Transcript
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 wonder if Marie Kondo is now regretting that she cleaned out her house after 3 months of pandemic. I wish I could get her on the podcast to ask her. Maybe that maybe that's in the in the cards. A lot of things we've discussed today, everything from demon sperm, which was trending on Twitter as I started this podcast, and a lot more about how to construct an experiment to change your life. Experiments about entrepreneurship, experiments about skills, experiments in relationships, experiments to improve your life. Also, is it possible to buy an Instagram account and why would one wanna do that? And many more things. I mean, we spoke about so many things I can't even recount them all. So here's the podcast. Now live. And we're gonna get some questions. Got some questions already. Robin, you're not you have a little sore throat. You're not gonna get coronavirus maybe? Are you gonna take hydroxychloroquine? Only the doctor prescribed it to me. So, thank you, anybody, for tuning into this because right now, there's, the phrase demon sperm is trending on Twitter. And so anybody watching this, I'm just letting you know demon sperm is trending on Twitter. So thank you for watching this instead of finding out why demon sperm is trending. But I looked into it for you so I know why demon sperm is trending. Apparently, that so yesterday, there was this doctor who a woman who posted all these videos, and she was talking about her experiences with hydroxychloroquine. Mhmm. And she said, basically, she was treating every patient. She hadn't lost a single patient. She was treating diabetics. She was treating treating patients for, as a prophylaxis to coronavirus. Mhmm. And she was using hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and erythro And Azrythromycin. And she said nobody died from coronavirus. And so that got 20,000,000 views. Everybody was tweeting it and Facebooking it. Mhmm. Twitter and Facebook pulled it down. YouTube pulled it down. Again, I'm not like, the, like, the ruler of so forget I dropped the corona for a second. Base everybody pulled this video down. And the ruler of Iran the other day, Khamenei, whatever. I told Khamenei. The ruler of Iran tweeted that tweeted. He used Twitter to do this. He tweeted that he is going to strike a massive blow against the United States. That tweet is still up there. That's fine. But if you tweet, hey, the I'm a I'm an MD, and I use the medicine to cure people, get that the hell off of Twitter. That is just does not belong. And look, I That makes sense. Well Really? I know. And look, the thing is, regardless of your this is why it's not political, Russ, because you and I were you mentioned hydroxychloroquine to me in January because your family took it in Africa Right. For malaria and stuff like that. So we've been talking about this since long before Trump mentioned it. It's so funny to me though. This this is this is not about hydroxychloroquine. This is about how 50,000,000 people just magically believe the exact same thing Mhmm. If they're on one side of the political spectrum. And 50,000,000 people magically believe the other thing. Just by coincidence. It just so happens, everybody who likes Trump believes that hydroxychloroquine works. Everybody who likes Biden, by coincidence it must be, believe that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work. You mentioned it to me in January long before It always Trump mentioned it. Right. So it wasn't political then. It was like, oh, that's interesting. It's and then people are saying, oh, it's got adverse side effects. It's been on the Who's List list of the 12 safest drugs since, like, 1950. Well, I take it straight for 3 years. Yeah. So did you die? Are you dead? No. So anyway, we don't know. Who knows? Here's the problem, is that it may work or it may not. A friend of mine showed me about 60 studies. 60 from every university, every hospital, everything that said it worked. But then there's another friend of mine who showed me a bunch of studies where it didn't work. One thing I will say is that a lot of the studies that shows it works, it works those studies seem to focus on people who took it when they first got symptoms and they took it with Zinc and Erythromycin. Right. And And a lot of the studies that didn't work, they took it late stage and they did not take it with zinc. So I'm not saying anything one way or the other. Use your doctor, but don't listen to people who have if people use the word Trump in the same sentence as hydroxychloroquine. In other words, if people use it how I just used it, don't listen to them, which is a paradox. But anyway, the reason why demon sperm is trending is because that same woman who recommended hydroxychloroquine and said she's used it in her medical practice, also believes that certain feminine diseases are caused by demons having sex with you in your dreams and are caused by the demon sperm. So take from that what you will. Does that disqualify her for hydroxychloroquine, advice? It probably does. But what about the Yale doctor who also said yesterday, hydroxychloroquine's good? He might be good to listen to. I did not listen to him. Well, that's I prefer to listen to the demon sperm lady, so now I don't know anything. Well, there's a there's this thing going on, a convention, yesterday and today with many doctors, and they're all coming together and talking about their experiences and their practice. And believe, I've I've researched a lot of those doctors, and they they have full practices there, you know, wherever they live. One's in San Diego. Yeah. One's in Houston. And they they belong to these, reputable hospitals. I mean, hospitals won't just take a quack. Okay? You you they want good doctors that don't have, you know, problems. And they they belong to these hospitals. So, you know, the science is getting better. People are using these in their practices. They're using them on their patients. Yes. It's there is a difference if you use it earlier or later, obviously, you know, on any medication. But, the the fact that people are wanting this not to work because of a political they want people to die because of a political position that they have just makes me sick. I mean, it really makes me sick. And again I'm so angry about it. Left of center. I had Andrew Yang on the podcast. It was released this morning. I was in favor of Yang. I liked a lot of his issues. I can't call myself one way or the other. But I I you sent me a tweet that was taken down. AOC tweeted, please keep businesses closed until November. A few businesses closed here and there doesn't matter as long as we get rid of this presidency. And so I understand why someone feels that strongly. If you really feel the president of the United States is rooting society, then it doesn't matter to you if you hurt a few people. But understand, this is a young person who's tweeting this, who has certain ambitions on her own and she took her tweet down within minutes, but of course people screenshotted it. So again, a lot of people on both sides, Republicans too. A lot of people are making bad decisions on both sides because of politics. Do not make decisions about your economic health or other peep don't make decisions about other people's jobs That's right. Just because you like one candidate or the other. By the way It wasn't just a few. It was millions of people. Okay? Yeah. A lot of people too were making decisions during the Democratic primaries. Don't do this if you want Biden or don't do this if you want Bernie Sanders. So politics should be out of medicine and out of other people's I can't make an opinion about your life because of my politics. So so when someone says That's right. X y z should be closed because I want Trump to win, or x y z should be closed because I want Biden to win. That's just stupid. That's right. So anyway It's not rational. It's just not rational thinking. But the point is and and I'm guilty of this. I don't know if you're guilty of it. I suspect you are actually. I'm guilty of this. Every now and then, I get into a Twitter fight or a Facebook fight. And I think it's just a waste of time. It's a waste of time. You don't change anyone's mind. You don't learn anything new. There is I try to justify it by saying I'm using Google to research. I'm not learning anything new. And I just get upset and stressed. And I think the challenge the great opportune I always try to look at a situation and not ask what am I grateful for, but ask what are the difficult things? What's a what what's a difficult gratitude problem? So a difficult gratitude problem is when something is going really bad for you and then you find what to be grateful for in that. So for instance, if you're driving into a busy city, New York City, because you're and you're late for an appointment because there's a ton of traffic and you're late, you didn't expect this much traffic, that's a difficult gratitude problem. So you could say to yourself, you know, I'm grateful I live in the city that everybody wants to go to because that's how I find so many opportunities. So it's too bad that I'm late for this, but I'm grateful that this is the city of opportunity and that's why there's so much traffic. So the difficult gratitude problem, as hard as it is in this coronavirus, in this pandemic, in these economic lockdowns, the difficult graduate problem is that, for me, I'm grateful to have an opportunity to learn how to rise above these petty arguments Yeah. That people are having. When in when you're in some obscure Twitter thread arguing about hydroxychloroquine Right. There's just no need to do it. For sure, do your own research. Talk to your doctor. I have spoken to doctors. I have spoken to doctors on the podcast. I have spoken to many medical practitioners. I don't mean to argue it on Twitter or Facebook. I'm not a doctor. I'm not gonna change anyone's mind. But but recognizing, oh, my gosh. I'm getting angry. I'm getting angry right now. Someone said something bad about zinc. I need to fight this on Twitter. So someone just said this happened. Someone just said the other day, for the 100th billionth time on Twitter, oh, you wanna kill your grandma just so the stock market could go up? No. Nobody wants any there is no relationship between killing people and this I always hear this. The economy should reopen. And then somebody always says to me usually, someone says, oh, profits are more important than lives to you? Absolutely not. Lives are always no one there is no correlation between deaths and profits. No maybe if you're a bomb making company, there's a correlation between deaths and profits. I don't know. Probably in the middle of World War 2 that was the case. But, like, everybody always says, oh, you would prefer your grandma to die? Yeah. Just so you people could go back to work? Actually, if my grandma was alive, I probably would prefer her to die so people could go back to work. But that's another story. But the reality is people just say these stupid political things. And meanwhile, people are starving. And, you know, people aren't getting medical treatments because hospitals are filled with coronavirus or where there's lockdowns, for health facilities unrelated to coronavirus, and we've talked about this before. I'm not gonna argue it. All I'm saying is there's lots of strategies, there's lots of philosophies, it's not just Trump's, It's not just Biden's. It's not just Fauci's. Fauci who approved hydroxychloroquine in 2005 for SARS. So there's lots of opinions. You don't have to look you don't have to look up What's what does Trump say about this so I know to believe it or not? What is what does AOC say about this so I know I won't be canceled if I say it? Like That's the sick part, are people that do that, I think. Just shallow, shallow people that just don't know, and they just wanna do it because that's the in thing to do. Yeah. So again Those are the people that are boring. Like, who wants to be around people like that? Right. And so I'm grateful. I see one of those things. I feel a little anger coming up. Either side, somebody just said something bad about Andrew Yang after I posted my podcast. And I felt a little bit angry. But I just then I'm like, I'm getting angry at this human being. And I look at what his name is. I'm gonna at least respond to this human being. His name is Cyberboard Bitcoin, Bitcoin 3203. And, like, am I actually gonna respond to an anonymous 13 year old masturbating in his mom's basement or whatever? Like, and he's like he's like masturbate he's like tweeting me, like, oh, you you Andrew Yang. I'm act he that's gonna make Yang. No. I get to rise above it and read interesting things, write an article, do a podcast, do this, and think about the questions people are asking. So I'm grateful I get practice at rising above Right. These difficult things. It's not so easy. Social media, you know, triggers every dopamine molecule in your body. You wanna fight. Like, I have to correct the world. But these people don't put their real names either. That's what I don't understand. It's like if you really believe that and you, you know, put your name. Yeah. This is like, let's see who you are. Why are you gonna hide? You know why? It's because social media social media I mean, again, it didn't used to be called social media. It used to be called social networking. Because I would, oh, I met Robin at a party. I wanna network with her. Oh, she's on Facebook. Be my friend on Facebook, and then we'll talk and be friends, and we're networking. But now, it's social media. It's like people with the loudest voice broadcasting to as many people as possible their insane opinions. It's begun from networking to media. And the thing is, it's 1 giant costume party. It's like a giant Halloween. Yeah. So what's the day of the year where you feel the least amount of inhibitions? It's Halloween because you're wearing a costume. So every so you can get that feeling. You can capture that feeling of no inhibitions when you're on social media. It's all a costume party. And, you know, some people like to live in reality. So you think, oh my gosh, I need to change this person's mind so the world is a tiny bit better. I'm doing my job in the world by changing someone's mind. No one's mind has ever been changed. Have you ever once has anyone ever once contacted you and said, you know, you know James, thank you so much for changing my mind about, prison reform, about the death penalty, about abortion, about hydroxychloroquine, about anything. Like, thank you so much for changing my mind. No one's ever said that. No one's ever thanked me for anything except you. Because I I I argue with her and I change her mind all the time. And she pretends to thank me and then she calls up all her friends and she says, oh, you wouldn't believe what my husband just said about Biden or Trump or whatever. And then they all laugh and then she says to me, thank you for changing my mind. I'm just kidding. I don't think you really do that. Well, I look I listen. I lived through bird flu, SARS, when we lived in Ghana, lived in China for 6 years. And guess what? Hydrochloroquine did you know, they used this kind of stuff. This is what they use. We didn't get it. We had hydrochloroquine because we were, you know, it was a prophylaxis for malaria. So I don't wanna hear people people say it doesn't work. Because you know what? It does. It works in in cases. In some cases. So, you you know, it's like, it's not on the shelf where people are gonna go buy it. You gotta get it through a doctor. So, you know, that's the whole thing. It's Alright, Trumptard. And I'm not a Trumptard. It's just common sense that you just you you there's a problem. There's a pandemic. Alright? Listen to people. Listen to doctors. Listen to what they're doing with their patients. Listen to what works. Listen to what doesn't work. What works on some patients, obviously, it works on some patients. So don't just say in a blanket statement, it doesn't work. So I don't want I'm I'm angry. I'm super angry. You were arguing on Twitter yesterday. A lot. I can tell. I can tell just by your eye. Actually, I only argue I don't argue with people, stupid people like that. I don't know if it works. With the Chinese people. I don't know if it works. We asked a doctor the other day who lives in the area, and he said It works for something. It works if you if you take it early. Don't take it. Use it for pulforides. Anyway, I was talking about I was talking about Marie Kondo. Remember me remember Marie Kondo? She used to live. She used to exist. Like, now nobody talks about Marie Kondo. You ever think about Marie Kondo? So Marie Kondo had this Netflix show. She is. She's the one with the, the Kondo technique of, you know, the magic art of tidying up. So she's all about if you if you love something, you know, you throw out everything, except if you love something, like, put it like, hold it and see if you love it. And, and then keep it if you love it. And she had a whole show on Netflix, the Marie Kondo show about tidying up. And it's all it's related to minimalism and things like that. And, I I think it's very interesting her business model. So she didn't make as much money from her best selling book. She doesn't nobody makes money from a Netflix show. What she did was she created a certification program for other people to be Marie Kondo coaches, to help other people tidying up. But the reason I was thinking of this is is that when everybody was locked when when a 1000000000 people around the planet were locked down for 3 months, I bet you they were kinda unhappy if they had Marie Kondo at their house. Because they had nothing left in their house. What? And then they were suddenly locked down. It's like, why couldn't I have waited till after the lockdown? I threw out all my books and food. Now I'm locked down. I can't leave. Like, everybody who Marie Kondo ed in China starved to death. So they got Kondo ed a little too much. So gonna answer a question. Somebody, first off, actually, before I I just heard an interesting story. I was on someone else's podcast and someone was mentioning something interesting to me, which I thought was a a a good business idea to to think about. This person is buying Instagram accounts. I won't mention his name because I don't know if he wants to be known for this. This person was buying Instagram accounts. So with $1,000 he bought an Instagram account relating to a particular sport, that had 33,000 followers. Then he for $2,000 he bought another Instagram account that was very popular, had a 100,000 followers but had a lot of engagement, also for the same sport. And so now he's using Teespring, which may helps you design and make t shirts. And he's gonna sell t shirts related to the sport on these 2 Instagram accounts where he has a 135,000 really engaged followers that he bought for $3,000. So I looked this up. Like, is this possible? Well, suddenly, see. What do I know about buying more character Twitter accounts? I don't know. But there so then I Googled this. I mean, maybe this is related to your question. On fame swap dot com I never know knew this site. Fame swap dot com, there's a bunch of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube accounts listed for sale. So I looked at a bunch of Instagram accounts on this site. And to be honest, I didn't think there were anything there was anything interesting to acquire. That was just my opinion. You should check it out. I only looked for, like, 15 minutes because I was just thinking about that, mentioning that for this. But I think it is a good idea to buy generic social media accounts. And by that I mean, these were like generic accounts about basketball. They weren't like someone specific individual account. They were like just somebody created an account about amazing basketball dunks and had 33,000 followers. And now this guy's making like basketball related t shirts. It's actually not basketball, but I'm using basketball. I just think that's an interesting business idea because the hardest thing Yeah. With any business, you can decide to build or buy. It's it's gonna be cheaper to build, but sometimes you wanna buy because you want speed. And if this guy was telling me for for $3,000 he bought a 133,000 engaged followers interested in this sport and now he can focus on what he really allows loves, which is designing his t shirt and then see if these Instagram accounts he'll probably at least make the $3,000 back and because it's also he can also sell these Instagram accounts the same way he bought them. So he can always get his money back, worst case, But he could that's an interesting experiment because you can make t shirts for free. They'll Teespring will drop ship and then take a cut. And then he basically bought for almost nothing, a 133,000 he didn't buy followers illegally, Like, these were legit followers. It's not like he bought, like, a farm of followers. Like, some celebrities, they have I know one guy. He's a a podcaster. He has a half a 1000000 Instagram followers. And I could tell they're not real. Like, he gets fewer I have 70,000 or so Instagram followers. I get more likes per post than he does, and he has a half a night. So I could tell he bought them. Yeah. And so that's stupid. Like, there is no point in doing that. Right. But here's a guy who spent $3,000 to buy a legit 133,000 followers interested in basketball. For free, he can make basketball shirts and then he could try to sell them on these Instagram pants. That's a great idea. It really is. We should all try it. Like that's at least Mhmm. I don't know. I don't know if it works or not. This guy is a social media expert. He's built up many celebrity accounts to millions of followers. So it's in he was interesting enough and the idea is interesting enough that I think that's an interesting experiment. So some person asked me one of the questions I just got were what do I do, you know, what kind of experiments I do? So I've I've talked about how the 10,000 experiment rule is better than the 10000 hour rule for learning. The 10000 hour rules, of course, says, if you do something for 10000 hours, you'll be among the best in the world at it. 10000 experiment rule, which I'm calling it is if you do an experiments, you will learn much, much faster and you will succeed much, much faster than the 10000 Hour Roll. And I'll give just one simple example, which I might have talked about before. I apologize if I did. In the 1960s, there's an Olympic sport right now called the high jump and you run and jump over a high bar. And if you if you crash into the bar because you can't don't jump high enough, you lose. And whoever jumps the highest wins and doesn't crash the bar. So peep so in the people used to, for decades, people used to run forward and then jump up and then get their legs over, or they go forward over the bar. So this one guy did an experiment, Dick Fosbury. He did an experiment and everyone told him it was crazy. His coach told him it was crazy, but his legs were really long so he couldn't get his legs over the bar. So he does a he he jumps and then he turns around and his back goes over the bar instead. And it's 2 years later, he won the gold medal in the Olympics. So by doing an experiment that no one else had ever done before, he actually became the best in the world. So I'm not saying he didn't practice at all. I'm not saying he didn't put in a 1000 hours of running and jumping and so on. But it was the experiment itself that allowed him to skip straight from literally being the worst high jumper in the in in the whole sport to being the gold medalist at the Olympics. So experiments so someone asked me, how do you take risks during experiments? I'll find the exact question. I have it right here. But the quest the way to make an experiment, it's very important, is you have little downside. So and you could have downside with money or you could have downside in time. So it shouldn't take a lot of time from you and it shouldn't take a lot of money for you to test something. So for instance, let's say I wanna test. Can I sell pajamas with the choose yourself symbol on them? Okay. Well, I'll I'll get someone on Fiverr.com or 99 designs to make a photoshopped picture of someone in pajamas with the choose yourself logo on it. And I'll make a Facebook ad and I'll put it on with a $20 budget. And if there I've talked about this last week. If there's a 3% click through, to the on that Facebook ad, then I just spent maybe 30 or $40 including the designs. I spent almost zero time and I validated that if it's a good idea or not. 3% click through or more, great idea. 1% click through or less, bad idea. Between 1 3% click through, maybe. So try some more stuff. That's an example. Little downside, huge upside, and you learn things. You learn how to use Fiverr. You learn how to use 99 designs. You learn how to make a Facebook ad. You learn how to evaluate or test a Facebook ad. And you learn maybe something about fashion design in the process. So, what are experiments we're doing now? I'll tell you an experiment I'm doing now. Okay. So I'm doing an experiment where I'm trying to I think I think and maybe you would agree, I think you're a little bit more of an extrovert than me. Mhmm. I'm an introvert, which doesn't mean I'm shy. I think actually you might be shyer than me. Do you think? Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Yes. I can. I'm willing to just go in and start talking to people. Right. But so I'm a little shyer, but I'm an introvert in the true definition of introvert. Introvert doesn't mean you're shy. Introvert doesn't mean you can't speak up in the workplace. And I'll you know what? I'm gonna have Susan Cain, the author of Quiet on the podcast and ask her directly. But introvert means you lose energy when you're around people after a certain amount of time. Mhmm. And extrovert means you gain energy when you're talking to people and you're having fun in a social setting like a party. So, like, even when we had a party at our own house a year ago, I had to go into our room and lock the door, like, every 15 minutes or so. Yeah. And that's the only way I could function. Else, I would completely collapse. Well, I wanted to join you. 350 people. But you're so good at like you go to a party and I just you're so good, like, you're laugh you could laugh for hours. You, like, enjoy talking to people. And I enjoy it too. I just I lose energy. And so I'm trying a little bit harder to experiment with preserving my energy in different ways Sure. In a social situation. I'll let you know how it goes. I'm not quite sure how I'm gonna experiment with that, but that's the plan. And I've been doing other experiments like, look, I probably will experiment on this site, fameswap.com, and see what it costs to actually buy an Instagram account. Right now, I'm buying a mobile app. I promised I would update everybody when that's done. I'm buying a a game on the Apple Store and the Google Store. And hopefully, later this week, I'll be closed on that or maybe early next week. And I'm just experimenting and we'll see what happens. Often, when I was doing stand up comedy, when stand up comedy still existed, now unfortunately everything is locked down, I was doing many experiments. You know, one time horrible experiment. One time I experimented with playing the air piano on stage. There was a song. I even forgot the song now. Great Balls of Fire. Yeah. And I would play the air I wouldn't talk, but I would play the air piano all through it. Because he's doing this and this and the whole thing. And, horrible, I bombed miserably, but I was that's also an experiment in what's called committing to the bit. So even when you're bombing on a joke, you commit to it till the end. You can't just say in the middle of the joke, oh, I'm sorry. That I'm I'm changing. So I did a 3 minute air piano song, which no everybody was like, what the hell is this guy doing? And I'm going, and then, anyway. So Peter Schiff, who is not who I think is the worst economist on the planet after Nuriel Roubini. Peter Schiff said that, on Joe Rogan's show, that there's gonna be a great giant financial collapse in the economy. And what do I think? And I've debated with Peter Schiff before on on TV, on CNBC, at the time I was right but I think in the long run. So we were arguing about gold and about the economy. He said the economy was gonna crash, it didn't. He said gold would go up, It didn't. But now because of the pandemic, gold has gone up to all time highs. So I suppose 9 years later, you could say he was right, and I was wrong about gold, but we'll see. So now he's saying there's gonna be a giant collapse in the economy. And I don't think I think that's like an all I think what's gonna happen to economics in general as a science is that it's gonna disappear. Because when has an economist ever been correct? And I'm not asking you to know the history of economics, but I will tell you the answer. The answer is never. So nobody really knows what's gonna happen. And I don't even think there is such a thing as the economy. Yes. You know, sometimes people lose jobs. Sometimes prices go up, sometimes prices go down. But I think what's happened now is something and and of course everyone says you can't say this time it's different. But of course this time it's different. We've never been told, 2,000,000,000 people have never been told, you've gotta stay home from your jobs and and and not do anything except watch TV, smoke pot, drink, and clap out your window at 7 pm for all the essential delivery boys. No one's ever done that before. So we're in a strange economy where 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars have been printed and nobody's spending because you can't even go to the store in many places. So what's happening is, it's not that the economy is going up or down. The economy has turned sideways. And no one thinks of it this way. No one thinks of the economy in a three-dimensional way. The economy right now is more complicated than ever, but there are entrepreneurial opportunities out there. For instance, why not, I'm just thinking about this guy earlier, why not buy 2 Instagram accounts, popular Instagram accounts for $3,000 And then, for free, make shirts that cater to that audience and, sell to them. Why not try that? There is money in the economy. There's 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars in the economy. Worrying about, oh, is there gonna be hyperinflation? Let the people on CNBC worry about that. You just worry about creative ways to make use of the 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars that have not yet been spent in this economy. And there's I was just looking at another site. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, this is an interesting site. I never saw this site before. Exchange marketplace.com. And so it's kinda like flippa.com, but it very much focuses on ecommerce sites. So here's the first one. Eco Fish Tackle. Eco Fish Tackle. I don't know if that's.com or whatever. It doesn't say the the name of the website. It makes $11,000 a month profit. So a 121,000 a year profit. And it's for sale for $79,000. So I could click view listing, Eco fish tackle.com. It's for sale for $79,000. It's $11,000 profit per month. And Look at it. It just went up to profit. Oh, yeah. So here's here's where I'm a little skeptical. The the the profits skyrocketed at the beginning of the pandemic. So I don't know why people were buying fish tacos. Well, because they were probably about spending time outdoors. Yeah. Maybe they left New York City, for instance. They left their cities to go fishing. So they needed a lot of tackles to to Just to go out. Maybe they're selling other things too for outdoor use. Yeah. So in the due diligence, you'd have to just find out. And, like, here's one that was about stamps that sold. But, yeah, they tell you the the statistics. So this guy this Eco Fish Tackle has gotten 600,000 visits in the past 3 months. That's a lot. Here's one. This this is a small one. The MAGA Shop. I gotta click on this. What's the MAGA Shop? The MAGA Shop makes $2,000 profit a month. So $24,000 in earnings a year. It's for sale for $51,000 but I'm sure that's negotiable. And what does it sell? Oh. It sells Trump 2020 t shirts. It sells it's a picture of Fauci with an insole. It sells Trump Mudds. So, whatever. But, it's trading for 2 so you can make $24,000 in earnings and it may you could sell it. $24,000 a year in earnings. You could buy it for 51,000. The question you would have to ask in due diligence is what? What happens after the election? What if Trump wins? What if Trump loses? Somebody told me the other day, if you're interested in a conservative e commerce site, this is just by coincidence, I only saw this site today, but someone said, the best Rush Limbaugh once said, the best thing that ever happened to him was a Democrat getting elected to office. Because then the conservatives get more polarized and so maybe sites like this do even better. Mhmm. So and again, you could build a site like this or you could buy a site like this. I I actually think it's more interesting to buy right now, but so you can more quickly ramp up to make profits and you could borrow money or raise money to to buy. But anyway, that's another, interesting business thing. So those are interesting things that could be business experiments. Somebody asked, do I ever experiment in my relationships? So remember, the importance of an experiment is little downside and potential for massive upside or at the worst case, you learn something. So, for instance, if I were to cheat on Robin as an experiment that has enormous, enormous downside and there's no way to avoid the downside. Anyone who thinks they can cheat and get away with it is incredibly wrong. And everybody could tell. You're not fooling anybody. Anybody out there listening to this was cheated, everybody knows you're a cheater. They might not know it directly, but they sense it. Yeah. And you also have withdrawn time from your loved one, by creating even intrigue with somebody else or specific or spending time with someone else, they're gonna wonder. Nobody's stupid. They're gonna wonder, where were you? Or who are you talking to? Or who why are you giggling and texting all day long? Like, this and you're spending less time with your kids. The whole thing's horrible. Don't cheat. But that's a bad experiment. So so do I experiment in my in my relationships? Of course. So for instance, in the middle of the day yesterday, it's sunny outside. Rob I said to Rob, let's take a walk. It's the first walk we've taken here in 2 months. We we moved we we half moved down to Key Biscayne, Florida. And and we took I I think you were shocked. I said, let's take a walk. And you were like, okay. And we took a walk. I hated the walk. That was the downside. But I got to spend quality time with Robin. It was fun. I thought so. So I love the talking. Maybe next time I could just talk on the couch in the air conditioning. Oh, man. I was sweating so much. I took my first shower in 2 weeks. What? First time I took a shower in the afternoon in years. So oh, what do you guys think of this? What do you think of this business idea? So a year ago, I was talking about a business idea which I thought was interesting, which is that a single owner will have apartment owner might have lots of apartments and they Airbnb the mall. And they need, like, a but they don't live there. So they just own these apartments, and they make money instead of renting. They need money from Airbnb. And sometimes they need an Airbnb manager, someone to manage all their apartments, coordinate all the listings, make sure the house gets cleaned, make sure keys gets picked up. So that's on the Airbnb side. That's on the owner side. Mhmm. But what about the idea right now of an Airbnb concierge? So let's say I'm in Miami and you're in New York and you're thinking of going to Miami. You contacted, an Airbnb concierge. I find the right Airbnb for you. So you don't have to, like, deal with all that. I make sure sometimes it's a drag to get the keys. Like a curator or something. Yeah. Like, sometimes, so I'll make sure I get the keys. I make sure I'm waiting there for you. I show you the house. I deal with any problems. I coordinate with the owner. Because sometimes the owners are I've been on I've lived in thousands of Airbnbs. Sometimes the owners are hard to get get a hold of. Sometimes it's hard to get keys. You know, I'll have a rental car waiting there for you at the Airbnb instead of you having to go through the airport, and waiting in the line and taking that little tram to the car rental place and the whole thing. And I don't know. Being an Airbnb concierge for a lot of people might be Right. I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea. I think it's a good idea. I don't I don't know if maybe the landlords would pay you, but surely No. No. The the people. This is for the people. Yeah. The people would pay you at the end. So it's not landlord focused. You're on the side of the customer. Right. So and then if you need rest you need you're going to Miami for the first time. You don't know what restaurants to go to. You know how a hotel tells you, oh, check out this restaurant. Yeah. Check out this club. Go to this w***ehouse or buy drugs here. Like, I will tell you all those things as the Airbnb concierge because you don't have a hotel concierge. Right. So Airbnb, if you're listening, you should run a concierge service where that could be an exchange. Like, hey, if you're going to Miami, consider having a concierge service. Boom. Idea number 1 for Airbnb. So one time, I did send my 10 ideas to Airbnb. I got to go and speak at the Airbnb open. This is in 2017 maybe and or 2018. I forget. And, now this is just another idea. Our air so not only is the Airbnb concierge business a possibility, but it's even better. Here's 2 ideas for Airbnb. Airbnb should have a concierge service. So if you're right now, if you're going to Miami from New York, there's a lot of questions you might have. Oh, is it Miami even open? Are the restaurants open? Is it just outdoor dining? Is it safe to go to Miami? What are the travel warnings in New York and Florida? What's the best airline for for this stuff? And then you might want to know, well, what parts of town should I get an Airbnb in? I'm going with my family. I'm going with my pets. What restaurants can I eat at and that are safest with the virus going on? So So an Airbnb should have an exchange. Here's our top rated Miami concierges and here's their price per hour. And then you can have a Zoom Airbnb schedules the Zoom call so you can start talking via Zoom. Boom. Here's another idea for Airbnb. Why is Netflix worth half a $1,000,000,000,000? Is it because they have original TV shows? That's part of it. But how did they how did they start why Why do they have all these original TV shows? Why do we go there? It's because Netflix had a really popular website where you would just buy or rent DVDs. And so my view is any website that has a large amount of traffic like Netflix has billions of visitors a month. Uber has billions of visitors a month. Airbnb has billions of visitors a month. There's no reason why Airbnb can't produce their own TV shows to keep people sticky on the site. So Airbnb should make a TV show or a bunch of TV shows. Maybe you can make, you know, a TV show that I once we talked about this idea once. Here I'll stay in the worst Airbnb the cheapest Airbnb in New York City and the most expensive Airbnb in New York City. And they make a little show out of it. You know, work from worst to first, they get called the show. And, airing now on the front page of Airbnb. They've got the traffic, so they will have more viewers of that TV show than somebody watching CNN right now, for instance. Yeah. So That's a good idea. That's another idea for Airbnb. Yeah. Great idea. I don't know. It's just an idea machine. I don't I don't know. Let's see. Should all experiments be fun? The answer is no. Experiments should take you a little bit out of your comfort zone. So, for instance, when I was practicing comedy and I I did an experiment, I did stand up on a subway car, that was not fun. Or if I'm doing if I'm trying to validate a business idea by making a Facebook ad, that's not necessarily fun. When Thomas Edison was trying 10,000 different filaments to light a light bulb, that's not fun. It's just he's testing out a theory. So the accumulation of knowledge is reward unto itself. Doesn't have to be like, Oh, I'm gonna try archery today and have fun as an experiment. That's not experiments are not really fun. It's not about fun. It's about it's about learning incredibly quickly. So one experiment I did once is I said to myself, I'm gonna write a children's book. So in one weekend, I wrote I wrote out the plot of a children's book. I'll show you. I wrote I wrote out, it's it's all it's my daddy owns out all outer space. I wrote out the plot of a children's book. It's only like 20 pages or so. And then, that took me a couple hours. And then I called up a friend of mine, Molly Han, a great illustrator. And I said, Hey, Molly. Can you would you wanna illustrate a children's book? And you could say yes or no. I won't be offended. Here's the plot that I made in a couple hours. And she's like, I love this. And she illustrated it. Like, it's pretty. It's pretty. All the illustrations are pretty. In the cover. So and then she made a little animated trailer for it. So so by the way, that entire experiment took me just a few hours because once I wrote it, I just sent her the text. She spent months illustrating it and then we put it out. It was actually a best seller for a couple days on Amazon, which is not that hard to do. And, that experiment resulted in a published children's book that only took me a few hours of time. And I paid her some money to do to illustrate it. And then, I uploaded it to Amazon. Easy experiment and I learned a lot about writing a book for basically 3 to 5 year olds. The only problem was, is that right now we have 5 kids between us, but at the time, I had 2 daughters, Josie and Molly. Josie has black hair, Molly has orange hair. And so Molly Hahn didn't know that, and so when she illustrated, she made the daughter have orange hair. So Josie, my older daughter, got a little upset. Like, hey. Is that Molly? So now I'm writing a sequel where I'm gonna have a girl with dark hair. I've gotta make it up to her. So how much did it cost for the illustration? To be honest, I don't remember. But I think I paid $5,000 So $5,000 seems like a lot and it is a lot. But and I did not get a return on that 5,000 except for the fact that, a, forever and ever now, for the rest of my life, I could say I'm a children's book author. So it pays dividends for that $5,000 pays so many dividends. When I meet new people, they say, well, what do you do? I could say, well, I'm a children's book author. I could just do that forever. And $5,000 and so instead of paying for, like, 1 third of a vacation or paying for a vacation or, I don't know, joining a gym, I have a children's book forever. And I'll just do push ups and lift weights in my house. I don't need to spend $5,000 joining a gym every year and then never using it like everybody else in the world. Think of all the things you waste $5,000 a year on. Like, if you smoke cigarettes, you easily what's a pack of cigarettes now? Like, $20? I have no idea. So you spend if you buy a pack a day, you spend $7,000 if you smoke cigarettes. Yeah. Instead of smoking cigarettes for a year, which I don't do anyway, I I made my very own children's book and I feel very proud of it. And it's it's beautifully drawn and I like the plot and it was fun. So that was an experiment. How long did it take her to it took me so how long did it take to write the book? It took 4 hours to write the book. Maybe 3 hours. And it's oh, Robin? Mhmm. White looks great on you. Thank you. White does look great on her. It makes it look like she has a tan. She doesn't. But, anyway, other questions? I had some other questions. What time is it? Got some more time. Let's see. Oh, someone add someone gained it made a suggestion. I'll comment on the suggestion. You can I once a week, we can host a radio show called Ask Aught? And someone could pitch a business and I could analyze the business and tell them how to experiment with starting up the business and tell them, what what what are the flaws, the good things, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the business. How to do due diligence and validate the idea, and what next steps to take, and what additional ideas to have. So I think that's a decent idea. We don't have to have a separate show though. If you wanna pitch if you wanna pitch a business, just send me a message. Send me the business idea. 203-590-8607. 203-590-8607. Pitch the business and we'll think about it and analyze it and tell you how every business I do, I start off with experiments. And so, for instance, when I was thinking of buying this game on that in that's a mobile app in the iPhone store and in the Android store, which I can't wait to tell you about. I had never played the game before. And so the first thing I did was not only did I play the game, I made sure I loved the game so much that I would get obsessed with it. And I made sure that I had at least 10 ideas to improve the revenues of the game. So those were my 2 experiments. Now I'm obsessed with the game. I even played it this morning when I woke up, and I played it last night before I went to sleep. And and every 24 hours, the highest scores around the world are updated. This morning, I was 11, and that was my I got my best score ever. And I was 11th in the world of the past 24 hours. So that was my experiment for to see if that game it it works. You love it though. I love it. Yeah. And I never loved a game like that before. That's really great. You chose wisely. Oh, another somebody asked just what's another experiment I'm doing? So every week I've talked about this before. But every week on lessonface.com, I've been taking a beatboxing class from professional beatboxer and UK champion, Paul Arnett, otherwise known as Subsonic, if you Google him on YouTube. I've been taking a beatboxing cla*s. Started off as an experiment, but now I've taken like a dozen of these classes. I'm starting to get a little good. And the exp why am I doing an experiment like this? First off, I've always been curious about it. I've never loved beatboxing, but I've always been curious. And I'm I noticed sometimes some comedians make sounds that seem to me similar to beatboxing. I showed Paul, the instructor, these comedians, and he said, yeah, those are beatboxing techniques. And I said, okay, I wanna learn beatboxing because it seems fun. And it could be related, it could enhance it's an experiment to enhance the comedy. And meanwhile, it's musical too. So it's it's it's entertaining and I'm learning a new skill. I always like learning a new skill. It takes 45 minutes or a half hour a week to take the cla*s. And then I practice for like an hour or so a week. So, let me see if there's any other questions. Here's here's kind of, What else? That's kind of a boring question, but, I'll answer it anyway. Someone was saying, if they're allowed to take money out of their 401 k for without a penalty because of the situation, I guess they're allowed without a penalty now, should they take it out? The answer is yes. I don't really wanna go into it. Oh, cash is king. Don't put your money in an account that will penalize you if you want your cash before the age of 65. You might die before you're 65. So, put cash in your account now. Don't forget that as you get older, unless you're already 60 or whatever, as you get older, your earnings potential is gonna increase so much faster than your savings that it makes very little point to have too much savings in the bank. Like when you're in your twenties, you should probably have 3, maybe 4 months savings in the bank, tops. It's okay if you have none. As you get older, maybe you need a little bit more and more. Like in your fifties, you need more because your earnings potential starts to decline actually. But in your twenties, thirties, and forties, focus on making more money, not saving more money. Now we're just at the age where we're thinking, okay, well maybe it's important to see how much you've accumulated and and whatever. But don't use a 401 k. That's like the worst idea. In a 401 k, they just steal your money. Wall Street charges all sorts of fees and they penalize you for wanting your money before the age of 65. They Wall Street wants to hold on to your money for as long as possible. So they made it on law. You can't take it out before 59a half. And it's just silly. Sometimes, though, companies do match it. So that's a good thing. So there are circumstances, right, that are good. If there's matching, then you still have to decide. The main formula is, even if there's matching, you still have to decide if your earning potential is gonna go much like, for instance, let's say you're 24 years old. Mhmm. And you would have put 4 $500 in your 401 k. Until they match it, and now you have a $1,000 Well, by the time you're 30 years old, you might be making I'm just making it, you might be making 200,000 a year. So that extra $500 was meaningless to you at that point. You'll just put 5,000 or 10,000 in your 4 zero one ks. So, and and it was trivial. And yes, there's compounding, but there's also in the stock market, you could also lose money. 401ks go down. And, you know, most most mutual funds don't outperform the stock market. So and most people and if you do bonds now, they pay 0% interest. So there's no real benefit to 401ks, particularly when you're young. And when you're old, you don't have enough runway to do 401ks. So you should just you should just focus on and by the way, risk is very important. If someone says Robin's right, she's only right and I agree. Matching is like free money. But instead of thinking of it as matching, think of it as part of your salary and think of it is your salary gonna increase much faster than the amount you save? In which case, you might as well have the money because the money so like, when you're 25, yes, $1,000 saved means a huge amount. For me, I didn't I didn't have even a $100 saved until I was 28 years old. So $1,000 was huge. But when you're older and you have money, $1,000 is meaningless. So you you could have spent and enjoyed that $1,000 when you were 25, even though they matched it, whatever, you could have spent that when you were trying to it it when you look back on it, you will say at at the age of 40, you'll say to yourself, oh my gosh. Why was I so stupid just because of matching? Now, if you're putting in a 100,000 and they're matching you with a 100,000 and Well, they usually put a limit on it. Yeah. They'll put a cap on it anyway. So it's a way for them to again, it's a trick companies use to get you you know what the default is when a company gets you in a 401 k? The default is they use that 401 k cash to buy their own stock, propping up their stock. That's why they're more than happy to match it because they get that's a way for them to get through the laws about buying their own stock. And so they get to prop up the stock by putting it in your 401 k first, and then using your money to buy their stock. In your 401 k, did you have Chevron stock? Yeah. Case closed. But it also, though, encourages people to have ownership with their job. So it's like you it it makes them feel like, okay. I do own part of this company. I'm gonna do a really great job because this is my company too. You're absolutely right. But that's different. There are things called ESOPs, employee stock ownership programs. That's what it was. Okay. So that's a little bit of a 401 k plan. Well, I mean, we had both. Okay. She had both. And they had the So it's true. When employees get stuck in the company as part of the salary, that those companies tend to do better. That's why tech companies always give equity, in their company. Tech companies zoom up. Right. So but that's a little different than than just putting money in to be managed by mutual funds. Yeah. Yeah. Or new losses with those. In general, 4 zero one k's bad. Savings for young people, medium to bad. Savings for older people, also medium to bad. You should just try and focus on making more money. And then when you have enough, then you should say, okay, now I'm gonna start accumulating rather than just making. But enjoy what you do and make more money doing it, And that's much better than obsessing over every penny. You know, there are people who don't buy Starbucks coffees because they're $2 and they can buy on the cart outside for a dollar. Don't worry about saving a dollar. Sit and enjoy and relax in Starbucks. I'm sorry. So it's like $10 an now for a cup of coffee. Whatever. But, like, $10 will never kill anybody. And just like people have no problem buying lottery tickets and packs of cigarettes Yeah. Or cheese blintzes that are boxed in the freezer or whatever. That's nice. Like, you know, don't don't obsess so much when you're young about saving money because I guarantee you, it's gonna seem you're gonna feel like you wasted your it's so hard to save money when you're young, even $1,000. And you're that time when you're 15 years later, $1,000 is gonna be meaningless to you maybe. And you're gonna regret all the energy you spent saving such a small amount. So and this is related to risk and entrepreneurship. Always. It's like a parting thought. When you're thinking of being an entrepreneur, which I hope everyone is because 1 out of 3 employees who thought they had safe jobs with no risk, 1 out of 3 employees were laid off Yeah. That that in March. So if you're thinking about being an entrepreneur, you don't have to go all out and have employees and raise money. But the most important thing is, no no risks. I wish I had new no. I'm stuttering. I wish I had known this about investing. I think I have PTSD about 2,001 when I lost all my money the first time, a 4. I lost all my money that first time. Not because I made bad investments, which I did. Not because I bought a house too expensive for me, which I did. Not because I would take position sizes incredibly high, much higher than I should have, which I did. I lost all my money because I did not ask the question, what is the risk here? What is the downside? I only saw, oh my gosh, I can make a gazillion dollars if I do this. That's the only thing I thought. How much money can I make? That was like my main due diligence question. How much can I make? How fast can I make it? I didn't ask, who are the competitors? Who are the customers? Why would I even use this? I would just make guesses on the risks. And now, when I'm starting a business now, I have the idea and then 99% of the time, and I'm not even exaggerating, 99% of the time is about reducing, reducing, reducing risk. And by the way, this works for relationships. How do how do I reduce risk by being involved with Robin? Well, I have kids, she has kids. So she's gonna understand kids, you know, maybe better than me. In fact, much better than me. So I would do it turns out very risky when one person has kids and the other doesn't. The person who never had kids doesn't always understand, you know, that what the person with kids is going through. Also too, I mean, you're not telling people to just go out and splurge and spend all your money. You're saying take that money instead of putting it in a 401 to invest in themselves. Yeah. And and, like, invest in themselves, get educated, get more tools for themselves, and then maybe invest in a business, or they're doing it themselves. Yeah. You're not saying to go out and just spend money. You're just Yeah. Right. Instead instead of putting a instead of putting, a $1,000 in a 401 k, I just talked to a guy who used $1,000 to buy an Instagram account with 33,000 avid basketball fans. And now for free, he's gonna be able to design basketball t shirts and sell to these fans. He'll probably and he could just sell the Instagram account again to make his 1,000 back. And he has more control over that money and building it rather than the stock market. Right. And so instead of the stock market, which best case, on average, goes up 5 or 6% a year, maybe he's gonna go up 100 of percent with that $1,000. So there's so many more opportunities now with money and with risk. But even then, when I analyzed I went to Fame Swap and I analyzed Instagram accounts, they did not all seem real to me. You still have to do due diligence. I just gave you the idea, but I spent one minute on the idea and then 20 minutes or half hour before this IG Live, going through Instagram accounts and seeing which ones had fake followers. They all did, so that wasn't appropriate. But there's maybe other exchanges. I don't even know. Yeah. You gotta be careful. Yeah. Don't buy stock options in your company because you're already invested to your company. Don't take double risk. That's like being friends with your coworkers. I already see them all day. I need other people to see. So don't be friends with your coworkers. You think you're gonna be at each other's funeral, like, 50 years later? It's the worst thing to be friends with your coworkers. So thank you once again. This is gonna go on the podcast. Text me questions or business models or feedback at what is my number? 203-590-8607. You look lovely in white, my dear.
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