0:00
I was like, have you done any deals that I would have heard of?
Search this video
0:03
And he's like, You know Disneyland?
0:05
[laughter] He's like, a lot of windows in Disneyland.
0:10
We do all the windows in Disneyland. [laughter] Oh my god.
0:14
He said he bought a window company, got him a Disney contract, we do all the windows in Disney.
0:18
[laughter] All right, what's up?
0:28
We are talking about something pretty special this episode.
0:31
This is going to be different than our normal episodes, which are, you know, free-wheeling, free-styling.
0:34
Today we got a plan, and the plan is we're going to talk about companies that crush [snorts] it with only one or two employees.
0:44
So, the reason we thought about this was there was some news, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, that a company that I had never heard of called Wargraphs sold for $54 million, and the Yeah, that's I mean, that's obviously impressive, but the most impressive part was that Wargraph was just one dude.
1:00
So, one guy sold his company for $54 million, and I don't even Do you know what Wargraphs did?
1:07
Are you familiar with it? it a a gaming thing?
1:09
It's a gaming thing, yeah.
1:09
So, he built basically a companion app, I think, for League of Legends.
1:13
So, if you play League of Legends, this was like a thing that would keep track of your stats and stuff like that, help you get better at the game.
1:19
So, he built this little companion app, and it got really popular.
1:23
I think he got into like a million players that used it, and was generating serious revenue, and so he sold it for 51 54 million in cash, and he was upfront.
1:31
He was like, I got half of the Sorry, I got half of the 54 million in cash upfront, and I have the other half as like my earnout that I have to like, you know, if it hits, you know, our milestones along the way.
1:41
Which is just super impressive for a one-person company, and How old is the person?
1:47
Uh I think he started when he was young, but now it's been like, you know, 7 or 8 years, so you know, he's probably I'm going to guess something like 30, but the the it got me thinking.
1:55
It was like, everybody talks about big businesses.
1:59
For good reason, big businesses are awesome. Uh they are.
2:03
But what about mighty businesses?
2:03
What about the the the guys who are punching above their weight?
2:06
So, somebody who has just themselves or with just one or two people that does millions in revenue profitably, flies under the radar, and like how many other Wargraphs are there out there?
2:17
So, we did some research, and we found some, and so that's what this episode's going to be about, and we've kind of touched on this before.
2:23
We've done some of our most popular episodes.
2:25
If you go on YouTube, you'll see the episode with Peter Levels, I think, has a couple hundred thousand um listens.
2:32
The lesson Sorry, the uh episode about Amit Agarwal, the guy who builds uh G-Suite, you know, basically like Google Sheets plugins.
2:43
Um he does millions of dollars in revenue as just kind of one guy who was a blogger turned app builder.
2:47
And so, those have been some of our most popular episodes, so I think this is going to be a good one, too.
2:52
Sam, anything else before we jump in?
2:53
Yeah, I want to give an honorable mention to this one person.
2:58
Have you listened to Juvenile growing up?
3:01
Remember rapper the rapper Juvenile? Of course.
3:03
You're giving him a shoutout like he's listening. Yeah.
3:04
[laughter] I Like last year, NPR, they do this thing called the Tiny Desk Concert series. You know what that is?
3:11
It's like they're in the office like playing acoustic songs. Yeah, those are cool.
3:15
They said, "Who should we have?"
3:17
And this one guy goes, "You should have Juvenile."
3:19
And Juvenile replies, and he goes, "What the What the" He goes, "WTF?
3:23
What What the F is a Tiny Desk? And hell no."
3:25
And [laughter] You know what?
3:30
They got him to do it anyway.
3:32
It happened this weekend.
3:32
And so, in preparation for this one-man band show, I've been listening to that Juvenile concert at the Tiny Desk NPR series. It was awesome. It was awesome.
3:45
You remember Back That Azz Up and Slow Motion for me and [laughter] It was so good. It was so good. I had to be inspired.
3:52
Him and Mannie Fresh did it, and it was awesome.
3:54
It was awesome, awesome, awesome.
3:56
So, honorable mention these are the tiny These are the Tiny Desk Awards, then. Let's call it that.
4:01
These are the Tiny Desk Awards, which are the the the businesses that can be run off of one tiny desk, cuz it's just one or two people, all right?
4:07
And uh we're going to do this like an award show.
4:09
So, we have a long list, but that'd be kind of boring.
4:12
So, we're We're broken up into categories, and we each have our answer for the category.
4:17
So, for example, first category is going to be biggest one-person business.
4:24
But we also have to set some rules here.
4:26
Some of these things, one person, it's a bit uh vague.
4:28
One person oftentimes can mean like the founder and like a team of contractors, or in many cases it's going to be um uh agencies that they work with.
4:39
Or it started as one person, and it was that way for a long time, and then they hired a team.
4:46
Um so, it's more of the spirit of the law than the than the letter of the law here.
4:50
So, you know, they don't have T-shirts for the company, because, you know, there's they don't have like, you know, a bunch of employees and and you know, morale.
5:01
They they probably won't have a an office where where a bunch of people go into.
5:05
It's either one or two people who are kind of the core drivers, and maybe they use some contractors or vendors or agencies for for other things, but that's that's generally the the way we're looking at this.
5:16
Yeah, and so let's get into it.
5:18
So, what's the first one?
5:20
The Is it the the biggest? So, you go first.
5:24
So, I'm going to do one another gaming one that that I doubt you know of.
5:29
Do you know what Stardew Valley is? No, what is that?
5:32
So, Stardew Valley is this game, and if you look at the game, the game art looks like it's like eight-bit art.
5:35
Almost it looks like a very, very simplistic game.
5:40
And it was made by one guy, this guy Eric Barone.
5:44
And he basically is like, you know, I'm he gets out of school, he doesn't want to get a job.
5:47
So, he's like, well, I you know, I'm going to teach myself how to code instead of going to get a good job.
5:53
So, he's like, "Why don't I learn how to build a game in order to teach myself how to code?
5:57
Like, I don't want to just code for coding's sake, I'll try to do something with it."
5:59
And he always liked these games back in the day.
6:03
I don't know if you know Harvest Moon, it's like this kind of like farming simulator game.
6:08
He's a very simple kind of like uh you you know, it had like a cult following.
6:12
And so, he's like, "I'm going to make my version of Harvest Moon."
6:16
Which was like kind of was popular when I was a kid, like, you know, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
6:19
And um so, he spends basically uh 4 years in solitude just building this game by himself before he releases it. For 4 years? What was his job? Did he have a job?
6:32
He He just lived off his girlfriend.
6:34
His girlfriend had a like a a grad degree stipend, and [laughter] and Usher is a terrible unless you're literally trying to be like a cover artist covering the artist Usher.
6:50
Like, you know, you never want to be an Usher.
6:53
That's not the That's not your career is not going the right direction when you're doing that.
6:56
Um so, anyways, the he launches this thing.
6:59
Stardew Valley has sold 20 million copies.
7:03
Um it sells for $13 a pop.
7:03
And so, uh you know, he sold this thing, I think, over time it has done 150 million in sales or revenue.
7:14
Um and he's the only guy who built it just by himself.
7:16
Which is honestly not that uncommon.
7:18
Minecraft was largely built the same way.
7:20
There's this guy Notch, who was the developer behind Minecraft.
7:24
And if you've ever seen it, he'll get on Twitch, and he'll just code Minecraft.
7:28
Like, he'll just stream himself for like 12 hours just building the game.
7:29
And like, I think Minecraft had more people overall, but like one guy was really the driving force and the driving energy around it for many, many years.
7:38
Uh but Stardew Valley is my pick for for biggest, 150 million off of one one game dev.
7:45
The guy Notch, when he sold, I think he sold for like multiple billions, right?
7:49
billion, 2 billion, something like that.
7:50
And he I think he bought like an like he outbid Beyoncé for like an $80 million mansion in [laughter] LA, and he was tweeting out or sharing how everyone hates him now.
8:00
He was like, "I'm so lonely. This sucks."
8:02
But he's still in this like fancy $80 million mansion.
8:06
Do you remember that whole like ordeal where he was talking about how he like didn't give equity to people, and so some of the people who he hired hated him, and he was lonely, but he was and he was having all these huge parties, and he was lost, and all that stuff.
8:17
Do you remember all that?
8:20
[laughter] I missed all of that.
8:22
Dude, he like went through this whole spiel on on Twitter about how like he hates his life, but Oh, wow.
8:29
I mean, this house is I'm looking at this house. This house is insane. Was it 80 million? 70 million.
8:35
Yeah, it was like a it was fat.
8:35
I remember like he I was like, this guy see Beyoncé getting the news.
8:38
It's like, "Oh, who Who did it? Who outbid me? Was it Was it Spielberg? Who was it?
8:43
Oh, no, it must have been uh Lenny Kravitz? Who Who was it?
8:47
Who Who outbid me on this?"
8:49
It's like, "Nah, it's Notch." Yeah, got him.
8:55
[clears throat and laughter] Um all right, mine is a StreamYard.
8:57
So, StreamYard, I'll have to remember when they launched, but I think they launched in 2019, right before the pandemic hit.
9:05
And it was basically a it was a way to stream events online and stream interviews and things like that online.
9:12
These two guys scaled it to $30 million in 1 year or 18 months or so, and this mostly happened because the pandemic.
9:20
They ended up selling it to Hopin for $250 million.
9:22
It was a mix of cash and stock.
9:25
And Hopin ended up laying them off a bunch of people like last year, but I've heard rumors that it's killing it.
9:32
Have you heard these rumors? Hopin? Yeah. No.
9:35
No, I have not heard I've heard the opposite of those rumors, but I don't know. What have you heard?
9:39
Well, just like when the layoffs happened, and it was like basically post-COVID, events came back online like in person, so that's naturally going to hurt the business.
9:45
Then they had massive layoffs, and I heard that the the founders have taken a ton of secondary or something like that, so I heard like a hundred million plus in secondary.
9:53
Yeah, but maybe the business went well, I have no idea.
9:54
I just heard kind of like the generally though, when you hear those three things, it's like massive layoffs, you know, market uh you know, the the the the crazy event that was driving your growth has stopped.
10:04
And the founders took and people start talking about how much secondary the founders took, it's usually because the business is going in the wrong direction.
10:10
You Usually people don't [ __ ] about secondaries when the thing is exploding. I don't know.
10:14
I I heard the other way I I also thought that and I heard the other way around.
10:17
We talked about StreamYard like right when they were getting going and then we talked about them again when they were acquired.
10:22
Did you say you knew these guys?
10:23
I think I'd met cuz back when I was doing video streaming, I met like kind of everyone in the space. I I I I don't know.
10:29
I got to look up who these guys are, but I do know that they got to 14 million in ARR when it was just the two of them.
10:38
And then it got to 30 million when they had By that time they had hired up a team.
10:42
So this is kind of like a hybrid.
10:43
They got They got really far with just a couple of people and then they hired up um you know, from from as as they scaled it before they sold.
10:51
And I remember going to their website when it was just them and I there was like the founder and he was he was on the he was on the homepage and he was giving like a tutorial video on how to use the product and it was just him like with his camera on his lap practically. And he looked exhausted. He looked so worn out.
11:07
I remember this during the pandemic when we were thinking about using them for something.
11:12
And he looked like super haggard, but it was very impressive that these two guys have built this to sell for $250 million and I although it was cash and stock, so I don't know if the stock is worth anything. I heard it might be.
11:23
So that might be one of the biggest ones that I've heard of at least recent big ones.
11:28
Another big one that it happened a long time ago, so I've no connection. It was Plenty of Fish.
11:32
How much did Plenty of Fish get acquired for?
11:33
Like $550 million I think. Yes, hundreds, yeah.
11:37
And that was started by one guy named Markus who now I see online and he seems like he like lives the most lavish life and just does crazy [ __ ] And so Plenty of Fish was basically one of the early dating websites. It was a marketplace.
11:48
It was all like OKCupid, but I think it was predominantly Canadian and that had to be probably the biggest exit that I've ever heard of for a a really small small team.
11:57
Yeah, Plenty of Fish was unbelievable.
11:59
That guy, isn't he like a nut?
11:59
The Plenty of Fish founder, I feel like that's a whole 'nother story we should do one day.
12:04
I think it's a whole 'nother I think I don't know.
12:05
I haven't researched it enough to actually like verify the claims, but I've heard like a little like grumblings, like a little little stories that something weird is going on, but I don't know the truth.
12:16
[laughter] Also, I love the fact that you met the StreamYard guys and they looked haggard and you're like It's like in Silicon Valley when you see somebody like that, you put your arm around them and you're like, "Hey, you all right?
12:25
Is it Is it cuz of too much traction or not enough?
12:27
I just need to know how I'm going to treat you for tomorrow."
12:31
Oh, it's too much traction. Okay, okay, okay. Come here. Come here. You sleep on my couch. Let me feed you. Just take this check.
12:38
Put me on your cap table.
12:38
You know, like there's there's really you know, one out of 10 of the haggard people, they're getting beat down by too much demand and nine out of 10 are getting beat down by too that?
12:46
Who have you met like that?
12:46
Who else have you met where you just like talking to a guy who this guy Abder. Met a guy Abder.
12:54
And he was doing something pretty I met him after the fact, but he told me the story and it I always it always stuck with me and I always remember here after hearing the story, I was like, I should look for that.
13:02
So what happened was Twitter started taking off in popularity uh right when it kind of got going in Silicon Valley.
13:08
Like it became like a thing.
13:11
And Abder was him and his team were they're like kind of like data science type people.
13:16
And so they were like, "All right.
13:16
What can we build uh that makes Twitter work better?"
13:20
Cuz Twitter was such a simplistic product and at the time it was like almost like a protocol.
13:23
Like anyone could have build apps on top of it or use the data for something.
13:26
So he's trying to build something and he doesn't know what he's doing.
13:29
He's like he's sitting on a train and he starts coding this thing.
13:32
He's like, "Oh, I I've done this research on sentiment analysis."
13:36
And he's like, I was like, "Okay, so you know, what what what story sounds a little bit boring.
13:38
Who cares about sentiment analysis?"
13:39
He's like, "Yeah, you could He's like, you could figure out like how people are feeling about a certain topic cuz they're talking about it in a certain way."
13:45
Did you tell him his story was boring right when he got going?
13:49
you know, my chin [laughter] the chin started to drift. You know, I did that.
13:53
I was like, "Is there anyone else in this car I can talk to?"
13:54
I was in a car with him in Ethiopia and you know, 4 hours straight.
13:57
I there's nowhere to run. So I'm I'm hearing it.
13:59
I like, "All right, let me hear out the story. Your sentiment analysis. Yeah, go ahead.
14:03
Tell me more about your PhD in sentiment analysis. What did this do?"
14:07
And he's like [laughter] "So, I was on a train and I'm building this thing.
14:11
I'm trying to analyze what people are saying on Twitter to see if I can get the sentiment, the current mood or whatever.
14:15
He's like, but then I realized actually what I'll do is instead of figure out their mood, I'll just figure out what are they talking about a lot of like a lot more than usual.
14:24
That's kind of interesting."
14:27
And he basically created trending for Twitter off of Twitter. Oh, cool.
14:33
So he He's like He's like, "Oh, I can figure out that the word Olympics normally is only said this much, but it's being said 10 standard standard deviations more, so that means Olympics is trending.
14:43
The the it's it's above its par."
14:45
And he's like, "This is super cool.
14:47
Like I basically have the 10 things that people are talking about on Twitter.
14:51
I can kind of get that I get that signal in a way that you couldn't really get at the time on Twitter."
14:57
And so he creates this and they create a separate website off of Twitter called Twitter trending.
15:01
I forgot what it what it was called. It's their own website.
15:03
And they start getting millions of hits on this thing and they're just trying to and and he's trying to keep it keep it up cuz he's basically drinking from the Twitter firehose and he's got all this traffic and so he's trying to keep both of them working.
15:14
Eventually Twitter buys them.
15:15
So they become like employees 10 through 20 or something of Twitter. Oh, sick.
15:20
And at the time Twitter had the fail whale.
15:22
It was just like constantly Twitter the the service was going down.
15:26
It was had so much usage and it was like in this web 2. 0.
15:28
Like what it wasn't like scalable yet.
15:29
They hadn't figured out how to scale it.
15:33
And he he told me he's like he's like, "For 6 months he's like, I just woke up every day with like an imprint of my keyboard on my forehead.
15:40
Like I had just passed out.
15:40
I was working trying to keep this damn site up. Pass out, wake up. Uh where was I?" And I just kept going.
15:48
He's like, "That was 6 months straight of my life.
15:50
He's like, I've never experienced anything like it."
15:53
And at the time I remember thinking "Oh, there's levels to this thing."
15:55
Like that's what it feels like when you really have one of the winners.
15:58
Like and and if you talk to people early at Facebook and they talk about like what the what what it was like working early at Facebook Facebook, it's like when people talk about living in New York, they're like just the energy was it's just You can't explain it.
16:11
And it's like that's how that's what you get when you're inside one of these generational companies at the early stage when they're they're scaling too fast. Dude, that's exciting. I love that one.
16:21
Um I like hearing those old stories like that.
16:23
I always read those old books like the the hacking Twitter and all that [ __ ] I love that [ __ ] All right, next let's go to let's wait, let's go to highest degree of difficulty.
16:31
We'll skip a category and come back to it.
16:33
Okay, so this is the hardest one, the hardest example, the one that we're like, "How the hell did you even do that?"
16:38
And there's no way anyone else would have done this. You go first. All right, I have one. It's called TinyWow.
16:43
So I think the URL is just tinywow. com.
16:45
So do you have that pulled up? TinyWow? Yeah, got it.
16:49
All right, so I met this guy.
16:49
He's a member of Hampton. That's how I met him. His name's Evan Gauler.
16:51
He had a a another website called TechCrunch.
16:55
Maybe you heard of TechCrunch, but they like just talked about like tech topics, whatever.
17:00
It's pretty normal website, but he ended up selling it for eight figures and on the side he started this thing called TinyWow, which is a bunch of tools that include like how to convert a PDF, but then image editing tools that use AI and it's one of those websites where you Google like convert this file to PDF.
17:17
It is able to he's able to come up first. Right now it has 6.
17:21
6 million visits a month. And It's insane. Yeah, it's insane.
17:25
The reason it's interesting is right now it only does 20,000 a month in revenue because he says, "I haven't I just haven't turned on any of the um monetization.
17:36
It just has like little ads."
17:38
He goes, "I'm going to turn it on eventually, but right now I'm just enjoying the summer and time with my family.
17:42
So I haven't really like [laughter] dug deep and like built it."
17:44
And so basically this guy Evan, he was a talking about the weather? Put on AdSense. What are you doing?
17:52
[laughter] I mean, this is insane.
17:54
Dude, that's the cool part about these one-person businesses.
17:56
And this is another guy who I'm going to tell the story about has said the same thing.
17:59
He goes, "I felt like taking the summer off, so I just let let it ride for a little while."
18:05
So this guy Evan, he basically had a history as a developer.
18:07
He says he doesn't do any development now, but he has a team of three people who are helping him or one contractor who helps him with overseas who's helped him actually like build and implement.
18:17
He basically just draws it and designs it.
18:20
But the reason why this thing has taken off is if you Google Do you remember like Do you ever see those videos on TikTok that say like, "Here's five websites that should be illegal, but aren't"?
18:29
so good that they should be illegal.
18:31
[laughter] Yeah, it's like a stick.
18:33
So that is basically how it the the website got popular.
18:36
Is it's gotten popular from those videos.
18:38
And so the reason why this is really hard to create because A, getting traffic to a like a content site or any type of website like this, it's very challenging.
18:47
Often times in building the product is not the hard part. It's getting users. Uh and getting 6.
18:50
6 million visits a month mostly from social, quite challenging.
18:55
We'll see if he's able to turn this, but I asked him I was like, "How big can this get?"
18:59
He's like, "Well, like I think of like Canva."
19:01
So I'm like, "Can we I think it can make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue because we're going to ultimately we have this traffic.
19:08
We can have like a feature that says, 'Hey, you can edit this picture using our platform and we'll charge a small fee.'
19:14
I think this actually could be a big business, but right now it's really tiny."
19:17
He told me it costs $10,000 a month to run and it's making $20,000 a month in revenue. Wow. Yeah.
19:23
Do you know how much uh how much remove. bg makes? Who?
19:29
[clears throat] Do you ever use remove. bg? No, what is that?
19:32
Oh, that's I mean, that's the that was the old way.
19:34
It's like if you need to remove a background from an image, like you need to just cut out the object and remove the background. remove.
19:40
bg was this website that was like just the go-to.
19:46
Yeah, it was just the go-to and oh my god, 50 to 60 million in monthly monthly visits.
19:52
So, it's just like insane. And remove.
19:54
bg it just had a stranglehold for me at least on on doing this. It was like super quick.
19:59
You just drag your image in, it just removes the background, boom, there you go.
20:03
And uh and then they charge for like, you know, you want it like 1080p or whatever, they started to charging for like little things like remove this watermark.
20:10
And um I'm sure this thing crushes, you know, I I I don't know I don't know how how much revenue they do now, but I'm sure this is one of these like mighty businesses where it's a very small team. Uh here we go. Canva acquired them. Canva acquired them.
20:25
It says that they had at least 100 million people coming to their website last year. Yeah.
20:30
Um that's a that's crazy.
20:30
So, it was acquired by Canva, so you can probably I don't know if Canva has gone public yet.
20:35
Maybe they have I think actually they just did a last month.
20:37
You might be able to dig through their numbers and see if they got acquired and for how much. But, that's crazy. That's so much traffic.
20:44
This site TinyWow definitely could be something like that. this in 2019.
20:50
Um it's this company Kaleido.
20:53
Um And then they So, they started in 2019, they sold it this was 2021.
20:56
So, 2 years later for roughly $100 million. Wow.
21:02
And uh Wow, do they have funding?
21:05
I think the parent company It looks like it's a side project of the parent company.
21:08
The reason why I said these are the hardest to make is getting that scale of traffic that fast is so challenging.
21:14
You know, like there's a lot of like software products that we're going to name as one-person companies.
21:19
And that's challenging in the sense of like you have to put in a ton of hours uh and you actually have to like invent stuff and that's very challenging.
21:25
But, getting traffic to me is more of an intellectual challenge where it's like I have no idea like where to start like whereas with starting with software it's like I I'm going to make this one feature then I'll build this other feature. I'll talk to my users.
21:36
It's a little bit involves a little bit of luck, a little bit of skill, but getting a lot of traffic to your website early on I think there's less people that know how to do that.
21:43
And so, that's why I think that this is one of the harder things to start.
21:45
So, here's my my answer for highest degree of difficulty Photopea.
21:51
So, Photopea is very very similar.
21:54
Basically, it's one guy who recreated the entirety of Photoshop in a web browser for free. Oh my god.
22:03
is one of the most complicated products in the world.
22:06
He recreated it by himself.
22:10
Gives it away for free and made it work in the browser which Photoshop doesn't.
22:14
Photoshop is a you have to download the app in order to make it work. It's just remarkable.
22:17
The guy barely monetizes it.
22:21
Uh doesn't want to sell it.
22:21
And uh if you go just search his like just search Photopea Reddit um or like, you know, founder Reddit, he goes and he talks about like, you know, why he built it, how he built it, um and what you know how he thinks about it or whatever.
22:35
It's pretty insane and I'm I think it's How much traffic does it get?
22:41
Uh traffic-wise like 13 million according to SimilarWeb uh per month.
22:47
And um he does at the time this was couple years ago he said that he was doing 100,000 a month um off this thing and it was like literally from the most basic absolute most basic of uh of like ads.
23:01
Like this is one guy Ivan who made it and he's just like puts like the very simple banner ad on the site and makes like 100 100,000 a month.
23:09
[snorts] He did a post on Hacker News on April 11th, 2021.
23:11
He goes, "Hey guys, I'm Ivan.
23:13
I'm the creator of Photopea.
23:13
I made almost a million dollars in the last 12 months, 90% from ads.
23:17
The rest is from premium which is users who pay to hide ads, so it's not even much of a premium.
23:23
When you start your own project, you never know if you'll make $250,000.
23:26
But, if you get hired, you can be quite sure that you will never make more than $250,000.
23:29
And so, that's why I started it.
23:32
And so, this company Photopea, I don't know how big it is, but depending on how many users it has, I can see this getting sold for nine figures, over $100 million.
23:41
So, um he did an AMA on Reddit and they said, "Hey, have you hired your first employee yet?" This was a year ago.
23:45
And he says, "Oh, after I did my first AMA on Reddit, lots of great people got in touch.
23:51
I did end up hiring one guy from Prague who uh who went to my university.
23:56
But, it'll take some time for him to get familiar with the code.
23:58
He hasn't done any He hasn't hasn't done anything yet."
24:02
[laughter] It's pretty crazy how this guy uh operates.
24:04
So, why do you think this is the most challenging?
24:06
Uh just like technically recreating Photoshop feature for feature is absolutely insane.
24:10
Like I think that's just an insane endeavor.
24:14
Um and then making it work in the browser.
24:19
Like making it performant in a browser is not easy either.
24:21
So, like for one person to do this, I think it's crazy. That's insane.
24:26
Yeah, I The The cool thing about these like what I think the the downside of these one-person companies is that everything relies on you.
24:34
And that you don't have like anyone else to ask for help and you can't hire anyone You can't have anyone better than you doing something cuz you're the only person.
24:42
And so, in order to do this, I think a lot of these people they have a they have a handful of traits that we'll talk about in the end, but I don't understand how he could grind that hard for that long with all this pressure on him.
24:51
By the way, this guy says he put 7,000 hours into it before he made any money from it. That's insane.
24:57
So, I think that that that just takes so much will.
25:00
Do you remember Viral Nova?
25:01
It was a guy named Scott DeLong.
25:03
So, Viral Nova was basically an Upworthy clone.
25:05
It was a It says like they're like, "Here's a list of 10 reasons why you don't want to go swimming after eating.
25:12
You're not going to believe number seven."
25:13
And so, this guy would talk about like how it was just him writing 10 articles a day and he was like I'm the pressure of all this traffic and all of this success it's killing me.
25:24
I feel so worn out all the time and I don't understand how some people can sustain that for a really long time like this Photopea guy.
25:31
Yeah, this is like you know, when you go to someone's house and they're like, "Oh, do you want to see my model train set I'm building?" You're like, "What? Uh yeah, sure, why not? I'm here."
25:39
And they take you down to the basement and then it's just like they've recreated like the city of Vienna and through their like they're just tinkering on this like one thing and they're like, "Uh uh How many hour How long have you been doing this?"
25:54
And they're like, "Oh, I just come here every night.
25:55
I love it and this is what I do.
25:57
It makes me feel so good."
25:58
And you're like, "Holy [ __ ] this is like the most intense hobby."
26:02
That's how That's how I feel about the Photopea guy.
26:04
I'm not that type of person. Are you?
26:05
You're definitely not, I think, right? Come on. [laughter] I'm not.
26:09
Uh yeah, I envy those people.
26:11
That That's an amazing willpower.
26:11
All right, let's do another one.
26:13
Let's do on the other end. Easiest to recreate.
26:15
So, which of these one-person one- or two-person businesses do you think are easiest to recreate that um is the opposite of the highest degree of difficulty? Go ahead.
26:27
Um so, mine would be anything that sells information or service.
26:29
So, I put just any course creator, but you and I know a bunch of these people of which you and I are both of those people.
26:37
Uh you know, we make hundreds of thousands or millions dollars a year from like a course or two and I think they're fairly easy to recreate.
26:48
Another one is uh there's a company called Design Joy.
26:50
Do you Do you know what they do?
26:52
I believe that It's a design subscription, basically. It's him.
26:55
He's a design subscription.
26:57
the way that he positions it, it seems really hard to imagine that that's the truth.
27:00
But, basically it's just this designer that you pay thousands of dollars a month for and you ask him to make small changes to different design-related stuff.
27:08
And he claims that it's just him.
27:12
But, I I believe he claims that.
27:12
But, that sounds like he does $100,000 a month. So, he does 1.
27:16
2 million a year or so around that range.
27:20
And it's basically you buy a subscription plan.
27:21
So, you pay and you buy like the five It's like four five thousand a month.
27:24
Um and then you you basically get one request at a time. Um and that's it.
27:33
You could just say, "I'd like this design thing done."
27:35
and then he turns around in some I don't know what his SLA is of how long he takes to uh to do this, but it's like it's cheaper than hiring a full-time designer, probably, unless like in the US.
27:47
Um but yeah, that's the uh I think that's the easiest to recreate, but also the worst to run which we'll talk about later.
27:55
But, that's probably the easiest one is like a bunch of Do you know any other course people that do like Like I know Sam Ovens does 10 million in revenue, 5 million profit and for a while it was just him.
28:03
I met these guys I met a guy recently who does like a product management course and I was like, "Oh my god, who's taking a product manager course?"
28:12
He He goes, "No, no, no, it's how to ace your job interview as a product manager."
28:16
Like how to get a job as a PM at one of these tech companies.
28:20
And I think he was doing What was he doing?
28:21
Like 2 million a year or something like that?
28:22
I think they were doing like two What? Two 2. 5. Yeah, 2.
28:26
5 million a year uh roughly in in revenue.
28:29
I think it was like 80%ish margins.
28:33
And what they would do is they would basically say they would give away free content that was like how to you know, how to get a job as a PM, how to interview as a PM, how to uh prep for this interview, what what it was like talking to a Facebook PM, blah blah blah.
28:44
They give away free content to get you kind of on the email list and get you to the website.
28:47
And then they're like, "Hey, do you want to like get a job as a PM which will pay you, let's call it, $120,000 a year.
28:57
If you want that job, um buy this course and you know, join this cohort course or whatever."
29:01
And they basically sell this course for a couple thousand dollars that's going to help you get this job that's going to pay you over $100,000.
29:08
And that's just like a very simple value proposition for somebody who wants to uh wants to do that with their career. And it was just him?
29:15
It was him and three It was three of them.
29:17
Three three PMs that kind of like got together and made this thing.
29:21
Another example of an easy one to start I think I told you about this. It's called Cyber Leads.
29:25
So, you go to getcyberleads. com.
29:29
So, it's c y b e r leads. So, getcyberleads. com.
29:32
It's this guy named Alex West.
29:33
And basically, it's a newsletter where I I think it costs four to a thousand dollars a month.
29:39
So, four hundred to a thousand dollars a month depending on what you get what you do.
29:44
But, basically he goes and he handpicks different companies that have recently raised money and base off a bunch of attributes he thinks are about to hire an agency and then he gets all these agency owners to sign up to his service and he emails
29:58
this list out once a month along with like the contact information the hiring decision or the hiring like whoever's managing ad spend whatever and you can just contact him on your face and quote as a testimonial. Do Do you use this?
30:11
No, I don't use this but I talked I talked about it on the pod I talked about it on the pod like 2 years ago. I've never used it.
30:17
I've never I I'm not but he sure used you.
30:22
[laughter] He is using me.
30:22
I don't know is there anything Can I Can you say anything about these people who do this?
30:26
I talked about it on the pod.
30:29
I said it's so freak freaking simple the value so clear.
30:32
I guess I said that on the podcast and he uses that as a quote.
30:33
I Is there anything I could do to stop you can tell him to take it down. You can always say that.
30:40
Um Oh sorry, let me wrap up.
30:40
My thing selling information.
30:43
So anything that you sell information that's the easiest thing to start.
30:46
Yeah, I think so I went the same route but I'm going to give more detail because I think when you tell somebody selling information is the easiest way they're like cool. What? So what do I do?
30:54
So [ __ ] I gave three examples.
30:56
Yeah, but I think you have to break it down a little further.
30:58
So um you know this guy Lenny Lenny Russian last name?
31:04
I like Lenny Ragowsky or Ragachevsky something something along those lines. I like Lenny.
31:10
So Lenny I think used to work at Airbnb or something.
31:12
He was like a growth slash like product guy and so he's got Lenny's newsletter.
31:18
He's got Lenny's community.
31:20
He's got Lenny's job board and basically he was like I'm going to become He's like I'm going to put out tons of free thought leader content on a specific super niche topic that only certain people are going to care about but they're going to care a lot.
31:33
And that's the that's kind of the key with this stuff is how do you put out free content to establish yourself as an authority in a niche so that you can then monetize that through either consulting services, job board, paid community or or paid content paid newsletter. Right?
31:52
That's That's the formula.
31:53
And you can look at the the design joy guy he does exactly this.
31:58
He puts out free content examples of design work and then says you can hire me for design work.
32:02
Um Lenny does the same thing.
32:04
He puts out free content.
32:06
He's got really good stuff like you know how did these 10 huge marketplaces how did they get their first thousand users and he goes deep and he's like I'm going to interview them.
32:13
I'm going to talk to them.
32:14
I'm going to get the real answer on the specific zero to one question that's going to be highly relevant to other people going through that same challenge.
32:20
I think he has a podcast, too. He's got a podcast.
32:22
Like at one point his job board was doing a couple hundred thousand.
32:26
I'm sure the newsletter does a couple hundred thousand in sponsorships.
32:28
Are you talking about monthly or annually? Annually.
32:32
Um at least these are minimums. he's way more.
32:36
Like I I know at the beginning his job board was crushing.
32:38
I don't know what they're doing now but like I would bet his entire roll up of job board um content sponsorships so podcast plus newsletter and then he's got a paid thing, right?
32:49
Ben He's got like a paid paid community.
32:51
What's it What do you think Lenny's total thing is? 2 million 3 million? Yeah, for sure.
32:57
About 2 to 3 million a year and he did that I would say in a period of like 2 and a half 3 years it seems like.
33:02
Like I think he I think he has a a fund, too.
33:06
He kind of put his foot down on the content side.
33:07
I like he kind of appeared on the scene I would say like two twoish years ago.
33:12
Obviously you had to know your stuff, right?
33:14
So he's like you know spent time learning a decade being awesome inside these companies in order to do so.
33:19
So I don't mean to make it sound overly simplistic but there are people who did it without that, too.
33:25
So another example is Harry Dry.
33:28
One of my favorite content creators in the whole world a guy I tried to recruit like a hundred times to do something with me because I feel like Me, too. something great. Um Me, too.
33:36
He keeps he keeps bullshitting and and did not saying yes but he's going to say yes eventually.
33:42
So he's got marketing examples.
33:42
He does a great job with his blog called marketing examples.
33:45
Now I don't know how much marketing examples makes I would guess quarter million to half a million as just him making content there. I think he's young. He's very young. He's 20.
33:53
He didn't do the put in 10 to 15 years becoming industry like like do the job cut your teeth then go make content.
34:00
He's like No, I'm pretty sure I could just look at what's out there and like give my opinion on it and it'll work.
34:05
I'll study this [ __ ] And that's how I feel like you know a lot of people also can do it.
34:09
You can be the curious novice approaching these topics and become an expert just by studying them intensely.
34:17
And so I think Harry Dry would also be one of the easiest to recreate.
34:20
Not because he's untalented.
34:21
He's super talented but I think that's kind of something anyone can do.
34:25
Anybody could just say yo I'm going to study what makes TikToks go viral and I'm going to put out content about viral TikToks.
34:31
I'm going to become the expert of breaking out TikToks going viral and then brands are going to know me as the guy that they should talk to about TikTok consulting. Right?
34:38
Like or like advertising on TikTok.
34:40
And like you could just build your niche audience and your niche authority in that space.
34:44
A lot of people are trying to do this with AI right now.
34:48
And the thing about Lenny and Harry was people were doing So first of all like a newsletter community podcast that's existed since forever.
34:55
Uh so it's not a unique business model and also people have been talking about that type of stuff for a long time but what's interesting is that they were both earlyish where there was only maybe I don't know how many but they felt like they were earlyish talking about it to this customer to this community on this platform.
35:13
So both of those guys I think got popular on Twitter right before the pandemic started.
35:17
I think I remember seeing Harry in 2018 2019 which I wasn't even really using Twitter as a power user back then.
35:23
But they all seem a little bit early.
35:25
So I think timing matters for a lot of these things.
35:29
Speaking of which that Facebook threads thing no idea if that's going to be a thing or not but that's an example of like hey there's this new thing right now if you want to use it lose. You better be there.
35:37
Yeah, just go get go be around there. See what's going on.
35:40
Yeah, that's one of those things.
35:42
People did with Clubhouse.
35:42
I don't know if that worked out or not but uh The way I I say it is like you most most entrepreneurs you're we're actually surfing waves.
35:49
You don't get to create the wave.
35:51
But you do have to paddle out.
35:54
You got to be on your board out there in the water.
35:55
You got to paddle out and you know which is a takes effort.
35:57
And then you got to wait and sometimes it's a dud.
36:01
Sometimes it's just a small wave.
36:02
You're going to have to paddle back out again.
36:04
But when you catch a good one you know that's when you get and we'll see how good you are at surfing.
36:07
You might wipe out the first couple times you try it but like that's your job as an entrepreneur is to paddle out be out there and start trying to surf these waves and and get a sense for where are the big waves and and how do I not wipe out when I do when I do find one.
36:21
So this episode you're giving a really in-depth surf analogy.
36:23
Last episode you gave a slow a fat a pitching a baseball. What did you say?
36:29
A fat a slow small swing? [laughter] Fat pitches. It was fat pitches.
36:35
I got to Have you ever played baseball?
36:38
[laughter] Have you ever played baseball or surf in your life?
36:41
Bro, I was starting right fielder for my high school team which anybody who knows baseball knows that means you're the biggest scrub on the team because that's who that's who they put in right field is the guy who's you know you know the ball never comes to right field.
36:52
Yeah, but did you play baseball in China?
36:54
Like they were just learning I might have been in China.
36:57
I might have been in China.
36:59
You went to high school in You went to high school in China.
37:00
Yeah, I mean or or Australia. Like it was the scrubs.
37:02
It was like We play the ball as it lies.
37:06
There I got a golf analogy for you, too.
37:08
I was in China well that's where I'm going to be.
37:13
Our software is the worst.
37:13
Have you heard of HubSpot?
37:15
See most CRMs [music] are a cobbled-together mess but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
37:21
I [music] think I love our new CRM.
37:24
Our software is the best. HubSpot. Grow better.
37:27
[music] Let's go to the next one.
37:30
Most fun one-person business.
37:30
So the one that seems like the most fun to to work on. I'll go first. Joe Rogan.
37:39
So I'm pretty sure Joe Rogan's media enterprise is bigger than all the late night talk shows combined.
37:46
So forget the Tonight Show, Letterman and any of these guys whoever the new guy Conan whoever these guys are.
37:52
Dude, Letterman's been retired for 10 years, man.
37:54
Jimmy Fallon I don't know.
37:57
Bro, who's who's watching this stuff? His audience is bigger.
38:01
He makes hundreds of millions and he's made hundreds of millions doing it.
38:07
And I'm pretty sure it's just him and young Jamie.
38:10
I've heard from a few of my friends who have been on it how it works.
38:12
So basically they told me that it's Jamie who produces it and it's Joe and then they have one other guy named Matt, I think.
38:20
And I forget his name exactly.
38:20
I think it was Matt and basically Matt sends Joe a list of like 30 people.
38:26
They're like hey I can get these 30 people these 30 let me know who you want.
38:30
And sometimes he just ignores it.
38:32
Every once in a while he'll say that person and that person and that's all he says.
38:35
And I've heard that it's just those three people. That's amazing.
38:36
So I think most people just think oh Joe Rogan he's just a podcaster.
38:41
Yeah, he is a podcaster but that thing is a juggernaut.
38:45
It is a media juggernaut.
38:45
So the you know Spotify obviously paid him you know hundreds of millions to to be there for a couple years but even before that you know just off the sponsorships off of off of the Alpha Brain you know product that they built off of it.
39:02
Joe Rogan I think has the most fun probably of anyone on the planet. That's just my sense.
39:07
He took all of his hobbies. He's like oh I like UFC.
39:08
He gets to be the UFC commentator doing exactly what he would want.
39:14
He gets to go sit ringside commentate for these fights and analyze the fights but he only does it for the ones in Vegas that are an hour flight away from him.
39:21
He doesn't do any of the the ones that require a bunch of travel.
39:26
And so all the He does all the best ones.
39:28
He does none of the worst ones.
39:29
You know he was like I want to do stand-up comedy.
39:31
So he does stand-up comedy sells out you know theaters all around the country and you know gets to make people laugh for a living.
39:38
Does his podcast where he's like I'm going to have conversations with the people I want."
39:42
And people are like, "Oh, Joe, 3 hours is too long."
39:46
He's like, "That's the type of conversation I want to have.
39:47
So, I'm going to do it my way." And it worked.
39:50
And so, like, I just think he just dictated how he wants to live life on his terms.
39:53
I think he has the most fun.
39:55
I think his business is absolutely a mighty business in that it's just let's say one, two, or three people that is building a a thing that does, you know, over $100 million in revenue, which is like if you just valued something like that, you know, traditionally, which is not It's not apples to apples, but like if you have a thing that can do $100 million a year in revenue for multiple years For multiple years.
40:19
You typically that's a billion-dollar property.
40:22
And you know, obviously it's weird.
40:22
You can't really sell the you know, Joe Rogan Experience cuz you need him.
40:26
It's tightly branded with him.
40:28
But let's say at least he's built something worth $100 million.
40:31
I think we can agree on that cuz it's generated $100 million of profit for him.
40:34
And so, he's built, you know, with a very small team a multi-hundred-million-dollar business at the minimum.
40:40
And he has this new thing called the Comedy Mothership.
40:41
It's like a mile from my house in Austin.
40:43
And there's always a line out the door to get in that place.
40:47
Yeah, building his own comedy club, right now. Why not?
40:49
If you drive by it at 6:00, there's every single night there's been a line out the door to go there. And it looks awesome. Right. Who you got? Most fun. All right.
40:58
So, scroll up to the very top of this doc. I put a link in there.
41:00
It sounds like I'm trying to like promote Hampton. I'm not.
41:04
It's just that when I had to prepare for this episode, I just went through our database and like picked out people.
41:08
And we had just written a blog post about this guy.
41:09
His name's Joseph Mambray.
41:11
And he started this company called Gymstreak.
41:13
And this guy is super fascinating cuz he has all the attributes of like what a lot of these like tinkers have.
41:18
But basically, he's from Zimbabwe, moved to England when he was like 12 or 13.
41:23
That was the first time that he experienced the internet.
41:26
He taught himself how to code.
41:28
He taught himself design.
41:28
And then he launched this thing called Gymstreak.
41:30
At first, it was just an app for tracking your workouts.
41:33
And then he what he did was he went and got his buddy to wear one of these like suits.
41:37
And that way he could do 3D visualizations of all the exercises and what they need to look like.
41:45
So, he has hundreds of them.
41:45
And so, his app it's free to use and then they have some like premium thing.
41:48
And basically, you track your workouts.
41:50
He uses AI to suggest which weights you should do for the next workout.
41:54
And if you don't know what the exercise does, and they'll they'll suggest workouts and exercises to do.
41:59
He has hundreds of these 3D models of like what a proper bicep curl or what this other type of exercise looks like.
42:06
In year one, he did $300,000. That was in year 2021. In year two, he did 2. 5 million.
42:12
And his goal, he says, is by in the next 2 years, I want to get to 15 to 20 million dollars a year in revenue.
42:18
And he's the only employee.
42:20
I don't believe he has any contractors.
42:22
I think he he told me got most of his users from Facebook and TikTok ads.
42:28
And he hired a consultant and an agency to help him learn how to do that.
42:31
And right now he said, "I'm taking the summer off.
42:33
So, our growth this year might still only be 2.
42:35
5 or 3 million a year in revenue.
42:37
But I don't cuz I don't like buying ads or staying on top of that.
42:41
So, I'm taking the summer off because we just had a kid.
42:44
But super fascinating to see a guy who basically came from Zimbabwe, didn't use the internet until he was 12, 13, and taught himself how to do all this.
42:50
He's like one of those really cool tinkers.
42:53
And on that blog post, you can see pictures of him like arriving from Africa and like learning how to work the computer. It's super fascinating.
42:58
You'll see pictures of him with his like iPhone and a laptop at the gym filming people doing like the curls so he can use his AI or whatever to like get the 3D imaging.
43:07
Really fascinating company.
43:07
I think Gymstreak is awesome.
43:09
If this could get to 15 or 20 million a year in revenue like he thinks, that would be a monster business for one person.
43:15
Yeah, that's an amazing story. Wow. Love that. Good for him.
43:20
That's that's really, really cool. Um next category.
43:25
Business we most want to own.
43:27
So, this is um I think this is specifically a good question because for us, a business we would want to own would be the lowest maintenance business cuz neither of us want to really run an extra business right now.
43:40
So, it's like, which business would you want to own because it is very much uh you know, autopilot. So, it's not Designjoy.
43:46
It's not people are paying you and you're providing a subscription.
43:49
It's not one of those content or course businesses where you constantly have to create new content in order to stay relevant and get more customers.
43:56
Um I think we both have the same one.
43:58
Let's just do the same one that we we both are really interested in. You you explain it. Go for it. No, you go first. milled. com.
44:06
So, most people don't know milled. com. It's m i l l e d. com.
44:10
And it's a really, really simple website.
44:11
It's just a compilation of email marketing that different companies do.
44:17
So, if you want to see like, what are my competitors sending for their 4th of July sale? You just go to milled. com. You search the brand.
44:26
And you'll see, okay, here's what Ridge Wallet sent uh for their 4th of July um emails.
44:31
It's the top one on the on the site right side right now.
44:34
So, it says, you know, you just click and it shows you the exact email that they sent.
44:37
So, you can see the design. You can see the offer. You can see the copy.
44:40
And you could use that to get inspiration for what you should be doing for your email marketing.
44:45
And this guy built this site uh I don't know how long ago now, but um he's post on Hacker News a little bit about it. And it's one person. It's a side project.
44:55
He does a million dollars a year on it.
44:56
And he said, "I was uh I was doing email marketing for a brand. I noticed two things.
45:00
One, it's took us several days to create each email blast.
45:05
Um and two, I had to subscribe to like dozens of other competitor emails just to do research for for them.
45:10
So, my hypothesis was I could create a site that would just sign up for all the brands uh you know, email newsletters.
45:17
And um and then make it easier for anybody who's trying to do email marketing. Right?
45:22
That's the uh that's that's the core core pitch for it.
45:25
And he's just been running it as a side project.
45:27
Doesn't take much maintenance.
45:28
Doesn't he you know, he could just do nothing on it for a little while.
45:31
And it makes money through ads.
45:33
Yeah, so so they use ads on the left side here.
45:35
You can see like I have it open.
45:37
And he's basically got like a like a link to the brand itself.
45:40
And then he's got like a cybersecurity like ad here popped up.
45:45
On below it, he's got like a skincare ad.
45:47
Yeah, it's just display ads.
45:49
So, but here's another way how he makes money.
45:51
So, basically, you are you're a marketer.
45:52
You go to milled and you want to see like uh it looks like some shoe brand.
45:56
They run they ran this campaign.
45:57
And you want to check out the email.
45:59
And you read it and get inspired, whatever.
46:01
You click that ad and it takes you to the shoe company.
46:05
And it's using an affiliate link if you buy some of the shoes. Right.
46:09
This is a horrible way to monetize.
46:10
[laughter] This is a a really under monetized product.
46:12
Under mono under monetized website, for sure.
46:15
But good for him for getting the traffic in the first place.
46:18
But that's a horrible way to monetize. Yeah. Yeah, I agree.
46:20
But I think the guy doesn't care.
46:22
He's just like, this is easy uh low maintenance, which is why I put it in my one I'd want to own because it's low maintenance.
46:29
And I think it still has a lot of upside uh left.
46:33
I'll do one for one I want to own.
46:33
So, I said anything that is like market-placey sort of like a marketplace cuz sometimes if you do it right, those don't they don't run themselves entirely, but the the community kind of handles business. Uh BuiltWith.
46:44
So, BuiltWith was started in 2015 or 16, probably.
46:46
BuiltWith is like the most niche [ __ ] ever.
46:51
But there's it's a really big niche.
46:53
So, you go to BuiltWith in order to see which plugins a website is using if they are using WordPress.
46:58
And the reason why that's important is you go to a website that you like and you go, "Oh, I love this feature they have.
47:03
Let's go and see what they're using." Shopify, also. That's new.
47:05
It started with just WordPress, I think.
47:08
And so, you're like, "Just tell me like the plugins and tell me the the everything that they're using." Shopify and BuiltWith. Shopify and WordPress.
47:13
It has something like tens of millions of people going there a month.
47:18
And does at the time when I first found them, I think in 2020, I think they were doing 14, 15 million in revenue with just one person.
47:26
So, I think that would be a really cool company to own.
47:30
Cuz I think it's super valuable.
47:30
Once you get all that traffic and those people coming back to you all the time, I think it's a really valuable site.
47:33
Do you know anything about BuiltWith? Yeah.
47:36
Just what you told what you said there.
47:37
I've been using it for a long time.
47:39
Basically, if you see a website and you want to know what they use for whatever they use, just go to BuiltWith. It's pretty great.
47:44
It's kind of like a data It's almost like a data index, right?
47:46
It's like more like a database than it is a marketplace in a way. But I agree. It's kind of amazing. Um All right. Let's keep going.
47:54
We got a couple categories left.
47:55
We have a rookie of the year. So, a new one.
47:57
A new a new one that we found.
48:00
I think you might have already covered yours in here, but I I have a new one.
48:04
I didn't want to say the same thing twice.
48:05
But this guy, Joe Mambray, this Joseph Mambray, like I love his story.
48:07
I think that this guy's going to be a big deal.
48:11
And I and I take a lot of pride in trying to find people before they're like really popular.
48:14
I think he's Read the blog post that I that I have linked up there from the Hampton site. It's really good.
48:19
I think this guy's going to be a winner.
48:21
So, that's my rookie of the year. What's OnlyFinder's? OnlyFinder's is mine.
48:25
So, this is one that I don't know how old it is.
48:27
Maybe a couple years old now.
48:28
Um So, OnlyFinder's is a search engine for OnlyFans.
48:33
So, if you want to find a type of model on OnlyFans, so you you know, you're into you know, blonde Asians or like, you know, whatever. Good-looking midgets.
48:45
Whatever Whatever you're into.
48:47
You can search on OnlyFinder's and it'll give you a list of top-ranked profiles for that thing.
48:55
So, as you know, I've been down the OnlyFans rabbit hole where I'm like, I think there's a lot of potential in the OnlyFans uh world of like businesses.
49:00
And this was one of them that I found.
49:03
And um OnlyFinder's run by one guy. He's awesome. He listens to the pod. He um and he crushes it.
49:11
So, he crushes the SEO game for for OnlyFans.
49:13
If you search for a bunch of different popular searches, um And in fact, actually, what what he what he did was smart, which is he didn't want to just rank for like the general uh searches like best OnlyFans or something like that.
49:27
Like he wants the high-intent ones.
49:28
So, he wants the person who's searching for like whatever.
49:32
I don't know what people search for, but like Redhead.
49:35
Yeah, redhead, nice feet.
49:35
If you go to his site, if you go to his site, you can you click the button on the right hand and it says like what the top searches are. So, it's like Indian.
49:42
Uh, girls with boyfriends, whatever.
49:47
[laughter] Yeah, I don't even want to read half of this stuff.
49:48
Stuff that people are into.
49:50
So, it's what he categories he did was he ranks really high for the categories that people are that's like clearly people's thing.
49:56
And it's like I don't know what your thing is, but I got if if you got a thing, I got it for you.
49:59
And because of that, those are really really high intent searches.
50:03
And then what he does on the other side is he goes to OnlyFans models and agencies and he says, "Hey, if you want more traffic, I have tons of people searching for your exact thing.
50:12
Pay me per click for every person I send to you."
50:17
So, he's basically recreated Google.
50:19
It's a search engine where you get paid per click to send it any somebody with intent to your to your to your site.
50:27
And he can do it he does a really really good job of it.
50:30
And OnlyFans does not have a discover section on purpose.
50:31
They decided they don't want to be in the discovery business, they want to only be in the like the kind of the underlying tools underneath these creator profiles.
50:39
And so, and it's just been surfing the growth of OnlyFans, which has grown like exponentially.
50:45
Like OnlyFans a few years ago was very small.
50:49
You know, five years whatever four or five years ago was very small and then it got bigger and bigger.
50:51
So, it's sort of like I mean, the curve looks looks unreal.
50:56
Like OnlyFans is bigger than Twitch.
50:57
It's bigger than like some of these massive websites now and it generates a lot of money.
51:03
Like they pay out billions to creators on the platform.
51:06
And so, if you can be part of that ecosystem, it's valuable. That's insane.
51:11
have now met multiple people on OnlyFans that you've never heard of.
51:17
Girls that are doing between one and two million a month on their profile. No way. Two million a month.
51:21
Cuz their body is the cogs.
51:23
So, there's [laughter] it's all profit, basically.
51:27
They have like, you know, usually they have like a they'll have they'll have like some of them as you get bigger you have like a agency that manages it.
51:36
So, what are they doing with this money?
51:37
They're just they they have huge income and how long do you think can they do it for? Five years? Three years? Yeah.
51:44
And it's funny they kind of some of them kind of exit, they burn out.
51:46
And they'll just sell their like name, likeness, and photo library and be like, "You run it and just give me a rev share. Give me 50%."
51:54
It's like Bruce Springsteen. That's what he did.
51:56
[laughter] The same thing. The boss. This is insane.
51:59
I I don't know much I don't know much about this [ __ ] This is absolutely insane.
52:04
The engagement on these things are wild.
52:07
have a OnlyFans business, reach out to me. Sean@seanpurry. com.
52:09
I want to invest in OnlyFans business businesses that are just cash flowing. Are they cool?
52:14
Like when you met these They're cool.
52:16
The problem is they're very hard to sell and they're very easy to be killed.
52:18
And so, they need kind of like strategy on like how No, I mean the girls. Oh, I don't know.
52:24
I don't I don't know them.
52:26
You said you hung out with them a couple of them.
52:27
I don't hang out with them. I just talk to them.
52:29
Yeah, they're they're nice people. I don't know. That's insane.
52:32
How did you get in touch with them? The internet, bro.
52:37
[laughter] What do you What do you mean?
52:38
You know, I I've How many times have I been here and I talked about OnlyFans?
52:41
And then people basically like, "Oh, you're into that."
52:44
So, then they email you and they're like Well, they they probably have a million Indian guys like DMing them. I mean, that's insane. This is insane.
52:53
go I don't go through, you know, if you see a big line at the front door, you don't you don't you don't go wait in that line.
52:57
You have to go find a side door.
52:59
And the side door is generally, you know, some some dude who listens to our podcast that runs their business or is their manager and that's kind of like the way it All right, let's if we do last category is worst of the best.
53:08
I have a different one, but I would have to say OnlyFans would be up there.
53:11
But what I I have another one.
53:13
This one is is these are all cool businesses, but which which ones are our least favorite?
53:19
So, yours going to be OnlyFans?
53:23
No, I mean it would be, but I already had something else. Kevin Van Trump.
53:25
So, Kevin Van Trump, I met this guy Sean likes him a lot now. I met him in 2018. 18.
53:33
I was at a conference and Kevin Van Trump is like 6 ft tall and he's like really big.
53:38
He's like a very very large overweight guy.
53:41
And he walks up to me and he's got this super thick accent and he goes, "Hey, what's up, man? How you doing?"
53:47
Like he just starts talking to me and I'm like, "This guy is so confident."
53:50
And he starts talking about all my newsletters and the hustle and all this stuff.
53:54
And he's got this thick accent and he's wearing a Ramones t-shirt and he's got like Converse on.
53:58
He just looks like a like a like a like a Walmart guy.
54:00
And then like he dropped [laughter] he drops like one or two lines where for some reason we talked about art.
54:07
And he was like, "Oh, yeah.
54:08
That Picasso, I got one of them son bitches."
54:10
Like he said something like that. I was like, "What?" So, I let it slide.
54:14
And then I go, "How many subscribers are on your your newsletter?"
54:17
And he goes like, "Oh, 60,000."
54:19
And he goes, "Hey, how much you guys charge for yours?"
54:21
And I go, "Oh, it's free. We make money on ads." "You charge?"
54:24
He goes, "Yeah, we charge like $300 a month."
54:26
I forget exactly what it was.
54:28
And I'm like do the math in my head and I'm like, "Wait, that's $20 million a year."
54:32
He goes, "Yeah, it's something like that. I don't even know."
54:35
[laughter] And I started hanging out with them.
54:35
And he And basically this guy's name is Kevin Van Trump.
54:37
He's got this newsletter where he talks about agriculture and like how it impacts commodity prices. And he's brilliant.
54:44
And I get to know him a little bit more and you're like, "Oh, no, you just have a southern accent."
54:47
He like was a Wall Street like trader.
54:48
He's the guy's brilliant. He's amazing.
54:50
And he lives in Kansas City and I've done a Zoom call with them and you see like he's got like these custom-built motorcycles in the back of his like house and he's got like all these Picassos and [ __ ] The guy's killing it.
55:01
But that same day when I hung out with them, I was like, "Hey, do you want to go get dinner?"
55:03
He's like, "Yeah, let's go get dinner." We we hang out at 8:30.
55:07
He goes, "Hey, man, I got to run.
55:07
I got to go write tomorrow's newsletter." And I was like, "What?"
55:10
He goes, "I do it every day.
55:11
I've done it every day for 10 years."
55:13
I go, "What do you mean every day?"
55:15
He goes, "Six days a week I send a newsletter and it's 2,000 plus words. It's really long. He does it every day."
55:22
And he was making all this money.
55:22
I don't think I would trade lives with him though just to have all that money. I had the same answer. I think he's amazing. You put me on to him. I met him and his son. Such awesome people.
55:31
So, like They're awesome. They're so awesome.
55:36
Just fun to be around, smart, uh, really nice, just kind people.
55:38
Don't like, you know, no no pretense about them. Um, and same thing. He was hosting FarmCon.
55:48
I went cuz you had told me about him and introduced me to him.
55:51
And when when I go there, he's or He has a conference called FarmCon.
55:55
He's got FarmCon, which is like the biggest farming conference get-together.
55:58
So, I go to Kansas and I Was it awesome? Yeah, it was amazing.
56:00
And I'm there and we're talking.
56:02
It's like 11:00 at night.
56:03
It's like the the whole event's done. Everyone's at the bar.
56:07
Every single person is drinking a beer.
56:10
Every single person is drinking a beer.
56:12
And he's like, "I got to get up got to get up to the bedroom.
56:15
Got to I got to go back to my room real quick, write the write tomorrow's edition."
56:19
And I was like, "Wait, you write it yourself still?"
56:20
And he's like, "Yeah, I write it I've I've written it myself by hand every night."
56:24
And he started this thing more than 10 years ago.
56:26
Like he I think he'd said like almost like 20 years basically that he's been writing this thing.
56:31
18 years or something insane. Every day almost.
56:35
Yeah, and it's long, too.
56:35
It's not like just some cookie-cutter like here's three links that are interesting.
56:40
It's like My analysis Powell came down said this but he's said this, said that.
56:46
You know, here's how this is going to affect corn futures and here's what I'm I'm betting over here and blah blah.
56:50
And then there's a bunch of memes. It's [laughter] amazing.
56:53
It's basically his market analysis for like crop, you know, crop and commodities.
56:59
And then it's a bunch of memes underneath it and he's like, "Nope, never do ads."
57:04
Um, he's like, "I just wanted to build as much trust as I can in this community and so I never advertise.
57:09
I charge for it and that's why we have FarmCon, so why everybody shows up is because, you know, they they I built a lot of trust over the over the years."
57:17
And I learned more about business from that guy in like 1 hour than I did in my entire like four-year education at Duke.
57:22
Like he said to me he said us a bunch of things that I that I loved.
57:26
I put this in my my my newsletter. I did a feature on him.
57:29
I wrote a bunch of the lessons, but one of them that he said was He goes, "Yeah, content's cool, but he's like being an He goes, "Being an investor is the best job in the world. You kidding me?"
57:40
Uh, he's like and he he just said it so matter-of-factly.
57:42
He's like, "There is no better job in the world than being an investor. It is it is the best."
57:46
And you sort of think about that.
57:48
You're like, "All right, well, that sounds, you know, whatever.
57:49
I guess it's kind of obvious."
57:51
And it's like, "Okay, if that's true, then how do you get into that job?"
57:53
Like if if that is true for you, how do you architect your life to get there?
58:00
Cuz he was basically just like, "Look, this newsletter's great.
58:01
Yeah, it crushes, makes a lot of money.
58:04
But I wish I was just an investor.
58:04
It would have been a better better better choice." blah blah.
58:08
And he talks about investing cuz he I think he was on Wall Street before he started doing what he was doing. Yeah.
58:13
And he goes, um, he goes, "You know, one thing I He goes, "I was early into Bitcoin.
58:16
I was early into Facebook." I was like, "Really?" And he's like, "Yeah."
58:20
He's like, "I wasn't as early as I could have been."
58:22
He's like, "But there's always He's like, "I got into Bitcoin like in 20 He's like, "We started hearing about it at FarmCon like in 2013, 2014.
58:27
I didn't buy it until 2015, 2016.
58:29
I should have been in it right when I first heard it."
58:34
He's like, "Same thing with Facebook."
58:35
He goes, "One one lesson I learned in investing."
58:37
He goes, um, He goes, "Two two lessons for you in investing.
58:39
Number one, the best trades are going to be one ones where you buy them, you put them in the drawer, you never think about them again."
58:46
He's like He's like, "That was the best thing I did about Bitcoin.
58:47
I bought Bitcoin, I put it in the drawer, never thought about it again.
58:49
Heard all the news, didn't care. It's in the drawer."
58:53
And I was like, "Damn, in the drawer.
58:54
That's a cool concept of like what investments can you just have the conviction in you put in the drawer?
58:57
You say, 'I'm not going to react to the daily news cycle about this investment.
59:03
I'm going to let the 10 years play out on this investment' cuz it was a let's see what happens on the long-term type of bet."
59:09
Um, second thing he said was he goes, "Uh, you always get a second chance to get on the train.
59:13
With the best investments, there's always a second chance on the train."
59:16
He's like, "With Bitcoin, you know, you think you missed it and then the price will come down.
59:21
That's your chance to get back on the train."
59:22
And most people by that time, you know, they spend the whole way up wishing they'd got on the train.
59:25
Train comes back around and they get scared. They don't get back on."
59:29
He goes, "Same thing happened with Facebook.
59:30
Facebook, you know, we had our chances uh when it was private, then it goes public, it goes up up up, crashed back down to $19.
59:38
I got back on the train you know that that train came around, I got right back on.
59:41
And he's like, you know, that will happen for the best investments.
59:42
And I sort of look for this now of like uh how do you override the psychology that most people have, which is when it's going up, you wish you had gotten in earlier.
59:52
Then when it crashes down, you're too afraid to buy in cuz you feel like, oh [ __ ] did it is it over? Did it pop? Is it Did I miss it? Um was I wrong?
1:00:00
And it's like, well, then you lose lose.
1:00:02
You you know, you want to buy on the way up and you don't want to buy on the way down.
1:00:06
That's that's a recipe for being poor, right?
1:00:08
Like you know buy high, don't buy low, right?
1:00:10
That's not going to work.
1:00:12
And so uh those two little lessons were were ones that stuck out for me.
1:00:15
But this guy's business is amazing.
1:00:18
He's an amazing guy and the reason he's amazing among other things is he breaks all the stereotypes.
1:00:22
He you you'll think that he's just this like hickey guy just like people used to think about me.
1:00:26
Uh and then like I grew up around people just like him.
1:00:29
Turns out he's like brilliant.
1:00:31
He'll he'll like you're you're like, you're going to talk to me about Facebook?
1:00:34
And he knows way more about it than you do.
1:00:35
He'll probably knows all about Bitcoin.
1:00:37
I mean, the guy's brilliant and I love hanging out with him and his friends because you it teaches you like I'm a [ __ ] idiot for judging people a certain way.
1:00:46
These guys are all badass and they're fun as [ __ ] I did a call the other day with another guy.
1:00:50
So another guy from Farm Con, same same sort of guy.
1:00:54
He's this white guy, maybe I don't know.
1:00:59
He's 50s-ish, something like that.
1:00:59
Was he super rich cuz so many of those guys are like Super rich.
1:01:04
And like I think this guy I I don't know how rich this guy is. Like private jet rich.
1:01:09
I don't know how rich this guy is, but the guy who introduced me to him was just like, yeah, this guy's worth, you know, 300 to 500 million dollars personally.
1:01:16
And I was like, wow, okay, that's crazy.
1:01:18
Cuz I was like I was like, do his deals like he's always talking about these deals.
1:01:20
Like does he actually make money on these?
1:01:21
Like does he have a track record of success? He's like, yeah, he has.
1:01:26
[laughter] So this guy this guy's got phrases for days.
1:01:28
So I I have this doc that I keep on my phone that I call phrases.
1:01:32
It's It's how somebody says something that's just like funny or worded well, it just sticks out to me.
1:01:38
It's a punchy phrase, I write it down.
1:01:39
At Farm Con, I filled out my phrases thing like because there were so many.
1:01:43
So this one guy um I I don't want to say his name to put him on blast, but he uh he was at a dinner with uh so it's Kevin O'Leary and then this guy was at the dinner and it was like a private dinner at the at Farm Con.
1:01:54
And he stands up and he goes and there's every everyone at the table is doing introductions.
1:01:58
And so then I'm like, you know, how I am, Sean, and yeah, I work in tech and uh just [ __ ] kill me. I guess I'm boring.
1:02:06
Like you know, like that's basically [laughter] how I felt during the introductions.
1:02:08
This guy stands up, he goes, you know, my name's so-and-so.
1:02:10
He goes, you know, uh he goes [laughter] exactly what he said.
1:02:17
He goes, he goes, uh I don't know who won the World Series.
1:02:22
He starts I don't know who won the World Series.
1:02:25
[laughter] I can't tell you how to get a six-pack abs.
1:02:28
Hell, I don't even know where the remote is in my house.
1:02:29
But I know one thing, I know how to structure deals.
1:02:34
And today I'm going to tell you [laughter] guys about a deal that I'm doing.
1:02:36
And he like gave this intro and I was like, what an incredible I was like, what an incredible way to introduce yourself.
1:02:41
I don't know where the remote is, but I know one thing, I know deals.
1:02:44
And I was like, that is incredible.
1:02:44
Then he's he's talking about [clears throat] how old he is.
1:02:49
He goes, you cut me in half, there's going to be a lot of rings. That's the best. Nice.
1:02:53
And then he goes and then I I did a call with him the other day and I get on the Zoom call and I had just finished my workout and my trainer was like insisting cuz I was like, dude, I got to run, I got to be on this call.
1:03:04
He's like, all right, just take your call, but let's do your like kind of like we try to do like this like myofascial like kind of like your rolling like a like a foam roller type of thing like you're you're you're kind of like foam rolling out at the end.
1:03:13
So we were doing it and he's like, just do it while you're on the call.
1:03:17
rolled with this guy on a call?
1:03:19
on the call, I turn on the video and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to show him what's going on.
1:03:22
So I'm I'm like, sorry if uh sorry this looks weird, I'm doing like some stretching.
1:03:25
And he goes [laughter] So he's a big dude, he goes, okay, cool.
1:03:30
If if it looks like I'm stretching, call 911 cuz I'm HAVING A STROKE.
1:03:35
[laughter] DUDE, WHY WOULD YOU TAKE A CALL like that? Incredible wit.
1:03:42
Like to have that line immediately ready when I say if you know, that I'm stretching.
1:03:47
If it Sorry if it looks weird, I'm stretching.
1:03:49
I was like, wow, that was literally so [ __ ] funny to me. I was blown away.
1:03:55
I was like, I don't even care what else happens on this call.
1:03:57
That that was so impressive. So good.
1:04:01
What state did he live in?
1:04:02
Uh he's in Tennessee, I think.
1:04:06
What the hell is a deal struck?
1:04:06
I don't even know what that means.
1:04:07
Like he Like he does basically private equity, so he buys companies.
1:04:12
Um but he's like, I just know how to find a great deal, how to put the financing together, and how to structure it so that like I get the maximum value out of these deals is kind of like what he does.
1:04:22
Um and like you know, I'm like So I was like I was like, you know, what um uh I was like, have you done any deals that like that we would have heard of?
1:04:32
And he's like, you know, Disneyland?
1:04:35
[laughter] He's like, a lot of windows in Disneyland.
1:04:39
We do all the windows in Disneyland. [laughter] Oh my god.
1:04:43
He bought a window company, got him a Disney contract.
1:04:45
We do all the windows at Disney.
1:04:48
[laughter] I was like, you do what with the windows? Like clean them?
1:04:50
We got to have this guy on the pod. This guy's incredible.
1:04:53
What's yours for World's worst of the best?
1:04:55
Um I had both Design Joy and the Kevin O'Leary and Trump just because of the time thing.
1:04:59
So I love that Kevin O'Leary and Trump has built like this this amazing power niche in the farming industry, but I I would not want to be the guy who has to write the newsletter every night cuz the pressure is it's got to go out tomorrow morning.
1:05:12
I felt that during Milk Road for a month and I was like, nope, not doing it this way.
1:05:15
I Although I think if I was him, I would just find a way to hire somebody to do that.
1:05:21
Like I can't believe he hasn't done that yet.
1:05:22
Um does Ben Thompson still do Stratechery?
1:05:24
I haven't read this in a while.
1:05:27
Thompson is is my version of that.
1:05:27
So he does Stratechery and every day he writes a newsletter about basically the same four things.
1:05:39
And I don't even know how he does that.
1:05:40
Like he talks about Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and like what's going like the kind of the business and strategy of what they're doing. so long. These are so long. this daily long-form.
1:05:49
His audience is like has the highest bar.
1:05:52
His audience is like the smartest people in the tech industry.
1:05:57
Uh like you know, VCs and all that.
1:05:57
They they that's who reads him every morning.
1:06:00
So he's got to come with like original content that's super smart about the same topics.
1:06:05
He's been doing this for like a decade and he makes 3 million dollars a year roughly doing this off his paid And he only charges $120 a year.
1:06:14
Yeah, I think he upped his price.
1:06:15
I don't know if what it is now, but he like did raise his prices at some point. I'm it's $12 a month. 100 and now it's 120. [laughter] Oh my god.
1:06:23
needs to be charging like $1,000 a month for this thing, you know, but but he's you know, I think Ben's awesome.
1:06:28
Uh so I don't read it as a knock for him.
1:06:30
I'm saying I would hate the pressure of the daily super insightful thing that I have to write every every morning original content about like the same kind of like 10 companies is I don't I literally don't even know how he does it.
1:06:45
If somebody had told me they're going to do that, I'd be like, what are you saying? This makes no sense.
1:06:48
And he does it every day sitting in Taiwan. This is the worst.
1:06:52
This is the [laughter] worst. It is It is amazing.
1:06:57
Um but um yeah, I would never want to do this. Um so what do we think?
1:07:00
That I wonder what I want to know the listener if they think that these one all in-depth on one topic, if they dig this.
1:07:08
They dig the award category style or the award style. What do you think?
1:07:13
is an experiment for us of like doing a few focused episodes, themed episodes.
1:07:17
So today's theme was these one or two-person businesses that crush it.
1:07:21
Um do you like this or do you like the freestyle?
1:07:23
Freestyle's a lot easier.
1:07:25
This one takes a lot of work.
1:07:25
But if people love this, you got to go in the YouTube comments and show us if we should do more of these or no.
1:07:32
We're cool either way, but this is an experiment.
1:07:33
So let us know in the YouTube comments.
1:07:35
Dude, I stressed out for so long doing this.
1:07:37
These These are These are emotional for me. I get stressed out.
1:07:42
some takeaways cuz I don't think we did that.
1:07:43
I think we should do some takeaways.
1:07:44
All right, so here's my my quick takeaways.
1:07:48
The most common industries you see these one or two-person businesses that crush are uh just like thought leader on the on social media.
1:07:55
So just putting out free content on social media. E-commerce.
1:07:56
We didn't do any e-com ones in this, but like there's a bunch of e-commerce businesses that can do like you know, a million dollars a year in profit that are run with one or two people and then you can do agencies for everything else. Um games.
1:08:12
So we talked about Stardew Valley, Minecraft.
1:08:13
There's a bunch of games that are built like this.
1:08:16
Um apps apps and plugins.
1:08:16
So plugins on top of things like a Figma plugin, a Google Sheets plugin, a Gmail plugin, that sort of thing.
1:08:23
And then data aggregators like BuiltWith, which are basically a compiling data like middle.
1:08:27
com, compiling a bunch of things that are of the same thing.
1:08:30
So it's you go search and you find what you want because they've aggregated everything. OnlyFinder, same thing. It's a data aggregator. Um strategy.
1:08:38
So here's a couple strategy points.
1:08:40
You need to be either amazing, 100% awesome at distribution, meaning you're the influencer.
1:08:45
You're the content creator.
1:08:47
Or you need to be 100% awesome on product.
1:08:49
You're the guy coding the game and and and you'll you'll hire a publisher to do the publishing.
1:08:55
And so I think that if I was going to do this, if I was going to try to make this happen, I would say, where can I be either an incredible at distribution or incredible at product?
1:09:04
And I want to just like put all of my emphasis on that in order to make this happen. The next one. You need attributes.
1:09:11
So a lot of these we made sound simple, but you got to have some attributes, some skill, copywriting, design, you know, the ability like investment judgment, market analysis.
1:09:20
Like you got to be expert on one of these things if you're going to make this happen.
1:09:25
And so, you know, you got to get to that expert master master of your craft level if you're going to do this.
1:09:32
Uh the last one, it's all about leverage.
1:09:33
So, the way you can get a one-or-two-person company to get to millions, tens of millions, or even some of the examples we gave were hundreds of millions of dollars, um was leverage.
1:09:42
So, you need to be using code, uh build it once and then it runs as software.
1:09:48
You need to use um media, like podcasts or newsletters or whatever.
1:09:51
Um or you need to use capital.
1:09:53
Because you're not going to use labor, right?
1:09:55
Like most companies use labor, that's why they have hundreds of people working for them.
1:10:00
But if you're going to not have hundreds of people working, you got to use these other forms of leverage.
1:10:03
Code, capital, so money, or media are are your tools of choice.
1:10:08
You got to figure out which of those three can I use, and that's how I'm going to do it.
1:10:11
And the beauty of it is because of the internet, if you're the best at X, you now get to sell to the whole world.
1:10:17
So, like we didn't give an example, Miss Excel.
1:10:19
So, Miss Excel is this girl who goes on TikTok, and she in a high-energy way dances and tells teaches you how to use Excel like Microsoft Excel better.
1:10:30
And she's the best in the world at teaching Excel.
1:10:32
It turns out the best in the world at teaching Excel is you know how to do the pop you know, the the useful stuff, and you can dance.
1:10:39
Turns out that's what the best teacher of Excel looked like.
1:10:40
And she now gets [snorts] to teach the entire world Excel.
1:10:44
Like the best of anything gets to gets to provide that product, service, or education to everybody.
1:10:49
That's the beauty of of the internet.
1:10:51
And so, you need to figure out how to become the best of X cuz and then just make it available to everybody.
1:10:57
And the last thing I I I was going to say was it's [ __ ] lonely.
1:10:58
Like the best times that I have in work is when I'm whether it's in the trenches and like it's a shitty day or it's a great day, is celebrating with coworkers. These jobs are lonely.
1:11:09
I'm actually surprised when I hear about this about like how they are able to push like I push myself because oh, I have mouths to feed, or I want to be held accountable by these other people and make them proud.
1:11:21
It's really hard to push yourself this hard and to think big when you're by yourself, and it's just hard to do this every day alone.
1:11:27
So, hopefully you have like a good spouse or a significant other or something cuz this shit's challenging you by yourself.
1:11:35
I I when I started this, I was like oh, I want to be a solo solopreneur.
1:11:39
I wanted to be a solopreneur, or they call it a solo capitalist.
1:11:41
I raised a fund, and it's like I want to be a solo capitalist.
1:11:46
And I was like, oh, this isn't fun at all to do this by yourself. Yeah.
1:11:49
And not only is it not that good to do things by yourself cuz you know, a little bit of help can go a long way.
1:11:55
A complimentary good at the things you're not good at is really really useful.
1:12:00
But on top of that, it ain't no fun.
1:12:00
And like most of life is the journey, not the destination.
1:12:05
And you don't want to have the shitty journey for this awesome destination.
1:12:09
And so, very quickly I was like, yeah, this is a duopreneur.
1:12:10
This is me and Ben doing this.
1:12:12
Or in the fund, it's me and Ramin doing this.
1:12:14
And I basically immediately was like, I'm going to do this.
1:12:17
Even my e-com business, I gave a chunk of it to a guy who was smarter than me and had done this before and would give me some money. And I was like, why?
1:12:23
It's because like I don't want to be reporting in to myself and only like have myself as a thought partner to be sparring with on ideas about this.
1:12:32
I want to have somebody awesome just just to do some, you know, idea jousting on this.
1:12:35
And so, uh I think doing it by yourself is honestly a terrible idea, and you should definitely try to get one other person to do this.
1:12:43
I think two people is the is the sweet spot where you get sort of the the the most autonomy you and the least like management headaches, and you have uh you still get the most [ __ ] done and have a lot of fun along the way.
1:12:56
All right, that's the pod.
1:12:56
Whether you're listening on iTunes or Spotify or whatever, go to uh search My First Million on YouTube and go to the comments on this video and actually let us know.
1:13:04
We'll read them and see if we should keep doing these. That's it.
1:13:10
[music] I feel like I could rule the world.
1:13:10
I know [singing] I could be what I want to.
1:13:15
I put my all in it like no days off.
1:13:15
On the [music] road, let's travel, never looking back.