How are you you got COVID or what? No, I don't have COVID but I was exposed to a couple of people with COVID first exposure was on Friday, okay, and I've tested since they have tested three or four times since then and I'm good But then the other exposure was yesterday Which was wild what happened as you may notice Big wax isn't here. Hey I mean, we don't know it's like I'm yesterday. Let me see what happened yesterday. Okay. I got tested. I Did a PCR test Sunday? Did another PCR test Monday morning?  I when I was doing a Netflix special. I got a Test that was positive freaked out Had a guy come to the crib and give me two Different tests. He gave me two rapid tests. Both of those rapid tests were negative Wow, so I test positive test negative twice Test again the next day Tested positive. I was positive for COVID Did you have it though? Did you actually have cold?   Yeah, I think I would be able to I fine-tune my pussy tasting skills by this point in my life, but But the real reason I knew that I'm the real reason I knew that I wasn't tasting things because she came That'll do it down there, baby If all guys are inside effect of COVID your girls like get cold. Yeah. Yeah, she wanted me to get that Delta the whole thing Run it back. I don't know what's going on. I'm just being I'd rather be safe than sorry I'll get another PCR test on Wednesday because you know, I got a show to do baby. Yeah, I don't think I got a radio show from the house I can do breakfast up from the house. I can't do the guys on the truth from the house No, you need to get in there.  That might be you Yeah, no, I think I think I got it early on too.  I was up tea drink rum punch go in the ocean bro take it to the ocean That literally that literally was our mindset, but literally when I got back. I didn't get over that. I Ain't get over that to like mid-February.  No, that's true. That's true. No, but we hear man. You know, I don't know I don't I don't know what what what wax is doing, but but we're here What did you see this week that you thought that was positively brilliant? What did you see that made you say?  Like I thought that absolutely brilliant thing. Did you are you've been following the Dave Portnoy thing at all? And I Thought the way that he handled the Me Too allegation was brilliant because like He completely flipped it to a hit piece like he just changed the conversation Like it went from an allegation against him to oh This is a hit piece and he proved all all these people had you know Disliked them in the past and they've been disingenuous and they're reporting and all this other stuff and now the conversation is about a hit piece Well, I mean if you're being honest with each other a lot of these a lot of these were hip pieces, you know, I mean This is this is something that needs to change It's not like, you know, America's culture towards women should not change it absolutely should change You know, it has changed in a lot of ways for the better, but we can't act like a lot of people didn't weaponize You know the Me Too movement, of course We saw we saw it play out in politics. So crazy whether it was Brett Kavanaugh, Trump, Biden Every politician everybody going up for office it feels like no matter who it is There's just something coming out of the work would work And it just became this like perfect tool to take someone down that you didn't like Yeah, that's I mean, yeah, we did definitely weaponize it I don't I don't know all the details of the port the Portnoy Dave Portnoy case, but I definitely saw him You know start pointing the finger back at people and by the way, there's nothing wrong with that Like, you know, some people just don't don't care to sue Because you know, you know, it costs too much time. It costs too much energy waste too many resources, but Clearly Dave got a lot of time. Yeah Yeah, it's it's weird. It's like, I don't know if you assassinate my character. What other choice do I have? 100% instead of defending my character.  Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah What do you thought on that?  I think baby did I Think that number one he had every right to record and protect himself Because of what we're talking about right now We live in an era where whoever gets the first narrative out there wins and you know, the baby is already fighting All this other stuff, but that we think we've seen over the past couple of months So it's like does he need that does he need, you know, a woman jumping out there saying X Y and Z Not saying she would but what if she did so he's he's recording himself, you know for insurance It's easy. I thought I was like, well, maybe he should have just recorded it and not went live with it Yeah, but I don't know. Maybe you shouldn't show people in real time what's going on The other thing he did that was just crazy. You had no business disrespecting her like that.     Yeah, he made himself look worse.  Here's the thing What's who does I saw that when I saw the baby called the police? I Was like something's going down. I actually respect it because I What how else do you want him to handle that like you want him to get on some going shit? charges Like aren't you a street dude?  Like what?  What's the deal you break explain the rules to me because I don't know police on your baby mama Like because she did simple assault. What's simple assault? I Don't know I don't make the rules because I don't play about those rules no more. I am a Corporate Man, I am a tax-paying citizen. I vote Okay, I have I have security Armed and otherwise. I love the life. I live.   What do you mean you came back too soon? You know I'm saying you came back too soon. She's gonna calm down.  Like like she's an artist. She's a singer. Oh My bad, she's an artist my bad Whatever No, no, no, no show to your larger point, you know, let's take it out in this situation Very true, man.  And she said in the video.     I was thinking about this the other day. I'm curious about your perspective on it But like you know how like here in the first world We got all these like rules so that we can have like a better society because we like care about human beings You know, so we got like rules like like children aren't allowed to work You know, they're not allowed to work because that could be abusive practices to children Right because the kids used to work in the factories.   You're doing the things. It's wrong like I was just thinking about this the other day Too like you know how like every time we have one of these climate Arrangements, you know like the climate accords or whatever and and they try to tell China and India to stop polluting right? They're like hey You got to stop using coal because you're polluting the world and it's like if I'm China and India I'd be I'd tell the rest of us.   It's just there's a border so we get to pretend like we're not Yeah, yeah We're supporting all the bad things You know I mean but as long as life is good for us here, we can just ignore it and maybe that's good Maybe that's cool, but I guess I just get annoyed when people act holier than now It's just like I'm it's cool But it's kind of rocking us to sleep man And it's something that do ball says all the time if you just want to see how America's eventually gonna shape out just look at what's going on in other countries and Bro, we just simply not equipped for it. What do you mean? Like we're just not equipped for anything like we're not equipped for anything Potentially bad that could happen here in America. We saw that last year with the pandemic, bro Like we're not equipped for anything. We're like we're not equipped for I mean this will probably never happen We're not equipped for if a nuclear weapon hits us We're definitely not a quick. We're definitely not equipped for for pandemics You know what I'm saying?  Are you kidding me? Inflation that are all-time high.   Maybe cuz The stock market is humming and a lot of times that's how we're defined the economy is like There are so many jobs that they're begging people to work like you can get a job anybody who's unemployed right now That's my choice you You know they had a bunch they had a great resignation I forget the exact number, but it was like you're the highest level of resignations ever this year Like people just decided they did not want to go back to work because some people want to be entrepreneurs A lot of people, you know, they were collecting the PPPs and the unemployment, right? And now they're at a point right now where it's like it's a lot of jobs But it's not job and people necessarily want to work but inflation is sky-high right now Yo, first of all, I don't even know what that means with inflation. I pretend like I know what it means I don't know what that means.   I think coffee is good coffee gets here.  I'm pretty good right now things that I need right now pretty good Yes, I mean if it right like that's all the articles that came out yesterday in the day is so much economic discontent That's why they say Joe Biden's approval rating is so fucking low rating is low because he's dead That's why This is embarrassing. How is this not more embarrassing than Trump? the most embarrassing part about this is that it completely exposes that the presidential position is Useless it you could put anybody at the poor guy I feel bad for him because you know, there's no way that he dedicated his whole life to politics He knows how useless the position is you can just put anybody in there It doesn't matter and he's like y'all are really gonna make me do this before I die Y'all are really gonna force me to be president.  You kept chasing chasing it and then when you finally got it, you realize it's not even what I wanted fam I don't think he even wanted I think he wanted it early and then once he saw what it was he was like No, I'm gonna be a vice president.  They got Kamala in a bunker somewhere dog.  She's trying to be sweet and she's clearly like a smart effective She was really a smart effective I don't know if you call them like politician or like public servant regardless if you liked her policies or not She was able to implement them, right? So it's like but for some reason it is just you know, like Taylor Swift doesn't seem authentic You know what I mean?  Because just like Taylor Swift just like Kamala.  We live in an age of transparency. Yo, I'm reading right now. I'm reading Will's book man. Will Smith. Oh, yeah first of all The presentation that will send his book in is by far one of the greatest presentations I've ever seen in my life opposing on Instagram like last week Okay, but it's litter it was literally like this box that had these keys and you Take the letter and put the letter on certain words and different flaps open up like it was it was unreal And then you can unhinge the flaps and hang them up on your wall like plaques Like I got the plaques that came with the box hanging up in the kitchen and our in our breakfast area So, you know, the girls can see that every morning when they're eating But it's like one thing that I realized man and it's so interesting seeing somebody like Will Smith go through this Will Smith was playing a character for 40 years And when you read his book The character was created for personal and professional reasons. Yeah, welcome to a life He felt like a coward, huh? Welcome to adulthood Yeah, we all pretend a little bit.  Yes. Think about it. Yes. Yes. Yes.  Yep Because his character was squeaky clean Didn't even curse. Mm-hmm. You know got flack from the hip-hop community because folks said he was too soft all of this other stuff But that was a character. That's what Kamala, that's what Taylor Swift. That's what they're doing. That does not resonate because just like Robert Green said in the 48 laws of power never appeared too perfect, bro You know, it's funny is that the There is an immense power to Gaining fame and then losing it The the most normal people and one of the best thing that happened to me in my career was getting like a little like fame early on with like guy code and then losing it and I Got to reset and go. Hey, who am I because the first time you get famous at least for me Like I found myself wanting to justify Why I was on TV to the people I met, you know, like these people would be fans and I'd be like I want to deliver what they saw on TV I want to make them laugh I want to live up to this expectation that they have for me, right? And you you're living for these other people. That's probably what what will was talking about And I'm sure you earlier in your career you walked in the room and everybody's like here's the wild guy Charlotte man of God. You're like, okay.  And then you can lean further into the character that gets rewarded you look at a guy like Andrew dice clay who's a Jewish guy from Brooklyn and then Cultivates this very Italian influenced character and then ends up living as that and he is Yeah, you didn't know this Oh, it's a character and now he now he has to be that that is who he is I'm sure that there's aspects of this there really him.   Yeah, but when when things started like hitting the wall and the movies weren't you know Doing the numbers that they once were and You know, hollywood is like, I know you used to get this but let me give you this It's like yo, it really made him have to have to hit reset and lost the fame Yeah, it's a little bit of a lost game. No, he didn't lose the fame but he I mean will smith will always be famous forever, but he lost some of that influence He lost some of it and he because he lost it. He didn't have to chase it to keep up with it So now he's forced to make this decision Okay, I'm not making as much as I used to do and I'm not doing let's say the films that I used to do What do I really want to do? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be a blessing. I'm telling you man. It can be a blessing Because for me it was the exact opposite. I was Super successful and wasn't happy. Yep. You know what I'm saying?   Yeah, what are you doing?   I mean all of it is so interesting, but it's a journey that I hope everybody I hope everybody gets to go on man Like yo, you do not have to be stuck in no one place Like I would not want to be the person who was a character in their 20s and still betraying that character in their 30s Their 40s and yo hip-hop. This is why I love the fact that hip-hop has gotten old because you've watched Jay Z evolve Into Sean Carter like this is that's who he is. He's the guy that wanted to grow his hair out And be married and be in the art and everything else And and those are those are things that develop over time Same thing with world smith will smith is like a really spiritual dude You know not he's he's always been that way when you read his book because of his grandmother and his mom and everything else but boy When you set a goal and your goal is to be the biggest movie star in the world And then you achieve that That's great But what does that do for you as a human? What does that do for you as a man? What does that do for you as a person?  Yeah, they just do. Yeah, but but but what are you as a man? Yeah, it is a privilege to be able to go on that journey though You know I'm saying like a lot of people got to worry about making ends meet They can't even they can't even sit back and relax and go am I being myself? right They're going I got to go to work and I got to be this character that I put on to work. That's why like Everybody got to play a character like you go to work at the corporate office. You're not being you You know, I think really wealthy people get to have this self exploration Because they have the privilege to be themselves But if you work at uh, you know blah blah blah and blah blah blah Johnson and Johnson or whatever you walk into work You don't get to just be you you don't get to dress how you want to dress Talk to people how you want to talk you got to be a character too.  I find that Some of the most whole people I meet Some of the most healed people I meet are people who are not Celebrities at all are who aren't well off at all You know what I mean? Like they just That's just how they choose to live life and they're also very happy Yeah, you know what I mean? Like that's why I always say happiness is subjective Like you could be the guy with 50 million dollars and be miserable Or you could be the guy with 50 thousand dollars You know, I mean are five thousand dollars And be happy as hell just because of the way you choose to show up in life Like I really do be wondering is elan must happen Yeah I'm on that too. Like, uh, yeah, I don't know that is a great question. I don't know And what makes me say things like that is how I see how he he got at bernie this week.  Trust me all the other 1% They was like You ever seen that meme with the dude in the glasses in the hoodie?  Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not a big fan of bernie's economic plan at all But having everybody pay their pay their fair share is I think a very reasonable thing like there's other things you would clobber him about and uh The thing that's interesting about elan. He's so brilliant is that He got everybody to buy into tesla right and Once everybody is tied into your economic success Nobody criticizes you It's like china got the world by the balls right now because they make all of the goods that we use So they can have a concentration camp of muslim chinese people and the rest of the world just looks the other way right because We need to get our t-shirts. We need to get our containers. We need to get all the things we need They made the world dependent on them and that's what elan did everybody in this room probably right now Everybody on the zoom is invested in tesla stock. So I don't want to see elan go down I want to see elan keep thriving because they're not dropped Yeah, my 13 year old daughter literally was talking to me last night saying how she don't want no tesla stock Whoa, and I'm like, well actually now's the time to buy But like it's you know, it's it's like that's the other part of life too when you start having kids man and like I got some really brilliant kids like my daughter was saying stuff to me last night. She said to me. What's the stock ticker? And I was like, excuse me I'm like what what are you what are you talking about? She was like, what's the stock ticker? What's the what's the stock ticker symbol for square? I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about And I go I had to google it and I'm like, oh Yeah, okay, it's sq or whatever But just the fact she knows that at 13 years old as far those are the kind of things man If that don't reshape you was a person nothing will bro. I wish I wish my parents were more uh financially literate And they were though My parents did very well. They And they uh invested in in real estate because that's the thing that they understood But they didn't know anything about the stock market. They lost a ton of money like, you know They knew something else social. They knew something else. What's that something else? Ownership your mom had a dance studio Why you think you are so big on being an entrepreneur and being independent right now 100% I 100% seeing them do it seeing them hustle like that seeing them work, you know 20 hour days like that instilled everything in me, but And I wouldn't trade that for anything. I mean, you know, you get different advice from different people But like I know certain friends who Grew up kind of like your daughters are growing up where like they're asking questions about the stock market and talking about investing And like that was so foreign to me Even now I barely invest You know only reason I'm invested because everybody's telling me this inflation shit is coming And your money's going to be worth less even if it's sitting there So I'm like, all right, I gotta get I gotta move it somewhere But I don't know it just makes me happy that your kids are getting into that early because it's a language Bro, they teach it in school. My daughter my 13 year old daughter said to me already no finances The only thing I'm gonna ever use from any of this stuff Really like that was her that's her language. She said that I didn't confirm I didn't confirm it with her that she was absolutely right Yeah But yes, I was like Wow And they teach them how to do the stocks in school like they got Classes but and they're trading with real companies So they're really learning about what these real companies are doing So it's like yo, at least you know what you're getting for christmas All right, because I'm buying y'all stocks the days the toys are over I might still get the younger ones But you miss 13 yo, we not we not playing monopoly with the stock game We won't you really gonna be in it and I showed her my portfolio I showed her my portfolio. I showed her my portfolio. I let her know, you know how diverse my portfolio is I'll show her my smp 500. I'll show her the individual stocks. I'm invested in You know ask for some things that she wants to invest in like it's Yeah, I'm saying all that to say if that don't reshape your your your your train of thought There's no way you can ever be In character with that.  I want to like I want to have like a fund where they can put a percentage of their income into the fund And then that money gets invested automatically with one of these bigger companies that obviously I have access to that they might not have access to because I have more money, right and then Even like for me if somebody started taking my money 10 years ago and investing it imagine what it'd be worth now So then give them the opportunity to take advantage of this market the ups and downs and like learn about it In a pretty safe way and then 10 years from now they look back and they're like, holy shit. Thank god I was given that few hundred dollars a month To this fund. That's my kid's college fund You know That's how I feel I feel the same way I'm looking because I look at my smp 500 from last year and I know the market Was different last year in the top. I think they said that that like the smp 500 That's only been down like, you know, it's only been down like that markets only I could be saying it's totally wrong I'm quoting uh, earn your leisure and and in you know, the master investor, but it's like Five it's only been down five times in like the last However many years and last year was one of those times. Thank god.  So imagine if you get your daughter in there when she's 13 You get your daughter in there when she's six when she's three You know, I mean how that's going to look in 20 years for them when they're still young They can still do things It's like, yo, that's yeah, that's that's it's the best for me, bro. That's what I'm doing That's what I'm doing Huh place some bills man. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right guys We're gonna take a break for a second because I gotta make sure that you guys are getting bricked up for the holidays Okay, you're going back home to your family.  Okay same active ingredients. It's inside sea alice or viagra But this is the chew. It's the one we swear by this is the Peds the performance enhancing drugs for yiddily dong.   You deserve it. Now. Let's get back to the show Or let's do another ad. Yeah Yes, uh, let's do cushy dreams man Loot dog good folks at cushy dreams The world today is nuts and just when it seems like things are getting better We're hit with even more reasons to be anxious and uncomfortable And that's why our friends at cushy dreams can help cushy dreams specializes in high quality smokable cbd And cbd has been shown to help with anxiety depression Inflammation even pain relief and more and smoking cbd gets it into your system right away So you don't have to wait long for the effects cushy dreams Extraordinary cbd rich in flour comes in eight ounce cans and pre-rolled joints It is cannabis that shifts discreetly to you and directly to all 50 states They offer indigo and sativa screens that deliver effects like relax create hustle peace energy and dream I love this because when I go in any type of zone, I need to know exactly what zone I'm going to get in Okay, I know what zone to kill is going to get me in.  Now. Let's get back to the show Shows you guys insurance announcements guys Infamous tour uh, toronto man.   We're gonna keep adding Um, obviously we got radio city music hall. We added another one at radio city music hall So get those tickets while you can uh, and then we added a bunch of a bunch more shows this week as well We got pittsburgh. We got braya california san jose california. We got um oxnard california cochella california Uh new orleans atlantic city Uh portland and seattle. We added another show in each of those cities as well and uh This week i'll be in minneapolis and fargo and then the week after that We got thanksgiving week after that jacksonville and boston go check it out Thank you so much everybody who came out to chicago the chicago theater. That was unbelievable biggest venue I performed him and uh, we did two shows there and yeah We always have held me down and I just really appreciate that and thank you guys for being there. That was awesome I calculated an easy 1.3 million dollars just now easy.  Oh for all over the shows Yes, oh, oh that's light my friend.  All right Hey, listen mine is simple man. Uh this saturday November 20th, matter of fact, let me make sure that's a saturday. Uh, yes this saturday november 20th I'm having my annual turkey giveaway in months corner, South Carolina. So from 1 3 p.m Pull up to the berkeley high school student parking lot four six west main street months corner, South Carolina Me along with one of my my my charity third eye awareness will be doing our annual turkey giveaway from 1 to 3 p.m So pull up, you know while supplies last we got you on the birds Make sure you check out the gods on his truth every friday night at 10 p.m on comedy central We had as sharing a soldier boy on last week. Um, very happy to see that both those conversations with various reasons Have have gone with the kids called viral. Yes, you know what I mean? So it's good You know, it's always a pleasure to see like 10 12, you know different articles about content Especially being that we come on friday nights friday nights is a weird time. You know what I mean? Yeah, things be shut down on the weekend, but you know Uh, yeah, we did we did very well this week and kevin heart is on this week. We got kevin heart on Oh, this friday Yeah, so this tune in this friday 10 p.m on comedy central is actually going to be our capitalism episode So you want to see a parent's room? You know dr. Claude anderson? Uh I don't want to say who else just yet, but dr. Claude anderson will be on Um chico bean will be on and kevin heart is our very special guest So this friday at 10 p.m on comedy central god's honest truth and you can scream us on paramount plus right now and make sure you go Check out, uh the the latest addition of black enterprise magazine what Dolly bishop one of the most powerful, you know people in podcasting according to inside radio um in the president of the black effect podcast network Also a owner she has equity in the black effect podcast network as well She was she she's gracing the cover of black enterprise and she was uh, she was gracious enough to allow me to tag along So the new cover of um black enterprise magazine.  We had a very very very successful year So thank you to everybody that's tuning into all the different podcasts on the black effect podcast network And I I cannot wait to show y'all what we got up our sleeves For year two And beyond it's not easy man. It's not easy You know I'm saying you hope to have success when you launch these businesses You hope to have success when you launch these companies Shots, you know, you hope to have success when you launch these toys But man, I don't take none of them for granted But I know when you look out at that crowd and you see them sold our souls You don't take that for granted, bro No, it's the coolest thing in the world and like um like humble buy it and so fucking grateful and Yeah, it's just a wild experience.  I'm so grateful.  We are so lucky Bless me.  I feel Everything man, and I know I'm a cancer. So I'm naturally an empath What I'll be feeling everything and I'll be feeling extreme gratitude like and it's not even just for me like when even of course when I look at the black enterprise cover and I see You know dolly and just knowing like man, that's my family. That's my loved one for real and Looking at what she's done with the black effect like this vision, right? I can go to your page And cd sold out showed I was looking at the 85 south show and I was looking at how like three years ago.    I've seen it. I've watched it Yeah There's so many there's so many people you can point to right now I can't speak for the the generations before us. We didn't come up with them. I'm talking about this generation now It's so many people you can point at people can point at I can tell you exactly how their origin story started At least professionally Yeah You know, yeah, they don't get it like I like And I don't want to say too much. I I've watched you cry Yeah Because things weren't moving the way you wanted them to move. Yeah for sure like literal tears. Yeah Yeah, and now what we out here baby Yeah, that's what makes it sweet man.  It was just powerful man. I I don't know any other way to describe it What you're talking about is the power of manifestation And when you realize how powerful your mind is bro when you realize the things that you can Conceive just by believing you would really really really monitor your thoughts in the real way That's another reason I started going to therapy and all that stuff like that because I understood how powerful my brain was so when those thoughts of like You know defeat and lack of self-worth And you know feeling like I may not want to be here when that shit started the way really really heavy on me I was like Careful because my mind my mindset was I don't know what got Lauren Hill to her point I don't know what got Dave Chappelle to his point back in the day I don't know what got 100,000 back to his point and you know, those those aren't those aren't extreme examples because they're still here But just just the disc why they chose to disconnect I I could totally understand that and I just didn't want that.  That's why I love the internet.   You know what I'm saying? I love that.    So I rather I love when certain things happen And then The process of elimination, baby. Yeah, just just just naturally just That person goes that person goes you pick a side you go stay over there great Now you make it clear For me and my vision and for me and my conglomerate to do what it is that we do And my favorite quote ever is from not said Jones much success to you Even if you wish me the opposite because sooner or later, we'll all see who the prophet is That's just how I'll be feeling.  What Yes Their swing is so the mom Let's her sister. No the woman lets her mom and sister sleep with her husband I gotta see this girl because usually swingers Telling there with you. Yeah, she's right next to me. Usually swingers are pretty ugly Pull it up Taylor Like I can't fathom that she's good looking because when you have something that nobody wants you're willing to share it But if you've got something that people actually want you want to keep it to yourself. It looks to me It looks to me like She's married to They're white or whatever. Of course married to like Somebody that's not white it's not black I'm thinking latino in some way And he probably got that thing man You think he got that hammer You probably got that ascension bottle, bro. He got that ascension Can you open that up Taylor that don't won't work on my finger? Show it to him Taylor I can't fathom that there's just no way it's just too weird.  I'm putting it in the group shot. Hold on one second. Let me see your whole computer This is just weird, bro But how does the mom look though? Like a mom hot mom Hold on Taylor A mom and daughter have revealed that they both sleep with the same man and they don't see anything wrong with it Matty Brooks lives with her husband in the u.s. But as she explains in her tiktok video that she's not in the mood She's quite happy for her mom to sleep with him This is because both matty and her mom and her husband are swingers Meaning they are an open relationship swapping sexual partners at swinging parties and events Speaking in the video, she said me and my mom are both swingers and it's great. You know why? Because when i'm not in the mood, I can just let my husband have her. Yeah, i'm that kind of wife I let my husband have her a couple times a week No, it's not her mom That's my share they're hugging with it's her sister sometimes plays with her husband, too. That's cat What you mean that's cat, bro. That's not her mom is hotter than her real talk if we're gonna be honest about it And um, the husband looks mexican That's what i'm saying. He looks like he's not he's not white clearly. No, he's not white White people we don't have that type of sex drive, but i but latino i believe could handle that to me That's just be too much pressure to like sad like Dude imagine disappointing a whole family of women. It's like one.   Are you or you feel more confident sharing the mediocre? Because if it was the real real you would never want to share it But you don't you don't you don't give people bad restaurant recommendations Yeah, but it's not your restaurant Mmm You know what i mean When it's your restaurant, it hits different it hits different.  That's just weird bro. It's more common than you know I thought we had uh, we had shanbu dram On god's on his truth a few weeks ago and like she's in a non monogamous marriage Like you know a lot of these kids are into this stuff man Like I don't want to call them kids, but the younger generation is into these non traditional relationship, bro What do you think you think you can pull it off? No, my ego is way too fragile for that What about just you being non non monogamous? I don't want that. I've learned that energy is um Energy is precious man. I don't be wanting to swap energy with everybody like that Like like I would have to have like a real spiritual energetic Attraction to somebody to want to get with them physically and I just don't need that at this point I really honestly don't need that at this point in my life. And when I think about What about what about just a sweet cocksuck every once in a while? Don't want it does nothing for me It does nothing for me Even back in the day. It did nothing for me.  Just a nice sweet cocksuck. No big deal. Like I don't lie.  And then that's it I'm writing that down. That's a line or something. That's how you walk up to how much for a sweet cocksuck How many how many calories in a Three salt water taffy and one sweet cocksuck to go, please Can I have a warm sweet cocksuck please with a little bit of salt around the room? It doesn't even sound like cheating as it doesn't right. It's just it really doesn't imagine A sweet cocksuck.  That is so crazy Just totally different.  I'm like, no, ever did you beg me like that I do not do on you. All I did was partake in a sweet cocksuck. That's it. I did my part You know what I mean?  I don't want those problems man. I personally just don't want those problems. I'm a good When I say I'm so good I'm good, bro. Yeah, how do you feel you you feel like you need sweet cocksucks here?  No, no, you know me. I've been good. I'm always good That's that's what it is You know, I mean, you know, but if like for example our girls formed a coalition And it was the let your husband get a sweet cocksuck every once in a while a committee or coalition And uh, they approached us and they're like we think it's very important Uh for you guys For your mental health to get a sweet cocksuck every once in a while It'd be something that I would consider on behalf of my my wife Yeah, I don't yeah, I can't uh, I mean You wouldn't do it for your wife, bro.  Would you would you want your girl to get a healthy poom poom lick? Would you would you want her to get a healthy poom poom lick? They're good for you. They're nutritious All right.  That's crazy.  Don't look at the healthy poom poom lick me. What do you do?  I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't want it I don't want it and listen, you know, who knows who knows how I may feel at 50 Who knows how I may feel at 60, you know what I mean? But right now I'm cool Did you see the story about uh The virginia pharmacy that gave 112 kids the wrong dose of vaccine? No Yeah, all of these kids they these kids were going in to get the cobra vaccine And what they did was um, you know, because the cobra vaccine is different for children and adults So being that they didn't have any more of the children vaccine this pharmacy thought that they could cut The vaccine to a third.  They're like, oh, it's not our fault It was the system.  Yeah All right, and it took you forever to get it You know, you're gonna be dragging your feet when it comes to the kids, right?   Yeah Is this is this is this stuff even really work? Like you went out of your way To make sure children can get it You're pushing the vaccine on kids.  They'll be all right Yeah And i'm never going back. There's nothing that can convince me to take my kids back after that Are they all right? Yeah, I mean, yeah from what we see they're fine. All right. So then they're fine. What's the big deal then? They they're right It's the principle though. It's the pharmacist man. The pharmacist got to know better, bro And guess what it took a woman a woman dare Notice the woman that took her kid noticed because I guess the the kid's one has a different color cap than the adult one She was like, why isn't that the one for the adults? And so she called him on it and that's how they ended up like having to pump the brakes on everything.   Okay, what are the safest socks to put your money in then join red panda star club You probably know Ian from his coverage and Forbes From the usa today as one of the most exciting entrepreneurs of 2021 rolling out unfiltered which he records at wtf media studios or From the hit investing show market mondays that he does every week with earn your leisure There are a lot of people talking about investing But none of them have the track record that he does Ian predicted one Bitcoin dropping to 28,002 months before it happened bitcoin recovering less than 63 days from the low of 28,000 He called to invest in medirna at 43 in april of 2020. It's currently at 408 Which is an 820 return. 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Let's get back to the show Taylor gang.  I'm holding up too by the way robber green the daily laws.  You're gonna love this. It's just a daily affirmation book That he has and it's based off it's based off all those different books I've just named every book that he's ever done You know, he does an affirmation daily from from run from one of them. So go pick that up Taylor gang. Oh, here's an interesting one From uh, beza 10 sigh. How do you guys feel about facebook and the metaverse? Should we be concerned? Great question beza charlotte hit it um I don't like I don't like it at all. The main reason I don't like it is because It's really going to I believe Take away people's motivation to really do anything in the real world. Um, we had a conversation Uh on brekkies club this week with urnia leisure and um You know, and I've been talking to this about a lot of people. I talked to this with, you know, tristan Uh tristan harris, you know who used to work at google And it's like some people say well, what if this is The new real world reality is it's not so if I can sit at home all day and Create whatever environment I want I can create the clothes that I'm wearing I can create the car that I'm driving I can create the house that I live in like I'm really just stuck in In in here in this virtual world I don't even know if you're using your mind to be honest with you is just I don't know what you're using when you build this world But I just think it takes away your natural drive To like actually go out there and do something with yourself Yeah, I think that you're right man. It's a little scary It's scary, but I also think it's dependent on how great your life is I bet the worst your life is in the real world the more that you're excited about the metaverse And the better your life is in the real world the more excited you are about your life in the real world The less interesting the metaverse is Oh Yes, you know what I'm saying so it's like I bet there are a lot of people who just have horrible lives and they can't wait for the metaverse to pop up They're like, yo, let me get a redo.    I hate my loved ones Finally, I get to just Escape from all that in this dream worlds. I get to be the person I've always wanted to be Wow, man, that sounds liberating bro. That sounds super liberating. Well, I tell you what When y'all talk about the movie avatar because this is all it is We're all gonna be able to have our own avatars. You talk about getting lost in characters in real life Always remember that dude didn't come back at the end of avatar. Well, what about ready player one? It feels like more like ready player one. I never saw that. Oh my god. That's a phenomenal movie. Watch that tonight Really, you'll love it. There's a lot of nostalgia in it great storyline Like it literally is this it's people who spend their whole day locked away in this I don't know. I guess this metaverse is what they're calling it Now my question for you is because I don't know this is the metaverse different from facebook's name, which is meta Or is facebook creating the metaverse? I thought that he was changing the name of facebook to meta And then the metaverse The metaverse is like an internet, but you get to exist within it as your avatar What i'm wondering is like the sim world Yes, but who's creating it? Is it facebook's creation? Or are they trying to capitalize on this thing that is the metaverse by changing their name to meta? So it seems like they have ownership over the metaverse as well That's a good point. I have no idea I just was I just thought that it's the metaverse and you can create your own virtual world Which you and your people y'all can have your own community and to your point.  At least video game was have turned this into something like What they can actually You know eat off it I'm sure it'll get like that in the metaverse at some point But it's like man, I would just hate to see the human condition of a person Like is there certain things we need y'all we need sunlight You know what I mean? We need a certain amount of physical activity Like like is there certain things that you need in order to exist as a human? I think if you stay in your house all day, man, and you be on that metaverse, what happens to the world? Yeah, and I thought about this too. I was like, yo, maybe the world ends up like I am legend, but I doubt it maybe the world It's like during the pandemic when all of us was in the house For a nature reset itself in a real way Yeah Yeah, that is interesting Uh I don't know. I don't like it. I just wonder how much Like outside of our jobs how much like living a lot of people are even doing or are they already on The metaverse by looking at their phone all day or looking at netflix and just like watching movies constantly like Do we do we really take a break from the internet? Not really You know if you're on your phone for six hours a day and you're working for eight and then you're sleeping for eight You know, it's not like you have that much more free time So maybe this is just like a a more interesting effective world to live in like what if instead of just looking at your instagram comments You're engaging with people. You're making friends You're building a community and you're doing it as the person that you'd always like to be Wow, man, that seemed pretty. How do you feel about vr technology?  What's it called?  I was watching surf videos and like surfing with them. I was doing the rock climbing with alex Honnold like it was unbelievable Yeah, I'm thinking about it. I didn't try to porn. I didn't try to porn, but that should look crazy The thing about it though, right? Um man, don't you feel like it it activates You know your fight or flight instinct and you you you really need that like don't you think it's kind of like What about when you really need it? You know what I mean? That's interesting like yeah, because Wait, are you saying like it removes the difficulty of life? Because you're not operating in something with stakes Yeah, because I did I played the creed game right the creed game was why because you're literally in Adonis preeds body so you can look down and see your abs and your arms and all you can look at You know, you so you got Michael B Jordan's body But it's like yo when these dudes are coming at you in the ring Yeah, you're like, oh shit, and I remember I played in a cobble And me and my I don't know what my daughter was playing but she was next to me playing it And my mind literally goes don't you get beat up in front of your daughter? You know what I'm saying so it's like Then you then you tell yourself this is just a game Yeah, wait, what if that affects you in real life? Yeah, what if in real life something happens and you need that? You need that for what is all to kick in you need that fight of flight instinct What's your mind registers it as oh, this is just a game. It's not a real threat. Ah, interesting Yeah, I guess that's entirely possible That's what I'm scared about. Yeah, that's entirely possible that it could kind of numb you to the reality of life Me as you're taking place in this world where there are no real Uh repercussions Yeah, that's that's interesting You just start walking out in the street when you see cars coming because you're like, yeah, it's not gonna hit me It's gonna go right down me. Yeah, and especially the more time you spend in that world. Wow Yeah, we'll have to see it's the way the world is going. I find that's why I find I find your rogue and instagram page so dope because I'm like Like that's the stuff I be reading about that's the stuff I be talking about You know Like what I'm looking at all that like you talking about the metaverse, you know He was talking this week And this something in the wall bench there like how the next evolution in humans is probably going to be You know humans merging with artificial intelligence.  I'm holding that I'm holding You know what I mean? It's like the difference is it's inside of our head But this thing right here is connected to my body I take it everywhere I go. It's got tons of information. It's got tons of knowledge Like I can answer any question I need on it, right?  It's already in there Lord and mercy But you know, it's a little more convenient, bro.   From our kids when it comes to technology like I'm like that now I just told you I was talking to my daughter about stops and being that she has an actual class that she does every day Yeah, she's she's using language. I don't even know about Yo, Alicia Renee just hit me just now. It's luta. Alicia Renee Um, and she she was telling me about something she shared with me that she want me to share it's actually a a clip of uh as shared as sharing speaking about um brilliant nitty as an armchair expert and um I'm like, how do I do that? And she was like, man, get one of my needs is to show you how to work it.    I just I I don't know.   All right My girlfriend is incredible But uh, she wants to wait for marriage to give head Let me tell you something homie marco the homie marco Uh You don't get more head after you're married. So if you're not getting any head right now You better get used to it All this is showing me that we got to open up a sweet sweet cocksuck food truck That's The brilliant that he is need a sweet cocksuck food truck. And that's that that's who we that's who we advertise to we advertise Men like him who want to get married But feel like that girl isn't gonna give head until they get married. So we pull up Pay a few dollars for sweet cocksuck And you keep it moving bro a sweet cocksuck food truck. Maybe we can do it virtually Maybe Maybe there's something we can do like maybe there's some type of Device we can give guys to get that sweet cocksuck feeling You know for those who aren't getting it from the woman they potentially want to marry Yes. Yes. Yes. What is that device like a trip to columbia or No, I think it's something we can make it let it be virtual you put the virtual goggles on So now, you know, you got all of these different women or guys you can choose from You know what I mean and you put and they probably already got this you put the device on And you get that sweet cocksuck Yo, that's crazy, but that might work That might work. Sorry. I already got that. I'm almost positive. They already got that.    I bet if you search the origins of hooters it started somewhere like this Wow, dude Hooters is probably wild problematic back in the day and we don't even know it.  You want to do something do it. All right, you want to do one more? Let's do one more and get up out of here okay, um That's a question.  No, I started I started losing I started losing On purpose like like I wanted to lean out Really yeah, yeah, I've lost like I think I've lost like 12 pounds.  Yeah, you were letting loose a little bit Let loose a little bit man. I was wilding man. It was a little bit of uh, you know still in pandemic mode But I feel like I was doing a lot of comforting You know what I mean and being that I you know, I do edibles on the weekend You know for my like anxiety and stuff like that, you know, that should give you the munchies So I was wild.   Also, when I'm on my wife was pregnant That's another thing to have. Oh, yeah, because you even with her That's right. She was pregnant and she was you know Having a lot of those cravings and we was in here a while and then goddamn cookies from Wegman's That 15 pack of chocolate chip cookies from Wegman's fine smoke That red velvet cake from Wegman's slapping Yeah, bro. Wegman is the greatest grocery store of all time, bro And this comes from somebody who grew up on full line pickle wiggly and bilow Um that is What is it called collective wisdom in the north?  That is the greatest grocery store ever. They're in love with it. Nothing is better than Wegman's And I think we're just starting to get them down here, but Whole Foods is like taking over the game Whole Foods is cute. I like Whole Foods Something about Wegman's, bro. My wife went into Wegman's. I was like, where has this place been all my life? Tell me what is it? What's the Honestly, man, when I think about it, I really think it's the food Because they got a the one the one that's close to my house. They got a burger bar in it I don't know if that's the norm with the Wegman's That was that was one of your charlemagne isms, bro Hey, what's so good about the grocery store? Honestly? I'm pretty sure it's the food inside the food place that makes the food place so good like Now that I really think about it like if I'm gonna really truly be honest here What makes the food place good is the food I would have to ask my wife what she likes about Wegman's me personally. I like the food I like the burger bar. Uh-huh. They got they got this pizza spot. That's crazy.   They got everything else.  That's just like I was like the flip phone You know what I mean? Like you was happy when you wouldn't know one of these girls at least for me going up in the country I was happy when I went to one of these grocery stores and they had an arcade That's not a whole arcade, but just one game one arcade game You know what I mean?   Yes, sir As always if you listen to this podcast, you think we're smart. You think we're intelligent. You think we're brilliant You're absolutely right.   Thank you for listening and uh Shokes is filming out of wtf media studios You know salute the wtf peace


So, most of you are probably pretty familiar with the Gemini program, NASA's intern program between Mercury and Apollo, but did you know that it started life as Mercury Mark II? Because that's what we're talking about today on Vintage Space. The Mercury program was NASA's first manned spaceflight program, and its official goals were threefold. It was designed to put a man into Earth orbit, investigate how he would function in space, and also safely recover him from the ocean after a splashdown. The follow-up program to this first step into space began to take shape in the summer of 1961, more than half a year before NASA actually put a man into orbit. This new program was designed to take advantage of the lessons learned during the Mercury program and also use an operated Mercury spacecraft. As such, the program was provisionally called Mercury Mark II. The original proposal called for six program objectives to be met over the course of ten flights between March of 1963 and September of 1964. During that period, NASA expected to launch one mission every two months. The first objective was duration. NASA was already looking at manned lunar flights, and so had to make sure that both the men and the machines were up to the two-week journey. Under the Mercury Mark II program, the longest duration flight was a manned mission lasting seven days. An animal flight lasting 14 days would give NASA the objective of physiological data it wouldn't otherwise be able to gather. Studying the Van Allen belts was a secondary objective. Biological experiments would fly through this high-radiation environment to gather data. Controlled precision landings in a small landing area was third objective. This meant that the astronauts would have to have some way of controlling their spacecraft during descent, and the most obvious way to do this was to create the spacecraft with an off-center center of gravity so that there would be some aerodynamic lift. And actually, the original landing goal for Mercury Mark II was to have it land on land, not in the ocean. The fourth goal was rendezvous and docking, again an objective that fed into the Apollo program. The idea was to have the Mercury Mark II spacecraft dock with an Agena target vehicle in orbit. The fifth objective was increased astronaut training, which was really just a byproduct of running the program as it was anyways. The sixth and final goal of the Mercury Mark II program was a pretty interesting one. The idea was that if the Mercury Mark II program met all of its goals in a reasonable time, it might surpass Apollo, making the first lunar orbital flights. The Mercury Mark II program was renamed Gemini on January 3rd of 1962. And as the Gemini program, there were only three official goals to the program. The first was the duration flight lasting up to two weeks to simulate the time it would take to go to the moon and come back again. The second was the docking and rendezvous. And the third was a precision landing. Originally Gemini also wanted to do the land landings that Mercury Mark II had proposed, but the objective was eventually dropped in 1964. And one other note about the Gemini program, because I know people are going to ask about this, is why it's pronounced Gemini and not Gemini, like the zodiac sign or the constellation. I don't know why it's pronounced like that, but I know that in all of the old NASA videos and the progress reports about the Gemini program, it is pronounced Gemini. Within one second of the scheduled time, Gemini number one listed smoothly off the path. Case in point. So if you have any other questions about early spaceflight or not so early spaceflight, modern spaceflight is good too, leave them in the comments below and I will add them to my ever-growing list of topics for future episodes. And in the meantime, for space and predominantly vintage space type content every day of the week, be sure to follow me on Twitter as AST Vintage Space. And with new episodes going up every Tuesday and Friday, be sure to subscribe right here so you never miss an episode.


specifically focused on enterprise tax benefits and various employee allowances. So before I go into that, I just want to have a general understanding of my audience here. How many of you have ever tried doing something related to payments, whatever may it be like you know the building something related to payments, a few, that is great. Is it predominantly card acceptance, payment gateways or stuff like that? So great. So I come from the other side, not on the payment receiving side, but creating payment instruments that people could use to make payments. What we felt back in November 2014, that is when I started thinking about digitizing payments and the payment whatever giving a different form to payments completely or making payments formless what I could call it as. That is when I started and I started looking at various options and how we could go about with it. So when I just looked at it, a lot of challenges not in terms of actually receiving payments. Receiving payments is just one of of course is a very important component of it and many of the technology guys have been doing it for several years now through payment gateways which support cards as payment option, banking as payment option and so on and so forth. But what we felt is that there is a need to create more forms of payment or more mechanisms of payment more to speak to extend payment reach to merchants who cannot afford card payments. Card payments are generally considered very expensive in the retail space and in the brick and mortar space. So I just looked at solving that problem. When I just went about looking at that what we realized is that as with many marketplaces it is actually a chicken and egg problem. No payment mechanism will kick off until there are people who are willing to pay with that and no payment mechanism will kick off until there are people accepting that. It is a traditional chicken and egg problem. So my story today, the MVP story today that we are just talking about is like taking one such chapter and how we went about actually solving that problem as a story of our journey. In the sense it is not the complete, it is not all encompassing story but I just wanted to take a small piece of what Zeta has done so far and how we went about iterating over it and what are the various things that we learned at each stage and to come to where we are today. That is what we are trying to do. So before I go in I just want to show what Zeta is today. Just a quick minute on that. So for people who have not seen or known about us, I just want to quickly show you this is the Zeta app. What you have is something what we call as a supercard. It is pretty smart. I will not get into the details. It is not a marketing pitch anyway. So it has various mechanisms to make payments. You can just go to a store and send money to your friend, bank account. You can use what we call as a Zeta code which is a nice six digit code. You can make payment with that and you can just make payment to any store by just selecting the store and sending money to that store. Just quickly walk through and you have in the Zeta app what we call as Zeta cloud cards. Each of them represent various types of money. This what you see as cash pressed card out there is like your traditional debit card or bank account wherever you can just deposit money and take money out or just use it like your premium wallet or whatever it is, a number of things that you can traditionally do with a bank account. And you have something called as a medical card where your employee can actually deposit your medical allowance and you can spend that and there are tax incentives around that. I am not going to the specific details. There is something called a fuel card. There is something called as a gift card and number of other such things like in a typical according to the income tax act there are 26 allowances that are available to salaried employees that they can claim tax benefits on. All of that is completely digitized and represented as what we call as cloud cards.  That is like if you are just paying at a medical store it deducts money from your medical account so that you get the tax exemption for that. So when you are at a fuel outlet and you have a fuel allowance and if you are making a payment at a fuel allowance Zeta automatically deducts money from your fuel card and just ensures that wherever whenever you are transacting whatever is the tax advantage you get it is applicable and it is available by you. And furthermore what we have done is like once I digitize all of these things if I am giving you a medical card and if there is money in the medical card you should be able to directly buy medicines from it. So on and so forth you will see that you can order medicines here and book a doctor appointment here and so on and so forth. And if I if I get a gift card you should be able to use that gift on Amazon KFC whatever it is various brands and various outlets all of that is completely integrated. It just does not end there Zeta has rewards program XYZ other things and it has a what we call as many of you might be familiar with Chrome Web Store we have just integrated similar such store into the app so that you can just actually transact seamlessly and the checkout is taken care of by Zeta. That is an example and we have integrated offers into it where where these various offers from Coupon Dunia or whatever it is all of that is just integrated into one place and you can just avail that. So whatever you are spending whatever even if a penny can be saved in that we give you an option to save that through this all of it okay so but obviously the point I am trying to make is the point I am making trying to make is and it just doesn't end there just to let you know we Zeta also has what we call as optimized all the entire tax benefits part of it spotlight is rewards and recognition that is like whatever various gifts your employees can give and all that stuff expresses for your cafeteria automation we just completely automate the cafeteria payments with an NFC mode of payment through what we call as super tag. Anyway it is a whole list of things I just want to cut short there and just say that okay obviously when I just tell you this very pertinent question is it minimum it's far far from it I couldn't have started a product which says that okay it works like a swiss army knife with 50 things and 50 different ways of doing things and so on and so forth right people would reject me in the day one on the day one or probably my business itself there is no nothing that I would have established as a value prop for my own business okay if I have to say that I have to do this 50 things before I can launch my product right so there is there is practically no way I would have gone down this path when I'm starting it's definitely not minimal is it viable well at the outset if I just say that okay these are the hundred things hundred things put together they make some sense and all of them all these hundred things put together will give you some value well one can hardly say you know I don't know if it is viable right if you cannot you cannot be sure that it's viable right and the is it a product well probably but definitely not one product we're talking about many products it could be a suite of offerings okay so now obviously no startup that I know of should have tried this or should have started here okay and obviously we didn't start this so it's definitely because it's not a minimum viable product okay because we haven't we couldn't have gone to market with all of this and said that okay look it works or look it doesn't work okay the amount of investment that's gone to building any such thing is quite high so obviously we couldn't have started here right actually we did okay back in November 2014 when I when I when I just started looking at you know what we can do with these two payments we realized that a lot could be done and lot could be done by actually creating more value on payment than the mere transaction that is when I'm just exchanging money with one person the value of that should not be just exchanging money paper does that really well without any cost without any friction so much so to speak okay if something is digitized the value should be much higher than that that's a premise with which we have started and there's a huge blueprint this is this is the first mock that we prepared by the way the one that I'm showing is the first mock that we prepared back in December 2014 okay where we said that okay if you're digitizing transaction there should be more value there are various sources of money that can be presented in in one form to the in one simplified form to the user and then we said that okay there is a way to discover merchants and you will be able to discover identify the merchants and you will be able to make transaction with them so on and so forth there are a whole lot of things that have gone into this blueprint before we even started right but obviously I couldn't start that and go take the whole thing build the whole thing and go to market right what is the minimum product that I could actually take to the market and see if it is viable and see if I can just actually go on building thereafter so the story is about how do you sell it the slice how do you sell it given the whole thing that you have in your mind okay how do you go about choosing the date one slice that you can actually go ahead and put to market test whether or not it's working and iterate on on top of it at the point in time so we sell it to the first slice to be meal washers okay you have several of you have probably used this Sodexo meal washers which are this paper washers that you take to you get from your employer take to retailer for and buy food with that okay typically right so we selected that as a first slice now how did we I mean given this whole blueprint of you know there are multiple sources of money and multiple ways of spending it and there are retailers who have card reading machines retailers who don't have card reading machines and so on and so forth all the complexity how did we arrive at this particular thin slice okay thin slice of you know choosing this one small thing called meal washes right obviously there are several tools for all of it like you know you you do a lot of user service you you talk to several users okay because payments is just universal you can just say once I build a payment platform you can do anything on top of it right so but what is the use case that you would just go about picking obviously there is some hypothesis that we came up with okay the fundamental thing that we said is like if I am solving problem it should solve the highest pain possible right and provide the maximum value possible so we took it took a survey among various types of audience one we we went ahead and did a survey of college students and close environments where we felt that okay we needn't have to solve the chicken and that problem or it is easy to solve the chicken and that problem where in when you go to a closed environment like a university campus right okay so we solving the chicken and that problem for the entire country is a much much harder task than solving the problem in a university campus so we went to a university campus and just instead of giving the product out there we just spoke to several merchants we spoke to several students and spoke to them and ask them you know what are the problems that they have and what how do we how do you think that the digital payments can solve the problem okay when when I showed the first mocks okay to the merchants or the users okay users were completely ambivalent about it okay about you know okay I don't care whether you give it or not because because they they don't find it so painful right but when I just spoke to merchants about it uh interestingly they felt that okay the payment is not a big problem okay I have enough number of alternatives you know what what you have shown in your mocks is that okay there is something called feed uh in the mock the initial mock that I said they said that okay my problem is what I see as a value is that okay you're not really solving a problem but what I see as a value is that I can actually reach out to my customers through your app okay what I like is the channel of advertising that you got there called feed okay so payments is not my problem okay so that's the that's the first thing that I actually uh a very interesting insight that we got when we felt that okay change is a big problem in colleges like people uh if you just actually look at a typical student behavior again learn from the survey uh they do a 200 rupee cash withdrawal almost every day they're super expensive people for banks okay they they do uh so there are people who actually do ATM withdrawals four times a week right in in college campuses these are all the insights that we got that when we just looked at it so we felt like okay this is not the audience okay this is not a payment problem that we will be solving okay so we didn't even build the product we just stopped from there so when we just came to uh uh another setup okay we did try two other setups when I came to the another setup when we started speaking to the HR okay what we have what we realized when we started speaking to the corporate what we realized is there's a huge pain in handling that paper okay this is like a treasury job to get those uh washers talk them and give them to the employees and so on and so forth there's a huge pain there when we started talking to the employees instantly HR also happens to be employees of the organization who are also availing those benefits when we started talking to them they felt that okay this is even bigger pain to start using those washers and so on and so forth so we we felt like okay fine Indicatively there's a big problem here let's try solving it I'm not going to get into again technical details of you know what exactly uh is the solution realm looking uh is supposed to be modeled as but let's say we pick this slice okay so now once once we started talking to the people we could clearly see that okay they are able to articulate the problem in many cases when we start up try to solve the problem often we give an excuse that okay the problem is latent okay I do it several times okay when I when I have a theory to say that okay this will work okay and if someone says that no I I don't think it may not work or I don't see that people are actively looking at a solution for this the excuse that I often give to several of my friends or people involved in the product development is the pain is latent they don't they don't realize it the once once you just give an alternative solution to it they start realizing it okay yes it is true in several cases it would be so but but you know once you identify a problem that people can actually articulate okay people can actually articulate that's that's I think is a good place to start from okay if you can identify such a problem that's a good place to start so that's a good problem to solve so we said okay the thinness slice that we could just okay the first picture that I showed you had lots of features and the product that I showed that I showed as a initial product has several things in it but this is the very first slice that we started off with this is the first very first mock and this is the first slice we started giving out to people okay so very simple thing you have a search a text box where you can type in six digits or you know you can just search by name and we'll give you a list of merchants that are nearby okay you can tap that merchant and enter the amount and make a payment enter the amount and say pay the payment is complete unfortunately I don't have that version right now otherwise I would have shown there's a just about five screens that's all this this was January by January we of 2015 okay sorry 20 January of sorry this is not January this is July of 2015 okay July of 2015 no not really in this slice yes in this slice yes okay today zeta can be used to make payments anywhere across the world okay but the the very first slice we picked as I said like payments is universal it's a very very broad thing we the very first slice that we said is like okay you're going to get a list of merchants where you can make a payment okay and you will select a merchant just enter the value that you can make payment enter the value that you want to pay and just say pay you'll get that receipt that the payment is done okay as simple as that that's that's what we did right as a very first slice and this is this is as I said like in July of 2015 that is like we started in April 2015 zeta started our first team was recruited in April 2015 July 2015 we are ready with this product and I remember that date because like July 28th of 2015 there is NASCOM NASCOM HR conference okay so we presented this there okay so this is a simplest thing that we presented now obviously very thin slice nothing too much to invent too much nothing there to brag about it but so simple done shipped and as the I don't know how many of you are aware of this code okay nothing survives contacting the customer for the first time nothing that you thought survives is the simplest thing it's solving a big pain I have already validated the pain with my customer right okay I've just they they're very very clear in their articulation that there's a biggest pain that they are handling month on month not not like you know from a HR perspective and from a user perspective they are handling it like every every single day okay so it's a big pain that I'm solving okay but what could go wrong right so when I when I just went ahead all these tiny faces okay these are the these the part of the initial team that we had it was the NASCOM HR booth out there in the back drop okay and we have several people from HR fraternity who came and said like we love what you guys are doing it's brilliant I mean we did we didn't expect that okay it can be this way so on and so forth okay it's all great but what what turned out to be like they're just asking one question right but where can I use this okay but where can I use this obviously I couldn't have gone there without a answer for that question my answer has been that okay if you confirm okay within 30 days or if you say that okay you want to try if you as a company want to try within 30 days I'll convert all the merchants in your vicinity to start accepting data payments okay very I thought like it's a very very valid viable answer okay you should be convinced because I told you that okay this is in 30 days I'll definitely convert and obviously you're not paying anything to me and everything is fine you should just try it out okay not even one not even one said they will give it a shot okay first find an answer for this then we'll look at it okay it's solving a big pain and they they have all the incentive to try it out because I'm saying that I'm going to charge you nothing okay there is no cost in adoption still they don't want to do that right yes fortunately we are part of direct type group with a with about 1200 people back then this by before we went to NASCon summit people were already using it within our cafeteria for making the payments and so on and so forth oh okay so we spoke to merchants okay we what gave us confidence is we spoke to merchants we showed them the thing so the biggest factor again for the merchant side of the story is like the meal washer companies like Sodexo, Eden Red and other guys they charge merchant close to four percent okay depending on the size of the merchant nature of the business they charge four to seven percent of the transaction value as their fee okay and merchants take these papers they have to submit to the respective companies and they they get the payment back in 45 days okay that's like another one percent lost in the working capital cost okay so the net cost of payment for a merchant is five to seven percent and I was giving the merchant at zero price okay so he's so excited I mean he the merchant we never had a problem with the merchant well we had certain problems I'll talk about it from a model and trying perspective merchant never said I won't try okay so he's fine just bring me the users so the merchant has always given us the assurance that if you bring me the users why would I say no to it just go get it so we had that confidence from the merchant side of story and also what we are asking from the merchant is nothing this all that I showed is on the user side on the merchant side he doesn't even need to have a smartphone or he doesn't need to have anything digital just a simple phone would work okay so that's how we build this solution we just simplified everything for the merchant but coming back to the user side of the things okay we felt that okay this is a very viable thing when I'm just talking to the to the HR to try it out okay obviously nobody one was willing to try so we had to abandon the entire approach and start looking at what we could do with the merchant okay obviously we have the important problem the what we thought of the chicken and egg okay is and we are going to solve the problem is not solved so we just picked up next slice we said that okay how can we just make it completely oblivious or you know make the merchant network redundant itself okay one one problem is to eliminate the problem itself like one solution to the problem is eliminate the problem itself if people are asking for merchant network why can't I just eliminate the need for merchant network okay no why why should there be a merchant network so to speak so what we said is like okay well let's give it a complete spin okay there is a thing like okay whenever the user has spent on me asking to just upload a bill okay just ask him to select the merchant where he has spent that money ask him to upload the bill we will validate of course it's a very difficult thing it's not a viable thing but it's definitely minimal thing that I could just start off with because one of the theories of doing a startup is like don't worry about viability in the beginning so that's a lesson that's a that's a theory I was subscribing to back then so just try if it works right okay try if it works so we just went ahead and just said that okay forget about everything else let your employees go and spend let them upload the bill we will validate and verify that it is actually a food spend in that case we'll just convert that meal money if it is a food spend we'll convert that meal money into the regular cash and they can they can transfer it to the bank account okay very very simple from that perspective right you just I don't know how I mean like you see this right you you don't have to you don't have to have a merchant network so to speak okay the wherever your employees goes to let's say for example my pitch to the HR is wherever your employee goes to he will just simply after making a payment take a picture of the bill and claim his allowance on that particular spend take a picture and claim his allowance on that particular spend very straightforward okay so yes this time I saw some conversion okay in terms of like okay there are about less than one percent but at least some people have converted and started adopting this obviously it further couldn't continue because the competition cried fault about it okay they they started saying that okay no this is not how meal should be implemented as an allowance and so on and so forth again there are the whole legal story around that I'm not going to get into that so what what we felt as a really simple shortcut a hack to bringing out a product and saying that okay we cut off all the dependencies that need to be that need to that are traditionally assumed right we thought like it's a very powerful hack that we came up with we just completely abandoned the in the chicken and egg again going back to the chicken and egg problem we completely abandoned one side of the story and we should be able to roll it out but it didn't happen that way right again this is a learning from the market so we still had to solve the chicken and egg problem so we adopted the brute force approach that is okay fine I'm not able to get the customer let me get the merchant because there's a lot of readiness from the merchant perspective okay so we use brute force it's not a product per se a product technology problem that we are solving here but we use brute force to actually approach the merchants right so when we approach the merchants as you would expect when I say I'm giving it up giving it for free they will all say yes awesome give it for me for free right after a week they will forget about the product because there's no customer coming and asking for it okay just one week after if even if I go and say that okay do you accept zeta what is zeta okay and more importantly what happens is that okay at the store there are no in a family run store there are probably three or four people at the counter at different points in time okay in a in a large retail store it's a completely different story okay then the churn rate is close to 20% month on month the people who are operating the cash counters okay so this is a huge training cost when when you had to give a solution these are all not factors that we have considered when we proposed this solution this is just like we said that there is no technology cost that's out there for the merchant okay he should be able to start accepting it so again while we tried using brute force there are big things our solution was rejected because you know in all these large format places they couldn't change like let's say you go to big bazaar to accept a payment they have to change their post machines and they have to train lots of people which are the factors that we haven't considered is grossly rejected by them right and so therefore we had to go back to the drawing board again okay so the solution we had to look at is like you know again this is the same problem how do you go about looking at it ideally you know at this point in time we could we could up pivot it into some other problem okay but but what we know is that the problem is very valuable right problem was stated articulated by all the people as a pain right and people can see that okay we solve the problem there will be an adoption of it now how do you go about solving it so all these iterations are about that and when I'm just looking at each of these things at every point in time what we tried doing is do the least and take it out and all the things that I said so far were rejected at any point in time when I started looking at it I felt like I have a really awesome solution with the simplest form in which that particular problem could have been solved but it was simply rejected the moment I gave it to the customer right so there is another such story because you know as as you see the product is nowhere what what you're seeing right right now so another such story the simplest thing is okay if we are not able to build a merchant network leverage the existing merchant network visa master card to pay these guys represent a huge merchant network okay leverage an existing merchant network now how do you go about doing that you can simply go and issue a card to every every person who is making a payment right that's a very simple way of doing it every bank does that so but but we did a spin on that why because we thought it's even more simpler to give a card to a merchant now imagine okay a scenario where you are going to a merchant and he has a card okay when you go walk to his shop and say that I want to make a payment okay you say that he asked how much I mean like whatever the transaction happens and you are you're saying that I will make a payment of 200 rupees and he is taking his card swiping it entering 200 rupees and asking you for a pin and he gets 200 rupees you didn't give him anything right so well I'll I'll give it one more stab of explaining it explanation so this is what we called as collect card right the collect card is something the a card that user will not have the person collecting money will have that is the merchant will have the collect card okay he will swipe on the regular card reading machine right and enter the money that you would have wanted to make a payment right you know 400 rupees let's say he enters the 400 rupees and just to take that money from you he asks you for a pin you give him a pin he enters that pin and he gets the 400 rupees right this is a kind of a tech tech spin that we just did on the card where we said that people don't even have to carry cards you just have a mobile that's sufficient to make a payment okay so very we felt like you know it's one of the best inventions on the card payment systems we patented it duly and and we said that okay it's going to be welcome with open arms by everybody okay because instead of investing on a card per person you flipped it one merchant will have one card that's all it takes to make money to transfer money okay so the same first version that I showed it works for this mechanism you just go find a shop make a payment you get the transaction code that's the pin okay so the merchant takes the orange color colored card that he has in his pocket his wipes enters the pin and that's all he got 682 rupees into his bank account I'm sorry what kind of danger not really so this pin will work for that 682 rupees at that particular merchant for a brief period of two minutes so I mean like okay so I'm not talking about the tech here just okay whatever we have done right you know assume that okay the the hygiene factors are taken care of okay so what we have given is that okay this is a solution and Eureka moments okay and we just went about yes this is the customer app okay you you just indicated that you want to pay to subway 682 rupees on your amp and we gave you a pin for that particular transaction that's all you have yes merchant swipes his card enters 682 rupees is what he wants to collect okay and ask you for the pin that's all I'm sorry that's all zeta does that okay zeta knows that okay the who the merchant is and everything because the car yeah we know that because you know when the merchant is swiping on his machine we know the machine that's from which the transaction is coming to us and and we also know we gave the collect card the card is given by zeta okay okay so yeah so let's yeah so the point is okay yeah that's thanks thanks for reminding about that yes so the point is a net net okay ignore the magic part of it at the smartness part of the solution okay but obviously it just seemed like a something contra something that just eliminates lots of hops in the equation anybody can just download zeta app and go to any merchant and make a payment whether or not that merchant has a certain kind of a specific instruments for us because he only needs is a 1520 rupee plastic to collect money right or the entire merchant network which is currently accepting mastercard is our merchant network just all I needed to do was give a plastic to them this is a brilliant solution we went to merchants they really loved it and all that stuff okay boom something must have gone wrong right okay so it did go wrong the problem was that when we gave this interface I remember this specific store more okay he said like what nuts are you I mean like where did you come from okay it's all fine whatever theory that you're giving you think my average household wife who buys grocery at my outlet okay do you think she is going to just come here open the app enter the merchant name more okay and she will be online while she doing that enter the merchant name more and enter the digits and finally give me this digits right you must be on pot or whatever it is right okay that's that's that's the thing so we had to go back to drawing board it was rejected by large merchants the small merchants were okay with that okay they didn't have too much I mean they are also like you know first time and they heard that okay they are and you know more often than not all our sales visit convert because they're surprised there's something like this could happen but but when it came to large merchants they completely rejected the solution okay it's just about giving a card the keeping a card at the till that was fine but they said that their customers will never do that or the majority of the customers will never do that so we had to go back again and redo the whole thing okay so with one concept this time where all you require to give is visits okay why do you need to go make the user do all the steps that we were doing so we just completely cut them off and brought down to this the entire app we just removed everything what you would see on the app is just one circle you tap and hold that circle it gives six digits and that's your pen right you just instead of the four digits that you have received after three steps right we tap and hold the circle and you get the six digits and the payment is done right now this is probably the simplest payments have ever happened and you would see on our app also till today this is the mechanism that is in use by several of our customers as on today sorry obviously the the app went through a lot of journey that's all you do you just go and give these six digits you tap and hold you go and give these six digits the merchant will get money from you yeah but but you know it's it's also an identifier not only an authenticator there is a again a lot of science that has gone into it we are not talking about that what what I'm saying what my intent to say here is that you know whatever we thought is simple there is much simpler version there okay we never discovered it okay and each time each time we thought we had a clever move that would solve the problem okay it was clever but when the customer sees it it just seemed to him like a trick or something that that just indicated that we reflected to him that our ignorance of the customer his customer rather okay when I went went to him okay so so many iterations which I would have traditionally considered as simple things like you know what big deal is it to select a merchant and make a payment they were rejected by the customer the simplest things I thought of the simple are easy to execute they were all rejected when we just went when we iterated on it we never would have thought in our head that a payment could be just brought down to sharing those digits right until we were just pushed to that extreme limit to a point where they said that okay no we can't pass up this and each iteration we have just what we thought as a minimal thing that we started off with at each iteration we just stripped off so many things to come down to this one payment method which which would work and no one could argue there is no and by the way this code works even if you are not connected to internet and all that stuff so there is a all those again hygiene factors out there it is just completely brought down to a level where anybody who is even moderately in a trade understands digits and he should be able to make a payment that's that's the level which which to which we were pushed by our customers and we we couldn't have arrived at it in one go so this is like the number of thank you I'm sorry yes that's a as I said this is not the end story the journey is much longer we we went through lot more iterations and a lot many more things yeah that's great thank you but yes we call that as a super car now when well we that's a different aspect of the journey didn't end here okay so this is this is but what actually gave us the maximum acceptance okay so when we just gave this nobody had so to speak any objections thereafter so there is a there is a a lot of adoption in this space but we moved on to issuing card subsequently I'm sorry without showing what sir I don't have a problem with that actually so the point is you can you can do that even today right okay you can go to a guy and just say that okay you can give a band of cash he takes a band of cash and record the sale about what not really sir I don't think so so any any questions any comments there is a flip okay premium QR code is used to identify the merchant okay and after that you push money to the merchant that's pretty much the first flow that we did okay the three screen flow where you select the merchant either through you use a QR code to help you in identifying that merchant or you've got a list and you select a guy select a merchant from there and after that the payment is done okay that's that's that okay and it has several dependencies for example firstly the user should be the biggest hurdle is that the user should be able to do that action itself scan the QR code and do that there are several limitations with respect to QR codes in all this we have done a QR codes there are several experiments that have gone that I haven't been talking about there are hundreds of them actually the problem with QR code is like it doesn't work in several light conditions okay and it depends on line of sight your camera need to be you know depending on where the QR code is and all the stuff it's it's it doesn't work at a wide scale so we just removed all of it to just bring it into visits that can be communicated that can be shown has very limited dependencies in the physical on the physical medium yep yes that's a that's another important aspect we always solve the problem with an assumption that the user doesn't have internet in all the things that I spoke and shown you user needn't have to have internet yeah yeah so traditionally all merchant payments rely on one business model which is merchant pays okay there are more elements to it there is money always when people are parking money there is money always in that okay that's typically referred to as float so there is a float revenue always when when when you're giving keeping money in your savings account there is a float revenue in it there are typically disclassified into multiple models there is a financial revenue there is a transactional revenue and we don't have much of it but traditional players also talk about breakage revenue that is like people put money and forget about it so so a lot of it is about users of this that's the first thing and we our product team the way we structure it is there is a pre and post there's a product manager and he has two associate product managers who will talk about pre product release and who will talk about post product release any particular feature when it is picked okay there is one guy who is looking at what all need to be in the product be even be even before we just actually go and put it to any user that's one one aspect that we take care of the elaborate list and that while the product is being built there is a post product manager who actually goes ahead and looks at the feature what are the various things that I need to check to know whether or not this is actually working okay from the time I started rolling it out and we have this various mechanisms to do staggered roll out okay we don't just simply rely on the app stores we have higher level controls so we control the visibility of feature each time when I when I'm just giving an iteration the visibility is completely controlled we do a staggered roll out and the post product manager actually looks at you know whether or not people are behaving in the anticipated way or not okay that's one aspect but that's after that's now where we have some scale in the initial days is the hard work you just have to go talk to the user see him how he is using it see the merchant how he is using it so on and so forth okay