I'm Scott.
I'm Russell.
And I'm Leo.
This is Spitball.
Welcome to Spitball, where three wizardly wantrepreneurs and a guest empty our heads
of startup and tech product ideas that we have stuck up in there so you can all have
them for free.
Anything that we say is yours to keep.
And this week, Russell, I believe you brought our guest.
uh yes uh this is jess zo she's uh famous uh for being a super entrepreneur mom
momtrepreneur as well as the hot tub pool extraordinaire careful um and believe it or not
Sam's always married to her.
So the previous guest of our show.
One of our first guests.
That's right.
Yeah.
She's the more famous version of that by far.
So thank you, Jess, for joining us.
My intros are the best.
Welcome.
Wow.
Thank you.
Thank you for that kind introduction, Russell.
Yeah, I'm glad to be on your show.
and I'm really excited to share my idea that I came up with today.
We're so hyped to have you.
This is going to be so much fun.
To get us started this week, I want to play a little warm-up game here.
I'm going to call this one founder or pharma.
So I have a few nonsense words that I'd like to throw at you all.
We'll go down the line one by one here.
I want you to tell me if this is a startup or tech product
or if this is a drug that exists as a prescription drug in the U.S.
And we start always as we always do every time with our guest, Jess.
Jess, is this a product tech thing or is this a drug?
Alterix.
A-L-T-E-R-Y-X.
That sounds like a drug.
It is a data analytics platform.
Oh, right.
For skincare.
No.
Scott Entresto.
E-N-T-R-E-S-T-O.
That's like a bad magician.
Entresto.
I'm going to say a drug.
It's a Harry Potter spell.
It is a heart failure medication.
Oh, God.
Harry Potter spell?
Russell, CELONIS, C-E-L-O-N-I-S.
That's a drug.
As a business intelligence platform.
Of course.
Heard of that one.
Of course.
Jess, LUMIFY, L-U-M-I-F-Y.
I think I have that.
I think that's a business.
Is that a cool light that syncs to your phone?
Bad news, that's a brand of eye drops.
Oh, hey, all right!
It sure sounds like it.
That's kind of why I picked it.
Scott, Mendix.
M-E-N-D-I-X.
I'm going to go for drug again and hope it mends you.
That's a low-code platform.
I'm sure Russell's all about it.
Mendix.
That's a back-end one.
I think we've got one correct out of five or six so far.
uh russell vimovo v-i-m-o-v-o vimovo okay that's a bank online bank not an option
that is a pain med of course oh darn one more time through jess denodo d-e-n-o-d-o
um i'm gonna say that's a product it is data visualization very good
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking.
Data visualization.
You're a big Denodo head.
Jess and Scott tied.
Scott, Kevzara.
K-E-V-Z-A-R-A.
Medical product.
That's an arthritis medicine.
Very good.
Clinching it.
And Russell, lastly, Upneek.
U-P-N-E-E-Q.
N-E-E-Q?
Upnike?
That's got to be medical.
Too hard to spell.
It's a droopy eyelid, man.
You're very good.
After years of these games, Leo,
I've just learned to take every instinct I have
and just do the opposite.
Well, great news.
For the first time I think ever, maybe, you've won.
Two to one to one.
I have learned how to do this.
I think that means you have to go first this week.
All right.
Let's do this.
Hit me.
What do you got?
So my little sister has a master's in food science.
And the more I talk to her, the more I learn about nutrition and food.
And I want to start a movement with you guys.
We have had air fryer movements.
We have had just random panini presses, just random things that just like appear in your kitchen over time.
I want to start a freeze drying one.
And I don't know why this doesn't exist yet.
So you can get like a dehydrator and dehydrator, just a box in your kitchen and it'll take all the moisture out of it.
And, but you lose a bunch of nutritional value, at least according to my little sister, like something like 60 to 80% just kind of goes away with it.
Freeze dry retains 99% of nutritional value.
And it's just like astronaut food.
You know, you get your freeze dried ice cream or strawberries and whatnot.
You go online and they are stupid expensive.
They're like, you know, $5,000 to $7,000, but they're all industrial ones.
There's not a good commercial one yet.
And, you know, just looking online how to build one of these, you just need three things.
You need a freezer.
You need something to, a vacuum chamber to put all in and a vacuum pump.
All of these can be found for really cheap on AliExpress.
Like the vacuum chamber is just a pressure cooker.
Any off-the-shelf pressure cooker.
The vacuum pump is, you can find refrigerator grade ones for cheap.
And then a cooling system, which is just anything that cools.
how hard would it be to put all these three things together give it a nice outer shell
branded as something and be like 99 nutrition and that is my whole pitch i want to start the
new air fryer movement i see the freeze dryer the freeze dryer that is so fun i have had freeze
dried candies now at like craft fairs and stuff and they're so fun like i don't know if they use
like uh uh i was gonna say nitroglycerin that's not right what are the uh nitrogen
Nitro, what?
Dry ice?
Dry ice, but liquid that they put a rose in it
Liquid nitrogen
Is it liquid nitrogen?
Yeah, liquid nitrogen
I feel like you can do interesting things with that in the kitchen
And obviously it's been proven that freeze-drying stuff
Can yield interesting foods that are convenient
And shelf-stable and all that
Yeah
It lasts literally forever
And it makes all food taste weird
So
Well, that's maybe part of the reason why
Yeah, but like, I don't know
maybe we can market it to all the preppers.
You put a sandwich in there with chips in there and a smoothie and all that,
and it's all just cotton candy,
but different flavors.
That's honestly a totally different,
great idea though.
Just market a fully freeze dried sandwich.
All the parts are there.
It'll last forever.
The idea of selling these to the home is fun,
but why don't you become the producer and just sell the interesting foods?
That's also,
you know,
ever since I had those freeze dried Skittles,
I'm like,
There's something to this here.
I want to just freeze dry everything.
Start up a warehouse?
That's a good idea.
I mean, I bet the dehydrator before it became consumer friendly
was in this exact spot on this exact podcast 15, 20 years ago.
1880s podcast.
Dehydrator, but smaller, right?
I mean, computer.
Beef.
We'll make beef, but dehydrated.
You'll love it.
Yeah.
I mean, I think there's something like if you're saying like, yeah, you just take an Instapot out and you just have like the racks, wire racks in there.
And you got layers of Skittles, fruits, you know, and something weird.
Just let's go freeze dry it.
You just freeze it so it's fully solid and then put in a vacuum chamber and lower the pressure until all the water sublimates.
Whoa.
Is there a word like jerky, but for freeze dried food?
Like a thing that is the product that is made other than freeze-dried blank?
I think that's kind of all I've ever heard.
If there isn't, I think we have to invent it right now.
I guess so.
What do you call it?
Come on, Russell of Marketing Genius.
Wait, what?
The device?
What do you call the thing that gets made?
The food.
Instead of jerky.
Oh, space food.
Because the ice cream, the ice cream, right?
Space ice cream is freeze-dried ice cream.
Galaxy.
That's it.
I will say though, Scott, I am very into health and nutrition and kitchen appliances.
So I'd be all about a freeze dryer, a countertop freeze dryer.
That'd be great.
Our first generation one is going to be the size of your oven, but we'll try to shrink it down.
Can I keep it in my garage?
Basement?
The more I'm reading into this, the more I'm like, we could make one that could realistically be the size of an air fryer or something.
I think Technology Connections did a thing about the smallest freeze dryer that you can buy, and it was super, super, super expensive, but an interesting watch.
I wonder, so why is it so expensive to get freeze-dried things now?
I know that our local grocery store, Meijer, has a very small section next to the canned fruits and stuff where it's just a few popcorns and snacks and stuff, and then boom, there's freeze-dried strawberries and one or two other freeze-dried fruits.
and it's like $9 for the lightest little bag.
And they're fun and they're fine,
but is it just that there's not the economies of scale?
Why are they so expensive?
Does it take a lot of energy?
How long does this process take?
Oh, yeah, maybe that.
You are asking great questions right now,
and I don't have my little sister here, so.
All right, we'll power it with solar panels, okay?
So there's no cost to energy, all right?
It's cheap now.
Maybe you hook it up to your existing fridge and stuff
and leach efficiency off of that.
You know, this is kind of like the ice cream maker.
Everybody wants to have one.
They're enormous.
You get one.
You love it for like two or three weeks, maybe months.
And then you're like, oh, this is going to sit in the basement for a while.
Sure enough, it was two months ago that Technology Connections published a video called
I Bought a Freeze Dryer So You Don't Have To.
And the thing looks like a freaking washing machine.
It's huge.
I did look into this.
Yeah, then you'd have like the small air fryer countertop version.
It's $5,000.
That's the one.
Whoa.
I feel like the air dryer, like the current ones, right?
They're like a 3D printer size.
You can buy them, but they're really expensive.
No way.
Give me an Arduino and an Instapot, and I'll give you a freeze dryer that will never be
UL certified.
Jess, would you buy one?
Not for five grand.
What would you put in there?
Oh, I would definitely freeze dry.
You're right, though.
They do taste weird.
Like you ever get the strawberries in your cereal and it's like, oh, you just eat it.
It's like, oh, or even like some raspberries that you freeze dry them.
They do taste very strange.
Yeah.
But I think what's nice about it is the nutrition piece.
And as a mom who is trying to get snacks and not need to get like not have to have like bowls and containers and things.
It's like I would love to just give my kids a bag of freeze dried fruit or something for the car instead of like fresh fruit.
Because like it just goes.
You have fresh fruit.
You have to cut it up.
You have to wash it and then put it in a bag.
And if they drop it, it gets all nasty.
Whereas a freeze-dried strawberry is like, ah, pick it up off the fan floor.
It's fine.
No big deal.
So I think it's a convenient and nutrition, which is not what every mom wants for their kid.
I want it to be convenient, but I also want it to be nutritious so they're not just eating goldfish all day.
They are, yeah, shelf-stable.
It's like a baggie, a Ziploc baggie of snack that you've made.
But it is vegetables and fruits and interesting stuff.
Yeah, totally.
The market's there.
Definitely, actually.
The words of Russell will leave it to the engineers.
But I really believe this one's possible.
Oh, man.
Zap?
What do you call it?
Yeah, I guess like the zapper.
Zapper.
Frostbites.
Ooh.
Frostbites.
Ooh.
Frostbites.
What the?
You thought this.
You said that before.
Off the dome.
No, there was a Reddit post with a guy with a really bad frostbite today, and it was horrible.
Oh.
But inspired this great idea.
Spire freeze drying.
I love it.
I'm in.
Sam, let's do frostbite.
Anyone who has experience with actual frostbite maybe won't be appetized by that.
And I have a frostbiter 3000 from Branded Easter.
Can you imagine having freeze-dried vegetables like carrots, celery, onion, and there's a soup base.
Now you can meal prep a bunch of different packets of soup bases.
And then it's like, oh, chicken noodle soup.
Well, here we go.
I've got all the things.
throw in some yeah like amazing you could do mason jar meals it would be so cute you could
meal prep meals in a mason jar put a little bow on it a little ribbon you know give it to your
friend just add water it's like those instant ramen cups but it's just not the noodles aren't
made of styrofoam it's like actual pasta and ingredients went into this right which they
already sell at the store like they do sell those it's just they're really expensive you know to
buy it's like wow i gotta pay 15 bucks for a jar of chicken noodle soup right dude jess will sell
this so hard scott i know i know i'm gonna make one so obviously the end product is a or the
excuse me the process is a bit different between dehydrating something and freeze drying it
the process is a lot different but how does the flavor and stuff come out different i don't know
if i've ever compared like dehydrated strawberries and freeze-dried strawberries dehydrated vegetables
and freeze-dried vegetables.
Are they that different?
Yes.
Oh, good question.
Everything I've ever tried that's been freeze-dried
is just like, yeah, this was a strawberry,
but this tastes just weird.
I don't know why.
It's like cotton candy eyes.
It's crunched.
It kind of melts in your mouth.
And do you rehydrate it?
Do you put it in a bowl of milk with cereal
and rehydrate it?
Or you just eat it dry?
Just eat it like a Cheez-It.
I wonder if it would taste better
if it was rehydrated.
Probably.
Yeah.
How much of the original product do you get back if you throw your freeze-dried strawberries in a cup of water for 10 minutes?
I don't know.
Yeah.
That's true.
That's fun to try.
I think at Aldi, they sell these freeze-dried strawberries like packs that Zay loves.
Yeah.
They're not cheap.
And they're way better than fruit snacks.
They're way better than everything else.
It's just a strawberry.
We pay a premium for like two-ounce bag of strawberry chips.
They're so light.
And you don't get very much.
And they're expensive.
Yeah.
I was watching a YouTube right before this where it just shows how much water they're actually pulling out of fruits and stuff.
And it's ridiculous.
It's like the volume of the entire strawberry is just water.
I don't know what's remaining afterwards.
Foam.
Everything's foam.
We're all made up of foam.
There's your company name.
Everythingsfoam.com
Everything's foam.
FOMO.
You know you want it.
Put it in the FOMO-matic.
FOMO-matic.
Wait, okay, hold on.
What if you blend up these vegetables and fruits and now you turn it into like seasoning?
Is it better?
You think it'd be better like onion powder and garlic powder?
This is better garlic powder because it's got all the nutritional.
I don't know how garlic powder is made today, right?
Straight up celery salt.
It's freeze-dried celery and salt.
You just sell spices that are better than any other spices.
Russell, that's a really good idea.
Let's just, yeah.
They're premium.
They cost more because you have to buy, I mean, I don't know.
You start there to fund your frostbite, Scott.
Like I would never eat kale, let's say, plain, but I sprinkle it on, you know, a little something, something.
Maybe they cook it better.
I cook it better.
Well, they do that with organ meats.
Oh, do they?
Yeah, you can like sprinkle beef liver and other organ meats onto things that you can't taste it, but you still get the nutritional benefit from it without tasting it.
Interesting.
Dang, I'm going to be Popeye.
Popeye's liver.
Making me hungry.
I have not ever tried it, but I do know it exists.
Because no one wants to just eat it.
All right, Leo, what have you brought us this week?
All right, I want to get a little bit high level and heady and not talk about, you know,
laser tags and stuff, but something a little bit more abstract.
So the escrow account that we have that goes along with our mortgage was one of the easiest
things that I've ever set up in my adult life.
Like if I think about paying for a hospital bill or whatever, total nightmare every time.
But getting it set up so that my bank bent over backwards to say, oh, who's your insurance
provider?
Oh, we'll take care of all that.
We already know where your house actually is.
We'll take care of all your taxes.
How much do you, oh, you didn't pay enough this year?
We'll just adjust for it automatically.
All this stuff to make my life super, super convenient so that they're just taking out
the money that they need to or raising the prices automatically and adjusting it so that
I'm just, I have certain bills in my life that are just taken care of.
It's whack how easy that is.
And I've done a little bit of research about this.
It's because the banks that own your mortgage don't want you to default on that mortgage,
if at all possible, right?
So they want you to remain a good investment.
And so they work a little bit harder to make it easier for you to pay your taxes and to
do your insurance for your house and all that stuff so that you're less likely to be a problem
for them, right?
But it's made me crazy how every utility that we pay for has a different user account system
with different credit cards are accepted here but not there and you need to go to this other portal
and have a different system for logging into that this one accepts bill pay that one doesn't we got
to mail checks only to this gas company versus whatever it's crazy that you have to have all
these different systems and i'm looking at this escrow thing that was just like whisked away from
my life we will handle all this for you and it wasn't that hard and the second i don't have a
mortgage anymore, I'm going to lose that, which is a bummer. But I wish that there was, here's my
pitch, ready? Four words, escrow for all bills. I will pay 20, 30, maybe even 40 bucks a month,
that's a little steep, to have a middleman collect all of my regular monthly bills,
get the money to them, to automatically adjust for, hey, in the winters you tend to use more
this electricity so be prepared for that and just sort of abstract away all of the bill pay type
stuff that i have to fiddle with in my life have you ever had your debit or credit card just expire
because the numbers have changed 20 places you gotta go like remember oh i gotta re-enter this
and why isn't this gone right and oh no my insurance actually expired because i forgot to
that is crazy and yeah i don't think it would be super hard to be like a little like personal
assistant type middleman type escrow service where you just sort of get access to your clients
regular bills i'm not talking about their you know uber eats bills and stuff just the the basics you
need to have to participate in the modern economy right but like take care of it for me escrow for
all bills yes yes 2028 okay i am so i love this because uh i've always think that i i don't know
why i i'll talk about this another time but like garnishing your own pay to like put it into a spot
and have it be handled like through this escrow so you know exactly what your fun money looks like
right your discretion it's kind of like the envelope method the david ramsey one but the
envelope is an escrow account and that escrow account expands and contracts and you never see
it hit, let's say, your checking account. Yep. Because it's going to go away anyway. Why have
your checking account be a middleman to your bills, right? Have your escrow be there, right?
And so you put a little petty cash in there, let's say a thousand bucks, right? Just to make
eat right. And then the account expands and contracts based on what you're saying. It gets
really smart right and if you're using a debit card your bank already has all this for you it
could be another account type that they will offer as a service they already clearly have the
infrastructure to take care of sending out these payments and stuff automatically for the bills
that they do handle like charge a little extra bank that i already have my stuff in you already
know that i pay every month to my internet service provider and my gas company and whatever because i
pay with a debit card just like do it for me i tried to set up something like this with my bank
exactly what you're saying, Russell, where, you know, direct deposit, here's my paycheck. It'll
automatically pull things into different guys. And they limit me. You can have, at most, three
different things that it can go towards. And it always ends up being your 401k, your insurance,
and then, or mortgage, and then just like checking account. And if I could make 30 of them,
like distribute it out before that final check hits my checking account, I would do that in a
heartbeat. Digital envelope method, right? Digital envelope, yeah. What do you mean maximum of three?
Tell me more about what you did.
What were you able to do?
It's either my company or the bank where you can put in direct deposits, different accounts for this check is going to be distributed in this many ways.
And I would love to do it that way because then I could have an account for all the different things that you want.
But your idea is even better because it's someone else managing all of that.
The in and the out.
And you would have one direct deposit to this.
I know that there's what you're describing it, my employer.
I don't think I've ever run up against a limit.
So I think it might be a your employer doesn't let you do more than three.
I'm sure it is.
Because we definitely have gone to our credit union and said, like, can I have two more savings accounts?
And they're like, sure, whatever.
They don't care.
They'll open more savings accounts, which is cool.
You just want to do that and also have, like, some dude at the bank remembering to send an email and payment for you.
Yeah, I mean, it could even be its own credit card number, right?
Like you could have a, you know, it's just a Visa card, right?
It collects points.
It does all the same stuff, but it just does things a little differently, right?
You're always filling that account.
It's like a prepay bill pay, right?
I want to tell my bank I am a customer of Comcast and just let them do it.
You know what I mean?
I don't want to have to generate a number and then go to Comcast and remember to keep the number up to date and then keep track of did it actually happen and all that stuff.
And if that makes my bill from $65 a month to $68 a month, easy, no question.
I think you can make this really a very profitable business, Leo, in just like the way Venmo operates, right?
Oh, yeah.
You take an interest.
Everybody's account's never zero, just like Venmo's.
Everybody's account's always got a little money in there, right?
Take a cut off the top.
You throw in your, like, it's a credit card, let's say.
So you take a transaction fee on every payment, like instead of you collecting points, right?
You're losing those points.
You're trusting your escrow to pay all those bills.
And then maybe the hex, yeah, you could have the escrow pay you, right?
You could invest if you wanted to invest your petty cash or part of that prepay, right?
So if you're always putting in, let's say the convenience of putting in, having one
payment for necessities, right?
Every time I pay my bills or every time I get a paycheck, half of it goes to necessities.
the other half goes into my checking, right?
And now that's accumulating interest on the day,
every day in some way, shape or form.
There's so much play there, I think.
So I don't know.
That's cool.
I'm hyped about that one.
That's a store is on level.
Could you make that like a free service?
I really like what you're saying about the Venmo methodology.
It's just totally free.
I think that's how Robinhood's business model was
when they started was, you know, you put $100 in,
you buy $80 worth of stock. We're going to, in the background without you knowing, invest that
extra 20 that's quote-unquote free cash that you still have access to. You don't know that we
haven't, but there's all this slush money that's in transit that we can do stuff with while it's
sitting. That's how they were free when they launched. And just have ChatGPT run the whole
thing in the background. Oh my god, no. Here's all of my credit card information. If this was a
totally separate independent business that came along, I don't know how quick I would be to like
give over all of my gas and electric bills to it right but if it was something that the bank's
already offered or something i don't think i'd be an early adopter on this one unless it was my bank
that's how they get a lot of these cool fintech startups will have like a cool bank and it's
actually an fdic backed bank that they're just like the front end for so you can maybe do something
like that i don't know we had simple for years and then they shut down and now i have a fun money
account at one finance which is fine but their actual thing is like like when i look at my
it's some actual bank in California, but they're just the web digital front end for it, you know?
So you could maybe partner with some actual existing bank to do the whole legal checking,
taking care of compliance and all that stuff and just build the like,
I have built infrastructure to pay all of these utilities and to manage who has what.
Isn't that like what Synchrony Bank is? Like Amazon? I know we like, is it Synchrony?
Synchrony, yeah.
I'm not part of the podcast.
Yeah, Simple was a synchrony bank.
That's right.
Special guest, Sam Zoe.
You guys should talk about financial advice.
This is the perfect financial advisor of us, by the way.
That's the market.
Oh, a financial advisor.
My financial advisor does all these things for you
or has this tack-on service.
Dang.
That's your market.
Oh.
Right.
I bet a person exists of this now,
but you guys should just create the app to help the service.
Edward Jones creates this and oh yeah I like that that's great it's the first
couple yes welcome to the show Sam's doing my taxes you're doing your taxes
yeah yeah yeah I was like well what can I do sitting next to her while she's
pitching her idea yeah that's so true though like imagine financial advisor
services that want to find like the next big you know person or client they're just watching who's
got the biggest escrow right who wants to manage the least amount of their money and they just find
the escrow it's a lead pipeline you know as well so it's just money making machine and right now
the only people who have escrow accounts are like middle america who have a mortgage but have a
mortgage you know what i mean like if you you're either too rich and you don't need a mortgage and
one or you don't have a house and a mortgage and you don't yeah yeah i've been uh let's share a
little bit about my life why not because this is the podcast right uh i've been garnishing my own
wages and putting it into like some savings account right or something i gotta figure out
where to invest it and it's caused us like me and carrie literally in the car she's like getting
really interested in financial planning and like spending and all this other stuff and you're like
yeah imagine if we lived like this right on this salary instead of my current salary this is what
it would be like, right? And this is a reasonable salary that we're living off of. And now it's
like, well, it'd be cool to have one payment because now I'm like, we're balancing two
different, three different credit card payments at three different times for three different
things, you know, and you're just like, oh, if there was a way to just like have a little bit
of a, there's something about like having a buffer. I don't know that would be cool to like
manage your costs over time. Yeah, I guess this is financial advisor services, but like,
But it's too confusing.
I didn't even think about credit cards.
That's interesting.
Another thing.
I think there's a market for prepaid services, right?
Like when you prepay your cell phone bill, right?
You pay ahead of time.
Every other company has a cash flow problem or whatever.
They have to invoice.
There's a whole AR thing, right?
If your escrow service slowly turned into a prepay service,
So now Comcast doesn't have to worry if you're going to pay your bill or whatever because you have it in an escrow.
And it's almost like you become a prepaid provider for all bills, reducing Comcast costs because they already know 100,000 people are going to pay their bill on time.
Guaranteed.
You don't have to worry about your cash flow or all that stuff, right?
Which gives these various providers incentive to advertise you.
hey, there's this cheaper free service that if you sign up for them,
we'll take care of payments with them.
We'll help work with them so that, you know, yeah, exactly.
It's to everyone's benefit.
And then because of the, you know, they want the cash flow,
so they might even offer you a discount on your bill.
We'll give you $5 off your Wi-Fi bill, you know, to use this service and prepay.
I know Comcast has a $5 discount for auto pay.
It's basically better, but even better.
Yeah, all the best, all the cheapest phone plans out there are prepay
because they don't have to worry about AR or whatever, right?
You pay ahead of time and you shut down your service if you don't pay.
Like this for everything else?
But it's guaranteed because it's escrow?
It just makes sense.
I don't know.
There's just something there that grows.
Yeah.
Yeah, this becomes a unicorn quick, I think.
Leo just casually dropping a unicorn on a Spitball.
This kind of company can also do the proactive alerting.
I know I shouldn't, but it's easy for me to get in the habit of checking what my actual bill total was every couple of months, not every month, right?
Because they're all set to auto pay.
I see the money go out.
Was that a lot for winter in gas bill?
That seems like roughly right, so I'm not going to look at the line items anymore.
But if I had this middleman actually scanning the invoices and saying, oh, you used triple the amount of water than you usually do.
Is everything okay?
or whatever, right?
It'd be nice as just a service.
Yeah, my husband got a hot tub.
For my wife.
I have never seen or been in Russell's hot tub.
That's true.
It's just one of those inflatable squares, you know?
Russell's Costco Black Friday.
I did heat it up with a sous vide.
That was dangerous and stupid.
It's the most Michigan problem ever, and I love it.
it's too cold for my hot tub my hot tub's too cold to start new idea next week tune in
all right russell you're up what do you got so all right have after having a baby i had a lot
of appointments that i had scheduled that i'm like oh i'm having time off like i'll just go to
them right because i have all this free time i'm not working well it turns out you have a harder
job when you take time off for a baby there is less time in your life yeah and availability
so every appointment i ever scheduled during those six weeks two weeks that i had off just
straight in the trash right no way am i gonna go to those those things optimism right um but here's
the thing you know i worked with my dentist i worked with some other places and they i'm like
you know throw me on the cancellation list right my dentist eventually threw me like would literally
text me hey are you available for this appointment ah no so then they text me next week are you
available this week how about tomorrow a cancellation just dropped it literally i got
text from this dentist because she's amazing at her job right because she knows every calendar
booking means money in the bank right not money loss so i was like wow what a pain in the ass for
her to constantly be texting everybody on this list of people on the wait list to jump into a
dentist appointment that may or may not happen at 9 a.m. right so I would my suggestion is creating
like a you know a third-party tool for standby lines for all appointments right love it dentists
haircuts you can go as far as like uh what are those professional workout people that get paid
on like like a personal trainer personal trainer yes right you could even do restaurant reservations
yeah high end oh anything like cancellation you know like people cancel everything all the time
right hotels too right there's an app hotel tonight that i expected to give me discounts on
but like imagine like the mom and pop shops that have hotels it's just like okay cancellation
book it half the price.
It's just money on the table we're leaving
or we could fill it.
Yes.
Every time I've ever made a doctor's appointment
in the last year,
if I've went to a couple specialists
and even some that were decently out of town
and I'll always say,
oh yeah, I just live down the street from you guys.
Call me anytime.
And if you haven't,
because it's six months until their next appointment
and I'll just lie and say like,
I am very close to you.
I will make it work, whatever happens.
And half the time it would work
and I would just leave whatever I'm doing at my job
and book it out several miles or to a different city in order to make it.
Dude, you sync this, like, let's say, you know, you go two ways, right?
Amazing for the businesses, but for me,
if I were to sync my Google Calendar or whatever to it,
like, they could even provide this service for me.
So, like, my dentist assistant person would just find,
look at my calendar or look at her list of availability,
and it just would match instantly.
Like, here are three people that are on wait list, right, or whatever.
This person doesn't tend to make it when you ask.
This other person has a score of nine,
and they're likely to be a Scott who runs.
Scores, of course.
All right.
Or you just send it out to three people, first come, first serve, right?
First person to press the button in the app.
Oh, I like that.
Send the notification.
It's a game.
Sorry, you lost.
Get the high score.
Yeah.
100%, because you can't have them texting people.
It's so awkward when you have one slot, and it's like,
Well, I want to text 10 people and tell them there's one slot, but if someone grabs it and I try to text them and I'm like, oh, sorry.
Right.
Never mind.
Too late.
So, yeah, the button thing fills your spot.
But then the first person doesn't answer and you have the opposite problem.
How long do I give them before I text the next in line?
Right.
Well, no.
Then you keep adding a discount to it or something.
Like airlines would do that.
If you're late, if they're overbooked on a flight, they'll be like, we'll offer $100 to a person.
No one takes it.
$200, $300.
Someone's going to take it eventually, but you don't want to miss out on that opportunity.
So everyone's incentivized.
15% off your dental appointment. That's kind of sketchy. I don't want to it's
going for like a free haircut. You don't want a free haircut. Oh did you get a discount haircut?
You must have been on the wait list.
Okay I don't know why but somebody said something it made me think
you could totally sell your spot in line through this. Scalpers on day two.
I've signed up for every doctor's appointment.
Like, Scott, if you have a doctor's appointment at a time that I want, you know, just cancel and I'll pay you 20 bucks.
Like, what if, to your point, like, oh, that's the standby line.
Like, anybody want to leave the flight for $500, right?
I mean, maybe somebody is willing.
And the dentist doesn't care.
Like, the dentist doesn't care.
Like, go ahead, sell the seat.
It's still the same service to them.
Maybe they get a commission.
I don't know.
Maybe that's a little bit too much.
I'm pretty excited.
Yesterday I got an appointment for the world's third best oncologist down in Nebraska.
But I'm going to flip that thing a couple weeks from now and it's going to be worth a fortune.
It's just what we need for the American healthcare system.
One more level.
Couldn't get any worse, could it, boys?
I just invented it.
I went on eBay to get these tickets to go to the urologist.
I like buying tickets for a football game.
buy him to sit with him.
Incredible.
Let's see the world burn one oncology
appointment at a time.
Ticketmaster
and then all of a sudden
Ticketmaster gets into US healthcare.
All of a sudden
everybody's using my app because it's an
amazing tool to book appointments
and schedule. Then you pull the rug
under them and you say, ha!
Fees on fees on fees. Okay.
That's right. We know capitalism now.
2025.
25.
Okay, but yeah, that'd be a Spitball.
Once you make it, it's actually for you.
It's pretty easy to lock down, yeah.
All right, we saved the best for last.
Jess, what do you got for us?
All right, all right.
Let's hear it.
Hold on to your seats, guys.
Here we go.
So, well, I feel like it's actually similar
to something that Russell said.
So I love making sourdough, right?
You'll, not everyone knows that, but you guys know that.
I love making sourdough.
I love making sourdough every, and I also love eating it, but I don't want to own a
micro bakery.
There's way too many startup costs for that, right?
But I love selling it to like friends or neighbors or people in my town.
And I really feel like there's a lot of people like that.
like, hey, I would make rolls or pasta or bagels or anything for you like occasionally, but not,
I don't want to, I don't want to get branding and be a big baker or something. But I have this skill
and I'm willing to share with people. And so you kind of, you have this opportunity for people
to order things, to order sourdough or micro bakery type things from people like me. And it's
like an order comes up and I can like the standby line, I can choose to take it like, yeah, I'm free
today. I could make that or sure. I could have five loaves by Friday, but like, I don't want to
do, I don't want to be a baker and have people just demand all my time and be like, yeah, I want
20 loaves. Yeah. I want five loaves today, tomorrow, the next day. Like I can't do that every
day of my life, but I would really love to be able to sell it sometimes to just be able to make some
money but not have it be my job it's like uber but i'm uber eats but i'm like the other way around
it's like sure i will claim that food order and i will make it and fulfill it those are um what's
it called cottage food laws right yeah i can sell baked goods and i don't need to like a full
from my home yes from my home but you're combining that with like the open source or uh leo what are
those like 3d print groups where everyone all these people have a 3d printer and anyone can
select jobs from this large site. It's a gig economy. It just printed home.
Gig economy. Thank you. Because so many of us sourdough bakers are already
making stuff all the time. Like I make stuff to feed my family. It'd be
really easy to make an extra loaf when I'm making a loaf. Yeah. But if I'm not
making it, I don't want to really make something for somebody else. But if there's an order
comes up, it's like, oh sure, I'll make that. I'll make that tomorrow, whatever day.
Bagels, sure. I feel like making an extra 10 bucks, extra 20 bucks.
That's great.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Okay.
So this is like a ticketing system of like, I want a dozen bagels, some homemade bagels,
Let's go.
And see who around.
And then you wouldn't have to find a local baker or bakery or friend to make them for
You could just get on your phone and be like, I want bagels.
And then it'll be like, Jessica Zoe will be fulfilling your order.
Like, you know, sourdough takes a while.
So it'd be like tomorrow.
Pick them up here.
Sourdough can't be instant, unfortunately.
but yeah you know that's that's the idea it's part of the rules it's part of the fun i think
too yeah you get it's the trade-off like would this marketplace be uh assisted or hindered by
a rating system of the bakers and stuff like oh man i got diane again oh she's awful you know i
was i was wondering that because obviously when it's homemade it's like do you get to like select
like i only want to pick from like these five people like are there like a list of bakers and
You can start making your own baker wish list and be like, only if these five people say yes.
When you go to post a thing on Facebook Marketplace, there's a checkbox that says, don't show this to my friends and family.
So you almost need like, okay, did you like that meal that you just had?
Okay, don't ever show my tickets to that person ever again.
There you go.
Or like, you also need a way to make sure that people's kitchens are like, you know, it's like, I don't want someone baking that has cats or something.
I don't want.
In a peanut oil house or whatever.
Right. Allergy stuff or, yeah.
So, you know, it's like then I can have all these like little things, these little stars on my profile like peanut free, this free, dairy free, whatever.
I don't know.
Totally.
That would be so cool.
Because I feel like people that want to eat sourdough or eat something that's like healthier homemade to go to a bakery is, well, it is really expensive.
but also sometimes they don't have the variety that you're hoping for,
or you just don't have one in your town.
Like, I don't even know where.
Most towns probably don't have a sourdough bakery.
Right.
It's made with love, too.
That's the difference.
Only if you get one of the top.
Made with love, right?
Added ingredient, right?
The secret ingredient.
And that's it.
That's why.
Your order will be fulfilled by Taco Bell.
What?
Aw.
You got the corporations on your app.
All right.
So here's what I don't know.
So does someone get to just put up in the app, like, I would like blueberry sourdough scone?
Or is it like they have a menu in the app and bakers upload what they can make?
And then people can click on stuff, like a menu?
Because I'm very creative.
And if you tell me to make something, like, sure, I'll look up a recipe and it'll probably be great.
My motto is it'll probably be fine.
I like that way better.
You know, so there's this fun side to it.
Like, cool, I'll make something new.
Like, I want to try.
That makes a lot of sense to me.
A couple of episodes ago, I don't even know if this episode's out yet,
Russell pitched, I think it was Russell,
Grandma's Sassified, like, baking delivery fulfillment service.
So it was kind of like that where you have, like, the Etsy stores,
but they're all menus of, you know, recipes that people have posted.
I make this really well.
And then his pitch was you outsource that idea to, like,
the factory actually makes it and you just put the recipe in there remove all the love remove
the love um having it not be menu based where you have like what are five different local people's
takes on blueberry scones it's really fun i i yeah i think that that's where the match happens
like you uploading your recipe makes it make sense it's a little bit anonymous right so like maybe
uh you know you might be the only baker that does scones this way right so then trying to not
overwhelm that person like dude those scones i got on whatever app like i'm ordering them every
week now and now all of a sudden you're just like overwhelmed because you're just such a good baker
all of a sudden like everybody's buying that recipe she's going viral on oh what's the app
called oh honestly if i if there was an app or a website where i could order just a box of scones
but they were all made by a different person logistically it's a nightmare but i got to like
blindly vote on these and then a communal vote of the world of like a1 is the best scone of all
of these made by such and such and boost his business i would do that in a heartbeat i'd love
that so then it would just be like a drop off thing where i would bring like 30 scones and
drop them off at a certain place and so would 10 other bakers and then there would only be 30 boxes
available right we put one score in each box and then it's just a yeah there's just a like a limit
to how many it's like okay every friday every friday there's 30 boxes first come first serve
oh then you can start bidding on them oh man i i've been making muffins out of a box because i
just like don't have the energy to make it from scratch right what if i could out like there's
something different about like i buy muffins all the time i go to lj's get the muffins there
i get muffins from blueberry store and like but they're not like as good as like i don't know the
even the box stuff that i make at home it stays better than sometimes the stuff i get at lj's
right and so it's like it'd be nice to just get somebody with a little bit more you know
somebody knows how to handle a sourdough you know just like you know i'm trying my best with this
box but like it'd be nice as somebody who actually tried to like provide like the good stuff you're
like fresh fruit all that yeah yeah yes fresh fruit real good ingredients you know there's no
short cutting of employee work or whatever i mean it's just like uh your app would be the first
thing i would fire up if i was traveling too if i'm in a new town for a week what are they known
for here oh a really good curry that's made by that lady down the street or whatever that sounds
awesome delivered my hotel room for sure oh that'd be interesting too wow that would be really
just the convenient way to get food that's homemade from people that you don't know
awesome you do have to deal with the random arsenic you know poisoning or whatever but
just give them a one-star review and then move on
i'm sure the one-star reviews will keep all of the ill intentions in check
They will be hilarious to read.
Razor blades in your carrot cake.
One star.
Three stars and above is just like how good of a baker you are.
Two or less.
Something's happening.
It'd be so cool to like just buy some like legit cookies.
Not like the.
I think you're just hungry.
Russell's in.
You are too.
He is like on board.
All right.
What are we going to call the app, Russell?
I just want some good baked goods.
Good.
Russell miss homemade muffins.
Whole baked.
baked whole you know or something like that like you could go healthy holistic or whole
whole like not fake you know maybe there's a spin on the app which just like not like
crud ingredients you know you have to use good stuff whole whole ah no it sounds weird donut
whole w-h-o-l-e all right whole just hold it baby uh now i've uh shoot i don't know what to
do for dinner i'm gonna hold it whole whole goods instead of whole foods just you know we could just
call it so good so good that's pretty good and then no one would ever mispronounce our last name
again because it would become famous yeah so it's not so well dear listener if you are preparing
dinner or wondering what to do for dinner tonight and you want to fire up an app reach out to us
Take a look at the app store.
See if Zo Foods is up for download yet.
It's so good.
So good.
Thanks for listening.
And thank you so much for hopping in, Jess.
This was so much fun to have you.
It was fun to be here.
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