Back In Person Setup

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Welcome back to Corporate Strategy. The email. This could have been a live show.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

How long did you not breathe for? Uh, not that long. This actually wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_03 0:29

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

This time I actually could see what was happening. Yes. So I knew when to start, when to stop. Okay. When we do it remotely, I have no clue.

unknown 0:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:36

Yeah. I need to figure that out. I really need to take some time and figure out how to set up our remote pod. I think we got this pretty good though. It's looking pretty good. Yeah, I think this is pretty nice. It's good to be back in person again. Yeah, uh, new segment. New pod segment. New pod segment. You ready? Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I don't know what it is, but yes.

Tasting Manhattan Special Coffee Soda

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Okay, I just wanted to make sure you were ready. I don't I don't have the feeling you're ready. I don't know what this is. New pod segment. I mean, I'm excited. I just don't know what it is. It's called What are you drinking? And today, we're drinking Manhattan Specials. This is premium espresso coffee soda. No, it's not. It sure is. It sure is. Are we actually doing this? Imported straight from Italia. Oh my god, they're cold. Oh yeah, it's ready to go. I had it ready to go. New pod segment. Oh my goodness. We're not sponsored, by the way. Have you ever had espresso coffee soda? I've never heard of espresso.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Imported from beautiful Italia. Delicious. Rome 1925. Is that how long this has been aged? Since 1925?

SPEAKER_04 1:35

Yeah, this is a 1925-year-old soda.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

I'm kind of scared. That's how old it is. I mean, we gotta try it together at the same time, right? I've actually had these before. Oh, okay. So I just need to add a lot of things.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Yeah, but we can do like a little, hold on. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

This is so this is so exciting. I want to do this.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

One, two, bongi. Bongiorno. Okay. Did I do it? All right, should we? This is great for the listeners, by the way. Should I try this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try it. Right into the mic. Right in the microphone.

unknown 2:06

Ah.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

That was not what I was expecting.

SPEAKER_04 2:09

What? Okay, it's a coffee soda. I'm curious. What did you expect? So it's so sweet. It is sweet. I thought it would be like sweetened with cane sugar.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

I thought it would be like bitter. Oh yeah. I mean, no. Like coffee, you know, without sugar is bitter. I thought it'd be like a bitter soda type caffeinated beverage. But no, it tastes really sweet. I actually like it a lot.

SPEAKER_04 2:28

It's great. So I we frequent an Italian deli and I saw this before and was like, coffee, soda, Manhattan special. And started, I started picking them up every time I go because I think they're just so much fun. It is legit just a. Imagine you had a cold coffee. Yep. You put sugar in it, no cream, just sug, and then you carbonated it, and that's what this is.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

I almost want to, I almost want to say the way I would describe it is you get a soda like loaded. Imagine Coke without like the signature Coke flavor. Yeah. Like just sugary water. And it's it's carbonated. And then you just infuse coffee taste into it. That's what it tastes like. That's exactly what it is. That's so different. Oh my, I love it.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

You ever had those little uh coffee candies, the hard coffee candies? It's like that. It's got the same flavor profiles, like a hard coffee candy. I like it though. It is good. I love them. It is really good. I thought it'd be fun. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

New pod segment. I want to do this every time. Watching you drinking. Wait, what's the name of it again? Manhattan Special. Manhattan Special. Espresso, premium coffee soda. Is this like a thing? Like are coffee sodas a thing that you can just like research as a market at other brands that do this?

SPEAKER_04 3:39

There's a whole, there is a soda market period. I think there's I have seen in my life, just in the various farmers markets and little stores I go to, hundreds, if not thousands, of unique sodas. I mean, it is a wild, wild market, and we'll never run out. We'll run out of podcast material before we run out of what do you drink in segments.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Even if we do this until like we're 90, we'll still keep going.

SPEAKER_04 4:03

Well, we won't make it because of the diabetes, but yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

The amount of sugar in here is a lot. I'm not gonna lie to you. One bottle to have 37 grams of sugars. Yeah, but it's it's cane. It's cane. Yeah, at least it's cane.

SPEAKER_04 4:15

Is it? Water, cough, pure coffee, cane sugar, caramel color, preserve with potassium sorbate, sodium benzenate. Like, let me just tell you, man, it's nice to see a drink that only has five ingredients.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah, that is nice. I'll be honest, seeing how short that is, and that it's so it's actually such large font I can read it easily. Those are usually things like when my wife and I go to the grocery store, we look for the things with as minimal amount of ingredients as possible. Like we're choosing between two brands. We're like, can we read and understand the label? Yeah, if the answer is no, we're going with the other one. Uh the bottled in Brooklyn, Manhattan special bottle. Say how much how much caffeine is in this? Does it say?

SPEAKER_04 4:49

Uh, I don't I don't know if they have to disclose that. Do you know four grams of caffeine can kill a man? Do you know that? No. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Isn't it like four grams in a cup of coffee? Or 40 in a caffeine. No, 40 milligrams. Milligrams. Yes, four grams. 40 grams of coffee.

SPEAKER_04 5:02

Four grams kill a man. So I uh I watched an interesting YouTube video this week all about caffeine. Did you know? Caffeine. So one, obviously, caffeine stimulant drug. Yep, obviously. Just gotta get that out of the way. Caffeine is poison. Did you know that? I did not know. It's actually poison. Specifically for bugs. Like four grams will kill us. The flowers and the plants that produce caffeine, because lots of flowers actually produce caffeine. They will do it because the bees get a little jolt. So it's not enough to kill a bee. But it's enough to be like, hey, I got some pep mustaches. I want to come back here. I want more of this, I want more of this nectar. They're drugging the bees. They're drugging the bees. And it makes the bees more productive. Wow. Interesting. So next time you're drinking coffee, just think bees drink this. That's crazy. This is a wild segment that we're doing right now. I'm learning so much. Yeah, so what are you drinking segment?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

What are you drinking? What are you drinking? It's a Manhattan special. Oh, I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you for this nice little surprise. I actually like it a lot. I feel like I can feel it kicking in a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Oh, yeah? It's like it has the sugar. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

The sugar and the caffeine mixed together, and the fact that I had a coffee right before coming over. I think that's just the combination.

SPEAKER_04 6:13

But you have the caffeine intolerant.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

I do have the caffeine resistance. That's what I'm I'm thinking. Is it the sugar? Is the caffeine? It's gotta be the sugar. Yeah, for sure. It's still great though. Bonjourno.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

Bonjourno. As they say in my home country. America.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Hey, Five Check. How are you doing? Are we doing our grievances or are we doing a vibe check? Oh, is it grievance? Do we have grievances? Are you on a grievance train? What's happening? You've got to just keep on with the grievances. That's how you get attention these days.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

You just complain. You know, out of the two of us, I mean, you've got the grievances. I feel like I am far more negative, pessimistic human being, but you've got the grievances lately. What's going on, Michael?

SPEAKER_01 6:52

I actually, so this week was actually pretty good. All things considered, pretty good. Not a lot of grievances. Okay. I'll be honest, one grievance I have is we watched a little bit of regular TV this week because we ended a show. What is regular TV? Just, you know, cable. Oh, you turn it on? We turned on cable. Yikes. And I forgot how much I just hate ads. Why would you do this? Like watching ads and like the show stops and goes to an advertisement for three minutes. You sit there and be like, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced. I haven't watched an ad since sports ball season. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:23

It's crazy. So I don't watch TV, period. Right? Like I'll watch a Netflix show or something. And I don't know if you remember this. When we used to go out to lunch during work days, we'd go to like Buffalo Wild Wings. Yeah. And they'd have the TVs everywhere. I would get enthralled by the commercials because I hadn't seen them in years. Like, oh yeah, these things exist. That's wild. That's so funny. And yeah, I can't, I don't know how you do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yeah, it was it was awful. I don't know how you do it. It's weird because like this day and age, your brain just feels like it needs to do something during that time. Like you can't just sit there and watch an ad anymore. It's like you end up pulling out your phone because you're like, this is more interesting to me than this stupid ad that I'm watching that's trying to sell me something. But then afterwards, you kind of feel like really depleted mentally because you're like, I'm watching a show, I'm scrolling on my phone, seeing a million things, seeing ads on this, hearing ads on this. Like your whole entire brain is just like mush afterwards.

Whole Home Ad Blockers

SPEAKER_04 8:17

It's a really weird feeling. I cannot recommend enough for you and you, the viewer slash listener. Whole home ad blocker.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:24

Set one up. Uh, I have an ad guard running on an Apple Mini. Yep. And it's my DNS, it's my ad blocker, it's great. It actually has spoiled me so much that when I leave the house and when I perchance take my phone out of my pocket and scroll outside of this wonderful little domicile, I'm like, what are these things? How do you close them? Like, they've become so bad now.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

You don't know how to close them. How do you close an ad? No, if you click on the wrong, if you if you even try to click on the X, it'll be like, oh, there's a mask on top of the X. And now it's gonna pop another ad.

SPEAKER_04 8:59

But and now our fair platform we're streaming on will put ads on the video. Yep. But how you can't. It's a video. You can't have like a thing on the like, not the ones before.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Right. On. Yeah, yeah. There's it's on the video. Yeah. In like the bottom corner, just stays there. And you're like, Why the heck is that? Yeah, it's absolutely wild. How do we stop this? So, what I noticed though, so I did take a page out of your book. Okay. Since I left Universal, I was like, I want to do the ad blocker thing. So I had an old Raspberry Pi, the little uh microcomputer sitting around. I was like, let me try this. So I set up, they call it the Pi Hole, which I just have various names. It's okay. Yeah, it works, it works pretty well, but I use it on my computer. So whenever I go and use my wife's computer or my other computer and I don't have the DNS set to the right thing, I'm like, oh my goodness, I forgot how terrible it is without this. But the downside is it doesn't block us companies or apps or anything that uses their own ad server. Right. Because like if you're watching Hulu or whatever, like you can't block Hulu because it's from Hulu's DNS. If you block them, you just can't watch it.

SPEAKER_04 9:59

This is why you gotta set up Ad Guard. Yeah. AdGuard Home is Pie Hole for nerds. Yep. Right? Like Pie Hole is very nice because it's pretty and it's easy. Ad Guard will allow you to set up your own filters and block lists. Yes. And there's a lot of pre-made, I use pre-mades, but I'm using like cybersecurity-oriented pre-made lists that are being maintained and updated every week by cybersecurity nuts. It has not failed me yet. The only ads I will get are YouTube pre-roll ads, and that's it. Interesting. That is everything else is filtered in this house. Huh. It's amazing. And I can just log in, take a look, and be like, oh yeah, everything's being filtered. My life is perfect.

SPEAKER_01 10:37

It is really, really nice to see that dashboard.

SPEAKER_04 10:39

I think it's gonna help with your grievances quite a bit. I upgrade your pie hole, do Ad Guard. I'll have to give it a shot. Do it.

AI Ads And Claude Vs ChatGPT

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah, it was really painful. And then also uh Chat GPT started doing ads, which I use ChatGPT pretty much daily for random searches. And they started throwing random ads in our face now, and I kind of hate it.

SPEAKER_04 10:54

So I gotta I gotta stop you on two things here. We're never gonna get to podcast today. We're never gonna get to vibe check today.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

We're never gonna vibe check, we're never gonna do the real topic.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

You know, I since we've last talked, I talked about seeing the ad, the AI documentary. Uh I've been using Claude.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

And my God, why would you ever use Chat GPT? Why would you ever use ChatGPT?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Yeah, Claude is one way better, but their usage. It's better. It's flat out better. But you will run out of usage context real quick. Oh, you're not paying for it? No. No, I'm using it for free. I use Claude tokens for Claude code. I don't use it for the chat layer.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

For the listeners, I'm just gonna make unbroken eye contact with the camera. Because you already know.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

I don't pay for ChatGPT either, but their free window is massive.

SPEAKER_04 11:40

I actually saw a really good ad. Uh because at the movies now, this sucks. We have uh we go to we go to the movies all the time, and we were, I think it was, it wasn't the AI, oh no, it was The Bride, which was the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. Before that movie, Claude had an ad, and it was a professor speaking to a student, and it he was like, I didn't know it was a Claude ad, but I knew it was an AI ad because the way the professor was talking to the student was very much the way a chatbot talks to you. It was it was very generative. And halfway through his little speech explanation to the student of what he's trying to teach her, he breaks into there's a diamond sale happening right now at Jared's. Make sure to that's like, oh my gosh, this is really good. This is like a really good ad. And then it it was basically like saying, Yeah, ChatGPT is gonna start putting ads in your AI. Do you feel comfortable with this? Claude doesn't do it. And I'm like, damn.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah, I saw something like that. Shots fired! So good. I love when they take shots like that. It just fires me up. I'm like, oh yeah. Now, hopefully, Claude doesn't, you know, renege on that in the future. I don't think they will. I hope not.

SPEAKER_04 12:46

After watching the CEO talk about the product, yeah, I mean, him and his sister left Chat GPT because they didn't feel safe. They don't think ChatGP2 is being safe. OpenAI. Claude is all about safety. Safety first. In fact, so I've been using it recently just to check out our AEO at work. And I'll ask it questions.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Oh, it's so weird to hear that in like a live setting now because it's becoming real.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So I'll I it was funny. I actually needed to get measurements for a box that we sell. So I asked it, what are the measurements on this box? And it said, it's 13 inches deep, it's 14 inches wide, and it's one inch tall. And I said, Claude, you fool. That's a pizza box. That's not a computer. That's so good. And I was like, I I could pull up the chat and show you. I was like, where did you why do you think it's one inch tall? And it's like, no, you're right. That's really stupid of me to even suggest that. Like, yeah, dude, it's a it's a computer tower.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

That's so funny. Yeah. But that's like the that is the like epitome of where AI is right now. It really is. Like it's really it's got these really dumb things that like a human would be able to perceive and be like, that is really, really stupid. But the AI just doesn't see it like that because it doesn't have like the practical real world knowledge. And it's just so funny when it does stuff like that. You're like, oh yeah, you're missing the theoretical concept of the world and how these things work.

SPEAKER_04 14:11

Yeah, yeah. It I mean, it's great. It's really, I will say, I have I've become fond of using AI with my own work.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

I love using it with my own work. I actually had to craft some text this week for our website, and I used a piece of messaging I wrote, and I used a blog that I wrote, and I said, I kind of need to build a paragraph that merges these two things together. But it's gotta be tight. And so it spits something out, and I was like, this sucks. But try again, you did manage to merge them together shortly. So then I went and took that and rewrote it, and it was perfect. Yeah, literally perfect.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

That's the way to do it.

SPEAKER_04 14:46

Yeah. So I couldn't have done the merging, but I certainly could make it good after it merged it. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

It kind of sparks those, it does those things that would take you a long time to do as first draft. Right. And then once you refine it, you're like, okay, that's exactly where I need it.

SPEAKER_04 14:59

Because I couldn't figure out how do I cut this and this into this. Right. And like, what do I sacrifice? It's my own work. I love it. It's a non-objective thing that I was like, it's gonna, I'm gonna pull the things that based on the data I'm aggregating seems the most interesting. And it's like, you did a terrible job, but you did do it. And I can work with this. So yeah, it is it is interesting the direction we're going as a species. I can't wait to not work. That's what I'm excited for.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, that day may never come.

SPEAKER_04 15:28

AGI is coming. There's no stopping it.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

I still need to go see this document. It's coming.

SPEAKER_04 15:32

I'm gonna do it. We're all we're all gonna not be working in 10 years. Yeah. Um, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah, that was my grievance. Ads. Ads was my grievance.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

I had a sick puppy, as you you saw this week. I had a sick puppy. Uh, it was very exhaust, very exhausting for my wife. Yeah, because she was the one waking up all night taking care of her. And then I would by proxy kind of like open my mind, be like, well, I'm not sleeping good tonight. Yeah. It's been a it's been a long two weeks. And even even still, even with all those potential things that would be grievances, I'm doing all right. Good. I'm happy I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

I'm happy I'm here. I'm happy I'm drinking this espresso. Manhattan special. It's delicious. Yeah. And this makes up for any small advertisement grievances I do have. Yeah, I'm glad.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

So thank you. Hey, you know what? That that what are you drinking segment?

Why The Mario Movie Hurts

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Actually, I got a second grievance. Oh, yeah. And it's because you just told me the Mario movie sucks. Oh, yes, so it's so sad. And it's so sad because we were so excited. My wife and I were like, Yoshi's in it, this is gonna be so good. We love the first one.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Yoshi was what did it for us.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yoshi was exciting. Okay. We love Yoshi the character. Okay, Mario fan. But when you said it was terrible, that like is super disgusting.

SPEAKER_04 16:36

It's kind of like a three on Rotten Tomatoes. Um, like a 30. It so the I read a review. Oh, I wish I had it on hand. It was the funniest thing I've ever read. Because the person's like, I go to a lot of movies and I've seen a lot of bad movies, but very few movies make me feel physical discomfort. It was like watching this movie made my body hurt watching it. So I've never felt so uncomfortable with what my eyes were perceiving on the screen. Because it's just soulless. Yeah, it's thoughtless. Um, you know, like there's this joke with Star Wars fans. Every time a new Star Wars trailer comes out, someone points at the screen and says, Oh, they got Glub Shit O in this one. And it's it's like a spot the reference type thing, right? Apparently, this entire movie is just like oh look, it's a thwonk. Oh look, it's a bomb, oh look, it's Star Fox.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Like it's just literally oh look, but there is no actual anything for Nintendo to mess that up. It's really weird. It does feel weird. Like Nintendo is so thoughtful and they craft things so carefully, and it's always a good story, like that's the most important part. Right. So this is so disappointing to hear.

SPEAKER_04 17:43

I beat Pokopia. My obsession. I beat it. I beat it. I got to the end of that game, my wife did as well. So I made her play it right after me, and she's beat it too. Really? It's honestly game of the year material. Oh my god. It's so good. But let me tell you something. That story, the story in that game, which you think like it's a it's a game about building habitats. What's the it's so meaningful and important and well written and well constructed. And I think about like the last Metroid game and the Donkey Kong game, and like Nintendo's very good at the subtle art of storytelling. Right. Making the Mario movie should be a cakewalk for them. Absolutely. It really should be. This should be the easiest thing in the world. 100%. The first one was just a layup. Like this is a no-brainer. Like, just and I think the funny sad truth is the Sonic movies are just absolutely stomping the Mario movies in terms of quality, which is like, I think, a heinous thing to say. Yeah. Because you know, I was a Sega kid, I had Sega growing up, I had the Hedgehog in the house. I didn't have Mario until GameCube era. Right. I didn't Nintendo 64. I had Smash Bros. Um, but I'd never played a Mario game until GameCube. Wow. Sunshine. But Sonic was always there, but everyone always told me Sonic sucked. Yep. And I was bullied and thrown into garbage cans because I liked Sonic the Hedgehog. But honestly, go watch it. Go watch a Sonic movie.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

Yeah. I never saw those movies, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 19:08

The third one is actually really good.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Don't tell me there's three. There's they're working on a fourth. Oh my god. Okay, I gotta go back to one.

SPEAKER_04 19:15

Legit, legit. Sonic the Hedgehog has the dumbest lore, but Shadow the Hedgehog, who was, you know, a clone creation by Dr. Robotnik, obviously. Um is played by Keanu Reeves.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Oh, no way.

SPEAKER_04 19:29

Legit second best role I've ever seen him in. Like he crushes it as Shadow the Hedgehog. It's so, it's so good. It's so exactly what it needs. Like he understood the assignment in a way. Did the lights just go out? I think they did. Okay. Well, it just got a little darker in here.

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Maybe it just got dark outside?

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Maybe maybe the sun is set. Oh, it's in the total eclipse. It's a total solar eclipse outside right now.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Is that really what's happening?

SPEAKER_04 19:57

No, I'm just making it up.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

It was really weird, though. That was a lot of things.

SPEAKER_04 20:00

That was weird.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Anyway.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog. Go see it. That's the moral of that story.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

I am gonna have to go watch those now.

SPEAKER_04 20:09

Just watch the third one.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Okay. I don't need to do the first or second.

SPEAKER_04 20:12

You don't need to. Third one's actually really good.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

I love it. Well, speaking of it, you said something funny and you reminded me of this random story. Games like Animal Crossing, which you said Pocopia is like, which I have not played yet, full disclosure. It's not a game you can really beat. No. I mean you can, but it just like continues on forever in Pocopio that way.

SPEAKER_04 20:31

Pocopia does continue on forever, but there is a goal.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

There is a goal.

SPEAKER_04 20:36

There is a goal that you have to do.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Right.

SPEAKER_04 20:38

And then you get credits and you have an emotional experience. It's a whole thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

The reason I say that is because when you said I beat it, it reminded me of I played Animal Grossing. And when I was a kid, I would make these intricate things, I would make these amazing islands, I would keep everything clean and tidy, everything had its space. But as an adult, I was like, ain't nobody got time for that. It's a job. And so I told my friend, I was like, I beat the game. They're like, that's not a thing. Like, you can't just beat the game. And then they looked at my island and they were like, you live on Trash Island. Yeah. This is the ugliest island I've ever seen. I'm like, I was just trying to maximize, get the house, get all the perks, and then I was done. Pay off that mortgage. Exactly. Beat the game. That's that was beating the game for me. I was like, that's that's it. I wanted all the upgrades, I wanted the cool stuff, and then I wanted to be done.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

I I will say uh Pocopia is gonna make Animal Crossing suck in the future.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

I'm so excited for Pocopia, though. Yeah, you gotta play. Some people on Discord said you gotta go play it too. So I'm not gonna have to go play it.

SPEAKER_04 21:34

It's really good. You gotta go play it. You really gotta go play it. Uh yeah. So that's the uh what are you drinking segment? Nice, that was great. We should just end it here. That was that was awesome. Great show.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

It's the whole pod. What's up? Oh, yeah, we actually have a topic. Oh, do we? Do you want to talk about something for real? Work related? Work related for real.

SPEAKER_04 21:53

I'm good. I'm good.

SPEAKER_03 21:55

I don't feel like it. Not today.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

You know what? Let's just drink our Manhattan specials and just not talk about them. Okay, fine. We're already here. We might as well talk.

Why Corporate Feels Busy

SPEAKER_04 22:09

What are we talking about today? What's the topic?

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Okay. I saw this post and I thought it would be really interesting to try to like decompose. Somebody was saying it sounded like a fresher. So someone that's new to their career, maybe a year or two in. Where was this post? This is on Reddit. I was browsing, perusing Reddit, and I saw this. And they're like, why does corporate feel so busy but not productive? And they were trying to root cause it because they're like, I don't really understand. Like everyone's moving around, everyone's doing all these things, but I don't really feel like we're really doing anything. Like the stuff that takes us a week, we could probably do in a day. But then we have these other meetings and these unnecessary email chains and these reviews of a PowerPoint deck just to share the same message we were going to share in the first place. Like it just feels busy. Like, why? And so I thought it'd be interesting for us to break that down.

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Where does this start? Would you believe me if I told you I had this exact conversation with like my boss's boss this week? Did you really? And I have a like a one-sentence explanation.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Wait, your boss's boss. That means somebody pretty high up.

SPEAKER_04 23:09

Well, we were just talking about like the you know, uh, the corporate world, like the enterprise and the speed of execution.

SPEAKER_01 23:15

I'm like, well, it's it's because of this. It's it's as easy as one sentence.

SPEAKER_04 23:19

It's as easy as one sentence.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

All right, you gotta hit me.

SPEAKER_04 23:22

The bigger the corporation, the bigger the customer, the more important the work, the longer it takes.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Not an S at the end, the longer it takes.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

No, the longer it takes. It's one sentence, not two.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

So the bigger the corporation.

SPEAKER_04 23:38

The bigger the customer. The bigger the work.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

The bigger the work, the longer it takes.

SPEAKER_04 23:42

The longer it takes.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yeah. This is like this is like uh in the office.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

When they do it, why use many words when a few do trick.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Think about it though. I mean, I guess that does make sense. Right? Like if you really break it down, or maybe it's not even the bigger the customer, maybe it is the bigger customer. But it is the bigger the customer. Well, yes, because if you have many customers, but I am Big Corp. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

I grow. I want Home Depot to be my customer. In order to get them to be our customer, we have to do very specific things to court them. Yep. That introduces checks, balances, time, marketing, sales, product. All focus is how do we win them as a customer. Okay. Yep. The effort and energy put into big customers requires much more effort and energy from everyone else, every department. Whereas when you're a startup or a small company, you're not thinking about big customer. Right. You're thinking about how do I spread out for the market. So you go fast, sloppy, yeah, even, right? Because you're you're not and you're never gonna get Home Depot. Yeah, that's the whole thing. The whole point of it is I gotta cast a net and get, I mean, you're a fisherman, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:06

Net fishing, you ain't gonna ever catch a grub lub. You're just not going to.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Lots of those out there.

SPEAKER_04 25:12

There, the grublub is a delicious, huge fish that requires bait, time, and patience.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Okay. I I could see this, but I think there's there's one thing that that's missing because I do think generally that's true. I think it's missing the human side of it.

SPEAKER_04 25:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

All right. And maybe it's factored in interweaved in there, but I think to not consider it would be an oversimplification. I think when when there is a big customer, the the CEO, whoever says, hey, we got this massive customer, we're targeting them. We need to build X, Y, Z features, platforms, whatever, because I've talked to their CEO and said, and they told me they have this need. So we need to go build that thing so they will buy from us. I think what happens is after that conversation, it starts then trickling down. And when it gets to certain layers, then ego and pride and things start to really come into place. So saying, I need my team to do this, but it has to make me look really good, and I need to put my mark on it to then impress the person who told me to do it. Yeah, it trickles down and down and down and down, where now everybody is trying to impress everybody to do the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_04 26:27

It is very funny. I like I like where you're going here because from the, you know, and we're closer to the top than the bottom now. Right. Right. And that's an unfortunate development of our career is we've we've lost touch of the bottom, but you clearly haven't. Uh, when you're close to the top, you realize the reason this is taking so long is because there are quality checks that gotta be put in place. Because if we lose this, that's a huge loss for us. Yep. So we're gonna take time and do it right. But that doesn't trickle down. I remember when we were at the bottom, we're like, why are we doing this? Yeah, what is the point of this? We're not thinking about big customer, right? We're thinking about what am I doing this week, right? Like, why am I doing this this week? Your point is is well put. At the top, it is because of direction and strategy that slows a company down. At the bottom, it's the lack of understanding of direction and strategy plus just poor behavior.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Yep, a hundred percent. Yeah, it's it's just I feel like generally what you said is so true, but I think a lot of the delay and a lot of the busyness comes from having to impress people who reflected it down, like you're saying. And I think that's where like all the busyness comes from and why you feel unproductive. I mean, there were things we would work on when we really didn't know what we were doing or why we were doing it. And we'd get to the end and we'd be like, Oh, I couldn't really figure it out. And everybody would just be like, ah, that's all right. Go work on something else. And we're like, okay, like we don't really understand, we're just gonna kill that thing, right? Oh, yeah, it's not that important. And you're like, why did I do it in the first place? Deprioritize. It was deprioritized, but that would happen all the time because we didn't really know why we were doing something in the first place and like what it was for. And so I think like as it gets higher and higher up, like that's the case. If you have 500 people that work for you, the person at the very bottom, you're not gonna care if they waste a week doing something. You're gonna be like, oh, whatever. Johnny worked on this this week, I don't care.

SPEAKER_04 28:24

So, okay, that you're a hundred percent right. And it's interesting because it doesn't really impact the top.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Yeah. You know, yeah, like what Johnny wastes a week on. It's like, whatever. Who cares?

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Yeah, it's true. Like, CEO does not care that Johnny wasted a week. Yeah, CEO does not care. CEO cares about how do we get Home Depot? Yep. Like, how do we close that deal? Or how do we start this marketing campaign to target all of the Home Depot?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Everyone working on that is single goal, and are my direct reports telling me that it's on track. Right.

SPEAKER_04 28:57

And when we launch whatever this campaign or product or whatever, it needs to be perfect. Yeah. So I'd rather we take an extra quarter to get it perfect than to launch prematurely and have it fail. Right. Now there's always that, like, I will say there is sometimes a rush when it's a competitive type thing. Yeah. First to market. I mean, you see ChatGPT and Claude, right? I think ChatGPT is always going to be ahead of Claude because they are reckless. They are moving fast and Claude is moving safe, or anthropic is moving safe. Um, so there you will see that, but I think for the most part, just like this Reddit poster has said, it's a lot more. Why does this boat turn so slowly?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:41

Giant iceberg ahead. Why is this boat turning as slow as it is?

SPEAKER_01 29:45

Yeah, you have 500 people. Why can't we get this done in a day?

SPEAKER_04 29:48

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Why does it take three weeks to put this presentation together?

SPEAKER_04 29:51

Well, there's also the mythical man month.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah, mythical man month is certainly part of it. I agree.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

And, you know, there's the Pareto principle we talked about before. Yep. I'm just bringing up all the things we've had podcasts on. So look these up. Look these up.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Watch the episodes because it's informative.

SPEAKER_04 30:05

Right. 80% of the work done by 20% of the people. So if you think about what that means, if you're not in that 20%, you're probably bored out of your mind. Yeah. You know, it's gonna feel slow for you.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

But honestly, when you look back at it, it might be the golden age of your career. That's true. You look back at those times where it was like our work didn't really have any impact on anything that was going on in the company, but we had a great time doing it. And actually, the more important work came after we left that team or we did a hackathon that actually was more important than anything we're working on in the first place.

SPEAKER_04 30:35

Let me tell you, as someone who is currently in the 20%, but has been in the 80%, I miss it. It's really nice.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Not having that pressure was the best. And you showing up to work and be like, I get to just hang out with my team and I'll work on whatever's in the backlog, and it's not gonna be that important or critical. It was the best feeling in the world.

SPEAKER_04 30:53

I mean, we used to bring our DSs into the office and just play Mario Kart.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Play ping pong for like two and a half hours.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

Two and a half hours, ping pong, Mario Kart. Let's watch Starbucks, let's go through the Frisbee. Oh, today's car wash day. Oh, let's go to that German restaurant for the four hours, four-hour lunch.

SPEAKER_01 31:07

Yeah, four-hour lunch. And it was funny because it wasn't just us. It was everyone, it was like our manager. It was like our whole entire team was just like, yeah, whatever, we're just having a good time.

SPEAKER_04 31:17

I don't think I've ever had such a good time at work as I did when we were in quality assurance, which we've talked about a million times in this pod. The golden years.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

You just we made pennies compared to what we make now. But either way, it was awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:32

I told someone recently, uh, someone who's fairly young in their career, because they were, you know, talking about how much they make and they make good money. And I was telling them how much I made when I was their age. Yeah. And they're like, when was that? I'm like, that's 2013. Yeah. Like, well, inflation would have fixed that, right? I'm like, inflation would have put me still very low for today.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Add maybe 10% on top of that. That's what I would have been doing.

SPEAKER_04 31:59

We were not making good money. So it's just funny. Yeah. It's funny. Start at the bottom, now I'm here, you know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

It's true. Yeah. But I think that is like for this person that posted it, like this this is why it happens, unfortunately. Is like, I do agree, like, bigger the company, bigger the customer, you know, bigger the work, and then all the way down to you know, bigger the team, you probably need to do it. But then I think the personality side of it becomes a lot of everyone's just trying to prove something to someone or put something impressive so that they can get their their mark on it. And then every manager doesn't want to show it until it's perfect to the person above them. And as you think about cascading layers, like maybe 20 jumps to get to the CEO. That's a lot of layers of like has to be perfect before I show my boss, and like has to go 20 times to do that. And then there's revisions. Like, think about how long that loop is just to get anything done.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

And think about what makes it back to you.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:51

Right? Like things get cut as it comes back down the review chain as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:55

So it I've been in rooms like presenting to the CEO of like Universal. And I think about in just back to that presentation we built, and like how many iterations we probably went through for that presentation. Hundreds, hundreds of presentations.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

How many of those iterations are were actually impactful?

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Probably very, very few.

SPEAKER_04 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Because a CEO just wants the highlights. He doesn't care about the visual presentation of the blocked summary. He just wants the words. Like, are we on track? Are we off track? And it's really interesting when you're in the room with those type of people because they ask those questions at the end. Like you'll say everything, and then they'll ask just like the for the for the plot line. They're like, where's the through line here? Okay, cool. That's all I needed. Like I didn't need these 500 words on these presentations, these 40 slides. I needed that one sentence to tell me we're good to go.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

Yeah. I I have learned the art of building the executive summary in every paper I write because it's three paragraphs, you put on the first page, you assume everyone with a V or a C in their name is only gonna read this part. Yep. So what do I need to cram in this little segment to get them to know what we do? Like they're they're gonna either bounce or they're gonna commit, and that's it.

SPEAKER_01 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:05

But it's it's a very interesting point. Now I will say, for this topic poster, how do you fix it if you're miserable?

Escaping Busy Work Inside Big Corp

SPEAKER_01 34:16

I think if you're feeling there's only a couple ways out. Okay. I think it's a it's a core, a big corp issue that you'll never escape.

SPEAKER_04 34:24

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Unfortunately, like startups don't have this problem. Exactly. Like at a smaller company, you're not gonna have this because it's more about just getting the job done. I think really the only way out is either get promoted and be the one telling people to do that work, that's busy work that you don't feel like doing, or that you need to delegate to your team. Or yeah, it's find a different, smaller team that does something different, whether it's a startup or whether you're out of the limelight of creating the unproductive work. Like you can also choose a job, you could be a developer or whatever, where you're probably not doing unproductive work. You probably are fixing actual bugs in the code base. And like you can pick a role that probably will have more value that just doesn't feel busy.

SPEAKER_04 35:08

I think another thing too, set goals for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

Like a lot of companies will do MBOs or KPIs or goals. Be aggressive with the goals you set or set goals that will empower you to go learn something new or to take on a new project, take on some new responsibility. Even if you can't move up or laterally in your company, you can always set new goals. And the nice thing about doing that is you usually have to work with your manager. Yep. So they'll be approved. Say, hey, you know, this quarter, I'd actually like to focus on implementing some new agentic AI agent in our development flow. And like, I know it's not really part of what we do, but I think it would actually benefit us in these ways. Set yourself up for rapid development. Yeah. Right? Like 100%. You can empower yourself in that way. And usually corporate goals are a through line to kind of get out of some of the stuff that might drive you crazy in your job. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

And just think about it this way is if you feel like you're doing stuff that's unproductive, think about like who is trying to impress who here. Unfortunately, that's a part of the politics of big corp, is you need to understand the game. Yes. And the game is this person is trying to put this presentation together to make this person happy. At the end of the day, that person that they're trying to make happy doesn't really care about this person and what they're putting together. So maybe I need to spend less time helping this person. And unfortunately, that game you only get by getting the visibility, getting the rooms, asking questions, having conversations, but just realize where the value actually is. And when it comes to goals, make sure they're value-based goals. Like, don't make a goal that's like, I'm gonna build 20 presentations this week. It's like, what does that mean? What's it get yet? Yeah, what what's the end result of that? Like, does the presentation help us land a sale? Does it help us with productivity? Like, you need to find a way to make that valuable and then go talk to your manager about it. So keep that in mind as you're putting together those goals.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

I think too, it's a it's an interesting point where you're talking about sort of looking at who helps who, who is seen by who. Something that would have benefited us earlier in our careers is actually taking the time to do skip levels. Yeah, request them, right? Where you skip the meeting with your manager to go talk to your manager's manager. This is not an unusual thing.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

No, very normal.

SPEAKER_04 37:21

Set a skip level, but instead of setting a skip level just to do it, do it to talk about strategy. If you actually go and talk to your boss's boss and say, hey, I just want to talk to you so I could understand the bigger strategy of what we're trying to build here, the organizational. And so get some of the why questions out of the way. I think that will actually help motivate you a little bit because we didn't understand why we were doing what we were doing. Right. We just did it because we were told to. But I think had we actually understood the greater picture, it could have spurned us to be more productive and to think a little more about what we were doing and produce a little bit more quality work than what we were producing, but we just didn't know. And you know, obviously that's that's a big part of corporate leadership, not bringing things down. Right. But you have to motivate yourself sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah. 100%. And I think in those meetings, don't make it about you.

SPEAKER_04 38:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 38:16

Ask questions about the strategy, about the company direction. Like ask questions that aren't like you trying to show off.

SPEAKER_04 38:24

Pretend you're interviewing your skip level about like what they do and why. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

And then ask for feedback. Be like, is there anything I could do? Like, my I'm hoping my career directory is to have your job one day. Like, is there anything I can do to help get ready for that? What helped you? Like, feed into that of them, giving them praise, asking them for feedback, and don't be like, Well, I tried this and I'm doing this. Like, they don't want to hear that. No, they just want to help and answer questions and feel like they are going to help you in some way. Feel that's important. Feel like they are helping you.

SPEAKER_04 38:54

I will say this. When I've had skip levels done with me, where someone will come either from outside my team or like, hey, I want to talk to you about you know what you and your team do. It excites me because I'm not talking to someone that I'm directly responsible for and have to give managerial guidance to and say it's more broad and strategic and educational. So don't feel like you're wasting their time or it's embarrassing or weird. This is a very natural part of career development. And for myself, I love to do skip levels with either in my case, I do it with a CEO. And it's always so interesting because I think I have a grasp on what we're doing. And then I'll talk to our CEO and I'm like, oh my gosh. Yep. I am off the mark. But it's great. I take so much away from that that then I put into my work.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:46

Right. Because he will tell me, hey, we're looking at this kind of you know, sale for the next two quarters. We're looking at this specific type of customer, and here's what I've heard. It's like, oh, you're talking to these people. Yeah, this is great. This is good information for me. This is gonna help me do my job better. Yeah, right. So I absolutely encourage it both as a recipient of them as well as someone who does it myself.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

Yeah, you get context to the bigger picture of the company. Like that's the key. And then you can use that to get more productive things done because you understand the bigger picture. If you don't understand the bigger picture, frankly, whatever you're doing, you don't understand the value of it. So you're probably not doing it right. Right. Doing it in a way that's gonna get you seen, all those things. You know what's really embarrassing to admit? Our first manager. I don't even know who their manager was. Like, I don't even know who the skip level would be. Is that terrible? You know what's funny? Our first manager.

SPEAKER_04 40:42

I did before you joined, I had a different manager. Yeah, I did know who their manager was when I joined, but things got so convoluted so quickly at that company that I couldn't tell either. When when you came out, I have no idea who our boss was.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

We worked for that person for years, and we had no idea who their boss was. Yeah. That's that's wild. I knew a couple levels above them, but I have no idea in between. That's crazy to think about. Was it Elias?

SPEAKER_04 41:19

Maybe? Maybe. No clue. Couldn't tell you. Wouldn't know. Didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

We'll never know. Never know now? Yeah, the company's gone. We'll never know the org chart back then.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

No, we'll never know the org chart from over 10 years ago. What a shame.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

What a shame. So this is a good PSA, too. If you don't know who the skip level is, you're just not even looking at the picture. Yeah, you're you're looking at the microscopic thing in front of you. You don't even know what the picture looks like right behind you. Try to figure that out. You should know the people.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

We were very lucky in our specific setup. And I'm sure that that kind of job doesn't exist anymore. Yep. It's been completely replaced by AI. And I don't even know if you have like fun jobs where you can goof off and just enjoy being with your team anymore, sadly, because all those jobs will get replaced by AI too. But I I do think, unfortunately, today, more than any day before and every day after, you need to know so much more than you've ever known to be able to move up and be successful at your job.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Yep.

Learning Fast In The AI Era

SPEAKER_04 42:28

Like sadly. 100%. Like you are competing against AI at this point for your job. So you do really need to understand the why, not only for your team, but for your organization and your company, if you want to keep your job. 100%. Best advice I can give you is if you're a fresher. Learn everything. There is to learn about your customer, your company, your company's structure, what each department does, who you get a contact in each department, because all of that matters, and that's things that AI can't do yet. Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

Well, something I would suggest is if you're a public company, and I started doing this many years ago, is look at the public earnings that are basically reported by your company.

SPEAKER_04 43:06

That's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Like look at their earnings statements. Look at the quarterly business reports that they have to put out as a public company legally. And when you read those presentations, you really understand like, oh, shoot, there's a whole entire arm of this business. I didn't even know was a thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:20

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Like you see the numbers, you see the types of business you're doing, you see the direction. So that's a big benefit. If you work at a public company, look at that, you're gonna get the big picture. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

Agree.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Pro tips. Pro tips. And if you're a fresher, I hope there's jobs like we had when we started. Because there were, it was just incredible. Like that was the best way to start.

SPEAKER_04 43:40

I will go to like coffee shops and restaurants, and I'll see teammates vibing the way we used to vibe. Excuse me, I didn't mean to burp into the microphone. I just don't think in corporate that level, that layer, it just can't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Yeah. I think AI would do it. Jobs way better, way better, way cheaper, way better, way better.

SPEAKER_04 44:05

I mean, we were automating our jobs, we automated our entire job in like two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Yeah, we automated our whole entire team fast.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

And then we never worked again until we had to work. So I just I don't it sucks. And I feel I feel like the entry-level computer science role, yeah, specifically it's gotta be tough. Is gone.

SPEAKER_01 44:28

It's gotta be impossible to find entry-level software engineering jobs these days.

SPEAKER_04 44:33

It uh remember when like everyone knew JavaScript, and we're like, we don't want people to know JavaScript, we want people to know Java.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 44:38

Because that was actually like the thing. Yep. And I'm like, JavaScript's so much more difficult than Java, but it's just no one knew how to program object-oriented Java code.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Nowadays, I don't think that problem exists. Where oh, I can just go specialize in this code base that's in demand right now and go do that. Like, nah.

SPEAKER_01 44:58

No, you gotta be an orchestrator. You gotta be an orchestrator. You gotta understand what you're asking and how to direct an agent to do it again. It's just totally different.

SPEAKER_04 45:06

How do you how do you graduate college and go do that?

SPEAKER_01 45:10

You gotta do stuff on the side. That's all I gotta say. I don't think many schools are teaching the things that the workforce needs right now yet. I think schools will get there. I think maybe some higher-end schools, but I think the the field of technology is changing so fast, and actually corporations are adopting it faster, probably than most people expected. Right. You're gonna have to be learning on your own on the side. Otherwise, getting into the job market's gonna be really, really hard.

SPEAKER_04 45:35

What is the point of college if you have to go learn on your own? That's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 45:39

Well, it's life, it's a life thing, life skills, working with people, like all that is important.

SPEAKER_04 45:44

It is important until you don't have to work with people anymore.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

Certain fields are going to be really hard for schools to they're gonna have to change everything. Yeah. Schools are gonna have to look at computer science and be like, um, are you still doing paper tests for coding in Java? Probably should kill those. Throw those to the ground.

SPEAKER_04 46:07

What about what about who codes who codes I well? I guess that's the thing, is like the AI probably codes the AI at this point.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

They're there You know who does the AI work is PhD students and researchers, and you gotta be in school for like 10 years to do that well.

SPEAKER_04 46:23

By the time you've graduated with a PhD in AI, if if you started today, I'm gonna go get a PhD in AI. Yep. By the time you graduated, we will all be without jobs.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

Yeah, you could you could have done AI 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

And now you would probably be in the most perfect spot ever.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

Correct. Well, for a time.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

For a time anyway.

SPEAKER_04 46:46

Is it is it worth giving 10 years of your life to then be out of work uh within 10 years? I don't know. Yeah, trade-offs.

SPEAKER_01 46:53

This is a topic for another day.

SPEAKER_04 46:57

Well, I think that answers the question though.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yeah, I think so. I think if yeah, if you think it's just busy work, you're probably in the wrong place or you don't see the bigger picture.

SPEAKER_04 47:04

Or alternatively, big company. Big customer. Big big big product.

SPEAKER_01 47:14

Wait, we don't even remember what it was.

SPEAKER_04 47:16

Big company, big customer. Big work. Bigger big strategy. Welcome back to Big Strategy. The podcast that could have been an email. I'm Big Bigsley.

SPEAKER_01 47:33

And I'm Big Chubsy.

SPEAKER_04 47:37

We're talking big today. Monster trucks.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

This is Daxes.

SPEAKER_04 47:43

My point stands.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_04 47:44

I think I think I think I think I nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

We just forgot what we said. I think I nailed it in one. Run it back, listen to the beginning. We've been drinking a lot of espresso.

SPEAKER_04 47:52

This stuff when the when the sugar crashed.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Listen, I can feel the sugar hitting tingly.

SPEAKER_04 47:57

Rome 1925.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

Rome. Love the pasta from Rome. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 48:05

I can't do that.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Mario. Don't say that. Luigi.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Don't say those names out loud.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

You made a terrible movie. Why you do this to me, huh? Why you insulting my culture?

Patreon Goals Discord And Closing

SPEAKER_01 48:18

It's so sad. We should have just drained a few of these. Well, I think we think that does it. I think it did. Uh we got exclusive content coming to our Patreon. Yeah, we do. So we're gonna do something fun. Do we know what we're doing?

SPEAKER_04 48:33

Uh no.

SPEAKER_01 48:34

Okay. Well, we're gonna do something fun.

SPEAKER_04 48:35

There's there, I mean the maybe we don't do this.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

Maybe we don't do this segment ever again because our brains are just fried.

SPEAKER_04 48:47

I can't string together a sentence at the moment. Every month, our patrons, our sweet, loving, wonderful patrons, every month we promise you exclusive content. I think the last one we did was great. It was a lot of fun. By the way, I think it was really good, if I may say so myself, about our own our own work for something that was pretty much on the fly.

SPEAKER_01 49:12

It's not at all by it actually wasn't what we're planning to do, but it was way more pertinent to what we just talked about. And I think it's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 49:18

And what I can tell you is if you're not a Patreon, you're missing out on some pretty good exclusive content. So sign up, sign up for our free tier. You don't get access to anything other than our love and affection, and sign up for the paid tier. You keep the podcast going. Uh, we do have we actually have goals, monetary goals that we're planning on hitting. Right now, we're almost cash flow positive on the podcast stream. Here's like instead of the business, right? So we're$18 a month right now. Uh, we're looking to get$22 a month, which means the podcast is now net neutral. I'm not losing money running this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

On the net net. So you're doing well.

SPEAKER_04 49:54

Yeah, we get we get four more$1 tier or just one$10 tier subs. We did it. We are in the positive. Now, from there, moving forward, all of that additional cash goes into a escrow.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

The discretionary fund.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

The discretionary fund. We have goals to take that money and put it towards bigger corporate strategy things. But can't do anything until we're cash lepositive.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Listen, so if we can hit our net net, we'll go back to McDonald's.

SPEAKER_04 50:23

I thought we were gonna do that anyway.

SPEAKER_01 50:25

Don't tell them that. Oh, okay. If you want to see us back at McDonald's, do the Patreon thing.

SPEAKER_04 50:31

Live from McDonald's.

SPEAKER_01 50:32

Live from McDonald's. Oh, that's gonna be super.

SPEAKER_04 50:34

It's corporate strategy.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

I'm not looking forward to it. I am looking forward to eating something there, though.

SPEAKER_04 50:38

Uh another uh McGriddle, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 50:41

Yes, another McGriddle would be fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 50:43

Sweet and salty. Dude, this with McGriddle would be fantastic. That with a McGridddle, I might need to drive you to the hospital afterwards. Which would be a fun episode. That's good content. It's Patreon exclusive content right there. Yeah, live from the live from the ER. From the ER corporate strategy. They really don't want us recording this, but we're doing it anyway. They said no cameras. I said no way.

SPEAKER_01 51:10

I love that. I think we did it.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

All right, I think we did. Hey, if uh if you want to join our Discord, you can do that. Yep, talk with us to hang out community. We got a great community. We knew there's some really good people there. I just shout out Discord.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

Yeah. Not the application.

SPEAKER_04 51:25

You suck Discord, but the people. Shout outs you. You know who you are. We love you. You're great people. We think you're really swell.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

We do. Quite swell.

SPEAKER_04 51:35

Quite swell. Uh please share this. As always. Because this is YouTube, and YouTube seems to be a place where a lot of you watch and listen now. Leave a comment. Those of you who've done it before, you know who you are. You're also Discordies. But it just goes without saying again. We really appreciate you leaving those comments. So thank you. It is actually helping. Continue to do that. Like, comment, subscribe, ring the bell, tell your friends, share the pod. Fun never ends. I think that's all you got.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

That was great. Okay. Thanks for it.

SPEAKER_04 52:08

Thanks as always for your listener and viewership. As always, I'm Anthony. And I'm Michael. I just realized we didn't do the intro. We did.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

We just didn't say our real names.

SPEAKER_04 52:18

We didn't say our real names.

SPEAKER_01 52:19

Okay, weird. We did though.

SPEAKER_04 52:21

We did though. I mean, if you don't know who we are by now, who are you? Do you not know?

SPEAKER_01 52:25

We won't know unless they join the Discord.

SPEAKER_04 52:27

That's true. Join the Discord so we can know who you are. Quit lurking. You know who you are. You. Uh, and you are on mute. We'll see you next week.