Big Brain Business
@BigBrainBizness • 18,870 subscribers
Learn to not suck at business
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Jeff Bezos' reaction to David Blaine chewing glass is how we always imagined billionaires laugh:
Big Brain Business1,810,416 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
AriZona co-founder Don Vultaggio explains how a Gatorade 24 oz can sold at Snapple's 16 oz price built AriZona Iced Tea: The whole thing started with a delivery truck in the wrong season. "I was in a grocery store and a Snapple truck pulled up. It was February and he was selling iced tea in February. And I said, 'Iced tea is not supposed to sell in the winter time.' And I went home that night. I told my wife I'm going in the tea business." He already had trucks and salespeople selling alcohol, so tea "was just a plug-in." All he needed was a better product in a can that would stand out. But his first instinct was to do exactly what everyone else was doing. "The short story is I thought I was going to put it in a glass bottle at first because that's what everybody else was doing." Snapple, Lipton and Gatorade were all in that same bottle. He drove to a factory in South Jersey that was making Snapple, run by a man he knew: "He said to me, 'So, you got a label?' I said, 'No, got a name.' 'No, got a package. No, but I have an idea.' He said, 'You know something, Don? That's better than most guys.'" Then the drive home killed it. He stopped at a 7-Eleven and bought a couple of Snapples to stare at on the way back to Brooklyn. "And I said, 'If I don't have a package that is going to be different than Snapple, the retailer is going to sell it at the same price as Snapple.' And why would a consumer choose me over them? They know Snapple. They're comfortable with Snapple." "By the time I got back to Brooklyn, I talked myself out of the tea business." Asked why he'd been so fixated on glass, he doesn't soften it: "Because I saw the other competition in glass bottle. And I thought in order to get into it, you should be in a light package. I was naive. Simpleminded." And he applied a standard to himself that most founders never do: "If I can't figure out how I'm going to get a consumer to buy me over Snapple, I don't deserve to be in the business." What restarted it was one line from his wife, who he'd known since high school. "One day leaving the house and my wife said, 'By the way, whatever happened with that idea?' And I said, 'You know something? I couldn't make it work.' And she said, 'I didn't think you were going to pull that one off.'" "Yeah. I knew her since high school, you know, and I said, 'What the heck is that?' You know, it's 7:00 in the morning and I get to the office and I said, 'I got to do something.'" The answer was sitting on a shelf in another 7-Eleven, in the sports drink aisle. A Gatorade in a 24 oz can. "I said, 'If I could sell that big can for the same price as Snapple 16 ounce, I'll be a 50% price advantage at the same price and I'll get consumers cuz it's going to stand out.'" That's the entire invention: same shelf, same price, 50% more product, in a package nobody in the tea aisle was using. He borrowed a format from an adjacent category and pointed it at a competitor he could never beat on brand loyalty, which changed what consumers were comparing in the first place. Don Vultaggio refuses to let anyone dress it up: "Years later, people say, 'Wow, that was ingenious.' No, it wasn't. It was an accident essentially."
Big Brain Business63,215 просмотров • 6 дней назад
Mark Cuban on the door-to-door garbage bag business that taught him how to sell at age 12: It started because his dad wouldn't buy him a pair of shoes. Cuban was 12, and he wanted new Converse. His dad was in the middle of a poker game. "Dad, I need a new pair of Converse, right?" Cuban recalls asking. His father wasn't moved: "I see those, you know, those shoes on your feet. They still work, right?" Cuban admitted they did. So his dad laid down the rule that would end up shaping his career: "Well, when you have a job, you can buy whatever you want, but until then, those shoes still work." Cuban pushed back with the obvious problem: "Dad, I can't get a job. I'm 12 years old." Then one of his dad's poker buddies spoke up. "Yeah, I got a job for you," the man said. "I've got these boxes of garbage bags and you can go sell them around the neighborhood." So that's what Cuban did. He knocked on doors with a simple pitch: "Hi, I'm your neighbor, Mark. Do you use garbage bags?" The economics were straightforward. The boxes cost him three dollars for a hundred. He sold them for six. Then he'd come back every couple of weeks to restock his neighbors whenever they needed more. He was clearing about 20 bucks a week, which felt like big time, and he got his shoes. The money was never the real lesson. What stuck with him was what selling actually is: "That taught me to be confident and that taught me that I could sell. And that taught me that selling was helping, not convincing." That distinction became the foundation of how Mark Cuban thinks about business. Once he realized everyone already needed garbage bags, the whole game clarified: "Once I figured out that everybody needed garbage bags, then it really became obvious to me that if I can find things that people needed, right, and wanted and I could do it a better way than what they were doing it, then I can make some money. And that's kind of stayed with me since."
Big Brain Business338,845 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
Jerry Seinfeld on why chasing your "passion" is embarrassing, and what to do instead: Seinfeld pushes back against the popular advice to find your one great passion in life. In his view, it's not just unnecessary, it's a little ridiculous. "Let go of this idea that you have to find this one great thing that is my passion. My great passion with your shirt torn open and your heaving pec muscles. It's embarrassing." Instead of chasing something dramatic, he offers a quieter alternative: "Find fascination. Fascination is way better than passion. It's not so sweaty." He explains why the heavy-breathing version of passion is actually counterproductive: "Just be willing to do your work as hard as you can with the ability you have. We don't need the heavy breathing and the outstretched arm from your passion. It makes co-workers uncomfortable in the cubicle next to you." Then Seinfeld offers what he calls his three real keys to life, no jokes: "Number one, bust your ass. Number two, pay attention. Number three, fall in love." Jerry Seinfeld elaborates on the first one: "You obviously already know whatever you're doing, I don't care if it's your job, your hobby, a relationship, getting a reservation at M Sushi, make an effort. Just pure stupid… effort." And here's the part worth sitting with: "Effort always yields a positive value even if the outcome of the effort is absolute failure of the desired result. This is a rule of life. Just swing the bat and pray is not a bad approach to a lot of things."
Big Brain Business1,158,492 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Ken Griffin, Founder and CEO of Citadel, on why a $2.50 Coke at McDonald's tells you everything about the U.S. economy: For Griffin, the price of a single fast-food drink captures the story of the past six years. "$2.50 for a Coke. And before the Biden administration, it was $0.99." That jump is a window into something much bigger: "The United States has endured prolonged and persistent inflation now for 6 years." Griffin explains that these everyday price shocks carry a psychological weight far heavier than the numbers themselves: "The rise of gasoline prices at the gas station, it's like a triggering event. It just brings back to all of us the fact that the purchasing power of the dollar has declined so precipitously for 6 years now." The Coke is just one example. Eggs are another. Griffin points to New York City prices in the range of "7, 8, 9 dollars for a dozen eggs", and notes that even though they've come down somewhat, they remain painfully elevated. Each of these small, daily encounters with higher prices adds up to something larger. A creeping anxiety about the future: "I think everybody in our country, when we see a price shock in any of our day-to-day commodities, gasoline for example, it's just deeply triggering. And I think that there's just a general apprehension of how much more purchasing power are we going to lose because of the economic policies that we're pursuing in Washington." His message to policymakers is direct: "It's very important that this administration and that the legislature continues to stay focused on how do we strengthen the purchasing power of the dollar? How do we make sure that Americans' paychecks go further?" The takeaway: a $2.50 Coke isn't really about a Coke. It's about what the dollar in your pocket can no longer buy at the drive-thru, the gas pump, and the grocery aisle. Until purchasing power is restored, that frustration will keep growing into something much harder to ignore.
Big Brain Business853,646 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Tim Cook reveals a surprising truth about hiring at the world's biggest tech company: You don't need to know how to code to work at Apple. "We hire people from all walks of life and people that have college degrees, people that don't. People that code, people that don't." Tim is a vocal advocate for learning to code, but not because it's a prerequisite for getting hired. He sees it as something far broader: "I do recommend coding for everyone to learn because I think it's a form of expressing yourself and it's a global language and it's the only global language that we all share is coding." So if coding isn't the golden ticket, what is? Tim explains that the traits he values most have nothing to do with technical credentials. There are three that matter above all else. The first is collaboration. Not just the willingness to work with others, but a deep, genuine belief that teams produce better outcomes than individuals ever could: "Can they really collaborate? Do they deeply believe that one plus one equals three?" The second is curiosity. Tim Cook gravitates toward people who are relentless in their need to understand, people who never stop probing how the world works and why people think the way they do: "I think curiosity is a trait that I love about people, about people that ask questions that are so curious about how things work, how people think. All of the why and how questions." The third is creativity. This is where everything comes together. Apple's entire model depends on anticipating needs that consumers haven't even recognised yet: "We're looking for people that can see around the corner because ultimately we want to create products that people can't live without, but they didn't know they needed." Collaboration. Curiosity. Creativity. None of them show up on a résumé, and none of them require a degree. But according to Tim Cook, they're exactly what makes a great team player at Apple.
Big Brain Business439,582 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
A young Sam Altman pitching Loopt, the $175M startup he sold for $43M before going on to lead YC and OpenAI:
Big Brain Business762,284 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Jeff Bezos' heartwarming reaction when a veteran employee says Blue Origin is the best company he's worked for in 36 years:
Big Brain Business1,226,715 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад
Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel, has a $10 plaque behind his desk that reads: "If we're all going to eat, someone has to sell." Of all the things this man could surround himself with, he chose a cheap plaque with a blunt truth about business. "You're always selling. You're selling to candidates. You're selling to vendors, you're selling to counterparties, you're selling to customers." And if you're always selling, you know what you're going to hear a lot of? "No." Griffin doesn't sugarcoat it. He tells two stories that illustrate just how brutal rejection can be. 1994 was a rough year, with Citadel losing ~4% of its capital. Griffin flew to Switzerland for a crucial lunch meeting, sat down, and his guest arrived only to say: "Oh, I thought you were John Griffin from Fen Church. I got to go." His lunch date got up and left the table. Later that afternoon, a Swiss banker spent 45 minutes with him in a beautiful office, smoking a cigar, before closing with: "Such a pity that such a bright young man picked the wrong career." Two rejections in one day for the founder of one of the most successful hedge funds in history — and his takeaway was simply this: "You just have to tolerate. You're going to hear no a lot, but you need to become accustomed to having to market your ideas and market what you represent and what you stand for." Absorbing rejection and continuing anyway is the actual skill, whether you're hiring, raising capital, or winning customers. Most people avoid selling because they're afraid of no. The ones who build great things have learned to expect it.
Big Brain Business1,053,165 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад
When asked a great question at MIT in 1992, Steve Jobs sat in silence for 19 seconds before giving his most honest answer.
Big Brain Business468,540 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Jeff Bezos on why too many ideas can destroy a company, and the discipline that built Amazon's inventive edge: "Jeff, you have enough ideas to destroy Amazon." That's what senior executive Jeff Wilke told Bezos after just one year of working together. Bezos was confused. He pushed back: "What do you mean?" Wilke was a manufacturing expert. He explained it simply: Every new idea Bezos released created a backlog. Work piling up, adding no value, creating distraction instead. The fix wasn't to stop having ideas. It was to control when they came out: "You have to release the work at the right rate that the organisation can accept it." So Jeff Bezos changed how he operated. He started keeping lists, holding ideas back, and waiting until the organisation had the bandwidth to absorb them. But then he flipped the problem entirely. He asked: "How do I build an organisation that's ready for more ideas?" His answer was structural: get the right senior team, give leaders real executive bandwidth, and build a company capable of running multiple bets at once. And there's a benefit he didn't expect. Slowing down made the ideas themselves better: "If you are releasing the ideas through time, it forces you to prioritise them better. You end up sharpening the ideas better." The constraint becomes a filter. The ideas that survive the wait are the ones worth acting on. The result? Faster execution, less distraction, and better ideas.
Big Brain Business873,442 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад
![Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky explains the one thing Barack Obama told him that changed how he thinks about relationships: Chesky went to Obama at a point when he thought what he was missing was romance. "I remember telling him, I think I need to be in another relationship. And he said, I don't think you yet need to be in a relationship. I think what you need are friends." Chesky's first reaction was defensive: "And I thought to myself, but I have friends. What do you mean?" Then Obama explained what he actually meant. He described his own circle, a small fixed set of people, most of whom predated the presidency: "He had these like 15 people in his life, many of them... mostly before he was president. And they were totally connected." Fifteen people who were current on his life at all times. That's when the distinction landed for Chesky. He had people, but not connection, and there was a simple test that separated the two: "I realized I had all these people in my life. But if I call them first, they [say] what's going on? Like what's new with you? And I have to get them all up to speed in my life." Brian Chesky states the rule directly: "If you have someone in your life where if you were to call them or text them, you have to get them up to speed, then you're not connected. People you're connected to are already up to speed." The measure isn't how many people you know or how often you see them. It's whether you have to brief them before you can say anything real. From there Chesky makes a claim that cuts against how most people experience loneliness: "I actually think that most of us being alone or being lonely is an illusion. Or maybe the illusion is that like people don't love us. And the fact is we have all these people, but we're not reaching out to them. And they're also not reaching out to us. And everyone's waiting for someone else to take some initiative." What's missing is anyone willing to move first. And the friction is close to zero: "And it seems crazy cuz we're just a text message away from our entire life." So why doesn't it happen? Chesky points at the substitute we reach for instead: "And yet what do we do? We open the phone and instead of texting people or facetiming them or like seeing them, we — what do we do? Open social media." Then he gives the image that makes the whole thing click: "So opening social media is like going to a dinner party except you don't go inside. You're looking in the window." He's careful not to write the platforms off entirely: "It's great if it's a way station to meet people but if you're just look in the window and that's your social life then you're going to feel really sad." The trouble starts when the window becomes the room. You see who's there, who's laughing, who's with whom, and none of it counts as attendance. You put the phone down feeling like you were social, and somehow worse. Chesky ends with an instruction rather than an observation: "So knock on the door and walk in."](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2094440458470768641/amplify_video_thumb/2094440370562293762/img/aAGMgXUX1g9wkc1E.jpg)
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky explains the one thing Barack Obama told him that changed how he thinks about relationships: Chesky went to Obama at a point when he thought what he was missing was romance. "I remember telling him, I think I need to be in another relationship. And he said, I don't think you yet need to be in a relationship. I think what you need are friends." Chesky's first reaction was defensive: "And I thought to myself, but I have friends. What do you mean?" Then Obama explained what he actually meant. He described his own circle, a small fixed set of people, most of whom predated the presidency: "He had these like 15 people in his life, many of them... mostly before he was president. And they were totally connected." Fifteen people who were current on his life at all times. That's when the distinction landed for Chesky. He had people, but not connection, and there was a simple test that separated the two: "I realized I had all these people in my life. But if I call them first, they [say] what's going on? Like what's new with you? And I have to get them all up to speed in my life." Brian Chesky states the rule directly: "If you have someone in your life where if you were to call them or text them, you have to get them up to speed, then you're not connected. People you're connected to are already up to speed." The measure isn't how many people you know or how often you see them. It's whether you have to brief them before you can say anything real. From there Chesky makes a claim that cuts against how most people experience loneliness: "I actually think that most of us being alone or being lonely is an illusion. Or maybe the illusion is that like people don't love us. And the fact is we have all these people, but we're not reaching out to them. And they're also not reaching out to us. And everyone's waiting for someone else to take some initiative." What's missing is anyone willing to move first. And the friction is close to zero: "And it seems crazy cuz we're just a text message away from our entire life." So why doesn't it happen? Chesky points at the substitute we reach for instead: "And yet what do we do? We open the phone and instead of texting people or facetiming them or like seeing them, we — what do we do? Open social media." Then he gives the image that makes the whole thing click: "So opening social media is like going to a dinner party except you don't go inside. You're looking in the window." He's careful not to write the platforms off entirely: "It's great if it's a way station to meet people but if you're just look in the window and that's your social life then you're going to feel really sad." The trouble starts when the window becomes the room. You see who's there, who's laughing, who's with whom, and none of it counts as attendance. You put the phone down feeling like you were social, and somehow worse. Chesky ends with an instruction rather than an observation: "So knock on the door and walk in."
Big Brain Business49,569 просмотров • 12 дней назад
Elon Musk shares his favorite economist joke and it's a brutal takedown of how we measure the economy:
Big Brain Business502,142 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
![Actor William Fichtner explains how the lowest point of his career, long before his success, became the turning point that kept him going: He shares a moment from his early days in New York when everything he'd worked for felt like it was slipping away. "I think I was 30 years old and I was in New York and I hit the end of the road. I ran out of money. I had no commercial residual. I had nothing." After a few years of scraping by, a little money in theater and a few residuals from commercials, he had to go back to waiting tables. And it crushed him to compare himself to everyone he'd come up with: "I felt like I was falling backwards and I was 30 now. Everybody that I knew I graduated college with [had] a company car and I was just... it was depressing." He describes the morning he went to ask for a brunch shift at the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, a place he knew people went to: "I woke up. I was brushing my teeth. I started crying. I really was. I was walking that street going, 'Just, it's all right, man. It's all right. You're not falling backwards. You're not going off the end of the earth.'" On the walk, it got worse before it got better. He passed someone from his past: "I passed a guy that I hadn't seen in a couple of years that was like kind of like an old friend. And I said hi to him and he walked by and he just kind of looked at me like he didn't recognize me. It was horrible. It was just horrible." Then he walked into the restaurant, and the manager met him with hostility, telling him he was on the schedule the day before, hadn't even started, and was already fired. But instead of breaking him, it freed him: "I said, 'Thank you.' I walked out of there. I said, 'I have absolutely nothing right now and I'm feeling so good and I'm not working at your f****** restaurant today, buddy.'" He went home to find a place to re-energize. Looking back, that brutal day became a great one: "Just great, great day." The lowest point can feel like proof you're failing, but sometimes it's just part of the process. Years before his success, that morning could have ended his career. Instead it became the turning point that kept him going.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2065056579964264608/amplify_video_thumb/2065056499353956352/img/2kl6vYnzNMlry2Et.jpg)
Actor William Fichtner explains how the lowest point of his career, long before his success, became the turning point that kept him going: He shares a moment from his early days in New York when everything he'd worked for felt like it was slipping away. "I think I was 30 years old and I was in New York and I hit the end of the road. I ran out of money. I had no commercial residual. I had nothing." After a few years of scraping by, a little money in theater and a few residuals from commercials, he had to go back to waiting tables. And it crushed him to compare himself to everyone he'd come up with: "I felt like I was falling backwards and I was 30 now. Everybody that I knew I graduated college with [had] a company car and I was just... it was depressing." He describes the morning he went to ask for a brunch shift at the White Horse Tavern in the West Village, a place he knew people went to: "I woke up. I was brushing my teeth. I started crying. I really was. I was walking that street going, 'Just, it's all right, man. It's all right. You're not falling backwards. You're not going off the end of the earth.'" On the walk, it got worse before it got better. He passed someone from his past: "I passed a guy that I hadn't seen in a couple of years that was like kind of like an old friend. And I said hi to him and he walked by and he just kind of looked at me like he didn't recognize me. It was horrible. It was just horrible." Then he walked into the restaurant, and the manager met him with hostility, telling him he was on the schedule the day before, hadn't even started, and was already fired. But instead of breaking him, it freed him: "I said, 'Thank you.' I walked out of there. I said, 'I have absolutely nothing right now and I'm feeling so good and I'm not working at your f****** restaurant today, buddy.'" He went home to find a place to re-energize. Looking back, that brutal day became a great one: "Just great, great day." The lowest point can feel like proof you're failing, but sometimes it's just part of the process. Years before his success, that morning could have ended his career. Instead it became the turning point that kept him going.
Big Brain Business348,290 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
Byron Allen, Founder of Allen Media Group, explains how treating business like a contact sport unlocks unlimited capital: Byron once borrowed $310 million on a Friday to acquire the Weather Channel. He paid it back in five months. When the lender hit him with a $28 million prepayment penalty for closing too quickly, he paid that too. His philosophy on why capital is never the real obstacle: "Business is a contact sport. You're nothing more than economic athletes. They will see your passion. They will see your stats. And they will always want you on their team because you make them money." The framing shift here is everything. Byron sees founders as athletes whose performance is being evaluated by people who need them to win. "You have unlimited amounts of capital available to you if your hustle is at the highest level." Byron Allen drives the point home: "Keep your hustle at the highest level because capital is always looking for you to get the money back and a return. There's trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of capital looking for you. Go get it." The takeaway: Capital is hunting for operators who can put up the stats. Hustle at the highest level, and the money will find you.
Big Brain Business496,725 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, on why showing up early and staying late beats being the smartest person in the room: "I'm not smarter than anybody else, but I can outwork you." Bloomberg shares his key to success: "Make sure you're the first one in there every day and the last one to leave. Don't ever take a lunch break or go to the bathroom. You keep working. You never know when that opportunity is going to come along." He explains how this approach shaped his early career at Salomon Brothers. The managing partner of the company, Bill Salomon, was the second person to arrive each morning. Mike Bloomberg was the only other one in the big trading room. "If he had needed to borrow a match… if he wanted to ask something about a newspaper or a stock, he came over and so we became buddies." The same thing happened at the end of the day. The number two guy, John Gutfreund, was the last one to leave except for Bloomberg. They'd share a cab or take the subway uptown together. "You can't control that you're the smartest guy. There'll always be somebody smarter. But if you're there, then you absorb things. You put things together in ways that if you didn't have all that experience…" He compares it to skiing: "Reading a book on skiing doesn't teach you how to ski. You got to go and you got to ski and get lots of miles under your skis. And incidentally, if you don't fall, you're not skiing hard enough and you're not learning anything." Bloomberg also touches on resilience when things don't go your way: "You got to be smart enough to say, 'Hey, I tried it. Don't let your ego get in the way. I can't keep doing this. I've got to earn a living, but a year from now, I'm going to come up with a better idea and then I'll go back and do it again.'" He closes with a mindset that defined his career: "There's never been a day that I haven't looked forward to going into work. Even the days I knew I was going to get beaten up. Even the day I knew I was going to get fired. I'd never been fired before. I wonder what it's like. Okay, let's go find out."
Big Brain Business489,164 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, on the most effective way to eliminate meetings: "The reason there's too many meetings in a company isn't because they don't have meeting-no-meeting Wednesdays. It's because they have too many people." He advocates for a small, elite workforce over bloated teams: "We want a small, lean, elite, highly skilled team, not a team of kind of mid-level battalion type people. And the reason why is every person brings a communication tax." He explains how mediocre hiring compounds into dysfunction: "The old saying: A players hire A players. B players hire C players. I would like to amend it: B players hire lots of C players. Because those are the kind of people that like building empires." And those C players can't do the work alone, so they hire more people, who go in different directions, creating even more meetings and admin tax. His solution at Airbnb was radical—eliminate management layers entirely: "I got rid of layers of management. I went back to functional. You can only manage the function if you're an expert. You don't manage people. You manage people through the work." He credits this philosophy to Jony Ive, who believed most design leaders get it backwards. Ive's approach was to focus on the work itself and build a team that designs together. Elite teams don't need elaborate management structures — they need leaders who manage through the work itself.
Big Brain Business749,547 просмотров • 8 месяцев назад
A random YouTuber casually questioned SpaceX's design logic, and Elon Musk rewrote it on the spot:
Big Brain Business449,753 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад