Transcript

My 6-Step Process To Find +$1,000,000 Business Ideas

I put my law in it like a day song. Alright, we're live. Sean is not here, so I'm gonna do a question and answer session. I tweeted out. That I'm gonna be doing this. And we have a bunch of questions. Jonathan's gonna be reading uh the first ones.

What are they? Which where do you want to start? Alright, this one is from Jimbo Slice. He goes, would love to learn how to develop ideas for businesses to start and how to test said ideas. So basically, because of this podcast, I have to research cool companies. But

What a lot of people don't know is I've been doing research on companies before I worked on this podcast before I started this podcast and This is how I created the hustle. We ended up selling the hustle for tens of millions of dollars. And this is how I created Hampton, which is gonna be a huge company, I think. And I've done a bunch of other

little projects based off of this research model. Um I'll do a quick plug. Basically if you go to ideationboot camp.co. Everyone kept asking me about this process. So I like made it into a course. You can go and buy it if you want. I'll just kinda give you a little preview now.

I've got this way of researching where I look for five or six different things. And it's almost like the way that I compare it to a song. So there's a song called uh Uh, you know, like a guns and roses song like Welcome to Paradise. Is that what it's called? Sweet Child of Mine. That's what I'm thinking. Sweet child of mind. Sweet child of mind has this amazing guitar solo. Uh in that song. And the

The band said Yeah. the someone asked them how they write songs they're like, Well, sometimes like which sweet child of mine I heard this uh amazing guitar riff that Slash was tinkering with and I wrote lyrics around it and then we created the bridge and the hook and whatever. Other times I've got this really cool one liner, this lyric, we're gonna turn it into the song. I do the same thing with business. And so those little hooks that I look for are the first thing is demand.

So I'm constantly seeking out what problems people have. Uh the second thing is I'm constantly looking at uh how many people share that particular problem. And I'm gonna give examples of all this. The third thing I look at is

Who are the leaders in that space? So what's succeeding and why? The fourth thing I look at is of the leaders and the people in the space, what shortcomings do they have? Next, I look at which business models are most effective. And then finally I look at what problems aren't being solved. And I'm gonna give you an example of this. And so I have all these tools that I use.

And so Like Here's a here's an example. So there's there's this company called one eight hundred flowers. And

Um It's a phone service where you call and you order flowers. And I was just Like Probably buying

Valentine Day Flowers on their website one time. And I noticed that their traffic, I use this tool called Similar Web. I use that all the time. It's a plugin, it's free. They have a paid version. The free version's totally fine. They have this plugin where it tells you a guesstimate. of what the traffic is from a website. And one eight hundred flowers, as predicted, it had like

Pretty great traffic. Like it was like five million people a month coming to their website and then in February it like peaked. to be really, really big. That's Easy to guess because it was Valentine's Day.

But basically It was that told me that wow, a lot of people are using one eight hundred flowers on a regular basis and it peaks in February. And it also uh had a big jump in uh Um Whenever Mother's Day is, May or June.

And so I was like, all right, that's interesting. I kind of knew that, but let me read a little bit more about this. And so I use another tool called annual reports.com. And I love reading annual reports because it teaches me about the company. So an annual report If a company is public

They have to release this quarterly report where they talk about their earnings and all these interesting things about the company. And A lot of time they appear boring. But I'm reading them to find insight. And I found this one insight that said

We are noticing that the The succulent plant is a very particular plant. We are noticing that Amongst our millennial consumers, it's the fastest growing trend. I also did this with Heineken.

the company Heineken. They in their annual report they said Um Heineken. Zero. So which is like a non alcohol version. They are uh it's our fastest growing segment. It's still really small, but it's fast growing.

And when you see a big company like Money Hundred Flowers or Heineken, so a company that has millions of customers. When they say one or two lines like that. That gets me really interested. When they say something's fast growing, I'm like, oh, I'm intrigued. And so I'll read these reports just for looking. For one or two lines that say that. Or I'll use I'll go to like every website I go to, if it's like really weird looking.

Um, and it grabs my attention. I go to a similar web and I just look at what the traffic is because I'm looking for these one little tidbits that catch my attention. And in this case for the one eight hundred flowers, it they said succulents were were growing. And so I'll look at Um You know, what they say. And and

And then I try to find shortcomings. So with one e hundred flowers They said that Their shortcomings are They uh that most of their revenue comes from holidays. And so they're trying to get revenue and business between the holidays to make their business more steady.

They also said that I believe This was a few years ago, they said that most of their profit comes from not the flowers, but from vases. So that has the biggest margins. And they also said uh

that they're trying to think of w ways to get people to buy more accessories like vases, chocolates, and things like that. And then um so that kinda like gave me this idea of like, okay One hundred flowers is a big business because the revenue is huge and it gets tons of traffic. I know that. So that's like proving me that there's demand and a big audience. I know that they're succeeding, at least to some point, because they're a publicly traded company and they're very profitable. I know their shortcomings or the problems that they're trying to solve for are that they uh can't get people to buy stuff on a regular basis and they want people to buy more vases.

So what other problems are consumers not being uh not Do consumers have that aren't being solved and where's one eight hundred flowers failing? Well, in my head I was like, Well, if you could figure out a way to get people to buy regularly with different bases. How can I do that? And so I wrote this report. For trends, trends.co. And then someone eventually launched a company where they created the succulent plant that you like smack on the wall.

And it it's like has this like hydrophonic system phonic system where it like it like watered itself. And then there was another company that launched and they And they created the coolest it was a succulent Plan and all some of them launch these companies based off our that report I wrote. Another company created this uh

Where they had these like amazing pots and vases why it had like artists on there. So like Friticala was on one. Or they would create like really funny Pots and plants like Some of the pots were like

State themed. So like an organ plant like had had like an organ flag on the vase, like things like that. And that was their way of solving it. And a bunch of these companies, a few of them went on to raise millions and millions of dollars. I think there's Bloomscape and I forget the other one.

But It basically came from this like research methodology of Finding demand. Finding the audience. looking at the leaders, the shortcomings, and it's this like cycle.

that I use and I try to find like one hook or one line for each of those things that get me interested. So I use similar web a ton to do that. So I'll look at where someone's getting a lot of traffic or how much traffic's getting. There's this another amazing thing called Company's House. It's a so basically if you're based in the UK, and you're a company that does at least ten million in revenue, you have to file your um

Your uh Financials. And so if I find a cool company that uses the word LTD, I guess that means like limited Company. If I find a company that does something like that has that on their website, I immediately go to company's house. But so for example, I found this amazing website.

That basically basically was reviewing Um VPN. So you know what a VPN is? It's like a a thing that hides like where you are when you're using the web. And they had like twelve million visitors to their site and I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And the company was called like

something company name L T D. So I go, all right. I'm gonna go straight to company's house and see what the revenue is. Their revenue was like 18 million and their profit was like sixteen million. And so that told me that A, there's demand for people who want to uh

get reviews for VPN. That shocks me. I didn't realize that market was that big. B, it shows me that that business model of affiliate. So they made money through affiliate. So they would write a review on a um They would write a review on a VPN, if someone bought it, they got a little cut back. That business model, super fascinating. So in my head, I'm like, oh wow, what other tech products are have this big a affiliate fees and can I create content for them. That business model was really fascinating.

And C, I learned that they were the leader in the space. And so like that just like opened up my mind to like a different business model and a different niche. And I didn't do anything with that, but I thought to myself, Man, I wonder if I could do this for payroll software. I wonder how many people are having payroll software problems. Uh, I bet you I can get a big affiliate fee with that. I bet you I could rank on Search for that and then I never ended up doing it'cause I wasn't passionate about it.

But anyway. I go through all these different examples and of like these different tools that I use to research on Adiation Boot Camp. It's Audiation Bootcamp. Co. But that's like A very

Scattered. example of how I do that. All right, this one is from Mike Teravella. He asks. about the evolution of your health journey while being an entrepreneur. He goes

I've been lifting to get back in shape and just curious of lessons or future roadblocks to watch out for. So this is around fitness and health. So let me give you guys some background. So I was an exceptional high school athlete. I was one of the best in the state of Missouri where I'm from at the two hundred meter and four hundred meter dash. And then I went to a division one school where I was a scholarship athlete. for two years and then I quit and I got into business. And between the ages of twenty to about twenty eight, I was fat. I was pretty lumpy and I was pretty disgusting.

Now's a good time to put the my before picture. So if you're on uh Listen to this on audio. You can go ahead and see you can go to our YouTube and see those pictures. But I got pretty fat. And I got disgusting. And then

About three or four years ago I said This is it. I'm gonna get my act together and I'm gonna become a fitness model. That's what I said. It was a joke. I'm not actually that, but it was a joke. And I did it. I got pretty fit.

And so I basically created this rule. General Mathis, he's this uh general in America. He's got this great line that says Figure out your flat ass rules and stick to them. And the reason being, and I stole this from Ryan Holiday, who's uh inspiration to me, he said the person who decides every day Uh what choices they have to make for each decision.

That person will be exhausted and burnt out. And so about when I was 29, 28 years old, I made the decision that I will never, ever, ever miss a workout. And so at first, I basically created programming for myself, which means I created my own schedule, my own lifts, and like how much I should lift. I did that on my own for a little while. And then I hired a trainer. His name's Jesse O'Brien at Central Athlete. I think I've got a centralathlete.com. You can see him. I'm not affiliated. I'm just a fan. And he created all my training for me and I meet with him monthly and I do the workouts remotely, but basically I don't miss a single workout. And I have uh I work out five days a week.

And I so that's Five days times fifty two. I think that's two hundred and sixty workouts. In the last two years, three years, I've probably have missed five to ten a year. And that's usually only because of sickness or like if someone dies and I have to take a flight to a funeral.

But basically Ninety five percent of the time. I don't miss. And so I believe big, big, big in big time into consistency. And so I don't miss.

The second thing that I do And by the way, that like that I'm fairly extreme about it. So for example Uh I drive a ton. So like when I go on I take tons of road trips. When I take a road trip and I can't get my work out in the morning before I leave, I pull over on the side of the road and I tell Jesse

Today's a travel day. I'm going to be driving and I bring uh bands with me and I pull over on a truck stop. I got lots of pictures and videos of me setting my wife saying, Uh I'm at this particular truck stop. I'm doing pushups, burpees, sprints, things like that. I will pull over on the side of the road for an hour and do it. I do not miss workouts. The second thing that I do is I set very specific goals. So each quarter I have a new goal. So those goals have included like I wanted to Bench press three hundred and thirty pounds and I wanted to squat four hundred and thirty pounds. And I I'll take a quarter, sometimes two quarters to get there. The next time I've had a

uh goal of doing a combine and I wanted to score average for an NFL receiver. Uh, which I think was like a four five forty, a thirty four inch vertical, a ten four broad jump. And then bench pressing two hundred and twenty five pounds times sixteen times I think whatever it was, I pick goals every quarter and I stick to them because I I need to have a goal. I don't always hit my goal. Sometimes I most of the time I do, but I but I I always have a goal that I'm trying to do.

For me right now And I imagine for the rest of my life it's gonna all be centered around weightlifting. Because A, I wanna live to like I'm a hundred and thirty and there seems to be a strong correlation between living long and Uh having muscle. Like

I can just not break my hip when I fall because my bones will be stronger and I can get up when I get hurt. Um And also B because I want to look good naked.

I'm Thane. So that's why I do it. So I lift a ton of weights. And I have a coach that tells me what to do. And I basically don't question them. I also use my body tutor. No affilation with them other than I've become friends with them.

And that helps me with my dieting. So I spend roughly three hundred dollars a month on training and I think two hundred and fifty dollars a month on my body tutor. It's basically a nutritionist. They call me once a week and they keep me on track. And then finally I write down everything I eat and I write down every workout. So I use an app where I track all of my workouts. uh because I want to know what I did the previous week so I can improve and then I track everything I eat because it's really easy for me to overeat. And so Tracking it helps me.

Um This person asked, um Um, what future roadblocks will be. Everyone I don't have a kid yet. I but we are pregnant. Everyone says that that will be a roadblock. I've been a very fortunate situation where I've been able to hire some help, like a night nurse and things like that.

I have a feeling that it won't be a roadblock. But I it will be more challenging. But it's not gonna prevent me. Did I answer that question? Yeah, for sure. All right, this one is from John Murphy at ecom CEO. He asks

When to embrace shiny object syndrome and when and how to keep it under control. This is a great question. And this is something that I think holds back ninety percent of people from really big success. So I constantly ask myself, What can I do? This week, this month, this year. What can I accomplish in a certain time period that will make every other task

not important. And so there's this idea of like procrastination. Paul Graham wrote this great article. If you Google Paul Graham procrastination, he talks about there's actually good procrastination, there's bad procrastination. Proprascination. the bad type is um you're just not gonna you just don't start working, but the good type is that It's like the idea of this crazy scientist who's a genius and he forgets to shower or he forgets to wear two uh matching socks. And the idea being is you can actually ignore most things as long as you're getting the big things right.

And so I ask myself all the time. What is that one thing that I want to accomplish? Most people they try to jump from thing to thing to thing because something's not working or because they feel pressured into doing something. I actually think that you should do one thing for an extended period of time. The reason being is because

Every time I say yes to something, I'm ultimately saying no to something else. And that means I'm saying if I'm saying yes to a new project, I'm saying no to either things like family time or I'm saying No to Focusing on the thing that matters. Or I'm saying

No to having like I'm basically giving worry Uh or uh worry time and I'm giving uh space in my brain for something that isn't essential.

And so saying no is really important. It's very uncomfortable, but I think it's necessary. I think most people do multiple things at one time because they are guilt into it because what they see online. Um, and I try to remind myself that I don't care about another person's opinion. More than I care about my own opinion. And also most people don't know what they're doing.

And so I'm not gonna put too much judgment on Their opinion. Because they don't have any idea what they're doing. I also try to remind myself that strong men They don't like give in to fear. And I think a lot of people have shiny object syndrome because they're fearful that their main thing's not going to work.

I try not to give in to fear. Of course, I'm human. I do every once in a while. But I try my hardest not to do it. And so I think that When you're starting a business 'Cause it's a business podcast. We'll talk about that.

I uh I have to ask myself Well, I wish that I have stuck with this. In ten years, while I look back and say, I wish I would have done this one thing. And if the answer is consistently yes, then I'm gonna stick to that one thing. That said, it's definitely an art to figure out what to say no to and when to bail on what's working.

But I've met A lot of successful people. And I have noticed That the people that have huge outside outsize Results.

And have massive, massive wealth. It typically comes From one thing. And then once they get incredibly successful, it appears as though they have a lot of things going on. But those lot of things are like

Five percent. of the hundred percent when it comes to net worth creation. So I have to remind myself on a regular basis that big results typically come from one thing. And the people who appear to be be to be doing a lot of things. They actually kind of are doing one thing. One of my good friends, Andrew Wilkinson, he owns a private equity company, or he owns a thing called Tiny, where they buy businesses.

And so he owns technically like forty businesses. But his one thing is buying companies or investing. And so you have to remind mys I have to remind myself that's his one thing. And he's doing that well, and that's what makes Everything else works. Additionally, he also had one agency, Meta Lab, for

I think twelve years and then he started investing into other companies. And so you have to make your one thing work. Otherwise the rest of the stuff doesn't really work out. And so I think more people should focus. Even though it's quite challenging and it doesn't appear as fun. Yeah, I think it's better results. Okay, this one is from Gabe Finema.

At gabe underscore Finn on Twitter, he asks How to be interesting. As a podcaster, you're essentially a professional entertainer. What are the key skills you've learned over the years that allow you to be entertaining to listen to? And talk to you. This question is, I think, particularly interesting for young men.

Single men. Because when I was a single guy when I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen Well Basically until I was Not single. All I cared about was meeting girls.

And when I learned and I wasn't very good at it. Arguably was never great at it, but I got I improved. The best thing for meeting a partner was to be an interesting person. I imagine this works for women as well, but I only know a man's perspective. It works awesome for men. It's to be interesting.

Um I made a few points about How to be interesting, at least what I think. 'Cause I like figure this out. I wasn't like good at this.

The first thing is that you have to find something that interests you and you have to turn it into a passion, even if it's not popular. The reason being is people like people Who uh are passionate about stuff and who are really great at explaining why they're passionate about things and they don't need to be popular things. So for a long time I'm I've I was really interested in denim.

That's like a hobby of mine. I love jeans because jeans are part of American history and I would like buy like five hundred or a thousand dollar jeans just to store them and keep them and only wear them occasionally because they're historical and important to me. I was really, really fascinated in that And I noticed that when I would meet a girl and I would say something like Hey, I'm going to this uh swap meet. They got really cool addum. just having something to do and like being passionate about it, it attract she was more attracted to me because of it. And then my male friends as well were like, oh, this sounds interesting. You just got me

interested in this topic. I'll go with you and you can explain it to me. And thus people were attracted to me. This works for business for meeting someone, whatever. Right now it's fitness. I'm super fascinating. Fitness and having like a goal. And having

Something I care about. I've noticed people are drawn to me. The second one is when I can I consume a ton of information. So I listen to podcasts. I um Watch a lot of T V, like documentaries. I read a lot of books and I read Wikipedia every night. I love Wikipedia. And when I'm consuming information, I consume it from the perspective of

I try to find a hook. So I'll hear like or I'll read something on Wikipedia and I try to find a fascinating hook. And I think in my brain How can I retell this that can capture people's attention? And whenever I consume information, that's what I do. So for example, I just watched the documentary on Arnold Schwarzen Schwarzenegger.

And he has this great line where he calls the Shmi, which basically means bullshit. So like when he was talking about being the spokesperson for supplement brands or whatever, or uh wining and dining people. He goes, I got the Shmi. I know how to like grab people's attention. I'm just bullshitting with them. I got the gift to gap. And he told the story of the Shmi. And I remember hearing that line I go, That's brilliant. The Shmi. I'm gonna talk about that all the time. I love the Shmi. And that was that one little line I took from that documentary. And I'm gonna retell that story all the time. I'm gonna talk all about the Shmi. And so whenever I consume information, I'm just or

comedy show or anything. I just look for like lines or hooks of a story that I'm gonna retell to people constantly. I'm gonna steal it, basically. That's it. It's I consume information as if I have to write a book report at a uh at a at another time. The third thing is I ask people all the time and I ask them this in a very non-judgmental way. And a lot of people aren't used to being asked this, but I basically ask them all the time. Whenever they I'll ask them. about what they do for work or um where they're from or whatever. And they'll say something and they'll say an opinion. And I always ask them

Why do you think that? And I always try to ask that because it gets people to open up. And when I ask them all about themselves. There's this uh great Buck.

Uh called How to Win Friends and Influence People. And Dale Carnegie wrote it in the nineteen twenties and he says this tells a story about Yes. kinda nobody young guy talking to this big shot executive and The nobody guy, the young guy, he asked the big shot executive all about himself.

And the executive spends Ninety five percent of the conversation talking all about himself. young guy spends five percent of the conversation. At the end of the conversation, the executive goes Wow, you're a great conversationalist. And the truth is that that's because people love to talk about themselves. And so oftentimes when I'm with new people, I'll ask them questions like why do you think that or why do you do that? Or Questions like that, these open ended questions, and that gives them an opportunity to talk about themselves, and thus they think that I am more interesting because.

ultimately they find themselves probably more interesting than anyone else. Another thing is I have tried really hard to learn how to tell stories. My partner on this podcast, Sean Purry, he's one of the best storytellers uh I've seen. Um I've tried to learn from him and I've tried to tell stories and I'll retell the same stories to different groups of people as if I'm a comedian and I like to see what hits and what doesn't. And sometimes I'll alter the story while keeping the truth in there.

But I'll also the story and the way I tell it in order to c capture their attention. The last two things are I am constantly trying to improve myself. Which is great because to be interesting, you just make yourself better. So I'm constantly trying to improve myself and I explain to people what I'm trying to do. So for example, if I'm trying to get fit, if I'm trying to read a certain amount of books, If I'm trying to uh

Build a business. I'm always trying to improve myself and I talk about that with people, not in an obnoxious way, but I let them know and they find that interesting. I found Most of the time. And then finally I say my opinion. And I usually research opinions that I have. So for example, it could be like political stuff.

It could be health stuff. I uh it could be in business. I try to come up with well thought out opinions and I'm very uh not afraid to say that opinion. And even if it rubs people the wrong way, I have found that When you explain your opinion. And you stand firm on it.

Uh, it you people find you interesting because most people are vanilla and they don't have strong opinions. And so That said, I'm still open minded. I think there's a phrase. What's that phrase? It's uh Strong beliefs loosely held. And so I'm I can be swayed for sure. But I tr I have strong opinions that I try to let people know about'em. And then when I don't have an opinion or I haven't researched a topic, I try my hardest to say,

I've not thought about that or I don't know. Um, and so that's how I think you'd be interesting when we have Different podcast guests. Come on. Even if they're not in my world at all.

Because I've like consumed so much information. I'm pretty good at relating to them. And that is just comes down to I just read a ton of Wikipedia and when they talk, I'll reference things in that field, even if I don't know a ton about'em. And then I'll

Ask them. why they think that because I read on Wikipedia That this, this and this. Um, is that true for you? Is does that

Uh Is that one of the reasons why you think X, Y, and Z? And they'll say no, actually, or yes, actually, and that's a great way to get them to talk more about it and it gets me involved in the conversation. All right, so I back channeled a few questions. This one is from your buddy. Neville Medora at Neville Medora on Twitter.

And he wanted to hear a bit about your loyalty to your dog. Sid, he had a quote to share that I thought was pretty great. He goes, I remember Sam vividly saying, I hate when people give away their pets. When you sign up for a dog, you sign up for life. So Neville wants to hear a bit about

your relationship to Sid and just if you could elaborate on that quote a bit. Yeah. So basically I have this dog named Sid. I got him when I was twenty or twenty two or something. He's fourteen years old now. And I do crazy stuff for this dog. Like, for example, I live half the year sometimes in New York. And sometimes I'll fly, sometimes I'll drive. But if I fly, I hire a driver for him.

So I basically hire someone to drive him from Austin all the way up to New York. And like I don't travel because of him, uh Overseas typically. Um, and so the reason being is

I mentioned uh having rules. Another rule in my book. is responsibility. and loyalty. So there's a few people in my life. My wife, my dog.

My business partner, Joe. Sean's one of these folks. Uh, Jordan, the CEO of Hampton. I firmly believe that you never ever ever speak badly about them behind their back. You don't lie. Um you don't disrespect them publicly.

You don't question them publicly. And I try my hardest not to do that, even a little bit. The reason being is Uh I'm a firm belief in loyalty and so uh there's I basically

have zero loyalty to most people, and then there's like eight people in my live. My life, who I like I can like write them down and cite them. I will do anything for them and I expect them to do that for me. The second reason is responsibility. So like when I have a meeting on my calendar

I try my hardest never ever ever to be late. I try very hard to be early. I don't miss things. If I say I'm gonna do something, I do it. I'm a big firm believer and you do what you say. And uh following through. And so another rule is when you have a responsibility, you stick with it no matter what. When I got my dog I said.

I'm gonna raise them right. And uh I'm gonna like respect this this like bond that we have. And so I'm crazy about that. So that's a rule that I just don't break is loyalty and uh rules. Love it.

Alright, this one is from Garrett's his handles at GGS. I I I And he goes finding someone to build a company with or finding your first hire. So basically he's just asking How you hire people.

So I'm not like a religious person, but there's this uh thing from the Bible. I went to Catholic school my whole life. There's this like a line from the Bible where like Jesus is trying to like get disciples and he tells one of his disciples, Peter and Paul, he goes like I think they're fishermen and he goes. Come join me and you are going to be fishers of men. Uh And I love that line.

Um, that's an example, by the way, of being interesting. You just find like Interesting lines and you You know, you Retell them. Th that's a beautiful line and the way that I'm able to

Um hire good CEOs and hire great people. I mean if you look at the hustle. I don't know how many people we had when we sold the company, maybe forty. So we probably have hired. Sixty or seventy people.

A lot of them are really successful. No, like we hired them when they were like twenty three and a lot of them. Maybe like fifteen or twenty of them have went on to start successful companies, help grow other successful companies, have a name for themselves.

And the reason they did that is I want it to be a collector of people. Fishers of men. That's a weird line. I call it collector of people. So I I worked really hard at collecting people. And so When I find someone that's interesting to me.

Um I try to make a mental note. of who they are and how I can use them. And The line.

But I tell them. And this is a line that I believe, which is like, Hey, do you want to hang out? Like let's say I meet someone. I'll follow up with them or I called email someone. And I'll say, Hey look. The best case.

Scenario here. Is that somehow we work together and we create magic. The worst case scenario is that you have a new friend in the industry and we'll just help one another. But our world is small and I have a feeling that it's gonna be nice that we're gonna be uh on the same team in some capacity, whether just as friends or literally at the same company. So Take this phone call.

And That's what I believe. And so uh for years, so like for example For years I would host events or create excuses to meet people. So, for example, I had this thing called the anti MBA. It was my book club. I started it in San Francisco in two thousand and twelve and basically the way it worked is I would

pick one book per month. We would read a quarter of the book each month and and then I we would meet up and talk about the book and I would bring experts on that book's topic to come in and lead the conversation. So it's kinda like an MBA, but it was free and I organized it, hence the anti MBA. A bunch of my great, great, great friends, uh Sean and uh Perry we we came in each other's orbit via this book club.

Um, Sieva, who um Kacinski has got a really successful PE firm now. Came he was one of my first members. I posted ads on Craigslist for this book club. That's how it got popular, by the way. I posted an ad on meetup.com and on Craigslist. And I would host this book club like What

I think I did it. For two years straight. Every week. And that is how I developed a network. And then from there, I hosted a conference called HustleCon. And the whole idea was I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next after selling my previous company, but I'm gonna host this event called HustleCon. And in doing so, I imagine I'm gonna meet a handful of people who will inspire me or partner with me in order to create my next

And so I'm constantly I I do it less now. Now I I jokingly have this rule called no new friends because I have a pretty good network. No. But basically I just collected people and anytime I saw someone who was intriguing, I did a really good job of getting to know them and then just filing them away in this bank or I would check in with them once in a while. And get to know them.

uh and remind them who I was occasionally. And then when I had like an opportunity, like I'm starting a new company, I would think, Oh, I talked to this one person this one time, I left a good impression on them, I hope I can just holler at them. And so I do a really good job of collecting people and doing outreach. Um Uh yeah, I mean that's kinda like how it works. It's a lot easier now that when you're popular and you have a podcast, it's way easier to do that. But when I was younger and didn't have a network, I hosted book clubs, conferences, meetups, and I was basically wanting to be the center of attention

Not necessarily center of attention, but center of a social circle. Uh, and I was the connector and that's how I would collect people. And I um When I see now when I see people on LinkedIn or Twitter. And they write something cool. I DM them and all I say was like

Saw this post. This was awesome. And that's all I'll say. Uh and then when I reach out to them again, if I ever have a reason to It kinda feels like they know me a little bit, at least.

And so I'm a collector of people. Okay, this question is from Grant Wilkinson. At Grant F Wilkinson. If you're open to sharing about the behind the scenes of running a great community. There's some good stuff there. So I think Grant's referring to

uh your community building over at Hampton. So I've got this new company. It's about a year old. It's uh joinhampton.com is the URL. It's called Hampton. Basically, what it is is It's for CEOs who have at least a million in revenue, and you apply and then we interview and you get in, we put you in a group of eight founders who have similar size and types of businesses. You meet monthly, and then we host all these um events, retreats, and then we have uh digital community where you can hang out and talk to all the other members of which we have hundreds of them soon thousands. I

I got pretty great at making community because of the events that I hosted. I kind of understood like what motivated people And then I created trends when we ran the hustle, which was like a digital community as well. And there's a few interesting things about community to make them great. The first is

You have to create FOMO. So a little bit of fear of missing out. And once they're in your community they feel excited that they're finally in. And so we create FOMO. Not even on purpose. We interview everyone and we turn down most people. So that helps. Um, so there needs to be a barrier to entry for building a good community, I think.

There also has to be a way to create intimacy. And so there's lots of tactical ways that you could do that where you have multiple communities within a community and like you can only join one channel and not the other channels. And the reason you do that is because I think that around like two hundred fifty, five hundred people, things get a little bit

wonky in terms of not being able to know everyone. And so you wanna do You need to do a good job of making things intimate. The way you do that is to keep it small. Another way that you do that is you set norms and standards behind intro introductions. And so at Hampton, we do a really good job of saying Look at Hampton. We want you to brag about who you are because with most most of the times when you run a company, it's not cool when you're talking to people that say, like, oh, I run this company and we do this much in revenue, this much of profit, this many employees. It's not that cool. It's all tacky.

In this community, we set lots of like strange norms of which one of them is it's okay to brag and it's cool to brag because now I can learn If you actually know what you're talking about and I can ask you advice, I can actually learn Um about your business, so I can apply some of it. And so it's fun to learn that stuff. And so we set different norms and we do a really good job of of making people introduce themselves.

A lot of times particularly in trends, my one of the first communities that I built. I would seed it. by having ten, twenty, thirty people who I knew were impressive and I just said You don't have to pay anything, but you're joining this community. Also, on this date, I need you to post this comment or this uh post.

And so it looked like this particular person was contributing. In reality, I wrote it for them. This is a a thing that I stole from Reddit. When Reddit.com first launched, the founder Steve Huffman created like thirty different usernames and he just posted lots of different fake comments and it looked like a lot of stuff was happening. Creating community is hard. I think it's one of those things that everyone wants, but few people know how to do. It's really challenging. I think it's more art than science though. This question is

I'm gonna totally butcher this name, but Sarong Birad? At Sarong Birod on Twitter. He asks. How's it going with viral cuts? Share some tips for someone looking to start a productized service from scratch. So Viral Cuts is a company that I'm part of.

Um I don't have anything to do with the day to day. uh but basically if you want footage like if you have a podcast like this or if you have a bunch of video footage They chop it up. And they uh post it on your social for you so you get like

Clips. Um, the founder, his name's Hunter. S used to have an agency and He he was like

You know, it's cool. Agencies are great. But when your agency is really broad and you will do lots of services for lots of different uh clients. And it's hard to focus on something, it's hard to operationalize something, your margins kind of get crushed a little bit and it's just a lot more challenging. And so

His whole thing. was we're just gonna do clips and then eventually now they're doing more stuff under a different company like they're doing um Helping people write uh books. or uh write Twitter threads, I mean. They're helping people do a bunch of different stuff. Um They're helping people grow their YouTube, but those are all different companies. But viral cuts, he was like, I'm just gonna productize this one service. And so he did a really good job of hiring like twenty

people and he taught'em how to make the the The clips? And then he like created a very strict process on how to get the footage from people, how to chop it up, how to deliver them. And it was like very, very, very, very operationalized from day one. And it's going great.

I don't remember exactly Uh what we're allowed to say about how big it is, but it got to seven figures in revenue in Like Sixty days.

Most of which came because At first I tweeted it and then Cody Sanchez, another partner involved. She started sharing and so now it's like well into the seven figures. Um, it's going great. You have to deal with a lot of headaches'cause it's a people business, but Uh, and we're not sure how churn will be.

But it's going really well so far. The hardest part about these businesses is operationalizing the the service. So making it so it's like a conveyor belt. So Your workers know exactly what to do and have very strict deadlines. And then the second hardest part is getting customers viral cuts um solve that problem. by talking to me and Cody and we just tweeted it out and within a very short amount of time they had seven figures in revenue. So it's going really well.

All right, so that was my Rapid Fire QA. This is what happens when Sean's not here. We do a little rapid fire QA. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If you are listening on iTunes, Spotify, whatever, if you go to our YouTube, you'll see some of the links to some of these examples and some of these topics that we talked about. And if you like this, let me know in the comments. Talk soon. I feel like I can rule the world a no way

But I want to I put my law in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back