Loading summary
Transcript259 lines
- [00:00]
Jess Ma
So you're not afraid to share ideas?
- [00:02]
Unknown Speaker
No, I'm super afraid to share ideas. But that's. I mean, one of my ideas that I'm actively exploring. And here I am sharing it with everyone here.
- [00:10]
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it. Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking.
- [00:19]
Jess Ma
We should address the elephant in the room. Why are we on. Why are we on a plane? So we're just flexing on everybody now. This is my Tai Lopez. Hey, guys. I'm just on my jet, so it's not that.
- [00:32]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. So this plane, It's a Citation CG3 Plus. And I fly planes for fun. So it's been my passion and my hobby, I think, since even elementary school. I was obsessed with airplanes, and it was always my goal to be able to afford to fly one. And then I learned. I interviewed a bunch of very wealthy people, and I said, how do you afford an airplane? Like, how successful do you have to be? And the secret was, you don't have to be that successful. You just have to have a big tax bill and good cash flow. And so.
- [01:06]
Jess Ma
Which takes success to get to that.
- [01:07]
Unknown Speaker
Point, but it takes some success.
- [01:09]
Jess Ma
But less than you think.
- [01:10]
Unknown Speaker
A lot less than you think, actually, because it's like a house. You could finance it, get, you know, put 20% down, and then, you know, the rest is.
- [01:18]
Jess Ma
We'll walk through that in a second. So the funny thing was, we did an episode, a normal episode, where we're on zoom, and it was great. You can go see it. It's called, like, Jess Ma, like, High School Dropout, you know, blah, blah.
- [01:29]
Unknown Speaker
We.
- [01:29]
Jess Ma
We YouTubed it to make the title good. But, like, you know, I don't know, 300, 400,000 people have. Have listened to that interview across all the platforms. And I wanted to do a second one. And you were like, hey, I'm in town, if you can kind of meet me here. I was like, all right, let's go. I'll meet you there. And the second thing is, you're actually great with tax tax hacks. And you're better than my accountant, who I pay. I pay this guy to be like, hey, come up with ideas that I can lower my tax bill legally, but how can I do it? What are the ideas? And he's idea poor. You're very idea rich. And so I thought, okay, it's kind of fitting. Cause one of the things we'll talk about at the end is, you've talked to a lot of rich people and tried to learn what are the options, what are the possibilities as far as taxes goes. And that's. I want to learn that from you.
- [02:09]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we'll talk about that as it relates to business ideas, but as relates to tax ideas. It's actually a pretty similar process. Like, I'll just talk to as many people as possible. And I think the mistake people make with taxes is they have their one tax person and that person worked with their parents and they've been loyal. But actually, this is a very bad place to have loyalty. It's really good to talk to. Like, I've talked to dozens of tax. You want to be very promiscuous here. I've talked to dozens of tax attorneys and tax accountants about their ideas. And I just keep track of all their ideas. And then I talk to all my friends, ask them for their tax ideas and consolidate it.
- [02:45]
Jess Ma
That's so true. There's like this weird loyalty. It's like, yeah, he's been doing my taxes for four years. Like, yeah. But nothing has changed. And you want to get ideas from everybody. So let's do this plane real quick. So a plane like this, what does it cost roughly? What do you have to put down and what is the tax savings or something? This is the mini tax lesson for this plane.
- [03:02]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, mini tax lesson. And then we go into more detail on this on the last episode I did with you guys. But this is a $12 million plus airplane, and you could put 20% down on the airplane. I got this pre owned, so saved a few million bucks and it's just good as new.
- [03:17]
Jess Ma
So you put down roughly 2 million bucks.
- [03:19]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you put down about a few million bucks, and then you just pay monthly financing on it. But then you get to write off up to the whole thing. Last year it was 60% upfront, but now with the new administration, it looks like accelerated depreciation is back. So if you bought a $12 million airplane, financed it, you can write off the whole $12 million off your tax bill, even though you only put in 3 million bucks. So you're gonna pay the government or you could buy an airplane.
- [03:46]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [03:46]
Unknown Speaker
So it looks like either way, 3.
- [03:48]
Jess Ma
Million DOL dollars is going out of your bank account.
- [03:50]
Unknown Speaker
Either way, the money's leaving your bank account. So, like, it looks lavish, it looks ridiculous. But this is why rich people do these things.
- [03:57]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [03:58]
Unknown Speaker
And I just wanted to debunk that. A lot of people are scared to admit that they don't want to share that because they want to flex more, they want to show off, but it's just a practical matter.
- [04:08]
Jess Ma
Right. And you use it to, like, literally be more efficient and go meet people where otherwise you might not have taken that day trip to go do it. Like, you came up, you're like, I want to have lunch with you. And so you flew up, we had lunch, and you flew out. And I was like, wow. First, I felt honored, but secondly, man, there's probably a lot of people that I think I would have kind of amazing opportunities or build a relationship with, but I don't do it because the logistics are actually, like, in the way. Of course, this is not accessible to most people, but, like, if you're in that successful entrepreneur bucket, it kind of makes sense logistically as well.
- [04:39]
Unknown Speaker
It does, yeah. And, you know, we've got Starlink on board, so flying. Flying out here, I was able to make five phone calls and be on Zoom and, you know, do FaceTime video where I'm like, yo, what's up?
- [04:49]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [04:49]
Unknown Speaker
And like, it's. It's a practical matter of saving money, but it looks really bad. If you're an operating CEO of a company, you're going to get shat on by your employees, your customers, your investors. And I realized that that would be a problem for me a few years ago. So that's why I stopped being an operating CEO. Actually. It. It was really. I had this conflict of, like, can I do everything I want to do? And I know it's the right thing to do. I know I will. I know I will. Well, I know I'll create more abundance, you know, I'll create more value for my companies. But at the same time, I know I'm gonna get more flack. I'm gonna have more people who wanna rip on me, unfortunately, and I'm sure this video will not help with that at all. But, like, I defend it. It's like a practical matter.
- [05:33]
Jess Ma
Right. I love that. Unapologetic. So enough about the private jet. It's cool. It's going to make for a great, great shot. First time for the podcast. What I want to talk to you about is what you're great at, which is ideas and coming up with new ideas for businesses. So the track record here is you've been an operating CEO. You started this company called Into Narrow when you were really young. Right. How old were you when you started that?
- [05:54]
Unknown Speaker
I was 19. When I started, I knew absolutely nothing. Yeah. And then I built that company up and then started a bunch of other companies, several of Them are nine figure valuation businesses. I have no unicorns under my belt, so that's a big insecurity of mine. Right now I'm going to be super honest about it. Like I don't have a single unicorn, but if you add them all up, I've got, you know, multiple unicorns.
- [06:13]
Jess Ma
Right.
- [06:14]
Unknown Speaker
So that became my strategy. I decided I'm really not good at building unicorns, but I'm really good at coming up with smaller businesses.
- [06:21]
Jess Ma
A barn full of horses.
- [06:23]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, a barn full of horses where I create.
- [06:25]
Jess Ma
I think we just coined something there by the way.
- [06:27]
Unknown Speaker
That was all you. Good work. But yeah, if I could just raise less VC money for these companies and just create more of them and not be directly operating in them, then that could add up to being just as valuable, if not more valuable than if I created one unicorn. Not to mention all my friends who are CEOs of unicorns, miserable, so miserable and so stressed out. And also they don't have the ability to live an amazing lifestyle because of all the stuff you talked about. They're scared of the optics and they own a much smaller percentage of these businesses. Like a lot of my unicorn CEO friends, they own like 5% of a billion dollar company which is remarkable amount of money. That's a lot. But you know, yeah, totally.
- [07:12]
Jess Ma
I'm in it for the lifestyle, not the.
- [07:14]
Unknown Speaker
You just have to decide what you're in it for and just be honest.
- [07:16]
Jess Ma
And there's other people who are in it for the impact. That's dope. They should do that. They should save the world. I'm on the world, I'm glad that they're saving it.
- [07:22]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [07:23]
Jess Ma
I personally don't want to do that with my time. I want to indulge my curiosities, have fun conversations and just enjoy my life with my kids. Like that's totally unusual. That's not what I like to do. That's my, that's my gold standard.
- [07:32]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [07:33]
Jess Ma
So your story is basically 19 years old. You start Indon Arrow, you run that company, you grow that company and then you, you've like you said you transitioned from starting and running companies yourself to now you have this like your own Holdco where you're, you're incubating or creating companies and you said that in the last four years you started four companies each worth over a hundred million dollars.
- [07:53]
Unknown Speaker
I've co founded companies and when I say co found sometimes I didn't do a whole lot. Maybe I helped with idea, I got the early team on board, I got some early funding and then on some of them I'm still really active and on some of them I'm not active and I'm just like a significant shareholder.
- [08:10]
Jess Ma
Right. All right, hey, real quick, if you're liking this episode with Jess, then we got something cool for you. So when the episode ended, we asked her, we were like, hey, you were talking about how you have this, this playbook, this recruiting guide. You have this like content guide, you have these things. Would you mind sharing one of those with us? And she actually just sent us like all of them. So she wanted the listeners to be able to have them for free. So they're in the show notes. It's her talent playbook. It's her recruiting guide. I think it's an operations guide for how she runs her companies. These are straight from her. They're available in the show notes below. Check them out. I mean, somebody's giving you free gold. All you got to do is take out your hands and just accept the gold. All right, back to this episode. I want to ask you about your idea process, because that's amazing to be able to do that. I want to be able to do that. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about ideas. How do you get ideas to start these companies? And then what are some ideas right now that you're excited about?
- [08:59]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, let's talk about process first. So I love Y Combinator ideas. The request for startups and when I was coming up with my first ideas for businesses like in Dinero, that was inspired by that list. And it's a list of 100 business ideas where they say if you build this, we are more likely to fund you.
- [09:20]
Jess Ma
Right.
- [09:21]
Unknown Speaker
And I really wanted to get into Y Combinator and, and then I put together this spreadsheet. So I had this matrix of criteria. And one of my top criteria was complicated enough that other people won't copy me too fast. I think that's really important. If I'm a first time founder, I need to have more legroom. And then another criteria was I can pseudo bootstrap this. Like I can raise some angel money, but I don't need to raise like $100 million. So like I'm not going to build Tesla or SpaceX. I want to build something that $2 million could get me very far. My other criteria was I wanted recurring revenue. I wanted something that was sticky, like a must have. And so I literally went through every single one of those ideas on the Y Combinator list. And I rank ordered them based on these three criteria and business Accounting and tax management seem to be the better one for my criteria. And so my process is I go online and I scrape these ideas. I've even gone to Reddit to look for ideas. I have one on one lunches and dinners with people like you. And I just say, hey, what are ideas you're exploring? And then we'll just have a brainstorm. But none of the ideas I've actually worked on came from me sitting in a room with a whiteboard and just coming up with stuff yourself. Yeah, that's never worked out. I've tried it, by the way, with no success.
- [10:49]
Jess Ma
Okay, so you, you had this thing on your phone, you had like this idea database. Yeah, it's like 300 ideas.
- [10:54]
Unknown Speaker
Uh huh.
- [10:55]
Jess Ma
And you promised, you said, I'll show some of them today, even though these are things you might still go do.
- [11:00]
Unknown Speaker
I think I might still do some of these.
- [11:02]
Jess Ma
So do you want to give us a couple of them?
- [11:04]
Unknown Speaker
Absolutely. It's called the idea hopper. So actually, let me pull it up on my phone real quick.
- [11:08]
Jess Ma
Okay, great.
- [11:09]
Unknown Speaker
Should we start with the ones we talked about before?
- [11:11]
Jess Ma
Yeah, she gave me a teaser of like two or three of them that I was like, don't tell me more.
- [11:15]
Unknown Speaker
But yes, like, should we start with a Doge as a service?
- [11:17]
Jess Ma
Okay, yeah, yeah, I like this one. So explain Doge as a service for companies. Explain.
- [11:23]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I mean, most companies have so much waste. You have people who barely show up or they're phoning it in. And I have friends who say, oh yeah, like, like I've, you know, my husband, quiet, quit his job. He's like working two hours a day and no one's tracking it, so he's available to hang out. Those are the people you want to get rid of. So what if you could create a software platform that goes through and tracks who is actually on slack, who is actually emailing, who is like using their computer, and if not, then they're fired. So Doge is a service for companies.
- [11:56]
Jess Ma
So it would be a team of consultants. It'd be a consultant plus AI. How would you do it?
- [12:00]
Unknown Speaker
I think AI could do a lot of it. I also thought that if you're an enterprise, then you could sell this to consulting firms like McKinsey or BCG or whoever and say, hey, you guys can offer this to the cfo.
- [12:12]
Jess Ma
Okay, they're already doing. They're already in there.
- [12:14]
Unknown Speaker
They're already in there. And that makes you seem more valuable as a consultant because you could say, hey, we could demonstrate that. We'll save you Hundreds of millions of dollars. You'll pay us only $20 million. And this AI did all the work.
- [12:26]
Jess Ma
That's actually pretty interesting. I don't think enough tech teams build tools for the consultants who have already done the sale. Because what McKinsey is amazing at is they got this relationship with a Fortune 100 company, they're on retainer, they're getting paid millions of dollars a year. And if you can sell them a tool that either helps them land and expand that contract or just save overhead in actually, like, executing that contract, that's gonna be pretty valuable. Like, if I was, like, building AI right now, I would not be trying to make something that, like, I'm gonna not only build the tool, but also figure out all of the go to market. Maybe you could actually just sell this to consultants who already have the go to market done.
- [13:03]
Unknown Speaker
Exactly that. That's. I mean, one of my ideas I'm actively exploring. And here I am sharing it with everyone here.
- [13:10]
Jess Ma
So you're not afraid to share ideas, or what's your philosophy around that?
- [13:14]
Unknown Speaker
No, I'm super afraid to share ideas.
- [13:16]
Jess Ma
But put you on the spot.
- [13:17]
Unknown Speaker
You just got me really comfortable. So here I am. This is an idea I've been playing around with for a few months, and I really like it a lot. Okay.
- [13:24]
Jess Ma
I like it.
- [13:25]
Unknown Speaker
I didn't want to be one of those people who said, okay, here are my shittiest ideas. Now you go do like. I think that'd be just really lame. Totally.
- [13:33]
Jess Ma
All right, what else you got? So doja's a service. That's one I like.
- [13:35]
Unknown Speaker
And this is the trendy category.
- [13:37]
Jess Ma
Okay.
- [13:38]
Unknown Speaker
Okay. Another idea is everyone says SaaS is dead. Agents are the new thing. Well, what if you could build vertical agent as a service for an industry? So, for example, build a library of agents for dental offices, or for auto mechanics, or for clothing designers or manufacturers or whatever, or distributors. So there are all these industries, but where they need their own very unique library of agents to automate their tasks. And you can go really deep there. So this is more of a thematic business area, which will be. I think we're going to see thousands of businesses doing this.
- [14:20]
Jess Ma
Right? So, okay, so somebody's building a tool. And so you're saying you don't even have to build the agent. You're like, there's going to be somebody who builds an agent that's about picking up a call and booking an appointment. Let's say appointment booking agent. So what you used to have to have pay a receptionist to do, now AI is Pretty damn good. It's going to be able to do that fully.
- [14:38]
Unknown Speaker
Right. So you have horizontal companies right now that sell the voice agent for any industry. The problem is you still have to do a lot of fine tuning and work for. If you're a dentist. So what if you're a company and you look for all these off the shelf tools and make your own agents and plug them all in and tune it just for dentists.
- [14:57]
Jess Ma
Right.
- [14:57]
Unknown Speaker
And so it's plug and play. I'm a dental office, I can use your company. And it has like a hundred different pieces of AI already baked into my workflow.
- [15:05]
Jess Ma
Gotcha.
- [15:05]
Unknown Speaker
That's the idea in a nutshell.
- [15:07]
Jess Ma
Okay. I like it.
- [15:07]
Unknown Speaker
You should do this for an industry you know about. Like if you're passionate about, you know, dental offices, then do it in dental offices.
- [15:14]
Jess Ma
So that's shout out to anyone who's passionate about dental offices. You are. This was your day. You got to. I know, but the recognize you, the.
- [15:22]
Unknown Speaker
More boring the better. That's the Constellation software model. Right?
- [15:25]
Jess Ma
Like, so we invested in this company that's vertical SaaS, which was called Shop Genie. They just. So we invested in it and I think within a year or two they sold for mid eight figures. And what they did was they went to auto repair shops and they were like, hey, guess what? Auto repair shops need a CRM. So there was always CRMs like HubSpot and others that they work for any type of business. And he's like, well, but auto repair shops have specific things that are, you know, very specific for them. So they built a tool that was just for them and then they went and they got like 3,000, 4,000 auto repair shops in like a year to use them.
- [15:57]
Unknown Speaker
And by the way, very sexy business.
- [15:59]
Jess Ma
Yeah. I was like, dude, how did you get so many shops to use you? And he's like, there's this guy who's like the auto repair influencer. He's like the Kardashian of auto repair shops and he vouched for us and then all these people, you know, followed on board. He's like, that guy makes like 20 million a year as the like biggest influencer to other auto repair shop owners. It's like really insane.
- [16:17]
Unknown Speaker
Oh wow, there's riches business idea. Yeah.
- [16:19]
Jess Ma
So, so what they did was they give him this tool and it was like for booking your appointment and the text message, follow ups, whatever. And what you're saying is like, and vertical SaaS has been a thing. Constellation Software did it. What you're saying is Instead of vertical SaaS, it's going to be like vertical.
- [16:33]
Unknown Speaker
Ass agents as a service.
- [16:36]
Jess Ma
Vertical ass, I love it.
- [16:37]
Unknown Speaker
All right, but seriously. And then the more random the better. Like if you could apply this to marine shipping or to resource mining, you know, then Constellation will be acquiring and rolling up these vertical ass companies in the next few years. Like that's, that's the future.
- [16:56]
Jess Ma
What was the marine shipping cargo ship idea you were telling me about?
- [16:59]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that was another idea I had on my idea Hopper. The idea was in a nutshell, could we. Oh yeah, it was coating for these cargo ships.
- [17:09]
Jess Ma
Coating, like the paint coating?
- [17:10]
Unknown Speaker
Uh huh. But to make it more efficient so that these ships could go even a few knots faster. And that saves you a ton of money on fuel. And then you don't need to like take these ships out of the water as often to recoat them. So this could be like millions, if not tens of millions of dollars over a decade for your entire fleet of cargo ships. Totally random idea. I got this from having dinner with someone who was playing around with this idea or looking at funding something like this like many years ago, and the other person just didn't have the money to proceed with it. So my idea, like I learned about that just from having dinner with someone.
- [17:45]
Jess Ma
Yeah, that's crazy. And so you, when let's say you have an idea like that. So first it's like, who the heck even thinks about cargo ship coding?
- [17:53]
Unknown Speaker
Definitely not me. I mean, most of these ideas, the common theme is I didn't come up with any of these ideas.
- [17:57]
Jess Ma
Right. So you're a good spotter, would you say? Or what are you good at?
- [18:00]
Unknown Speaker
I'm good at initiating conversations with people who are likely to have ideas or have access to ideas. Like you have good access to ideas.
- [18:09]
Jess Ma
So like, actually I've sent you an idea before and now that I think about it, like my buddy James Courier has this great phrase, he goes, you want to turn yourself into an API. And what he means by that, he goes, you know, like a website has an API which basically says, here's what I can offer you. I can give you location data. So you ping me, I give you location data. That's what I'm good at. And by the way, here's what I want to get from your API. Here's the things I'm interested in. I'm interested in acquiring geospatial data. So you kind of have made your API like, hey, I'm always interested in hearing interesting, kind of weird, off the beaten path ideas. So when I hear one, I Think, oh, Jess would like this, right? So you've put yourself in my mind and associated yourself with. She likes to hear weird, cool off the beaten path, you know, ideas that. That, you know, she. She's good at making them happen. And then in return, you know, you're like, what do you. What are you good at? It's like, what do you offer? As your API is like, I have a business, and I'm trying to recruit a CEO. And I know you've done that a bunch of times. I'm like, oh, if I go to Jess, she's gonna, you know, reduce my error rate and make me go faster at this, because she's really going to be helpful in doing that. Or if I have a new idea, she's really good at fleshing it out over a lunch, like, riffing on it, and then being, like, super motivated to be like, all right, what are we gonna do to make this happen? Like, let's push the ball forward. So I think you've kind of done that in the idea space, which is very well articulated.
- [19:24]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Like, I get people calling me all the time saying, hey, Jess, you have, like, five minutes to chat. I have this random idea I want to get your thoughts on, and would you build this with me? Or if I did it, would you fund it? I get those calls all the time, multiple times a week. And it's like, all right, like, yeah, I'll find time to call you back. But it's like, what Warren Buffett did. He just got the word out there, hey, I'm buying businesses. Call me if you're ready to sell. And it's a fast, easy process. I'm doing the same thing with ideas.
- [19:54]
Jess Ma
Yeah, that's great. My business partner, Ben, I was just thinking while you were talking, like, his API. So funny is two things. One, Ben always knows a guy. So you're like, do you know anybody? He's like, I know a guy who knows a guy. That's always Ben's thing. Like, he always knows a guy who knows a guy. And the second thing is, a lot of people will go to Ben. They'll just text him when something good happens in their life. And I always am like, why did they. Did you ask? He's like, no, no, they just told me. And, like, we just closed this big deal, or we just did this thing, and they haven't announced it, and he's not that close to them. But what I realize is I do the same thing with him because he's somebody that makes you feel good when you Win. You don't feel like there's any envy or he's not going to try to take anything from you. He's like, genuinely pumped for you.
- [20:34]
Unknown Speaker
That's awesome.
- [20:34]
Jess Ma
And because of that, he just gets this wealth of inbound of people who are winning, which is also great for us for investing because we're like, oh, wow, these guys are doing really well. Do they need more capital? Do they need something like maybe we could help them? And that's a superpower. So I think people, there's like these underrated superpowers. Like the thing you're describing about. I'm good at maybe having interesting conversations, getting good ideas, and making people feel like they should come to me with interesting ideas. That's not even a skill you could learn in school or nobody would even tell you that that's a thing. Yeah, but you're gonna build generational wealth off that.
- [21:05]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that's well said. I think it's equally as important to know what we're bad at. You know, like, for me, I realized that I'm not the best operating CEO. Like, that's just not my forte. And after I realized that and came to peace with that, then I was able to say, okay, well, I'm gonna come up with ideas and recruit great teams and then empower them. And that's what I'm going to figure out how to put a worry on and be great at. Exactly.
- [21:29]
Jess Ma
So let's do more. I want more ideas for idea. You got me going.
- [21:33]
Unknown Speaker
I have this other idea. The code name is Holy Health. And I came up with this idea because I heard of another business that was minting like tens of millions of dollars in EBITDA within 36 months. And all they did was help one niche of, like, medical provider get access to insurance. And then I did some research, I plugged this in my GPT and I realized there's so many of these other types of people, like chiropractors or physical therapists, where they can get insurance reimbursement, but they're so small, they don't have the scale to negotiate with an insurance company on getting reimbursed. So they just charge.
- [22:16]
Jess Ma
Technically they could.
- [22:17]
Unknown Speaker
Technically they could.
- [22:18]
Jess Ma
But is it that they don't have the time or the skill or, like, you need to band them together?
- [22:21]
Unknown Speaker
Both. So if you ban them together, then they can get some reimbursement. And then you could create, you know, agents as a service to support them, to create more, lock in, and then you could help them with their customer acquisition. So it's gotta be the full stack. And this other company did that for one of these different verticals. And I heard about that through a friend who heard about the company. And I'm like, oh, man, that's a great idea. Can I do something adjacent to that? That's not copying them, but similar in some ways.
- [22:49]
Jess Ma
A similar blueprint, but in a different space that needs it.
- [22:51]
Unknown Speaker
Exactly.
- [22:52]
Jess Ma
So you would go, what would you do for. Let's just walk through this. So I want to hear, so you have that idea.
- [22:57]
Unknown Speaker
I heard about.
- [22:57]
Jess Ma
It starts with a clue.
- [22:59]
Unknown Speaker
I got a clue because I was having lunch with a friend and he's like, these guys are making like 30 million in EBITDA. I'm like, all right, what question are.
- [23:05]
Jess Ma
You asking that friend? Because we were just talking before and I was like, how the hell do you get these? I go, what is your info diet that you are getting these ideas that I don't get to hear about? You're doing something different, you know, you're not just consuming the same stuff I am because you're getting different ideas. So can we talk about that real quick? The info diet?
- [23:23]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. I mean, none of these come from reading a blog post or watching a podcast. All these are from in person conversations. I think a lot of people are lazy. They just want to come up with stuff by staring at their computer. Nothing good comes out of doing that. If I'm being candid. You have to get out of the building. You have to, like, just talk to people.
- [23:43]
Jess Ma
And when you're talking to them, what are you asking? Like, hey, what's interesting? What have you seen that's cool?
- [23:47]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. What's the coolest. What's the most interesting, exotic business idea that's minting cash that you seen recently? And so I'm not asking them for a business idea. I'm asking them for what's an existing thing you've seen. It's like, why? What's the key to their success and why does no one know about this?
- [24:03]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [24:04]
Unknown Speaker
And like, why hasn't anyone copied them yet? And you know, why is now the right time for them?
- [24:11]
Jess Ma
Right. So you're filtering as they're. As they give you the exotic business that's minting cash. You're like, was there some secret sauce that's not replicable? Maybe they're super influential in a community. Okay. That would take forever to build. Could this be done in another space? Does this take $100 million of venture capital or could this be. Yeah.
- [24:27]
Unknown Speaker
How much do they start and then they're like, oh, yeah. Like, these guys just boots draft it, right? I'm like, oh, my God, now my math is really watering.
- [24:33]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [24:34]
Unknown Speaker
Like, okay, and what are the other risks here? Like, can AI just replace this in 36 months? That's, like, the new risk factor in my, like, criteria that y'all have to ask for.
- [24:44]
Jess Ma
So you get the clue. You get the clue from the conversation. Conversation key question. And then you get the clue. Then you run it through your filter mentally. Just there. Let's say now you're excited about the idea because you're like, holy health. And you give it a code name. Is there.
- [24:58]
Unknown Speaker
Everything has to have a code name.
- [25:00]
Jess Ma
Why is that? It makes it real.
- [25:01]
Unknown Speaker
It makes it feel more psychologically real. And like, okay, then I have something to remind me of the rest of the substance of the idea.
- [25:08]
Jess Ma
Cool.
- [25:08]
Unknown Speaker
And so I'll just, like, throw the idea into ChatGPT.
- [25:11]
Jess Ma
Before you even tell your coworkers, you're like, I think with AI first.
- [25:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I tell everyone before you tell me anything, think with AI as well.
- [25:18]
Jess Ma
Yeah.
- [25:19]
Unknown Speaker
And so everyone does that. And I say, give me, like, 20 ideas of potential names for this idea. And then I just pick one, and this is the code name. And then we put it in the idea hopper.
- [25:27]
Jess Ma
And then did you see the CEO of Microsoft went on a podcast, I think, Darkest podcast recently. He had this great line. He goes, my new workflow is think with AI and then work with my coworkers. So he goes, I think people are thinking about, like, AI is going to replace your coworkers. Your employees are going to do a task. He's like, but right now, the best use case is me thinking and sparring with AI to get clarity. And then I go work with my coworkers after that. Sounds like you're kind of doing a similar thing.
- [25:54]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, we definitely do that. And what we're trying to do is have all of our meetings be recorded. So even if it's in person, we're just, like, turning on granola and having. I have a big one of those conference speakerphone things. And it's just recording everything. And we're gonna feed it in to create digital twins of all of us, then have, like, basically thousands of versions of ourselves just brainstorming and sparring with each other to refine ideas even further.
- [26:19]
Jess Ma
It's like those little, like, chess arenas or whatever where they train the AIs to just compete with each other until, like. Until there's, like, a winner, winning strategy.
- [26:26]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And actually, how are you gonna do the digital twin Thing we're actually doing, we're actually training one based off of you as well. So we're gonna have it. Just watch every single video you've been part of. So it knows how to think. Like, you be like, hey, bring Sean into these conversations. Bring Satya, bring, suck, bring Elon, bring, like, whoever. And I want all of them to, like, help battle test this, you know, conversation.
- [26:50]
Jess Ma
That's amazing.
- [26:51]
Unknown Speaker
So that way I don't need to pay for you.
- [26:53]
Jess Ma
You know, that's useful when. If you just ask a question like, oh, what would Elon do in this situation? Or, you know, take your most high agency badass friend who's not afraid and seems to have, like, clarity in the moment of fog of war. If you just have that friend and you've hung out with them enough and you literally just ask the question, it's like they're in the room. And I know if that works, then an AI that's actually trained on them is gonna be insane. Do you know how you'll do that? How will you create? Like, what are you gonna use to make the me? Well, for you?
- [27:22]
Unknown Speaker
There's so much public content for my team members. That's why I'm making sure that they record every single interaction in the company with each other.
- [27:30]
Jess Ma
And is there a tool to do that, or are you gonna make your.
- [27:32]
Unknown Speaker
Own tool or just try and to get the transcripts? Cause once you have the transcripts, then you can just feed that into any of these.
- [27:38]
Jess Ma
So any LLM will be able to.
- [27:40]
Unknown Speaker
Like, it's gonna do a pretty good job. Yeah, we should go into more advanced conversation on this. But that's 90% people will.
- [27:47]
Jess Ma
Dude, it's so annoying. People are using my voice in ads all the time now. And I'm like, this is. This is wild. Like, how do I sue you? I don't know who you are.
- [27:54]
Unknown Speaker
Right.
- [27:55]
Jess Ma
Second thing is that. But I'm going to anybody who's doing, I'm suing you. I'm actively working on that. I'm telling AI to figure out how.
- [28:01]
Unknown Speaker
To do it.
- [28:04]
Jess Ma
But then also working on that also. What was the other one? Oh, writing style. So people will just put in ChatGPT, be like, write this in the style, whatever. Because I've written a lot of content publicly, and it's not me, but it's like, it's definitely kind of close to me. It's like, oh, that's 18 months away from being better than me. So that's definitely happening. Might as well embrace it. We're almost gonna need like a safe word that's like. Is it human Sean that I'm talking to or is this AI Sean that I'm talking to? Like, we need a code word.
- [28:32]
Unknown Speaker
I know, but it's like really exciting. And, and so, yeah, Satya's.
- [28:37]
Jess Ma
He's on point.
- [28:37]
Unknown Speaker
He's on point here.
- [28:39]
Jess Ma
So where was I? So you were telling me about. Okay, so we're going through your process. So you get excited about the idea.
- [28:44]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. You have the clue, you have the.
- [28:46]
Jess Ma
Code name, and you then have a meeting with your team. What are you doing in that meeting? What are you trying to do to advance that idea forward?
- [28:54]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, every week we have a R and D team meeting is what we just call it, and we talk about the ideas that we're playing with and the problem here with Holy Health, because this was a live idea and it still is a live idea. Everything I've shared today is still alive, by the way. And the problem is we just had too many of these ideas. I mean, we have hundreds of these ideas and we try to work on too many at the same time. And the problem is then you don't really advance any idea forward enough between each week meeting and then we lose excitement.
- [29:28]
Jess Ma
Right.
- [29:28]
Unknown Speaker
So now the new rule is we're only going to have two and we're going to take them all the way until they're busted before you replace and bring in another one.
- [29:37]
Jess Ma
And so, like, what do you do? So you have the meeting, you pitch the idea. Do you have a way of kind of pitching it to your team or how do you. What's happening in that meeting?
- [29:45]
Unknown Speaker
In that meeting? Anyone can pitch. So it's not just me. Everyone usually has different ideas. And so, yeah, it's like, hey, here's a AI defensible idea, xyz, here's why it's a Maway idea. So we kind of have a common understanding on what a Maui idea is.
- [30:02]
Jess Ma
Which is roughly what.
- [30:03]
Unknown Speaker
It's roughly an idea that can cash flow, that doesn't require a lot of outside funding. We could fund it ourselves. And where it's like boring and complicated enough where random people are not going to copy us that easily or reverse engineer it that easily. Those are Maui ideas. And that's what I encourage anyone else to do as well. Okay, so if you're an auto mechanic expert, then that might be your theme of idea. And we have that for like financial services in particular.
- [30:32]
Jess Ma
Right. And so you. Where do you leave that meeting? You say, all right, what are we going to do next?
- [30:38]
Unknown Speaker
We say okay, what are we gonna get done to advance this between this week and next week? And we just get very specific and it's like, all right, person A, you're doing these five things. Person B, you're doing these five things. And the next step might be like, okay, let's just go call for holy health. The next step was, let's just call some chiropractors and ask them if they figure out who accepts insurance and who doesn't and why, and then ask them why don't they plug into these existing companies. That should be that doing something similar. So a lot of it's just like, what are the questions we're curious about?
- [31:12]
Jess Ma
And psychologically, are you trying to disqualify an idea or are you trying to qualify an idea? Like, what's the mindset? Is it. I'm trying to figure out, is this good or bad? Or is it like, I'm listing the riskiest assumption? I'm doing it. What are you trying to do during that, those next few weeks?
- [31:27]
Unknown Speaker
It's, it's, it's not. We're trying to figure it out or, or disqualify, per se. I think either attitude might be too extreme. It's more like there might be a creat angle here that no one else has thought through. And so we're not married to this idea. We're holding it very loosely. We just have to figure out, like, okay, you might hear an interesting insight from a chiropractor that says, hey, your idea is okay, but what would make it really good is if you also added in all these AI agents to automate away my receptionist. And then my customer acquisition is terrible because xyz, those are the insights we're looking for to then manufacture an upgraded version of the idea. So we assume the first idea is terrible and it's going to go through, like, 10 pivots, right?
- [32:09]
Jess Ma
Like, which is very useful because that's almost always the case. And if you don't have that attitude, you basically, you hear something really juicy, but you're so locked in, it's like somebody was handing you gold, but you were out there just, you know, searching for bronze. And it's like, are you sure? You sure you want that? I was going to ask you, you know, you. You're talking a lot about ideas in Silicon Valley. There's this idea, there's this phrase which is, you know, ideas are worthless. Execution is everything. Do you buy that?
- [32:39]
Unknown Speaker
I think it's bs. I think it's, I think it's some of the Worst advice I've ever heard in Silicon Valley.
- [32:45]
Jess Ma
So what's your take?
- [32:46]
Unknown Speaker
My take is that ideas are really fricking important and if you have the wrong idea, you could be a great team and you're screwed. And actually I modified my thinking on this because I was a scout for Sequoia Capital for many years and they would show us a bunch of these great ideas with amazing traction, especially in consumer Internet. And then they would ask us, would you invest on this memo? Yes or no? And so we would vote. And then they'd say, well, here's what happened to that company. It ended up being a CRO. Even though it had the best team, the idea was still garbage. So it ended up being a zero. And that was like a common theme, I noticed.
- [33:25]
Jess Ma
So they would almost train you on historical memos? Basically, yeah.
- [33:29]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, wow, that's incredible.
- [33:31]
Jess Ma
But if the traction was great, is it usually the traction or just the team and the thesis was great?
- [33:37]
Unknown Speaker
I mean, the early traction might have been good and the team looks good, but then if you really think through the long term, like, is this idea sticky after a year or two, will there be copycats? Like, is it like, is there anything that really holds the consumer in? That's where these ideas would then lose steam and die. And so that kind of helped me think about this a bit differently.
- [34:00]
Jess Ma
And so you're saying ideas, super important.
- [34:02]
Unknown Speaker
Ideas are really important and the team is really important. They're both really important. But to say, oh yeah, ideas are a dime a dozen, really. It's not just the idea, it's the whole thinking of the business, like doing the calls to understand or meeting with the chiropractors in person or the auto mechanic and really figuring out these juicy tidbits that you're not going to find out by sending out a stupid survey or by using ChatGPT to tell me, hey, what are the problems that chiropractors have that helps you build an interview script for what you're going to then talk to them about, but then you have to show up. So when I was building in an era, I would go to Yelp and I would call these CPAs and I would say, hey, I'm like a 19 year old college kid, I know nothing about business. I want to do something to help accountants. Can I come to you, buy you lunch and just like ask you some questions just for 15 minutes and then you show up. They're not gonna kick you out after 15 minutes. 15 minutes is gonna turn into two hours and you have your notepad you're scribbling like, they love that. They wanna be helpful, Right? And I did a lot of that personally. Like, I just showed up and asked them my questions and then got all these insights. And we still do that. I'm still on these calls. Okay. Like, even if it's not in person, if you could at least do like, you know, expert calls. Like, we use GLG for this. There's also, like alpha sites and they charge you a lot. You know, you might be paying 800 bucks or $1,000 to talk to an expert in a very difficult to find area versus, like, accountants and chiropractors. Like, you could just call someone on the Internet. But if you want to find like an expert in titanium mining, how are you going to find that person? You go to GLG and you pay them a thousand bucks, they'll find the person for you, set up the phone call for you.
- [35:46]
Jess Ma
Right?
- [35:46]
Unknown Speaker
And we do that all the time.
- [35:48]
Jess Ma
The way you're talking about ideas and markets, it reminds me of there's a story of this marketer, and the marketer goes to, I think a. A seminar or something like that. Other marketers there. And he goes, okay, we are going to. Let's pretend we're opening up a hot dog stand. And he's like, so I can. He's like, I'm a genie. I will give you anything you want to make your hot dog stand the most successful you can make it. So he goes, what do you want? And so first person, what do you want? The guy's like, I want the best ingredients, best buns. He's like, got it. Best buns. You. What do you want? He's like, no, no, no buns. That's foolish. In the food business, location is everything. So location, all right, I got you this corner spot in a high traffic area, cool location. You got it. What do you want? And each person had, like, best branding, best whatever. And he goes, I have one thing that I think will beat all of you. If we all did the same thing and we all got our wish granted. He goes, all I want is a starving crowd. And if you're a marketer, like, you're gonna spend a lot of time and energy trying to sell something. The absolute best decision you can make up front is finding a starving, ravenous crowd. And it sounds like, you know, when you say ideas, really the idea, you know, what's underneath an idea is a customer or set of customers who have, like a real pain and like a desire to solve that pain. You know, like they are hungry and they're hungry for something. And if you just show up with even decent buns and hot dogs, like, they'll buy it, you know, instantaneously. It's okay. If it's a little cold, it doesn't matter.
- [37:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that's a great story. It's. It's about, like, how cute is this problem? And ideally, one hallmark of a mawe idea is the customer doesn't have to pay anything. So in holy health, you don't pay to be on our platform. By being part of our platform, you make more money, you get more customers, and we'll take a cut of that in exchange for helping you grow your business.
- [37:39]
Jess Ma
So you like that model because there's no friction.
- [37:41]
Unknown Speaker
I love that model. Like, why would you say no to that? It's like you're just saying no to more business.
- [37:46]
Jess Ma
Yeah, that's like those companies that they'll negotiate with all vendors on your behalf and, like, whatever we save, we'll take 20%. You're saving nothing today. If I save you any money, I'll take 20%. And it's like, okay, go. Have at it. You. You were talking about, you had a couple other ideas. You had like a divorce one. What was that?
- [38:02]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that is like, I had so many friends chatting, divorced and still do. And people say they need an advance on their alimony, or, like, there's going to be. Or their money gets tied up and locked up because they're in divorce proceedings and they're really rich, they're really successful, but they can't tap any of their own capital while it's all tied up. So what if we could just give them some of their money back? And. And so that was just like a.
- [38:24]
Jess Ma
Funny, random creative financing around the window of a divorce. Or the alimony.
- [38:29]
Unknown Speaker
We called it Divorce dot fund.
- [38:32]
Jess Ma
Didn't go forward with that one.
- [38:34]
Unknown Speaker
No, I mean, people talk about it and we still joke about it, but there are other ideas that we got more excited about. So.
- [38:40]
Jess Ma
So let's talk about failures. Because one of the things you said.
- [38:42]
Unknown Speaker
To me before, so many failures, you.
- [38:44]
Jess Ma
Were like, I like your podcast, but, you know, sometimes you listen to people and it just sounds like it's. I had this idea. It worked. I'm so great, you know, like, that's a podcast problem. And you were like, I want to be super honest about things we were trying that are not working or failures I've had. Where do you want to start?
- [39:01]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would start by saying when I use YouTube and I have all these Entrepreneur, business podcasts. I spend a lot of time flipping through and I think, man, like I'm not doing enough. Like I'm not good enough. Even when, like I watched your podcast. I think that, and I think that a lot of people, you know, probably share that view. And the people you interview, I know a lot of these people. These are my friends. I know what they're secretly struggling with.
- [39:28]
Jess Ma
Yeah.
- [39:29]
Unknown Speaker
And they're not necessarily sharing all of that. And I think that's just important to know. So in my case, looks like I am good at coming up with these things and having success, but most of the time they're total duds. And one example is we had this idea, we called it credboost. Terrible idea. In hindsight, I'm so embarrassed to share this, but I'm going to share it anyway.
- [39:51]
D
New York City founders, if you've listened to my first million before, you know, I've got this company called Hampton. And Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs. But a lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton. We have this big community of a thousand plus people and it's amazing. But the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business. And it's life changing. Now to the folks in New York City, I'm building a in real life core group in New York City. And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does 3 million in revenue or you've raised 3 million in funding or you've started and sold the company for at least $10 million. You are eligible to apply. So go to joinhampton.com and apply. I'm going to be reviewing all of the applications myself. So put that you heard about this on mfm, so I know to give you a little extra love. Now back to the show.
- [40:44]
Unknown Speaker
And the idea was we're going to help you like improve your credit and repair it. And you know, we had the customer acquisition funnel going and it was high churn, low price point, very high regulation by the ftc. You know, it, it got compared to credit repair businesses too much. And you know, my idea was we're going to boost your credit, not repair, just repair your credit. And it could have made some money, but we just got bored with that and so I burned a few hundred thousand bucks experimenting with that and then I put in the wrong team. So I made so many mistakes on that. That was an early incubation that went nowhere. And this other idea was, we're going to help veterans of the US Military find new jobs, and we're going to get paid by Vet Tech and the GI Bill to do that. And we could do this all online. So it's virtual, it's scalable, and we're helping veterans. So it felt like a really good idea. Yeah. And the veteran, all they have to do is say yes. So we launched all these ads, all these veterans signed up. They're like, hell, yeah, I could double my salary, make more money, and do this all online from the comfort of my home. And our payment mechanism was this thing called VetTech V E T T E C. And it had bipartisan acceptance. Everyone loved it, but it got stuck. It got approved by the House and never went up to the Senate. And the money dried up. And we were like, all right, well, it'll get renewed imminently. And 18 months after that, still not renewed today, still not renewed. And we're like, okay, well, the HET business died just because of that. And then I tried to pivot it. I'm like, oh, can I get the GI Bill to pay for it? But then the GI Bill requires in person. And then after that, we lost interest. Like, I was the only one excited about this. Still, like, guys, we gotta help the veterans. My team's like, we have other ideas that will make more money, Jess. And we want to make money. Like, all right, I'll come back to this when the time's right. So.
- [42:40]
Jess Ma
Swings and misses, for sure. I want to show you this. I want you to read this. This is from a talk you gave.
- [42:46]
Unknown Speaker
Oh, man. So this is not just 2011.
- [42:49]
Jess Ma
This is when it hurts, but not just because an idea is wrong. Sometimes it's even when the idea is right.
- [42:54]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah.
- [42:54]
Jess Ma
And you're running a company. Can you. Can you read this? I want you to read that.
- [42:57]
Unknown Speaker
I wrote this to my mom and my dad on Saturday, June 4, 2011 at 5:56am So I was up all night. I couldn't go to sleep. I was so upset. Subject line, kind of sad. I feel like I'm burning. Made off rich on the outside, but completely broken on the inside. There's just a lot of pressure right now because the company is running dry on money in the next nine months. Nine or so months. And we really need to produce this summer or else we're royally screwed. This was about a year after Y Combinator for me, anyway. I want to start seeing a therapist or something because this is just no way to live. I Have no idea how you handle this entrepreneur job, Jess.
- [43:38]
Jess Ma
Wow.
- [43:38]
Unknown Speaker
And my mom, she's an entrepreneur. She came here.
- [43:41]
Jess Ma
Do you remember saying that?
- [43:43]
Unknown Speaker
I do. I absolutely remember that. I remember the night. I remember how I was just, like, very upset because I had all these hoops and expectations on myself. And Paul Graham, even, he was my mentor, and he's like, you're going to be one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. You, Patrick Halston and Sam Altman. And I'm still the least successful today. And I still think about that often.
- [44:08]
Jess Ma
That weight was on your shoulders.
- [44:09]
Unknown Speaker
That weight was fully on my shoulders. It still is on my shoulders. And. And my mom called me, and she said, hey, I love you no matter what. Even if you're a total business failure, I'll still love you. And then I just cut all my expenses, cut my burn, moved into a tiny apartment with my business partner, and then just slowly crawled out of the hole. And then, yeah, we grew in and out. It's a few hundred employees. Profitable, good business, Not a unicorn. But it gave me all the training and spiritual training to pursue entrepreneurship and be comfortable with mistakes and failure.
- [44:46]
Jess Ma
Were you at that time, I guess. What was the conversation with yourself to, like? Cause you're like, I did these things. I lowered my burn. I did this. I did this. So those are the actions. But before the action comes, there's some inner monologue. There's some conversation you gotta have with yourself. And I love the inner monologue because your whole life gets dictated by this tiny little voice in your head that nobody hears. It's the one telling you how to feel, what to do, where to stand, what to say. And I think training that and learning how to, like, kind of improve that inner monologue is so important. And you. It gets better in moments like this, right? That's when it gets. That's the muscle building for that inner monologue. Do you remember kind of what you were telling yourself at that phase? You wrote this. Your mom tells you something. What'd you tell yourself?
- [45:33]
Unknown Speaker
I distinctly remember what the monologue was that whole evening, which is, I am destined for greatness, and I am not producing my best work right now. I am not showing up at my best. I'm not playing to win, and I'm. I'm falling behind, and I need to diagnose what went wrong, and I need to keep on trying, and I will not accept or tolerate failure. That was what was going through my head.
- [45:55]
Jess Ma
Were you listening to a song at that time? Where did that come from? That was fire. No how did you get yourself into that state from kind of sad to like kind of kick ass?
- [46:03]
Unknown Speaker
No, that was sad though. That was not. It was not an empowered attitude. I was, I was thinking that, but because I knew that that was my situation. Then it went from like, all right, like, I need to do all this or I'm screwed. And then like, all right, I'm really sad and I gotta process my emotions, right? Just get it out of me and, you know, be honest with myself that I'm struggling. I need to ask for help. And I didn't have a great community. Cause back at that time, you, you know, as an entrepreneur, you wanna show off, you wanna posture, you wanna seem like you're better than everyone else. And then after that, I realized I could just be honest and I'll still have friends. And I told all my girlfriends and ends up more people were struggling than I realized. More of my Y Combinator batchmates were also running out of money. And if we look back today, most of the companies from that batch did not make it. Most of them went bk. And then people took normal jobs or started new companies and then eventually found success. And so, yeah, I still think about that. I still have thoughts like that today. It's a work in progress, right?
- [47:07]
Jess Ma
You know, I've done whatever 600 of these episodes, and at a certain point, you know, you'd have to be sort of stupid to not realize, like, there's a mindset amongst the. A common mindset that I think great entrepreneurs have, and I've distilled it down into this. I think a great entrepreneur's mindset is they're ignorant of the past because it's already done. If they live there, they'll die there. If you just stay stuck on, well, I've been failing for five years, you know, then you will feel like a failure and you won't be able to win. So you're ignorant of the past, realistic about the present, which is kind of what you said. Like, I'm not showing up at my best. I'm not putting in all the effort. I'm not doing the obvious things that I should be doing right now, but I'm also not. It's not over. And so they don't make it worse than it is. They don't make it better than it is. They see it as it actually is. So ignorant of the past, realistic about the present, and delusional about the future, you have to have that delusion. Because if you're just realistic and practical about the future, you don't do anything great.
- [48:02]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, that's really well articulated, I think, also going through moments like that. I remember then talking to my business partner, and we did a full postmortem. We listed out every single strategic and tactical mistake and thing we did wrong and what we would do different if we went back in time. And I wish I wrote this somewhere because it was a long list. I mean, it was like, I would do everything different if I could go back in time was the attitude. And even today I was talking to. Or yesterday I was talking to one of my colleagues. And the number of bad ideas we funded and experimented with and our process flaws. You know, we would also do everything different going three years back if you could. But we're talking about this constantly. And that goes back to what we talked about at first. Kotowari. So every week, what if we bake this into our workflow? No matter how good things are, let's still reflect on all the mistakes we made so that we can improve and not repeat that again. It doesn't have to be when times are tough and when you're about to run out of money that you're reflecting on everything.
- [49:11]
Jess Ma
Yeah, yeah. No old mistakes. It's kind of like it's the no new friends. It's the no old mistakes of what you want. You know, I keep making those same mistakes. Again, you said something when you were talking about, like, I'm not. You said, I'm not showing up the way I need to. You said, I'm not playing to win. Yeah, that's nothing. While I was talking to your boyfriend before this, and he goes, I asked him, I said, what's a. What's a Jess? Ism, Meaning, like, if you talk to people enough, you start to see their. The things they repeat, the things that are, like, their philosophy that they're, like, actually operating on. And he go. He said something like, play to win, don't play not to lose. Explain that.
- [49:43]
Unknown Speaker
I think that came from this story that I just shared where one of my problems was I was playing not to lose. So I was in a scarcity mindset. And when I'm running out of money and I'm in scarcity mindset, I mean, there's research that talks about how your IQ drops by a lot during those periods. And so I'm not gonna think outside of the box. And playing a win means I'm optimistic. I'm delusional about the future a bit. Right. So I see a lot of my friends who are just, like, playing it too safe. They're not trying new things. And so you can't do the same thing you've been doing and expect a completely different outcome.
- [50:24]
Jess Ma
Right. What's an example, maybe non business related, where in your life you had a moment where you're like, I need to play to win here instead of playing.
- [50:32]
Unknown Speaker
Not to lose in a personal life, like for example, with the airplane. You know, this is a physical manifestation of that attitude and why it's really fun to share that with everyone today. It's easy to say, I'm gonna be frugal, I'm gonna save the money, I'm gonna let it compound, I'm gonna invest it in my other businesses or screw it, I'm playing to win here. This is gonna manifest way more abundance for me than if I don't.
- [50:58]
Jess Ma
You had told me something when we were at lunch that inspired me. You met somebody, I think, who through a great event and you hired this person. You were like, hey, here's a budget and I will pay you whatever you're making your job, I'll pay you that or more, whatever. You're like, I want to have four events a year in these four cities with the most inspiring, fun people in my. I'm going to engineer some serendipity, some luck, some fun, some cross pollination of people and ideas four times a year in these places. And I remember I've told probably five people this because you need some resources to do it. Yes, of course, of course. Like, like don't. If you're in the YouTube comments, don't be that guy who's like, oh, it must be nice to have money. Great. There's a version of this in your life too. You can take people out to dinner. Right. It doesn't have to be a grand event. But I was like, that is an investment that I don't even have a line item for. Yeah, right. I kind of know if I did it probably really good, I would A, have a lot of fun and B, like, yeah, I do think good things would happen. But you took an almost like intentional business capital allocation approach to the like, luck and fun part of your life, which I think most people leave untouched. Luck and fun is just something that either happens or doesn't happen.
- [52:08]
Unknown Speaker
It's not.
- [52:09]
Jess Ma
I don't use my business brain for that. I use this other part of my brain. It seemed like you almost used that same brain for both.
- [52:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, because I wanted to kill two birds with one stone or three birds with one stone because I want to have fun, I want to do more business Meet cool people. But I also had this friend who hated her private equity job and really wanted an excuse to leave. And so I was able to present that to her. The vision was four events a year with the most successful entrepreneurs and investors I know. And we're launching the first one literally today. That's exactly what I'm flying off to after we're done. And then the vision is we'll do a summer thing, a fall thing, et cetera. But it was really expensive. And so what she and I decided to do was we would help her find other work, other events. So I'd set her up with my other friends throwing events. She would charge per event, and she would get paid based on the revenue coming into the event. So it's all variable versus her being on my payroll.
- [53:06]
Jess Ma
Right.
- [53:06]
Unknown Speaker
And so for this event, what I did is I called a bunch of my friends and said, hey, you gotta pay something because I have hard costs here. And they paid in. And then she only paid herself after there was a profit. So you could get creative about this. For the ideas we were talking about earlier, and my whole team, a bunch of these people are on contract. I found them on upwork. Okay, like, you could do this.
- [53:27]
Jess Ma
What type of person, like, what skill set do they have that you found out? You said, like, fiverr or upwork?
- [53:32]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, like one's product management, ui, ux, Thinker. One is a financial services guy. One was a intern of mine, he was at ucla, and he asked me to speak to his entrepreneur club. And then he said, hey, could I like, take you to lunch? I want to get some advice from you. What should I do after college? I'm like, just intern for me and I'll teach you the ropes. And then he was so good that now he's full time with us. But he's probably one of my best ideas sparring partners. And then here, this event planning person, I met her from the Burning man community. These people are everywhere around you. They don't necessarily have a fancy, specific resume. And they're fun, I love them. We work well together. That's more important than the resume, right?
- [54:20]
Jess Ma
I met a friend recently who told me this. He said something in passing. He goes, I was at this event, and then there was this guy, he was dressed differently, blah, blah. And me and my friend, we collect eccentric people. So we went over to him, had a chat. I kind of paused him. I was like, that's kind of a cool thing you just said, like, I collect eccentric people. I don't do that. And I was like, but what do I collect? Like, if I just put myself in, if I said, what am I a collector of? So, like, for me, I'm a collector of what I call golden nuggets. It's like, I can have this conversation with you and I'm just looking for two, three, four things. Like, I don't need two hours or 90 minutes of a conversation to be perfect. I need three ideas that spark something. Three golden nuggets that will change my way of thinking or acting. So I'm a great collector of those. I'm also a collector of like, young talent. Like, I see somebody who's young, who's hustling or is talented in some way, I will like kind of really help them out because I want to, A, stay young myself and be helpful, but B, I kind of want to be able to connect dots between young people and good opportunities or young people and funding or whatever it is. And so I think there's this interesting idea of like figuring out what is it that you collect? Like, some dudes collect stamps, some dudes collect bugs. What is it that you collect? So, like, for you, what do you, what would you say you collect?
- [55:30]
Unknown Speaker
I would say I collect interesting people with outside of the box ideas who also like to have fun. That is, that's the key intersection I'm looking for.
- [55:38]
Jess Ma
That's your Venn diagram.
- [55:39]
Unknown Speaker
Exactly. Because I think you could find interesting people where they're not fun. It's very transactional. They're just in it to make money themselves. But then the problem with that is then I can't do any business with them. So then my idea was, okay, how do I bring more of these people together so that we can have more serendipity? Oh, I'll just create my own event and then bring them there and then have a bunch of my people also talking to them, getting their ideas and seeing where we could partner on stuff.
- [56:05]
Jess Ma
Right, right. Engineering the serendipity. Our buddy Nick Gray does a like no cost, low cost version of this. So he used to do renegade museum tour. So he like, he loved museums. So his Venn diagram was like fun. People who are interested in like, you know, going to a museum on a Friday night and he would host his. He wasn't a part of the museum. He would just take people on a tour because he knew the museum better than the tour guides. And he would take them on a fun version of the tour. They'd like, have a drink outside after beforehand they would go in and they would like do little fun things. At the different stations. So, like, that was one thing he did. Another way he engineered serendipity is he would throw these, like, singles events where he himself was looking to date somebody. But he's like, well, I could just kind of do that. I can swipe left or right or like, is there something I could do more creative that will not only help me find someone amazing, but maybe even like a bunch of our friends find somebody amazing? And he started hosting these singles events. And again, the. It's a pizza budget. It's not like it's super fancy. It doesn't have to be fancy. Right?
- [56:59]
Unknown Speaker
Like.
- [57:00]
Jess Ma
And I feel like I need to say that because we're sitting on this, like, jet.
- [57:02]
Unknown Speaker
But like, yeah, I mean, most of the stuff we do is like very cheap prospective NPs for itself and sometimes makes a profit, you know, so like just.
- [57:08]
Jess Ma
But just taking that intensity to engineering some serendipity, I kind of love that. Before we leave, what do you just leave me with? What are you currently nerding out about?
- [57:16]
Unknown Speaker
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about, like, cancer and oncology. I've been thinking a lot about longevity. And, you know, we're still funding a lot of the research with Mike Levin, who's my favorite scientist of all time. He's the bioelectricity ninja. And I've been nerding out on this a bit more because I was mentioning to you before we got here. I've been in a bit of a sad mood this week. I had a friend die of cancer a few days ago. Never smoked a cigarette in her life and had stage four lung cancer. And it's just more examples of this in my life every year or two. I lose a friend like that. And so it's not necessarily gonna make money. It's not gonna improve my lifestyle, but I'm just like, I gotta nerd out on it, right?
- [58:06]
Jess Ma
Is there exciting progress in the cancer oncology stuff right now? Like, is there something. Is there a new paradigm or a new pathway? That's interesting.
- [58:15]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Like with Mike, he talks about how he's been able to use bioelectricity to normalize cancer cells. So everyone right now in the field is talking about how do you kill cancer, right? You think about chemo, radiation, it's really painful on the patient, but if you could just normalize cancer and not have to kill it, that's gonna be a lot more comfortable.
- [58:36]
Jess Ma
Cancer kind of makes it like a normal non cancerous cell, basically.
- [58:39]
Unknown Speaker
It's still gonna be cancer, but it's more benign, essentially. So that's really cool research. He's got a lot of great stuff on longevity, making labor animals live longer. I don't think he wants me to talk about it publicly yet.
- [58:52]
Jess Ma
But how insane is the AI? AI for medicine and biology. How insane is that going to be?
- [59:00]
Unknown Speaker
I think it's going to be amazing. I think it's also going to be a lot harder than people think, because you have AI that's coming up with all these ideas. But the bottleneck is still regulatory, it's still fda. It's still getting a clinical trial put together. That's one area where we're gonna see slower progress than everyone is bragging about. Whereas with everything else we discussed with digital twins, if we could have two of us brainstorm ideas, there's no bottleneck there. The only bottleneck is spitting up the computer and then us pulling the trigger to fund ads or fund whatever. But in health and bio, people's lives are at stake. It's gonna go slow still, I think, unfortunately.
- [59:37]
Jess Ma
Okay, well, where should people find you and what should they send you?
- [59:42]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. If you have any exotic, outside of the box business ideas you want to run by me, and I'd love to discuss that with you, shoot me a note. And I am on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Just search Jess Ma and I post on my blog there almost every week, partially using ChatGPT to come up with my blog posts, but I still review it. I'm like, hey, write me a blog post that's 2950 characters long, because the LinkedIn limit's 3000 in my boy about XYZ XYZ and insert these anecdotal stories. And then within two minutes, I have a blog post.
- [60:22]
Jess Ma
That's amazing. Yeah.
- [60:23]
Unknown Speaker
But so I post there, and these are real life stories in my life. And just send me a message on LinkedIn. Would love to hear from people. And also the last pod we did, I made a bunch of friends. People just cold emailed me and I'm like, yeah, I'll grab lunch with you, I'll grab dinner with you. And two people I met from the Potter coming to my retreat.
- [60:43]
Jess Ma
That's amazing to hear. That's a point of pride for us, is like, we want it today. If somebody comes on the podcast, you should get more kind of inbound messages from this than any other podcast you go on. And the second would be that the people who message you are people you would actually want to talk to. That would be the goal, right? That if we're doing that, we've kind of built the right tribe here, so.
- [61:02]
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, you've done a great job with that. Real community. So thanks for having me here.
- [61:06]
Jess Ma
Well, cheers.
- [61:07]
Unknown Speaker
Cheers.
- [61:08]
Jess Ma
All right, here we go.
- [61:09]
Unknown Speaker
I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like no days off on the road let's travel never looking back.