3 Niche Business Ideas We Thought Would Fail… But Actually Crushed It

May twenty fifth, twenty twenty three. Subject line. He said it was a bad business idea. Dot dot dot. Emailed out to his whole list, I think. Hey folks, Alex here.

Telling you telling people you run a mouth taping business isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Did anyone think that that was sunshine and rainbows? You know what they say. Running a mouth taping business is all Everyone always asks me, like, how awesome is this business? I feel like I can Well I know. be what I want to Alright, what's up everybody, back to the greatest podcast of all time. My first million, where we talk about business ideas. We talk about businesses that are under the radar, crushing it that you haven't heard of. And hopefully when you listen to this podcast, you get a little inspiration, you get a little wind in your sails, so that you go out and kick a little more ass today.

Sam, I have an ass kicking story for you. You wanna hear it? I love ass kicking stories. In fact, this is two way. It's it's stories of other people who are kicking ass, and it's a story of me getting my ass kicked as an investor. So here's two investments that I passed on for two totally different reasons. And I'm gonna tell you the reason why I missed it and the really cool story of what what these companies did. All right. So this first one, three years, two or three years ago, two years ago, I think it was. And It's this guy David, and he's pitching me a startup. called Jenny. And it was

at peak AI time. So this is twenty twenty one. Um You know, GPT three was out. Everybody was excited about AI. And this guy had yet another AI startup idea. And I didn't really know what to make of it. It was small. It was only doing$2,000 a month in revenue. So he's like, hey We've got great traction. I'm at two K M R R and I'm like

That's cute, son. Two K M R R you know, like The pool guys make a two K MRR. Come on. We we gotta do better than that. But really nice guy. We get on a call and um I don't remember what I said, but he told me afterwards he was like, Yeah, you were like one of the nicer people in terms of giving us feedback and telling us what to do. At the time they had a pretty undifferentiated product. So what they were doing was a product called Jenny AI. And what Jenny was doing was it was a writing tool. So it was just like Jasper Which was like

You just say, Hey, I need a blog post. It writes you a blog post. You need SEO content. You need blog content. You need email content. And it was just like writing blogs for you. And there was a bunch of starters doing this at the same time. Jasper was doing it and they were taken off. So it was like a kind of a hot space, but I was like, dude, I think you're late to that party. And he's like, No, no, no, we're gonna make it. And I like the guy. He had told me that at age sixteen, he had basically he had started being an entrepreneur at age sixteen, trying to build companies like try to build a t-shirt company, fail. But like, you know, that's a rite of passage is start your first terrible idea. He had gotten that out of the way. And now he was onto this, which was cool, and he's like, Yeah, I saw he's like it's actually a funny story. He goes

We got on uh GPT two when it was just like developer access mode only. And we told it to like, I don't know, tell us a joke or say something wise but funny. And it's uh GPT go two goes What's the darkest place in the world? And they go, Why? It goes.

A butthole. They're like this thing is this thing is crazy. What is this tech? And so they're like, We're all in on this. So they start trying to make ideas for this. And and how old are they when they start working on this? So they're about twenty-four, I think, uh doing this, right? And he's like, I got no money. He's living in his mom's house. He's like literally, I I have to ask my mom, like, hey, can I get the credit card? I want to get Chipotle. And he's like, you know, she didn't make me feel bad, which I get respect. Like I know she probably felt bad. 'Cause like

You know, Asian parents, like all their kids, all their friends' kids are like at Stanford and getting a promotion. He's like He's still in the bedroom. He's I don't know. Also like twenty four is the threshold where it's like Cute from concern. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Endearing to concern who's making that transition.

And she's like, I don't know, he just keeps saying, Thanks for hopping on the call, but nothing seems to happen after that. Like, you know, he's pitching people all day in his bedroom and it's not working. But he makes a pivot. He makes a pivot that that made a lot of sense. He did what I call a niche down, a zoom in pivot. And so a zoom in pivot is when you basically say I have this thing today that's kinda meh for everybody.

But maybe for one set of people, it's awesome. And this is the same way that actually Twitch started. Twitch was You had Justin TV, which was broadcast anything. It was his grand vision. Broadcast anything, broadcast your life, broadcast your backyard, broadcast this sports game, broadcast this video game. And only two percent of it was people broadcasting video games. And Twitch was a zoom in, Justin TV was failing and they said, What if we just did the video games thing?

And it it sounds counterintuitive, it's like Well, then we'll be too small. It's only just that little bit. It's only two percent of our current traffic. But it actually had the potential to be quite big once you specialize the product in that. So these guys did the same thing. They did it around College students.

who need help writing essays specifically, not like Oh dude, it's like One minute before the deadline, just give me a full essay. I just want to like hand it in to my teacher and make them trick them that it's AI. It's like, no, no, no, it's actually like a writing assistant. So you basically you're writing your essay. And it you don't just say, give me an essay about

The industrial revolution. you start writing your essay and then it kinda like Like an auto correct, it'll kinda like fill in the rest of the sentence. So if you're writing, it'll kinda like s if you stop, it'll like suggest what the next couple of sentences could be. It'll help you cite stuff as well. So there are sources, exactly. For example, online is like is really well is really great. So it's the effect of the kinogenic diet on human longevity. And looks like he's talking about something, and it's like, Hey, by the way, do you want to cite this paper that's already mentioned this or that? And it's generates the well-formatted citation at the end.

Or it'll run a plagiarism check for you. It'll be like, Hey, let's just make sure that this is not copying what's already out there because you know your teacher's not gonna like that. So has a couple of like specific tools and you can it's like a it's not like chat GPT where you're it's just a chat interface. Like you kind of click buttons and you select Wha how you want this to help you and then it helps you. Do you know how like uh Microsoft used to have Clippy who would like catch you making errors. They just need like a little picture of Bill Ackman that says like uh that's plagiarism. Exactly. Exactly. He told me that like basically at the end of the essay, less than thirty percent has been written by AI. So 70% is written by the student and thirty percent ends up getting filled in by the AI. Okay so He gets this idea, but even still

How do you know if this is gonna be successful? So now he pitched me Two years ago. At two thousand in M R R. It's currently doing three hundred thousand N MR, so three point six million a year. Uh in fact last year he had an offer to sell the company, I think, for three billion bucks.

He thought about it, he's like, Oh my God, I can be a millionaire, I can have three million dollars. I'm young, I'm in you know, my early twenties. And he turned it down and now the company's probably worth ten, ten to fifteen million million bucks today. So in six six to twelve months, he basically, you know, tripled the value of the company. So that's that's great. So I talked to him and I was like Dude, David, what's uh What's the story here? What happened? He's like Uh well, you know, we we talked to you, we did we did a bunch of things. So here's here's kind of the story of how they figured it out. So do you want to know

The kind of like the startup survival part of it? Or do you want to know the strategy of how they made it big? Well, the strategy. I mean the startup survival mode of it, like he was just probably floundering, but he didn't have any expenses. So like he was kind of default dead just not even in startup mode, but default dead just his life. I mean, but then uh actually Jason Calicanus' uh incubator launched, gave him a hundred K. Um, just like over email, like here's 100K. And so then they move to Malaysia to be like, cool, this will last forever here. And so he's like, just let's how do we just make this hundred K last as long as we need to survive? Cause we don't know if there's ever gonna be another investor. They they did end up raising more money that they raise like another 800K later, but how did they make this big? So I want to share a couple of things. So first He's like, you know, we do the obvious things. We prepost about it, whatever. It's not really going anywhere. Then

Three there's three interesting inflections for this business. Inflection one. Is He does the the the the stuff that does a scale. He goes and he fights for that first hundred customers with hand to hand combat. And the way he did it is a strategy that I'll the overall strategy for what what worked here is I'll call influence the influencers. So He starts joining Facebook groups and he wrote a long Twitter post about this. You can check it out. So

He joins Facebook groups. He's like uh join a group of like let's say Ten thousand people. And he's like, what you can't do is join the group and then immediately post about your shit and then it just gets taken down or flagged as like Promotion, sales, get out of here, dude. So he's like I basically did a strategy where I was like, I'm going to

Warm up. these groups so that like if I do ever want to post How would it be like well received? He would just work backwards from what situation would make this be well received. He's like, Well, it would be well received if The moderators and admins liked me. And they were rooting for me and actually they liked my product. They already used my product.

And that I was a familiar face in the community. They had seen me around adding value. And that even when I post, I was really posting actually just for feedback and not for like Buy my shit. So he's like, Let me work backwards from that.

So he joins the group. And he starts posting just like very helpful content. And in a Facebook group, the bar is pretty low, right? Yeah, yeah. Nobody's like professionally trying in a Facebook group. People are just very casual. Most people don't do anything at all. This is like a like a Facebook group for researchers. Uh be for like college students, it'd be for like grad students anything in a hypothesis about. So he's like, Oh, I think it should work really well for grad students. Got it. So he joins some school's grad student group, which has like six thousand people or whatever, and then he would get in and what he would do is he'd first start making helpful helpful posts. So he's just very visible. And very helpful. People start to see him as like a regular.

He's a regular at the bar. Okay, then he hits up the admin and the admin's like, Oh, you're one of the regulars. Yeah, sure, what's up? He's like, hey man, I wanted to get your feedback on something. Would would you be down to do like a fifteen minute call? I know you talked about this in a previous post. I think I actually have something that can help you with that. And then the guy would be like

All right, sure, I'll do it. So he gets on the call with him, he shows them the product. And then he's like, I'm he's like, I'm not gonna promote this until I see the eyes light up. He's like basically. If they don't like it. Then I'm dead on arrival. Not if the if the core power users don't like it.

The casual guys aren't gonna like it. So he's like, I'm gonna keep iterating on my product until those guys are like, Yeah, this is actually awesome. And I see that they're using it after the call, like they keep using it. So he does that. He does he asked them questions. He he was like, I read the mom test, like you guys said. These guys are fans of the pot. So we learned how to do these customer calls. Then I'm doing the calls and I'm uh I'm finding out their pain points and then I try to build a product that solves them.

And then I'm seeing do they use it on their own organically afterwards? Once they did, he's like, I got'em. He's like so then I would let them use it for a couple weeks. And then he's like, I would um Oh, and by the way, he's also like I'm gonna circle back. So I would do the call And he's like

A week later it's like, Hey, I took all your feedback and I made the product better, which That's like a key part of of like winning users over is Making them feel like they're heard and what that you actually acted on what they said. Um Finally, he'd be like, Hey, do you think I could post it in the group? Like, do you think other people would like this? Like, Yeah, for sure. Actually, I'll post it for you. And they would go post it. So now you get the

The kind of like cosine from the group admin or moderator that everybody knows the leader saying Hey, this is awesome. I've been using it. The founders in the group, if you have any questions. Uh check this out. So we start getting a bunch of tracks. So we got the first hundred customers through this like

Very manual process, which was really not as much about getting customers as it was about Getting the product right. By winning over the customers. This is very similar to you doing the first hundred calls with Hampton members, right? Like you showed me your calendar and I called it the zebra calendar. It just f stripes, just twenty minute calls. All day. Just like your whole calendar was striped and it can't be a little bit more. Well, I did this with Reddit too, by the way. I did that when when the hustle first got popular is because I posted on Reddit and I did the same thing. I wasn't as eloquent as he was, but I basically just said ten percent self promotion, 90% add value. So people start you start getting a reputation.

So do did you see that there's a movie about the guy, what's his name? Some Roaring Kitty who like did the game stuff. Okay, so Roaring Kitty, the real person, is like a really good looking guy who would charismatic. Like he looks like he kind of looks like he could be an actor, like when you see him talk. And I remember watching that movie and I'm like, dude, the real the the real roaring kitty is cooler looking than this actor. Right.

I'm looking at David Park do this video and I and I'm seeing how he dresses and I'm seeing like some of the home videos that he's taken of himself. I'm like this guy looks like an actor playing him. Do you know what I mean? This guy's got the it factor. Like I can't even hear him talk, but I can just tell it by his body language how he dresses. Like this guy's got charisma. Got like the guy's Yeah, yeah. This guy looks he looks like the actor playing him. Yeah, he's like one of those people where if they wear like clothes that don't fit, it looks good. But if you wear clothes don't fit, you look like a fucking idiot. He's one of those people who can actually wear clothes that don't fit. Now let me tell you, okay, so then here comes phase two, get lucky.

And uh get lucky is Y you know, we've done that thing before about the four levels of luck. The first one is just dumb luck. Lightning strikes you. The second one, which is Fortune favors the bold. He's taking a bunch of action and he puts himself in a position to get lucky. So There's there's two lucky breaks that happen. The first

Uh. This guy Zayn, who runs a uh AI newsletter, I think it's called. superhuman I think it is. Superpower, superhuman something like that. He um does this Twitter thread and it's called Ten websites so useful.

It feels almost illegal to use them or something like that. That's so funny. Classic like you know, clickbaity thing. Yeah. This thread goes so viral, dude. Guess how many likes this thread has? I don't know, ten thousand?

Three hundred and sixty five thousand. Dude, I could post a sex tape and not get three hundred sixty five thousand In fact I probably won't get any likes. But actually can post a sex tape and not get three hundred sixty five thousand likes. Your friend who you said has a porn site that's not that popular. And I was like, wow. The worst case scenario. How many downloads did he get from or uh how many users did he get from that? So he's like, dude, every every minute, he's like, I'd get ten customers. And he's like it was just insane. And so he goes for he gets like this huge boost. Like, you know, whatever. I don't know exactly how much, but like

ten X or more, you know, is the revenue. He's out he's at two thousand before that. And now we so that the first thing I described is how we got to the first two thousand MR. Then he gets the viral Twitter thing and now he's in the like tens of thousands of monthly recurring revenue. So what happens after that? Jennifer Lopez does a commercial.

That's about AI with virgin air or something like that. And in the commercial She's like, Oh, I'm not Jennifer. This is Jen AI. Uh and so Jen AI gets a bunch of searches. He's the number one search for Jenny AI. And so he's like, I got a bunch of free traffic from that. That helped again. He's like so I'm getting lucky. He's like, but I still don't know what to do to like really blow the top off this thing.

And then they start posting TikToks. Now this is what I want to ask you. Sam, you did a great job early on with the hustle. I'm gonna put you on the spot. This is gonna be hard. You at the hustle. did some really cool ads. Uh you you basically were like Instead of just saying, Here's my newsletter, please read it. It's it's very good. I promise. You were like My boss thin so smart.

But what he doesn't know is I just read the hustle every day. Right. And it was like value based, right? And it kinda had that that hook, which is what is the What is the end happy out happy ending for this customer? It's not that your newsletter's great, it's that your boss thinks you're smart. Everyone thinks you're so smart. My boss thinks I'm smart. I'm not.

My secret weapon is the hustle, which I get every morning. That was the ad. Right. And you stole that from somebody and then now a hundred people have tried to copy that. I was I wouldn't say I stole, but you could say that. You could say that. I don't think I would say that. Uh I would say I was heavily influenced by a random ad that I saw from the skim. And I changed it and now everyone else has since stole it. A jury of our peers would say that. So so this guy now now I want you to tell me. Um If you had to do an ad. Right. You're making a little a short video, a TikTok.

And you need to promote Jenny AI. Just let's brainstorm real quick. Right, let's do this. Let's do it live. As Bill O'Reill used to say. Tell me what how what you would think of. I know this is a very hard prompt, but if you come through, just imagine. How smart everyone's gonna think you are at this podcast. Good. What would you do? How would you design this this TikTok app? Well, okay, I actually think that I would steal that same premise, which is like my teachers think I'm brilliant. I'm not. I'm really just using Jenny AI.

Um, video is harder. So all of my ads were text and a photo on Facebook. To do this on video, that's like what young people are great at, that I'm really bad at. What would you do for the video? I would do that same premise, but I don't know how I would struggle to display that. Yeah, watch this. Um by the way, if you're watching this, uh if you're on audio And you're like, Oh my God, I really want to see this ad.

This ad sounds awesome. This is the ad that drove all of their growth. I want growth and I want to learn how to be better at advertising. Maybe you should go to YouTube. You should watch this ad with us. Maybe you should Go to YouTube and subscribe. And then watch this ad with us.

What do you think Sam? Is that good advice? Well, so listen, earlier you're talking about Jenny AI and how they were doing okay and how they niched down and found their target market. That's basically this podcast. We took all of business, we took all of comedy, we niche it down to the very few people that actually want to joke about stupid stuff like us and dissect different businesses and that's how they all work. That's this YouTube channel. So whether you're listening on YouTube already or you're on like Spotify or whatever. Go to the comment section. 'Cause there's a lot of people making fun of us, but a lot of people actually adding value and like breaking down cool companies. Click subscribe. Help her brother out.

So That was our version of this ad. Let's see this one. This TikTok has four million views. So the ad is basically it takes a fo instead of saying Um, my boss thinks I'm so smart, or my teacher thinks so smart. A different format, which is what I call the relatable struggle. And it starts, let's just break this ad down. So it says, It's a girl, it doesn't look like an ad. That's the first the first thing to know. It looks like Starbucks.

If you want ads to work nowadays, don't make them look like ads. That's the biggest thing. As soon as I see an ad, I'm insta-swiping away. So this needs to be relatable. So it looks like a college girl. At a Starbucks and it says Doing an essay last minute, my goal is to submit before twelve AM. Done two things. Relatable problem.

And it's established some some stakes. Will this person or will they make it? Well won't they make it, right? All right. That's the thing. It's a it's a door closing mission impossible. You got to slide under the door. I gotta tell you the second thing. I've my experiences like Fifteen million dollars in ad spend. I'm gonna say something right now that's gonna make me sound horrible, but I'm just gonna say the truth. Here's what I found with my numbers.

Women that are w so women Get higher clicks amongst women. Women get higher clicks amongst men. And men Or rather, so so women that are like

Just women do better amongst men and women. For getting clicks. So we've always I've always had a higher click through rate with women. Now Here's the thing about the woman. They have to look

Like you can approach them, like I can have a conversation with them, but they're aspirational. If they're too like good looking or too like fancy looking, it doesn't work. It has to be an approachable young woman. And I have found that that gets the most clicks amongst all demographics. And they did that they did that wonderfully here. Did I say that appropriate? The level of nervousness in your voice as you're trying to say this without getting canceled. You're like, You're a fine approachable young woman. You're a strapping lad young lad. Like it was like it was like a if you use like 1940s language, you're like

If you're a young lass who's Splendid and fine, then then you're it's like, dude, you can't just avoid cancellation by using old language. I'm gonna call it next door hot. So whether whether you're a next door guy or a next door girl, next door hot always outperformed like Beautiful or model or whatever. Yeah, runway hot. So that's frame one. Relatable strike. Okay, now Two is

Okay, and then by the way, it says current time ten twenty. So it's here's ten twenty, gotta submit this by by midnight. Last minute research. And then it says Then it th this is the key one. Ten fifty, mental breakdown, and she's crying basically. Uh like and so now you're like all right. You kinda don't know. Is this gonna be funny? Is this gonna be like it's obviously kind of like

It's plan, but it still doesn't look like an ad for any product. We're ten seconds in. No Hint that this is an ad for product. Then it says coffee and tick tock break, relatable. Uh says back to it.

And then it basically is like Shit gets serious and it's her like Clipping up her hair. Again, another relatable humorous like, Oh, that's so me. I get it. I do that. Uh I'm guilty of this, right? We're now thirty seconds in.

And there's been no mention of the product. And so This does two things. Number one, the TikTok algorithm loves that. It's you're watching full length videos rather than swiping away because it's like, oh, this is some ad. The second thing is You're kind of invested. You have sunk cost. You need to see the ending. Even even once you realize and one of the top comments is It says um

For a second when you showed Jenny AI, I was like I got bamboozled by an ad, all caps, because you didn't realize it was an ad until you're Basically what? uh thirty five seconds in. And then even then it doesn't It's not some polished demo of the product.

It's a phone recording a laptop of someone typing in Jenny AI into like their Google search. And then finally it tells you what the product does for you, which is It'll help you write two times faster, and the happy ending is she submits it on time. Okay. So Four million dollars. my doctor and lawyer and accountant are where they're just like

At Starbucks at eleven fifty, trying to plagiarize a paper that's due at midnight. Well that's how they work. Eight years ago. Shit. Dude, you know that. You went to college with people who are now doctors, and you're like, that guy? I know that guy. I know the real I know the real version of that guy, right? That guy only drinks Jägermeister. Like this guy should not be a doctor. Uh, and so right now these guys so that ad was great. So the David Park, you're amazing. So they're at three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. A monk? Three hundred thousand a month, so three point six million a year.

And uh doing really well. So congrats to the Jenny guys. Uh did great. By the way, he gets cancer then. And he says this in the p in that starter story video, he goes I'm he's like I felt like my dreams and desires were both coming true at the same time. What's that? And he got uh that's a footnote to his story. He got cancer. He got cancer during that like last year or whatever, and then he had a surgery and he got out, he's good now. It's uh it's a crazy story, dude. It's a it's a really crazy story. So congratulations. By the way I don't think

I wouldn't say this is gonna be a smart investment yet. So Oh, I d I don't think it's gonna be a good investment, but I think it's gonna be great for them. You make six to eight million bucks, that's fantastic. But below before thirty, that's amazing. You're you're set. I I like

So if I was David, this is a company I would love to own. This is not a company that I would love to invest in. But it's gonna make him very, very rich, I think, at a very young age, and it's gonna make him like mildly famous amongst our little Start up dude. There's a business I would love to sell. If I could sell this thing for anything above eighteen million dollars. You won't see me the next bye.

See you later. I'm gone. Wait, the paperwork's not even signed. I don't care. Bye. It's over. I'm out of here. I AI moves too fast, dude. I'm not trying to be In the middle of the hurricane of AI and hope that I'm not made obsolete by You know, one click chat GPT or some big company adding this. I think this is actually fairly protected. Like I don't think it's so niche, I don't think too many people are gonna go for it. But

I just wouldn't want to mess with this. I also think that college student essay writing isn't like the biggest Tam either. So you know, I would wanna sell on the way up and get out and go do something else. Yeah, and also Sam Altman raised the equivalent of America's GDP, like five trillion dollars for whatever he like whenever I see this these numbers, I'm like, that just means nothing to me. I hope I'm dead by the time this becomes a reality. Because there's any Sam Albman story you wouldn't believe? No, I believe I would believe it all. If I told you The open AI headquarters is underwater. Would you be like that's bullshit or would you just be like where? I would believe anything about it. Yeah, I'd be like, so like should we scuba up and like go and visit them or like what do we do? Yeah, I'd believe it all.

Um I've got all right, I've got a big one and I've got a short one. I'm gonna give you the short one first and then and then I'm gonna hear this thing about flow. But Do you remember I want to give an update. And I'm gonna say with preference with this update. Last time I gave an update on this guy He took that update and he clipped our YouTube video and he turned it into an ad and I got super fucking pissed. So I just want to tell you, don't turn this into an ad. You do not have permission. That's dumb. It looked like I endorsed this product. I don't.

A few years ago, I think it was three years ago, this guy started DMing me telling me he has this idea for hostage tape. Do you remember I told you about this? Yeah. Tape that you put over your mouth. Because mouth

s mouth breathing at night makes you a bad sleeper, I guess is the premise. It's just gross. I don't know what it is, but there's some health benefits. And he just like got in right when the Huberman's and the Brian Johnson's of the world and all this stuff. So he he timed it perfectly. He told me he was launching this and I was like, oh this is This is really dumb. Th this is the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time. And he kept m DMing me. Kept sending me updates.

I think in year one he did two million in revenue. Now he just told me he ended two thousand twenty three with fourteen million in revenue. And then he's saying that this year in twenty four, he's like, I think I can get forty million in revenue. He's like, We're buying all these ads on Joe Rogan, we're gonna be sponsoring the UFC. He's saying all this crazy stuff. And I'm gonna file this under the I cannot believe this worked. I still can't believe it's worked, and he's totally proven me wrong so far. Has this guy been sending you updates? Uh not update. I've talked to him a couple times about one specific deal he was going to do. I just try to help him out. By the way.

May twenty fifth, twenty twenty three. Subject line. He said it was a bad business idea. Dot dot dot. Emailed out to his whole list, I think. Hey folks, Alex here.

Tell you Telling people you run a mouth taped business isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Did anyone think that that was sunshine and rainbows? You know what they say. Running a mouth taped business ain't all Everyone always asked me, like, how awesome is this business? I recently got called out on a very popular business podcast called My First Million. Maybe you listen to it. Anyways. I reached out to one of the hosts, Sam, to tell him my idea.

She said it was a bad idea, all bold. That was over a year ago. Now, fourteen hundred reviews, hundreds of s success stories later, I couldn't help but message him again. Well he didn't I don't know what I don't know what the but the thing is oh he goes

Um I thought it'd be really funny if the hostage tape army If you're if you're a customer of this and you're in the host tape army I mean None of these words should be going together, by the way. None of these words should be lumped in the same sentence. The hostage tape army. You know what I mean? If that's on your bio, like you're out.

But he he said, Show up in the comments and say, Hey Sam, hashtag shut your mouth. I like that part. That part's pretty good. Has this tape, shut your mouth. I like I think that's good. He goes, I don't want to start a w a war, but these guys appreciate a good prank. We do. We really do. We do. Um so I don't know if he did do that. I'm gonna click this uh this little bit. And by the way. He's getting the last laugh. If his tape is untaped, he is getting the last laugh. This guy this guy's winning. He's making a lot of money. People actually want his product. I'm wrong here. He's right. I still think it's stupid though. I'm looking at the comments, by the way.

I don't see one hashtag shut your mouth, Sam. So I don't think hostage tape army showed up. So the cavalry did not appear for this one. But I think it's funny that he's doing this, and I think it's great that he's he's winning. So uh God bless him. I got so angry when I saw my face on these ads, though. I started getting these ads and I'm like It said like I lost. Mm. What the fuck? I was making fun of you and you just totally jujitsued me and now I'm promoting you.

All right, you you shared a an L you took, I'll tell you about an L I take. It's twenty it's twenty twenty and I'm getting dinner with a friend. And We're only like I wanna say forty minutes into the dinner and he's like

I gotta go. And I'm like, Was it me? Was it something I said? Am I chewing too much? What's going on? Why why you gotta leave? He's like, No, no, He's like, I hate to leave, but I gotta I gotta go meet with this founder from Belarus. It was just you two at the dinner? Let's start at the dinner.

He just bounces and I'm like Belarus. I don't know where Belarus is, but I was like all right, that's uh I I don't know if this is some you know elaborate excuse or what, but he leaves. So I finish up dinner, go home, I see an email from my friend. He says, Sorry I had to jet so early. But this company's really interesting. He tells me about this company called Flow.

And he's investing in this company called Flow and he's like if you want in, I can get you in. And I remember this because today or yesterday I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see Flow is one of the biggest success stories. In consumer startups today.

A hundred and ninety two million in ARR. With sixty million active users And it's been the fastest growing health app uh for like, you know, four years. And I'm like a hundred and ninety two million dollars in error I was like Why does this app sound familiar?

I go back and look at my email and I see that I could have invested in this thing years ago had I just replied to this email. For my friend. What valuation I don't know what it was back then because I didn't even reply to ask. But uh whatever it was, I should have done it'cause you know, the obviously the thing has been growing so fast that It is uh, you know, it's clear it's become a billion dollar company and it's it's done really, really well.

But this company's really interesting. Last Pod You talked about I forget what ammo or whatever it is, like some Eastern European like app builder factory? Yeah, they make a variety of apps. Like one's muscle for men, and then another one was working out for women while the men the women are on their period. Well, I see your Eastern European women's period app and I raise you. Because that's what flow is. Started by these guys out like Belarus, Lithuania, something like that. Two two twin brothers, by the way. So the twin brothers

One uh they're raised by a single mother who's a librarian and they're like, Yo, we gotta make money. Like they're fifteen years old. He's like, I was going to school and then I would work a full time job after school. So I go to school for eight hours, then I go work for eight hours. And that's what I did every day at my as a teenager. He's like, and I just had this like deep like We have to figure something out. He's like, so I Did two things. He's like, I taught myself how to code. He's like and I was teaching myself using these like textbooks

He's like, so then I started actually writing books to make some money. He's like whatever I learned, I would then package up into a book and I would write it. He's like, I've written, you know. A bunch of books and then I started pub I became a book publisher. I started publishing. It's like I've published a thousand books now. Um So I'm like, okay, random. He's like the other thing that happened is 2008 and the iPhone app store comes out. And uh he's like, I think this is gonna be big. I think this is gonna be like, you know, the internet was big. There was a bunch of winners. I think there's gonna be some here. So he's like, forget the book publishing. Let's start making apps. And so they start a health app. Kind of fails.

Start a second app. Kinda fails. And people ask them, they're like, you know Would you learn was Flow your first app or how'd you do it? No, no, I started two things before that, similar space, but just didn't didn't fully hit. He goes, but I believe the si that success

Is the sum of your attempts. Exactly, those first two attempts that I did for a couple of years, that is the success of flow. I just love that quote. Success is the sum of your attempts. I think that's an amazing quote. And so he goes. We start flow.

And they're like, So you're a dude building a women's like period tracking app, the number one period tracking app in the world? Like, how does that happen? How does a dude in Belarus do that? I love the I love this quote. It's my not my job to build the product. It's my job to build the company of people that are able to build the product. Exactly. They're like how how do you have the product intuition of building this? He goes I was like, I this is one thing I learned in those first two products was As a job, as a CEO, as a founder, my job is not to build the product, it's to build

the company that will build these products. And that's what they did. And so they actually built two things. They create this Holdco, and the Holdco owns like four apps that are all super successful. So they own Flow, which itself does about$200 million a year in revenue. And that's Flow's help. So it's basically it started off with just simple like period tracking. So it's like a a monthly kind of like tracker. Uh, but then off that they they go into other things. So they created what they call a woman's health super app. And this was the pitch that I saw at the time when my friend went and got dinner with them. And they were like Look, we built the number one period tracking app.

That's great. Uh and at the time they had like thirty million users using this and they said that in the US Ten percent of adult women. We're using their tracker. So like we built the best tracker.

But a tracker's not gonna be like the most monetizable thing, but they're like, well, why do people track? Well often they track because of Health reasons, they track because they're trying to get pregnant. They track because um Maybe they're entering menopause. Like there's all these other things that maybe they need. health coaching, maybe they need these other things. There's a bunch of maybe's from there.

And they turned out to be right. And so they were like, We're gonna make more money than any of these other health apps. So they're bigger than Calm or These other like meditation apps that that are like in the kind of health and wellness space. Uh, this is a bigger app than all of those. And it's run by these guys in Eastern Europe. who, you know, have basically dominated the world in this one category. They're the number one in this category. And so they but they also own a couple of other companies. They own Another app called Zing and they know another app called Prisma, which is like a photo editor.

And they owed d do you remember when Prismo went viral a little while back? It like was cool looking. Filters. Um The Hold Co has raised a hundred million dollars series B. And that's called uh that's called Palta.

Pulso, yeah. And are they in America? No, they're in Lithuania. Really? And they have like hundreds of employees. And this is like in the pitch deck was like

Yeah, we ha we can hire like ten super talented European coders for the cost of one you know, mediocre engineer in San Francisco. They didn't say it like that, but that I added the mediocre part, but that's that's the implication, is basically we have this like talent advantage where the We're the big fish in a small pond, but the small pond is highly talented with really good programmers and uh were super, super cost efficient. And so they were able to to be very um Very efficient as they've as they've grown.

You could have invested in this? Yeah. So this one that one sucks. So the so the I would say the first one was not really a a miss in that like Even now I don't think that would have been a great investment, but great business to own, not a great business to invest in. This one would have been a great business to vest, but it just didn't hit any of my patterns. It's like

You have Eastern European company versus a Silicon Valley company. You have it's in the, you know, period tracking. I don't know how big that space could be. Uh, you know, I I don't really I m I underestimated, I'm sure many people underestimated how big that app can be. And in fact, that's why they said they're like I love that these guys didn't bullsh, like they didn't do the thing that all Silicon Valley startups do where they make up their origin story where they're like Well, the reason I got into this was that my my aunt was having trouble like

You know, like Jack Dorsey with Square, he's like Um, you know, I was um I was I was trying to buy this uh this vase that was being you know, this glass this this guy was blowing glass and making this vase for me and I wanted to buy, but he couldn't take a credit card. And I thought Wow, the small businesses of America are like, you know, underserved. I should really change this.

In fact, actually I think part of that story is true. That the co founder did do that as a As a Hobby. But I think most startups make up their origin story where they're like Uh you know, like native deodorant. He's like, My sister was pregnant and I just did not want her to be having aluminum in her armpits. And so I created a pregnancy site. Like, yeah, right, dude. You just the shipping cost of deodorant was just a lot cheaper than mattresses and you just exactly like that's why you did it. Unit economics is not as good of a story where like I went to Etsy and I was hunting for the most o most highly sold product that didn't have

That was under one pound of ship and had eighty percent gross margins. It's like that's not as good of a PR story. So these guys, they didn't do that. They were like, Why did you do this? Well, we just wanted to find the most underserved market. He's like we just knew that no talented builders were building in this space. And we thought well Half the world's population has this problem.

Uh they're completely underserved and we could build a you know a simple product that might have legs. uh to to grow from there. And that's that's what they did. This guy's amazing. We gotta get him on the pot. So is the one of the founders, I guess it's you said two brothers. His name is Yuri. Gerski, I guess. Uh, he's from Belarus, but I think they kind of live in Poland, it looks in

In in Cyprus, they're all over the place. But he ha he's really successful, so Like you kinda acted like he was like a young kid just like blogging and packaging his blogs into books. No, no, these guys are gangsters. Yeah, like these guys are ballers. And he's had multiple companies that he's sold one he's sold to Facebook, one to uh

I actually don't know how to pronounce this. What's mail dot r. U. It's the Russian Mil um You're a dollar. Yes, yes, yes. Uh, he sold one to Google. Like th these guys are hardcore. These guys are awesome.

Yeah, these guys are kicking ass. And so they Uh And you know, he's he's basically like they were like, What do you think contributed to the success of this? He's like, Well The biggest thing is we pick the right market. And I love that he said this because I think this is where he even said this. He's like, most people he's like, You need three things. The right target market

The right timing. And then the right people to execute on it. He's like most people don't get the first two right. But that's your rising tide. If you could pick the right market. And the right timing. He's like, we picked basically this underserved women's health market, and we started in two thousand eight, right? When the apps were came out. That's when we started making apps. So we were early. And we went to the to the underserved market that had demand.

From there, all we had to do is just hire good people and it would it would work out. Um, and I think that most people When you Talk to entrepreneurs of the way their brain works, if you had to make a pie chart. It would be like

Number one is like, you know, the um How cool is my idea? So it's like not market, but it's more product. They focus on the product, then they focus on the people. And then last is like they kind of think about what market they're in. And they try what they try to do, which I think is a bad strategy, one I a mistake I made many times, is like

Build the best product. In the in a whatever market. In a meh market. But you'd rather Go into an amazing market. And build a Good enough product. That's like where a lot more success comes. And the best example of that, I believe it was uh Coinbase. They were like

Our website early on sucked, like it went down all of the time. But we were we picked a market that people were begging for it and that they were willing to put up with a really crappy product. And another speaking of these apps. Michael uh Acton Smith from Calm. He gave me this great like sound bite one time and we were just talking.

And he was like, I don't launch these other things, and I kinda had to push the rock up the hill in order to make it work. But I knew that I picked the right I knew that I picked the right market, being calm in meditation. It was like It was as if I had just

was surfing and I just happened to catch this massive tidal wave. And my job was not to push the rock up the hill. It was just to hang onto the surfboard and hope I don't crash because it's pushing me and it's doing all of the work. And that's the difference between something really working and something not working because he's like, I had all these amazing things and he's like, I'm a really good entrepreneur, but I didn't and I kind of brute forced it into reality. But it was really, really, really hard. And I learned that when you pick the right market and you catch the right tidal wave, that makes life a thousand times easier. And the hard part is what you people get wrong is

Okay, I want to pick the right market. So they just go to the biggest, flashiest market. Right. So right now. AI. I gotta go into AI. And they go into a super competitive market. That's uh it is a hot market. There are gonna be huge winners there. But the trick that like, you know, Peter Thiel one time went to a a uh a a meetup and they were like, What's the key to investing? He do he drew two circles, like a Venn diagram. And he's like, um

Seems like a bad idea. And the other is a good idea. He's like The problem is most people just do things that sound like a good idea. The problem is everybody else is also doing things that sound like good ideas. You're just it's tons of competition. And uh you might be too late by the time it seems like a good idea.

He's like so the secret Is can you find something that today seems like a bad idea? But it's actually a good idea. Coinbase started back when Bitcoin was like not considered like an obvious crypto wasn't the wave back then. It wasn't the trendy thing to do. It was actually an underserved market.

But it wasn't and it was turned out to be a great market, but it wasn't considered already a great market where all the smartest people in the world went and were fighting this like war over there. That's what AI has today. It's Everybody agrees it's an incredible market. So they're all gonna go fight this battle over there. So you really have to, if you're gonna have something, you have to niche down and find some section of that that's underserved or go somewhere that's today not seen as that. Not like forget AI. Find the thing, three years from now that's AI. This seems like the hostage tape guy giving his TED talk. You know, he's gotta be standing there like this talking about the Venn diagram of bad ideas and good ideas, and that his idea is just gonna be in the circle of the bad ideas. I'm sorry, hostage tape guy. You're right. I'm wrong. You're the one winning. Um

The this is amazing. These guys are amazing. Uh I I would love to get this guy on the podcast as he's speaking. He's I imagine he's an English speaker, right? Or partially. Dude, he probably speaks better English than us. Yeah. Is there anything this guy can't do? Like would you if if I if one guy had to save my life and then they were like How about this guy? Like Yeah, sure, I'm sure he could do it. Yeah, and if you Google this guy, so his name's Yuri Gursky. Sorry, I'm pr I'm probably pronouncing it a little bit incorrect.

He's got the perfect balance. He's got that next door that next door hot look. You know what I'm saying? It looks like he could you could chill with him a little bit, but he also looks like he could really mess you up physically. Like he's he does a good job of of having that that next door. I get so many messages or comments of people making fun of me and they they either think I'm gay or they're just like, dude, why are you commenting about people's calves all the time? And I'm totally just like giving into this. Uh by the way, do you have something to promote today or what? Now it's time. Right now we're talking about S some of the best execution we've seen, some of the best, most talented people we've seen.

And are they sitting in America? No. They're overseas. Actually everyone has been overseas. Everybody we've talked about has been overseas, and that's because the world has changed. There's talent everywhere. And

For you as an entrepreneur one of the things you should be doing is leveraging that global talent. The way to do that is to go to Shepherd and just tell him what you need. All you do is you go there and you're like, hey I think we need a developer. I need an engineer or I need a designer. Or I need somebody who could do all of our influencer marketing. Whatever you don't have time for, that's the bottleneck of your business.

Go to Shepherd. Tell them what you need and they will find you somebody. Couple weeks, you will have talent in place. Usually for five times less than you'd hire for in America. This is a This is a not so secret secret anymore. You know, for my e commerce company, I think forty percent of our staff is international. Um

We get tremendous cost savings and we get some of the best talent. by just by looking overseas, looking where other people aren't looking. If you're hiring in the same place that everybody else is hiring, You know, you're you're not gonna make it. They're doing developers now? They do developers, yeah. Because they do Latam. So the w one of the things I've been using is all their like Laddam talents in Latin America, where you get a lot more of two things. One is a shit ton of MBAs. So like I needed an operations person. I was like

My COO is just like I feel like every COO is overworked. Like I don't know if you've ever had this, but like the entrepreneur always just gives the COO everything they don't want to do, which is like 85% of all the work in any business that just gets dumped on the COO. It's like, yeah, that's operational. You should figure that out. And so I was like, dude, my COO needs a COO. And so we started hiring operations people from South America because they have Basically people who are you know, MBAs, so they're like

trained that way. They've been doing consulting for years. And they make like, you know, let's call it three K a month. And so compare that to in America you'd probably be paying 12 to 15 K a month for that same talent. So we have four to five times more. And so we found some awesome uh both developers and operations people in Laddam. That's what I go for there. And then like kind of like customer service design. Um

Anything that's like data m marketing marketing assistant, that's all Philippines for me. Wow. All right. Well, and what's the URL? Support Shepherd.com. Go to SportShep.com and then when you're there, tell them I sent you they'll take care of you. Do we wanna round up? round out with the the three random things you have here. Yeah, I got some random things. I don't know uh which one we want to do. Did you watch the Super Bowl at all?

Yeah, I w I'm not like a sports guy. I I but I watched it just'cause it was a big deal And uh you have Jason w how do you say the guy's last name? Kelsey? Kelsey. Jason Kelsey over Travis Kelsey. That Travis guy seemed pretty likable in his post game like interview. Like a f he seemed like a big goofy idiot in the best possible way. Yeah, he kind of is although it was really bad for him. I don't know if you saw it during the game, he like

The reason it wasn't cool was because his coach is old enough that you're like, Oh, that ain't that's like your you kinda push an old guy. He like kinda lost his balance, he like almost pushed him down, and it was like everyone felt bad for like their own dad in that moment. That's what I mean, but it was like oh he's a little But they like hug it out and they seem like they're fine afterwards. Yeah, I think they're fine, but definitely all of the Taylor Swift fans were like Red flag, we need an emergency meeting. All the Swifty said like an emergency meeting. We're like, I'm worried about Taylor. I don't like what I saw out there. But did you see the uh I did see the brother. So he has another brother in the in the NFL, Jason. His brother dressed up like Zach Galfinakis from uh Hangover, where he wore from Alan from the Hangover. He looked hilarious.

Yeah, I basically want to do a TED talk, actually. I want to prepare slides and be like, here's why you should be Jason Kelsey and not Travis Kelsey, because on paper. You want to be Travis Kelsey, he's the receiver. You know, Jason Kelsey's a center, like the most unglamorous position that there is. Uh, so it's like, you know, you have Travis Kelsey, he's a tight end, he's always catching passes, he's like, G better looking. Like he's like, you know

More handsome, he's like more stylish. He can dance. The other guy's kinda awkward. Um, you know, Travis Kelsey's dating Taylor Swift. Oh, that's amazing, right? But Jason Kelsey's wife is a badass. She's like Great looking former athlete, super fun. She like joins his podcast all the time, and she's like got a great personality and just seems like super down to earth. Like she shows up to the to the box because they know you're gonna show Taylor Swift like a hundred times during the game, right?

And it's Taylor Swift that she's there with like that actress, what's her name? Blake whatever. Blake lively. Yeah. Blake lively. Yeah. And it's like And they know every time something happens, they're like Doing YouTube thumbnail face. Like they're so exaggerated with their emotions, because I know we're performing here. Whereas like Jason Kelsey's wife is there in the background. She's wearing like her college hoodie, like her like alma mater hoodie, no makeup. And she's just super comfortable and she's having a great time. She's like eating food and drinking. She's like,

Chilling out, not trying to get attention all the time. So it's like And then if Jason shows up, you've thought about this a lot, huh? I did,'cause last week They played uh or two weeks ago, they played in Buffalo. And the game, I don't know if you saw it, it was like crazy snow day. And Jason Kelsey was

uh watching the games watching his brother play And he went and he was like, dude, I don't want to sit in this like luxury suite. He's like, I wanna be out there with a this is awesome. This is like what you grow up loving about football. It's like A snow game. This is crazy playoff football. So he takes his shirt off, he jumps into the crowd, he jumps out of the luxury box. Into the crowd with the Buffalo fans and starts chugging beers and just like having a great time with them. He's like, that's the experience I want.

And his wife was like, Don't do this, babe like Taylor S here, they're gonna like people are gonna see you doing this. He's like I don't care what people see. I wanna like This is what I grew up like, you know, admiring. I want to have a great time. So you can tell this guy's having a great time.

He's not in it for the show. He's got the real relationship goals you should have, not the Taylor Swift like High school You know, the the cheerleaders dating the quarterback type of shit. Um

And then he shows up to the Super Bowl dressed like Alan from the hangover. I love Jason Kelsey. I am all about Jason Kelsey, Jason Kelsey over Travis Kelsey, that's my case. I'm looking at the I just googled uh Jason Kelsey's shirt list and you do see him in the box wearing gray sweatpants, taking a shirt off. And he's like in the drunk guy mode where he's yelling. What's hilarious about this guy is you see his face and you see some of the things

Where he sounds just like a goofy dummy, like he's just joking like your fat friend. But Do they show him shirtless? And you see a can of beer in his hand. And it is so small. This guy is a giant. This guy will kill you over you. Yes. This this bud like looks like a five hour energy in his k in his hand. This guy is a freak.

How like they're they're both, I guess, huge. This guy does not look huge when you just see him from the neck up on the podcast. This guy and you know he's got gray hair, right? So he like doesn't as ex like look like an athlete. You see him shirtless. This guy looks like a freak. That's amazing. Yes, exactly. And I just think there's some life lesson, there's some wisdom in this whole thing. In fact, another version of this, by the way. Uh, did you see like when the I don't know what it was, the Grammys were on and the Tracy Chapman uh song was going super viral. Do you see this? They did Fast Car or in L. So do you know the back do you know her story or do you know the backstory of

Like Tracy Chapman and that song. Yeah, she basically was uh just a a normal person. She was a uh just your an average lady and she I think got discovered by like a friend of a friend. So uh the friend being the writer of billions. His Yeah, his dad was uh worked in the music industry and Brian went up to Tracy and was like, look Well that they went to the same college. So they were in college. She's just playing like on campus and he's like

You're amazing? He calls his dad. He's like Daddy What he said was he goes, Look, this is like lame usually and I never like ask my daddy for a favor, that's kinda douchey. Right. But you've got it. What you care if I make an introduction to my father. I actually think he might help you. And I'm not just like blowing smoke up your ass. Like you actually this actually could do something. And I think it it became something.

It it did. And so she she kinda gets a contract, but she's She's like The anti artist, right? She's the anti pop artist. So she's not Um like she's just gonna make the music she wants and she's not gonna like just do what the record label wants. They were like, Oh, tell us about your relationship. She's like, No, I prefer to keep that private.

Yeah, yeah. Like, but just tell us. She's like on Access Hollywood, they're like, But there's got this song has to be about someone. She's like, Well, it is about someone, but like, you know, I prefer not to share and I don't want them to feel bad about it or anything like that. So I I'm not gonna share. And they're like, well, it's hard to promote this album if you're not gonna say anything. She's like, I just want my music to speak for itself. Like she was just like To me, I watched a coup I went down a rabbit hole after this and I watched her and I was like

She is the beacon of authenticity. Her and Jason Kelsey are like You actually wanna be them. You don't wanna be the pop answer. And there's something to the to just being totally authentic and like Not performing for everybody. Like she makes all the like little tick tock bitches look like little tick tock bitches of just like I don't know if you've seen the subreddit I am the main character.

Yes, I hate it. People who like think they're the main character of life, they're like They put their camera somewhere on a flight, they stand up and they're doing a TikTok dance and everyone else is like, dude, can you Can I get to my seat? Like I what are you doing? Like what is this? It's just like these annoying people who are trying to do stuff for attention. And so Do you know do you know how old Chasey Chapman is? She's like in her fifties probably. I don't know what she's doing. She's sixty. She looks sixty. She looks awesome.

And she's like she just goes gray. She's got no makeup on or whatever. She's like uh they're like, you know, how do you um How do you promote your music? She's like, I don't know, I don't have social media. Well, you don't have social media? She's like no, I mean I just hang out with my friends. Wha w what do I why would I need that? And they're like

But because um because um And do you sound like an idiot trying to explain why you need social media? She's like, I don't know, I just make my music and I I w like go outside and I play with my I hang out with my friends, like Wh where would I need that? And then they're like, Okay, but like what do you do on your phone? And she's like I don't have a smartphone either.

Haven't you heard the uh haven't you heard the story of like the Mexican fisherman and the banker? It's like that where it's uh uh you know, a a banker a rich banker's on vacation and he's in Mexico and he's loving it and he meets this fisherman who brings him fresh fish every day. And uh the fri the fisherman basically brings the fish in the morning to the banker and then he spends the rest of the day chilling. The banker goes to the fisherman, he goes, Hey, why don't you just go and h like your fish is the best. Go hire more fishermen and like I'll help you. Let's build this into a thing and we're gonna make so much money. And the Mexican guy's like, All right, but then what? He goes, Well then we're gonna like get grow revenue to like fifteen million and then we're gonna sell it. And the guy's like, Then what? He goes, Well then you're gonna be rich and uh you can do anything you want.

And then Mexican guys like What would I do? The banker goes. Well then you can just fish all day. And just hang out. And the Mexican guy's like I do that now.

And that's like the whole parable of like You know. I actually don't know what it's trying to say other than like your great life a lot simpler and all that. And all that's nonsense, whatever. Actually I'm not sure what it's all about. Why does it be light on the boat? Let's go on vacation. Yeah, I think you you missed the ending of that one. I think it's about Knowing what you want and also knowing how to how to have it have enough. Uh that there is such a thing as enough.

Um Tracy Chapman has enough. By the way, a couple of other cool things about her story that I really like. One. Um Yeah. Be prepared to uh you know, take the chance when when luck presents itself. So do you know how she got her big break? Like what kind of catapulted her to become a star? Cause obviously she's not doing

The normal stuff you do to promote yourself as a pop star. She doesn't look like a pop star, doesn't talk like a pop star, doesn't have social media, doesn't have a smartphone. So how does she initiate her break? Have you heard the story? No. So there was like a giant um televised music thing that was the uh for Nelson Mandela's seventieth. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And

She's on the like the pre-limbs, the undercard of the undercard, before the TV start stuff even turns on. So she goes And she plays two songs or three songs. Uh early in the day. And then later in the day was supposed to be the headline axe. And Stevie Wonder.

was supposed to go on and perform. But Steve you wonder Um Got lost. They messed up his backing tracks. And so he's like, I can't go on. Like my backing this is not gonna work. Like I need the audio to work. So they were like, shit. Uh, the audio's messed up. We need somebody to go fill like, you know, six minutes of time here before the next act and give us some time to fix this.

Who can go on and who can play with no backing tracks And just go on acoustic and kill it. And they were like Tracy. Uh will you go on there and play a song?

And she's like, Okay. And but it's just you you and your guitar, nothing else. She's like, Okay. And so she goes out there and she plays fast car. And you can see this video on YouTube. Her voice is like quaking at the beginning and she has no like autotune, no no vocals, no back track, so it's like You can hear every imperfection in it. But then she gets you know, she kinda comes into her own, she sings the song.

And people love it. People go nuts for it. And that's how She kind of got her break in a startup was by being prepared and being willing to go out there and take a risk and having obviously the talent to back it up. Her first album sells ten million copies. Which is insane. And then They're like

Amazing, huge hit. Um, Fast Car still is considered like one of the like top hundred songs ever written or whatever. They're like, What are you gonna do for your second album? Hey, the the record executives come to her with like some ideas. They have like a pitch meeting and they're like They like, you know, presentation, they like Pull the curtain off the off the easel and they're like, Tracy Chapman singing these pop songs. And she's like, nah, I don't think I want to do that. And they're like, but Tracy, you did ten million your first time, you could do twenty this time, right? Like the f the banker to the fisherman. And she's like, No, I don't really want to do that. Well, what do you want to do? She's like, I'm not sure yet. I'm gonna experiment and figure it out. They're like, Experiment? What do you mean? You have to go r go to the studio and record. She's like, No, no, I'm not gonna record. What I'm gonna do is she hired

So normally What a musician does is they go They write their song, they go to a studio, they hire like a studio musician to come and play the like the piano or the trumpet or whatever with them there. They have no chemistry with them. They record, then later they go on tour and they perform. She did it.

In reverse. She's like, What if I did the f the the in instead, what if I hired a a set of musicians that I really like, I took the risk of hiring them. And what if we tour for a year? writing songs as we go. And then through the tour we're gonna see What music is resonating with people. And at the end we'll just record the stuff that they like. Almost like a comedian.

going to small clubs and working out their material. She did that for music. And so and that's how she did her second album. She was like, I'm so proud of how it turned out. blah blah blah. I have no idea what the sales are, but like yeah, I like that that approach. And again, I'm I'm I'm on an authenticity kick right now. And to me, I love that. Last year I said, Sean, I'm gonna be having a baby. Do you um

Can you tell me what are some of the highlights of having a kid? This was in private. And you're like It's just great, you know. My my son and my daughter like I just

I get so much joy out of seeing that they admire all these little things. Like they just love staring at the fan, and it made me happier. that like, oh the fan actually is cool. And I like I I like am interested in now because they're interested in and and I love seeing them grow. That's how I feel right now. A few years ago a few years ago I asked you about

Really. simple thing so I just thought you would understand, like Dolly Parton. And you're like, Dolly who? Now You're teaching me about Tracy Chapman. Next, for all I know, you're gonna tell me who the Beatles are and you're gonna do this wonderful breakdown.

And I just think that you have grown so much that you are now Like Tracy Chapman, like I didn't know everything about her, but I could tell you a lot of her songs. And and now you've just discovered her, and I love that you are bringing a new perspective of this, and you're actually teaching me about an artist that I love. Next, we're we're going to talk about You know, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, let's talk about all this stuff. Tell me who Mick Jagger is. I like Sam. I used to stop believing, but now I realize I should don't stop believing. Great song. Like I am getting so much joy and I'm learning.

Now that you are do'cause you you probably didn't know much about her before this, did you? No, I I mean I just heard the song In fact I didn't even understand what you ever heard that song? No, no, I hear I love the song, but I'm gonna are you so there's two types of people. I think there's people who listen to songs For the words and there's people who listen to the songs for the meaning. Which one are you? Like I can hear a song a thousand times.

And not tell you I have no clue what the song is about. I don't I've never even actually I've never even thought about the lyrics. I might know some of the words, but like I couldn't tell you what the song is about, even though I mean I can't talk. I care about the meeting, like like particularly like rock and roll by like a lot of black people in the seventies and eighties. It's like civil rights stuff. I enjoy like learning the story about it. Yeah. I don't know I actually know what bla uh fast car is about, though. You should go listen to it. Um go listen and like actually listen to the lyrics. It's a it's an amazing story that she's telling in in that thing. So I kinda got into it for that reason. I also like one other thing. I watched the interview with her. And I think both of us appreciate

Poise? As a c as a trait. I think poise is something nobody ever talks about, but we all notice it when we see it. Yeah, those are things that I like to pick up on. What are things that Nobody says they are into a practice.

Nobody ever says I'm practicing poise. But when we see it, we all think it's badass. And we appreciate well, Tom Brady, he's so poised, or that leader. He just has this way he carries himself well. It's poise, um, under pressure, right? Poise. And so she she did this Charlie Rose interview. And Charlie Rose, again, she's kind of the worst interview ever because she doesn't say anything. Like. But she doesn't play the game. Yeah. She doesn't play the game.

He's like You know, w tell me, you know, when you were a young kid, like when did you first start playing music? She's like, Oh, you know, I got a guitar and I start playing music when I was like five. He's like by eight, I was writing songs. And he's like and he's like, And that's when you knew you wanted to be a musician. She goes. I think that's what I knew by just she didn't say I think she goes. That's when I knew I was a musician.

Oh yeah. And Charlie was like just realized he kind of this she wasn't trying to say it to own him, but What a what a statement too. And I think there's Uh What a poised way of saying something that sh She's just saying it as it is.

Uh, that's how it was. I realized I was a musician, and that's me, uh that's a part of me, that's how I am. Like that It wasn't I'm gonna try to do anything. Trying is like the least poised thing you could do. I am a musician. Uh, I think she's just she's a badass. I really respect her. And I think she lives in Ohio, which is, you know, sort of like uh Dave Chappelle, you know, these guys that are like they could have it all, they could be in the middle and the thick of it all.

But they're in fucking Ohio. Just like Chappelle's another one on the authenticity Mount Rushmore, right? Like walked away from fifty million dollars'cause you know, they were trying to control the the show. And uh And he's like, then they made they called me crazy and said I was doing crack in Africa. He's like, No, I'm I'm not doing cracking after what the fuck you're talking about. He's like I'm in Ohio. I'm not gonna my image, I'm just gonna Go live my life and be happy. I didn't know that that I I actually up until recently thought he was in Africa. He was like that was the narrative. It was Dave Dave Shappell.

Got a like basically went crazy. He's doing crack and then he went to Africa. He lost his mind. He's and he came out like years later was like No, like They were offering me a bullshit contract. I said no. And then I just went home.

And like just did other things with my life. Yeah. He's like and then they started saying this crazy shit, but whatever, okay, whatever. Yeah. He was like I was I was in Ohio. That's where uh my my father's from there. I was just hanging out with family. It's like the you know, the the the poison like when Mandela got locked up for whatever th like it was like locked up for thirty years or something like that. And then he came out and like, you know Whatever, solved the apartheid. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He did something good for the you know black guy. He was fishing with a bunch of Mexicans. But the thing that he said was badass. He was like uh they were like, you know, aren't you angry or resentful at the people that put you in the in jail for twenty, thirty years or whatever. And he was like, No, I was preparing.

Yes, I was preparing for this and I was like That's awesome. That's a cool way of saying it. Um Sean. Coming through big time. This is the Sean Purry episode. That was a good good one from Startured? No? Yeah. I think so. I think the second you give prop to Tracy Chapman and and Nelson Medella, I think that you are officially you've crossed the chasm, my friend. You know when you leave milk out for a while, it becomes yogurt culture? That's what happened to me. I just sat out for a while and it happened.

couple of dozen a few dozen years, but you've officially you've crossed the threshold. Congratulations. Uh good job, good pod. If you're a fan of this, you gotta subscribe. If you want more Tracy Chapman stuff, but also the occasional Joke about Mexican fishermen that we totally skipped over and don't understand the meaning of the story. You gotta subscribe. Uh that's the pod, thanks. I feel like I could rule the world, I know I could be what I want to. I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back

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