#221 - How to Make Millions With a Modern Day Infomercial

I think if you're starting a media company and if I started it again If you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'll put my all in it like a day song. Alright, we're live. Um So did you see I uh got Ariel Hawani to agree to come on?

I know, good job. How'd you do that? A friend a good buddy of mine is like best friends with him. And I just begged him. Your uh your outreach. I had never seen you try so hard. Normally you're pretty cool about things. I don't think you really care with too many people. But I could tell you wanted this one. I did. I uh so basically Air for the people listening, there's this guy named Ariel Hawani. He's

Got a million followers on Twitter, so he's not like that niche, but basically he's like the god of MMA journalism. And the reason why he's interesting is because he just quit ESPN where he was probably making close to a million dollars a year as a host and he created a sub stack, his own podcast, and he's kind of building like a little media media empire. Yep. And uh So we're gonna we'll have him on and talk about that.

Yeah, and you know, the thing that's interesting about him was He's been in it for a while. So like you have this phrase I think you've c said like niches get riches, basically, which is like Um a lot of people are afraid to go into a niche market. And is it niche or niche, by the way, I have no idea. Both all can work.

Okay, good. So you know a lot of people are afraid, Oh, is this too niche? And I think you have the opposite reaction, which is too niche. Fantastic. Um, at least that's my my understanding. You tell me if that's that's right or wrong. Well it's The the two things. One

When you when whenever you start doing something, it's definitely better to start for a very small group of people and a very small niche and corner that or at least get big in that. And then expand. Or the second thing is you can stay in in a growing niche. And grow with But g you know, start your start your business on top of a huge wave. For example, Twitch.

Video game streaming, super small niche. They never expanded really, right? it's still, you know, dominant w where it's just gaming. Yeah, and that niche. has just they're in it. It just is no longer really a niche. Or you have like an Amazon, only books, and then you dominate that, and then CDs, and then this, and then this, and then this. So yeah, I I think starting small is always the way to go or is often the way to go.

Yeah, and I think in in Ariel's case what he did was Um, I know he's a fan of the I kinda wanna ask him this. He's a fan of the NBA, like he's a b big basketball fan. But he didn't go for journalism basketball journalism, which would have been a a more obvious safe choice. Instead he went for MA, which was like this fringe, really niche sport that you know I it was kind of like

you know, John McCain in New York is calling it human cockfighting. It's like not allowed in certain places. Yeah. And so it wasn't really like a a very safe choice, but he was the only dude doing it, it felt like It was like You know, you can go back, you know, t fifteen years basically, and you see clips of him talking to people backstage and just budget production value, but He was like the guy covering this regularly.

And because of that, he's got like deep relationships, deep respect amongst the fans. To the point where even though Dana White, who's the president of UFC Hates him. and has banned him from like UFC events. Um, he's still the number one journalist. So imagine, you know, like this guy that that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, just hates and bans from the game, still being the number one you know, journalist for for the athletes, that's kind of uh un unusual. And so yeah, he's an interesting dude with a with a cool story.

Yeah, I'm excited to have him. I I actually think that I I think that it's gonna the it'll be a hit with our listeners, even the people who aren't into UFC. I think it's gonna be a hit, but I am a fanboy, so we'll see. Yeah, that's all good. Can I tell you about a business that is built on trust that I'm obsessed with at the moment? Okay, go for it. All right. Have you heard of examine dot com?

No. What is examination? You've never heard that? Okay. Can you go to your computer now? Okay. I'm at it. Let me go there. All right. So do I tell tell you what I see? Yeah. Okay, I go to examine dot com and I thought it was gonna be about books or something. No, it says nutrition information you can trust.

And then it's just like a giant kind of like Google search bar. It's like uh like for example, Oh, this is perfect actually. My trainer was telling me about Ashwagandha. I see Ashwagandha here. I I uh I've been taking that for eight days now. Right. So it's a supplement and so I go here and I guess the idea would be Hey, there's gonna be a lot of if you Google this, you're gonna find a lot of information, but we are a trusted source. We do the research, we Put the pros and cons here. We make it easy to understand. Is that the idea?

Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna summarize this. So The reason this interests me is I have a friend named Sol S O L Orwell, he's a good buddy of mine. I've never even met him, but we bec we went to a bunch of conferences and we were in the same room and we never met up, but we became friends. And um, he's a great guy. And I just met him as a guy and then I saw his business and it's called examine.com. And what it does is they do a a few things. So first

They get about forty thousand visitors a day. And they get those visitors by having this free content. So what you're looking at where it examines that supplement, uh Ashwagandha. But The model in which they make money is that they have a membership. That membership has supplement guides and then they also have a thing where they look at all the recent studies and they summarize it to tell you.

Exactly what you need to know. And it'll say, this is a strong study and the conclusion is this. This is a not great study and the conclusion is this. And you shouldn't you should avoid it. And they do that with all types of studies. And basically the what the company is and I the I'll I'll explain why I think this is a is a big deal, but basically they take knowledge That's locked up or complicated to understand, and they make sense of it into a really easy to understand uh way. And so they have I'm gonna give you some stats. 40,000 visitors a day. twenty employees, seven figures in revenue. Fifty thousand people have signed up for their membership. Or um

bought some of the guides. And that's only been around for about two years. The guides have, or the membership. And so uh they made money by selling guides. And so I bought the supplement guide. They have one on like I I have like uh panic attack problems that I'm trying to fix. And they have guides On It listed all the it said here if you these six supplements have been proven

By clinical trials to help with panic attack. And it lists them all and it says, take this one. If you don't feel anything in two weeks, pair it with this one and then pair it with this one. And they tell you and they go, and when you buy it, make sure that it's magnesium, not magnesium oxate. Like they tell you very specific stuff. And I think this business is amazing. It's amazing because they've spent years building up trust. So men's health Uh Dr. Andrew Schumerman, do you know who that is? He's that guy who has a YouTube where he talks about health stuff. He's like kind of going viral right now, which is on Joe Rogan and Tim Ferriss. They all everyone's site examined.com. New York Times sites examined.com. They've spent years building up trust. Every word that they write is very meticulous. Now they're starting to monetize and this model

I actually think it's amazing. And I didn't a at first I was like, There's no way this can be a big idea, but There's this company called Up To Date. You've probably never heard of up up to date. If you're listening and you're a doctor, you probably have heard of this. And so it's basically examine.com, but for doctors. Uh I mean, it's been around before examined.com. So examine.com is that for Nutrition. In this business, doctors pay, I believe, six hundred dollars a year and they get the same exact thing. They get access to a content database that very explicitly and clearly says which clinical trials are proven, which are not, and what the conclusion is, and then uh summarizes a bunch of stuff. Guess how much money that makes a year.

Uh w I think a lot. I think I think probably I mean I'm just I'm just looking at up to date and I think it has fifteen this you know, similar rub shows about fifteen million visits. A month? So uh that's pretty impressive. I would guess Okay, I'm gonna go high. Uh no, I'm gonna go low. It's always fun to to be blown away. So I'm gonna say fifty million a year.

So the estimate is closer to five hundred million dollars a year in subscription revenue. I'm blown away, just as I hoped with my low estimate. Because isn't it isn't it shitty when you're trying to when you're trying to blow someone's mind and then they estimate over it, you're like, Well, okay, not not that much, but it's still cool. It's like God damn goddamn it. Like you know, that should just be a rule amongst friends. If I ask you a ballpark something, you know, let me let me blow you away. And the company that owns this does the same thing for finance, tax, and accounting, I believe. And that whole company is publicly traded. It does like five billion in sales a year. Crazy business model.

And the I'll tell you why this is interesting to me. This is interesting to me because I love content businesses. I love them. There's a huge problem with content businesses, which is they suck at making money if you're gonna make money in the most traditional way of banner ads or some type of buzzfeed style native ads. I fucking hate that. This model I love. I think that you could use this model for a bunch of different uh categories, including skincare, including beauty. I think that would be the next the the the the easiest one, uh according to Saul. Um what do you think about this business? It's pretty neat, right? Genius. Yeah. Uh so up to date makes total sense. Uh yeah, like I I am

I'm surprised I ha I haven't heard of it. I am not surprised something like this exists and works. It just makes all the sense in the world. Examine.com also Very, very cool. And I think sort of like I if if up to date is kinda like a B to B. Examine it's kinda like a a B to C where it's like

You know, the average person who's just curious like you, I'm curious about panic attacks, or I'm curious about Ashwagandha, or I'm curious about, you know, whatever, El Carnatine. And you know, I hear about it, I hear some buzz But I'm trying to be like smart and safe about things. Where do I go that's not just trying to sell me shit? And not just trying to like

print page views as like a content form. And so I think that trust is uh, you know, like sort of like one of the only things that matters in a like world of abundance. And that's where we're we are. We're we're in a world of abundance. And so trust is like one of the key uh Key things.

And examine.com, their rule is they don't uh recommend any brand. So you can't find any brand on their site. If they say take magnesium oxate, I was like, So just tell me like which brand so I can just buy it on Amazon. He goes, No. We can't tell you that. You gotta go and figure that out because if if we'll the day we start doing that is the day we start like incentivizing the wrong shit. So it's pretty amazing business model. You know who else does this is consumer reviews. So consumer reviews you probably don't use anymore. A lot of the people who are younger or my age and younger don't use it anymore. So the consumer reviews, it's wire cutter, but they charge a subscription. That company, it's actually a nonprofit. So you can actually look up their revenues. Their revenues Uh they charge a subscription revenue. what did I say? Consumer review? Consumer report. Yeah. Consumer report. It was around it was uh around before wire cutter. I prefer wire cutter now, but uh consumer report is pretty amazing. They charge subscription revenue. They still do like a hundred and twenty million dollars in subscription revenue and they're telling you like the best TV, the best microphone, the best computer, and they crush it.

Yeah, so let me just uh Consumer reports, subscription, newsstand, and other sales. Twenty in the year twenty twenty, they did two hundred and twelve million dollars in r in subscription revenue. Crazy, right? Two hundred million million subscription revenue. That's insane. Two hundred and forty five million overall uh overall revenue in twenty twenty. Insane. I think if you're starting a media company and if I started it again

If you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool and you're a masochist and you like pain. Yeah. If I if I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now. I would only start that way and it's totally the I think it's the best business model.

Clip it. Uh all right. Yeah, that's a good one. I I like that a lot. You've talked about this in like consumer reports for other things, right? So you've talked about it for SaaS tools. Um and then some people have tried that G2, and others uh have tried that. What do you think about that? What's your latest thinking on that? Because you've been thinking about that idea for a while. I think it's an amazing idea and someone can still do it. G two has raised another round of funding uh at like a multi billion dollar valuation. I think I think it still could be done. There's a company called J Two Global. Have you heard of J Two Global? No. All right, look up the stock of J two global right now for me. I I I'm act like I'm setting you up. I actually haven't looked at it in a while.

Uh is it good? Okay, so J two global Um all right, trading at$130 a share. The market cap is six point three billion dollars and uh Yeah, you know, like sort of year to date, it's almost uh double. So J2 Global, what they do is they own a handful of publications, including I IGN, Mashable, PC Mag. Um

offers.com and one or two more. But basically they make the bulk of the revenue, I believe, from suggesting which software to buy in PC magazine. And that's how they make most of their revenue. And and it's a publicly traded company. And you look it all up. So I think this model can still crush it. I think PC magazine is pretty much garbage. G2 is okay. Um Right. But anyway, I think it's a really big business that so many people are sleeping on. And uh, you know, what else could you do this sort of trust trust model for? So I have a I have one idea, but uh I'm curious what else comes to mind for you? Skincare and beauty.

That's what I I think it could be uh done. Skincare and beauty, whatever. There's an ocean of brands. And you kinda care about you know, the the problem I think with that is you don't have fear. So that's that's one really good thing about supplements and medicine is that there's like a fear component to it, right? Like I don't wanna actually like die or get side effects from this thing or have have a you know uh sort of a big problem occur because of the potential benefits of something. Whereas with skin care, I think, yeah, you might break out or you might just want to know which one's better. But it doesn't have that fear component where people are gonna look it up and say, Before I buy this, I've really got to check. And so I think that's one of the keys.

Um you know, there's like Which one of these dishwashers is best? I think that's a consumer reports thing. It's like oh I don't want to research this, like Oh, these guys test this for five thousand cycles and they tell me which one lasts the longest and works the best. Like, okay, that's great. I was never gonna do that myself.

Um Yeah, I think that's one version where it's like tires. Which tire is the best tire to get? Which refrigerator is the best refrigerator to get. And then on the other side, there's the fear one, like supplements, medicine, sort of like alternative medicines. What's what's gonna happen from those? I think those are two like Especially good categories. And I think the difference of Choosing the right category versus the wrong category is a multiplier of like

Oh, ten X. Ten X or fifty X of your outcome. I I would imagine you could do the same for physical therapy. So the reason physical therapy is interesting, so basically I've had a injured Achilles for uh about a year now and I've been researching like crazy, and if you search Achilles tendinitis, there's loads of different stuff. And I've been reading so many studies. And what my conclusion now is this. There's only one way to fix your Achilles tendonitis, and that is to do rest um well no. A fifteen. Achilles like E centric drop down. So what that means is you stand on a curb or a step and you slowly let yourself fall, and then you uh kind of step up.

And then slowly and if you do that, and I read study after study, it's almost like been unanimous that if you do this for three months every single day, your Achilles tendonitis will get better. And I had to dig so deep for that. And I think that something like this could exist for physical therapy and injuries and things like that. Right. Yeah. And I I yeah, I I I kind of agree with you. Right now my mom has this like she had vertigo, but then it kinda went away, but she still feels symptoms, and the doctor's like Uh, you don't have Vertigo. She's like, No, no, I get that. But what do I have? I have something. This is not right. And they're like Uh blood work looks fine.

And then she has to call back and be like, Hey, I know the blood work looks fine, but I'm not right. Yeah, what do I do? And like, uh gotta let's do an MRI. Same thing. And then it's like finally Okay, do these like do this physical therapy. So she literally walks around the house with a piece of paper in front of her that has like a letter on it. So her eye has to focus on it. And she moves it to the right while she's walking and then moves it to the left while she's walking. It's like Dude, is this the exercise? Like maybe it is. If it is, fantastic, but where how do we know that this is it and that there's not like a much faster, better way? Cause previously when she had Vertigo, Um that was like Vertigo proper.

She went to three doctors, nobody knew what to do. The fourth doctor was like oh Lay down and he like shook her head like vigorously and it's like this known cure. And basically it like loosens up the crystal in the inner ear or whatever, and she was like fixed in ten minutes. And she's like, Wow, like if I just hadn't come to see you How many more months or years would I just had Vertigo? That's a pretty scary thought.

Uh, I think that could work. Or here's another thing. Do you know ki you know anything about Chiropractory? I know, I I know what what most people know, which is like uh skeptical skeptical hippo eyes, as our boy Brendan Chob says. And I didn't know that. I thought Kyro sorry to chiropractors or chiropractors uh fans out there, but basically chiropractor it it was invented by a guy, I forget his name, but he was like a snake oil salesman. He was full of shit. And he thought that like I'm gonna someone's gonna correct me because I'm kinda getting it wrong, but basically like there's like evil spirits or something in you and if you would just If you adjust the spine, it releases it. Now, some chiropractory like can help. Very little, like, but 90%.

Like ninety percent of what chiropractors, what we think they do, you you you can't adjust your spine and like your headache stop. Like that's just not how your body works. But it's nonsense, right? Also, the the acceptance rate of chiropractor school is a hundred percent. So like and it's like a it's like a it's like a Google AdSense certification. It's not like, you know what I mean? I I know I'm gonna get flat for this. And yes, there are some chiropractors out there. A lot of it though is nonsense. And I I think an examine.com can exist for all types of parts of the body. So anyway, that's my idea on examined.com. I thought it was a interesting. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I'm currently on a Bitamin regimen and I discovered it on there. I thought it was cool. You want to do another one? Yeah, okay, so let me give you another trust as a service. So this is just like a I'm calling this my two dollar blue collar side hustle right now.

Which is Here's the side also that will make you some bucks. It's not gonna be huge business, probably. It's not even maybe gonna be around five years from now. But I think right now it's a thing you could do. So um Are you big on you do you order a lot of food?'Cause I'm a I'm a door dasher, right? Like I am I do, but not but not like you. You do like every meal.

Well, I I I got a chef now, but even with a chef, there's still, you know, two to two meals a week where I'm like, uh, let me just fire up the DoorDash and see what happens. It's so expensive, it hurts me. And so when y' when you get your meal, they all have this like sticker on it now. That says safety sealed. And it's just all it is is like, you know, normally it's like in a bag and they were like tie the bag in a knot. And now they like sticker it.

To show like no human had like the food went in and then we sealed the shit. Because there's like viral videos of like door dashers eating the food. I don't even know what the fear is, it's just like I can't lie. When I see this sticker, I'm like, good, yeah, I'm glad they sealed it. Like good. I'd rather it be sealed than not sealed. That's for fucking sure. And it wasn't even a thing I was thinking about before, but somebody is out there selling branded. Safety seal stickers to restaurants.

And I just think that in general there's gonna be a whole wave if you just said I'm gonna sell Trust and safety as a service. I'm gonna sell it to every business. that needs to reassure its customers that it is taking COVID safety protocols seriously.

And then you can d you can dial that knob up to level twelve of like chiropractory where you're like I'm just gonna mail these to everybody. They yeah. Put it on yourself honor code. This is an honor code system, you know, like just just put the sign up in your in your restaurant. Uh put this mat on the outside of your thing, put this on every doorknob, hang this on every doorknob, uh

You know, stick put the sticker on every cup, you know, whatever. Um Could just send it, or you could actually like go out and verify and say, Hey, here's our five point, you know, safety inspection, and uh we send mystery shoppers out or whatever, we like actually Create kind of like a zag it reviews. type of of sticker or seal of approval.

specifically for trust and safety around COVID. That's the general idea. What do you think? I love it. And I'm I'm gonna show you an example of of of something similar to this. Have you heard of uh I think it's pronounced lead, L E E D. Lead certified the like green buildings thing. Yeah. So I was looking this up. So it's a nonprofit. So you could easily see their sales. So that that wow, they do uh I think this is I I'm almost positive it's run by a company called the US Green oh, it's not a company, but a nonprofit, US Green Building Console.

And I think they uh is that it? Do you know? No, but uh yeah, I believe you. And they do thirty one million dollars a year in sales, and basically I have no idea what the I have no idea why buildings are incentivized to do that, but I imagine the business model is such where You pay

L E E D lead, I guess is what is what it's called. And oh here, Dan says he's a former accredited professional for lead. So uh that's Stand, stand, un unmute. Wait, so Okay, on a scale of one to chiropractor, where's lead certification? It's nowhere near chiropractor. It's legit.

And uh you are a lead accredited professional. What the heck does that mean? Did you pay for the first did you pay for this accreditation? My company, my former company did, yeah. Okay, so somebody paid for you to get certified and then you charge other companies to go give them the stamp of approval, is that right? Yeah, so as a professional you get like one point towards the point total you need to become A lead building. And then there's like a

Silver, gold, platinum scale. And it's shit like, you know, you use the right kind of light bulbs you use the right kind of insulation, that sort of thing when you're building your building, right? Or renovating. Yep, stuff like that. Um, air quality, indoor air quality, which is really bad normally. Low use water, things like that. No smuggling. And why does it you sound like a lead professional right now, bro? I feel like I'm getting lead certified as we speak. Why does the building care about getting leading?

Certified. That's a good question. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of uh just wanting to be green. But there's no incentivized incentivization. Like there's but the government does does the government like give you anything or is it simply just for branding and awareness? I don't know, it's been fifteen years since I took the exam, so I'm uh a little out of pace on it. But I'm not sure if there's a big incentive for it.

Dan, how old are you? I'm thirty five. Did this when you were twenty, you were a twenty year old lead certified? Might be around a little bit. I think I was twenty two when I took it. Okay. Um, more importantly, I got a lead certification. Go to my Twitter profile real quick, just see what you see there. Dude, fuck that. I think you are the worst.

That is so lame. So you'd be verified? So lame? Are you kidding me? Sean got verified on Twitter. He's got a blue check mark. I think that is the lamest, dude. You are not one you're not a man of the people anymore. You're so out of touch for getting that. I used to shit on uh I don't need that. I don't need that. You know what what does that mean anyways? But who cares about that anyways? You know, I actually prefer not to ha

And now that I have it. All that st all that bullshit. I am so glad you get it. So glad I got the blue check. Well, I got it for like actual legit reasons. Like first I was just I wanted it for my ego for many years, but I was you know, okay, whatever, it didn't happen, who cares? But then people started actually like s uh impersonating me and scamming my followers. So they were

All these accounts that get created every month. And they would go DM my followers, be like, Hey, yeah, what's up? And people be like, Oh, hey, thanks for the DM. Like no problem, you know, I saw you follow me. Um You know, what what are you doing with your portfolio lately? And they would scam them into either

Sending them crypto. or buying random crypto shit coins or they were Um getting them to like bu buy stocks or like send them like send them money to go like invest in their fund. Like be like they like pretended they were my fund. And so people were actually like, you know, it used to just hurt my feelings that I wasn't verified, but then it was actually like hurting other people. And so I was like, dude, what the fuck? So I was bitching about it. Yeah. And uh I get I get that.

I get that, but That's the only reason I'll accept. I think every other reason is bullshit. I d I think they're stupid. What's that? It's a little jealousy I'm smelling. I I don't know, like

I think you kinda want the blue check mark too. I think the people on Twitter at Twitter need to help you out. I think I'm I think I'm barely famous enough to get it. But I I will not get it. I'm not you have crypto bill. You're telling me right now you push a button and you could just have it or not have it. No no nothing else. Just

Push this little key on your keyboard. You tell me you wouldn't push that button? I give you my word, I will not push that button. Wow. But but but if I got a small If I end up having scams like you, then yes. But I've not had that I've not had that problem. Yeah, it became like a legit problem. Uh anyways. So okay, lead certification. So yeah, basically I think I think weed is another good one. Like I would love if somebody just took on lead.

And just called it like, you know, green home. Oh, you oh you're you're a green home triple star? Wow. Doesn't that sound good already? Yes. Again, you could turn the knob however you can go super legit if you really like Find ways that you could kind of score buildings.

Um, or you could like be somewhere in the middle and you know Don't scam, but like trust as a service is a great business. I actually think that the health department's scorecard is bullshit. So I had a hot dog stand. I mean duh. Uh

I talk about it. Oh really? Have you told that story? Yeah. Yeah. You know I don't drink either? Um And uh when when they the when they did my health certific certificate Like I just bullshit through it, like hardcore. And like I I mean, I my shit was clean, but like they had all these boxes we had to check and it was bullshit. But in the day that we were doing it, I actually was wearing flip flops.

And they gave me a ninety five instead of a hundred. And so like I think it's gonna not be a growth toes out while you're making hot dogs. Yeah, nobody wants to outside in a hundred degrees selling meat that's been sitting there for like You know what I mean? Like forever. Like it's it's fucking disgusting anyway. I uh it is super dis I worked so with uh my first thing was a sushi restaurant and we had a commissary we worked out of a commissary kitchen, which is like a It's a central kitchen where Like caterers and bakers. It's like a kitchen without a storefront.

So in there was all the food truck guys. And so you so in that I saw the hierarchy of like degeneracy. It's like caterers okay so like bakers. Bakers are good people. Bakers are are nice women who uh care about their product and they do a great job and they're very hygienic. And then caterers are like Kinda like they're like bakers, they're they're legit, but you know, the the need the demands on a caterer are so high. It's always high urgency. They're preparing for a two hundred person party or whatever. So, you know, they're kind of get shit done, they'll cut through the red tape, but you know, you you you respect their decisions.

Then there's the fucking food truck guys. Food truck guys. Th they think this is a bar. They're just drunk while they're prepping their tacos. They're pretty disgusting. And then you have the hot dog guy at the end. This guy straight up Okay, so there's like a sink. And if you don't know what a three compartment sink is, you haven't paid your blue collar dues. But basically a three compartment sink is like kind of where you do the dishes in a in a commercial kitchen.

And like The three ki three compartment sink is just literally it's full of like the dirtiest dishes. And just a chemical bomb you put in there to like clean them. And the fucking hot dog guy in our commissary kitchen would just go and he'd just fill up the sink with the hot dogs that he's gonna be selling like three hours later. He'd just be throwing the hot dogs around there, washing them, dry yeah, putting them in the other sink to dry off. And it's like this guy there was zero, and I literally I don't think I've had a hot dog since. Uh, because I saw how the sausage was made and I now never want to see it again. So that's my public service announcement. Don't eat. I agree. I was clean. I mean, I kept my stuan, but I can see why most don't. You can get you don't have to. You can just get away with it. It's not even counting what's the meat. I'm not like forget the meat. Let's say the meat was pure.

The way it's handled, disgusting. So I think you could build a new version of a of a of a health department score, actually. I I actually think that's legitimate. Uh how many other area could we just do this like, okay, I'm bullshitting about Twitter right now. Could you just do this where it's like You have a con you have like a content. score like you know just like how uh you know either like how like you know uh safe and kind of like non offensive your content is like maybe it's something that's like a you know it's uh it's around your cancellation interestingness or your fan score like how much your fans care about you we just bullshit like your engagement score but we make it really visible it's like Sam, he may not have the most followers, but his followers love him.

It's like we make your Q score. Yeah, you know what Q Q is? It's like a popularity ranking. Uh we just make some we it's oh, you haven't heard this? Q score, it's like a thing for celebrities. Yeah, it's a thing for like Hollywood celebrities, like what's your what's your popularity kind of like it's not approval rating, it's like your popularity rating. How how well do people know you? And like, you know, Obama has a high Q score. And uh yeah. I feel like you can do that on social media with clout, but just like Bullshit the whole thing.

Yeah, I I I I think that's crazy. And I think that's good. Clout score. I actually think Clout was amazing. So Clout was a company that was around. It was spelled K-L O U T. Uh they had like a hundred employees. They raised a lot of money. They ended up selling for a hundred million dollars. I think it was like a hundred million dollars of stock in a privately held company. Like I don't think it was actually that good of an exit. But they um Great idea, clout. Early. You were just too early. Amazing idea. Way too early. Amazing idea. If it were around now, it would be the best. I actually thought it was somebody restart clout and just DM us. I thought it was it was the great branding and people still to me make jokes about clout. Like they'll be like oh I gotta create that cloud score and I know what they're talking about. I had a cloud score and basically what happened I mean my cloud score wasn't that great. I had like five thousand friends on Facebook though, and so I qualified and so McDonald's. The fact that you're justifying it shows how good of a hook this is. How much I would use it all the time. McDonalds would send me a five dollar gift card once a month.

Right. Yeah, amazing. It was it was so cool. I loved clout. So I think that could exist and I think that could that could kick ass. Um I think this is like yeah, I think there's a lot of between because this is I don't even think you really need to do that much differently, right? Like there's I'm sure there's like twenty percent of things you would tweak. Uh, maybe in the execution, like, you know, maybe you don't have to raise that much money. I think the timing is the biggest tweak that you needed to make. Maybe you ch change the way it's calculated or the way you promote it or the business model, whatever.

I don't think you need to change that much. I just think that the time the time is now and like As Donald Trump basically created this thing called fake news. I think fake news is very underrated how like big of a wave that actually was created, how much distrust there is around the around brands and entities now. And so people are kind of like the atomic unit of a brand at this point.

And so yeah, I th I think that uh that clout clout should be remade. How about the fact that so HubSpot has a hub so this one woman who works with me just got Scrum certified and we paid five grand it was five thousand dollars or four thousand dollars. And I'm like, so Scrum I I I don't even know what it is. I guess it's just like a um Uh project management. Uh yeah. It's how you manage like engineering sprints. Yeah. And we paid five grand, and I was like, Who the heck like is the scrum like decision maker? And then I realized HubSpot Scrum Scrum Master, by the way. Is it really? Oh my god. That's so much more like legit than it than it probably really is. HubSpot has HubSpot certification courses, and if you look on people's LinkedIn, they

They brag about passing HubSpot certification courses. We gotta talk I gotta talk to HubSpot be like, How did you I'm like, look, like you guys are amazing and wonderful and legit. But like you weren't always amazing, wonderful, and legit. You were just starting out and you somehow convinced people to trust you and take this seriously. Right. How on earth did you do that? Cause that's amazing. So they paid HubSpot. So th so HubSpot is the collector of the five thousand dues for the scrum training? No, sorry. Uh the the there's a different organization that does Scrum, but HubSpot ha you've never seen people brag about their HubSpot certification. So like if you Google HubSpot cer certification, they've got like these classes. I just block people if they tried to Right to me about that. So that's an immediate block. So there's like inbound sales, hub stop marketing software, inbound marketing. And if you Google people if you Google like that and LinkedIn, there's so many people that put that on their LinkedIn, like certified in

Uh Uh Whatever. Like there's so many people that Sight. uh hub spot as their thing. And so like and so they put it like you know how like one time if you look up Tyra Banks on LinkedIn, what she probably still does this. She puts that she graduates from Harvard, okay?

She went to a Harvard. Executive learning day. And people play like Hunts Yeah. It's like a two day look at look uh if you look up Tyra Banks, let's see if it's called it. Okay, okay. So she did a nine week uh uh uh program for executives called the The owner president management extension program. Yeah. Dude, Harvard makes an unbelievable. I'm gonna break this down actually next podcast.

Harvard's kind of whole business model around online programs, Harvard Business Review, uh the the the media company. I'm gonna break that whole thing'cause it's crazy. I'll do it with you. I I've studied the business review a bunch. Um all right, can I tell you about another uh another idea or a person actually? Yeah. All right, there's this guy named Matt M uh how do you pronounce his last name? From uh Flip. Ah man, I don't want to butcher this guy.

Sorry, Matt. I I like you. I just don't know how to say your last name. Mickey And then with a wick at the end. Mickawicks. Uh Mickowits. Uh I've known about this guy for a long time, but I wanna tell you everything that he's done. Because I bet you you know all of his work, but you maybe didn't know he was the one behind it. So in nineteen ninety eight, when he lived in Australia, he started this company while he was in high school called Site Point. Site Point basically is a publisher of books, courses, and articles for uh developers. And so you can like learn HTML, CSS, Java, Ruby, all that. They they've never raised any funding. And they have like fifty employees. I imagine if I had a bet

They probably make five to ten, maybe five to fifteen million dollars a year. Um, that's my guess. Um Well how do you spell it?

Mitsoving out Mitsovich. Mizkovic. His name's Matt McMiskovich. Um have you heard of SitePoint? Sitepoint.com. No. Is it still around? It's still around. And so like I've heard his story. He was like basically I started this like as a forum and then a blog, and people would come to my forum and blog, and I was taking like ten thousand dollar advertising checks when I was like seventeen high school. So I dropped out of high school and went all in on this. Then when he went all in on it, his forum on Sitepoint

People were buying and selling businesses on it. And so he spun out one of the the forums into its own business called Flippa. You've heard of Flipbow, right? Yes. So I believe it's prolific. Yeah, really prolific because you haven't even got to two of his hits.

Listen, so we started Flippa, which is a marketplace for buying and selling smallish websites and stores and and and things like that. They've got millions of users. Flippa is like Not microacquires in the space, but Flippa is like considered like the thing. And in fact, I think they just raised a little bit of funding, like$20 million recently. It's got hundreds of employees. It's a pretty big business. Third, uh, on Site Point, he also discovered that. People in the forum were uh Um buying and selling designs. And so he started this thing called Ninety Nine Designs, which is amazing. Ninety nine designs is one of the best sites that I've used. It's a great place to you basically

You on ninety nine designs, you give them a thousand dollars, you tell'em what you want, and like a hundred designers give you a mock up of what if they think that your project should look like, and then you pay for you select the one you like and they get the money. So they've they do close to a hundred million, I believe, in revenue. They've raised forty five million dollars in funding. Okay. From there He also saw that people were hiring all types of devs. So he started hire.com. Hire.com, I think it kinda fizzled out a little bit. It might still be around. It's definitely around, but it kinda fizzled a little. But they raised$132 million in funding. Definitely could still be quite big. So that's pretty amazing. Then he now his next thing is he's creating and so this is all has to do with site point. Started site point ninety ninety eight. His next thing is called unstoppable domains. You know what that is? I bet you know that is better than I do. Go ahead. It's just a way to buy uh buy domains in crypto. So like I have

A domain that ends instead of dot com. It ends in dot eth, which is dot ETH, right? So it's a It's a domain name service like Uh it's a it's a domain uh domain, I think it's a registrar. So it's a domain registrar for making crypto domains. And the reason it's called unstoppable domains is because When you own that namespace, nobody it's on the blockchain. Nobody can sort of take it away from you. Nobody can switch the rules on you. Um, it is sort of there forever.

So this guy, Matt uh Mickovich, has done it. I don't think he started, by the way. I think he joined it, which is I DMed him when he joined it. 'cause If the guy who's a founder of all these successful companies joins a company It's like one of the strongest signals that there can be. Um like just recently uh I I was saying this about

Uh my my friend uh it's got David Macintosh, he started Tenor. It's a it's a gift keyboard. Sold it to Google for I think a couple hundred million dollars. And then he joined Instacart as like one of their execs. So you join you know, like anytime you're you it's like this person's independently massively wealthy.

as they want to start their own company and they if they want to join as like not even like join his number one. It wasn't join a CEO, didn't join a CTO, just CPO. He was like, you know, maybe like In the top ten of the insta work. Exact. So that's when you know like oh shit, this is like uh That's this this person thinks this is a hundred billion dollar company. If they're doing it, that's crazy to me.

So the and there's all let me just tell you. So I DM'd him, I go, You join Unstoppable, super interesting move. I said, What makes you bullish on it? Here's what he said. I'm just gonna read it out loud. Uh may or may not mean anything. He goes There's a trillion dollar asset class.

Um w which is basically domains. that people are navigating using the equivalent of an IP address. If web and cryp if web three and crypto is here to stay. Then building the identity Like the the the basically the address.

For consumers is one of the most important companies of the decade. They he's like in the normal m normal web you have I can. You know what I can is? It's like a it's like a it's like a committee, which is kinda bullshit to me, but It's the committee that decides shit about the internet. What domains can be, you know, can you have a dot photo or dot biz domain? Like I can kind of decide so such a thing. He goes, It's one of the oldest monopolies on the internet. It's begging to be disrupted.

Crypto gives us a way to disrupt that because it's creating like a new a new ground where they don't have jurisdiction, they don't have rule of law over there. Um That's one of the few crypto examples or blockchain examples where I wholeheartedly agree and I think that's actually incredibly useful and totally right. I don't know who's gonna host the domain or like how that works, but I agree with that like idea because if if you're doing something, I can or whoever uh can can pull it. Right. Um

Yeah, anyway, so s uh so so then he was just telling me a little bit more about it. But I was like, Yeah, that's That's great. That's cool. And I I bought I bought an unstoppable domain. This guy's amazing. So um and get this. He's thirty seven. He's only thirty seven years old.

Amazing. This is a uh have you you've heard of him. People don't really yeah, people don't really know about this guy. Like or they don't really talk about this guy, but he's it's a pretty prolific career and he's kind of like Independent. And definitely like a um Oh no, he's an independent thinker, I could tell, right? Because nine and design is actually a pretty like very novel mechanism. It's like Oh, what if we created kind of like a design auction?

It's the best. It's the best. Like we used it for our podcast uh thumbnail or our cover photo. Or podcast art done through ninety nine designs. And check this out. When we did it, HubSpot Um like had all these designers work on this stuff. And they made like some pretty good logos and then but we still went with uh this guy in the Philippines who made this logo and it was even b it was better than all of'em. The the the trends.co website I had designed on there because like

You know, like when you work with a designer, you don't want to be rude to your own designer and be like, No, this sucks. Can you just do exactly what I told you to do, please? But you can do that with a freelancer a little bit more than a full timer. So I'm I'm a fan of ninety nine designs. And by the way, it looks like there's this guy, Mark, uh, who is his co-founder, because it says co-founder of Nine Designs Flippa and Site Point. So it's like that's pretty cool. I like when people create this kind of like duo. It's like, yeah, let's just build a bunch of companies together. I find that to be like Pretty inspiring. Uh, and it tells you something about how somebody is to work with if somebody wants to keep going back in and uh and work with you again. And I've talked to this guy. I actually invited him to HustleCon two or three different times and s he committed and then some scheduling stuff happened and we weren't weren't weren't able to make him make it happen, but I've talked to him on the phone. He's very humble.

So uh I'm a big fan of this guy. Yeah, me too. Um okay, so he's kinda like our our little you know internet founder of the week. I don't know. We we need a name for that. Uh we we have the Billy of the Week, we got the blue collar side hustle. We need something for just founders who are badass who have done like serial serial serial entrepreneurs. Yeah, this guy's great. Um all right, you wanna you wanna do one or two more? Uh yeah, let's do some other ones. Okay, so um, do you know this company, Guthi Ranker? I bet you know about it. I can tell you all about'em.

Tell me uh tell me all about so last night on this I've been on this binge, I gotta say, I've been on this binge. Um I w I'm re reading the book that really got me Into

being like kind of like a startup founder. Can I can I guess can I guess? Yes. Think and grow rich. No.

But that is a good guess, especially if I don't we're talking about. I actually haven't read that book, so I'm gonna I want to read it now after reading about Guthy Ranker. But Um I I'm rereading five the four hour work week. So uh you're your Bud, Tim Ferris. Um

Wrote this book. I got it. right when I was starting my first company. So I I started my company before this. But once I started reading it, I was like oh wow, this there's people that are like me that are out there. Who think this way, and this guy's got like systems about this. I'm just I just started figuring this stuff out. This guy's like been doing this for a decade. Great. And

I got what you call the four hour fever, which is what happens right after you read the book. Uh is my own term,'cause I g I've given this book to maybe fifty people since, and they all get the four hour fever right after I I infect them with the book. And um We already lived the four hour work week life. So now we live it. And so I went back and I'm rereading it. Right. I'm like, okay, I'd rather yeah, I want to reread the classics. And so I went back and rereading it. And I just want to see uh you know What of it do I still believe in? What of it do I disagree with? What's changed? Anyway, it's been pretty interesting. I'm I'm taking a ton of notes. And I texted you this while I was reading it. I go. Let's write a best selling book.

Ten million copies sold. The next four hour quick. And then you're like, Okay, easy. And I was like, all right, perfect. Um, because I'm serious about that. I I'm like obsessed with this. So I've just been writing content. I've been writing. And I've been reading all weekend long. Like I've just been binging. Like I'm up till four in the morning every night.

doing this and I'm like pretty convinced that we could put out like an amazing, amazing book. So anyways, that's like, you know, just Calling my shot. Um gonna do that. Well don't be surprised. We're gonna use well, I wanna be involved. Let me let's say I I I invited I wanted to do it, like I'm doing this either way, but I was like What would be the best? I go

What if the best writer I know partner with me on this? And We trade it off chapters. So like I can say something, I'll write a chapter, and I what I want you to do is basically I want you to read it. And then you write what you would write right after you read that. So it's like

Uh, you know, like Actually, I totally agree with Sean with this one. I have my own story of how I did that. Or disagree, I do it totally differently. And I just think that if we play off of each other a little bit, it can become a very interesting book because there's not many books that are that are out there that are like that. That may all change, but that's what's in my head. I also think that we should do there's one book that had a pretty fundamental change in my outlook and it's called Founders at Work. And it was by Jessica Livingston, the woman who started uh

Like why combinator with uh Paul Graham, their husband and wife, and Basically it was just interviews. But For some reason it was really special and it was just interviews transcribed. I think we could do just interviews. And write our analysis and r and reply to the interviews.

And we I I read that book on a plane. I still remember it because there's a chapter in there about hotmail. And I just remember reading that book and being like, This is awesome. This is what is this what it's like to start a company or be around people that start companies? This is fucking awesome. And you know, by the way, I hope this podcast ends up being that for some number of people in the world. Well, that could be our first book if you want, because that's like a pretty easy and actually amazing and could be fun. I don't even care on the details on I just know

Ten million copies sold. Best seller. For some people, this is their version of four hour work. What four hours was for me. I want this to be that for like a whole you know, a million people out there. I think that would just be amazing. So let's talk about Gun Three Raker. Can I tell you what I know and you can tell me if it's true or not?

Yeah, explain'em. I I did a deep dive on'em last night, so uh fill in gaps. Alright, so they are a marketing and IP owner. So they own like a it's a business that markets other stuff. They mostly don't develop their own products, but they buy products or they license them. Um it's started by a guy named Steven Gunthy. Is that his name? There's a guy one of them's last name's Gunthy uh Guthy? Guthy, not Guthy. And then the other guy's last name is Ranker. So that's and they And they started, I think, as early as the early eighties, they're in marketing, and they bought basically bought infomercials. And one of their first big hits was they bought the rights to the book Think and Grow Rich. And they created infomercials and direct response copywriting ads that they put in magazines and they sold shitloads of this book. Like millions. So and then they just

Rits repeated. And then they eventu bought Proactive. They own proactive. They own proactive and they own a bunch more. They probably do a billion north of a billion in sales and they do the same type of model. Go ahead. So so it's an infomercial, uh it's a direct response company, which basically they made their name by doing infomercial based sales. They do about between one and a half to two billion in sales a year.

They own brands that you've heard they they they they brought brands to market that you've heard of, like proactive. Also Tony Robbins, his kind of personal power like audio books. Um think and grow rich. So okay, so here's kind of the some of the cool stuff I I I found out about. Okay, so how did it start? One of the guys, I think Guthy, he

had started a company and this is how funny the world works and why Really all you gotta do is just get in the game and start making shit happen because Nobody could have predicted this path, right? So he starts a company that just does audio cassette production. So uh like uh copying. So like you have a cassette, you want more copies of that cassette. Send me the send me the original recording, I'll make you a bunch of copies. So it's basically like these guys are fucking like kinko's, right? Like it's just like a printer.

Uh for audio cassettes. And he gets this order and this guy says, Hey, I need two hundred to two hundred fifty Oh sorry, I don't know why I said that. This is a small number. I basically the guy wanted almost

almost a hundred thousand cassettes made. He goes, A hundred thousand? What are you making? And um You know, it ended up being fifty thousand copies of a cassette that was about real estate, about how to make money doing real estate investments. And he's like wow, this is that's amazing. And he looked up the company and the guy was selling through infomercials. So he goes to his buddy, uh, Ranker, and Ranker at this time I think had

His family owned like kind of like a a a resort, like a tennis resort or something like that. So could probably come from a good family. So he goes, Hey dude, this guy ordered for me fifty thousand copies of this cassette. It's amazing. Forget making cassettes, like let's do this infomercial thing. That must be amazing. And so they go, Okay, what are we gonna do?

We need a product. And so they that's when they were like, Hey, what's up what's something we're both into? It's like they both had made their bones they both really love this book, Think and Grow Rates. So that's when they went and bought the rights to it for a hundred thousand dollars. They ended up making ten million dollars in the next three years. off of sales of Think and Grow Rich, right? They basically bought the rights to think and grow rich. And they s produce this infomercial. They hire

this football player Frank Tarkinton to do it. They go if you and I by the way, I watched the full 30 minute infomercial last night at four in the morning. I'm like, uh I'm like watching this thing and You can find it on YouTube and it has eight hundred and seventy five views on this video. And basically it's this infomercial and it starts with like Um This production and it's basically like

These people it's kinda like testimonials, but they don't tell you what the product is. It's like You know, I always wanted to just own my own business. I was so tired of working for somebody else. And then finally I felt like this is the solution broken down into tactical steps, but they don't tell you the name, right? And then it's like An interview with the founder of Domino's, he's like

I never went to college. I had the lowest GPA in my high school class. But I read this book. And afterwards, you know, like it became my blueprint for how I started dominoes. And like it's like it's like what's the book? What's the they just get you like salivating what's the book? And then three minutes in, Frank Tarquity comes on and he says

You know, the richest people in the world, Andrew Carnegie And the Rothschilds and whoever else, like all these people, are Andrew Carnegie commissioned this guy. To go study. What the most successful people on earth, the Ross Childs and others We're doing.

And he went and he interviewed all of them and he packaged it and he packaged all that knowledge and wisdom into a book that's been a bestseller for years. It's the book that executives say is their secret weapon. Blah blah blah. It's just like so it's like such a hard sell, but that's like what infomercials are. It's like once you get in, you're like, Alright, I'll bite. What is it? So yeah, like Fucking I'll order the thing. And so that's how they sold Think and Grow Rich. It's kind of like an amazing infirmary. I I recommend you go watch it if you're kind of like a marketing person. By the way, they bought that in nineteen eighty eight, so a hundred grand is the equivalent of

Is this true? Only two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, so it's only two point two X. Um And when they uh W the takeaway here should Not be like

I can't do that nowadays. But actually the if you look at the infomercial and if you go and if you Google like Guthrie Raker infomercial breakdown or if you just go and make your own and you look at You break it down. and you like copy it word for word and you break down the sections and you apply that section to a sales letter right now. It one hundred percent will continue to work. Right. Like if you see their infomercial, like the ladies are gonna be wearing like nineteen eighties clothes and the guys will have weird haircuts and you're like, Oh my god, it's so old.

No, it will continue to work. And TV infomercials at the time was like dirt cheap. So they were they when they did the Think of Growish, they just bought space in six small TV markets. And like you could buy the midnight slot, the two AM slot. And these are basically like is essentially free. They needed some programming to fill airtime. And so these started out really, really cheap. Now it's gotten much more expensive, right? So like let's take proactive. I think proactive at its heyday or or you know, kinda like Some yeah, this is maybe ten year old data at this point.

But they were spending about two hundred fifty million dollars a year just on the media buying. So just on the infomercial space. And then they're spending Like'cause if you go if you watch a Proactive thing, it's like Justin Bieber was their like signature person, right? Because Proactive was basically saying, Hey, teens, you don't need you don't have to have acne, you can get rid of your acne this way. And Justin Bieber was like, you know, the teen idol with great skin. And so it was like Uh Justin Bieber and Adam Levine, and like you know, the Maroon Five guy. Like there's all these people, right? Britney Spear, I don't know who else it was.

But they they would get paid five to ten million dollars To appear in a proactive infomercial, like crazy money for for an influencer. Like that's a big influencer spend. And so this is just influencer marketing. Done like at level twelve, as I like to say, right? Like what is the what is the maxed out version of this?

Proactive is the maxed out version of it. And so they own like a bunch of brand. They own like Globe by J Lo. It's like you want J Lo skin. By J Low's Glow. Then it's like, Oh, you want uh this other supermodel skin? By her thing. It's like very much around skin care because that I guess is like one of the like You know, that's like the sweet spot of like price, big market, and celebrity endorsements go a long way. The two big niches are fitness.

Or I would say three. Skin care? Fitness self help. So like Tony Robbins became like a household name using this on the self-help side. On the fitness side, they had a bunch of different brands and then Beach Body took the same playbook and they created P90X and the Beach Body program. using the same same idea. They became competitors.

There's a guy I'm trying to think of what what's it called. It's called uh Mind something. I'm trying to look it up. But basically there's a guy It's not mind body, but it's similar to that word. I can't remember what it was. Mind Valley. Mine Valley. Yes, you do exactly what I was talking about. There's a guy like the Philippines or Thailand, or I don't know where they're based. Yeah, there's some I don't want to be disrespectful, but it there's some weird stuff going on with this company. I don't know what the truth is, but basically, if you look up this company, Mind Valley, Mindvalley.com, he does this now. And basically, this company, what they do, they probably do 50 million a year in sales. And what they do is they buy programs from people. So they have one called LifeBook, one called Ohm. Omvana. I think that's a uh

Yoga thing. And then they have Evercoach, which is uh I actually don't know what some of these services are, but they have a bunch of these. And what they do is they find people who have like a yoga course or Some type of program on so they have programs on sleep. They've got programs on yoga, on uh meditation. Health, wellness, and hippie dippy shit. You know, it's like a combination of like very legit to like

uh you know, like tantric astrology or whatever, you know, like i i it can be anything. And they're experts on long form copywriting, which is basically an infomercial, and they're really good at buying traffic. And they make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, all bootstrapped. And so if you want to look at the internet version of this, there's also Agora, which is a one point five billion dollars. And another version of this is uh we had a guy named Craig is Craig Clemens. We had a guy named Craig Clements. His business is called Golden Hippo. They own I think eight or nine brands and I think, if I remember correctly, didn't he say they do like mid nine figures in revenue?

Yeah, I think I think Gold Hippo, our our buddy Craig I think it's on par with Guthy Ranker. um in terms of like sort of like success. Uh I I think Guthrie Record does does o over a billion in sales. So you know it it's it's the next level, but Golden hippo is that from the internet? For the for the internet instead of instead of TV infomercials.

They basically just do it with like long form blogs and then long form embedded video. So if you ever like go down the rabbit hole. Like I've tried to do it I've tried to figure out like look at some of his brands. They hide their brands. They hide them really well. But when you do find one, you're like, Oh, okay. And then it's hard to find where the advertising it's like Okay, so they buy a display ad through Tabula. on some random article and it's for a toe cream. Toe fungus removal, and then you click that, and then you watch a 40 minute video that auto plays with no pause or skip button.

And then by the end of that, you're like, God damn, like, you know, if you ended up making it there, you're almost certainly gonna buy this token. Then you subscribe to the SMSs and then you get like text messages from this legit doctor. Who you know is the face of the brand. It's kinda like the the the the the um you're like Rodan and Fields is another one which spun out of Gunthy Raker and it's basically like two they created Proactive. So I think it's two dermatologists that created the formula for proactive and then they left to create Rodan and Fields, which is a multi-level marketing company. That does the s that created their own

They create a new formulation of this one they owned a hundred percent. I think that's a m multi billion dollar company as well. And if you're on your computer listening to this, one of Golden Hippo's brands is called uh Gundry MD. I think Dr. Stephen Gundry. Uh a lot of pe he's kind of famous, I think. He's not famous in my world, but I think he's famous in like kind of mainstream world, actually. Gundry MD dot com is their website. Go to that website and look at this website and it they make it look like it's a small like mom and pop thing. First thing peak mobility plus. It's all about you, mobility. You l you love mobility.

And they even sell dog food. It's like it's it's a pretty wild business. And I think this is their most popular brand. This brand, if you told me it does a hundred million in sales, I actually wouldn't be surprised, but if you didn't know better, you go to it, you would have no idea. Right. And this is all about like gut health, plant based, you know, plant based eating. Uh, stuff like that. And so like, you know, I get their text messages all the time, like uh don't you know, don't get leaky gut syndrome, like by this thing. And uh so you know, it's very fascinating. And and The reason I like bringing these up or like what you brought up, I I think all the companies you brought up today are cool because

If you work in our our like most of our friends who are like s successful internet entrepreneurs tech people, Silicon Valley executives at big tech companies. They will have never heard of any of this. In fact, I did a breakdown of one of Golden Hippo's flows. Um and I sent it to all the execs at Twitch. I go, Hey, I went down the rabbit hole of this like. They laughed at you. They laughed at you. They were just like huh.

Fascinating. And they went back to doing like, you know, spending millions of dollars on Facebook ads that just said, Download Twitch. And it's like Okay, like You know, like is there any creativity we could do here, like to to try to like Like I just showed you one of the most creative things and like Nobody really cared. Nobody asked any follow up questions. Some people were just like, Ha, cool. Send it to me. Send it to me. It it was it's crazy to me. And so like

So I I feel like there's a lot you can learn from from these kind of under the radar brands or non traditional. And a lot of people just write them off. They're like, oh, infomercial, sleazy. Affiliate marketing sleazy, M L M sleazy. And like you may be right about like the the sort of like Yeah. That these aren't the best products, that they're maybe the best sold products. But

Look, I'm trying to get great at sales. So why would I not look at the best sold products? It's like a no brainer to me. This was a good one, I think. Yeah, I think it's a good one. Uh this is definitely sort of like Unusual slash Potentially gray hat. Trust and untrust. Untrustworthy businesses. Um, you know, I think it's I think it's gonna be entertaining. So yeah. Can we wrap up with what well let me wrap up first of all Gun Three Raker is amazing. I would love to see your notes on that, if you can share them. Um

The also. I wanna wrap up with one thing that you on Twitter, you said you wouldn't call me to invest in your company because I'm risk adverse. You you said this and I want to explain myself. 'Cause that was a dig at me. I don't think you meant to be rude, but I took it as you being rude.

And I think That P a lot of of our friends call me this as well. You guys are so wrong.

I just don't take dumb risk. So here's here's my philosophy. Listen, here's my philosophy. I So from age

twenty, I said by thirty, I'm gonna make enough money that I never have to worry about money ever again. And up and so that's when I started my company. Many would say that was incredibly risky. I would say Compared to the the average show, it was, but it wasn't that risky. The reality. It wasn't that risky. Then

I got the money and I invest in safe stuff. But here's the thing, when I find shit that I love I go all in on it. I just What you and a lot of our friends do is they go

They go to They spread their shit like w wild. I try to go all in on a couple of things. So I think I don't think I'm risky or risk adverse. I think that I just pick and choose them differently. Yeah, that's true. Like okay, let's say uh let's say I was starting a company. Uh And I think I think I know what your answer would be, but let's see.

If I was starting a company and um Let's say I either didn't have an idea I decided I'm gonna start a company or I said It's gonna be in this space, but I don't know exactly what Or I said an idea that you're like, I don't even get that, or that sounds kind of dumb or fuzzy to me.

Um Would you just invest then or would you want to wait?'Cause you know I would let you in at any point. So you like you could Well w w I would ask one question. Are you going all in and this is gonna be your only focus? Yeah, yeah. If the answer is if the answer is yes, I would be like money. I wouldn't even ask the valuation. I would just say okay. So that that's what I think the answer is. And that's kind of the to so the person asked a good question. I did a a Twitter kind of like, I don't know, like an AMA.

Um, where I was like, yo, just shoot me questions. My wife took the kids out to Target. I got an hour. I want some immediate. Rush of Twitter love. Let's just do s do some QA. And the person said You're raising money for a company who you're f who who's the first person you call and I I said I said like here's my first five phone calls.

And I basically. Sulli Sulli Ali, I totally agree with that. He's an amazing operator, very good investor. Scott Belski, amazing investor. Good signal to everyone. Uh the third was uh Just a call back, I think I had on there. Who's a I don't know him well, but he's a an amazing investor.

And then I had uh Bology I think I had on there. Did I put Bology on? Okay, obvious reasons. Yeah. Pretty good. And then I had one more person who who else is on there? I don't know I can't find the tweet. I forget who that fifth person was as well. But I I'm not offended that I didn't make that list. I'm offended that people think that I'm risk adverse. And and I had a friend text me, he goes, Do people think you're risk adverse? And I was like

I think they do, but I think they'll be the first person I had was Michael Burch, the person who backed me with my previous company. So that yeah, that would be my first so here's my like In reality, you know, I'm answering these questions fast. In reality, I would actually not Uh like two people who would uh two people who I would not actually go to first would not be Scott Delsky or Bology, right? Because two reasons. I don't actually know them that well. They're not like my homies. They're like For you know, like

Apology I consider like, yeah, we're kind of friends, but we never like. Yeah, we're cordial. Uh Scott Belski, same sort of thing. Like even even more distance, actually. And so like, you know, respect, but you know, I can't say this is like my my homie. And so in reality, my first five calls would be to You, Sully, Michael Birch Uh, you know, Ramon, like a bunch of our like my true friends who I'm like

Hey, I'm doing something like family. Basically like family, exactly. And so that's like the true answer. Uh, for Twitter, you know, I kind of like I didn't want to put only people that people would not like not recognize their names. Put a couple of people that they would know in there. Um and it's also kind of aspirational like

Who would I want to be in my company? I think Scott Belski is an amazing product person. So I think that's just like an amazing person to have on there. I think Ball And he's like the greatest in I mean he's one of the best angel investors. Right. So he's done well, and I think he's well connected. So I think that's useful to have. And I think uh Uh Bology also is like a different kind of signal. So super obviously like hyper intelligent. Uh he l comes from the future, so that's helpful in general.

And I think that um and I think that having him adds credibility because if you only have your friends there, it doesn't help you get the next investor on board necessarily because They look at who else is invested and if they don't see a name that they recognize that they respect, then they don't hasn't been like kind of like they don't see the Harvard stamp of approval on there. So you need that mix in there. So that's my justification for it. But yeah, in reality of of course. We call you. I know, but you said I don't care about that. I care about that you're risk averse. I think that's crazy. I think that's I put the smiley face. That means it's a joke. The smiley face means it's a joke.

Oh my God. You think that I'm re and and to s just I'm gonna wrap it up with talking about Scott Belsky. Scott Belski, his grandpa started Kaplan. Caplan Oh really? No way. I did not know. Yeah, his his grandpa started Kaplan, sold that for like eighty or a hundred million dollars in like I think the eighties or nineties. So it's like w you know, that's like the equivalent of like three hundred dollars. Then when he was twenty. Four, he invested$15,000 into Pinterest when it was worth three million dollars, and fifteen thousand dollars into Uber when it was worth three million dollars. He did this while he was running his company called The Hance, which was mostly bootstrapped until

Like six months before they sold it, they raised a series A, but prior to that, it was bootstrap. And when he sold it, he owned I think 75% of it. He sold it for like a hundred and fifty million dollars. Um, and then so he made probably a hundred million from the sale. Probably a hundred million on Uber. and a hundred million on Pinterest or give or take fifty percent. And now he's next in line to become CEO at Adobe. Gangster. Uh, which is like the fortieth largest company in the world. Yeah. Total gangster. Um

And good dude, just fun, fun hang, which is yeah means a lot. By the way, yeah, yeah, yeah. Financially successful. Uh whenever I met with him, I met with him uh a while ago and like he's like really good looking. He dresses really nice and he's like Fucking dreamy. He's like so optimistic and so happy. And whenever he like talked, I was just like dude, whatever you say, I'm Yeah he looks like the guy from Maroon Five Adam Lead. Exactly. He looks like that guy. Very good looking and he's nice as hell. He's really nice. Yeah. Uh okay, we should we should wrap it up uh before we just totally, you know

Totally uh gay for gay for gay for Bellsky. I was trying to think of something that would like be appropriate to say, and my mind only went to uh dirty words. So I'm I'm gay for Belcie. I'm hardcore gay for him. I like him a lot. All right, we're out of here.

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