Answers to your toughest business questions!

[Music] welcome to the business geeks podcast i'm your host super joe pardo from super joe pardo.com i'm joined by two fabulous guests uh guest who my fabulous co-host jennifer crawford of asparant.co and samantha riley of samantha riley.global sam how

are you doing today i am doing very well thank you happy new year joe and jen it's great to be here for a new year 2022. it is we made it someone actually said to me it's like when you say it's like 2020 as well like 2022 i'm like no no no no take that away we don't want that amen to that jen how are you doing did you have a great vacation i hope yeah yeah i'm i'm doing great i i feel like i have to share that i did um come down with kovid for the first time over christmas as well as several of our family members everybody's okay it was um you know three days relatively minor you know mild symptoms and i'm 100 fine now but i was just so mad after you know to get it after all this time of being careful but this omicron is no joke it is um and this was you know i've been triple boxed um so luckily my my symptoms were fairly mild and they didn't last very long but but yeah i kind of put a damper on the holidays just a little bit i'm glad you're feeling better thank you i bet yeah that's that's uh i mean somebody i was just talking to um friend of the show sue allen clayton said that um someone she knows i don't want to give away who it was but someone she knows like feels like they've been playing tag with the viru you know with the illness and then all of a sudden they they got it but it's like two years after the fact you know um but i mean mild symptoms are better than i mean and that person apparently had a bit of a rough patch uh with it but uh but not as rough as some other people that i personally know that um are going through it as well as some people that i know that passed away uh recently uh from it so yeah they're it's it's tough um it's tough on all fronts absolutely tough to avoid i mean just with the you know how transmissible this current variant is um you know we were taking a risk our family got together for the first christmas since the beginning of covid uh we were indoors unmasked and although the majority of us were vaccinated and boosted and nobody had any you know sick word any you know symptoms nobody was symptomatic um so we don't know who you know who where it originated or with who and it doesn't really matter i was gonna say it doesn't matter does it matter um but yeah you know that's um that's what happened and i guess in the end i'm really glad i got to see my family and spend time with them and from what i've read getting getting covered after you've been vaccinated and boosted um actually gives you a little extra bump in your immunity and i'm hoping that that science plays out um so anyway it is what it is i avoided it you know for a long time but it finally got me yeah i think i think in sydney just about just about everyone i know has covered at the moment and it's um yeah it's just gone crazy and it was interesting because uh leon and i walked down to our local um our local restaurant last night to grab some dinner and as we were walking past one of the cafes there's a sign up saying that they're closed because all of their staff have covered and then when we were at the restaurant they were on very limited stuff i think they only had two servers and normally they have like eight or nine on a thursday night so it's just it's uh and we've got supply i don't know about you guys but supply chain issues 50 of our of our truck drivers in sydney have got covered most of our supermarkets uh can't get stuff because they've got covered i think we're going to be living with it for a little while and and like you said jen i i i hope we're getting to the point where the symptoms aren't as bad as what we saw at the beginning of the virus although joe it sounds like you know some people that have been quite ill from it but luckily the people i know have actually been okay yeah yeah i mean it i mean it's just it's really a crap shoot you know of whether or not you're gonna have really bad symptoms or if you have underlying things i mean it's the same thing we've been you know living with for the last two years uh and and it's just unfortunate that um one of the people that we know that passed away uh they they did not they chose not to get vaccinated you know on purpose um and yeah it didn't play out too well uh for them but but yeah so speaking you know leading going from where uh the restaurant example uh from yesterday which really sucks and there is tons of examples of supply chain issues uh up and down the our country and and down you know now i guess down in in australia uh and the rest of the world uh there there is a a bright spot that i wanted to point out uh that they've been running these commercials for a little while now and uh what the is is dominoes right so they they made this decision to and i'm clicking on links and uh they made this decision to buy up a hundred and this was in november but i you know i've been watching seeing the commercials for a while and i forgot to bring it up before but they bought a hundred thousand dollars worth of gift cards to local restaurants to give out with their pizzas um because the delivery fees from these services like ubereats and uh doordash and all them have just you know they really take a a big chunk of the profits um almost to a leeching level uh that you know is is detrimental to those businesses uh especially at a time where uh costs are going up and you know uh while one company like chipotle has you know shown that like hey we can raise prices all we want and people aren't going to care uh whether or not you know they're paying an extra 50 cents or 20 cents or 30 cents but regardless if we have actual supply chain issues or not or staffing issues or not we're just going to raise the prices anyway because everybody's just getting used to paying these expanded prices um you know to see dominos pay out a hundred grand is pretty cool but the bigger thing here especially because we are the business geeks uh is that you you know having a company you know do that and then utilizing it as part of their marketing budget to be able to push out a a heartwarming message uh to me it's a it's a it's it's like a triple win for everybody right it's a win for the customers getting those those gift cards it's a win for dominoes to be able to promote it it's a win for the the restaurants to get you know some extra cash and sell some gift cards uh leading into the holiday season i guess it was leading into the holiday season i'm not sure when they specifically did it but i'm you know i'm all for the win-win-win yeah good on domino's hey that's great god i sounded really australian then didn't i was just like wow that was very australian please please keep the australian turned up to 11 please [Laughter] oh i'll love it well joe and did you did you catch that there there's another nuance to this move by domino's with these gift cards their business is actually being threatened or affected by these third-party delivery apps like door dash ubereats so they are trying to drive people away from those third-party apps by pointing out how high their fees are as you mentioned um because they actually that's becoming a huge competitor to their own um you know established delivery service so so they're kind of sticking it to the third-party apps which i don't have a problem with i there are problems with those third-party apps um you know which we you already mentioned joe um and it's still a it's still a triple win um but also not completely altruistic which is fine which is fine um but i just thought that was an interesting nuance that it's it was you know a very well planned and orchestrated um strategy and not just a marketing level but a long-term strategy to help deflect whatever pain their they've been experiencing financially from that competition no that's a that's a great point and i think that gets back to the uh like a k the kpi thing versus like the roi you know idea right of like um a great example this is kohl's right you i don't think you have coals down in australia uh sam but kohl's you know enables you to take uh do refunds for amazon purchases in their store so the whole idea is is to get people like because they're having you know it's it's retail so they're in a time where it's hard to get people to come out to your store so they're like oh great we'll team up with amazon we'll do we'll take care of the returns we'll package them up all you got to do is literally just show up with the thing and be like here you go here's my here's my thing and and you just send it on its way and and it's a free return opportunity and then they even give you a coupon like usually it's like five dollars off or um i think like i think the other one's like 20 off or 25 off one item but you know the 25 percent off has a ton of you know uh ledger to it to what you can and can't buy but the five dollars can literally be used on i believe anything in in the store so uh you know it's an opportunity and so they when they flipped the script on like let's how do we get more people to buy from us versus like how do we just get people in the store because if they're at the store they might buy something and i tell you i've increased my spending with uh kohl's because of that like returning things to amazon and and then getting five bucks and on the way out like oh i like that shirt or oh you know i need to get this for that while i'm here and it just creates an opera a buying opportunity that literally would not have existed otherwise um and real quick i wanted to point out that this isn't the first time domino's has done something like this before uh do either of you remember when they were paving the roads no i never heard about this uh so they what they did was that you know they had like a whole um commercial set series about oh you know the bumps in the road the potholes in the road are screwing up the pizza right the cheese is sliding around it's going everything's going crazy the madness you need to stop the madness so what do we do we're going to uh fill in the potholes we're going to pay for the asphalt to do it we're going to get it done and then we're going to stamp a domino's logo on top of [Music] that pothole patch and and so it's not the first time that they've done you know things like that and that you know it uh domino's has come a long way because like there was a long time there where and they've admitted in their commercials where like domino's was not people's favorite place to go to get pizza you know it's like the last place you would go it is definitely on my list of last places to go to get pizza so i like the pizza for what for what it is i mean we have a lot and we have in jersey we have lots of pizza great pizza places obviously but i like it for what it is and i actually like their sandwiches and their like their other things that they have aren't bad i don't order from their not even once a month um because the kids don't like the their pizza don't like their pizza it's like too garlicky garlicky for them so we you know order from one of our local places here but you know i i don't mind it i you know it's it's okay it's it's okay for what it is it's not the best i'm not taking sam when she comes from australia here you're like hey yeah we're going to dominate hey look i'm not saying they shouldn't be a company i'm just saying it's not my preference for pizza but i i think that what they're doing is great and and i hear what you're saying jen but at the same time when we're in business we we have to make smart strategic decisions to keep the business afloat so yeah i'm all for it i'm for it too i have no problem with it i just i thought it was interesting that that that is where some of that motivation came from but i could see completely how for the most part everybody's winning here it is it is so we have a question in the comments if you have a question please feel free to drop it in the chat uh and we will we will do our best to answer it now i don't know if we're gonna be able to answer this one that well because i don't know that any of us have done in inventing but a day with jersey uh says hi joe just want to ask if i if i think of something to invent how will i start because i'm not really sure about this invent help if i can trust them uh uh there is a uh was yeah there's event uh invent help there's that other one that runs the commercials like all the time here i don't know if it's just local new jersey or maybe it is invent help i don't know actually i don't recall do you know any uh sam or no it's no it's definitely not my not my company i've never heard of anything yeah it's so this is what this is what i was thinking about because i've seen the so many commercials with like this logo in it um personally i don't know anybody that's ever used it i know a handful well i actually know quite a few people now that have patents uh that have gone and got you know gone their own way uh to get patents and i don't know that any of them have gone through invent help i mean for me what like because like melissa brings this up all the time like especially well when we used to watch shark tank together now i watch shark tank by myself by myself with all with three thousand it was four thousand or actually like twelve thousand of my closest friends on youtube uh for a returning viewership so uh you know the thing the thing there is is when you're trying to uh get started like i would do my best to get a you know a prototype off the ground right and then you could start to say okay well um is there something patentable here what can i what can i do like you can go i would go to a patent attorney at that point i don't know that i would use invent help but i don't know anybody that has or or hasn't i'd be interested maybe we could crowdsource this with the with the super community and and find out if anybody has used uh invent help because uh i'm gonna guess that if they've existed since 1984 according to their website uh and i mean i remember these commercials from as from like even from a kid you know seeing them uh on like daytime television like you know price is right and stuff like that during the day daytime uh it's it it can't be all that bad right but i always i always have my own suspicions as well like oh you you know you're giving up that idea and then do i how do i know that they're not going to go run off and find out if it's patentable now i know somebody that works in the patent office in dc well they live in florida but they work remotely to the patent office in dc so um if you have any questions i could easily pass that along to a friend you know a good my good friend who uh is a patent attorney works in the in the patent office uh in dc and you know basic questions obviously i'm not gonna like here's the you know here's the drawing or whatever and and use up tons of his time but it is something that i you know i could do um if you want to reach out uh if you know go to my website shoot me an email uh it would be that'd be great superjoepardo.com so yeah so i i uh but i would start with the prototype depending on what you're you're building uh look uh you could get yourself a 3d printer though i don't know personally how to use them uh you could find somebody to do it for you there are places uh like sites and stuff that could help you but again if you're worried about somebody stealing your idea that that could be tough it's it's not it's it's not easy and that's why we've i've had these conversations with melissa my wife many many many a times he's like oh like we could do something you know blah blah blah and i'm like okay great so patton's gonna be a couple tens of thousands um and it's gotta and you might not even get it right like that might not be uh a thing that you're capable of patenting um and i've heard horror stories uh from my friend in the patent office like you know what the lawyer like he's like you know this is not patentable and they're like maybe take another look at it you know and it's like uh no we we are very cl we've been going back and forth on this for six months no like that's not a thing you can do um so it's it's a it's a tough road it's not easy to invent something for sure uh but i don't know if either of you have something to uh pack on top of that yeah i don't know any i actually don't know anyone that's actually invented anything it's definitely it's not in my world yeah not in my world i mean i guess my my instinct would be yeah get that prototype protect it pitch your partner right like you know you've got to get it in front of people and then you've got it you most likely are going to need some sort of partner um i'm guessing because there's just so much that uh involved in getting something to market um invented so yeah i mean i wish you all the luck in the world i wish i needed to learn my day with jersey because i feel weird saying hey a day with jersey um you know you can be anonymous that's that's that's your right uh actually yeah yeah jersey is the name i thought it was a day like in jersey like new jersey or jersey in in england or something but no it's it's uh that jersey's the name oh yeah there we go yeah right over there and i apologize for being snarky about it um good luck good luck to you jersey uh yeah so yeah yeah there's it is uh it is tough um it is a long road it is not simple and le i mean let's see uh oh it's the b yeah it's the baby's vlog i knew i knew it wasn't the person's name but i knew it was something uh to that effect uh thanks guys uh questions answered we'll dm uh you one of these days thank you you're so welcome and please do i you know uh on a side note here um i'm gonna be hosting a pitch competition in uh february i think it will be um and so to do so one of the things that came up was how do we go about protecting these ideas right for the for the entrepreneurs because like if we do it live in a live stream like ooh cool live stream like you got the chat you got the people like things are going and that's awesome but like then there's no way to prevent people from like just straight up stealing ideas so i think that the way that i've come up with it is i think it's gonna have to end up being like a series where we shoot like you know cl like behind closed doors record it and then edit it so that we're protecting anything that like really needs to be protected um so that the person isn't on the hook to like say too much by accident or because they want to win the pitch competition so we're looking for sponsors and we're go i'll be putting out a whole thing for people to uh apply and all that uh in the coming weeks ish so yeah uh look looking looking forward to that how exciting yeah fun i love watching pictures i just love it i know that just before christmas i bought up the disney documentary own the room did you guys ever go back and watch it no no no not yet i ha i i i do have it on my list i'm going to get to it it is very good did you guys know oh sorry no oh well i was just gonna all right real quick aside real quick aside uh on was it on christmas or no on new year's eve uh me and ava stayed up till midnight dom fell asleep at like nine o'clock ten o'clock but uh we ended up watching the in the final hour leading up to new year's eve uh the first of the imagineers uh documentary that's on disney plus the first episode all about disneyland and ava was like really she wants to be like a creator she says uh invents her creator so for her it you know she was just eating it up like oh and she's been to disneyland once so it's kind of really cool for her so i'm sorry that was on the side sam go ahead no but i do love that that series too and because you know i love disney as well and i'm a creative and yes i was like oh i could do that not it's very cool but i was going to say did you know that the world like just only a couple of days ago um has had its first publicly traded company to ever be worth three trillion dollars [Laughter] yeah wow it is i mean we were just talking about apple the uh last i think last week on the show right and you had mentioned that you you have friends that work there and uh yeah so uh now it is uh it's it's incredible for a company i think the the the powerful thing there is is the company while they do have some recurring products and they have you know some you know some streams smaller streams of like opera revenue and and that kind of stuff coming in you know they're they're physical products it's not like they're selling them every day like like a packet like packs of gum or just going out by the cake you know by the palettes like yeah they're selling lots and lots of macbooks over across the country or or ipads and iphones and things but like there's one launch day a year for an iphone there's one launch day a year for an ipad maybe two depending on how they break it up macbooks and things like that so so it's like i think that's it goes to show the power of like you don't necessarily have to have that super high volume across the whole year like again like the pack of gum example or something that's like constantly just you know you're buying every single yeah yeah yeah yeah incredible uh al brings up uh hello i am an inventor good to see you al in the chat uh once i got my prototype done i didn't have the money to get an attorney uh to do my patent work so i did it myself i was granted a design patent and it only took 11 months i mean that's determination because it's 11 months is is a long time to be sitting on something nervously hoping that nobody else you know swoops in or somebody else was coming up with the idea and you know it's a it's a long period of time but uh yeah i mean look you can start an llc you don't have to go to an attorney to start an llc or or anything like that right like you can do it yourself but there's i mean there's a reason to pay for it but um but you know patent attorneys are not cheap uh and and aren't a magic bullet to make sure that it actually happens either so that there's that and uh and a day with jersey said thank you for the info al yeah um so speaking of kitchens which again if anybody has any questions throw them in the chat uh but going back to the whole domino's kitchen thing jen you brought up this article so if you would like to take the floor here well i brought it up because i had not heard of this term of cloud kitchen uh it's a new industry have either of you heard of clouds no i have not yep i have not well once you once you hear about this you're gonna probably have the same reaction i did which was oh this makes a lot of sense so these are kitchens that are designed to cook and prepare food for delivery only so there's no seating in these you know they're not restaurants but they're cooking restaurant style meals and so this is a business model that um is has gained steam you know certainly because of the pandemic people aren't eating out as much um yet people are there is still that demand for good convenient food made by something somebody other than myself um so uh so yeah so this this article just just talks about how the these cloud kitchens are are popping up and sort of the the um the pros um of the cloud kitchen in terms of low startup costs you know they're um they're more efficient the menus are more flexible there's more freedom for chefs to experiment and get you know kind of change up the menu um also you can you kind of have your own um digitalized means to capture data from your customers and build on that relationship it's easy to market some disadvantages as well um you know obviously there's just you know a lot of competition out there uh with the you know and the delivery apps are expensive and and there's just you know restaurant the restaurant industry is just a fiercely competitive and um low margin business uh anyway so it's it's not a magic bullet for somebody who wants to get into that space but i found it it's really interesting when you see these new business models develop as our culture and is changing and our world is changing and how businesses adapt with it i just i found that just really fascinating that this was now how does the how does it work um over there in the us in regards to um getting um like be registered to cook food because in australia and i don't know if it's the same but in australia you can't just cook food in your kitchen and sell it you have to you have to get you know food licenses and you know you have to be uh the local council has to come out and make sure that everything's sanitary because that's my first thought is how do i know if that kitchen's safe we're in a restaurant well you don't know you don't know if a restaurant is either but at least you know there's there's regulations legitimate concern but in the us we have the same the same standards and you know uh inspections that need you know are similar you know inspections need to happen i don't necessarily although this picture looks like it's in somebody's this is a terrible example i don't think most of them oh okay because to me i just saw that and automatically thought oh so this person's just popping into their kitchen to make a couple of meals i don't know yeah it's not that simple i think these are you know they're commercial spaces but they're just you know they're not built out um the way you would a restaurant kitchen that might be seen or you know have a lot of people working in them so they're a little bit scaled down but they are commercial um but less expensive because of the type of use use that they're um they're being uh used for so anyway super crazy cool so this this launched uh maybe about six months ago actually no it was longer than that i think it was last i think it was the end of 2020 the that this launched uh so mr beast if you don't i mean if you watch any youtube at all mr beast is like what like the biggest if you know consistent viral video creator on the platform and what he did was he created mr beast burger using ghost kitchens which is i've never heard the term cloud kitchen before or ghost yeah ghost ghost is what they were calling it when he did it but when he launched i think he was like something like 300 restaurants across the country and it was built the app had built-in delivery service and all that so i was like i actually made a video on this um because i wanted to do a review and like you know make something of it um because and then ultimately uh i had to call customers ultimately i had to call customer service oh hang on no really [Laughter] i never got my birthday i spent like 60 and it never showed up and then the app just kept pushing back to delivery time oh like that like by days like days and days went by yeah no it was not a good experience at all so i my review and like i was hoping to have a review like that day that it launched it was like 50 it was like almost 15 days later because i i never actually got the food and it took that long to resolve because there was no one to call when you caught well when you called you got like a basically a looping system that said oh did you did you use post mates did you use this company this company and no matter who i talked to i even called the restaurant so the restaurants they were using was carabas at uh they used restaurants across like all across the country and a bunch of you know a bunch of different ones at the time carabas they had like basically wherever there was a karaba's location that's where mr beastberger was and if you go to these places they actually have a pickup like uh spot for like in front of the building like in front of their building for mr beastberger like for like people to run out and and drop off the food so yeah so i was super disappointed when i ordered it because it pushed i'll tell you why it didn't come the reason they didn't come was because when i ordered it it ordered it from pennsylvania because that was the closest place to me but there's a five dollar bridge sold between me and there and you know a pretty sizable amount of highway distance and so when i called the restaurant i talked to somebody like yeah we made your food and they got picked up i guess the person you know i said i guess the person just ate it and like because i when i tipped i didn't realize where i was ordering it from i didn't i just was like oh like here's a basic tip like i wasn't factoring in like they're gonna it's gonna cost them five dollars just to do the toll over the bridge you know and that kind of stuff so they weren't they i don't blame them for not willing to pick it up but you know when some lose some so anyway it took me that long to be able to get my video out to talk about it um and eventually i was refunded but i took i had to like tweet at the mr beast burger support twitter handle for them to like actually do something about it otherwise it just would have never happened so i've never actually got to have my miss thanks siri appreciate it uh the uh i never actually got to have my mr beast burger but it's a really it is a neat concept and uh they you know it was huge when he rolled it out like everyone everyone was like how did you come up with 300 locations overnight like that like that's you know nobody nobody does that that's not a thing you know so he was able to do it and apparently the food's really good uh and and to promote this what he did was he actually opened up the first ever world's first uh mr beast burger where i guess they took like an abandoned or shuttered fast food restaurant turned it into a mr beast burger for the video and gave out free mr beast burgers along with free macbooks free what like you know stacks of cash in the bags and and all that kind of stuff like yeah because there was a line the line was backed up for like two like a mile a mile and a half two miles something like that crazy people trying to get there and he did zero promotion he just literally put up the sign like they put they they put up like uh you know tarped it so that nobody could see what it was they undid it and then all of a sudden everybody you know these people started showing up and lining up for for like a mile plus wow crazy crazy crazy so that's you know ghost kitchen so it's cool but it it you know and i'm i'm gonna guess it's probably better now i know there's one in cherry hill now like so and and sticklerville so like if i wanted it i don't know i don't know if the app would still point me to the pennsylvania one that's over the bridge versus one that's closer like not over the bridge to me i want to get it at some point i just haven't gotten around to it so that's that's one example of a ghost kitchen um there was this story that uh jen wanted to bring up and i only i mean i know some of what the story is uh do you wanna do you wanna take it over there jen well sure joe um you can hand me this this baton and i'll muddle my way through uh so probably a lot of you are familiar with elizabeth holm she was the ceo of theranos theranos has been in the news for all the wrong reasons um and she her trial um took place recently and she was found guilty on a number of a number of counts um what i thought was interesting about this uh this particular article is they really uh they were speaking specifically to how this might affect startup culture because a lot you know elizabeth miss elizabeth did a lot of things wrong but one thing it did and got vilified for uh are part of the things she got vilified for for was sort of um this hyperbolic presentation of what her company's numbers were what the the capabilities were kind of skirting that line um or blurring the line between what was reality and what was planned kind of thing and this article was actually fairly sympathetic to her in the sense that she that they're like look every startup does this they they fudge the numbers they're trying to get investor money they put on you know best case scenarios they they bolster what they're capable of um in order to get that investor money coming in and so is it a lie or is it just hey this is what our plan is this is what we're planning to do and a way to spin it and and so that that those investor dollars come in fast and furiously so um i guess the question is will this change how startups um talk about their futures with and their products with their potential investors so that they don't they don't find themselves in a situation where they're deceitful and joey's got a joe's got a tick he needs to speak here i'm basically just regurgitating the article so you can um you can go right ahead joe not even not even a smidge and the reason is is because the people that are investing on that level want that magic bullet right they're investing in big power plays that either going to go to zero or going to go to the moon and back right that's the whole thing so um was she uh you know misleading from my understanding absolutely 100 percent it wasn't it's not even close it's not even not even remotely it's not like oh we're doing this today so we can get the business model going and we're building these relationships and all this stuff and and the hope is that in you know five to ten years this will work you know it was this will work now and my big takeaway for this is um you know a good friend of ours of the show larry roberts did this whole and and i think somebody else had talked about it as well before coined the term come and we as entrepreneurs you know get that all the time and you look you're like oh you know i'm busting my butt every day i'm doing the things i'm supposed to be doing i'm trying to make it work i'm grinding it out you know and and then here you have somebody like elizabeth holmes who's like getting to share a stage with like past presidents and like getting oh there's the next most important person on the planet like you can't don't do it because you know what it probably is a bunch of bs in most cases it probably will be and real quick before i give the stage over to you sam i wanted to point out this this story i just happened to watch this happen to be like the next up video that i was i was watching something and this was the next video that popped up and that video is uh the the video is called i ran a 500 000 ponzi scheme at 19 thanks frauds and scammers it's a vice video and this guy this kid actually ended up going to jail for three years because uh you know based on around the the hype of being a young 18 19 20 21 year old or eight i don't know if he even got to 21 and throwing these crazy parties you know booking all these big festivals well yeah so a lot yeah yeah but he didn't starve people you know along the way but point being is is that you know the the the thing was sinking the the shows were bombing they weren't doing the money they were supposed to do and and even though it's like oh we're only spent like if one out of five you know one out of five shows hit we're all good everything's cool well they weren't having any you know hit and and that started this thing where they just kept borrowing more money borrowing more money borrowing more money to give these and you know people and you know he he frames it as you know i was young i was dumb i made mistakes and and we were just you know we weren't trying we weren't setting out to create a ponzi screen scheme it just we just kept digging a hole that got bigger and deep bigger and bigger and the only way to keep it going was get more investor money to pay back you know pay out because we weren't creating the uh the wins that we you know the hits that we needed to do it so um i i sympathize a little like a little more with him than than than uh therma thoroughness well i think they've both been in the same position right because what they've done is they've started off with this idea and all of a sudden they have you know done one or two things to move ahead and then they're just constantly trying to cover up the next thing or you know trying to get the next thing and i think it's i do think it's the same joe because all of a sudden they've got in so deep and they're like oh i just need to get the next thing done to be able to move forward so hmm yeah i think i think it is but um the other thing is that in regards to the investors and what you were saying joe people love confidence and that's what she had and obviously that's what you know the other had so where where this gets tricky like where's the line between confidence and just straight out i don't even know what that is i haven't got a word well yeah that stretch you know there's another stretching the truth and just like and frau and fraud i there's definitely a difference there right well i think what they're saying is that in the startup culture like there is it's so encouraged and accepted that these these numbers and these the um you know these plans are going to be so inflated that there's so much acceptance that now we we are seeing more fraud and and elizabeth holmes may be an extreme case but we've got um adam newman at wework we've um you know we've got this this guy that you just that you just said i mean these are people that have squandered quite a bit of investor money and i don't i don't care if you're soft bank even soft bank you know your pockets are not limitless they lost a lot of money with wework and a lot of other investments actually um so yeah so i don't know i don't know if it's going to change culture but i know that i don't want to go to court for my you know for myself i would rather maybe be a little more truthful and um and pret and you know protect my myself and my business and i don't know i i think it that culture is startup culture is has gotten a really i don't know toxic i think so too jen and i think that there's so much glory in it now of how much money i've raised and to me i've i've always been a bit weird about this that people raise all this money and then they pay themselves and that for a lot of startups it's like we started this company and then you know i paid myself you know a hundred thousand dollars a year and then all of a sudden we had no money i'm like this this to me makes no sense whatsoever i just don't understand it and i feel like it's almost like there's they're spending their time on how do we get investors rather than how do we get our business to work absolutely how do yeah not not focusing on business fundamentals profit you just think oh i'll just get more free money i've been fascinated by that for years and don't as a business person i just don't understand it uh years ago thor was hired um at a startup he was like the the seventh person and this is a startup that got a lot of positive press a lot of momentum this is during like the whole internet bubble literally people were dying to write checks to you know tech companies so they got tons of investor money they had a great idea great idea um it was in the educational space so the thor was like all about it he really loved like what they were doing but he also was privy to the real numbers not the numbers they were sharing with their investors and they were telling investors they had x number of you know tens of thousands of subscribers when they had like maybe a hundred subscribers anyway the the ceo was indicted um they they crashed and burned big time because again he misappropriated investor funds he lied to investors so they were on the nightly news with ted koppel again for all the wrong reasons in the end um so this has been going on a long time this is not like something that's you know today i mean that there are no story is just so fascinating on so many i mean you didn't if you didn't know that it was real you would think it was a movie right the first time i saw her i was like this is real really yeah but yeah it's just insane that it got to what it did i can't i can't believe that it got to what it did and that people actually believed it yes she was very well connected which helped a lot and i i don't know and my guess is i i'm not sure i think she's probably dealing with some mental illness and i if that's the case i really hope she gets is getting help that she needs but yeah um i think that combination of like insane confidence and connections um and people wanted to believe i mean her if what she was putting out in the world was actually true like absolutely that diagno a diagnostic you know um method that you know you were one sample of blood and you could tell that would be the only test you would need and it was you know we all wanted to believe that right we actually all wanted to believe it yeah of course the world needs something like that but she wasn't the one to bring it to us no she was not it reminds me have either have you seen the the wizard of lies the tv movie with robert de niro talking about matt bernie madoff yeah you should watch that there you go that's enough that was really good there's another one too with richard dreyfuss uh playing bernie madoff uh i i think i've watched both of them i'm pretty sure i've watched both of them uh but yeah it just goes to show like you know anybody you know is going to do what they got to do to appear bigger than they actually are and hang on i'm going to i'm just going to correct one thing not anybody i'm not gonna say anybody because i think i could not see any of us doing that i could not see any of us doing it because it goes against our values i could see how some people could do it thank you sam i would say a lot a lot of people that you're watching online you know i will give you that one joey you are not afraid to do it and and i and thank you for for correcting me sam i i do appreciate that um yeah so it's it's uh it's horrible and but i like i said i i don't think it's going to change startup culture uh much um you know it might give somebody a second thought of like oh should we really be like gaming gaming these numbers to that level uh to make it look like that uh because that that is you know gaming how many people you have as subscribers and things like that is not it's not good well you know who's fueling this is actually the investors because what's happening is it's you're you're being i can't think of the word like reprimanded i guess is not the right word but you know when you're telling the truth you miss out you could be in exactly the same boat as all the other people that you're competitive with but if you're the only one that's telling the truth and you're missing out then then you know it's the investors that are fueling it yeah i can give i can give a baseball example uh that we had a baseball player here who was a pitcher uh who was uh using steroids and he was a very much on the bubble player and he beat out another guy and this came out years after the fact that like he beat out that other guy who wasn't using steroids and that guy wrote you know you know thanks for you know basically bumping me off when you you were cheating like i i lost my position on a team because you cheated so like that that affected my livelihood and my opportunity to make it to the you know to the to the big game you know the big things um and that kind of thing and i also want to point out so i i was um i was interviewed a little while back for uh for a newspaper or a press paper in europe uh talking about the glorification of of startup money and you know it's really not all it's turned out to be because you really are becoming your your own um you're going from being the boss to the employee even if it's just one five percent any amount of money they're taking on as an investor you know from investors is is money that has to be repaid and taken care of uh spent fervously uh in in any kind of kind of way so really like if they're in the dot you know how the pressure meter uh styled up as you take all that money not the way around um and i know specifically it's kind of came up literally i think yesterday before because our good friend of the show larry roberts uh had a really big rant against one of the shark tank episode uh entrepreneurs that was on about you know like oh they were talking about like oh yeah we burned 1.3 million dollars and and you know we're gonna get there and all that and it's it's uh apparently i'm breaking uh my audio is pretty yeah i was actually sitting here wondering if it was my my computer i hear your audio but your video is blurry oh weird um i don't want to speed this i don't know if it's oh wow i don't know what's going on all of a sudden um be something because i'm i'm looking at my yeah my internet speed right but my connection to here is not good uh tell you why don't you take over uh i'll be right back oh that's uh such a responsibility joe okay let me see what we haven't talked about um that might be interesting oh yeah okay well we'll just stay on theme okay are you okay with that sam yep let's do that you'll see what i mean um this article joe pulled um delivery driver slams tip baiting but customers defend the practice so this is uh you know the theme is third-party delivery apps i suppose oh you're back joe i'm back okay i stayed on theme but i was under the gun and i did the best i could do and then you did awesome you did awesome oh my gosh i'm still glad you're back joe so hopefully i'm not hopefully i'm not uh breaking up now no all perfect now oh i don't know why we're seeing cats it doesn't seem appropriate um but i love it yeah right i love it they're not even cats it's like little um what do you call it um that's a warthog that's a oh that's a warthog it looks like a lemur oh no no no no no no all it's missing is a gassy warthog oh it's uh it does look like a lemur looks like a baby lamer all right yeah it's a meerkat it's a meerkat oh meerkat yeah meerkat thanks to your post oh that has lots to do with tip baiting so i i know new york post maybe not the best source um yeah okay well first of all do you guys know what tip baiting is this was a no i didn't know that this was a thing like that you could do something like that so please okay so tip eating is when i don't do this i've never i would never do this um you order food and you want to make sure the food comes to you and that you're prioritized among the deliveries so you enter a very generous tip however apparently in these apps you have the opportunity to adjust that tip upon delivery so then they get the food thank you very much and then they lower it down to whatever like a normal tip or a less than normal tip and delivery drivers are understandably of upset because again they feel like they're just that's a carrot at the end of the stick they're expecting a tip they might take deliveries that are out of their way or inconvenient um with the understanding that they would be compensated by this tip and then the customer lowers the tip customers and the platform say hey we have the right to adjust we should have the right to adjust the tips based on the quality of the service not very nice not very nice not nice no i mean to me it seems like a a somewhat easy problem to fix you just don't allow them to adjust down past a certain percentage you know you just limit you just hard limit like okay cool you want to give a 20 tip well if you do that you can only adjust it by 15 or something you know down up or down or maybe up as much as you want but down you know down by 15 so then at least you you know the person delivering the food knows like okay i'm i'm going to receive a bare minimum this tip i mean it is inflating it and kind of it's all kind of silly still but um yeah that's that it's still not for the drivers obviously but for the it's just the concept is it's all kind of a you know a game being played here that is is kind of silly so yeah it's not not very fair it's not very nice know but but it does uh it it'll start curtailing that real fast um yeah somebody has something to say about it no i mean a sign of the times i guess i i mean why just be nice just be nice yeah why are we being so crappy that's a that's a great that's a great question um i did have one cool thing to talk about this week before we we've run out of time here uh and it's not the thing i talked about i brought up before we right before we started recording here i'll we'll save that for another day um when we have more time to rant about the sign of the times but my one cool thing uh is this um [Music] is this kettle i i did so i i personally don't like um using the keurig like we have a keurig machine and i don't like making tea from that keurig machine because the coffee grinds inevitably are always in it and i don't like getting those coffee grinds in my tea did you call customer service there's a couple customer service questions oh my god i can tell you about it the fact that you even hesitated joe actually oh god my head's in my hands can we schedule an intervention oh you know what let's have the intervention then um so so this uh this so i went on a search to find out like how how can i make tea without like putting it in the microwave or you know like the water in the microwave to heat it up or like boiling it or whatever you know all that stuff so i didn't realize that electric kettles are a thing never heard of it in my life so i went on a search it actually took almost an hour to find the right electric kettle because you know i started reading reviews we were like oh what there's plastic touching my water and and i started thinking like that's a good point i don't know that i would want you know for the amount of tea that i would drink like one to maybe three cups a day um you know i don't want to be ingesting that much hot plastic in the middle of my drink either so it was actually very hard to find uh one that worked that didn't have any plastic touching the water and this is the one that i found 32 uh which is which is a great price i'm very you know happy happy with uh with it but what i'm most impressed with and what got me to the point where i was like yeah i showed melissa like literally as soon as i put like turn it on the water starts bubbling like within within like 10 seconds 15 seconds the water starts bubbling in it and you know it's it's boiling within like two to three minutes and i'm like wow like we we should stop boiling every time we make pasta which is you know often here between mac and cheese and pasta in the italian household uh you know we we should not be uh be we should just be using this not to make the pasta in it obviously but boil the water dump it in the pot turn the turn the stove you know and instead of taking 15 20 minutes to boil a small pot of water this thing's doing it in seconds you know virtually so uh this is my thing for 30 bucks all stainless steel and glass they're the only pieces of plastic that potentially could touch is like right up around this uh like right around the mechanism to flip the the top open and it even comes with this cute little cleaning wand well that's what i thought was gonna be your when you said you know the best part about it i thought it was gonna be the the flower cleaning wand yeah no when we opened this up joe oh my goodness leon my husband actually said what is the flower for it's it you know it uses so much like less electricity can boil so much water auto shut off and just so it's just awesome for 30 bucks like totally awesome totally well i've got to say when i opened this up i actually started laughing because i only found out and reputable source i found out on tick tock only in the last few weeks that electric kettles weren't a thing in the us every australian household has had them since the 80s so we have one at our house we have one yeah so i just did i didn't realize that it wasn't a like a wide a widely used thing though that you know because every australian household has them my kids at dancing used to make their pasta in it every saturday at dancing by boiling the kettle exactly like joey that's how they made their lunches every saturday 30 years ago so you can boil an egg in one [Laughter] that's a that's a great i'm going to tell melissa she loves i mean i like boiled eggs too but she likes egg salad and things like that way more than doing the electric kettle wow wow i mean yeah it says the electric boiler heats up in five to seven minutes faster than a microwave and it and it is it's it's in it's incredible like i am this should not be a thing that i'm excited about but an all non-plastic uh very virtually inexpensive uh at 32 bucks and it's going to save us a ton of electricity because our stove is on is all electric and it's on a lot like very often just to boil water for one reason or another so um yeah yeah yeah for electric electric kettles yeah it's amazing good for you joe thank you thank you i am proud with your boiling water like that i didn't even know it was a thing i was just trying to find like how do you what's the other way to do like because melissa's like oh we'll just get a kettle and i was like yeah that takes forever i'm never going to use that like never i mean never never i'm never gonna make tea using a kettle like that's not gonna happen because it takes too long there you go okay welcome to uh 2022. also known as 1990 yes ding ding ding ding ding well uh i think that that pretty much wraps it up for for this week of the business geeks podcast uh we are sponsored by your podcast podcastconcierge.com

uh shout out to leon for editing these podcast episodes for us and getting them up if you haven't checked it out uh check out the show on the podcast be go to businessgeekspodcast.com we'll be back next thursday 4 p.m eastern standard time uh thursday 4 p.m eastern time friday 8 am australian eastern time i got it right and uh i hope you all have an amazing week happy new year take care everybody bye

2022-01-11 07:35

Other news