The Exchanges

Q been, not like so, so crazy, like every date night at Poppy. So I, I just think it's so important. And then to find someone that lifts you up and like understands your values, because I am a very successful woman and a lot that can bother a lot of men. Right. And he's just supported me through that. I don't know. Would you say you guys have similar values?

A Yeah. I mean, I think I got lucky. He's a former Navy seal, so he never really cared that much about money. He was like, we weren't even playing the same game. There was no competition between the two of us because he really cared about service. That's still really important to him. Um, he cares about like, really, am I doing something that matters? That's super important to him. He needs to feel like needed and respected. And I like the game of business. So I was like, no, I want to build something big and like, who cares if they respect me? I want to do, you know? And so the two of us together, I think that worked well. Um, but if, if it wasn't for him, I, I do think it would have been really hard to build a loan.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. I mean, I think I got lucky. He's a former Navy seal”

Q How do you feel about, like, the future of content right now as we sit, you know, halfway through twenty-twenty-five? Where is content heading? What trends do you see working? And what trends do you see, like, maybe we shouldn't be going that way anymore?

A Yeah. Well, um, the attention in this economy where you find the most underpriced attention to me is where you have something that is old, stayed, and sort of traditional, and you can take that and make it sexy. That's what I've seen continuously. So for instance, we have an old window washing company that was never something sexy. We turned it into a brand called pinks. We got these hot young guys wearing these nice uniforms out there cleaning people's windows. They're doing cool Kick flip tricks on skateboards, et cetera. They wear pink shirts, is that you said? Yeah, and the, and the company's called Pinks. Right. And they're getting millions of views as a window cleaning company that now they have like a hundred locations across the U.S., and we turned this old boring business into a sexy business. And why I like that, it's because it's much easier to stand out when you are in an area of people who don't even have Yelp pages, right? This is, this is the difference. Whereas if you go and you try to become a beauty influencer right now, Really tough. Lots of competition there. You go and you try to talk about content online. Lots of people talking about content online. Where can you find a niche where you can have expertise, but nobody is trying to make that area sexy yet. I do not believe the underpriced attention is on a platform. I believe the under price attention is in y…

AI assessment note: “I believe the under price attention is in your niche and choosing your niche intelligently”

Q On the flip side then, how do you feel about giving advice to, um, people in leadership roles and giving their employees more autonomy towards, um, their own time?

A You know, I worked at Goldman Sachs for, uh, two years during the financial crisis. And they were 60, 70, eight-hour weeks in the office. We didn't see the sun for a period. You know, we were, we were on phone calls and in Excel spreadsheets. Everybody was fine, but vitamin D deficient. And, um, and it was miserable. I actually remember very seriously looking at the clock, watching it count down, and ready to be get out of, to be getting out of there the second that I saw, you know, the boss or the manager leave, because I had everything I needed to get done, done, but I couldn't leave until the head guy left. And it was awful. I remember that so vividly. And to think that you would wait somewhere for your life to actually tick down, Just because you hate what you're doing so much is actually wild when you think about it, but I've felt it. So I think what managers need to realize and leaders need to realize is there's a reason that Goldman Sachs, the average tenure is two and a half years. It's because nobody wants to take that forever. And so I do not think you have to run companies where you are on top of people every single minute. All you have to do is in line incentive with outcomes. And that's why, uh, you know, Peter Drucker said, Um, what gets measured gets managed. If instead they gave us goals and they said, execute your goals at your will, we probably would stay at t…

AI assessment note: “I do not think you have to run companies where you are on top of people”

Q What was like the hardest thing or the hardest habit to break?

A I think it was, and I'd be curious your take, but mine was just even tracking when I was broke or when I wasn't broke. Like I was always kind of close to being broke. And so it was like, well, I'm just going to go out on Friday night. I spent a hundred bucks because I had four drinks instead of two. And I was only allowed to have two because that was all I could afford this week. And now I'm in the hole and now I'm have a 30 dollar overdraft fee. So now I'm in the hole more than I was before because I don't have enough cash. And at that time I had no credit. So I didn't get a credit card until I was like, um, senior in college or maybe had graduated college. Cause I had no idea that like building credit was a thing that was important. And, um, and so, you know, I think the hardest part was just, am I spending too much? You know, most Americans don't budget. I've never been good at it. And so my only answer was to earn so much budgeting was never an option. But what about you? Have you been broke?

AI assessment note: “mine was just even tracking when I was broke or when I wasn't broke.”

Q your thoughts on money? What do you think about when money comes to you? Or do you ever think about investing? If so, what do you think about it? What's your process look like? Just having some general conversations And feeling more safe in those conversations with girlfriends, with guy friends, with colleagues, whatever it might be, so you are in power, not feeling like it has power over you.

A It's, it's just so necessary because with those women, what I eventually said was, instead of doing that, can I push you guys to have this conversation in the main group and I will lead it. I'll like lead it off. I'll tell some embarrassing things about me first because You are self-limiting by going to this group because the average net worth of the woman in our group is lower than, than the men. Uh, you guys also are doing slightly smaller deals than the guys on average. So if you pull yourselves over here into a group of people that have less money, that do smaller deals, what are you replicating? Well, now you're in a group that's smaller. When the whole point of you being in here is for you to be in a group of other winners. And so, Um, we eventually sort of compromised on this idea, and I said, listen, if, if anybody's rude to you, if, if anything negative happens, like, you just, you ping me direct, and I will make sure that I handle it, but can I please push you slightly to go bigger?

AI assessment note: “instead of doing that, can I push you guys to have this conversation in the main group”

Q the room because business content is, you know, like gets a bad rap, especially on YouTube. You know, it's a lot of people who say they're influencers who have absolutely no influence at all. People who claim to have expertise who don't have expertise. I'm curious, as you started to like Navigate that world. How did you think about differentiating? Cause your content feels different and gets many more views.

A Thanks. Well, you know what? I, I was like, uh, super freaked out to talk on the internet at first. Like if you think about it, like if you look at my background, like I was in finance and investing for. 12 years. I wasn't, I didn't even have an internet presence before we started kind of blowing up three years ago. And so when I started making videos, I was like, ah, this is scary. Like not talking about the thing, but being on video was kind of scary. But then I remember, ah, one time that made me chill quite a bit is, ah, and I talk about this with, like, another one of our, our mutual friends, but, ah, I remember we were sending videos back and forth, and it was this guy getting shit on. Like, like, just like, they were like, who's this finance guru? What an idiot. Like, no way. And, you know, you obviously don't know what you, what you're talking about. Like, thousands of comments. And if you're in finance, you would know that that guy is Ray Dalio. And you're like, this is one of the He's a billionaire multiple times over. He runs something called Bridgewater Capital, and people still think he's a fake. So like, if that's gonna happen to him, it's gonna happen to all of us, which I think gave me some chill on like, all right, like people just might not like you and that's okay. And then the second part of it is, um, we try to do what we call show don't tell. So oftentimes…

AI assessment note: “we try to do what we call show don't tell.”

Q teeth and getting through it. The hard work is being clear with yourself and then your team about the change you seek to make. What is the purpose of what we're doing? So if you look at Will Gadara and Danny Meyer and talk about hospitality, hospitality doesn't come naturally at the end of a six hour shift. It's the work. That's what we're talking about. Where is the work?

A It's really underrated and hard, too, because, you know, I think in this day and age we use Slack so much in my company, for instance, which is a great way to remove all emotion and just have sort of compliance top-down leadership. And I always try to go back to the quote that's, you know, if you want to teach your people how to build a boat, don't teach them about, um, nails and ropes and bindings. Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea, which is some saint that I can never remember, but I should remember because I quote it a lot. And I think your work does a really good job of that. It's like we want to inspire people and ourselves, uh, not just mandate things. Like, I know you famously don't like the word should, too, which I think is probably important. I know you said optimism is a choice and a tool. Right. I can sometimes be proud of the fact that I'm a realist, and that could even border on the, on a pessimist take. I'd be curious your stance How do we switch to optimism? How do you have a choice to be optimistic? How could we do that if somebody's stuck being really pessimistic?

AI assessment note: “we want to inspire people and ourselves, uh, not just mandate things.”

Q stuff like that. And then the question is how is the data structured? Is it actually in the right file format, like a markdown where these models can actually talk to it? And more importantly, can you give your people agency to start to use AI to document what they do so it can do that for them so it can liberate them to deliver more value inside the company?

A Yeah, I mean, I think the one thing we found with the centralized, overly centralized AI database bases are they really need sub-agents for the most part, and those sub-agents, you're right, you have to have a data lake, and then that data lake needs to have protections for all the individual, you know, um, subsets that you need to have. But I think inside of a business, what we're seeing, at least with our businesses that we talk to, is there's usually one, this is probably your 20%, there's one Part of your business, usually sales, because that's where your, your, the money makes. And inside of sales is like the first place where agents make sense or, and I don't mean agents that are going to go do your sales even. I mean, is there an agent that can comb through all of your phone calls that your salespeople have to determine what are the most common objections, feed you the best solutions for the clients that were actually closed, and then help you, uh, You know, train your salespeople without having 30 minutes.

AI assessment note: “inside of sales is like the first place where agents make sense”

Q work smarter, not harder. And also being a mom and being there for us. I say I have my four babies and Russ is my biggest one. Okay. You already know. Okay. I mean, baby babies, uh, baby babying, but you know, so like, that's a real thing, right? So it's like, how do I work smarter and not harder at this point in my life and in my career?

A Yeah, it's a good point. You know, it's interesting. I, I made that mistake so many times early on in my career. I would partner with somebody who, like, hadn't figured anything out yet, and then I would work harder than them, or they wouldn't, you know, I'm sure with you it's gotta happen. They're like, I see her, like, I wanna be associated with all that. Let me get on that coat train, you know? And, and at some point we just realized, like, we're not gonna partner with somebody Who hasn't already shown, like, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, I think. It's like, you gotta show that you're winning, you gotta show that you wanna work harder than I do, because there's so many people that don't, and I think a lot of times with partnerships, we, like, buy into them in the same way we buy into, like, the, somebody's potential. And so we're like, no, no, no, we'll fix, I'll fix him. Like, how many of us have said that? And so, I think that's really interesting. So have you, like, with the mark, Like, if somebody's trying to figure out their avatar of like, alright, how do I trust somebody, which is so big today.

AI assessment note: “we're not gonna partner with somebody Who hasn't already shown”

Q accounting. What do you recommend to do? Focusing on internship programs to get a real job experience in finance, like banking or studying for a CCA and CFA exams to make my future path better. Or maybe focusing on grades for a master degree. So what do you think, Cody? Also, I want to be a billionaire. You gave me an inspiration on YouTube. Don't ignore my comment. Please, Cody.

A All right. I'll, I'll ignore the, uh, the demand on YouTube. I appreciate you guys following. If you don't follow us on YouTube, you should. Actually, that channel's sick. We put a bunch of time into those videos. All right. Um, first let's look at college. So should you go get an MBA or really even go to college these days? I thought this graph was fascinating. Basically, this is called the relative value of higher education. And what you see here, fancy words, but the diminishing financial return of higher education. What that means, you see a blue line that's kind of skyrocketing up since when is this? 64. And a red line that's staying sort of static. The blue line has the costs for higher education going up to 95,000 dollars or above, or if you're at Harvard, multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then the red line is the amount that people earn after getting their bachelor's degree from a higher education institute. And that red line has stayed from, let's call it 40, 35,000 to about 45,000. So we've had Astronomical growth in the cost of higher education and flatlining growth in the, uh, return of higher education. So if you take all of the emotional aspects out of it, and the fact that it's super fun to party with your friends and do keg stands on the weekends, what you realize is that the numbers don't lie. The numbers tell you that over time, college has become…

AI assessment note: “first let's look at college. So should you go get an MBA or really”

Q on the beach, or whatever the case is. But my point is, the people that were obsessed, you have to do something. Let's say somebody comes and buys everything from you tomorrow for whatever. What are you gonna do the next day? You're gonna start something else. You're not the personality type that can build a very valuable company. Is not the kind that can sit around and do nothing.

A It's also, I think, incredibly difficult to simplify things. You know, often, I'm sure you've found this too, but you're taking, I don't know, a 700 page book like Snowball and trying to synthesize it into one episode. Uh, that is actually quite a complex thing to do. You have a lot of decisions you have to make. You have to pull the core or soul out of it or the lessons that you want out of it. And I think, you know, I think sometimes about the stuff we do on the internet. Like, We'll try to, you know, explain acquisitions in some way, shape, or form in a really simplistic way, which is actually incredibly difficult to do. Even the vernacular in finance is, um, tribal knowledge, um, a lot of nouns and, and vowels in, in, uh, the words that don't need to be there, and so, um, making something about even a word like acquisitions, which some people have a hard time spelling, and simplifying it is actually quite difficult, and so, you know, we talk about that a lot when we invest, Is, I think I stole it from Warren Buffett back in the day, where it might have been Zell. Um, I think it was Zell. Zell basically said, um, if I can't, like, one of his employees came in with, like, a big folder on one of the deals that he wanted to do, and, uh, and was like, here's the brief on doing this deal, and he was like, uh, tell it to me in a couple sentences. He was like, I can't. He's like, t…

AI assessment note: “It's also, I think, incredibly difficult to simplify things.”

Q Have you heard of Blank Street? Blank Street. Oh my, I'm the biggest hater. Only viral tweet I ever had was about, I said, if I hated somebody, I would bring them to Blank Street. Blank Street's listening to this. Your coffee is so bad. It is a, but yeah, no, I'm with you, so.

A Yeah, I don't know. I don't love this idea. I mean, these are obviously geniuses. Founders Fund is an incredible fund, so is, so is Casla, but, um, I mean, two hundred million dollar project that is basically a glorified strip center residential unit, and the only difference is that there aren't cars. I don't know. Also, why are you picking Tempe, Arizona? All my Arizonans out there, it's fucking 400 degrees in this place. Could you imagine, one, you can't leave because you can't drive off. Two, it's 400 degrees, so like walking around outside is not really the deal either. The other part that I don't love about this is, you know, you, I was like, kind of talking with you about who's there, and so they gave a little rundown of some examples. If I can't leave, uh, because it's car free, and so maybe your cars are parked in a parking lot outside or something, I want to make sure the other residents are like hot, smart, successful, fun. And I'm not sure that I want venture capitalists picking other people in my neighborhood. So mine is like an immediate haterade over here. Um, but, uh, I get the idea. I think we humans, we actually, we want to do this. We want to recreate like small town main street America, but 21st century version. And so I get this feeling of nostalgia and going home, which is what I think they're going for. And, you know, if you think about it in the future, c…

AI assessment note: “two hundred million dollar project that is basically a glorified strip center residential unit”

Q course, a 2000 dollar accelerator, and you have a 10,000 dollar course in community. Like, how did you think about the price points? Like, how well are those doing? Like, I feel like a lot of creators can also package up what, They say into these courses, but maybe not a lot of them do because it's hard to price yourself in many ways. How have you thought about that?

A I think there's two reasons people don't do info products. One is because people on the internet tell you that it is better to go invest somebody else's money than teach them how to do the investing. There's a lot of people that look down on education products, and I can see why. Because one, universities are a huge institution that has sort of monopolized the idea of teaching another person. I think it's criminal, and they're totally overrated, and if you look at the actual numbers for educational institutions today, we have had a three to four x incline in the cost of universities, and we have had a flat line of return, meaning our salary increases after university. So for me, I got like on my, again, on my moral high ground here, I was like, why did I go to an MBA at Georgetown? I mean, if I want to climb a corporate ladder, it's very useful. Having that on there is much better than Arizona State. Harvard of the West where I went to undergrad, right? Like way better. But if I don't want to climb the corporate ladder, that a 160,000 dollar degree or whatever it was, that really didn't teach me much of anything. And I'm, and I, then, then they say, well, it's for the network. I don't know, better network by meeting people like you guys at conferences than that. I think it's, I think that's a scam. And so once I started to realize that my mom's a 30 year special education teach…

AI assessment note: “I think there's two reasons people don't do info products.”

Q rules from the government and the government fail fell, what did you learn? There are no rules. So where do you get your rules? And at some point in time, did something happen that caused you to believe that it was all made up and there was no right and wrong. And then there's some other behaviors that, you know, might interact to lean you in one direction or another.

A So do you think that like today in society, we know that religion is declining, like organized religion, uh, uptick, maybe not over the last two years. It seems like there's some trend reversal, but I haven't seen the data, but we have seen, let's call it over the last hundred years, real decline in organized religion uptick in America. Also we've seen, I mean, we're in New York. It appears to me that we have a little bit of a, um, we've got a disagreement with rules here, depending on who you are. You know, it's like, is it lawful? Is it not? Kind of depends. Um, so do you think that means that we're creating more psychopaths today?

AI assessment note: “so do you think that means that we're creating more psychopaths today?”

Q to buy a laundromat or kind of take that jump, but I think everyone is always ready to learn how to think differently when it comes to spending or saving. And so for women who are sitting here and they want that kind of practical next step that they can take tomorrow, this week, this month, what would you recommend to start thinking differently and to take those smaller actions?

A Yeah, I mean, listen, you can only save your way to zero. Uh, there is a bottom on it, and you gotta eat, and you gotta look cute, like you guys all do, and you gotta, like, go out and enjoy life, and so, um, I don't like the obsessive focus on savings culture, because I actually think it's much easier to earn than it is to save, and if you get better at becoming a dealmaker, at doing better deals, and at figuring out revenue, you will never have to focus on savings again, and I remember that, because I didn't come from money, so, like, I remember what it sounds like when you go to the grocery store and you're like, oh yeah, put it on the debit card. That one definitely works. And you're like, and you hear the beep that comes from it. It's like, no, it doesn't fucking work. I'm like, oh no, that one's old. Give me that one. And I fill it in with another one, right? Like I remember that feeling. And my promise to myself was always, I would never want to have to check my bank account every single day to see if I can afford something again. I don't even want to care about prices. That's what I wanted because my entire youth was spent Not being able to buy anything, and being worried all the time that my bank account would go dry, and, um, and I have like a little, I have a little PTSD from that, and so at some point I said, fuck it, I'm gonna make so much money that I can buy what…

AI assessment note: “I don't like the obsessive focus on savings culture”

Q move really fast? And are they able to convince people to do things? The third thing is the thing you realize you spend most of your time trying to convince people to do things. You try to convince investors to give you money, convince customers to use your product, convince employees to join your team. So how convincing is someone? And I think that ends up being really, really important.

A Yeah, it's so true. Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I remember Noah Kagan, who we were talking about before, a mutual friend of ours, he would say to me, like, you're the hardest working, you know, person I know online or something, and I remember at first, I was like, no, I'm not Noah, I'm really smart, and you know, don't, don't just say I work hard, but as I've gotten older, I realized that there is just a huge value to being willing to put the nose to the grindstone, and it's kind of gone a little bit out of favor, or at least it was for a few years, it was like, I love Gary Vee, but it would, it would be like, Gary Vee, stop it. Like, get off with the hustle part. And then I love that clip, uh, from Timothy Chalamet, Chalamet, what the fuck's his name? Where he talks about just like, I want to be a grant.

AI assessment note: “I realized that there is just a huge value to being willing to put the nose”