04:11	Sam Parr	and more money.
01:04:14	Shaan Puri	I got to be this interesting person with more money in my pocket. It was amazing! Yeah.
01:04:21	Sam Parr	Yeah, you're learning this. Sepsis, sitting there, she's like, "How can I get the things that are in their bank account to my bank account?" My daughter does.
01:04:31	Shaan Puri	This thing where she, she's 3 years old, and she says, "This is my best day ever." I'm like, she might actually be telling the truth. This might have been like the best day ever for her. Like, this is the one, and that's it.
01:04:43	Sam Parr	How I feel, Steph.
01:04:44	Shaan Puri	Whenever she gets a raise at ACCC, this is my best day ever, guys!
01:04:52	Sam Parr	Well, I... I like, we're Steph, you and I were talking about like how much money, like you've had. Like we were going through an exercise of like at 20, we had this, at 23... yeah, you've had a nice run. You've had a very nice run.
01:05:05	Steph Smith	A very, very nice run compared to where I came from. So, yeah, like you were saying earlier, Sean, if 21-year-old me would have said, "Yeah, like this is where you'll be, this is how much you'll make, these are the opportunities you'll have," yeah, it's pretty wild.
01:05:17	Sam Parr	Are you even 30?
01:05:18	Shaan Puri	No, oh my god! What would 200-year-old you say? Like, what would the reaction be?
01:05:24	Steph Smith	Well, it's funny because I feel like I still have this mindset throughout my whole life. I didn't grow up very wealthy, so I live with a very money-oriented perspective. Not that I need that much, but just the thought of, "Oh my gosh, you have that much money! Go buy a car! Go buy nice clothes! Use the money that you've always wanted but never had." But it's funny because now that I have more money, I'm still just as cheap as I ever was.
01:05:48	Shaan Puri	So I...
01:05:49	Steph Smith	Don't know if that stuff ever leaves you.
01:05:51	Sam Parr	Sean, do you know that stuff's half Thai? Are you Taiwanese?
01:05:55	Steph Smith	My mom's from Taiwan.
01:05:57	Sam Parr	Yeah, you know that.
01:05:58	Shaan Puri	No, I didn't know that.
01:06:00	Sam Parr	There was supposed to be super.
01:06:02	Shaan Puri	Special or what? Why are you telling me that?
01:06:04	Sam Parr	At our old company, when someone found that out, I was like, "Yeah, I mean, I could see that." There were people like, "Steph, why are you lying to us? You're Canadian."
01:06:13	Steph Smith	I've had some well... Canadians. Not racist.
01:06:16	Sam Parr	I know that was the joke. They're like, "Quit lying."
01:06:19	Steph Smith	Yeah, why?
01:06:19	Sam Parr	Are you lying about being Taiwanese?
01:06:21	Steph Smith	Jordan was like, "So there's a huge spectrum. I don't know what it is about the way I look, but some people, when they hear that I'm half Asian, are like, 'Oh yeah, of course, I knew that.' Then other people are truly shocked." Jordan was one of those. He went to Sam—or no, he asked me, "Does Sam know this?"
01:06:42	Shaan Puri	Your secret's safe. Yeah, that tells you more about them than about the way you look. It's just like, what is their level of exposure to different races versus anything to do with you? Yeah, by the way, this thing about being cheap... I was reading a story yesterday about this guy who made a bunch of money. They asked him, "What was your first purchase?" He replied, "I hired a consultant to help me spend money." He explained, "You know, I had learned over 25 years how to make money. It took me a long time to learn how to make money, and I was just very honest with myself that I have no idea how to spend money. I could shorten that learning curve if I get a coach to help me spend money."
01:07:21	Sam Parr	What was this coach called? A wife? I'll be here all night.
01:07:27	Steph Smith	I was gonna say, isn't that like Ramit's thing too? I feel like he talks about that all the time, right? Like, you gotta learn to spend. It's like it takes reps.
01:07:35	Sam Parr	What was the coach actually called?
01:07:38	Shaan Puri	I mean, I don't know. It's like I don't know his actual job title, but you know, a spending consultant, let's call it.
01:07:43	Sam Parr	I've known, but what do they teach you how to do?
01:07:46	Shaan Puri	I think it's... I don't know. I mean, he didn't go into details on exactly what the guy said, but let's just pretend for a minute that he did. I would imagine he does two things. First, he figures out where your psychology is screwed up about money. Everybody's got this... it's like, you know, people have body dysmorphia. I think everybody has bank account dysmorphia too. You know, you think you need more money than you actually do. Even when you have money, you still act like you don't have any. It's all this weird stuff. It's like, "Dude, you're fit now. Why do you still think you're fat?" You have to sort of retrain yourself to see something different in the mirror. I think that's part of it—just talking to figure out what are the ways your brain is a little screwed up about money. Let's identify that first. Some people spend too much, some people don't spend at all. Second, I think the next step would be: "Alright, what do you really want?" Let's try to outline your dream lifestyle or the things you really want. Identify those, and then let's calculate, "Okay, how much do those cost? Could you afford those now? Could you afford a step in that direction?" It's about giving you the encouragement to pull the trigger on the things that you actually want or setting certain rules, like, "You have to spend this much per month. What are you going to spend it on?" Also, on the debt, protect your downsides. It's like, "Hey, we're going to set aside this amount of money so that your safety reflex is satisfied." We agree that, by all logic, this amount of money being here untouched means you're safe. Okay, cool. Now we can talk about this other spending part without triggering your fight or flight mode around your fear of financial safety. I should find it where...
01:09:19	Sam Parr	Where was this article? Yeah, I want to look this up. I need one of these things.
01:09:23	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you should look it up. I don't know if this exists. Maybe it's a job of the future.
01:09:27	Steph Smith	I don't know if his recent episodes are the same, but Ramit's early podcast episodes would do that. This is a lot to like millionaires who are fretting about $8 blueberries at Whole Foods. I remember one episode where this guy was at least worth $10,000,000 and was picking up a stroller on the side of the road. Things like that show it's clear that, yeah, you haven't upgraded your thinking or your mindset to where you are.
01:09:53	Sam Parr	Dude, I just made $400 selling used gym equipment. I'm stoked from some stuff I'm not using, and I'm like, "This is my..."
01:10:02	Shaan Puri	Best day ever! $400. Yeah, this is like the best day ever. Best day!
01:10:06	Sam Parr	I feel happier about that $400 than I do making much larger sums.
01:10:12	Shaan Puri	Yeah.
01:10:13	Sam Parr	And the best part is that I paid $300 for it 5 years ago. Now I got $400 and it's like the best high.
01:10:19	Shaan Puri	I read this thing about a guy named Tymer, who created a company called Causal. It's like an Excel competitor. He has this blog post that I really liked, where he was trying to figure out, in a nerdy way, how to decide if he should buy something or not. He said he breaks everything down into a few factors. I don't remember the exact message, but it was something like this: the frequency of how often am I going to get the benefit of this, and then what's the magnitude of the benefit. So, he mentioned that something doesn't have to be a big shift, but if it's going to happen all the time, like 10 times a day or something like that, it can be worth it. For example, I bought a phone case that just feels better in my hand. It was a great purchase because the hand feel of my phone is something I'm touching all the time. Just making that feel a little smoother and a little better was like, "Dude, what?"
01:11:09	Sam Parr	What's that case called, by the way? I'm looking very good.
01:11:11	Shaan Puri	Let me look at my pain. Feel... so it's the...
01:11:14	Steph Smith	Oh, wait. Do we know how much it costs? Yeah, is it going to be...?
01:11:17	Shaan Puri	Preplugged for you guys, Moaz I think is the name of it. But it's got this feel that is not like plastic. This feel right here is almost like the feel of a basketball. It's like an attraction kind of feel because I was like, "I hate the plastic feel of cases." I just think that feels cheap, and I don't enjoy it. I didn't want the leather ones either, so I was like, "What else is there?" I found that. He identifies that if you're going to do it frequently, then the magnitude needs to be less. If it's going to be infrequent, then the magnitude of the joy it brings is going to need to be high. You can multiply those two together to figure out the value of that item. Then you sort of say, "Okay, that's the value to me," and then, "What's the price to me?" You sort of use that to figure out where you should spend versus not. What people mostly get wrong in that is they undercount frequency. A better pillow or something like that is great because you're going to sleep on it every single night versus a nice Louis Vuitton bag that's going to sit in your closet. My wife bought a Louis Vuitton bag, and she literally never takes it out because she doesn't want to get it messed up. It's like, "Wow, that's the most expensive $6,000 thing that just sits in a closet for no reason," versus things that you get joy out of all the time. I bet if you guys looked at what's the best purchase you made or what you're most satisfied with this year, it's probably something that you interact with somewhat frequently or it was like a one-off life-changing experience that was just of crazy magnitude.
01:12:46	Sam Parr	Yeah, what was that article called? I want to read it.
01:12:49	Shaan Puri	Let me.
01:12:49	Sam Parr	I need some good money therapy in my life.
01:12:52	Steph Smith	Money Therapist - that's the title.
01:12:54	Sam Parr	Yeah, I need some good money therapy. Yeah, send me an article. But Steph, I appreciate you doing this. You're always coming with fire. You're a Twitter person still, right?
01:13:03	Steph Smith	I'm a Twitter person. My handle is @stephsmithio. If you want to support my day job, go listen to the a16z podcast. We're doing some cool stuff there.
01:13:13	Sam Parr	That's just what it's called: a 16z podcast, right?
01:13:15	Steph Smith	Yes. Mhmm.
01:13:17	Sam Parr	Alright, we appreciate you. Thank you, thank you.

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6 Business Ideas To Start In 2023: Mouth Tape, Lupini Beans & More (#459)

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