The Best One Yet
📅 “Year in Review 2025” — Maxxing, Robots, & Kale Collar Workers
22 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Yetis, Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy studio before our year in review episode. We've only been on sale for our live show for less than two weeks. That's it. And the Yetis have already snapped up over half of the tickets. 54% of the tickets sold. Austin is pretty much sold out. New York, now or never, grab those tickets, baby. So this would be a great holiday gift for somebody.
We got links in the episode description to our first four cities of the IPO tour, our in-person offering. So besties, in 2026, we can't wait to see you live. Grab your tickets now. Jack, let's hit the show. All right, Jack, here we go. Three, two. This is Nick. This is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, December 22nd. And today's year in review episode is the best one yet. It's a T-boy.
The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Yetis, let's be real. The three biggest forces in business this year, Trump, AI, and affordability. For more on that, look at every single newsletter, podcast, and social media post from every single day of this entire year. Breaking news! Trump and Sam Altman dominate the inflation headlines.
We're not going to cover Trump's takeover of the term sheet, AI's takeover of the markets, or the K-shaped economy. No, besties. Instead, Jack and I found the three biggest pop biz themes of 2025. The ones that made business news your business this year. So Jack, the three stories for today's show, what do we got on the T-boy?
For our first story, the consumer trend of the year was protein maxing. Protein maxing. But Jack and I noticed that in this economy, everything is maxing. For our second story, 2025 is the year that robots got promoted. From Waymo highway cars to Amazon warehouse bots to the human-sized robots that are doing your laundry, robots got promoted.
And our third and final story, the final theme of the year is kale collard workers. Kale collard workers. We all practiced dupinomics and learned to thrive in the thrift economy. But yet is before we hit that wonderful mix. I mean, what a mix to end the year on. Love the mix, Jack. You can't remember everything that happened this year. No, I can't, Jack. What do you think?
Let's whip up the entire business year in 60 seconds. I like what you're thinking and let's start. Now. Stocks hit all-time highs an all-time high number of times. You survived the great matcha shortage but your AMX fee hit $895. Chipotle became a Louis Vuitton luxury and Coldplay became a kiss cam. We saw the Sidney Sweeney stock surge while electric cars got unplugged.
Bitcoin had Bromentum, hitting 125K. But then Bitcoin had Nomentum and fell 30%. OpenAI started the year looking green, but ended the year with a code red. We had Harvard major grade inflation. And your email had exclamation inflation. Mini soap operas became a big business. While Warner Brothers became someone's little brothers. We got the rise of mugs. Uggs for men. And ath-ski-jer-wear.
Ski gear for women. Warren Buffett announced his retirement. Jeff Bezos announced his un-retirement. And Tom Brady cloned his dog. This year, we brought back the dire wolf from extinction. Yeah, but the penny became extinct. This year, we got tariff from Wakanda to Westeros. And Elon's favorite child, SpaceX, announced plans to IPO to the moon. Plus, this year, this pod had two IBOs. We did.
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Chapter 2: What are the three biggest pop-biz themes of 2025?
Initial baby offerings. We both had kids. Jack had a son named Oakley. I had a daughter named Selena. But Jack, in all this business craziness this year, there was only one certainty. You know what it was? Cha-ching button? No, Jack. It's that nothing beat a Jet 2 holiday. Darling, hold my hand. Let's hit our three themes of the year, Jack.
15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in a dorm. They had an idea to cause a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is the norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50%, that's a fat tip. T-Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, cause we ready to go. We can't wait no more, so just start the show.
For our first pop biz theme of 2025, it's a consumer trend, protein maxing. Businesses sprinkled protein on anything. But we noticed that maxing actually applies to everything this year. Hi, yetis. If you didn't eat a dozen grams of protein two times a dozen days daily, then your muscles might spontaneously liquefy. Yeah, I just saw Jimbrow say that on TikTok, so it must be true.
And no company captured that protein maxin trend more than David Barr. David Barr, the protein bar startup, hit a $750 million valuation this year, less than two years after it launched. Besties in the age of Ozempic and fitness, this gold-plated protein bar, David, will give you more abs than a Renaissance sculpture.
David Barr is so into protein, they started selling individually wrapped codfish fillets just to prove their devotion to the cause. Yeah, post-Pilates, you whip up a David Barr protein fish.
But we also got the Kardashian clan involved. Khloe Cloud protein popcorn.
That's right. And Jack Costco started selling 12 packs of canned protein water too. And Starbucks said the word protein 19 times in their earnings call. Starbucks broistas, real trying to make foam protein cream a thing. But zooming out, it wasn't just protein that got maxed in 2025. No, Jack and I noticed that the term maxing actually captures the entire 2025 macro situation.
Early in the year, we had office maxing.
Bankers and tech workers were at their desk around the clock, working on weekends, trying to get to the next fundraise. 996. And you had valuation maxing. SpaceX and OpenAI became the most valuable private companies in the history of business. And crucially... This whole maxing trend actually started at the top, in the White House, with the trade war.
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Chapter 3: How is protein maxing influencing consumer behavior?
I'm still a fan of eating fast casual. Jack's actually offended by that term. The reason is because these bowls are expensive and anxious white-collar workers don't need to pay 18 bucks for your daily lunch. That's why we call the customers of these fast casual restaurants kale-collar workers. And fascinatingly, according to our T-Boy data, many of you are in fact kale-collar workers.
Kale-collar workers. You're 20 to 40-somethings living in cities, working in office buildings at your computer most of the day. You order an efficient salad most days for lunch. You might even have named your daughter Kale. Perhaps. Or you will.
Perhaps.
Now, unfortunately, if you're a Kale Call worker, you're also anxious about the future and your job because of AI. That's right. You're afraid your company has taken corporate Ozempic and is about to trim the headcount by 10%. Plus, your taxes, your rent, your babysitter prices, they're all higher than ever. There's a reason affordability is now a section on every politician's campaign website.
And for the same reason, you're probably finding lower price choices for various things in your life right now. We're talking micro changes, like cutting some streaming subscriptions or bumming your buddy's Netflix password again. Or driving to the local ski resort instead of flying to Colorado like you used to. Or buying a used car instead of a new car.
And brown bagging leftovers to work instead of buying chipotle, sweet green, or kava balls. Besties add it all up and zillennials in this knowledge economy, aka the kale collar workers, are trading down on everything. Makes a lot of sense. Nick and I are doing it too. But we're trading up on other things. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies listening to this pod?
It wasn't just lunch choices. Kale collar workers turned to the thrift economy. Yeah, it is. In this economy, prices are still way up even if inflation has remained calm. We've adapted to the inflation era by looking at what we have and asking what do we really need. like buying and selling clothes on ThredUp, whose secondhand clothing stock is up 500% this year.
And we've also done it by embracing dupes more often. Lower-priced versions of high-end things have totally gone mainstream. Plus, Jack, you got the white label phenomenon. Trader Joe's, Kirkland-branded products, they are the rage because they're lower-priced. And TJ Maxx, yeah, its stock's at an all-time high again. It's now worth seven times more than Lululemon.
Besties, in 2025, Americans fully embraced Dupinomics and the thrift economy. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us for the end of 2025? Protein maxing was a trend that became everything maxing across the whole economy. And the result of everything maxing, it's the casino economy. For our second story, robots got promoted in 2025.
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