Latest / The Action Catalyst / Stickers to Stimulus, with Anthony Constantino (Social Media, Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership)

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Stickers to Stimulus, with Anthony Constantino (Social Media, Business, Entrepreneurship, Leadership) · The Action Catalyst

0:00
Adam Outland: Hello, and welcome to the Action Catalyst podcast.
0:02
I'm your host Adam Outland. And today we get to interview
0:06
Anthony Constantino. Anthony is the co founder and CEO of
0:10
Sticker Mule, one of the world's most popular custom printing
0:14
companies, and also the founder of Stimulus, the world's first
0:18
100%, Id verified social media network, which replaces
0:22
advertising with giveaways. We're going to talk today about
0:26
the ideas of innovation when getting into a startup, some
0:30
counterintuitive ways to build a business as well as the modern
0:33
day Id verified social media outlet he's creating. So looking
0:37
at the just your whole story of background, your teenager and
0:41
you're even thinking about your future like most teenagers do,
0:45
not quite expecting that what you'd find yourself in is this
0:49
massive sticker business that you build that kicks off
0:52
everything, right? What were you initially thinking about with
0:56
your future?
0:57
Anthony Constantino: You know, I don't have an issue with
0:58
stickers. But you know, I didn't start this because I have some
1:01
of the graduation with stickers. I just want to get into
1:03
manufacturing, I want to get on the internet. You know, I was
1:06
sort of a screw up as a kid, I guess. You know, my brother was
1:09
like valedictorian of his class, I was sort of a screw up. And I
1:13
found my first success in life and sports and events, events,
1:16
sports, I was a disaster, I wrestled and I lost my first 30
1:20
matches. I was terrible, you know, everything else. So I
1:23
wasn't really great at school, but I wasn't terrible. You know,
1:25
I eventually just decided my last year of high school to
1:29
become good at sports. And I ended up becoming, I think I'd
1:34
for best record best finish in my high school. And I said to
1:37
myself out there that, you know, if you could learn how to become
1:39
good at one thing, why not try to be on my first experience
1:41
becoming good at something? And so then I went to college and,
1:45
you know, I wasn't the brightest light. I said, Why don't you try
1:47
to figure out how to become good at college. So and, you know,
1:50
I'll be overly honest, I got into a conflict here and ended
1:53
up getting semi kicked out. And I failed upwards and went to
1:57
RPI, which is a phenomenal school, Rensselaer Polytechnic
2:00
Institute. Okay, so it's competitive with them. It's
2:02
competitive with MIT, but it does have the brand recognition
2:04
but I believe it's was founded before MIT. So as a long
2:07
engineering history, it was the first time I lived been around
2:09
really, really, really smart people. So once my first school
2:12
did well, for first time, we were doing good in school with
2:14
my second school and got totally humbled by you know, the
2:18
intellect of the engineering crowd there.
2:20
Adam Outland: Do you know what you could trace back like the
2:23
switch point to for like wrestling?
2:26
Anthony Constantino: The switch point was, the reason I said I
2:28
could do that was, you know, there's state champion kids that
2:33
are only 13. You know, some some kids come right out someday, you
2:36
know, you're and some of the Braden in first year in high
2:38
school are already state champions. And I said, if a 13
2:42
year old can figure out how to become a state champion, even
2:44
though I've sucked. I've been figured out how to get to the
2:47
finals alone. I think only two or two kids in my school's
2:50
history to make it that finals that are regional or regional
2:53
tournament.
2:53
Adam Outland: It's so interesting to just hear these
2:56
early stories, because I don't want to superimpose, but I feel
3:00
like yeah, the proving to yourself of something that
3:03
happens as a teenager, I'm going to set a goal and see if I can
3:06
hit it. And maybe one of the first times where you really did
3:09
something that required an intense amount of labor.
3:12
Anthony Constantino: Yes. Oh, yeah. tremendous, tremendous
3:14
labor. The other thing I learned through it, in my first
3:17
experience, like reverse engineering success, I looked at
3:20
a kid that was one of the best wrestlers in our area was like,
3:25
Well, you know, and he'd been interviewed to paper and explain
3:27
how he trains and I said, Jesus, I thought it would just you
3:31
know, people think people just magically got and so I was like,
3:33
well, this kid trains so much harder than me. So I started you
3:37
know, emulating his training and magically all of a sudden I'm at
3:40
that level to you know, later on life I do the same thing Yeah,
3:43
you can reverse engineer business success and and
3:46
educational success you look at what what are the people that
3:49
are instead of just saying this magical hours? Why somebody good
3:52
and I'm not good? Like, what are they doing different than you?
3:54
Adam Outland: Yeah. And then it sounds like maybe a repetition
3:57
to that a little bit. When it when it came to the academics in
3:59
college. You're like, cool, if I can reverse engineer wrestling,
4:02
I can reverse...
4:02
Anthony Constantino: Exactly. Start studying. I lived in the
4:04
library. You know, I did a bunch of things I never did before. I
4:07
got really out of shape was I got comically out of shape,
4:10
because somebody introduced me to Code Red Mountain Dew. And I
4:16
started drinking 10 Code Red Mountain Dews a day. You know, I
4:18
didn't realize so many calories I gained 40 pounds. I was like
4:23
in phenomenal shape my whole life. And then all of a sudden
4:25
Code Red Mountain Dew and I was like, my friends saw me. Are you
4:28
okay? No. What do you mean?
4:30
Adam Outland: Well, we won't have Code Red Mountain Dew
4:32
sponsor this episode.
4:33
Anthony Constantino: I don't know if Code Red Mountain Dew
4:34
still exists probably.
4:36
Adam Outland: So alright, so where does Sticker Mule come
4:38
into this?
4:39
Anthony Constantino: Well, in full transparency. I didn't
4:41
actually graduate. I had one class left to take, which is
4:43
computer programming. And I didn't take it because I don't
4:48
usually tell this because it's like, it's such a long story.
4:50
But you know, I felt like business that way until, you
4:53
know near bankruptcy situation in college. So I spent a summer
4:57
of college, sort of digging it out of that even you know, I
5:01
didn't know what the hell I was doing. But I figured some stuff
5:02
out and got out of college and then went back into a terrible
5:06
situation again. So I spent a good chunk of my life free
5:09
sticker mill working in a dysfunctional family business. I
5:12
don't usually talk about this, but young my dad started the
5:15
company passed away when I was eight years old. 12 years went
5:17
by without, you know, him being president, and it became totally
5:20
dysfunctional. And so I had to do a restructuring wasn't a
5:24
pleasant situation, I spent X number years of my life doing
5:26
that. And then towards the end of that sort of stumbled into
5:30
the idea crane, sticking it off the IV ever stick mail came out
5:32
of frustration of like growing up until a manufacturing company
5:35
where traditionally manufacturers don't have control
5:37
of sales. So part of the problem was, we were very dysfunctional.
5:41
And the other part of the problem was, we had no easy,
5:44
there was no easy levers to grow sales, it was purely like we
5:47
didn't sell we made stuff. And we had a very small sales force,
5:51
right. And then we had partners that sold the stuff. Yeah, and
5:53
so if the partners, you know, we have partners go bankrupt, we
5:56
have product lines die, very small Salesforce that you
5:59
couldn't really do much with. And so we had no control over
6:02
sales. And so it was dysfunctional sales were
6:04
plummeting, I had no levers to pull, and I got frustrated that
6:07
situation, I said, you know, it would be very nice to be on the
6:09
internet, where you could connect manufacturing directly
6:12
to customers, you know, I couldn't make any guarantee, you
6:15
know, I was like, you want to have an agreement with your,
6:16
with your factory staff that, like, if you guys perform,
6:20
everything will be good for everyone. But there's, there was
6:23
no guarantee, in traditional manufacturing, that guarantee
6:25
doesn't exist.
6:25
Adam Outland: You're doing that while you're completely, you
6:28
know, working through college simultaneously?
6:31
Anthony Constantino: I started that in the middle of college, I
6:33
just I stopped because the people think it's easy to get
6:35
somebody to run a company. And it's not, especially a failing
6:38
company, you know, the talented CEOs of the world don't want to
6:40
go join a failing company.
6:44
Adam Outland: That's like your trial by fire of learning a
6:46
tremendous amount.
6:48
Anthony Constantino: At the time I hated it, but yeah, it gave me
6:50
a great foundation, I wouldn't, you know, people like sticking
6:52
up again, so successful because of this experience,
6:55
unfortunately, but I hated it. You know, everyone was out all
6:58
my friends, and I couldn't relate, you know, you on a date
7:00
with a girl when you're like, 23. And so what do you do for
7:02
work, you know, she's working in marketing or something, or, you
7:04
know, whatever, starting illegal, whatever they're doing,
7:06
and you're like, Oh, I'm, you know, restructuring our company
7:09
as in bankruptcy. And they're like, sure you are, you know,
7:11
it's like, don't get somebody else to do that. For you. We
7:13
look like a kid. Luckily, like the employees all supported me.
7:16
I think they felt badly. You know, like, I've always was
7:21
friendly with them.
7:22
Adam Outland: You hated this whole thing that you had to do,
7:25
but somehow you think it's a great idea to start a business
7:28
from scratch.
7:29
Anthony Constantino: I never found it stressful, I was
7:30
frustrated that I couldn't have the same fun that my friends
7:33
were having. You know, aside from that, I didn't have a lot
7:36
of faith in us being able to save lots of money. And I had
7:38
great relationships with people and a small community. I wanted
7:41
to have a backup plan for for people, you know, for Pete for
7:44
myself, you know, but also for for people that I had developed
7:48
relationships with the ownership structure of sticker metal in my
7:52
family's company was different. And eventually, I think five or
7:55
six years in the sticker mule ended up buying that company out
8:00
and just absorbed all the people.
8:02
Adam Outland: It's really incerdible. You always wonder
8:03
what like, makes people tick and motivates people, because I'm
8:06
hearing that, like, one of the big things that made you tick
8:09
was like, employing people and that you care about.
8:12
Anthony Constantino: Yeah, but I put a big premium on loyalty,
8:15
both directions. I'm very loyal. And so yeah, it was funny in the
8:18
beginning, you know, I was like, Well, I gotta have security for
8:20
the people I care about. And then at a certain point signal
8:22
grew. And I said, Well, now I'm just creating security people
8:25
I've never met before. That'd be weird. But I'm like, and
8:28
initially I did want to be, I was my number one, but and I
8:30
always meet with people. And I would say, what do you guys want
8:33
to you know, I'm talking from my factory worker supervisor. I
8:35
said, What do you guys want? Where do you guys want this
8:36
company, they end up and they say, doesn't add up to you? And
8:39
I was like, well, it's gonna be a lot. It's gonna get crazy if
8:41
we want to keep growing. And my goal is just to make a nice life
8:45
for us. Yeah. And I think we've done that. But if you guys I
8:48
would say, if you guys want the thing to grow, you know, we can
8:50
do it, we can figure out how to do it. But I want to know that's
8:53
what you guys want because it's definitely two different worlds
8:56
smaller, calm situation, we're just staying in a high growth
8:58
situation, you know, the end of the day, you aren't in business
9:01
you have to keep growing because you know, I don't know who said
9:03
it but so you're either growing or you're dying. So you have no
9:06
choice. You know, I thought I had a choice all it's just a
9:08
small and calm and you know, flirt around you know, just
9:12
screw around and have fun in the long run doesn't work that way.
9:16
Adam Outland: Real quick, but just for our audience, like what
9:17
is sticker mule? What does it do? And then yeah, jump into
9:20
like, what what kind of started putting gas on the fire when you
9:23
got that up and running?
9:24
Anthony Constantino: I'd say internet's favorite custom
9:25
branding company, easiest way to buy custom branding. You know,
9:27
we started with stickers but we sell up to 10 products now. And
9:30
you know, our original innovation was just that we made
9:34
it incredibly easy to buy. Someone first started and we
9:36
started growing people said oh, you must be destroying the
9:38
competition. The reason they say well, how are you growing so
9:40
fast and you're not eating into competition? I said because the
9:43
majority people that buy from us never bought before is what
9:45
happens is people can't remember this. But you know, prior to
9:49
sticker mule prior to like the internet, it will take forever
9:52
to buy custom stickers. And so the only people that were buying
9:55
were businesses that really needed them, but when it All of
9:57
a sudden a 22nd process or a 32nd process, though the market
10:02
just explodes because people go, geez, maybe I'll get stickers on
10:05
my cat, you know, maybe I'll get stickers of my, whatever, my kid
10:08
drew something or some other products like magnets buttons,
10:12
yeah, when you make it easy to buy, all of a sudden, you lower
10:15
barrier to entry and people start buying that never would
10:17
have considered buying before. So that was our, you know, our
10:19
big innovation was, you know, just making buying incredibly,
10:22
incredibly easy.
10:25
Adam Outland: It was just word of mouth, the marketing?
10:29
Anthony Constantino: And yeah, I mean, if you do more things, you
10:32
can make more mistakes. So I call it just brute force
10:35
marketing. Just, you know, try don't don't get too attached to
10:38
ideas, we try to estimate our ideas upfront, like whether we
10:41
think they're going to be good or not, and focus on what's a
10:44
simple way to do it. Things that are easy, and seeing high impact
10:49
you should do first, and things that are difficult and seeing
10:51
all impacts you should avoid. How long would you give it all?
10:54
So I'm in work. I have a wino for conversion rate. I like
10:57
that, like the number on the amount I like about conversion
10:59
rates moving up into the right, or obviously making good
11:01
decisions in terms of design improvements.
11:04
Adam Outland: Yeah, sometimes, like people make things too
11:06
complicated.
11:09
Anthony Constantino: Somebody asked me one day, so what's your
11:10
business strategy? And they said, Well, you don't seem like
11:13
you have one. I said, Yeah, I don't know. I just thought Yeah,
11:16
so yeah, we I want to get better every day. And they said, What
11:19
the hell away? They're like, well, what's that? I don't know.
11:21
Well, I remember working in a dysfunctional company. And I
11:24
said, you know, you've probably worked in ELI, everyone's worked
11:26
in dysfunction. Most people, not everyone, but have worked in
11:28
dysfunctional companies. I said, um, you know, inside sticker
11:31
meal, I said, do you see a lot of dysfunction? I said, No. I
11:35
said, we can't. I said, everyone wants for the most part comes
11:37
here every day, and tries to do something useful to help make
11:40
the company better every day. And I said, That's not normal.
11:44
Did you experience that? And your IBM experienced that in my
11:47
prior life, my prior job? And I said, you probably only said no,
11:50
you're right. Like down there's, there's generally a great degree
11:52
of dysfunction inside most companies. But you know, our
11:56
secret was, we don't have dysfunction. And we just come to
11:59
work every day. And everyone's constantly trying to do
12:02
something productive. When that's your attitude, things
12:04
just and improve.
12:06
Adam Outland: Yeah, well, this is called The Action Catalyst.
12:09
Anthony Constantino: I'm right on target.
12:12
Adam Outland: How do you actually cultivate like an
12:15
action oriented culture? What do you propose? Or what do you tell
12:18
your team?
12:20
Anthony Constantino: Your first five people will will will
12:22
define the culture so you'd be very careful with your first for
12:25
department into bigger, careful, a diverse group, right. So if
12:28
you, you're gonna make mistakes in hiring, they're gonna just
12:31
kind of set the tone for new people. And they're either gonna
12:35
indoctrinate new people, right, or they're gonna expel new
12:39
people, like they're gonna, you know, if you have, once you have
12:40
a core unit, definitely just think this is the way they
12:42
think. And somebody comes in, it doesn't fit that mold. They're
12:45
either going to convince them to join, or they're going to call
12:48
me and say this person shouldn't be here. Yeah. So if you have a
12:51
department where it's like a mixed bag, right, where you have
12:54
like, your first five people, two are good, and two are in
12:57
line. And you will and you try to build on that it's confusing,
13:00
because everyone's like, there's no agreement about what our
13:03
values are, right? You have to be will this set of values, that
13:05
we will have another set of values, and water person that's
13:08
got another set of values? Yeah, it doesn't scale gracefully on
13:11
its own, you can't just like walk away. So. And then we ended
13:14
up developing a core set of principles for our guy, the
13:17
organization. And then we started doing principles for
13:19
every department articles are eight to 10 rules about what
13:22
your decision making framework should be our fundamental
13:24
principle that we kind of have in all the boxes move fast,
13:26
because time is finite. When we really put up the heavens on
13:29
that, well, you want like an example. Like if I say safety is
13:32
more important than safety is more important than quality,
13:36
quality is more boring than productivity. If you're running
13:39
an unsafe manufacturing environment, people are getting
13:41
hurt. That's ridiculous, you know, but so many, you can have
13:44
a safe environment you shouldn't have, you know, you need that
13:46
quality before you worry about productivity. You know, I just
13:49
put up like, bam play, I say judge people, manufacturing
13:52
judge people primarily on the basis of attendance, the
13:54
enterprise world, the tool we use to scale the organization.
13:57
So like, as I started growing, I had confidence. And people
14:00
thought that these principles work, and I'm successful, and so
14:02
why not follow them? Right. So like, I mean, if I can say
14:05
Judge, people prime it on the basis of attendance, which isn't
14:07
something everyone realizes to do, because in manufacturing and
14:11
manufacturing ran people, judge people on the basis of silly
14:13
stuff, like this guy, can't perform a job, this person is
14:16
slow. Actually, the big brought, you know, this one business,
14:18
this person was slow. Well, rather than like picking on
14:21
people for being slow, why don't you if you're judging on the
14:24
basis of attendance, why don't you think about how to improve
14:26
the process? So even the slow people can be faster? Curry way
14:28
of thinking, yeah. And so and everyone adopts them, people
14:32
start thinking differently. And I just got up and said, I don't
14:35
have to keep repeating myself.
14:36
Adam Outland: Yeah, really cool. You said today, one of the
14:39
things that you're the building is Stimulus. Yep. What is
14:43
Stimulus? How'd you get to that idea?
14:45
Anthony Constantino: Yeah, I was very anti social media.
14:47
Eventually I said, why not? Yeah, we'll explore socialism as
14:51
a channel. I didn't see it doing anything. So I set a goal for us
14:54
to get to a million followers on Twitter. I said I don't think is
14:57
worth anything but she gets a million followers. So we came up
14:59
with a plan to Get we call that a goal to get there. And we
15:02
started succeeding. And we were growing 20 30,000 followers a
15:05
month real followers. And we were one of the dominant brands
15:07
on Twitter, you don't through that process, I got deeper into
15:10
Twitter, I was just like, this place is horrible. I just I just
15:13
saw all the mad the bad design, you know, a lot of the design
15:16
decisions they made were were pushing people in a bad
15:18
direction. So I realized Twitter sort of a game. And they're the
15:20
goal of game is to become the most popular player then even
15:23
though they're playing the game, but they're playing a game,
15:24
they're trying to dominate the game. And the game is bound by
15:26
the mechanics of the game. And the mechanics of Twitter were,
15:29
you'd have to be nasty. Yeah, in order to succeed. So all these
15:32
people that want to succeed in the game, now there's a lot of
15:34
people that didn't even know they were playing the game, they
15:37
weren't even trying to when they're on there, they're
15:39
floating around. But the people that decided to play yeah, you
15:42
know, had no choice. But to play within the game mechanics of
15:46
Twitter, and the game mechanics on Twitter where you have to be
15:48
nasty, this was one of the main tools to get attention. And
15:51
Twitter bait that influence into their software is particularly
15:55
destructive for people in tech, who tend to spend a lot of time
15:59
in front of computers and don't interact, you know, tend to be
16:02
maybe more introverted. The world isn't Twitter. So yeah,
16:05
heavily influenced by this, and they had everyone convinced that
16:07
the world's terrible and I saw the levers that they built on
16:10
their platform to make people behave poorly. And then they're
16:13
blaming people for behaving poorly. And then we gotta, you
16:17
know, socially execute people. I mean, they were just chopping
16:19
people's heads off, this guy's got to get off of Twitter. He's
16:21
bad. This one's got to do well, you set up a game, telling
16:23
people to behave badly, and then all sudden, you're removing
16:26
people, you gotta go, this one's terrible. He's beyond the pale.
16:29
He's gotta go. He was trying to win the game. Yeah, I don't like
16:32
to just talk. So I was talking to our CFO, and she said, you
16:35
know, if you feel so strongly about this, why don't you try to
16:37
pay your own network, and show people that things could be
16:39
better. And we've this conversation before Elon Musk
16:42
love Twitter, I didn't know he was gonna step in and do that.
16:44
So you don't, we had to build it from scratch, we funded it
16:48
ourselves, we had to get to the domain, spin up a team and all
16:50
that. And the idea was to show that you can remove some of the
16:53
negative design decisions, people aren't as bad, we wanted
16:56
to better reflect society. And we wanted to show that this is a
16:58
game. And if you don't want to turn into Twitter, you have to
17:01
give people positive levers to succeed at the game. So give
17:05
them a lever that's positive. So we decided to integrate
17:08
integrated giveaways, it's going to be our positive lever. Do you
17:11
want to touch on any or posts on stainless it works a lot like
17:13
Twitter or Facebook giveaways are very popular on Twitter and
17:16
Facebook, but they're not integrated. So you have a fraud
17:18
problem, and you have a trust problem. But honestly, most are
17:20
fully integrated. And since we've launched, they don't have
17:23
bad behavior. It's crazy.
17:25
Adam Outland: I guess, as user, you've got a lot of experience
17:28
with Twitter, and what well, and what they don't and that's
17:31
valuable. But I mean, you know, I get the connection between
17:34
what you were doing prior to sticker mule, and then rolling
17:37
in and sticker mule, because you'd like that, that background
17:39
of my world. Yeah, it actually played a role, right? But what a
17:42
leap, I mean, sticker mule to like total tech networking
17:45
company, I mean, what made you feel so I get the purpose and
17:50
the why behind wanting to do air? What gave you the
17:54
confidence that you could?
17:56
Anthony Constantino: You know, I only created one company and
17:57
succeeded, right, and people thought it was gonna be people
18:00
thought I was nuts. When I did that, you know, people mocked it
18:02
sticker be on the beginning, you know, it doesn't sound sensible
18:05
now. But, you know, I wanted more times limited on Earth, I
18:08
want to do something more challenging, more interesting,
18:11
and see, if I could do that I tell people do the most
18:14
impactful thing you can do. And so yeah, when I scan the world,
18:17
it's like, we think about that, what's the most impactful thing
18:20
I can do with my time, but this was, you know, in terms of what
18:23
it what my skill set is, and what my resources are, I
18:25
couldn't do anything better with my time. I didn't expect Elon
18:28
Musk to step in and buy it. And now all of a sudden, I'm
18:30
competing with, you know, a totally different person. Yeah,
18:35
what can you do? He actually has a lot of similar ideas to me. So
18:37
everyone out stimuluses verified, you know, I that was a
18:40
fundamental thought. And they must know, everyone's so
18:42
obsessed with privacy, and I get it, but like, I thought through
18:46
the majority of human history, privacy wasn't a thing. If you
18:49
interacted with another human, you did it face to face, people
18:51
knew who you were, they could find you. You know, you interact
18:53
with your neighbor, you put in, like, put a mask on and go
18:56
terrorize you and insult your neighbor. And you know, and it's
18:59
the fact that we didn't have privacy for the vast majority
19:01
human history is like, why we had, you know, much more civil
19:05
interactions. All of a sudden you taking on people with
19:07
obsessive probably take away privacy. And yeah, you got
19:09
people with masks on going on harassing, so you only want
19:11
people are on Twitter, harassing on Facebook, to harass their
19:14
neighbors or friends through fake names. You could never do
19:18
that if you had to actually do it face to face. The obsessional
19:21
privacy This is good, I get it, but it's giving additional
19:24
attention of people that operate under your real name is the
19:26
right thing to do.
19:27
Adam Outland: 100%. Yeah, it's like road rage, right? If you
19:31
cut someone off, you don't see that there's a human in the
19:33
car...
19:33
Anthony Constantino: Yeah, yes, exactly.
19:37
Adam Outland: So Stimulus. It's gaining attention. It's, you
19:41
know, the premise is creating a more positive environment.
19:44
Anthony Constantino: Yeah, reminding people that humans
19:45
naturally interact in a pleasant way with each other. And so far,
19:48
we've proven that I say sort of a you know, Innovation Lab for
19:51
social media. Like we our goal was samosas to do things that
19:54
aren't doing so if you look at all the other Twitter clones,
19:58
right, because there's just no revolution and Social, we had
20:00
this idea before people went nuts. But like all the other
20:03
Twitter bonds are just bad imitations that Twitter has no
20:05
real, there's really no inner innovation. But yeah, we're
20:08
trying to be an innovation lab we're trying to do with many
20:10
things that other people aren't doing. So we were the first
20:12
network to do integrated ID verification, mandatory ID
20:15
verification, we're the only network dev integrated giveaways
20:17
first network to do image polls, no one does damage baseballs,
20:20
which is pretty cool. I don't know why no one else looked
20:22
through that first network to build spam filtering. So you can
20:25
turn them spam on and off. So you can see your spam or not see
20:28
your spam. And eventually, we're going to have the ability to
20:31
like just like email, have your own personal spam filter,
20:33
because you know, Spam is in the eye of the beholder. So you
20:36
could add through the process of saying, I don't like this, I've
20:38
used to spam, you could start having your own definition and
20:41
building your own definition of spam through machine learning
20:44
and stuff like that. Just like the way email works, yeah,
20:47
that's our goal, keep innovating, keep doing cool
20:48
stuff, influence the other networks in a positive
20:50
direction. And we wanted to remind people that the time that
20:53
we started stimulus, I think it's the world starting to shift
20:55
again, hopefully, people were very convinced that the world
20:58
was dark and horrible and, and that social media was a
21:01
reflection of real life and life just socked and we were, that
21:04
was our goal is to show people that it's not that way.
21:07
Adam Outland: You know, it just as a way to kind of summarize
21:10
some of this conversation to kind of bring it back to you for
21:13
a second, you've learned a tremendous amount, just an
21:17
insane amount about business about, I mean, it sounds like
21:21
now you just lean in to whatever you're doing and unpack it, and
21:24
you're very interested in how things work. What would you say,
21:28
knowing everything you know, now to like, an 18 year old or 17
21:32
year old version of yourself, like what, what advice would you
21:34
give the young version of you having gone through this whole
21:37
path?
21:38
Anthony Constantino: You know, I just I felt kids in general, try
21:40
stuff, try more stuff. Don't be scared to try stuff. There's not
21:43
a huge separation between you and people that seem fancy, or
21:46
seem super intelligent, like people think that there is, but
21:49
there really isn't like when you're a kid, and you're like, I
21:52
don't know what you think I'm this person. And then the
21:54
successful people are just like, super humans. That's right.
21:57
Yeah. And it's not the case there, you do have to figure out
21:59
what it is that makes them successful and take on those
22:01
qualities. But like, once you figure it out, and so I have
22:04
this problem, like whatever I do in life, I try to like, downplay
22:07
whatever I do. So I started boxing, for now, and boxing for
22:10
knockouts to an amateur to impro. But even that, it's like,
22:14
once you figure it out, it's not that hard. I mean, it's really
22:17
not that hard. But you do have to study the sport and figure
22:20
out what are the fundamental characteristics that make like
22:23
most people on boxing, and it's like, a lot like business,
22:25
everything's kind of there's a lot of similarities between
22:26
whatever you do, but like, they're just in there doing it,
22:29
and they just think they're gonna win because they're gonna
22:31
win. And it's just, it's just not that way. You're not going
22:33
to win in business, just because you think you're gonna win. You
22:35
got to look at what are the qualities that make businesses
22:38
successful? Well slash and figure out how to do those
22:41
things.
22:41
Adam Outland: Your biggest lesson for me. And I think for
22:44
audience that that I'm distilling, I mean, there are a
22:46
lot of micro lessons and thoughts, achievements, just be
22:50
a student of the game, and just learn whatever you're into, and
22:53
you can figure it out. And I think it's a really human that
22:56
anybody can gravitate to that lesson and say, I can, you know,
22:59
that's something worth implementing in my life and
23:02
business. So a lot of cool anecdotes just from your life.
23:05
So I appreciate you being open about all that.
23:07
Anthony Constantino: Thank you. This is actually one of the best
23:10
podcasts I've done. So you did an incredible job with your
23:13
questions. Yeah, thank you, Adam. That was awesome.