Tales of Abundance

Steve Jobs Said No to 346 Products. It Saved Apple.

Show notes

The Power of Saying No: How Steve Jobs Saved Apple

The power of saying no is the focus of Episode 96 of Tales of Abundance. Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino look at how Steve Jobs said no to 346 products in 1997, why every yes is really a no to something else, and how focus drives profit in business and life. Then they ask whether AI agents change how much one person can say yes to.

In 1997 Steve Jobs said no to 346 products — and turned a dying Apple into a $309 million profit a year later. What could you build if you said no to almost everything?

Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino dig into the most underrated skill in business and life: saying no. From a $20 million startup that said yes to everything and went broke, to the gutter, roofing and siding deals Anthony turned down while growing Pella, to Warren Buffett's "top five" rule — this is a practical playbook for focus. Then the twist: with AI agents doing the work, is focus still the rule, or can you finally say yes to more?

How to Say No: Focus, Opportunity Cost and the "Hell Yes or No" Filter

What you'll discover:

  • Why every yes is secretly a no to something else — and how to see the trade before you make it
  • The "hell yes or no" filter, and Randy's five-question test for any new opportunity
  • How a $20M startup burned through its funding by chasing side products instead of its core
  • Why Anthony said no to easy $20K siding jobs — and how it helped build his Pella business
  • Does AI change the rules? When it pays to say yes more often — especially if you're young

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Introduction — Apple 1997: 350 products cut to 4
  • [01:26] Anthony's domino theory of yes and no
  • [04:19] The $20M startup that said yes to everything
  • [06:42] Focus vs. spreading too thin — Intuit's careful acquisitions
  • [09:35] Pella: saying no to gutters, roofing and siding
  • [11:57] Warren Buffett's top-five rule and quarterly "rocks"
  • [15:22] "Hell yes or no" — and why every yes is a no
  • [16:53] Health check: is Randy's AI building a distraction?
  • [19:54] Is focus still the rule in the age of AI agents?
  • [24:23] Seasons of life, consequences, and the T-chart
  • [26:29] Thinking in bets: small tests and Capital One's 4,000 experiments
  • [29:50] Why young people should say yes to more
  • [34:09] New grads, student debt, and the AI opportunity
  • [39:16] How to decide: are you good at it, and do you like it?
  • [41:46] Randy's yes/no filter — and Anthony's "count to ten"
  • [45:34] Abundance Briefing: desalination brine, mind-to-speech, solar overtakes gas
  • [50:18] Enhanced geothermal, Starlink from space, cancer survival at 71%
  • [54:28] Infant deaths down 70%, Indonesia's poverty collapse
  • [56:31] Tesla's flying car and quiet supersonic flight
  • [1:01:26] Living longer, pensions, and bringing back the dodo

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with no guest. Randy Lorensen is an entrepreneur whose work runs from direct sales to bringing AI into traditional industries, including Premium Cabinets. Anthony Marino spent 30+ years as a C-suite operations executive and grew a Pella distributorship from under $1M to $30M in sales. Dr. John Oberg, a healthcare entrepreneur behind ventures such as Sedera and Precina Health, co-hosts the show and sits this one out. (Bios summarized from the host pages linked below.)

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread yet, and the time markers follow the raw recording, so they can run a minute or two off the published audio.

Randy Lorensen [00:00]: nineteen ninety seven, Cupertino, California. Apple computer. Company has 12 days of cash left. The stock is in a free fall. Apple is making 350 different products. Printers, servers, PDAs. 15 different versions of the Macintosh. Steve Jobs is back. He walks into a room full of engineers and he says one word. Stop.

He draws a grid on the whiteboard, two columns, two rows. Consumer professional, desktop, laptop. Four products, that's it. Engineers revolt.

That year they had lost eight hundred and sixty seven million dollars making three hundred and fifty products, one year later making four three hundred and nine million dollars in profit.

What changed? Not a new invention, not a billion dollars in RD. One man simply said no to 346 things. And today's question is really: what would you be capable of if you said no to almost everything? Anthony, you've got a long history in corporate America as an entrepreneur. You've got lots of stories about this. Give us your best one.

Anthony Marino [01:26]: Well, before I give I'm gonna tell you a story, but what I wanna the way I wanna come across is when you the decision you make yes to say yes or no to something can be something that's in your head. You've gotta no one not know one. Many times we don't think of the consequences of the yes or no decision. And I've learned to think of it as in in terms of dominoes.

You know, if I say no to this, what domino is gonna fall? Am I gonna lose a friend? am I gonna let somebody down? If I say yes, yes always means additional responsibility. So my biggest yes story is in my head in nineteen seventy three, I saw this person across the room and made the decision.

To ask her if I could walk her home.

Fifty-three years later, a lot has transpired in my life with that person. Never did I think when I was gonna when I made that decision in my head to to say yes to go ask her to walk her home, would I was I think that 53 years later I'd be with the same person and have lived an incredible life. So that's one that worked out. now along the way there were a lot of yes and no.

Decisions.

Randy Lorensen [02:59]: By the way, saying yes to Jan meant saying no to four billion other women.

Anthony Marino [03:08]: Somebody else. So yeah. Yeah. In fact,

Randy Lorensen [03:10]: There's I

Anthony Marino [03:11]: I know the person's name I said no to. So yeah, I mean, there there's a weighing sometimes you don't know what the outcome is gonna be. And I know this we're gonna talk a lot about business and you know, when you when you're taking too much on and are not taking enough on or taking the wrong things on, and you know, we all passed on great opportunities, you know. So we'll we'll we'll we'll talk through all that.

But what I want the listeners to understand is that there are consequences to your decision that even with the most research and taking your time and thinking things through, it's not over right after the year so the no.

So that's that's that's the main message that I want to get across today. You've got to think through these things as best you can and then react to the various outcomes that come along the way.

Randy Lorensen [04:10]: So g so give us an example of something that you said yes to, or maybe watch somebody else say yes to that they probably shouldn't have.

Anthony Marino [04:19]: Yeah, I'll give you a good business example. I I was working with a company that was in the credit card space and it was a startup and they had received $20 million in funding from, you know, venture capitalists to start this company. And they were struggling. They they couldn't get customers. More importantly, they couldn't keep customers.

The the problem with the company was it once it launched its credit card, it immediately decided that it wanted to start selling other things to their credit card holders. So they were working on roadside assistance offers, health insurance, life insurance, and so forth. And so they weren't concentrating, much like in the case of Steve Jobs, they had multiple products.

None of which were generating any revenue, but ate up a lot of the resources, the engineering resources, to create the products, the marketing, and so on and so forth. So 20 million and one dollar later, the investors pulled the money, stopped the spigot, and the company crashed and burned. And that's a that's a case where the CEO just kept saying yes to what looked like a revenue streak.

It wasn't three hundred and forty six or whatever it was or three hundred and fifty products like like jobs, and he obviously had a lot more money to burn than or they they had a lot more money to burn than we did. But the same principle would have happened had Jobs not stepped in and shut down those products, we wouldn't be talking about Apple as one of the greatest investments in history, and it is. and then I sat there and watched.

Company with a really good core product, and we developed a great methodology to attract customers, but we we our resources were spread so thin that we couldn't attract enough customers that we just crashed and burned and literally went out of business. It cost 40 or 50 people their job, and 20 million dollars back then, you know, 20 years ago, went up in smoke. That used to be a lot of money, by the way.

Randy Lorensen [06:42]: It yeah, I I remember those days. So Anthony, this company, or we could use the Apple example, either one. The Apple three hundred and fifty products to four. Is it the focus? Is it the I mean, I my feeling is you just spread too thin, right? That you instead of being mediocre at three hundred and fifty things, you're excellent at four. And I think for most businesses,

Instead of trying to do twenty different things, you focus on one thing is the is this equivalent of that, right? 'Cause this was this was a big corporation that just got down to four. I mean, is it just about the focus or is there more to it?

Anthony Marino [07:21]: Well, what company produces and manufactures and sells three hundred and fifty things? Nobody. There's not a single you cannot name a single company that has that breadth of product. Now someone's gonna say Amazon. Amazon doesn't produce and make their products. They

Randy Lorensen [07:38]: No. They don't produce anything hardly.

Anthony Marino [07:40]: they don't produce anything. So yeah, I mean it's just and this is this is you know, on a much smaller scale, when you spread your resources thin and you have

You know, who made the decision to go to get the 350 products? Every everyone got the opportunity to just say yes. yeah, we're gonna go make a a Palm Pilot or whatever it was that they were making without enough research, enough development, enough product market fit analysis, the design. How could you how could you determine whether or not you had the right design?

There were there there's I work for a company called Intuit, you may have heard of, and they were forever being approached to acquire these smaller companies and bolt-ons to QuickBooks and bolt-ons to turbotax. They were very, very judicious in what they decided to spend their money on. So they went out and they bought

the company that that that tracks your investments that made that made a lot of sense they they made a mistake back in the early 2000s where they bought a check processing company they that was 20 minutes I think I told this story in one of our other sessions that was about 20 minutes before the iPhone came out and mobile banking showed up.

So yeah, it was it was a good idea, but they couldn't see the iPhone coming. So you you just have to, you know, back to your point about focus, that seems to work really well in your personal life and in business. That the those that focus seem to seem to win.

Randy Lorensen [09:35]: Well, I want to go to your Pella experience, right? You took over Pella and Pella sells doors and windows. They don't sell I mean, you could sell gutters, you could sell all kinds of different stuff, right? But what would that have done to the bus if you would have sold cause a lot of people go, I sell this, well I could sell this product and this product and this product. What would have changed at Pella if you tried to sell all these different things?

Anthony Marino [10:01]: So I actually have a real story about that. And John, who's not with us today, when we first got started, he was coaching me at Peller and he was my partner there. We he was working with a gutter company. And we actually went out to see the gutter company, met with the the owner, they were in disarray, they needed help, they needed money, they needed marketing, and all the things that we were doing really, really well. And

I walked away from that. It was a great idea, it looked like on paper, it was a great idea. And I just it I just in my instinctively, I just said, no. I don't, I just don't want to take that on. I I didn't really have a good reason. It just felt like it was not the right time for such a thing. And that was one of the one of the five or six best decisions I ever made and growing and growing that company. Just stayed out of it.

We got approached by Roofers and siding companies. I I hired a I hired a great production manager who came from the siding business. And many, many times when our folks were going out selling doors and windows, customers would ask us about, hey, can you do the siding for us? And he would come back and says, Boss, I can do the siding. We can make 20 grand on this deal. And I just say, Robbie, no.

Just hire your friends, okay? Give the lead to your friends in the root in the siding business. Let them do it. And the the favor will get returned to us when they're doing a siding job and somebody needs windows. And we just stayed focused on the door and window business and the rest, thankfully, is history and it worked out. Because I just felt like moving resources around to things that we weren't good at didn't make it didn't make a lot of sense to me.

Randy Lorensen [11:57]: Well, I was gonna have John, my I intended to have John tell the story about Warren Buffett, but you know, Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett has an annual, you know, we know about the annual shareholders meeting, but he also has an annual planning meeting where he brings in the CEOs of all their companies. And they do yearly planning. And John John tells this story well, but he comes in and one of the exercises he does every year, or used to at least, I don't think he still runs it, is he has them write down

a

list of everything they would like to accomplish. Then he has them rank like a top 25 or a top 30 or something like that. Then he tells them to cross off everything on the list except for the top five.

So think about that. That is that is these are companies that are, you know, multimillion, hundred million, billion dollar companies with lots of resources and lots of people. And he cuts them down to a maximum of five things per year. Right. And I know you've did a lot done a lot of this with, you know, we're both a believer of the book Traction and that whole you know, that whole management system. so you know.

Quarterly, like how many rocks do would you get your organization working on in a quarter and and like each person, how many things would they be working on?

Anthony Marino [13:20]: So we focused on three to five things every quarter. And when I was at bigger companies, I remember the project plan for the IT department, the programmers, the engineers. The laundry list would be twenty or thirty deep and nothing ever got done. Every single project was

w if it did get done, it was late and it was over budget because resources were spread so thin. There are a lot of good ideas out there. You just can't do them all. There every every company, every human being is resource constraint. Even Elon Musk is resource constrained. He's working on one specific rocket right now. He's not developing 10 new rockets.

The Falcon Heavy is where he's putting all his energy. He had whatever the names of the other ones were, the new one is where where it's at for him. Now I'm I'm sure once he makes that one perfect and it can fly every day, which is his goal, is to fly that thing every day, he'll move on to something else. But here that's a perfect example of narrowing the focus. Tesla only makes

What, three or four models now? Two or three models, I think that's it. GM, what do they do? They've got tens of models, and even they are scaling down it. I think Ford announced the elimination of almost all of its cars and focusing on you know SUVs, pickup trucks, and maybe the Mustang. I think the Mustang survived. So it's a it's a recipe.

That's so obvious yet so ignored in many ways. It's really, really surprising.

Randy Lorensen [15:22]: I

think two things that really helped me. I wish I could give this guy credit. The guy from CD Baby, I can't think of his name, he's been on Tim Ferris many times, but he has a saying and it's either hell yes or no. And I think that helped me, right? So if somebody wants you to do something, if your answer isn't hell yes, I definitely want to do it, you should say no, so you can focus on something that is a hell yes. So that helped me.

And the other thing that I think really helped me is when I came to the realization that every time I say yes to something, I'm actually saying no to something else. Right. And there's only so much time. And this has been, by the way, I probably should have led with this. This has been a challenge for me for years and years and years. Like my brain is thinking of things nonstop. And I am constantly playing defense to not get distracted and

You know, what the Confucius saying, you know, man who chases two rabbits catches none. You know, my my brain wants to chase a hundred rabbits. And so this this has been a battle for me. But, you know, hell yes or no, and realizing that everything I say yes to means no to something else. Now I think that's becoming less true in today's world. We'll we'll get to that later. speaking of which, Anthony, you let's go there now. You you before the call, you you're

You wanted to have like a health check on me. Tell tell people

Anthony Marino [16:53]: That's right.

So Randy is doing a lot of work with AI in in its in its actual physical work of creating bots and processes to automate a lot of the a lot of his business interests. And it seems like that's all he's doing. He even made a statement. Now Randy, you have to understand, is probably the the

the most intense person when it comes to the NFL. He knows a lot about football and he watches a lot of football. And he what what clicked for me was when he said the following. Yesterday when I was watching football, I created this thing. That concerned me because

I know how much he loves football. And it doesn't matter if it's his Vikings or my Patriots. It doesn't matter. He's going to watch it. And he's the kind of guy that can tell you the right guard of the New England Patriots isn't using a proper drop step when he comes back in pass protection. When he said he was created something during football that that was like a cue to me that said, my goodness, he's spending a lot of time on this stuff. Is he spending any time on himself? And that worried me.

Randy Lorensen [18:11]: Well, and and and it's a valid concern. However, I am excited and I I believe that a big part of longevity is that you're again I'm stealing this from Dan Sullivan, but that your future is brighter than your past. And I'm working harder than I've worked in years. And we've talked about before, when I started using AI, it was so I could have more free time and make things easier. And the exact same thing opp or exact opposite thing has happened.

I have been working harder longer. However, I'm coming out the other side. I'm A doing way more than I've ever done in the past. And I'm at a point now where I'm actually do have more free time and ability to get away. I mean, like I go walk the dog every day for 60 to 90 minutes. Now, I'm not saying I don't have Grokbot and I'm not talking to Odin on my phone.

through either Grockbot or Telegram and having it do things while I'm out there. But it I really have kind of turned the corner where it's so efficient and doing so many things that it has it's it's moving the other way now. And it's I'm becoming I am getting more and more time, I feel like, almost by the day or by the week. So I but there is a danger, right? Because I can just do so much

Look, last Friday, one of the girls in the office had an issue. And I said, let's fix that. In the past, this would have been a big fix, but we spent two hours creating bots to solve this huge problem that she has every month. And eventually you just kind of run out of those types of problems.

Anthony Marino [19:53]: Right.

Randy Lorensen [19:54]: Right? And that's kind of happening. And so let's take this to another thing. I think, you know, focus has been this really effective thing.

Throughout

time. And I don't think that's changing. I don't want to s I don't want to s poo-poo that because I think there's a big lesson and a big takeaway there. However,

Is it as true today as it was when Steve Jobs walked into that office? What if Steve Jobs could have set up, what if he could have had his experts set up bots to run and test and really focus on, even if it isn't 350 products, maybe it was 50 products or 20 products. Like with today's AI bots and assistants and agents, is it as true today?

Anthony Marino [20:44]: Well, maybe may i i it's a good point. So f he had to go he went to four because that's what he could absorb, that's what he could focus on. Could it be ten today? Could it be twenty-five today? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. but I know four was the right answer back then. So it's it's really up to a business to determine how deep can you go with the resources that you have.

But the important piece would be in a business sense, it would be one at a time. You might end up with 10, but you're probably better off going from four to five to six, and not from four to fifteen in one fell swoop, which was what happened at the company I referenced earlier. We went from one good product to five or six that went nowhere and destroyed the number one piece, the lifeblood of the company.

So so yeah, maybe you're right. but I would also wanna frame this around abundance and you know we we we had a a podcast long ago about about happiness. You know, you're you're you're talking about

You're coming out the other side, so now you're gonna be able to walk your dog for 65 minutes and have dinner with your family and so on and so forth, and that's gonna lead to some happiness. I think a lot of what we encounter in our country, in our environment that we live in, is we're a product of an environment that fostered the idea of saying yes to everything.

and hustling and not stopping and creating a you know abundant creating an abundance of finance and success and status. And if you juxtapose our country and how we grew up, and maybe it's going to be different for the next generations, but certainly for my generation that was part of it. You juxtapose us versus some European countries.

And you look at the way they approach business and the way they seem to approach life in general, it isn't the same. You know, it's close the shop from one to three every day in several European countries and you know, go have a lunch or take a siesta and so forth. And we've all said it because we've traveled there, we've all traveled there. They seem happier, they seem more relaxed.

They seem more well, whatever. You know, it didn't that that didn't go exactly right. Now take soccer out of the mix, 'cause when it comes to soccer that's a completely different thing for the Europeans. But it's

Randy Lorensen [23:37]: I think I think the

French and the Italians aren't aren't so happy right now either. They're they don't seem so whatever.

Anthony Marino [23:42]: No, no, no,

they they've they've done they've made some yes decisions that they're paying for right now.

Randy Lorensen [23:47]: Yeah.

Anthony Marino [23:49]: which is not it's it's it's rather scary when you think of some of the yes decisions we've made, but that's let's stay positive on that. But my point is you are a product of your environment. And and maybe that's changing. it may and it may be for the better. that you know we don't have this.

mad rush to be financially successful and have status and keeping up with the Joneses and so forth. But that's kind of why we ended up where where we are. we'll see. We'll s we'll see

Randy Lorensen [24:22]: Anthony,

Anthony Marino [24:22]: where the future holds, but.

Randy Lorensen [24:23]: we've talked about different seasons in people's lives, right? And we're talking about how you focus. Again, I I think you can do more now and you can say yes to more, but I would agree with your sentiment sentiment that you still can't say yes to everything, even if you can get more done now. But is there a season in people's life, is there a time in their life when they it probably is a good idea for them to say yes more often and to more things?

Anthony Marino [24:52]: I don't I don't know. I don't I'm not sure that I would agree with that. I think what I've what I've learned is that before you say yes or no, you you really stop and think about it. I mean, I've I've made a lot of decisions business wise over the years that in in reflection I should have said no to. You know, things that, you know

taking it taking a new job, leaving leaving a an opportunity behind, that led to what it was supposed to lead to something terrific, it didn't it didn't turn out. And in retrospect, it was obvious it wasn't gonna turn out. Or putting trust in someone that I'm really wasn't that familiar with, but the allure of the money and the status, I look past those things.

I didn't think I didn't think that through. Are the impact on family moving them from one city to another at a certain time in their particular lives that could cause stress? you gotta be really think through your yeses and your no's because there are consequences, good and bad. And you just have to do your best. But taking a minute, counting to 10, doing the old-fashioned T-screen.

T chart where here's the benefits, here's the you know, here's the risk, here are the rewards. Do they d is the upside gain bigger than the downside risk? You know, all those things that the fundamentals that sometimes when you make a decision you don't take the time to do that. And I just think that that's what's really important.

Randy Lorensen [26:29]: Just just because something doesn't

work out though doesn't mean it was the wrong decision, right? I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs have tried things, tried things, tried things, and they don't always work, right? You you have to take the you gotta take the information you have at that time, look at the chances it's gonna work out. This is my poker player brain, thinking in odds and percentages, the upside, what's the expected value, what's the chances it's gonna work out? And

If you just ex I I think about this, here's a maybe a simpler is advertising. This is the way because I was always, always testing some kind of advertising, right? I have my advertising that I know works and the things that I've proven, and then I'm testing other things. And my attitude was: if I test ten new advertising methods and nine of them fail, that's okay. If the tenth one or even the twentieth one works and it's repeatable.

it will make up for those those nine or nineteen failures. And I think sometimes with our with our business, we have to, you know, we have to have enough to survive and keep going. You can't risk it all on one thing necessarily unless it works. But doing a lot of little tests to see what happens, I think, is a very viable strategy, right?

Anthony Marino [27:48]: I I

I a hundred percent agree and I won't get this quote right, but years ago and I forget his name, the CEO of Capital One back in the day when they were a rocking and rolling credit card company that were growing like crazy, they were blowing blowing the doors off of growth, he was interviewed and someone asked him, Why did you guys run four thousand tests last year? 'Cause they used to mail hundreds of millions of credit card applications to people with different color envelopes and

Fonts and everything else. And he said, I know 3,999 things not to do next year. That was his answer. And yeah, in the context of testing, I absolutely agree. He knew what the outcomes were going to be. He knew what his expenses were. He was, you know, judicious with his resources. Sure, that makes sense. What I'm referencing is.

you wanna be you wanna be a little bit cautious when other people are involved, you know, particularly your family. Or if it's, you know, your bank account can't sustain the loss, right? You gotta be you've gotta be a little bit more cautious. so that's all. That's all I'm saying. And it makes it sounds simple, but in the heat of a moment and in the desire to be successful, in the emotion of

wanting to achieve something, sometimes we don't do that. You know, we can look back on it and say, this is what you should do. And, you know, great. I wish I wish I was a perfect human being and had done that every single time in my life. And none of us are. We're all prone to chasing two rabbits, as you said. That that happens. And you just have to, yes, you have to live with the consequences of it. And hopefully the consequences aren't dire or severe. But

You know, what are you gonna do? You know, that's you just have to th you know, think through it and and not hope for the best, but work work towards the best.

Randy Lorensen [29:50]: Well, circling back, I asked you the question about is there a time that maybe this isn't as important or you say yes more often. And what I was thinking is young people. I I just I believe young people should try stuff, whether it's elementary, you know, young kids, high school kids, try different activities, try different things, see what you like, see what's interesting, but college and even kids just out of college. It's what a great time. You know, I I think a lot of times these kids have so much pressure that you get out of college and you get the job.

Well,

in today's world, people are likely going to switch jobs at an even faster pace. They're they're switching them more now than they were decades ago. And I think with the rate of change that is happening in the world and technology advancements, a lot of the jobs we have are going to be obsolete and people are going to be doing new jobs that we can't even fathom. But exposing yourself to all these different things, it might not just be a career. It might just be

I like to travel to the beach or I like the mountains better than the beach. It could be that I like this group or I like playing this instrument or playing this game or whatever it is. And I just I think young people in particular trying more stuff is really good and healthy for them.

Anthony Marino [31:05]: Well, I a hundred percent agree with you, and it's manifesting itself even as we speak, not just young, I mean I mean any anyone's young to me, but twenties, thirties, early forties, people working in jobs and they're they've got side hustles. You know, that there was no such thing as a side hustle. And when I was growing up in in corporate America, you had a job. You didn't have a side hustle. In fact

It was there was not the the well side hustle didn't exist. The word didn't exist. But now you can have a side hustle because of the technology that's available to us, or you can try something with a group of your friends that want to maybe launch a a business on its own. I mean, Michael Dell went to college. He didn't have a side hustle. He had one thing he wanted to accomplish in college, and that was building computers out of spare parts that he found.

here and there and started reselling back to retailers. I mean, that there was no s that wasn't a side hustle. Now you can have a job and on weekends you can, you know, do what you're doing with with AI and create an app or whatever you whatever they're doing, an online Etsy, you know, sale program and so on and so forth. So it's a lot more available. 100% agree that the younger you are, the the more risk you should take. Because you you're not

You you don't have two kids and a mortgage. You know what I mean? You're just you're getting started, so wing it. Take take a shot. Also, you should take what's available to you. I heard there was someone doing an interview with, you know, kind of recent college graduates. It was a panel of of men and women, different social and economic backgrounds. It was a pretty good interview. And several of them said,

When asked, you know, well, there are jobs available in construction or there's jobs available in the service industries. And several of them said, I'm not going to do that. I want, I want my I went to school for this career, and that's the that's the job I want. Well, they're missing an opportunity to grow as a human being by not taking those opportunities. A, they're not they're not making any money. B, they're gonna have to rely on someone for to support them.

And they're not learning social skills, they're not developing good habits about getting to work on time and doing the job and achieving something. And there is I don't care what job you're doing, there's something to be gained from doing a job and working with people. I don't care if you're wrapping subway sub sandwiches at a Jimmy John's or you're on a data center construction site in the middle of Texas, there's something to be gained from doing those jobs. So yeah, I was disappointed to hear that kind of attitude because

I mean that would never have occurred to me to say, you know, I'm gonna rely on someone else for my my income. Just not not in my DNA.

Randy Lorensen [34:09]: Yeah, it's we've talked about this, but boy, these these kids today, I simultaneously think they've got it rough because they've been told, Go to school, get good grades, get into the right college, get a degree, and you're gonna have this job waiting. And that was actually pretty true until a few years ago. Right now, those jobs just it's hard if for a kid getting out of school.

And I've they feel like they've been lied to and they probably have been. So on one hand, I feel for them. On the other hand, I am so envious of these kids. my God. Being 18 now, and with the things you could do with AI, the things you can learn and do and teach yourself, that you know, being young, you're so far behind people with experience. You can close that gap unbelievably fast now, with AI and build things that

Even

a couple of years ago you just couldn't see. And I but I do still feel for because I I think it's really hard when you know, if you've spent years and years and your parents have told you, and your teachers have told you, and society has told you, here's the route and here's the path, and all of a sudden it's just not true. But on the other hand, you have this huge opportunity over there, go take the damn thing, right? I mean,

Anthony Marino [35:31]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [35:32]: like it's just like

grab the bull by the horns and go with it. It's it's it's so exciting and so much opportunity.

Anthony Marino [35:40]: Yeah, most of us that, you know, went went to college probably through the two thousands, paid their own way to do it. You know, had j I had jobs in the summer after school and so on and so forth, and I had other means to generate income that we won't talk about here. But the the kids today, I feel sorry for for two reasons. One

As you said, that culturally we carried this go to college, get a job. And by the way, here's some free money, what appeared to be free money to do it. And colleges took advantage of that, increasing their prices and so forth. And now they're these kids are saddled with, in some cases, fifty to a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of debt when they left college they're leaving college. So not only are they having a tough time getting a job, they've got the overhang of a government.

Who out of what they thought was kindness gave them this money. And by the way, charging them interest over and above what it costs the government to get the money. And so they're being built, in my opinion, not to drag this down, but not sure exactly why the government has to charge seven and a half, eight, nine percent to a college kid when they're borrowing the money at

Two or three or four percent. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It doesn't seem fair, but that's a that's a topic for another day. So I do feel I do feel farm. And also, unlike certainly when I graduated college, yeah, I graduated in a tough economic time, you know, the misery index was 20%, interest rates were 14, 15%, inflation was five, eight percent. It was a tougher, tough job environment, but it wasn't really a changing job environment.

You know, there just weren't enough of the same jobs. Today, the sand is shifting every day on these kids. You know, what I mean, my kids have young children, they ask me, Well, what would you do? And I I don't have a great answer other than make sure they get educated, they're great at math, they got good social skills, they can read and write. And then I always use the the phrase return or serve. See what comes at you and

Try to hit it back, you know, 'cause I can't tell you what ten or twelve years are gonna from now are gonna look like for people entering the workforce. They have I don't think anybody can I don't think it's any t tell you ten months from now what the workforce is gonna be like.

Randy Lorensen [38:20]: Yeah, it's

I I think more and more it's knowing how to think. If it's a if it means a college education, I think it's more of a classical f the philosophy and learning how to think more than the actual subjects is part of it. and then just being curious. Like being curious has always been a winning strategy, but I think in today's world it's even more so, right? Like i the

How quickly you can learn things, how quickly you can do things, how easily. Amazing. So much opportunity. Just dig in and figure out what you're curious about and follow it. But let's let's switch it. Our final topic here before we go to the briefing. Anthony, something new lands in front of you this afternoon. New opportunity.

How

do you actually decide yes or no?

Anthony Marino [39:21]: Well, the first thing it in using your discussion earlier about the different sea what season are you in in your life? For me, I've got the luxury of being able to take the time to think about it. I don't you know, I don't need to do things for money, although I still love money and my wife seems to really enjoy spending it. So

You know, there's the always the struct the the struggle of continuing to build and so forth. So I I would take my time, but I you I use that phrase before and I and I I live by this is what's the upside versus the downside of saying yes or no to this situation, this thing, this take a trip. I just had a a group of guys offer me a trip, a golf trip. The answer was no.

And I thought h long and hard about it and it came down to I I don't really want to travel with that guy. So that that was the decision. It was a great trip. It was expensive, of course, but it it came down to not want to go play golf with this particular guy, even though the rest of the group was good. So, you know, you move on from it. So it's gonna it's gonna vary depending on what it is. When it comes to a strictly a business situation.

Am I am I good at it and do I like it? That's what I I advise anybody. And you you you use the term curious. I would tell someone young, what are you good at? And do you like doing it? And if you are both feet. Jump in with both feet. If you're one or the other, give it a shot. Right? If you're good at it,

Give it a shot, you might learn to like it. If you like it, maybe you can get good at it. You know, so you've got to have those kinds of discussions with yourself. And you've got to be honest with yourself. Don't don't delude yourself to think, well, I really don't like it and I'm good at it. That's kind of not the best combination because you're gonna you're gonna you might quit if you don't like doing something. But you got to give those things a shot.

So I don't know if that answered your question, but that's how I think of it.

Randy Lorensen [41:46]: I think I'm gonna try and channel Dr. John here because he's got systems and processes and kind of have a list, but you know, for me it starts with, is this aligned? Right? In other words, is it aligned with it could be with my core values that we've talked about in previous exco episodes. It could be with a vision board. Is it, you know, my business, but is it aligned? Is there a benefit? Like why do I want this, right? Is it something that because I think we've all done that.

We've all chased after things, and then you realize, God, I didn't even really want that in the first place. you know, can I do it? Do I have the capacity to pull it off? does it excite me? That's a big one for me, right? Do I enjoy it? Do I get does it excite me? Because for me, I wish I was a person that could do the same monotonous, boring stuff over and over, but that's not who I am. And for me, having it be something that interests me.

That I will dive into is a big thing. and then the big thing going back to our question about you know, saying no to things is is it a distraction? And that has been a big, big filter for me for years. Now I will tell you, as AI expands, that is less and less and less of a filter. I can't tell you the number of things that I would have said no to even a few months ago, and now I just do and I tell an AI agent.

I basically tell my Odin bot, Hey, do this. Right? And it just gets done. So I think that's I think that's my list. Anthony, put a bow on this thing before we go to break.

Anthony Marino [43:26]: Well, what I would say is be careful, be honest with yourself. Is this decision gonna have a personal impact, a business impact on me? Who else and what else does it have an impact on? And then step back, count to ten, whether it's ten seconds, ten minutes, ten hours, ten days, ten months, then make your decision.

Randy Lorensen [43:53]: All right,

Anthony Marino [43:53]: How's that?

Randy Lorensen [43:54]: listeners, if you haven't already, please download, subscribe, tell your friends, help help our algorithm grow. and Anthony, we will come back after the break and do the abundance briefing.

I'm gonna cut that part, that last little line out. That was unnecessary, but we'll the add we can start whenever you're ready here. let me get the page open.

Anthony Marino [44:24]: Yeah too.

Randy Lorensen [44:33]: Alright, you ready?

Anthony Marino [44:34]: I am ready.

Randy Lorensen [44:35]: Okay.

Anthony Marino [44:40]: by the way, you froze a couple of times.

Randy Lorensen [44:43]: Yeah, I know. I don't know what. My internet it's weird. It's way faster now. But it's been freezing more. And what I'll tell you what I really noticed what's that?

Anthony Marino [44:51]: Do you have do you have a Starlink? Do you have Starlink?

Randy Lorensen [44:55]: No, I got I went from

Spectrum to ATT fiber. And well, I'll tell you where I really notice it. It used to be when I would upload the podcast episodes. Like I would I would hit upload on YouTube and I would hit uptoad on on Spotify and it would take 20, 30 minutes. I would literally do it a lot of times and then go shower and come back because it'd take twenty, thirty minutes for both of them to upload. Now, I think they upload in 30 seconds. It it's like but I seem to be freezing more and I don't I don't know why exactly.

So anyway, all right.

Welcome back, Anthony. Abundance briefing. First topic. China just solved desalinization's dirty secret. And what that really means is they've turned toxic brine into a product. This is a big thing. And really, as I read into this, what it's doing is when they when they do the desalinization, they have all this toxic crap left over, and they were just pouring it into the ocean. Well, it hasn't 100% eliminated it.

But

for every three tons of waste that it was creating, it's now creating one ton of waste and it's using sixty percent less electricity than conventional methods. So just I I think by the way, listeners, we're gonna go pretty rapid fire today on the abundance briefing. We've got a lot of news today that's just, wow, look at these little ways that the world is just simultaneously getting better and better and better. But you know, if you live in a coastal city, that's a big deal.

Anthony Marino [46:34]: Yeah, for sure. This is the biggest reason why desalinization plants have not been rapidly expanded because of the damage it does to the ecosystem surrounding it. It wipes out the fish, it wipes out the coral, it wipes out the seabed and so forth. So if this if this can be scaled, this is a this is a game changer for sure. As you as we all know, water is a scarce resource. three quarters of the earth is surrounded by

by it but is covered by it, but we're running out of water in many, many places, including the the southwest so of the United States. This is great.

Randy Lorensen [47:13]: All right, our next topic a paralyzed woman just called her grandkids using only her thoughts.

Anthony Marino [47:21]: What can be more abundant than this? I mean, this is terrific. that so many there are so many things happening in the healthcare space that are now being developed for small populations of people that are having trouble. So

There's Musk and is Neuralink, and several companies are doing things to help people that have been paralyzed. And these are small populations, but very, very affected people that our healthcare technology is getting to the point where, for not a lot of cost, we can improve the lives of smaller and smaller groups of people. In the past, people needed

big populations to help. We're gonna we're gonna help diabetics. We got 40 million of those. Now if we have two thousand or something, there can be a healthcare solution for those people coming. They're coming now and they're coming faster and faster. This is terrific.

Randy Lorensen [48:25]: Yeah, she she chose her own words, she answered open-ended questions, and it was a live phone call with her grandkids, but my favorite part was the first sentence she generated. It was, okay, I have a lot to say. So that's that's pretty cool. I'm sure I'm sure she did. another real one of our our quick ones. Claude outdesigned human experts on quantum circuits, sometimes by 17 times better.

I

don't know how much there's to say here, but this is using Claude Mythos 5. I mean, this is kind of the same story we keep hearing. It's, you know, last week we talked about it solving 722 math equations. I know they're they're going after physics next. You know, quantum is one of those things. A AI is getting better, B, it hope maybe it helps us get closer to quantum. solar, Anthony, just became the world's number one source of new energy, beating gas for the first time.

Anthony Marino [49:23]: Well, we know the sun's gonna be here for a couple more years. So I think this is great news. The the eventually what else is gonna be powered by solar? Right? What what are we where is it gonna where is it gonna take us next? Are we gonna have solar cars? Are we gonna have solar planes? I don't know. But I love the fact that we're using something that is not gonna run out in our lifetime. So go for it.

Randy Lorensen [49:52]: We

don't have to dig it out of the ground, right? It's just it's just there and it's hitting the earth all the time. you know, if the sun stops shining, we have a lot bigger problems. So you know, by the way, it passed it for the first time, but the lead so natural gas has 17%. Solar jumped all the way to 25%. So that's a big, big jump in one year. And you know, I love that. That's great.

I

think this one's cool. The world's first enhanced geothermal power plant just flipped on. So there have been other geothermal, but this is the first one that is has reached commercial operation. and basically what it is, you know, most of these happen with a volcano or a geyser or something like that. Well, what they're doing with this one is, and I think it was in Utah when I was reading about this earlier. I don't see that here, but I'm pretty sure it was in Utah.

But it's going after shale-style horizontal drilling into hot rock. And then they're pumping water through the cracks, generating 24-7 clean power, no geysers, no volcanoes. and there's 13 US geothermal products or projects now worth 2.58 billion that are currently in the pipeline. So

Anthony Marino [51:11]: Again, we need power from all the sources. someone said on a podcast I listened to yesterday that we're going to be some tremendous number of megawatts short of what we need to power the country in the thir in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. And if we don't get going, we're not gonna be able to supply the power we need to run the AI that's

need that we want to run. And even our just the our power plants are getting old and decrepit and they're going to need to be replaced. We just don't have we're not putting the resources into it. So seeing something like this, and I don't know exactly how this works and what the impact is on the environment with these projects, but we we need energy from all the sources until such time that we've perfected the cleanest of them, which looks like it's going to be solar.

So good good on you guys for figuring this out. Let's just keep going.

Randy Lorensen [52:15]: you know, Starlink is promising a hundred X the bandwidth of your unmodified phone from space. And again, it's gonna get faster. This may not be that big of a deal in the US, but worldwide, this is a big deal. There's billions of people on the planet that have either no mobile coverage or poor mobile coverage, and they're the target market is this is gonna unlock really fast internet and mobile coverage.

to the entire world. And who knows what opportunities and what brilliant people were missing that are now gonna just have access to do great things.

Anthony Marino [52:55]: Well, i that's exactly right. So the world the world is gonna benefit from this. rural areas are gonna benefit from it. And maybe someday we can ha take down all of these horrible looking cell towers that pop up in our neighborhoods that just eyesore. So, you know, again, Mr. Musk is doing something that nobody else has done. Everyone else has had the chance to do this, and I know there's some competitors out there.

that s you know may be able to compete with him. But this is again, this is terrific for places like Africa and Southeast Asia where they're they just don't have coverage. And it putting a mobile phone, we know what that does to a country in terms of its ability to communicate, industrialize, become more modern, get out from poverty and so forth. So

This this is again abundance at its best.

Randy Lorensen [53:57]: Yeah, I'm gonna, in the interest of time, I'm gonna do a few real fast. U.S. cancer survival rates just hit 71%, up from 49% in the 70s. That's pretty exciting, right? I mean, we all know people that have had cancer. you know, the f and for people that had already had like a advanced, it had already spread, the five-year survival rate went from 17% in the mid-90s to 36%, so more than doubled. So definitely good news

Anthony Marino [54:25]: That's great.

Randy Lorensen [54:26]: for longevity.

etc.

infant deaths. The world's poorest countries are down 70% in if infant debts deaths since 1969. In in 69, 148 of every thousand babies born in low-income countries died before age one. That number now is down to 43. That means 103 out of a thousand. I mean more than I mean that that's outstanding, right? A 71% drop

And basically that affects, you know, it's 140 million people living under that threat, 10 million in one lifetime. So again, unbelievable. Indonesia, Anthony, slashed extreme poverty from 86% to under 4% in one generation. So from 84, 86% of the people in Indonesia lived on under $3 a day, or about 140 million people.

Anthony Marino [55:23]: Well, these two things are related. The the deaths and the poverty are related because in order to reduce poverty, you have to have industrialization, clean sanitation, you have to have access to health care, access to vaccines, and so forth. And by raising the income levels and the and moving people out of poverty, it's like a it's balancing the seesaw. So both those things work off of each other.

So again, China did the exact same thing and

They're world power now. I mean, I was there in 2002, and 90% of the country in China made below $1,000 a year. Now they have the world's largest middle class 26 years, 24 years later. And they did it the same way Indonesia did it by industrializing and raising income levels, educating people, not spending more than they took in, so they don't have a high debt, and so on and so forth. So

Randy Lorensen [56:29]: I

mean, it's 130

Anthony Marino [56:30]: Good voice.

Randy Lorensen [56:31]: million people in a 40 year period that no longer have to live on under three dollars a day. So I mean pretty astounding. we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about a car flu a few days ago. I mean Tesla had a flying car. I mean what d talk about this.

Anthony Marino [56:50]: Well, I know Mr. Musk is a is a lightning rod for some people, but that was the coolest thing I ever saw. I mean, it was just absolutely the Jetsons waiting to happen. It I watched it a dozen times to figure out what exactly am I seeing here. What the practical application of that is, I don't really care.

Okay. It's technology being advanced. There there are going to be uses for this technology that none of us are thinking about right now. so good on him, man. It was entertaining. It was fun to watch. And I just I just think, you know, the world of what what these guys are doing over there, good for them.

Randy Lorensen [57:33]: Yeah, and you know, I heard I heard people, you know, poo-pooing it. It's it's I the first thing, the people that criticize this, they're generally booger eaters living in their parents' basement or whatever. I mean, they're just they're not people that have built things. And I'm I'm a big believer in the man in the arena and bravo to the person taking the risk, spending their money, making it happen. And it's the worst it's ever gonna be. I mean, this thing isn't gonna hit the streets, I don't think, for two or three years. Well

It'll be better two or three years from now than what it is right now. If it doesn't fly l far enough for you, okay. And one of the things I thought was really cool, I assume to do that because it was they called it cold gas or something. They they took the technology from SpaceX and I thought, well, that's gonna be really expensive. Who's gonna wanna do that? It fills itself back up. It's just using regular air and it uses it when it runs out, it just fills itself back up and can, you know.

No cost to the user to be able to do that. And by the way, you want to talk about fast. The performance for or whatever, they have three versions of it. The slow one is going to go zero to sixty in one point six seconds. The next one is like point nine some seconds. And the fastest one is going to go zero to sixty in point six seconds, which that's that's insane.

Anthony Marino [58:57]: Right. I I don't think we need that technology, but that technology is gonna lead to something that we haven't thought of.

Randy Lorensen [59:02]: Yeah.

Anthony Marino [59:03]: No one's gonna need to go zero to sixty in point five or point eight seconds, but that technology is going to bring some abundance to us. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be something. It's not going to go to waste.

Randy Lorensen [59:16]: And sometimes it's just kind of cool to do things because you can, right? America, that's why. There we go. all right. Quiet supersonic. This was your topic, Anthony. Tal talk to us about this. NASA's doing some tests and doing quiet supersonic. No no no sonic boom, in other words.

Anthony Marino [59:35]: Yeah, they figured out how to travel at just sub-supersonic speeds over populated areas so that it doesn't create a sonic boom. But when they travel over the ocean, they can go even faster and have a sonic boom and doesn't bother anybody. So this private company thinks it's about a year away from actually delivering passenger level supersonic flight.

across the United States into Europe and beyond. NASA is working on supersonic flight so that it can get us to the moon faster, so it can, you know, do its its thing. It's not a it's not a commercially viable project. But the comp the company and NASA are working together to advance this technology that we put on the shelf because we had a couple of Concords of in the 80s, you know, crash.

And people complained about the sonic booms while they're solving that problem. And who wouldn't want to trav travel from LA to Texas in forty five minutes? I mean, who doesn't want to get out of LA? So yeah, I'm all for this for sure.

Randy Lorensen [1:00:49]: That's what you're talking about, right? So one of these is going Mach one point seven. this one's still under development, but that's thirteen hundred miles an hour, is what that is. Significantly faster than airplanes go today. And yeah, just less time on an airplane, again, this is a win. Being able to get around the world and you know, it's LA to Texas. What if it's LA to Australia? Right? Even a even a bigger savings. All right.

Next

one here. We're living longer, but not healthier, although I think that's disputable, and pensions aren't ready for it. Anthony, why did you want to add this one?

Anthony Marino [1:01:31]: Well, it's it's a concern. It's it it's there's clearly abundance in living longer. The question is, are we going to live longer and still be living well? And are we gonna have the wealth as a world to basically support people that are going to be beyond working age? Okay. Now a lot of discussion about when people should retire and should the you know, the retirement age move from

65 to 75 and things like that. There's there's a lot of abundance positive abundance here. There's just some things we have to work through to make sure that it's an enjoyable life. It's a healthy life, it's it's a life worth living, is the way I would put it.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:19]: Yeah, I I think this is really positive, right? We're living longer. Yes, it's gonna be a little bit messy. We have to figure by the government's own numbers, Social Security is gonna run out in twenty thirty-four. And by the way, if you just go back a few years, it was thirty-five and thirty-six. But by the government's own numbers, they're running out of social security in eight years. Well, if people are living longer, they're gonna run out even faster. And that's assuming we don't have a recession. So so yes, it's messy. There's some real problems. But

You know, I know this will never get through politically, but I think people are so much healthier now. When they set 65 as a retirement age, most people didn't draw Social Security because they died either before they got to 65 or shortly after. And I remember when I was a kid, now part of it is probably because I was ten and anybody that fifty seemed like they were a million. But fifty-year-old people were not generally healthy, not like they are today. And

I think people can work longer. Like they like you're over sixty-five, you're still working. You're not you're not even close to being done. Right? Like this is an opportunity to do more stuff and have an exciting future. And we have to figure some stuff out. But between you know, healthcare advances and everything coming down the pipeline, I just think, you know, I I think this is great news, even even if it is gonna get a little messy.

Anthony Marino [1:03:46]: Yeah, it's gonna be messy, but I again man left alone without government interference solves almost every problem. So with with all the things that are happening in AI and and every other technology around the world, we'll solve this problem, for sure. I'm very, very confident we'll solve it.

Randy Lorensen [1:04:05]: All right, our last topic. Should we bring back the dodo bird? what we're talking about, Colossus AI. They're the people that brought back the direwolf. I think we've talked about on this episode before. Anthony, what what jumps out to you on this bringing back? Should we bring back the dodo bird?

Anthony Marino [1:04:24]: Well, have a could the the question, no, I don't know that we should bring back the dodo bird or or any bird. these guys are also, I've met the the founders of this company and they're also working on bringing back the woolly mammoth. There's there my question for them is okay, great. What else do you what are we going to learn from that? How is this gonna create abundance in the world? How what other what are you learning from doing this that is gonna help the human species? That's what I want to know.

So I think we'll we'll dig into this and do some research on it. we may be able to get a guest from the company to come on and talk to us about it in a later episode. There's nothing there's no downside to this, because again, this is a form of technology and what abundance it brings, I I really want to understand the impact on the human race, not so much on the dodo bird.

Randy Lorensen [1:05:16]: And I think it's pretty cool. Like you can't help but think about Jurassic Park here, right? And you know, whether you it's God, the universe, love, what light, whatever you call it, you know, what if everything has a plan, did the dodo bird go extinct because it's supposed to? Right? On the other hand, if we're able to I mean, we get we're getting really philosophical here, but

Maybe it was supposed to go extinct and maybe we're supposed to bring it back because we're supposed to learn something from it. Right? I would be curious, you know, different animals, I think there's a lot that we're gonna be able to learn. And things that happen, their biology, their makeup, their cellular structure might be different than ours. And how can we benefit? Does it give us ways to live longer, understand, repair the body? understand, you know, I don't know, what does it unlock? Right.

Anthony Marino [1:06:12]: Right.

Randy Lorensen [1:06:12]: So

Anthony Marino [1:06:13]: That's that's what I wonder. And I'm sure again, I'm sure there'll be something that these guys figure out that they haven't thought about, we haven't thought about. It's always it's always the case. We flew to the moon, we didn't know we w it was going to develop technology that was gonna turn into personal computers. You just don't know. you but having people build a business, their ancillary and adjacent benefits.

to this, we just don't know what they are. So go for it guys.

Randy Lorensen [1:06:43]: I think I worry more

about them cross-pollinating weird species, you know, similar to GMO crops. I think I you know, but there can also be benefits to that, right? So anyway, just an interesting thing to keep an eye an eye on. They've already brought back dire wolves for those of you that don't know. And like you said, they're talking about woolly mammoths, they're talking about dodo birds and other things. So I know they're doing some work with there's like a a s another wolf that they're bringing back as well. But anyway, that's all for this week.

Until next week, go out and spread a little abundance. Thank you, everyone.