Transcription
Okay, so last night I downloaded an app that blew my mind, and it's called Sora. And I don't say that casually. I'm not trying to be an AI thought leader who's like, "Holy crap, the new model is so unbelievable. They just changed the game." No, no, no. This app was weird in a way that I haven't, like, hasn't settled yet.
[Music]
Okay, so basically OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have released a new app called Sora. And when you hear it, I think the first reaction is a big eye roll. It's a feed like TikTok, but hey, all the videos are made by AI. You don't have to worry about, like, "Is this a fake video?" They're all fake videos, okay? And so the initial reaction from the smart guy community was like, "Uh, literally like, 'Oh, good. Pure AI slop.'" In fact, there were some great tweets about this, uh, that I just want to call out for humor and excellence. Uh, Chris Baky had a great one. He goes, "Uh, Sam Altman, you know, OpenAI, we're going to cure brain cancer." OpenAI today, we created brain cancer. Like, the worst thing you could do is just a feed of AI AI slop, basically.
But when you go in, it's not AI slop. I think that's a, I think that's a thing that gets you cool points on the internet. I don't think it's what's going on here. And I think you're going to be on the wrong side of history if you try to resist this. And so you open up the app. The way it works is like ChatGPT, you can type anything and it's going to create an AI video. But the very first thing it does, the camera's on, and this is not like any onboarding I've ever done in any other app. The camera's on and it says, "Say these three numbers out loud." You're like, "All right, 127488." It's like, "Cool. Stole your voice. Got it." Like, "What?" It's like, "Yeah, we can use AI to do your voice from those three numbers. Got it." And it's like, "Hey, just, uh, look to the right real quick. There's something over there." You look over to the right. It's like, "Got your face." All right. Now, we could put those two little actions, you sang three numbers and you look looking at the camera and then looking to the side. It now can recreate your face.
I did mine last night in bed. I made one that said, um, I made a few, actually. The first one was, "Put me in a Ralph Lauren ad," which is hilarious. But the really shocking one, I said, "Make it look like I have a ponytail." And let me, all right, share that ponytail one. It's scary. I let it grow out over the last year. It feels completely different, but I kind of like it. It's easy enough to keep in shape, just to rinse in some conditioner and let it do its thing. And when I'm working or need it out of my face, I just pull it back like this. Simple. Feels good.
So, this app is unbelievable. I did one where I said, "Me ding-dong ditching, uh, somebody," used like the Ring camera footage, and then I cartwheel away to hide. All right, here we go. Quick knock and I'm out. Perfect. How does it know your height and stuff? It just inferred my entire body from my face, which is disappointing in its own way. That looks real. Yeah.
And so, okay, so you could do it for yourself. Now, watch this one I just sent. You could also use other people if they let you. So, this is, so Sam Altman, the, you know, the founder of, uh, OpenAI, he's like available to be used. So, you just, if you just tag, like, you're just like, "Me talking to Sam Altman," or whatever. But in this case, somebody was like, they used Sam Altman and they were making fun of the idea of the AI slop. Have you seen this one? "Are my piggies enjoying their slop?" This is crazy. This is 100% I think, um, better than TikTok. Actually, I think it's better than TikTok, and it's, this is V1. It's so good.
So, there's a couple of kind of, so I think this is going to be, uh, here's a couple of predictions. I think this is going to be the most downloaded app in the history of the world, um, over in a short period of time. So, I think it'll be like the fastest to get to 100 million downloads. Um, 'cause I think it'll happen in like, like, right now, it's gated by, you need an invite code, but as soon as they open that gate, or if they open that gate, um, in, in short order, this thing would get, you know, 100 million plus downloads very, very quickly. I just went to the store last night and I just clicked download and it worked. I didn't know you had to have an, same other people couldn't do that. They all needed, they would hit a wall that said, "You need an invite code." Um, 'cause I was, I was like, "Dude, have you seen this?" I was texting people and they were like, "I can't get in." I was like, "I didn't have a code. I don't know why I got in and others didn't." I'm not sure. Um, so that's my first prediction.
Second prediction is I think this opens the floodgates of something that Matt Mazio talked about on our podcast. So, I did an episode with Matt about AI. Matt's totally like, he's so far down the rabbit hole. I'm like, "Matt, it's like, Matt, Matt, Matt. It's like echoing down the rabbit hole." And he was talking about AI and he goes, "The crazy thing about AI is we are so early." And I don't mean in just in terms of how smart it's going to be. We're so early because every AI tool right now is single player. He's like, "ChatGPT is just a tool you use yourself," and same thing with the image creators, and same thing with almost all of the tools are still single player. But the internet has showed us that like all the most powerful apps, they're multiplayer. The things you do with other people, whether it was Facebook and social networking, whether it was Uber connecting you with drivers, or Airbnb connecting with other people, Slack where you chat with your teammates. Like, it's crazy that none of the AI tools are really multiplayer today. And so he's like, "I'm waiting for that, like, that's the next wave, that's the big thing." This was one of the first AI AI native things where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to be using this with other other people." Like last night, me and my friends were basically like creating videos of each other, making each other laugh. Um, it was like so easy just to do that back and forth and get there, you know, you get a tag, you got tagged, somebody made a video of you. It's like, "Dude, I have to go look at that. I can't not look at that." Like, so, hey, here, somebody hold this baby. I got to look at this video somebody made of me, right? It's like one of the most like strong pulls. And if, if you remember, one of the big growth levers for Facebook was when they introduced friend, uh, photo tagging. So they made it super easy where not just you could upload photos, that's a solar player experience, but when you could just click on somebody in the picture and write their name, and then you would get an email, whether you use Facebook or not, that would say, "Sean just uploaded a photo and tagged you in it," and you're like, "Oh, I got to go see what this picture is like. That's out there for everybody to see." That created this insane growth loop for for Facebook. I think that's what's going to happen with this.
When you lived in China, did you, uh, I forget what they call them, but what are the apps that are like, I think it's WhatsApp is one of them where they're like an everything app? Like WeChat, super apps. WeChat. So like with WeChat, it's it's hard to understand in America, but they call it an everything app because you could like, you chat with your buddies, you order groceries, and you send money. Like, what is that, right? You pay your electricity bill, you can buy furniture, you do anything you want on that app.
So, um, I downloaded this thing, or I signed up for ChatGPT Pro, or whatever the most expensive one is, because they have this new thing called Pulse. Have you used Pulse, dude? No, but I, I love this idea. I haven't used it. Can, can anybody just turn this on? You have to pay money, so it's expensive. It's, I think it's $100 or $200 a month, but, um, yeah. Um, basically, like, I tell it what I'm into, or it gets to know me. And every day when I wake up, now, now, I mean, I'm, I'm on ChatGPT all day anyway. Now, in the morning, I pull up Pulse and it's sort of like my news feed, except it's all tailored for me. So, like, I'll tell it I'm interested, I'm reading this particular book that interests me, and I see like relevant articles that it has written. So, it's, it's the journalists, and it's like, uh, you know, um, Apple's news feed, except it's also the journalists. Or like, I'm into like Greek philosophy right now, and like, I'm seeing like, it's telling me about Greek philosophy tailored towards me. Or like YouTube, like, you know, we're trying to like learn more about YouTube. It's saying like, uh, I'm like, "I want to learn how to get more popular or be better at storytelling or whatever on YouTube. I want to like perfect that craft a bit more." It writes articles based off of the conversations that I've had with it. So when we do this podcast, we'll use ChatGPT to research and come up with story ideas. It's giving me daily articles based off that, which is insane. And so like, they should have just called this Ben Levy, 'cause this is what Ben Levy does. Ben gets to know you. He knows what your interests are, what your dreams are. He knows what you're working on right now. And he'll, every day, he'll just text you useful, interesting things and celebrate your success and like, "Hey, here's a tweet I saw that's relevant to the thing you're talking about. Hey, here's an article that talks about how to do that thing you were talking about." Now Ben has to compete with AI, 'cause AI is doing that. And this is the first example of a super app. Now I'm starting to get it where I'm like, everything's going to be on here. And frankly, like, I'm a free market guy. This is scary. This is like, every quarter I'm like, "Okay, now I am a little bit more fearful. What's going to happen in five years?" Because how is this company not going to take over the world and be the biggest company on earth the way that like I'm using it already?
And why is that something you're fearful of? There, there is always the biggest company on earth. Why is it scary that it would be OpenAI? Because I think it's potentially going to be significantly larger than every company ever, and we'll know more about me. Like, well, it, it will be ubiquitous in more ways than it has ever been. Uh, you know, like Nvidia is the third largest company in the world. I don't particularly interact with that every day, and I don't know if it knows anything that it could like ruin, ruin my life. But now OpenAI does. I just think that OpenAI is going to be like the combination of Facebook, Google, every news company ever, and then like five other companies combined into one.
I want to talk about this for a second. This is pretty fascinating. So, I sent this to my sister. I sent her one of these videos. She was like, "Uh, what AI, Sean? What is this?" And I'm like, "Oh, the makers of ChatGPT now have this app. You can make any video about anything using anyone. And you just use your face." And then they just do it. And I was, and she's like, "Oh my god, being your sister is so tiring. You have so many cool things that I now need to like know of, and like, I was just getting settled in this couch of life here, and now I have to get up and go do things." And like, "What is this?" And I feel that. I actually feel that in a big way, right? You feel exhausted? Yeah, 'cause like, even when you talked about Pulse, it's like, "Oh, another game-changing thing I need to go learn, do, try." Oh my god, am I irrelevant now? Is, am I, am I super powerful or irrelevant? I can't tell. So, I think there's, there's that angle, which is, I think some people feel exhausted by the rate of change. And I don't know what to tell you. It's like, it's like saying, "I'm so," it's like on Survivor when they're like, "I'm so cold." It's like, "Well, you still got 30 more days out here, and it's going to keep raining." Like, I don't know what you're going to do. You sleep every night in the rain, that's what happens. You're going to be drenched. You just summed it up perfectly. Am I now super powerful, or am I irrelevant? I don't know which one.
Yeah, dude. I mean, I, looking at this thing, like, "Oh, cool. So content creation, everybody can just do it easily. Interesting, huh?"
Hi. Um, you know, I was watching this interview with, um, Steve Bartlett. And Steve, his podcast is called Diary of the CEO, and I think it's basically like the second biggest podcast in the world right now. It's pretty, pretty insane. Um, he was talking, and he was like, uh, you know, it was sort of like, you're either the hunter or the hunted. It was like, you are either going to get disrupted, or you're going to be the one doing the disrupting. He was talking about for his own business. He's like, "Yeah, so I have a team that's just working on AI podcasting." So they're making like, AI Steve or AI guests, and then we're creating all AI podcasts. And he's like, "We are, um, testing them with ad spend to see, do people watch the AI podcast as much as they watch the normal podcast?" He goes, "Before it was like, no, it was really bad." He goes, "Now, as bad as it sounds, like the average watch time is the same on the AI podcast versus the human podcast." He's like, "So, that's going to be a thing." And I'm like, "I don't even know if that's true. I don't know if I believe that. I don't know where that is. I don't know what he's exactly saying." Just that idea of like, "Oh, so like, again, if I'm a content creator, maybe I'm just irrelevant at this stage." Like, who knows? Maybe, maybe I'll be completely obsolete, or maybe I'm 10 times more powerful, right? There's two different perspectives. So, I think there's an exhausting reaction to it. I think another reaction is sort of the dystopian of like, "Yo, this is all too powerful, and you guys are getting way too powerful." When it took my face and my voice in three seconds, and now like, if I, you know, if, if I toggle the button on, you can make a video of me doing anything, saying anything. And if you use ChatGPT, you could just upload all of my writing ever and all of the transcripts of this podcast. And you could be like, "Hey, let me just have Sean as my coach," and I don't get paid for that. That's just like a thing that people could do. Like, this is all like a little insane, right? And, um, it's all quite powerful. Um, and some people don't trust Sam Altman. So I think there's that dystopian of like, you know, um, where is the world going? Do I want this sort of all-powerful technology, or this company to be all-powerful? I think there's that fear too. And I think there's a third reaction, which is the one I'm trying to lean into, which is just be curious, go have fun, go play. Wow, what an amazing time to be alive. That like you're seeing the birth of this thing, and you get to ride these waves, and like the whole world's going to change, hopefully for the better, and you can kind of impact that. That I think is the only useful reaction of the three.
All right, guys. Here's the thing about side hustles. Everyone wants one, but most people overthink about it and they never actually launch anything. But because of AI, you can go from an idea to your first sale in only seven days. My old company, The Hustle, they just dropped an AI side hustle crash course. So, basically what The Hustle did was they looked at things that me and Sean and HubSpot CMO Kit founder. They look at stuff that we said, and they broke it all down into simple, bite-size steps, which means you're going to get a guide that gives you everything you need to launch a side hustle without any of the guesswork. So, you can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show.
Dude, what's going to happen in the next couple years is Palantir is going to, we're all just going to be in a Palantir cage, you know? Like, we're just going to be in a Palantir cage, and Sam Altman's going to be throwing stuff at us. Uh, like our slop that we have to eat in a cage. And this is just how it's going to be. Uh, I, I do think the haves and the have-nots are just going to separate even further.
So, can I tell you some of some of the more, uh, positive, uplifting, exciting versions of this? So, I think, um, learning and education is getting way better. So, there's a few examples of like, uh, people who are making AI tutors that are incredible. We've talked about Alpha School. Google just released this thing called, like, I forgot what it's called, like, personalized learning, where you can basically tell it what you want to know, and then it just, like, develops this incredibly personalized curriculum for you and feeds you, like, takes you down that path, which is really cool. Um, and I think the idea of, like, just like you have a therapist, or we talked about a, um, you know, a therapist in your pocket, a sponsor in your pocket, you're also going to have Socrates in your pocket. What's it called? Uh, you know, Google sucks at naming everything. So they're like, "Google Learning and Development Trees." It's like, I don't know what, I don't know what it's called. When all these companies just, they name their thing like Maps. Like, it's just like one, it's like, it's like, "This is Ava. Ava, your, your cute friend who's all-knowing." "Hey, Ava, I want..." And all you have to do is out in public, just say, "Hey, Ava." It's like, "No, I don't want to say, 'Hey, Ava,' out in public." You know, "Hey, Ava, how much is that, that house worth?" Like, that's what I'm going to be saying. Uh, "I want to," "Hey, Ava, does she have an OnlyFans?" "Thanks, Ava." While your glasses are on. "Hey, can you hold still for a second?" "Hey, Ava, record." "Hey, can you turn this way?" "Oh, I'm out of range. Hold on. Let me get closer to your face."
Do you ever gawk? Like, you ever see, like, a crime? And I'm like, uh, like, whenever I see a police officer doing something, I'm like, "Uh, like, Sarah, let's go gawk." Like, I'm just like, like, "Hey, can you guys?" I just overestimate myself. I'm like, "You guys need a hand with any? Can you guys explain what's going on? Like, what did he do? What did he do?" I'm just like, uh, I'm just like, uh, shamelessly, I'll just go up to someone and be like, "Can you give me a play-by-play?" Dude, by the way, that's one of the best Sora prompts is, "Use body cam footage to show me doing X," and it's a cop body cam that's following you. It's so good.
Uh, let me tell you a story, and then I want to ask you a question. I was with someone recently this past weekend, and we were watching a baseball game, and in between each inning, he would like look on his phone and like start messing around and doing stuff. And then during the game, I would hear like, "Kaching," or like a, like a buzzer, a buzzer noise. And I was like, after four innings, I was like, "What are you doing?" And he was like, "Oh, I'm betting like $3 or $5 between each inning on what's going to happen over the next." And I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" He's like, "Well, I have this app where like, it uses AI somehow, and it like makes you, it comes up with like different micro-bets that you can bet throughout the game." And I was like, "Do you, do you do this all the time? Like, what's the situation?" He's like, "Oh, like literally every time I watch sports, I do this." And I said, "How much do you watch sports?" He's like, "Oh, every day." I was like, "Wait, is this a thing?" And I went and like talked to like 10 other people in this room, and I was like, "Tell me, do you do this? Do you do this? Do you, do you do this?" And almost every single person in the room, they, if it was a man, they did it. If it was a woman, they're like, "My brother or husband or boyfriend does it, right?" Well, if you watch any sport now, like every ad is basically like the sponsor of every podcast is, you know, FanDuel or DraftKings. And then if you watch games, like, you know, the leagues used to ban this. They didn't want gambling as a part of it, but now they basically realize like, that's our premium sponsor, and so they're like heavily using it. But it's funny 'cause like, there's been all these situations now, I don't know if you've seen, where players are caught. There was probably like five notable, not five notable cases of this last year, uh, across like NBA, NFL, let's say. And so like, one guy, for example, um, you know, he owed a bunch of people money, owed like a car dealer money, and his jewelry guy money, and whatever. And then they went back and they looked at like a pattern of his games, and they're like, "Huh, like, that's weird that he didn't shoot the ball there at the end of the game." Or like, just last week, even, um, this football player, they, the quarterback, they were winning, the quarterback wanted to have run out the clock. So they're just trying to hold the ball. And so they, he took the snap and then to make sure that he used all of the clock, he just started running backwards, which you would never do normally if you wouldn't run backwards. But he's like, "Cool. I just need the seven seconds to expire." He ran all the way backwards into the end zone and took a safety, so a two-point swing for the other team, which didn't matter. They were up by seven anyways, but the line was six. And so it went from a win to a loss. Now, he wasn't cheating, but like the gambler, you know, these guys get like death threats in their DMs every day now 'cause they're like, "Dude, you messed up my parlay. Like, you messed up my over/under. Like, you piece of [ __ ] you know, blah, blah, blah." And they just, they get like harassed. The players don't really like it who are, you know, just trying to play the game, because like all of a sudden people take it uber, uber personally if they have a bad game, or if they miss that shot, or if they scored one extra time, or didn't score one extra time when they could have swung the line. You know, by the way, there's another angle to this that's kind of fascinating in the sort of sports betting nery. So, I don't know if you've seen lately, but there was this great tweet where it showed Robinhood stock going like this, and DraftKings stock going the exact opposite way in the same timeframe. Sports betting, which is like a pretty regulated thing, like I can't do it out of California, for example, right? I think you can do it in Texas, but I can't do it there. I don't know what, what states in America allow it. Yeah. And it started with like just New Jersey, and then it's Michigan, and then it's been expanding since then, but it's a pretty regulated thing. Um, but all these other apps now do sports betting, but they call it prediction markets, and prediction markets are legal. So Robinhood now has sports betting in its app, even though it's not, uh, not a casino. You could just go in Robinhood right now and bet on sports. You could do it on Kali. You could do it on Poly Market. You can do it on all these prediction market sites, and their volume is like exploding, um, because they now added basically like sports wagers because there's like a technical loophole in sports betting. You're like, "Okay, yeah, here's the, the, the distinction." So sports betting, you're wagering directly on the outcome of the game, you know, $100 on the Warriors to win. So this is regulated under US gambling laws by the state gaming commissions. Prediction markets are seen as a financial market where you're trading the future, like trading futures or stocks, not bet. So you are buying and selling shares of an outcome. That's insane. I don't know why that's any different, but it's basically calls it like, it's almost like a commodity, basically. So you're, so all these apps were able to add it as prediction markets rather than sports betting. And so now it's, now it's in more places than it was before, and it's easier to access than it was before.
I think once you become like a famous podcaster, like Scott Galloway, or you and I, we have to take on the cause. Like, we automatically get interested in saving young men, which is like all the rage right now, right? Like, young men are getting left behind. Uh, but in all seriousness, which is ironic, 'cause I spent like most of my 20s gambling on like riverboat casinos and like Indian reservations, but yeah. Yeah, you guys shouldn't do it, even though I did. Well, you know, I, I don't like gambling at all, but I think that there's a, there's, and I don't particularly like outlawing stuff, but I think that there's a difference between like going to a casino and that being your night out. I still don't think it's great, but I think that it's different than what I've experienced in my short amount of time being around guys like betting $3 every game, um, and having a, a DraftKings account manager calling you and being like, "Hey, um, do you want a $500 credit to try this new, uh, bet?" Like, like, you know, it's a little bit more isolated. Um, and, and so it's, it's, it's strange to me to see this. I talked to this guy. Um, go to, um, birchhealth.com. So, B-I-R-C-H-E-S. So, burcheshhealth.com. This company, they just raised $20 million from General Catalyst and, uh, Kevin Ryan from AlleyCorp. Um, I, I don't know this guy at all. So, and I've got no involvement or anything. I just thought it was cool. But it's a company that raised $20 million, and their whole thing is helping particularly young men, uh, get cured or get help from gambling addiction. And the reason I thought this was interesting is I brought this up about three years ago where I was like, "I'm shocked that there's not more alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous." Because Alcoholics Anonymous is a massive, it's not a business, but it's a massive organization. And, uh, one of the reasons now that I run a community, in-real-life community, is that I realize that Alcoholics Anonymous is all based around you and like 20 other alcoholics where you're sharing, and like the connection is what matters. And doing that online, it doesn't really solve the problem the same way that doing it in real life. And so that's one of the reasons why there hasn't been an alternative. However, with the rise of BetterHelp and like all these like telehealth psychiatrists or whatever, which I've done and I've tried, like it does actually help solve the problem. Um, I don't know if it does it as well or not. I don't, I don't know the research behind there, but it definitely like helps. It, it is a fine alternative to in-real-life therapy. And I saw that these guys had just raised money. I think he said they're only two years old. They grew like 5x in the last year. And I was reading the New York Times about this online betting. Said 60% of guys between 18 and 22 do sports betting, and a large percentage of them are now problematic gamblers. I'm like, "Oh, this company's got to take over the world." Like, this is like now, like I was seeking earlier, like years ago, for like an Alcoholics Anonymous alternative as like an interesting business that could do good in the world. This Birch's Health, and I'm sure there's competitors, is a very interesting business that I think could take off.
Someone on the pod brought this up a long time ago. They were talking about how, like, physical centers, basically, they were like, "Oh, you could repurpose like," I forgot what it was, there was some retail concept that was just dying, like a Blockbuster type of thing, and they were talking about how their prediction, their idea that they brought on the pod was to repurpose those for gambling addiction. They're like, "Oh, at that time, there wasn't even the sport, the prediction markets, it was just daily fantasy." Um, and they were like, "You know, there's there's going to be a big need for this."
Can I tell you about an MFM listener who's doing something really cool with this? All right, so there's a guy who, I think he lists the podcast. He DM'd me, and he's got a very interesting app. So if you go to sunflowersober.com. Okay, that's cool. Check this out. So this guy, Kobe, created this app called Sunflower Sober, and it's a AI-based version of what do they call like a sponsor? Yeah. So I think I don't know exactly how AA works, but I could tell you, I could tell you, you did, you go, were you a member? I was a member of AA. Yeah. So, what did you tell me your experience? So, you go to, you went to a physical place, and it was like, "Hi, I'm Sam, and, uh, I have a great newsletter to subscribe to. Also, I have a problem." Like, what did you say? And this was pre-newsletter, but basically, I think before I met you, like, I was like, I didn't make a lot of money. And I, uh, was like, I don't have a lot of money to go to rehab or anything like this. I need help. And I went and like Googled AA near me, and I lived in Peter Hill. And I go to a meeting, and there's 30 or 20 of you sitting around, um, in a circle. And they're famous for having everyone smoke cigarettes, 'cause that's like when you get off alcohol, you like, your your addiction transfers, like a new thing. And so there's everyone smoking cigarettes, and everyone drinking a black coffee at like 8:00 PM night. And you basically, uh, you go around the room, and you say your name and your issue, uh, which is basically, "I'm, I'm an alcoholic," and, "I have been sober," or "I haven't been sober for this long." And you tell your story. And you don't have to share if you don't want to share, but, and after a certain amount of time, you get a sponsor, which is someone who you're supposed to rely on, and you're supposed to call. And you say, like, "I'm at this party, and like, I'm feeling like I'm being tempted right now. I don't feel great," or "I screwed up. Like, can you help me?" And you're supposed to like, go above and beyond for this person. And that's how you pay it forward in the community. Right. And that's free. All of that's free, or you pay? AA is free. AA's free. The sponsor thing's free. It's a, just a community of people helping each other. Yeah. And there's a, a weird story about it. So there's a phrase. So have you ever heard the phrase, "Are you a friend of Bill?" That's the secret phrase. So, like, "Are you, are you friends with Bill?" Gave it out. It's not really like that secret, but it's like, "Are you, are you friends with Bill?" And that means like, "Are you in AA?" Yeah. Because I believe the founder is named, uh, Bill W. They they say, "Are you a friend of Bill W?" The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous was this guy named Bill W. And he started in 1935. And he's got this crazy story where he was trying to overcome alcohol addiction, and he, and he created these, this 12-step program for himself. But he's a wild character where like, he like took a lot of LSD to help him like overcome his addiction. And it's a whole, like, cowboy story behind this guy. But the, the phrase in AA, it's a secret phrase. It's, "You friends with Bill W?" Okay, that's amazing.
Um, so check this out. So this guy makes this app, and he's like, um, he basically uses AI to do this. So he's like, "Okay, you can go to rehab, you can go to therapy, you can, but like, what if in your pocket was an always-on, helpful, um, you know, compassionate, non-judgmental person who's there to, you know, who's there to help, someone to talk to?" And it's not just for, I think he started it, I think he had maybe in his family, like somebody who had like alcoholism, and then, but it's not going to be just for alcohol, like it'll be for gambling. It'll be for any type of addiction. And this app is kind of exploding. So in the last six months, it basically went from zero to 100,000 users. So like, look at this revenue ramp, basically to, you know, get getting to, you know, $50,000 plus, uh, in monthly recurring revenue from subscriptions. And what's interesting is that people pay, uh, you know, whatever, some low, like dollar a month plan. And this is going to happen in therapy, and any other, uh, any field where somebody's charging you, you know, $100 an hour or plus, you're going to suddenly be able to pay $9 a month and have unlimited access to that level of, of, you know, to that expertise. It won't be a human, but the AI might, you know, in some cases, might be better, 'cause again, non-judgmental, always available, you know, infinitely patient, that sort of thing. And in some ways, it might be worse. You might think, "Ah, it's AI, I'm not accountable to this person in the same way." Not sure, not sure exactly how this can play out, but very interested. And, uh, he's grown, and if you go look on Reddit, people are talking about this. There's a very big market for this. And one of the things that this business does, where where some of the revenue can come from, is he passes the leads on to like anybody who's looking for like, um, if you're looking for, let's say, like a more clinical solution, because I think there's like drugs that will help you as well, if that's the right, if that's the right treatment for you. And so you can actually, and, you know, he, he might be able to go vertical, so he might be able to start his own clinic underneath. And all of a sudden, you have this kind of either free or, you know, $10, $20 a month type of, um, consumer who suddenly is worth 10 times as much to you as a customer. And so, um, he's passing, you know, you know, hundreds of leads a month to these teletherapy clinics who are looking to, you know, um, speak to a human, slash, like, be able to have, you know, medicine for, for, for their addictions. This is pretty cool.
You know what's crazy is, um, alcohol amongst young guys has like plummeted. Alcohol, like people drinking, like when, when you and I were at college, like it was like Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Like, that's, that's drinking nights. Or like, you know, something like crazy like that. Young guys do not do this nearly as much, which is good. Um, have you seen, um, 21 Jump Street? Yeah. You're like, daily. Um, when they go back to school and they're trying to be cool, and they're basically like, you know, they're like 29 or whatever, and they're going back to, first they go with like one, one strap on the backpack, right? Like, there's like all these like little things that like were cool then, but are not cool now. And they like punk a kid, try to like make themselves cool. And they're like, "Yo, that's not cool, man. That's bullying." "Gay." And the guy's like, "Why would you be so insensitive?" Yeah, exactly. And so they're like, "Whoa, like, shit's changed." And that's, that's kind of what the drinking culture, uh, you know, from, from what I read. I don't know if it's actually true. I don't know if you go to college campuses and they're all dry now, but like, it, it does seem like it's much less than it was when we were in college, you know, 18, 20 years ago. It's way less.
Is this, um, Sunflower Sober? Are they, do they raise funding? Yeah, they raise funding. So I was looking at investing because I think this is going to be a very successful company. You know, that doesn't always make it a great investment because valuation matters a lot. But I think an app like this, I think, you know, the way that Calm and Headspace came in and did something on an app. They did meditation on an app. Something that was previously kind of like a, a little bit of a touchy-feely sort of thing that you did offline, and they made it like a daily habit, you know, daily ritual in your pocket. I think that basically getting off your addictions, whether it's porn, whether it's gambling, whether it's alcohol, um, whether it's weed, you know, whatever it is, there's, there's plenty of things, screens, you know, just, just, uh, social media. There's a bunch of things that you could be addicted to nowadays. And I think helping people get off that is going to be a bit pretty big deal.
Have you been to therapy? Um, I have like an executive coach. I don't know if that would count as therapy. I would say probably no. I mean, cousins, have you used, do you think that ChatGPT could potentially change or have you used ChatGPT to supplement and or replace an executive coach or a therapist? Definitely on the executive coach. On the therapy, I mean, I never went to therapy. I don't even know what you would, what I would say. I'd be like, "Hey, like, yeah, like life's pretty." I don't even know what I would go into. So, I don't even have the skills to like, it's kind of like in Lost when they find the hatch and they're like, "How do you get in?" And I'm like, "I don't know." It's like, that's my emotions. They're the hatch. And I have no idea how to get into it. I don't even know what the problem. I don't even know what I'm supposed to say, what I'm supposed to do. It's a foreign language to me. I have used it as a, like, for example, it would be like, "I'm mad at my wife because of this reason. Like, can you help me make sense of this? Like, am I wrong? Is she wrong? Why am I angry? Like, help me like figure out why I'm pissed off." Um, or like, "This person wrote me this email. Help me like figure out how not to react in a negative way and get what I want still." Um, I have found that it has helped me tremendously. Uh, chat, like crazy amounts. Yeah, it's really good. Really, really good. Um, and I think that AI is only getting better. And so using AI to do these things that humans were were otherwise doing, whether it's therapy or, you know, your sponsor or other things, I think is going to help expand access to more people, you know, who otherwise maybe they didn't, maybe they didn't seek it out because they felt embarrassed. Maybe it was too expensive. Maybe they live in some random country on on Earth where that's not as common. You know, they don't, they don't have it available in Peter Hill where you're living at the time, right? Like, there's this sort of like, there's like multiple 10x, multi, you know, sort of order of magnitude jumps you can get once you just look at those, those three variables alone: cost, access, and, um, uh, sort of the taboo nature of it.
So, I saw something on, uh, I saw something that like, sort of got passed up on that I thought was amazing. Okay, so there's a podcast called Acquired. Uh, we've had them on here. They're amazing. They're awesome. They were talking to Toby. Toby's, I actually don't know Toby's last name. Toby's the CEO. Loot Key. What is it? Loot Key, I think. Loot Key. He's the CEO of Shopify, which is, you know, like the 10th or 18th or 30th largest company in America or in the world, huge thing. And he made this small comment. So, Toby is a guy who, uh, we've had his, uh, partner on before, and he kind of explained to him a little. Dude, I know what you're about to say, 'cause it was unbelievable what he said. It was unbelievable. It was like, uh, "Guys, that guy just said something insane over there. Are we just moving on? Like, what's happening?" So, basically, he's like, this guy Toby, I got to set the stage a little bit. He's a nerd's nerd. Like, he's like, uh, he's like all about this. And so, he tells this story where he very casually mentions, "Well, um, about 20 years ago, about 15 years ago, I created this program where it logged every letter I ever typed on my machine." And you know when someone calls a computer a machine, that they're like, "The [ __ ]" He was like, "That's the tell." Yeah, that's the tell. He goes, "I created this program that, uh, looks at, uh, every single letter I've ever typed on my keyboard, and then every 10 minutes, it automatically takes a picture of my screen and does a screenshot. And I have an archive now of roughly 15 years of every single letter and 10-minute screenshots." And like, he just mentioned it like as he was getting to another story where he was like, "And what, and what I noticed when I was building this program is XYZ." I was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Reverse. Right." And so I'm like, "I want that. Give me that." And so for, for, um, context, I think Shopify is probably 15 years old. Uh, and so basically the whole founding of Shopify, he has shown you could see like exactly how he, how he feels. There's this one book where it was like, I forget the title of the book, but the premise is like, Google knows more about you than anything else, because you, you whenever you type and Google something, that's when you're saying your real feelings. Now, in this case, when you're, when we're talking to ChatGPT, that's where we say our real feelings, not what we're saying and telling people. And this guy has all of it right there. And so, we can see. I just, I think it's amazing. I want to, like, see this, and B, I want to do this for myself. I want to, like, log everything I've ever done so I can look back after years and have an archive of like, seeing my personal development and things like that. I think it's so cool.
What did you think when you saw this? I mean, like you, I thought that was one of the most, um, just sort of like, "What, what did you just say? You did that? You actually did that?" And I was like, "Wow, what a also forward-thinking thing to do, because now in the world of AI, it's all about data. And this guy might have the best data set that you would want to create, like a very, very, the best data set for himself." Yeah. Because if he wants to create AI that thinks like him, well, guess what? He logged every keystroke and took a screenshot of his screen every 10 seconds. So you knew exactly what he's doing. It made me think of, I don't know if you've heard people talk about, um, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, of course. And like the, the remarkable thing about Meditations is like, here's this guy who was the ruler of the Roman Empire, and which was the most powerful empire in the world. So here's the most powerful man on earth, and then he wrote in his diary every night, and he never thought it would get, he never planned to publish this. So it's his true inner thoughts, and then we sort of like.
A, you know, like a little brother jacked his diary and, you know, published it for the whole world to see. But wow, what an, what a one-of-one type of unique event where the most powerful man in the world logged all of his innermost thoughts that he didn't think anyone would read, and now we all get to benefit from it.
Um, and that's Meditations. I'm like, well, this is way better because this is like that for a CEO because he didn't even have to write it, which is already one filter, right? Maybe one, maybe some days you don't write. Maybe you, you write but you're not sharing the full context. Maybe you're not. Maybe you're being a little generous to yourself versus every keystroke, everything I looked at, every distraction, every tab I opened. I can't believe that he did this. And also, he didn't say what he's doing with it, but, um, I'm pretty fascinated to find out what that is.
Me, too. I think it's amazing. So, like, I, I'm a big, I'm big into this. So, like, I have a secret, I call my secret YouTube where I make like a, I, you know how like in your phone when you like film your kids, you typically only do like a 10-second video of them doing something cute? I love home videos. So, like, remember when your dad, like you just keep the camcorder on when they keep it on for like 10 minutes and then like, I don't know if you've ever experienced that magical moment where you're like 18 or, you know, our age now and you're like, "Oh, Dad, let me play one." And you'll just sit and watch it for like 15 minutes. Like, it, it does feel magical. And I only have, I think I only have one video of me as a kid because my parents didn't have one. And I'm like, "Oh man, I long for that. I wish I had that."
And so what I do is I film like five-minute videos where I'm just walking around the house having a conversation and we're not performing. We're just like, uh, hanging out and I upload it every day to my YouTube. And, um, the reason I did it is there's this app called 1 Second a Day or one I forgot. Is that what it's called? 1 Minute a Day? Is it one minute or no? No, one second. You're right. It's 1 second. It's 1 second, but it's actually, I think, 3 seconds. We actually changed it to 3 seconds where when my little girl was born, the day she was born all the way up to her first birthday, we, uh, did a 3-second video every single, uh, day. And and and whenever I watch this video, it makes me cry. Like, it's like so emotional because like I'll see my dog who's, uh, not alive anymore or you'll see like family members or whatever and, uh, it's like very emotional. You'll see like, oh wow, that was amazing. Remember the time we were there? And so I was inspired by that and I was like, I'm going to do this every day now but for like a 10-minute or 5-minute video. And it's not like a YouTube thing. I'm not, or it's not like I'm editing it. I literally just record a home video and I just upload it and like, I'll just, we'll scroll it one day when she's older. And so I love doing archive stuff and I remember there was this thing called Rescue Time. Do you remember Rescue Time?
Um, I remember that thing, but what was it do? Was it just bringing, was it like Timehop? It was just bringing back an old photo. No. So Rescue Time was a thing that Tim Ferriss promoted and the whole premise of it was it's going to tell you tracking time, what you spend your time on. And I remember using that and I'm like, I wish it could tell me more. Like, I wish I could like track my behavior on the internet and tell me about myself. But back then, this was 15 or 10 years ago, we didn't have that technology. Now, because of my obsession of like, I do like tracking, I love tracking. I, I wish that I could, uh, like do this for more facets of my life. And when I saw Toby's thing, I'm like, I long for that. I want that so bad.
Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I, I, um, I go the other side on the over-tracking everything. I only track when I'm trying to make a change. So if I'm trying to make a behavior change or like, um, let's say maybe whether it's in myself or in my company. So right now, what do I track? I track my kind of food and weight and exercise habits. And right now because I'm writing a book, I track, did I write this morning for the first, you know, the first two hours of my day? Did I write? Yes or no? Right. And so I'm just tracking those two things as a new behavior I'm trying to implement and sort of what gets measured gets managed. I find that the tracking, just tracking generally, um, tracking everything is somehow like nervous energy to me. I said this once about sleep tracking. I was like, good sleep is obvious. How'd you feel when you woke up? You'll know. You didn't need to check the number. Oh, my resting heart rate, my, oh, I went into, you know, deep REM 4 last night for 48 minutes. It's like, what are you? I don't know what you're talking about. Like, you, it's very obvious if you slept well or not. Then again, I think Oura has sold like 20 million rings or something like that, right? So, there's obviously like a sort of insecurity or nervous energy you can tap into of people who are hobbyists who enjoy knowing more about themselves.
I'm talking about tracking as in memories. Like I like looking back. Like, for example, um, I have, um, clothes from when I was a kid that my girl, my little girl wears now and I'm like, "Oh, that makes me feel special. I'm so happy I saved it." Like, I like, I'm talking about like memories, like, like memories. I don't, I don't wear an Oura ring. I don't wear. You're talking about like Rescue Time, right? That's more time tracking. Like Rob Dyrdek, right? When Rob Dyrdek came on, he goes, "I track every minute of every day." I'm not talking about what I'm saying is I wish I could have used that but in a different way. And what Toby is doing is a kind of a cool example where like I'm logging things to like so I can look back six or 12 months or 10 years later and I'm like, let's see my evolution, like, did I, like, I just think that it's very curious, um, and interesting.
Do you use the Meta glasses? No. Are they awesome? Should I get them? They're awesome. They're really great. Um, if you want to do the kind of 1 second a day VHS camcorder thing, it's kind of perfect. It doesn't go the 10, 15 minutes length. That's like too long of recording. But you get 2 minutes out of time basically if you just push the button, though. And it's your point of view and you don't have to take out your phone. Like, first of all, would you take out your phone? Like, you're out of the moment and then they're like, "Uh, okay. I guess I'm supposed to dance now. What do I do?" Right? Like, I'm not sure exactly what, what to do. Especially once your kid starts playing sports, it's like the handiest thing in the world. Like, is it, like the soccer mom's dream is to be able to just push the button and now you get to watch the game but you also get to record what's going on very easily. So these things are amazing. I think they're about to make them, um, good, bad, and what good, bad is, they, they're putting like a screen in it so it's like, and while you're walking around, you could scroll Instagram and I'm like, oh god, like you can check your email. It's like, okay, cool, like I can see why that's useful, but I don't think it's like wise to do that. Uh, whereas the version they have now, the version I have is just camera only. So it's just a capture device. It doesn't do anything else. It's a capture device and it's headphones. If you want like, if you don't want to wear AirPods, it's an amazing set of headphones, uh, that just like sit over your ear, but you hear it and only you hear it. Other people don't hear it. It's pretty great.
That's like the third time you've, you've mentioned this. I'll get it. I'll get it. Uh, I'll buy these. These are actually great. It's a great thing for parents because like, you know, your kids on the swings and you just like, you're like, this is a moment right now, or I think this is a moment and it's like 1 second, like less than 1 second away and you're capturing it and then you're still in the moment. That's cool. Yeah, I'll get them. I'm in. They used to be $500. Now they're way cheaper. Um, yeah, and they're just getting better, uh, every time they do it.
There's one more, but I don't want to bury it at the end of this episode. I want to actually lead with it next time because I've been dabbling with a different AI tool that I think is incredible and it's been such an amazing positive experience and I feel so, um, empowered, like, you know, I feel total, total empowerment in my body, um, and I want to tell you about that in a, in, in the next episode and I want to show you what I made with it.
Oh my god, that's a really good cliffhanger. Okay. Uh, all right, like and subscribe. Go to Spotify, please. Oh, by the way, the gentleman's agreement. The gentleman's agreement, which we've talked about before. Now, listen. You, you think you may have heard this spiel before, but I've decided on the spot to improvise and change the way we're going to do the spiel because if I just say the same thing again, and you feel like you've already heard it, this may not work as well. But listen, we are just simple creatures. And imagine that your friend Sam and your friend Sean, they needed a little bit of help. And you get to decide. It's like the trolley car problem. You get to decide. Are you going to let the train run over our bodies and we stay stuck at 800,000 YouTube subscribers and only 300,000 Spotify subscribers? Are you going to let us be at a measly 1.1 million subscribers? Or are you going to pull the lever and move the train off the tracks and go, "Hit that button on Spotify for us. Just show a little love. Show a little support. We've entertained you. We've we've trained you. We've we've educated you. We've been here. We've been there for you when you needed us. Are you going to be there when we need you? Be a good friend. Be our, what's it called? Be our emergency contact right now. I'm putting you, I'm putting your name down as my emergency contact. Go to Spotify, follow the show, please. Um, because we're growing like crazy on Spotify and Spotify's got video, Spotify's got audio, and it also has comments and there's a polls feature. We're going to put up a poll with this episode. Answer the poll. We're answering all the comments in, uh, in Spotify right now. That's, that's the new platform where we're excited about.
What do you want the poll to be? I think in this, it's the, uh, um, your reaction to the AI, to the AI ideas we have on here and the, the options are going to be, "Oh my god, this is too much," or "May I have some more, please?" Those are two options. All right. Uh, or it could be like, a [ __ ] we're [ __ ] or [ __ ] this is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Those are really the only two. And somehow I'm having that reaction at the same time, which is a very weird feeling. Um, all right. That's it. That's the pod.
[Music]