0:00
Okay.
Search this video
0:00
Next one, um, uh, hosted buyer meetings on a plane.
0:03
B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight.
0:09
It's like the time share idea.
0:11
It's like So, you get a free flight uh, but it's you're going to get on a plane a full of vendors.
0:17
It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane.
0:19
Instead of snakes, it's just B2B software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for for the next 7 hours on your way to Maui.
0:35
So, here's I'm going to tell you about something that's interesting.
0:36
There's a guy who I love and his name's Anand.
0:37
Do you know uh, he started CB Insights. Do you know him? Yeah. Listens to the pod. Love the guy. Yeah, he's a great guy.
0:46
He's one of my good friends and I was thinking about this.
0:48
So, there's a lot of things that second time or third time entrepreneurs think about that uh, mostly first-time entrepreneurs don't think about.
0:55
One of them being distribution.
0:56
So, they'll think like, "Oh, I'm just going to make a cool product and it'll somehow get into people's hands." That's false.
1:00
You got to have marketing baked in or like it's got to be part of like the ideation phase, marketing.
1:05
The second thing is pricing.
1:06
Uh, they think, "Oh, I'll just charge $5 a month and I'll get like millions of people to buy this and then you actually start doing it and and you're like, "Wow, this is incredibly challenging to get thousands or tens of thousands, let alone millions of people to buy something. That's really hard."
1:19
And so, I've been thinking about that pricing thing.
1:20
So, things that fit my wants and my needs and my skill sets.
1:24
So, for example, content.
1:24
There's Industry Dive which probably only has 5 or 10 million people a month reading their website, but they make [ __ ] for like people who own grocery stores, like content for people who own grocery stores versus BuzzFeed which makes stuff for stay-at-home moms who like cat videos.
1:39
BuzzFeed worth 100 million.
1:39
Industry Dive does the exact same thing, way smaller audience, makes or uh, sold recently for 500 or 600 million dollars.
1:47
So, like I've been thinking about like those that price just like that that the different ways of packaging.
1:50
And so, Anand from CB Insights, he's got this company that's brand new. It's only 90 days old.
1:56
It's been way low-key and under the under wraps and I recently discovered it and I asked him.
2:01
So, it's called Yardstick. So, go to yardstick.
2:03
com and tell me what you see. It's called Yardstick.
2:05
So, it's the word yard, like a backyard, and then stick is s t i q.
2:12
He's getting a little cute on us. Uh let's see.
2:14
Okay, so Yardstick, powered by CB Insights.
2:16
Learn what software buyers really think about their vendors. Great title. Great headline. Yeah.
2:21
Um and then it says, "Access thousands of analyst-led conversations with software buyers to quickly understand pricing, competition, evaluation criteria, and subscription and satisfaction."
2:30
So, basically, they interview software buyers and they get the scoop on how do you really feel about X tool and then they summarize it so that you can you can see how other people think about this tool before you buy it. Exactly. That's it.
2:46
And they charge like something like 30 or 40.
2:49
They charge Yeah, it's really smart and I'll explain how this works, but they charge like 30 or 50,000 dollars a year for this.
2:54
And I think this could be a hundred million dollar a year business and they're just Now, I'm I'm downplaying, but right now the MVP is just interviewing people and showing transcripts.
3:03
Eventually, I'm sure they're this is really smart.
3:05
I remember you talked about this back in the day cuz there's that website, what is it? G2 Crowd? Yes, exactly.
3:11
And um there's basically like software is a massive category and people are like, "Oh, which CRM should I use?"
3:15
And it's like, "Oh, you know, it's HubSpot fighting with 10 other people to try to be the answer to that question."
3:21
And so, reviews is always this thing that people are trying to like I think people in general want the idea of a review, but it's hard to trust reviews nowadays.
3:31
You don't know if the reviews are fake.
3:34
Uh you don't know if they're from people like you who have the same problems as you.
3:37
Uh and the website like, you know, G2 Crowd and these other ones, they're pretty bad.
3:40
And I've seen a I've seen several people try to create a new software review site to compete with them and they have to do two things.
3:47
One, they have to actually be better at the reviews and two, they have to rank higher in SEO for when somebody searches for, you know, whatever X tool alternative or what's the best Which is hard.
4:00
sales tool for me to use.
4:00
And it's really hard to beat their SEO.
4:02
And so they're fighting a very uphill battle.
4:06
This I think is smart for two reasons.
4:08
One, they already have a bunch of customers that they could just sell this sell into with this.
4:11
Two, the idea of instead of saying, "Okay, well, whoever reviews it, hopefully they're good reviews."
4:17
They're like, "No, we're just going to hire people to do these conversations and like the math works out."
4:21
If we get these brands to say what they think about these tools, you know, we might only need to invest, I don't know, $200,000 into the to the to the collection of that data and that gives us like the like a better review a better um content system.
4:40
And what you've nailed everything and there's a third thing though, which is basically G2 or um softwarereviews.
4:43
com or a lot of these websites, the way they typically work is they give an affiliate fee or some type of like advertisement fee.
4:52
They they collect that from the brand who wants to advertise on the website, which means they have to go and get traffic and they've got to convince these brands to give money, whereas this business, Yardstick, it does exactly what I said before.
5:03
It changes the way they package it.
5:04
And so they just go, "No, you're the customer.
5:06
You're going to read this and you're going to get value from this.
5:08
You're giving us 30 grand a year."
5:10
And so we're just going to make [ __ ] for you and it's just that's our that's our that's our exchange.
5:14
And so that's what we're going to do.
5:15
And so basically the background behind this business is uh this is something that I didn't know about until recently and probably you didn't either because we both had small companies.
5:23
And so a small company in this definition is anything that's below a billion dollars in in market cap or value.
5:28
Meaning typically the people who buy this [ __ ] have 500 employees.
5:32
And the reason that's important is when you buy a software provider or you buy a CRM or you buy like some type of um what's it called where you uh like uh your customer like you do give customer feedback like or you like interact with your customers and your customer service agents use it.
5:48
Do it business, I don't know. Customer happiness?
5:52
You know, whatever like the software is, like a Zendesk or something like that.
5:55
So, but like picking the wrong software, if you are a 500-person company, it will cost you like so much money.
6:00
And so, you have to do actually a fair amount of research including like who invested in this company, so I know they're not even going to go out of business.
6:07
And I never even in a million years thought about that.
6:09
I'm like, "Dude, I'm just going to Google like what's better, Gusto or Zenefits?"
6:12
And like we'll just pick one and then we'll switch if it sucks.
6:13
And so, what Yardstick is doing is they actually have just It's Anon and seven other employees are the early people starting this company and they basically just asked like seven questions to people who have bought software uh in the last 2 years and they say like, "Who else did you consider? Who did you pick? What price did you pay? Would you renew?
6:32
What's your customer satisfaction?"
6:33
And then um the people who purchased this Yardstick product are either investment bankers, so people who are like making investment decisions for the public markets or or private markets and they want to know what the customer satisfaction is, or people who are going out and buying software and they could see these other reviews.
6:48
And it's just like a really interesting business because there's there's a companies like GLG. You know GLG?
6:54
It's like uh you get paid two grand an hour. calls back in the day?
6:59
Yeah, you get paid two grand an hour to like answer questions, but that's one-to-one.
7:02
And so, what they're saying is like, "No, we're not going to do one-to-one, but we'll just make it so you can just read like dozens and dozens of interviews."
7:08
So anyway, interesting company for all everything I said, but secondly, it's an interesting company because this business is only 90 days old.
7:13
And I think if you go and sign up for their email list now, it's kind of like you can watch like a big business being built in real real time.
7:22
Yeah, this is really good.
7:22
Like I'm jealous I didn't think of this idea.
7:24
Um I kind of wish he had just done this outside of CB Insights.
7:29
I feel like this could have been his next hit.
7:31
I think it's going to be as big as CB Insights.
7:35
So, I think there's a slight, you know, although it's good to be able to sell into the same customers, I think it would have been worth it to uh you know, spin this out, but you know, that's a that's a com- more complicated decision.
7:45
By the way, this guy, Anan, he has a giant list of startup ideas. Have you seen this? No, where?
7:54
I'm trying to find the list.
7:54
I remember seeing it on um Twitter one day, but uh Here, what what why look for a second about the background behind Anan is he started CB Insights.
8:04
They're close to 100 million in revenue.
8:06
He's kind of a [ __ ] in a really good way.
8:08
For example, he signs he he writes their daily newsletter and he signs the newsletter with I love you.
8:14
Or in his Twitter file it profile it says, "Please sign up for CB Insights. I owe people money."
8:20
And like he is like like kind of like a cheeky like mischievous guy and very very likable and that's and his content's amazing.
8:29
And so that's Anan's really interesting.
8:32
If you if you want to know what speaks to our heart, you got to be somebody who's trying to do something.
8:39
So, you got to be ambitious or successful in some way.
8:40
And the second thing is a little bit of a [ __ ] So, you know, like have that so I don't like to eat my wings without sauce.
8:48
You got to have a little dipping sauce to your personality if you're going to if you're going to get me on board. And he's got the sauce.
8:52
All right, so let me tell you some of these ideas.
8:56
So, I don't have the full list.
8:56
I remember seeing this like a year ago or something like that.
8:59
Um we should get him on the pod, but let me just read a couple of the ideas that were tweeted out from this list.
9:04
Okay, so first one, Tough Mudder for kids. So, here's what he says.
9:11
"Really any sort of manufactured adversity for semi-affluent or affluent kids.
9:15
Parents talk about wanting their kids to have perspective, resilience, and reduce their entitlement, and get them off screens.
9:22
Um Tough Mudder for kids. Super high margin.
9:24
Unsure if uh uh you know, unsure exactly how it works, but money to be made for sure." Okay?
9:30
Dude, Spartan Spartan Race is now Spartan Race is I'm I'm signing up for one.
9:34
They actually have a kids version right now. Tiny Spartans.
9:35
I don't know if this house is called, but you know, we can pretend. That's a good name. Startup idea.
9:40
Duolingo for teaching finance or accounting.
9:42
Teach the principles of accounting or finance via gamified Duolingo style app.
9:45
What do you give that one? Uh yeah, that's cool. Okay. Next one.
9:50
Um uh hosted buyer meetings on a plane.
9:53
B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight.
9:58
It's like the time share idea.
10:00
It's like So, you get a free flight uh but it's you're going to get on a plane a full of vendors.
10:07
It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane, but instead of snakes it's just B2B software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for for the next 7 hours on your way to Maui.
10:19
And just tons of coke and and just everything that like a 45-year-old guy named Todd who wears tight blue jeans and brown shoes, whatever they need to like Yeah. This is Jennifer.
10:26
She wants you to call her Jenny and she happens to like you.
10:34
I think it's actually uh I think you actually could build a business that way if I'm being honest.
10:39
up for a free trial, you get to go to first class, that'd be great.
10:40
Uh yeah, this is actually uh kind of a genius idea. Okay, here here we go.
10:46
Buyable Google Doc travel itineraries.
10:48
So, friends often share their travel plans via Google Docs, you know, here's what I did in Iceland.
10:53
Um since they're friends, I trust their judgment.
10:55
Um you know, the idea would be let me just buy the whole itinerary with a buy now button, my vacation plan is done. Awesome. Big reaction. Okay.
11:02
Um Uh that's a small business, but cool.
11:06
Win loss reporting for employee hiring and attrition.
11:09
So, when somebody doesn't accept your job offer, the service would would dig in and find out the real reasons why.
11:15
When somebody leaves, the service digs in and finds the real reason why.
11:18
It would maybe anonymize or synthesize the insights over time.
11:22
Today, the process is very ad hoc. That's a great idea. That's a great idea.
11:26
That is a really good idea.
11:26
Uh wow, that's a that's a solid one. Okay.
11:32
Uh here's a not so solid one, but more fun.
11:34
The Nike of baby diapers.
11:36
So, create high-performance premium diapers.
11:38
Use sodium polyacrylate to make them super absorbent like astronaut diapers.
11:44
Other tech to increase comfort, make cleanup easier. Why?
11:45
Cuz parents spend a stupid amount of money on their kids. Okay?
11:48
Dude, anytime anytime you say it's the Nike of something, it's like when I see a restaurant on the side of road says world's greatest coffee or like the best pie in town, I automatically buy it. That's my rule.
11:58
If it says it's the world's greatest, if you're just bold enough to think that, I I've got to try it. I'm in.
12:03
Dude, I had the same realization yesterday where I was listening to some talk where Johnny Ive was talking.
12:09
And um and I knew I knew somebody who met Johnny Ive.
12:13
Like he used to hang out with Johnny Ive regularly.
12:15
They like lived near each other in San Francisco.
12:18
And I was like, oh, what's Johnny Ive like?
12:20
For those who don't know, he's basically the the head designer at Apple for like all the great products, iPod, you know, whatever, Macintosh, uh you know, iPhone, all that good stuff.
12:30
So, this guy's like the basically the greatest product designer in the world.
12:33
He's the guy Steve Jobs trusted the most at Apple.
12:36
I was like, what's he like?
12:36
And they're like, oh, you know, he's kind of like you'd expect.
12:38
He's like, you know, he's he's got a sort of a dry, but but funny personality.
12:42
He's a he's a pretty focused individual.
12:44
Like he's not like effing around a whole lot.
12:46
Um you know, he works really hard.
12:49
And um they'd be like, yeah, John- they'd come to me they'd be like, yeah, Johnny had an idea.
12:54
And I was like, oh my god, what's this Johnny Ive idea?
12:55
Now, I don't remember the specifics.
12:57
This was like 8 years ago or something.
12:59
just said it's a great idea.
12:59
But it'd be like a closet that's beautifully designed. What does that mean?
13:06
And then I realized I started using this.
13:08
I'd be like, you know what you guys should do?
13:09
Like I was giving somebody advice the other day.
13:10
I was like, you know, in your uh when you guys is an e-com brand, I was like, when you send your package, you should put in there just like beautiful pamphlet.
13:17
Just like super well done that just will make somebody that'll read it, they'll learn your story, but just just a beautiful pamphlet.
13:24
And then and I realized I was like, "Wow, if you just say like a beautiful thing a beautiful and then just like generic thing and say just super well done, the idea goes from like a whatever idea to like that's a great idea. Yeah, I can see that.
13:40
It's like when And honestly, it's not totally BS.
13:42
There is something to it.
13:42
If you said like, you know, let's just make like a really like just a hilarious YouTube video.
13:51
It's like actually that is the correct strategy.
13:54
You know, but there's not much more to it.
13:56
It's just a question of can you can you do something that's actually beautiful or really well done or really funny.
13:59
But honestly, that's not a bad business plan for most things to just say just a beautifully done just all the details nailed.
14:08
It's like when Andrew Wilkinson Andrew Wilkinson says, "We try to buy wonderful companies." Right.
14:14
And like our beautiful businesses.
14:14
We want to buy beautiful businesses. Our wonderful companies. board. Yeah, like wonderful.
14:19
You're right, that is it's wonderful.
14:24
He's like, "Okay, we're going to make this cookie, but it's just going to melt in your mouth."
14:29
And they're like, "Okay, all right, all right, I'm in."
14:31
It's like, you know, otherwise it's just a cookie.
14:34
And so I think there's something to this.
14:35
But um all right, I'm going to keep going.
14:37
By the way, I feel like I'm reading this guy's diary and just, you know, I feel I feel wrong just taking all these startup ideas here so rapid fire.
14:43
This could be like 12 episodes of content for us, but I'm going to cut it off today. it. Let's just steal it.
14:50
Well, I know, but I'm like I want to just use them all now and I binge eat this whole like tub of ice cream. right here.
14:55
Let me give you a couple more. Um Happy Cam.
15:00
A highlight reel of the best moments of your life. How?
15:02
A wearable camera that records audio and video only when you're laughing.
15:06
It captures the conversation of who you're with and great moments. All right. Fictitious.
15:10
Even the great ones get a miss once in a while. Yeah.
15:14
Just to show a little balance here. Um Okay.
15:20
How about Let me pull up another one. Okay, how about this?
15:28
Um He also wrote bad startup ideas, I think. So, bad but sexy.
15:34
So, startup ideas that suck you in, but they're actually bad startup ideas. Here we go. Yeah. Personal CRM. Always a bad one. Preaching to the choir. Yeah.
15:44
It's probably a bad recommendations.
15:48
It well, in most cases it's bad.
15:50
But hey look, that's what you, me, and Austen preach about. one.
15:56
Um Is something going to be like a college campus like Craigslist and then like laundry on a like delivery laundry? Here's one.
16:03
What are my friends up to right now apps?
16:06
The these apps that promise you, "Hey, what if your friend was two blocks away and you didn't know?
16:11
This with this app you could have met up with them." No, wrong.
16:15
Dude, by the way, did you know that girls share their location on their iPhone with other girls?
16:19
Like my wife does this with her friends.
16:22
Did you know people do that? purposes?
16:25
I don't know why they do that, but like I was out with like my wife and a bunch of her friends and they all did the same thing with themselves, like that group of friends and other people.
16:33
Like they know that where their real-time location is at all times. Hold on. Wait, what?
16:37
Honey, why are you going to the car?
16:39
My friend's going to the restroom, but she wanted somebody to go with her.
16:41
I'm driving to meet up with her. Dude, it's crazy.
16:45
They I don't even know how to use that feature.
16:47
Where I don't even know where that feature is on a phone. I don't know.
16:49
You click a thing and it says like share location for an hour or share indefinitely. Yeah, seems like a trap.
16:54
Yeah, not going to happen. To do list software. Yep, that's one.
16:58
Classic startup idea that everybody does. Um Glassdoor for VCs.
17:00
A a website that rates VCs.
17:03
Nobody really cares very much about VCs.
17:05
They're infrequent decisions for most entrepreneurs.
17:08
They'll take money from who they can get. Yeah. Um in most cases.
17:10
Founders are lucky enough to have a good choice, they probably already know who's good.
17:16
Okay, so those are some of the bad bad startup ideas.
17:18
But, he's got a bunch here.
17:20
I'm not going to We should have him on.
17:22
Yeah, the guy's interesting. He's pretty funny.
17:24
his He's earned his spot, for sure.
17:24
I forgot to remind you these last few times, you being the listener, about our gentleman's agreement.
17:30
So, like uh have you ever Yes, uh there's like have you ever gone to 7-Eleven and you've seen like uh like an Alzheimer's or like a sick children's like bowl and you like leave a quarter and you take a piece of candy? Right.
17:41
So, that that whole thing works.
17:44
And they use this thing called an honor system, a gentleman's agreement, where you put down a quarter and you take a piece of candy and it's just it just works.
17:50
That's kind of what our podcast is like a little bit with subscribing to our YouTube channel.
17:54
So, Sean and I spend all this time, we talk about stuff constantly about what we're going to do on the pod.
18:00
I live an epic life, actually, just so I can talk about it on the pod.
18:02
I dedicate my life to this.
18:04
And all I want in exchange is not even a quarter.
18:06
It's just for you to click subscribe on YouTube.
18:07
So, if you're listening to this on iTunes or Spotify, whatever, just go to your YouTube and just click subscribe.
18:12
That's all we want, because that helps the algorithm.
18:16
We get a little bit higher and then we'll just it helps our ego.
18:19
I mean, that's really all it is.
18:21
if you're making the choice between Alzheimer's, sick children, and us, make the right choice. Choose us. Yeah, and it's free. It's crazy.
18:28
60% of our YouTube views come from people who don't subscribe.
18:32
And all I can ask them is, are you not entertained?
18:35
Do you not want more of this? Click subscribe.
18:37
All right, so that's that.
18:38
Uh gentleman's agreement reinforced.
18:40
And everyone's been doing it lately.
18:43
So, if you don't do it, you're going to you'll look silly.
18:45
So, I think you should do it. Um all right.
18:47
Okay, I want to talk about a different little trend that I've seen on Twitter.
18:51
And I call this the guy mafia. I saw that line.
18:54
I thought that was really funny.
18:56
I mean, I would have called the guy mafia just the mafia, but the guy mafia.
19:00
Well, so what what am I what am I calling the guy mafia?
19:02
You've probably seen this trend. The guy mafia.
19:07
it's kind of new, but it's basically a whole bunch of Twitter accounts that are branded like car dealership guy.
19:17
Mobile home park guy, strip mall guy, self storage guy, right?
19:21
There's like and they're basically just saying it's an anonymous account so you don't know who's behind it.
19:28
The promise is basically, hey, I'm in I've been in this this this space for a while.
19:33
I got, you know, I'm been doing this for 10, 20 years.
19:36
I will share insights but also kind of like industry secrets about the way our industry works.
19:41
The you know, the the the dirty laundry.
19:43
And um these accounts are blowing up. They get really big up. really fast.
19:49
I just bought a car from car dealership guy. Did you really? this guy is.
19:53
I just I yeah, I I just dropped a lot Dude, I almost bought a car from him, too.
19:57
I almost bought a car from him, too. Tell people who he is.
20:01
Well, I don't want to say his his identity.
20:02
He did He did eventually tell me his identity but I know who he is, too.
20:06
So, he's car dealership guy on Twitter.
20:07
He's basically he's always just tweeting out about like, you know, insights into the car market, right?
20:11
Which I like following, right?
20:12
Cuz I want to know about the car market without doing any work.
20:16
So, he'll be like, that he just tweeted.
20:17
He said, "Market is literally flooded with Buicks.
20:21
They're rotting on car lots like trash.
20:23
You could score a deal on these if you're willing to suffer the embarrassment of being seen in one.
20:27
Buicks are on a 100 Buicks are at a 121-day supply.
20:29
For context, Toyo Toyota is less than 30-day supply. Ridiculous.
20:33
The simple people terms, day supply means the number of days it would take to deplete the current new car inventory at the current rate of sales.
20:40
And so, immediately I went, let's go look at a Buick."
21:05
had it for very long, so pull up kind of the the December 21.
21:10
So, December 21, so that's 1 year, basically.
21:12
He added 93,000 followers in the last 30 days.
21:17
Oh my god, he's at 225,000 now.
21:20
Literally, when we wrote this thing like, you know, 2 days ago, we did the research for this, he was at 219.
21:24
So, like, 2 days he added 6,000 followers. This guy's blowing up.
21:27
Um, and what he's doing is tweeting out insights.
21:31
Like, okay, you know, here's what the used car prices are doing, here's what the market is, here's which models and makes are are hottest right now, here's why G Wagons are selling for this, and here's where I think that's going, here's what's happening with auto loans, and here's what that means for the industry, all that good stuff.
21:44
Okay, so he he gets the following cuz he's tweeting out interesting stuff.
21:47
Secondly, he then says, okay, well, what do I do with this?
21:52
What do I create a newsletter, paid community, you know, people are like, the Sam and Shawn playbook, you know, they open up their little like red red book, and they're like, is this what I want to do?
22:02
But actually, he got some good advice from a buddy of mine, who said, screw that.
22:06
Don't don't make a newsletter, then try to find ads or sponsors or paid He goes, just help people buy cars. Yeah.
22:12
You're building up a load of trust on Twitter.
22:14
People will buy cars from you.
22:16
In fact, go buy me a car.
22:16
So, my buddy is like, I want to buy a Toyota Sequoia.
22:20
And I think there's like Toyota Sequoia, he was telling me, he's like, some crazy things where it hasn't been updated in like 15 or 18 years or something like that.
22:28
Like, the last update was like in 2004 or some [ __ ] like that.
22:30
And there's like a 100,000 person waiting list for the Toyota Sequoia.
22:34
It's some like crazy number like that.
22:36
And he's like, yeah, but I bet there's got to be one somewhere in the country. You know what?
22:41
I'll get I'll buy it in any color, any goofy color.
22:43
And this guy, because car dealership guy is a has a background as a dealer, he can At least we think.
22:51
access the car dealership the car dealer network.
22:53
So, basically, they can buy cars They have like their own little MLS system, right?
22:58
So, they can buy cars out of auction and And what That's how dealers acquire cars, and then they can sell those cars at a retail market.
23:04
And so what he's doing is he's just buying cars out of the auction.
23:09
Not really applying the retail markup.
23:12
And just charging a flat fee as a concierge for purchasing the vehicle.
23:17
Which we talked about before.
23:17
We talked about negotiating negotiating car prices a service from a guy who like knows the ins and outs of car dealerships and knows the time of month who to talk to what to say things like that.
23:28
This is like that but more in depth.
23:30
So I told the guy I was like hey I want an Escalade.
23:33
And he's like You wanted an Escalade?
23:35
I said I wanted an Escalade.
23:36
By the way hilarious thing I go I was like you know let me just I was like I'm not going to go test drive these cars nothing so I was like let me just go read the reviews online real quick.
23:46
But if you search for like reviews you get these like It's like dude is this just like some SEO optimized websites I go Reddit.
23:50
Let me go to Reddit and see what people are saying.
23:55
Let me tell you how people on Reddit feel about car dealerships.
23:57
The same way that people in prison feel about pedophiles.
24:00
Like people on Reddit do not like Escalades.
24:03
They are like dude I've never met a non jerk in an Escalade right like Escalades are smoking cigars.
24:12
Drug dealers and desperate housewives.
24:15
And then I was like Hey guys category number three Indian podcasters. Here we go.
24:21
And so Wait are you getting the hybrid one or the electric one or something like that?
24:25
No no no no you got to go full on.
24:25
But they have good self you know they have great self driving technology.
24:29
I actually like that one too.
24:32
I didn't do that much research to be honest with you.
24:33
But I just got the the big one.
24:34
So the the the extended version.
24:36
So anyways the my point is a lot of trust but anyways bought a car with this guy.
24:41
So Dude you live in the suburbs of San Francisco and you drive an Escalade you are warping into something.
24:47
I don't know exactly what it is but there's definitely a stereotype that you are fitting into.
24:52
You're like the Tony Soprano of Danville. I could believe that. That's so funny.
25:01
Let me tell you some of these other guys.
25:01
So, we have strip mall guy who you know, he's basically buying like little strip malls are like, I don't know.
25:08
I don't know what you'd call it.
25:09
Like these little like B-class shopping centers.
25:11
Uh there's the wool uh franchise wolf.
25:13
Franchise wolf is a guy who talks about buying franchises and what franchises doing.
25:18
Oh, Crumbl Cookies exploding like crazy.
25:19
Here's what's going on with that franchise.
25:23
That's a great That's a great niche to be in because interested franchise buyers are super super valuable.
25:29
That's That customer, a lead who's interested in buying a franchise is worth tens of thousand dollars to these uh companies. Um secret CFO. Another great name.
25:39
Uh didn't go with the guy, but I like secret CFO.
25:41
So, I like franchise wolf. I like secret CFO.
25:45
These are great names, great brands.
25:45
And I think they work for a couple reasons.
25:49
Number one, um the the watch guy? I talked to him.
25:50
I almost bought a watch from him.
25:52
He just will post I don't even know.
25:55
Yeah, there's a it's a he's it's a watch guy.
25:57
It's called um I think just watch guy actually.
25:59
Uh and he like posts like every day right now.
26:02
And by the way, this whole tactic is going to get flooded.
26:05
It's already getting flooded cuz people see it.
26:07
Now that we're talking about it and breaking it down, everybody who's like I am a dental hygienist.
26:13
Dental hygienist guy, you know, like there's going to be like just like a ton of these coming out.
26:17
But I honestly And they all use cartoons as their avatar.
26:20
By the way, I sent you in the Riverside chat the luxury watch guy and he does the exact same thing.
26:24
He goes, "Here's what I'm seeing.
26:26
This uh Rolex retails for 20,000. It's an 8-month wait.
26:31
And so, therefore, what we're actually seeing is people are buying it for 35,000.
26:33
Or this month, mostly because of the crypto guys, this particular uh model of Rolex is going way down because they're selling it cuz they need to afford rent."
26:41
And by the way, if anybody wants to do the the NFT guy, uh you know, for for for crypto, uh you know, we'll hire you for the build card.
26:50
We'll pay you to build If you're good.
26:52
So So So basically this is the trend.
26:55
Okay, so why do I think this works?
26:56
Number one, the the value proposition is in the name.
27:01
You don't even need to click to the bio.
27:02
They're a walking billboard for what value they're going to provide to you.
27:07
What what they're going to teach you about.
27:09
I think that sets them apart from just like, oh, this is Steve you know, Steve Irwin.
27:14
You you know, you don't know that he's the nature guy, right?
27:16
Like you don't know that you have to there's still a leap of faith.
27:19
You have to click in read the bio then you get the then you understand the value. Here it's right on top.
27:24
Second thing, they promise basically data, insights, and industry secrets.
27:28
And people really like industry secrets.
27:31
And so you can go viral with some of these like, here's the dirty little secrets about buying a used car or buying go about what happens when you walk into a car dealership.
27:40
I sat in these rooms for 30 years.
27:42
I know what conversations the the seller is having when you walk in like a fish.
27:48
And it's like, I got to click this. I got to read this.
27:50
And at the end of it I'm going to trust them as a niche expert.
27:52
Um so I think those are the two kind of like core reasons that it works.
27:57
It's also just a focused feed.
27:58
So versus my account, sometimes you're going to hear me talk about sports.
28:01
I'm going to crack a joke.
28:02
I'm going to complain about my kids.
28:03
And then sometimes I'm going to tweet tech stuff.
28:07
And in reality people just kind of want you for one of those things at at up front.
28:11
Up front a focused feed is going to do better.
28:13
So I think that's why these are these are working.
28:14
And um and I think all of these people who do this are going to make at least low millions of dollars.
28:22
And a few of them who really learn how to capitalize on capitalize on this are will make tens of millions of dollars of a business that basically the core of their business is just this Twitter account where they are the um you know, the gas station guy.
28:35
Like I saw one yesterday.
28:37
It was mobile home park guy.
28:39
Tweeted one interesting thing about mobile home. I insta followed.
28:41
I have no real desire to buy a mobile home park, but I kind of want to know about it, be smarter about it.
28:46
And then turns out the guy DMs me, he's it's my friend. I'm like, you? You do this? And he's like, yeah.
28:54
I was like, what the hell's going on here?
28:55
And so, you know, you never know what's going on under the video. It's your dad.
28:59
Your dad's doing this side hustle.
29:03
I think this is a really, really good insight that you've had. And I completely agree.
29:07
I think someone like a the car guy, I think could make tens of millions of dollars.
29:12
Now, let me give you Now, let me give you the so what what I do about this. Let me add to it, right?
29:18
So, by the way, another good thing about this, you can have ghost writers or contributors cuz you're just under this anonymous umbrella brand.
29:24
So, it's that's another benefit here.
29:26
Okay, so what can you do with it?
29:26
So, first I think avoid the you know let me do shout-outs, let me do paid ads in a free newsletter, let me do a community.
29:37
Like if somebody says the word community, you should stiff-arm them in the in this if you're doing these.
29:43
You got like you want to do it where you actually the thing, I would.
29:46
You actually get towards the transaction.
29:49
Maybe a high-ticket course can work, but like I do think you want to be more like the car dealership guy who's actually doing this.
29:54
Or you want to be the strip mall guy and you want to raise a giant fund off of this.
29:57
Well, dude, have you asked why? Cuz I'm the same way.
29:59
I would I almost sold my car recently and I had him give me a quote on it to tell me how much they're selling for.
30:05
And then I go, oh, I and I made a $100,000 plus decision because of his advice.
30:10
Have you asked yourself, why do we trust just these guys?
30:14
Like they don't even they use a cartoon.
30:16
It's the same reason people trust us from this podcast or from Twitter, which is that I think when you get to see somebody think out loud, which is what writing is, or or talking on a podcast.
30:28
And they're not talking to you, you're overhearing them.
30:31
And they're not selling you anything, they're just giving.
30:34
Give, give, give, give, give, right?
30:35
This is the Gary Vee playbook, right?
30:36
The jab, jab, jab, hook is give, give, give, ask.
30:40
And so, that's what they're doing.
30:42
Right now they're just in give mode.
30:43
And I think that's the absolute right way to be.
30:44
Give, give, give, give, give.
30:46
Insights, insights, insights.
30:48
And then there's a surprising number of wealthy people who will say, "Hey, can you help me? I want to do this.
30:52
I want to buy one of these or I want to get your opinion on this."
30:57
And they will come to you hat in hand like me and you did to these suckers.
31:02
Like suckers to these guys.
31:02
Okay, so that's the first thing.
31:04
Um secondly, I think that I would get away I called it the guy mafia.
31:11
But I'm calling them right here.
31:12
It's time to start the gal mafia.
31:15
We need we need car dealership lady.
31:18
We need strip strip club queen.
31:18
We need We need the female version of queen. Yeah, exactly.
31:24
We need the It's called network marketing or some [ __ ] like that by the way.
31:29
And that's how that It's like when you meet somebody who's proud of being in an MLM you're like, "Wait, you know you're in an MLM?"
31:36
They're like, "Yeah, I'm a I'm a I'm great at network sales."
31:39
What the [ __ ] Network sales.
31:43
If you can say the word I have a downline like if those words have come out of your mouth Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're a pimp.
31:50
That's what the that's what the that's what the Twitter profile should be like.
31:53
Does Does the word downline make you weak at the knees?
31:54
If yes, you're in the right place, my friend. Right.
31:57
If I presented you the shapes circle, square, and triangle and you you immediately gravitate towards triangle It's like those like psych tests the Rorschach test or whatever.
32:09
Um Okay, so I think you should brand it as a woman.
32:11
Whether you're a guy or a girl to be honest with you.
32:13
Um I think you know, catfish away.
32:15
Go I think I think that's the first opportunity.
32:17
Um second, you got to go find all all the valuable niches.
32:21
So, luxury watch, sneakers, cars, gas stations, real estate. I mean, what else? There's franchises.
32:28
There's Dude, but are women using Twitter?
32:30
I surveyed my audience and I go select if you're a male or a female and it was it was 93% male. It was all dudes.
32:38
It was probably all dudes looking for a father figure.
32:43
Like it was all young men.
32:43
Our our our Like have you When me and Sahil did the meetup, it was like uh literally 100 to 1 men to women. It was crazy.
32:50
If you're a single woman, you got to come to our meetups. You will love it.
32:57
Um Do you have any women followers you think?
32:59
Like it it's or is all Twitter this way?
33:02
No, I think it's more us than it is all of Twitter.
33:04
I think Twitter probably skews, but not to the 90%.
33:05
Uh that's that's kind of a crazy ratio there. But okay.
33:11
By the way, so here's here's my crazier ideas.
33:13
Okay, so first of all, I think Twitter's the wrong place to do this.
33:17
Uh I think it works on Twitter for sure.
33:19
But I also think LinkedIn, I think that there are other networks where you should probably be able to do well with this.
33:26
Uh I don't know if LinkedIn allows like anonymous accounts or like fake names. Maybe it doesn't.
33:29
But the second thing is Honestly, I think there could be a whole social network that's basically just Yo, you join here, and there's just verified like people who are industry insiders that you get to read their content from and and and subscribe and follow them.
33:42
I think you could literally like it is not likely to work, but it's more likely than a lot of stupid social app ideas.
33:49
Uh cuz it has really clear value prop.
33:52
So, anyways, that's my like long shot idea around this.
33:57
Yeah, I think this is a really really good insight that you've had, and I completely agree that there's a massive opportunity here.
34:02
I tried to make the argument this summer that there's going to be a billion-dollar empire started on Twitter just like there has been on YouTube and all these other things.
34:09
And I think one of these people it wouldn't it's not out of this world that one of these folks could be that person.
34:15
Another thing that I've noticed on Twitter, and um I didn't entirely plan this, but could because you brought up, I'll bring it up.
34:20
Have you noticed um people doing affiliates for agencies?
34:26
So, basically um who Well, question that you and I probably get asked a lot is like who's a good accountant accounting firm?
34:36
Or who's a good growth marketer for newsletters?
34:38
Or you know, there's like eight questions that you and I get asked all the time.
34:44
And I did this with my body tutor.
34:44
So my body tutor, they were like, "Hey, do you just want to like earn money every person you send to us cuz you're already sending tons of people?"
34:50
I go, "Hell yeah, give me a link."
34:52
like you're tweeting a bunch of like a bunch of shout-outs.
34:54
I was like, "Are you getting kickbacks here or what's going on?"
34:57
I feel like you've tweeted a couple of these. I haven't.
34:59
I just started doing it for my body tutor because they're like, "Dude, you send us so much like we'll just give you some money if you want." But no, I've I've not.
35:05
Who have I tweeted out lately?
35:07
I just I just call out cool [ __ ] and it was one other one that I saw that I was like uh Jason Yanowitz it was your Oh, Diego, my video guy? Yeah, yeah.
35:17
No, no, I no, I just like I'm just like, "Fuck it, dude, you've done Well, what I told him was I go, "Hey, if you're good, do it for free." you, right?
35:24
I go, "Do it for free for me and if you're good, I'll tell people about you."
35:27
And so I made him do it for free for me for six months.
35:29
And so and so I was like, "I'll just share you with you."
35:32
But then you and I have friends and I've seen people do this and I think they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by referring people to certain agencies.
35:41
And the right way to do this is to find a product or service that you're already a fan of and ask for an affiliate or go and start the thing with someone and just be an affiliate.
35:50
And uh I think that there's like this world we had Neil Patel on the pod and he basically founded an agency and the reason why he was considered the founder was he did start it, but he wasn't running it.
36:01
But a lot of the early leads and probably a lot of the leads to this day came from neilpatel.
36:05
com cuz people were using his website to search like SEO stuff and we haven't seen people do that on Twitter, but it actually is really good because Twitter unlike the other social media platforms is ideal for link clicks and that makes it really easy to attribute growth.
36:18
And I think that there's a lot of people making a significant amount of money referring people to these high ticket products and I think we can continue to see that and it might be a lot of pretty quite quite big.
36:30
I've thought about doing this.
36:30
So, one thing I've been thinking about doing is post Milk Road.
36:33
Okay, we sold the Milk Road, got some time.
36:37
What do I want to do next?
36:37
I kind of want to focus on the pod, make the pod bigger, uh better, all that all that good stuff.
36:43
One of the ways I think with the pod, you know, the pod itself is free.
36:47
If you're listening to this right now, you paid me, you know, $0. 0.
36:48
So, how how does this ever, you know, become something that that you could justify saying, "I'm not going to go build another business.
36:56
I'm going to do this instead."
36:57
And one way is that can the pod basically provide some kind of win-win value for people?
37:01
And so, this one thing I was thinking about was like I kind of want to buy a bunch of businesses that like of people that I've worked with like either, you know, like go to my accountant or go to my lawyer or go to my estate planner and basically buy the a majority stake in their firm.
37:19
And in exchange, be like, "Cool, there are a lot of other founders like me who also want estate planning, who also want legal help, who also want trademark help, who also want accounting and basically just build a MFM style like back office um set of businesses.
37:34
And instead of an affiliate, like actually own them, make sure that they're they're great, like trust in them.
37:39
And um and then drive a bunch of value to the to those businesses and then in return, there's a bunch of people founders like me who are constantly asking for recommendations about like, "Yo, I'm trying to find a good blank."
37:50
And I've burned through seven accountants before I found one I like.
37:56
Same thing on the estate planning side.
37:57
Same thing on And so, it's like not everybody should have to redo that work.
38:00
And so, that's one thought I've had as to like a cool business to build that just kind of helps kind of founder entrepreneur, you know, types.
38:09
Um and yeah, just like own those own a own a collection of those businesses that and then, uh you know, have audience, you know, people in this audience who want that want those same services be able to just go find who we use.
38:25
Yeah, and the the cons are like can you possibly vet the right people and have like actually quality, but the pros are like this is pretty much what Richard Branson did with Virgin.
38:35
And so it's definitely possible.
38:38
I often wonder why like more celebrities like the Kardashians and stuff, like why don't they own an equity stake in more things than they do?
38:45
It doesn't seem like they do for a lot.
38:47
They have done for one or two things that ended up being quite big.
38:52
And so I wonder like what's the strategy?
38:53
Like where where's where does cuz every celebrity has thought about this, too.
38:56
And so I think like well, where's the down where's the where's the mistakes that like you know, how much how many if you're going to take equity stakes, you know, how much how many things can you promote and how many things can you you know, you're better off basically in the in those cases like you're better off finding the one or two product categories that you can own a large chunk of and go big, right?
39:17
This is like Skims for for Kim Kardashian.
39:19
This is Kylie's lip stuff.
39:22
This is Conor McGregor's whiskey Irish whiskey.
39:24
It's like you know, he took the Irish whiskey thing he was like, oh, I'm just going to put this on blast.
39:29
I'm going to own a chunk of this.
39:31
I'm going to put this on blast.
39:32
I think they sold it for 500 or 600 million um within 3 years, something like that.
39:37
So, you know, that was like worth a lot more than like affiliate linking out to 20 services or trying to own tiny chunks of 20 businesses and then have to use your clout to promote 20 different businesses.
39:47
That's kind of exhausting. So, I think that's why.
39:51
You want to do a different topic?
39:51
Yeah, I um let me brainstorm or do you want to go to Is Your Pain for Taiment really good?
39:59
Uh both of my things here I think are pretty good, but I can save them cuz I think to the end. go. Go.
40:03
All right, which one do you want? Pain for Taiment? Yes. Or the Katana Store?
40:08
The Katana Store is a horrible name.
40:08
So, what is that actually? Oh, I've seen this.
40:12
Is this the guy who keeps tweeting about his YouTube page? Yes.
40:16
Yes, I thought that was beautiful.
40:16
And it I kept I'm like, wait, katana? Is this a joke?
40:21
Like you literally just sell swords? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so I see this guy.
40:26
I've been I've been seeing this guy for a while now. And so he sells Same.
40:29
I think his website's called minikatana. com. So it's mini katanas. But what does that mean? Like a tech deck?
40:35
Like a like a like a tech deck but a sword? What's a tech deck?
40:38
I don't know what that is.
40:40
You remember the mini finger skateboards?
40:40
Oh no, no, it's not that small.
40:42
It's like, you know, like 2 ft in length.
40:45
Instead of like a full samurai sword, it's like, you know, 5 ft or whatever.
40:49
Uh this is this is uh you know, like half the size of of a normal thing.
40:52
Maybe you know, 2 ft instead of 4.
40:54
I didn't know the I didn't know the standard size of a katana if I'm being honest.
40:57
Yeah, I realized I said that and like, you know, the katana guy is going to come after me here and that's not who you want on your bad side.
41:02
All right, so if you go to this website, you'll see that it does about 1 to 2 million monthly visits, which is a lot.
41:11
That is a lot of traffic for an e-com store.
41:13
Uh I he tweets about their revenue sometimes.
41:16
Wow, the the website is actually awesome.
41:18
It's like the supreme of like swords.
41:20
Yeah, actually that's a good that's a good thing.
41:23
So I think this business does it does he said eight figures.
41:27
It does at least 10 million a year in revenue.
41:28
I think it's probably closer to 20.
41:31
Um so I think it's probably closer to 20 based on the traffic.
41:33
And one of the main ways that they do it is through YouTube.
41:37
Okay, so really there's two kind of like hardcore takeaways that I have out of this.
41:41
So this I'm calling my um I'm calling this my new theory my updated theory on what it takes to have a great e-com brand.
41:51
By the way, these are dope.
41:51
I'm I'm going to buy me a [ __ ] sword. These are sick.
41:54
Yeah, you went from making fun of this to add to cart in like 6 seconds.
41:56
Okay, so Yeah, I'm going to buy me a gold sword. Who doesn't want that?
42:02
the Stranger Things Law, which is basically if you want to make it in e-com, one of the things you got to do is find people who are strangely and unapologetically obsessed with a certain lifestyle.
42:13
And then you just need to sell them things.
42:14
So, so you know, that's that's the whole model, right?
42:17
So, here's an example, katana store, right?
42:19
So, it's like you have this people you have people who are just obsessed with Japanese culture for some reason.
42:24
And they're always like fedora like it's like the fedora kind of Indian guy who loves Japanese culture, right?
42:30
Like you're finding white people who are super anti-Japanese culture, not Japanese people.
42:35
And and so you're like um And and and there's people who are really into something that's kind of irrational.
42:42
And I remember me one time I met this guy who was the first product guy, first product manager at Twitter.
42:48
He joined when Twitter was maybe like 10 15 people total.
42:52
And I was like I remember talking to him and I was like, "So, was it obvious at that time Twitter was going to be huge?" He goes, "No, no, no.
42:56
Like Twitter was it was like basically nothing at the time. It was very small.
43:01
It was just kind of this thing that tech people were doing, but even the tech people who were using it kind of felt like, "Well, this is stupid, right?
43:06
Like we're all just text messaging what we're like what we're having for lunch right now?
43:11
Like that doesn't seem like the next big thing."
43:15
And he goes, "But luckily I had learned a very valuable lesson, which is anytime you observe a weird behavior, people doing a phenomenon where people are in mass just doing this thing that makes no sense.
43:28
I first your first reaction is say, "That's weird."
43:30
And you kind of judge it.
43:31
He goes, "But I've learned you got to lean into that phenomenon.
43:33
If people are doing it video games. there's a reason. Exactly.
43:36
This reminded me of my experience when I was in college.
43:40
I remember freshman year of college, I walk into my buddy Tofiq's dorm room.
43:44
And I was like I see him playing video games.
43:47
And he's got his back to me.
43:48
He's playing I don't know, Starcraft at the time I think.
43:52
And then I'm like, "Yo, Tofiq."
43:52
And then he turns around.
43:55
And I'm like, "Oh, sorry.
43:55
And I like I didn't realize you were in a game."
43:56
And it cuz he took off his headphones, he turned around.
43:58
And I noticed that the game is like still going.
44:02
And I his not he's not touching the mouse anymore.
44:03
And I was like, "What are you Wait, what are you doing?
44:05
What are you just like in like a demo mode? What is this?
44:08
And he goes, "Oh, no, I'm not playing. I'm watching."
44:10
I go, "You're watch This 2010."
44:12
I'm like, "Uh 2000 uh No, 2000 seven or something like that. 2008.
44:17
And um I'm like, "You're watching somebody play video games?"
44:22
And he goes, "Yeah, I I always do this."
44:24
And I'm like, "You woke up" I was like, "It's 8:30 in the morning.
44:25
You woke up at 8:30 in the morning and started watching somebody play StarCraft.
44:28
Why don't you just play?"
44:31
He's like, "No, this is This is like one of the best players.
44:32
I just want to watch him." And I was like, "Nerd." I was like, "Hold on.
44:40
Let me go get four friends so we can make fun of you together cuz this is not going to be fun alone."
44:44
And I literally went and got grabbed my roommate.
44:46
I was like, "Come see what Toffeeq's doing.
44:47
This guy's literally I was like, "Do you know Is this your friend?"
44:50
He's like, "No, he Well, did he start like making fun of him, but you actually like sit next to him and like, "Well, hold on. Hold on.
44:55
Let me like let's just sit with this dragon, you know, like Yeah, well, yeah.
44:59
Wait, well, why did he go left?
44:59
He should've gone He should've gone left. He went right.
45:02
"Yeah, this guy's the best player on the Korean server.
45:03
So, they they played this match last night, Korean time, whatever. I'm watching it now."
45:08
And I was like, "You are the weirdest nerd."
45:11
And this guy is the weirdest guy.
45:14
Uh he he does like many many weird things. This was one of them.
45:16
And I remember just laughing at him and making fun of him. Fast forward 10 years.
45:22
I go and I I'm like announcing in our LinkedIn or whatever like, "Hey, we sold our company Bebo to Twitch. Super excited.
45:28
Join the exact team at Twitch."
45:30
He called I get this call from Toffeeq.
45:32
Toffeeq calls me uh you know, twice a year.
45:34
I get this call from Toffeeq. I pick up.
45:36
I'm expecting congratulations and he just goes, "You little bitch." And I'm like, "What?"
45:44
And he's like, "You used to make fun of me for this [ __ ] and now you're Mr. Twitch."
45:48
And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.
45:50
Dude, you were way ahead of the curve.
45:52
I should have listened to you.
45:53
Like I could have created Twitch if I had like if I had leaned into this insight that people want to watch other people play video games."
46:00
God, I love a guy who holds a grudge for 10 years, by the way.
46:02
Dude, he was he was ready.
46:03
I like the cut of your jib, guy. I'm about it.
46:08
And so anyways, that that's kind of the the the the learning of if you see people doing the strange behavior, right?
46:13
Like I remember seeing people wear those Vibram five toe shoes where you're like you're going to run barefoot? Why do you do that?
46:21
Like you know, and they're like super into that lifestyle.
46:23
I saw a video of Joe Rogan talking about people who hunt white bucks or some [ __ ] like that.
46:30
Like you know, some certain type of deer, I guess.
46:34
And he goes, "Dude, people don't realize how crazy this lifestyle is."
46:39
And he started explaining that people will build fields of like food and like lounge areas to try to attract these bucks in to hunt.
46:50
They like spend months building these like, you know, man caves for bucks just to attract them and then they hunt them, right?
46:57
And I was like, "That's crazy.
46:59
That I bet People who get in People getting cold ice baths every morning.
47:03
People ice baths every morning, just like you.
47:06
People who I met a guy yesterday makes $5 million doing a woodworking course. Woodworking. And it's like, why?
47:14
Because people who are into woodworking are not just kind of into woodworking.
47:17
You can only be really into woodworking.
47:22
And so there's this crazy If you see the strange obsession, that is the basis for a store.
47:31
Our software is the worst.
47:31
Have you heard of HubSpot?
47:33
See, most CRMs are a cobbled-together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.
47:39
I think I love our new CRM.
47:42
Our software is the best. HubSpot. Grow better.
47:46
So, that's the first thing.
47:46
Second thing, these guys are crushing it with YouTube organic content.
47:51
They built their YouTube channel up to 2 million subscribers.
47:55
And I think this is one of those like really cool growth hacks.
47:56
I think it's worth going and looking at where they just do these unboxings.
47:59
They got like, you know, like cute girls who are into katanas, like nerding out about katanas as they unbox them.
48:06
And it's like, yeah, I can see a bunch of dudes are getting really into this channel. That makes sense to me.
48:11
Like I think that's going to be like I think there's a lot of people who are going to like this brand and like this content there.
48:16
And so I think they're just doing a really good job.
48:17
I think it's good really good execute like 10 out of 10 execution at like a five out of 10 opportunity.
48:25
Um but like you know, still nonetheless is a lot lot you can kind of learn from this.
48:27
Dude, I'm looking at their YouTube.
48:29
I don't understand a lot of these references because it's like anime based, but they don't do that many videos.
48:34
It looks like they do one or two a month.
48:36
And they all kind of hit. This is crazy.
48:41
I think, a lot of TikToks maybe.
48:41
So I think they do they do TikToks.
48:43
And they basically just move their Facebook ad budget into hiring a full-time female creator to do this content and that sort of thing.
48:49
And so Uh yeah, I think they're it's it's a really cool really cool brand.
48:53
So I just wanted to share There's a guy I shout out because I forget his name, but on Twitter he's like showing all of the back end.
48:58
Like he's taking screenshots of their YouTube, and he's a really really good follow.
49:03
He's really been fascinating. I forget his name, too.
49:08
I'll find it in a second, but he said something like um he said something like they uh they got something like two or 300 million views in the last year, and they only started this past year.
49:21
Uh and he's like we're getting 80 million a month. Isaac. What's his name? So his name is Isaac. He's the Isaac Med, MBD.
49:29
His bio says scaling a sword brand to nine figures with organic video marketing.
49:34
Well, if that ain't exactly what we just described.
49:36
You know, like perfect description.
49:37
Yeah, he did a really good job. cool.
49:40
Also, I like his profile picture a lot.
49:42
He kind of looks like a mad man.
49:42
He did like a good clear headshot.
49:46
But he kind of looks like a mad man instead of like a try-hard.
49:47
And I just appreciate anybody that's not a try-hard. By the way, pet peeve.
49:53
I feel like all of Twitter is so cringe and tryhard.
49:57
And I don't know if anything changed or I changed.
50:01
But do you feel this way?
50:01
Like I feel like 90% of tweets, and including my own tweets, I'm like, is there a tweet that's not cringey?
50:09
I think that we were the tryhards, and now we're over it, and we're making fun of people that are doing the exact same thing that we did. Yeah, I love that.
50:18
You you use the ladder, climb up, and then you pull the ladder up behind you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:23
I think that's what we're doing, you know?
50:24
It's like When I did it, it was cool, but when you do it, that's small boy stuff. Yeah.
50:29
I think I think we're just being haters, which is cool. Which is fine.
50:34
It's It's a natural That's a natural thing.
50:35
Let me explain I'll wrap up with one quick thing.
50:38
I posted a a researcher job.
50:41
So, basically, I don't really have a researcher.
50:42
You do, and I'm envious of that. I want that.
50:45
I need a little help cuz you're you're you always come up with fire.
50:48
I need a little help coming up with good content for the pod.
50:49
And by the way, if you want to see the job, just go to my Twitter and like scroll down, and you'll see like a Google Form.
50:54
But so, I I tweeted this out.
50:57
I got like 300 applicants.
50:57
And in order to apply, I was very specific.
51:00
I was like, if you screw up one thing on these directions, like I'm not even going to consider hiring you.
51:07
I was like, you have to like bring your LinkedIn here. application.
51:13
Well, yeah, because I was like, dude, if you're not going to sweat the details on this, then you're not going to That's what I said.
51:17
If you If you don't do a good job on this, I I I don't believe you'll do a good job on anything else.
51:22
And I made people I was like I was like, really simple, come up with three ideas, and make it in a Google Doc, and put the Google Doc link in this form.
51:28
Make it so it's readable so I can just click it.
51:30
If it's not readable, I'm not even going to ask to like I won't even look at it.
51:35
And I got hundreds of applicants.
51:36
About half of them followed directions, and about a good chunk, 25%, were actually pretty legitimate.
51:45
What do I do with like these hundred like decent people, you know?
51:49
It's kind of like an interesting This is like an interesting business problem or a business an interesting problem.
51:54
If you have people So, we did this with apartments.
51:57
So, our my first business that was an online company was basically, "Look, in San Francisco, an open bedroom for a $1,200 a month apartment uh an open bedroom in a three-bedroom house, that gets like 500 applicants.
52:10
And all 500 are interested in living in the same neighborhood.
52:14
They're all interested in this ad, so they clearly have similar interests.
52:15
Why shouldn't just group them into their own thing and move them into their own apartment?"
52:19
And that was the premise of my first company.
52:20
With this, I'm like, "Man, I got like 300 people, 100 are are somewhat qualified.
52:25
What do you do with this group of people?
52:27
If I can it's kind of seems like such a waste that I'm just using one of them. You know what I mean?"
52:31
Yeah, unfortunately, not a lot of people need a researcher like this.
52:34
So, I think you just need to translate it to like something like most people don't have a podcast that requires researching random business stuff.
52:41
So, what could these people do that's What's a job that's more common that these people would be really good for?
52:49
Is it like chief of staff type roles?
52:49
Is it like something like that, you think? I don't know.
52:53
I have to I just started thinking about this ahead of time like right before we started recording, but I did think this is like the the application process is and this is just a little small thing.
53:03
Imagine if you're Burger King or something or some huge company and you get like, you know, a million applicants a year.
53:11
It's a kind of interesting where if you you can only hire a couple of them and so you're like are wasting 98%.
53:19
You know, in the same way that Ford decided to make charcoal out of their burnt wood that they were using to heat their furnaces when they were making iron.
53:26
Can I What can my charcoal be of these 299 applicants that I don't actually hire?
53:32
Yeah, that's a great question.
53:32
Um I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. Sorry. Yeah, sorry people.
53:36
Like this is the letdown, but Yeah, the an question.
53:41
question. The thing to do would be like what what common job do these skills translate to and then you have now a cohort or a pool of people that are you know somewhat vetted that you could create like a job board or some sort of like matching marketplace or service where people could just hire you know people like this for for that common job
54:00
but I'm not sure Well, I wonder like like the people who have enough probably don't care but what like the people who like that the engineering companies or some someone who's getting like a a startup that's getting an engineering company or getting engineers to apply what they should do is just like be like hey, I'm sorry. You didn't get the job
54:15
You didn't get the job but here's like five other gigs that are kind of cool and just take like the $30,000 referral fee. Do you know what I mean?
54:23
So our buddy Ryan Hoover kind of did this he he was hiring in a a researcher or like a analyst for his fund and he's like dude, I got like hundreds of applicants I have interviewed them and he's like these I forgot how many let's call it 30 just for an example.
54:37
He's like these 30 were really good. I just I can't hire 30.
54:38
I only needed one and so he emailed me and a bunch of other people who had funds he's like do you need an analyst like here's our kind of vetted analyst that we thought were good.
54:49
If you need one like I'd love to help these people get a job.
54:50
Like he wasn't asking for any money cuz Ryan's a nice guy and you know, this is not how he's looking to make money but like it was kind of great.
54:56
At the same time I was sort of like I'm not looking for the sloppy seconds like these these people weren't good enough for you.
55:02
Why why are they good enough for me?
55:03
There's a part of me that's like that too.
55:04
So I think you have that challenge.
55:06
If I'm a tech company I'm looking for engineers That's fair.
55:09
and I hire these people and you didn't hire me but you know, Facebook didn't hire you but Google should and I think Google's got a little problem with that.
55:14
So you have to find somewhere around that signal problem.
55:17
Same thing with investments.
55:17
If I send an investment to you I'm like hey, great deal not doing it though. You should.
55:24
You should invest in this.
55:26
It's like that those are the worst those are the worst emails cuz it just sometimes it's true.
55:29
It's like oh this is just your niche or it's your stage or whatever.
55:34
But a lot of times it just adds like a negative flag to it for no reason.
55:38
Well, and the answer to this might be there's nothing I could do. [ __ ] them. Sorry, guys.
55:42
Like you gave me you you did all this work for me and you just not you're not going to get the job.
55:46
And there's some guys who have applied for like eight jobs that I've had throughout the years and I feel so sad. I'm like sorry. Yeah, you missed again.
55:54
We're not hiring that many people, right?
55:56
So, it's just a hard hard thing to do.
55:58
Um All right, let's wrap it up there. Good episode.
56:04
And uh yeah, we'll see you guys next week.