Asses, Apartments & Anecdotes

A bit of a mindfuck that January is nearly over. Blink & boom, gone. First of all, I’d like to thank everyone for the incredible feedback on the Tony P in DC feature last week. If you missed it, read it here. This probably goes without saying, but it was without a doubt the biggest & most read Trust Fun to date. We had over 18k ADDITIONAL readers. All that web traffic was 100% for free through collaboration with my boy AJ. Trust Fun got tons of new subscribers (welcome, friends) & most importantly, the best possible vibes. I have proven my hypothesis that TonyPinDC, does in fact, put asses in the seats.

Cross-promotion & newsletter features will most definitely be a growth hack for me in ‘24. The numbers don’t lie… Thinking Elon Musk next…?

It’s been a blast continue to grow this thing & (hopefully) get better at writing. Every week I feel like I learn something new about myself. This week will be no different.

Welcome back to Week 14 of Trust Fun. Pete Rose week.

I’m Broke Again

I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t discuss my last 7 days here. As previously mentioned, my girlfriend and I are moving into a new apartment in mid-Feb. We were able to lock down our dream spot which is amazing. Please hold your applause.

If you’ve ever had the “privilege” of living in Manhattan, you probably know that moving & finding a new apartment absolutely sucks the most ass. It’s horrible. A nightmare. And most definitely a full time job. You spend HOURS every single day perusing StreetEasy (NYC’s exclusive version of Zillow). Yes we’re better than Zillow so we had to make our own. Deal with it. Anyways, hours on end reaching out to brokers & touring apartments that have a lines out the door like the Beatles are inside. It’s a nightmare & takes sooo much goddamn time. This video is meant as satire, but it’s not. This is actually what it’s like:

And then once you finally find the one… You gotta then deal with all these fees that are supposed to maybe be illegal now (?), but for some reason they aren’t. So, you pay a brokers fee (which is usually like 1 months rent for them to simply open the door for you), an application fee, a background check fee, a move in fee, etc etc.

It’s a nightmare. It’s defeating. And most definitely, it drains your bank account. As we speak, I’m wiring way too much money for an apartment I can’t afford.

*Cue Empire State of Mind by Jay Z & Alicia Keys*

Love this city tho. Someone please sponsor the newsletter.

Customer Feedback

Moving on to some informative & business related stuff, last week I spent what felt like every single second talking to Mugsy customers on video calls. Here’s what my calendar looked like:

Yes. Puke. I know. I did give myself a brief lunch break but other than that I was head down, making small talk with a bunch of bros who bought stretchy jeans at one point. It was certainly a lot. It was definitely a bit grueling. But… It was CRITICAL.

Believe it or not, no one told me to do this. I actually chose to. Psycho, I know. If I wanted to, I could’ve probably just trusted the data, dove into year over year growth numbers, returns & customer service feedback, and gathered all those numbers to come to a logical conclusion on what Mugsy is doing good & bad as a company. Ya know, taken a very, very educated & calculated guess on what we need to to improve on & adjust for ‘24. But I probably would’ve been wrong. Or, at the very least, missed something very important.

For any company that is customer facing at all, gathering anecdotes is so so so so important. Typically, customers’ feelings can’t be calculated or seen in the data. And sometimes, the anecdotes you gather actually CONFLICT with the data.

Jeff Bezos recently did an interview on The Lex Friedman Podcast & discussed this very topic:

“The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it.” - Jeff Bezos

Time and time again, I’ve seen businesses make wildly important business decisions without talking to customers. This, to me, is so so bad. You may think you know best because you started the company. Or because you built a super elaborate excel model that spits out a pretty pivot table with a bunch of variables. But until you speak to customers, you don’t know shit. They have real experiences with your company, & they’re the ones who gave you their money.

Figure out why. Figure out how. Figure out how it went.

Figure out why they haven’t come back, or why they have.

It may be because their buddy told them about you.

It may be because they bought yours but then bought this other one they like better.

It may be because yours is to expensive. Or it’s to cheap. Or they got annoyed by your emails.

These things most likely won’t be in the data. And even tho these calls do kinda suck & are draining, the reward of being 100% confident in your OKRs & choices far outweighs it.

Thanks for reading. See you next week.