Matthew Lewis

@bprintco Funny you mention that. As an electrical company, that happens, but I didn't really put that together until you mentioned it.

After doing hundreds and hundreds of quotes that average between $3k and $5k, there's one correlation that stands out the most... The likeliest buyers are always home and always available. If someone wants a quote after 5pm or on weekends because that's when they're home from work, their likelihood of closing drops significantly.

@alt_w_v_g They keep track of the year and model of the car units are attached to. I have an 2012 Audi and got 3 years at $3/month. Insane. I tried to use the same discount code on my wife's 2023 Audi and it wasn't allowed on her vehicle.

Ran some diligence on SiriusXM this weekend Not because anyone asked Because my 14-year-old nephew connected his phone to my car via Bluetooth, played a Spotify playlist, and asked me what the "SXM" button was for I didn't have an answer So I pulled the 10-K SiriusXM is an $8.56B revenue company with nearly $10B in debt and a $7.4B market cap Read that again The debt is larger than the company Their business model, simplified: 1. Pay automakers to install radios nobody asked for 2. Give every new car buyer a free trial they didn't request 3. Hope they forget to cancel 4. Charge them $25.99/month for something their phone does for $10.99 That's it. That's the model. They have 33M subscribers. Sounds impressive until they lost 301,000 self-pay subscribers last year. And hundreds of thousands the year before that. Revenue has declined three consecutive years The average subscriber is 35-64, male, household income over $150K. Over half have been paying for 10+ years. These aren't loyal customers These are people whose spouses haven't noticed the $25.99 charge on the Amex yet The crown jewel of the portfolio is Howard Stern. They pay him roughly $100M a year. He works three days a week. His show averages 125K daily listeners. That's $800 per listener per year My analyst did the math three times because he thought he was wrong He wasn't For that price, you could buy each listener a Spotify family plan, an Audible subscription, and still have enough left for AirPods Speaking of Spotify. Nearly 290M premium subscribers. Growing double digits. $10.99/month. Available on every device ever made. SiriusXM. 33M subscribers. Shrinking. $25.99/month. Requires a satellite. Spotify's full-year revenue grew 19%. SiriusXM's declined 2%. Spotify trades at 74x earnings. SiriusXM trades at 5x. The market is not confused about which direction these businesses are headed Their growth strategy is called the "trial funnel." There are 7.3M people driving cars with free SiriusXM trials. The conversion rate is not publicly disclosed. Probably because it's embarrassing They have 180M "enabled vehicles" in the U.S. They have 33M subscribers. That's an 18% attach rate on hardware they already paid to install. 82% of the cars with their radios in them are generating zero revenue In any other industry an 18% hit rate gets you fired In satellite radio, it gets you a seat on the NYSE Adjusted EBITDA margin is 31%. Looks healthy. Until you realize "adjusted" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting in a company that posted a $2.08B net loss the year prior. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.73B that same year The distance between those two numbers is called addbacks And they're working overtime 2026 guidance: flat revenue, flat EBITDA, slightly fewer subscribers. The CEO called this stability and meaningful progress. On Wall Street, we call this managed decline Warren Buffett owns 35.4% of this company. This is the most confusing part. The man who said "be fearful when others are greedy" bought a satellite radio company in the age of Bluetooth. His entry was a Liberty Media arb play that accidentally became a long-term hold. The stock is down over 50% from its highs. I don't know why he's still in. You don't know why. His shareholders definitely don't know why. The bull thesis: SiriusXM has 33M people who have been paying $15/month for a decade and have no plans to stop. That's $6B in recurring revenue from people who may not even remember they're subscribed. Churn is 1.5%. Lower than most SaaS companies. The bear thesis: Every teenager alive today has never used a car radio Both are probably right SiriusXM's competitive moat is not content. It's not technology. It's not brand. It's the 47 minutes it takes to cancel over the phone SiriusXM isn't a bad company. It's a case study in what happens when your moat is consumer apathy and your growth strategy requires General Motors. Plz fix. Thx. Sent from my iPhone

@FB_Helmet_Guy Of all that white guys available, how could you not choose Thunder Dan?

In honor of "White Men Can't Jump" 34th anniversary today, here's a white man who could jump.

@shawngorham We wrap our vehicles, but it's not a full wrap. I think it's invaluable as an advertising avenue.

I was never a wrapped van branding guy This week my neighbor had some work done at his house. 3 days - two sprinter vans - 4+ guys all in matching shirts NO BRANDING on the vans - plain white work vans. I live in a 1950's neighborhood where upgrades and repairs are always needed (old houses) Not having branding on the vans felt like a massive miss I have changed my mind again - wrap the vans Funny enough my other neighbor had a new roof installed. No yard sign, no signs on trucks, no branding.

@JR3_Cyco I'm more and more convinced that Pollard is taking the safe and "good enough" approach. The team doesn't cause any major off the courts issues and they win enough to keep ticket sales high enough. A new HC open up potential issues good and/or bad.

The fact that 80%+ of the women’s basketball team is leaving and not a single peep has been uttered out of anyone on the coaching staff or administration is just absolutely absurd

@alec_busse I'd say that's where the commonalities end.

Alabama coach Nate Oats says he is good friends with T.J. Otzelberger, saying that he has known Otzelberger since the Cyclone head coach played at UW-Whitewater. Oats was an assistant coach at UW-Whitewater from 2000-02, shortly after Otzelberger's career ended.

@Super70sSports I don't think you'd find too many guys turning down Mia.

If you ever find a pretty girl who keeps a scorebook at baseball games, marry her.

@mike_haden @CycloneLarry69 Buying one of those now feels like a major jinx.

Surely @CycloneLarry69 is getting a cut of profits to give to the “Keep Otz in Ames” fund!?!?!? smallbearco.printify.me/product/275284…

Everyone’s a genius until you have to use ratchet straps with someone watching

@hurricanesmill @ryanhammer09 "blueblood" fans are funny because they think everyone can't wait to join their school. You all are delusional period.

@ryanhammer09 ISU fans are funny. We could triple what he makes there, and he would have more money and resources at UNC than he would ever have at ISU. I’m not saying he’s going to leave, but you all are delusional if you think there’s no way he would consider leaving to coach a blueblood.

Why TJ won’t leave Iowa State 1. He’s able to build title contenders there 2. It’s home - he’s spent 13 years there, wife is in the ISU hall of fame. Midwest guy in his dream job 3. makes $4M/yr in Ames You call him bc he’s amazing, but he’ll stay put

@JoePostingg Cisco was one of the first companies to offshore their routers to China. It was well-known that those same manufacturers were stealing Cisco's IP software and using/modifying it. But sure, let's nuke all the other ones.

Banning foreign networking equipment is INSANE. American companies have abandoned the home networking market. My grandma is going to have to buy a fucking Meraki.

If your router is more than a few years old you should buy a TP-Link Archer BE3600 right now. Good home routers basically won't exist in six months, you'll have to buy an enterprise device if you want something that actually works.

@dantypo I own an electrical company so I know where you are coming from, but here's the truth. They price it what's worth to him at that time. His only mistake was complaining about the price to you.

Anyone who knows me knows that I support the trades. But MANY in the trades greatly overvalue their work. Real World Example: I had a young g guy starting out in plumbing. I needed a new well pump. It was in the basement, and NOT in the casing. I told him I’d buy the pump and he could just do the instal. He said he’d take at most 2 hours and said he’d swing by and do it as a job to fill a gap in his schedule. Told me $500. I figured that’d be about $50 in travel both ways and $200 an hour. More than fair. He did the job and said, “That was more work than I figured. I probably should have charged you $1,000.” I asked, “well did you have to buy anything else… did it take more than 2 hours?” He said no and so I simply said, “You just made $250 an hour on filler work… $500 for a 3 hour work day including travel and you didn’t buy any parts. That’s a pretty good day. How many people do you think can just throw $500 at you for 2 hours of work?” Another plumber recently came out to quote replacing 2 faucets in our employee bathrooms. Including labor and material, he quoted $1,600. The faucets were $70 bucks each. So I asked how long he thought it would take. He said 2 to 3 hours. So I said, “let’s just say travel is an hour… you think your labor is worth $500 an hour!?” I asked him how much it was to come give me the estimate, and he said it was no charge. I gave him a $50 and told him that his price was laughable. I did it myself in like 30 minutes. My point isn’t that time and knowledge isn’t money. I appreciate that maybe these little jobs are “beneath” them. But that’s what filler work is. But I get the feeling some of these guys want to make their week’s money in a few hours. The second guy could have got the job if he’d have quoted me $750. It’d have cost him maybe $150 in parts, and including travel he could have made $325 an hour.

@MichaelKudrna Casey's expanding because KwikStar is eating their lunch in Iowa. They won't lose in the small 1 stop light towns, but even in the semi urban areas, they are losing.

I've walked away from pizza deals in smaller towns. One reason: Casey's. $CASY owns the lower income pizza market in rural America. Cheap. Convenient. "Good enough." You can't out-price a gas station. Now they added wings. Small-town pizza and wing shop owners — your competition isn't the family restaurant across town. It's a publicly traded convenience store with 2,600 locations. Adapt or die slow.

@atxREpodcast In the electrical world, the constant code additions that AHJs want included, inflate the cost of our projects.

Same concept for housing. We are building homes nearly the same way as 20 yrs ago. However, the permitting paperwork required is 10 times harder. Physically = same stuff Paperwork = 10x It’s all about income for the government. New regs = new review = new income

@midwestern_ope And the wind is always blow 20+mph in your face.

People don’t appreciate the drive through North Dakota enough

@JerseyGeneral34 @jloose128 That's alright, neither can the rest of the country.

@jloose128 I can't distinguish Arkansas from Alabama

Here's the Sweet Sixteen!

@2024dion Iowa is a decent case study. Des Moines is an insurance hotspot and Cedar Rapids is a massive materials exporter. But the state govt has spent the past decade degrading the living conditions. Coupled with cold winters and humid summers, it's hard to want to live here.

No doubt this will get a ton of pickup from Midwest boosters but the argument is built on some very thin data. Its core claim (3 of the 5 fastest growing metros in the past two years are in the Midwest) is sourced to a single Bank of America accountholder analysis. If you zoom out a little bit to a period where we have more solid and comprehensive administrative data, no Midwestern city was among the 50 fastest growing from 2020-2024 per the ACS. Unless you count Sioux Falls, whose 7.6% increase (21,000 people) was good for 49th place. I suppose it's plausible this has changed somewhat -- and we get 2024/2025 data this month, conveniently -- but I strongly doubt it. Migration patterns don't reverse on a dime and there's little about the Midwestern or Sunbelt economies of the past 12 months that's so different from the previous 36. My strong expectation is that the pattern of the first four years of the 2020s, and indeed many years before that, will continue to generally hold. The Sunbelt is still a growth powerhouse and the Midwest lags far behind.

@hey_mindi Goodwill is a brand name not a cause.

Did you know Goodwill made $2.1 BILLION in revenue last year? They pay executives 6-figure salaries. They pay workers sometimes less than minimum wage via a legal loophole. They get their inventory donated for free then sell it back to the public. The thrift store for “poor people” is one of the most profitable nonprofits in the country.

@kenny5alive I resisted for a while, but I'll be damned if it hasn't almost replaced my grill. I use it way more often.

For years, I have said “awww, I don’t need one of those fucking Blackstone griddles”, and put off buying one. I’m happy to inform y’all that I bought a small one and I hope to be as insufferable as the barbecue bros about it.

@RedWavePress Because it's 30 seconds of news followed by pharma commercials, another 30 seconds of news followed by more pharma commercials. No useful news is provided.

Bill Maher: “During most primetime nights, less than 1% of the country is watching Fox News, CNN, and MS Now, combined… A guy on TikTok pressure washing his driveway gets bigger ratings.” “76% of Americans watch less than 1 hour of any cable news in a month.”