All right, guys, readings and salutations, Welcome back Episode seven, Lead your podcasts. We're back earn your Lesion podcast. Thank you for your support, your encouraging words. Thank you for riding with us throughout this journey of ours. So, Troy, yeah, man, we gotta we gotta talk about some real issues person.
Yeah man, a personal issue for me and for millions of Americans about forty five million of us to be exact student loan that it is a trillion dollar problem in America. I think it is the second not even I think, I know it is the second highest gross of debt in America, only to mortgage debt. And you know, we spoke about the wealth gap and how important having a mortgage is and having homes are. But something is going to be combating that now in the future if
something doesn't change, and that's student loan debt. So there are some negative effects that it has long term and short term, and we're going to talk about some ways that we well, not we in the sense, but the government is proposing to change that.
Yeah. So something came out recently, right, It's what happened.
So we had a report that the Senate is thinking of a way to have employers pay for student loan debt. So right now, they do reimburse people who are going to school, so they reverse you for tuition, and that is pretty standard in some fields of employeing. But having the debt paid is something that will be very new. And what they're saying is that employers can match up to five thousand dollars in student loan debt for their employees.
It'll be an incentive for people to take jobs and it will help burden that that that is pretty much crushing people, Like the average person has thirty six thousand.
Mean, what exactly you're going to happen?
So employers, right like if I want to get a job, Let's say I'm a teacher and I want to get a job at a school, and one of the things I ask the employer or the school district is do
you guys reimburse for student loan debt tuition? Right now, that isn't in place, but there are proposals that could do that, and if it passes, they can reimburse up to five thousand, So they're not going to pay your entire payment because I think the average person this is the study showed that the average person spends more on their student loan debt than they do on their monthly groceries, which is like crazy, Like people have to pay more
in debt than they are eating, which is like ridiculous. But they'll pay a percentage of it. So even if let's say your student loan payment is seven hundred dollars, right, which is kind of meeting in this day and age, the employer can say we'll pay two hundred dollars of that, and they'll do that as long as you're with the company.
So will that be deducted from your salary.
No, it's not. It's actually the employee gets a tax benefit.
The employer gets a tax benefit to paying off your student loan.
Absolutely. It's just like when they do tuition reibursement, Like people don't know that the employers write that off as a tax deduction. Okay, yeah, So like that's a new proposal that could happen. We'll see because if we don't figure something out right, people's lives are being delayed. So like when people come out of college, and it should be a celebratory time, right, we go to school four or five years, we get our bachelor's degree, and in most situations. Now we have to go further and get
our master's degree. It's we should be celebrating that. But what they people don't realize is that in six months, government's going to come knocking, right, we need you to start repaying. And the problem is that when people come out of school and they amass so much debt, like if they go to a top line school, it could be two hundred thousand dollars that they owe after they finished, you know, with their school. How are they going to
repay that? Because you have to come out of school and then find a job that can support you and then also pay back. So what you see is that a lot of people, a lot of millennials are living at home longer. They're not having the money to save to buy a house. You see more people renting, and
you see people's credits being damaged. That's one of the parts that a lot of people don't really understand is that when you defer on those student loan payments, right, they put you into a firma for about six to twelve months at best, and then right after that if you don't pay, it affects your credit. So now let's go further, like if you don't have the credit score. Now, when you try to apply for apartment, one of the things they check is your credit. Some jobs, when you
apply they check your credit. When you try to get a home, of course they're going to check your credit. And a lot of people are being completely hampered by it because they can't afford to pay the the debt, and now long term they won't be able to come out from the effects of not being able to pay it. So it's like a domino effect of things that are happening because of this debt.
Okay, all right, So actually, if I don't know if people remember, but if you follow my Instagram, I wrote a report about an interesting story in regards to student loan forgiveness a few months ago. So in December, the Department of Education announced it was going to cancel thousands of debts for teachers who had grants turned into loans. Right, so, okay, here's the bad story on it. Teachers that are aspiring teachers were given grants to go to college. Right then.
The thing was that you had to work in a low income school district for four years after you were done with college. Right then, if you worked in the school district four years after you were done with college. Then you didn't have to pay the grand back. It
was a grant, right. The problem is that it was all kinds of red tape involved, where you had to certify every single year with the Department of Education by sending in I believe like forms, and if you were like one day late on the form, then your grant turned into a loan, and then you had to get
the letter I think signed by a principle. But it was during the summertime, so a lot of schools were closed and it was hard to find administrators, and then people moved, and then their addresses wasn't updated properly so that they never actually got the letter in the mail. So what ended up happening is that thousands of inner city teachers had their grants turned into high interest loans.
Not only loans, but high interest loans, and overnight they were crippled with tons of debt that they didn't know about. So they might have took a grant, They might had a grant for fifty thousand dollars and they thought that, you know, it was all good, and they find out that now they're fifty thousand dollars of Debt. So a good friend of ours, a friend of the show. She'll be on the show soon, hopefully. Valencia Clay So she's
a superstar teacher out of Baltimore. Her name is Valencia Understore, Valencia on Instagram. Everybody probably follows her, everybody knows her. So she's the one that actually told me to write this story because it happened to her personally right where it affected her where I think she was trying to buy a home and she didn't know that her credit was affected and they say, your credit is real low,
and she's like, what happened? And then she found out that her grant turned into a loan and she was behind on her loan payments. So that happened to thousands of inner city teachers. It's very unfortunate situation, absolutely, and now I guess it's something that they're trying to rectify by saying that they forgiving a lot of loans because so there are a.
Few loan forgiveness programs, like I was a beneficiary of a teacher forgiveness loan.
So you were an inner city teacher.
Yes, for eight years? Eight years you.
Taught in the Bronx.
Absolutely right, yep, so part of the loan, and people have to do their research because there are a lot of programs that are being offered to have loan forgiveness
depending on what career you're in. So for me, like you said, it was the teacher loan forgiveness and some of the sipulations where you had to work in an inner city school a Title I school for five years and based on what you were teaching, so if it was math or science, you could be granted a certain amount of money, or if it was social studies or English.
Here it was a certain amount of money. But I argued like, hey, if I do science right, well what's the different We're all teaching right, So the max you could get with seventeen five hundred. So I was I was granted that, which was great and it helped a lot. But there's another loan forgiveness program which is called the Public Service Loan, and that goes for anybody who works
in public service. So if you're a government agent, it's not a double agent government official, you could qualify for this loan if you're part of a five oh one three P program, or if you're obviously a teacher, you still qualified. The problem is that there are a lot of sipulations and some red tape. Like you said, so one of the things is you have to pay. I have one hundred and twenty consecutive payments. You can't miss a payments. So that's like ten years of payments you
can't miss. And I thought I qualified for that, like I had paid my loans on time. I applied for this program, the Public Service loan, see the ten years or one hundred and twenty payments consecutive. And what I realized is that after I got no response from the government, it was like, this is weird. And then a report came out. They said that one percent of the forty five thousand people who applied for the public loans service
on Public service forgiveness granted it. Yes, one applicants point it's like zero point eight yes, ladies and gentlemen, a government program where one of the applicants, yeah, were accepted. Yeah, because inside of not so. The one hundred and twenty consecutive payments is a thing. But what they don't tell you is like it has to be a specific type
of payment pan it can't. It has to be like an income based one or one that they set where the interest is really high and you have to pay like seven hundred dollars a month or probably like my situation, I didn't leave college with a lot of debt.
It's all kind of it's college, you know. The interesting thing about is that Google, ibm uh, Facebook, I believe a few other companies recently dropped the college requirement.
Right.
They're just taking kids right out of high school to be higher, right, So what do we need college?
So it's tough, right as an educated like I'm going to say yes that at some point you will need some form of college or right, we can't leave them, or you have to learn a skill, right, And they've been taking that out of schools. Right. They used to have schools where you learn trades and you learn skills and you can carry on that into a profession, which is like kind of what you're saying with Google's doing. It's like, look, if we have kids who have an interest and they are advanced at.
If you know how to code, you don't need it. You don't.
We're going to go straight and we'll teach you on the job. But you have to know how to code, right, And a lot of schools are offering that now at high school and at the elementary levels. So if they're not going to go to college, then yeah, there are some careers that they can do. And that's one of the things that we talk about in our summer program is, Hey, everybody's not going to go and the way that this is looking is from a court perspective, this may not
be the best option for you. So we have to tell them about careers that they can do without a college degree. So some of the things that they can do are law enforcement. They can be a firefighter.
I think you need a college degree to be a cop.
No, I think you gotta go to academy.
Each state is different. Yeah, so New York State, I think you have to have two year degree or two years so with something something not a four year Degreekay.
Yeah, So you got firefighters, you have electricians, plumbers, there's.
Plenty of HVA.
There's plenty of careers that you can do with aut a college degree. Yes you do need training, and yes you do need licensing to do those careers, but you're not going to come out of those trainings with one hundred to two hundred thousand dollarsand death. I had a friend of mine.
The other day, his son just got accepted to Ohio State for aviation full ride, and just for curiosity curiosity, I said, how much would that have cost you if he didn't get the full ride?
You know number?
How much?
Three hundred thousand for four years at Ohio State? Three hundred thousand. So imagine the kid who doesn't have the full ride three hundred thousand and you're twenty one years old. What job is going to pay you the type of money that you can reimburse the government.
With no job right So it's either you're gonn to pay a student loan or pay your rent at that point, and most times they just stay at home.
People stay at home longer, like I said, So you got to choose. It's like, is this the best route, or can we go to schools that are going to cost less or like what New York is doing, you can go to school for free depending on your family's income. And one of the stipulations is that you have to work in the state in that field. So if you wanted to be a teacher again, in New York State they have their SELSIA program, that's what it's called. It's free
state schools. The only thing I think, Like every state doesn't have like a SELSIA program, but New York State has adopted it, and that's great. Like if I would have had this CELSIA program, I walk out of school with nothing because I went to school in New York. I've worked only in New York for more than four years, my tuition would have been free. So hopefully some states start adopting policies like that, and if not, man, we're
going to have a huge problem on I had. Like I said, right, it's a one point five trillion dollar problem now that only grows because tuition is only grow.
Yes, yep, okay, well, and this is something that we need to talk about on the campaign trail and elections coming up, and I would urge everybody really, but especially young people and parents to make that something that you know, you hold your your elective officials accountable for because financial aid and student loans, these things are very important and it's a growing problem and it's only getting worse because the course of education is only going up.
And the more you know, the better. Like I speak to parents, and I speak to you know, young teens all the time who have no idea about these things, like we when we have these sessions in the summer and the kids are like, wait, that's how much your gloss Like, yeah, that's what you're walking into. So just be prepared to know that and make sure that you do everything possible, whether it's grants or whether it's scholarships, so that you don't fall into this type of situation,
right because thirty six thousand, that's the average. That's a lot. Man.
Yeah, it is all right. Well there you have a student loans in a nutshell. Okay, So we talked about student loans and now we're going to talk about business. The world of business and business is a contact sport. I always say it's very competitive, right, So we haven't really had like a head to head competition case study yet. We did look at Rihanna and colleague Jenner's companies, but those we didn't really compare those two companies. But now we're going to do battle to titans, right, clash of
two big companies, Uber and Lyft. So Uber and Lyft are both coming on the stock market soon. They are both what's called IPO and you ipo that's when you debut on the stock exchange, and they're very they're probably the two biggest talk of the town when it comes to Wall Street this year. Right, So, Uber and Lyft, we're going to look at them, We're going to kind of compare them, and then I have an interesting story. We both have interesting stories about Uber that probably a
lot of people aren't fully aware of. So you want to start this.
Off, Yeah, So let's just talk about the two differences of the differences between the two companies. So Uber both are ride sharing companies. Uber the much larger one. They're in fifty eight countries over three hundred cities. Lift smaller, they're in the forty six states in the United States and in Canada. Uber again it's larger, so it has more employees about twenty thousand compared to Lifts forty five hundred. And the valuation is the big difference, the big difference.
So you got the valuation for Uber at seventy two to seventy six billion, and then you have Left at about fifteen billion. Now, when their IPO goes on the market, they said that, you know, those numbers are most likely to inflate when we have people invest in. So that's just on the service for those two. They differ again in their future innovations as well, so we have Uber. Obviously, they try to compete with each other, so when one
company does something, the other one does the same. So they start out with having cars, but both companies Uber and Lyft have dabbled into the bike and scooter service business. I believe Uber bought the company Jump, which is a bike in scooter service, for about two hundred million, and Lift bought Motivate, which is another bike and scooter service, for about two hundred fifty minutes. So you can see like when one makes a move, the other one is
trying to keep up. But then it kind of gets a little difficult for the Lift because obviously they don't have the same amount of employees. So Uber has a huge deal in twenty seventeen. Actually in twenty fourteen, they launched Uber Eats, which is huge, right, it's a delivery service for food. But they get their biggest sponsor in twenty seventeen, which is McDonald's. So McDonald's obviously world were
now probably the large franchise in the world. Thanks, yeah, probably right, So they had a large franchise in the world. Uber Eat signs up with them, so Lift says, you know, let's let's try to get our own sponsor, and they signed Taco Bell. Taco Bell, so I've never eaten Taco Bell.
I used to eat Taco Bell when I was in Hawaii.
Yeah, so they get Taco Bell and they decide to have a campaign with it. So one of the things is like the coldest thing Taco Mode. And I'm not sure if anybody's ever used it, but Taco Mode was only available and Lyft from the hours of nine pm to two am, which is like, I think that's when college students are hungary, is right, So like you call your Lyft and you push Taco Mode and it takes you the lift takes you to the nearest Taco Bell. It is a complete failure. They tried it out. It
was a complete failure. They dropped it, and they haven't got another sponsor as far as from the food. Another thing about their future is that they have some some things that Uber doesn't. And Uber has dealt with a lot of scandal lately. So they've been in the news for having the self driving cars that have failed.
They had a lawsuit.
They had a lawsuit of the car about a lawsuit.
So Uber Waymo you ever heard of Waymo Before No, I'm pretty sure nobody has ever heard of Waymore, So we have to give you the backstory on this. Google, I'm pretty sure everybody has heard of Google. Right. Google and Uber have a very complicated relationship. Google was kind of Uber's big brother. It was like a big brother
little brother relationship. Right. In twenty thirteen, Google invests two hundred and fifty eight million dollars into Uber, which gives them about six percent of the company, and the CEOs really like each other. They kick it off. Twenty fourteen, the CEO of Google takes a ride with the CEO of Uber and ubers knew they're trying to figure out
how to make self driving cars. Right. The relationships sours the next year when Uber finds out that Google is putting money into self driving car technologies by developing a company named Waymo. Waymo is up is Google's self driving car technology company. They have a whole company devoted for self driving cars.
It sounds like a pick your brain.
Yeah, so Uber feels a way about this. So what Uber does is that they recruit Google's one of their top engineers at Wayne to come to work at Uber. Right and right after he comes they purchased a self driving car company. Forget the name of it, but it makes them five hundred million dollars in revenue. Google sues Uber because they said that the engineer stole twelve thousand
files from Waimo to give the Uber right. So now they have a lawsuit where they're going back and forth between if it was inside information that was stolen and it's illegal.
To do that.
Uber so that they didn't do that. So long story short, they settled a lawsuit, I believe a few weeks ago, and they set up the lawsuit for zero point three four percent of the company. Uber settled it with Google and they gave Wayne Mo what we call thirty four basis points. Thirty four basis points is point three four thirty four percent of one percent of the company of Uber. It doesn't really sound like a lot, but that's roughly
equal to two hundred and forty four million dollars. So they settled out of They settled it for two hundred and forty four million dollars. But they're still not admitting that they did anything wrong. So now you have Uber who is at odds with somebody that once was a major investor, was still invested in them and it's a.
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Face for self driving cars. Right, there's a whole different conversation. But the self driving car, I don't know about saying, well, I'd rather trust a self driving car than a regular driver, right, if you think about it, computers are probably more efficient than people like, Look how many accidents there are in everything.
I'm not sure driving a car.
Okay, if you had it, if you had a computer like ib In Watson, do you think that you would trust them to do a calculation or would you trust.
I would trust that that. I would like that.
It's the same thing I.
Trust myself more than the computer. It's driving a car.
Well, the computers don't have distractions. They're not texting, they're not looking at what's going on in the road, they're not rubbernecking. Some people say it's actually a lot more safer to have carless driver list cars.
I'm just yeah, I couldn't do it. I just personally couldn't do it. It's happening, Yeah, I know it's happening.
And it's a race. It's a race who can do it first. Yes, it's a race to who can do it first. Elon Musk is involved with Tesla.
Uber is involved, but they've also like so Tesla himself has had again so not scandal, but they've had some controversy with some of their cars malfunctioning some of their self driving.
Of course, but how many cars malfunction regularly?
Yeah, I mean people getting there's always going.
To be one card. It's not like it's never gonna be one hundred percent.
Perfect, right, you know, people getting accidents every day exactly, just true, exactly, And like you said, like there's gonna be less distractions. Obviously there won't be if there's self driving, there's not going to be any alcohol related accidents. So like you said, but I don't know, I just feel like the trust in myself over a computer, I would I'd have to learn how to do that.
Well, we'll see. But it's interesting because now way Mo is at a disadvantage because they're behind in the technol Because now Uber people don't even people don't know that Uber invests so much money and they're already planning their next phase. It's one thing I do like about Uber. They are constantly reinventing themselves, right, So they're rides sharing company now, but they know that that space is crowded and there's a lot of competition, and then there's problems,
political problems, stuff like that. So now they're already trying to reinvent themselves.
The Uber eats, they got the food, the food delivery.
Your delivery. Now they have they have drones, food delivery drones.
And then they're investing in flying, so like they're thinking already like down the line, like we're going to have taxis that fly flying taxis.
Yes, that's flying taxi. No, it's yes, flying taxis. And this that's what I'm saying. It's so crazy because Wayne Moo, nobody's heard of weaymo before. Google has a billion dollar company that nobody's heard of that is currently working on ways to change the way that we travel.
That's pretty that's pretty crazy.
It's interesting.
So a part of the thing you said it like politically like things are changing too, And what's happening here in New York with Lyft and Uber is that they have changed the way that New York City travel looks. Right, we us It used to be yellow cabs that flooded the city and now it's Uber and Lyft, and the Taxi and Limousine Commission said, wait, they're taking away our business, right,
we have one fourth of the inventory that they have. Right, people take their everyday cars and turn them into taxi services. So what they said was like, we're going to file a report and we're going to get to the bombs because we're losing drivers at an alarming rate. And what they did. What they found out was that the average Uber and Lyft drivers they were making like fourteen dollars an hour, which in New York City is not the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is fifty fifteen dollars.
So when they found that out, they were like Uber said, hey, we don't have to abide by the minimum wage because these employees. We don't have employees. We have independent contractors.
Ten ninety nine independent contract.
Right, So when they have an independent contractor, they don't have to by workplace laws like they don't have to abide by minimum wage and they don't have to buy over time and safe and healthy laws like you're an independent contractor, right, So that that changes the way that they look at the people who are working for them. So from that New York City obviously won the case. Mayor built a Vosia was part of that. Now the minimum wage it has to be fifteen dollars for Uber
and Lyft drivers. But on top of it, and to combat the overflux of these cars, like they're trying to charge like tolls now to go into Lower Manhattan, they're saying, look, we're doing a pause, so for twelve months to start, I think in the summer this year, in twenty eighteen. For twelve months, they're not allowed to have any new
licensed vehicles patrolling the streets of New York City. So, like in Manhattan, that might sound good, but if you live in the outer boroughs, like you might rely on those services and you can't have any more right now.
Yes, yes, Well it's like I always say, you can't stop energy. I don't think that that's a fight that the city is going to win because Uber their groundbreaking.
They're not going anywhere.
It's groundbreaking, it's a groundbreaking idea, and it's disruptive, it's disruptive, and it's changed changed everything. So I think that their biggest competition will come from other companies like Lyft and other new companies that spawn up, which is I'm pretty sure they are aware of that, and which is why they are constantly reinventing themselves and adding new facets to
their company. Neither Lift or Google It. Neither Lift or Uber is profitable, by the way, But it'll be interesting to see how you know, when the IPO I think that you know, obviously Lift is that disadvantage their smaller company. They have less, like you said, drivers, they have less revenue, they have less everything globally than newer But at one point, you know, my Space was bigger than Facebook. True, at one point Blockbuster was bigger than Netflix.
Never never discount the underdogs.
Just because somebody's number one right now does not mean that they're going to be number one forether. So it'll you know, be entertaining to watch to see how did some play, how did some folds, Whether you know, they get brought by a company, whether they take each other over, whether they both succeed, who knows, but everybody.
It might be a third party that comes in.
Who knows, it might be a whole completely different new company that comes in. So all right, well, we will follow it. We will look to see what happens and when the I p os we definitely will have a follow up on both of them.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, it is now storytime.
Here's a little story that must be Listen up, gangsters and honeys, with your head done the best story.
Tell us stuff now, right, pray downs gray us.
Okay, So, boys and girls, today's story. This episode's story will be on Airbnb.
Airbnb Airbnb. Man. Amazing story.
Phenomenal, phenomenal story. So I'll started off in two thousand and seven, right, Joe gad Drabbi Gebbia and Brian Sheesky. They were both twenty seven at the time, right, and they lived in San Francisco. If anybody's not familiar, San Francisco, I believe is the most expensive place to live in America, highest real estate. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. No, I think it's more explored than that. Yeah, I'm pretty
sure it is. So they were struggling to pay rent, right, you know, twenty seven year olds stretch out of college, struggling. So they live together. They have like a two bedroom apartment. I as soon and it was a big conference coming up in the City of Design conference.
So they both come from the Rhode Island School of Design. So there was a design conference coming and they were playing on attendance.
Yeah, so all the hotels in the city were booked. Because if anybody familiar with San Francisco, San Franciscoco is a very small city. That's why our real estate is so expensive in San Francisco because it's very small. Obviously you have to look on valley nearby and tech industry. So it's a couple of different things that makes Simrancisco so expensive. It's very small, and you're surrounded by the tech industry, which billionaires all around, so land is very scarce.
So all the hotels in the city were booked, right, So they have the bright idea to rent out their living room for people that are looking for hotels. They know people are coming into the city and that they're not going to have anywhere to stay.
Yeah. I think Joe sends an email to Brian like, hey, I have this idea, and he shows it that a lot of his press commas is I have this idea. Yeah, you know what, there's no more city, there's no more hotels in the city, there's no more rooms. We got something.
So they want to put three airbeds in their living room on the floor and they are gonna cook their guest breakfast.
Right, so we're gonna rent the space. We have some space in the living room, three air mattresses. Not only we're gonna let people rent that, but like you said, we're gonna make breakfast for them.
So the next day they launched a website. The website is called air Bed and Breakfast dot com because they give you an airbed and breakfast, because they're gonna make you breakfast airbed and breakfast, hence the name Airbnb, but at first it was called airbed and Breakfast dot com, right, So from there they a few weeks later they actually get three people to come and I think they charged them eighty dollars a night person. Yeah right, and it
worked out for them. And then next year is when they really take off because now they have an idea, they have a business model, we have a website.
Before they get to the next year, like they're broke. Oh that it broke, so like that conference came in the left and they still can't pay the rent. So what they did is they took out as many credit cards as they could. I think he tells a story where he has well he remember he used to have trading cards and you slip them in. He had a
trading card book, but it was just credit cards. And I think they accumulated like fifteen thousand dollars in credit card debt each just to they couldn't take out any more cash advances on their credit card.
Cash advances powerful tool, very dangerous tools.
We have some stories on them.
Yes, that's a different story. Okay. So next year, two thousand and eight, there's a senator that is the talk of politics. His name is Barack Obama, right, so it is he's running for president the first time, obviously, and there's the Democratic National Convention, which is held in Denver, Colorado. So they gear up for the Democratic National Convention.
Yeah, they got another idea.
They can today saying, okay, this is a perfect I think eighty thousand people were going to come into Denver and there's not gonna be enough hotels, very similar to what they did in San Francisco, but now they want to scale it. So they want to recruit other people to rent their apartments, re rent their homes, and then they get a portion of that and they'll broker it for them.
And yeah, the idea was like we're going to find Obama supporters in Denver to open up their homes for other Obama supporters.
Think you had eight hundred listings they were able to find it. Yeah, eight hundred homes and it was great. They made some money, they made it. They made a little bit of money.
Yeah, some money. Yeah, not enough, not enough. Yeah. So they still even after the convention, they're still broke.
No, no, before the convention is over, before the convention is over. Leading up to it, they have eight hundred homes and apartments that they were able to get people to rent, but they still didn't really make any money, right, I don't know why. I guess it just wasn't profitable for whatever reasons. So now they go to the convention and they have the bright idea as a marketing tool, and they didn't really do this to make money. They did this as a marketing tool to make cereal limited
boxes of cereal. They have the Obama os and the Captain McCain cereal.
So the it ties into what they do, Right, we're going to give you the room, and how are we going to make breakfast now for you? Because the original thing is like you'll get the room and we'll provide breakfast but.
This was more of a pr store.
Yeah. No, but so he says it in some of his speeches. He's like, look, we had to figure out how we're going to scale breakfast, So are we going to put eggs and ship it to people? No, We're going to make cereal. So what they did, like I think Joe Gobia does, is he goes to like the cheapest places he can find cereal. So he goes to like dollar stores and buy cereal, and they press up these pictures. They go to an architect like, hey, we
need you to draw this picture. So they have Obama and they have McCain on the cereal box and they make it limited.
Edition, limited edition.
Yeah, and each box has like the numbers, so if you bought one, you know that you have four out of five hundred. Because I think they only did one thousand buses. I think it was eight hundred one thousand boxes each. Each candidate got five hundred boxes, so they put like like four out of two hundred or five out of two hundred, so everybody had a limited number
on their box. Okay, the brilliant thing is that we know boxes of cereal of course, like four dollars at the most sometimes a little bit more of super size. They charged four dollars for the.
Box and they made thirty thousand dollars, So they made thirty thousand dollars off cereal and that was enough to propel them next year going forward where they finally got the business off the ground, off and running, and then they were able to get substantial amount of money from an angel investor, some seed money, some seed money. Then in twenty eleven they get even more money from Ashton Kusher legend. People don't He's made.
Some brilliant moves.
People don't even remember him.
Was it Pumped?
Was that the show punk?
I think that's what that the seventies show?
First, the seventy show Punked. He had this movie called The Butterfly Effect.
I was just yeah, that was That was a decent movie. And then he married the Jimmy Moore. Right, he was married to Demi.
Moore and now he's married to Melakunis.
Okay, Ashton Cusher. Not to get off topic here, but the guys a genius RIGHTOD movies, he's angel investor, He's a Hollywood A list celebrity who, at the peak of his career decides to switch his focus and become an investor in tech companies. Some of the companies that he invested in early Spotify, Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, and now Ripple Yes cryptocurrency. Ripple So Aston Kusha comes in twenty eleven, gives them money.
And then.
They skyrocket skyrocket, right.
It gives them money to hire more staffing. They go staffing the United States to now Europe. Officers become global Global.
Their current valuation is thirty eight billion dollars.
Wow, yeah, I think so. They're both founders. It's three act founders. They're each worth four billion dollars four billion. They're under forty years old.
Ye, thirty eight billion dollar valuation. The reason why I like this story is because it highlights if you are an entrepreneur, you have to do whatever you have to do. You have to hustle at all courts. Right. So they're starting an idea to put air mattresses in their living room and they make people breakfast.
Nobody believed in them, like they took this to Silicon Valley and had twenty investors.
No, it's laughable if you take if you think about it, right, you're putting three air mattresses in your living room and you're gonna make people breakfast, and you're gonna name the company airbed and Breakfast.
They said. They laughed at they. That's not a joe. They laughed at them, and they said, this is never gonna work. They had twenty investors. Ten of them didn't respond to their emails, five of them met with them, and the other five sat down and had a ten minute conversation. All of them said no, none of them believed in.
It, and then right nobody believed in it. And then when all else fails, they realize that they have to go to plan B and they sell cereal.
And that's what gets the money from the seat investors. They're like, if you can sell cereal to people at four hours a box, you must be on something.
If one hustle isn't working, you gotta switch.
It, right. He said that his mom would call him like, wait, I thought you guys were a chain of like hotel services. Like you're selling cereal, nount here a food company.
You know, So whatever we have to do to get this money, whatever by any means necessary.
Yeah, But it didn't. Like I said, it didn't work at first, and they had to go to the drawing board and one of the things they said they met an investor and he was like, go meet your people, And what that really meant was like, why isn't it working? And they found out that when they went to some of the places that they were listing, they realized that the people weren't taking great pictures. It wasn't displaying the
homes like they should. So they said they went to New York and they went to Manhattan and Brooklyn and they went to each listing and said, look, here's the camera I want you to use when you take these pictures.
And from that moment, and it's important too, because you know, when we say all right, we give you guys these case studies. So when you go to business school, Harvard, yeah, whatever, top business school, boarding, they go through case studies, right, and it's entertaining stories, but it's more so it's education. Right. We're not just giving you these case studies just to
entertain you. Hopefully you can learn something from it and implement it in your business, whether you sell t shirts, whether you're a barber, whatever, you can learn from other people's success stories and figure out a way how you can copy what they have done. Right, there's nothing wrong with it okay what they have done or inspire you or gain some type of insight. So I just want to leave that because you know, we give a lot of these stories and they are entertaining, but it's not
just a bedtime story. It's for actual action, like to take action, to leave some inspiration. So hopefully that story, to me at very least is a very inspirational story for a few different reasons. But I just feel that stories like that really, you know, give you the push to keep going because it's not going to be easy in any type of business that you do.
Two thousand and seven, nobody believes in them. Two thousand and sixteen, they become the official sponsor of the Summer Olympics. Like this brand that nobody believed in. So like that, that's to.
Tell you, like, just be persistent from thirty believing itself from broke to thirty thousand cereos to thirty eight billion valuation in ten years.
And anybody can do that. Yes, anybody can be a host. So it's like if you have space, like anybody, it's.
It's disruptive idea. They disrupted the hotel industry, which was the same for one hundred years, so if you want to find the next big thing, see what hasn't been changed in the last hundred years and find a way to disrupt that.
And look across, look across, like the people around you might be able to help you.
Yep, right, that's another lesson.
He reached out to his friend who's from the same design school. He reached out to another friend that was a web developer. That's how they got the site up. And then the person who gives them to seed money actually came from came from the Rhode Island School Design. He was like, wait, let me at least have a meeting with these guys since they came from our school. And that's how it starts. Man Reach Across, Man Reach across.
Okay, well, before we leave, we have some exciting news.
Yeah, so we are again on YouTube, which we announced on the last episode, but now we have our merch up on earnier Leisure dot com, so we have some some some cool ideas that are up there, so you know, feel free to support. We also have our Patreon app which is going to be provided some exclusive and behind the scenes content and also some other features that we
thought that would help people. By requests pretty much people have been asking some things, and yeah, we thought we felt like Patreon would be a good avenue to address some of those topics.
Patreon is something that we're definitely excited about, something that we've been working on. So, you know, we give a lot of free game for you long time my Instagram page. Two years we do. We do the podcast, so a lot of time people have even more questions or they want like kind of like mentorship, pick business coaching, or pick my brain or just even stuff with the podcast.
We talked probably about an hour after the podcast is over with, were just going to end depth stuff so you guys be able to see it when you're going in. But that's all the extra bonus features and all of that stuff will be laid out in our Patreon. All of the links will be on our website and uh yeah, YouTube the merch the merchant Dope too. I'm not just
saying that because I'm involved with it. It's actually very creative and you know what, it gives a good message for financial literacy, and it gives good you know, inspirational quotes and things of that nature. So I think that that.
Especially in our cultures, like that's one of the things we notice is that people will look at what you're wearing for So if they're gonna look, we might as well have.
A message and say something exactly so you know, that's what we're doing. We're just pushing positivity. Thank you guys for supporting us. Thank you guys for rocking on us. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and also turn on our notifications. Also for Instagram as well. Also for iTunes, subscribe. I know you guys are listening to iTunes. We're not just on iTunes. That's another thing to people.
We're on Spotify, We're on Google Podcasts, We're on Podbeam, We're on Anchor, We're on I watch.
You everywhere you listed all the time.
So all right, guys, we will see you next week. Peace.
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