#130 - How Solopreneurs are Making $1m+, Why Lists Suck, and The 5 Minute City

Mm-hmm. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back We live, we live, we live. Alright, I'm looking at Sam. He's got uh like crazy background, uh purple background right now,'cause he

created a podcast studio in his closet, I think, which is kind of amazing. It's a A we're uh at our office. I took over a closet and I put like the uh What are these things called these uh panels?

Well, we put these panels on panels. So like I built a studio for I think less than two hundred dollars. And I think it probably looks pretty good and sounds good. It looks better than Joe Rogan's ugly red uh capsule that he sits in. Uh Imagine being so rich and famous and then building your custom studio and then it looks like that. That's all right. He did it. I think he said he he said he was gonna move and in two weeks he moved and had the studio. Maybe he'll fix it. Right. Um all right.

What are we talking about? Let's talk okay, uh you tell me uh okay, so Sean, first of all, you're in business insider today. Yeah. Congratulations to me. I bought the I bought the one dollar pro trial so I could read the article. Cause I was like I was like, yo to the writer, I was like, Can you just send me the PDF of this? He's like, No, you have to buy the trial. I have a I have a subscription. I would have give it given it to you. Um Yeah, it turned out okay. I Yeah, how'd that come about? Um

Th some so a guy reached out and he was asking about I remember what he was asking about originally. He was asking about something else. And so he's a journalist and he was asking about um something for my opinion on something. And then I was like, by the way. Um What happened? He goes.

Oh he was asking me'cause I had talked about Parlor. I had tweeted about Parlor and he was like yo Do you know who's behind this? And um And I was like, n I was like no. Uh, and he was like okay, whatever. And then he was like, Hey, congrats, you made the top hundred list of emerging VCs, which who the hell knows what this list is. Really? Yeah, and so he's like you made this list. And I was like, Thank you. And he's like, Can you send me a picture? I was like, Yeah, sure. And then I was like uh and then I like shot my shot. I was like by the way, like

Um, you should do a feature on rolling funds. These things are interesting. Uh like look at this. I just like I tweeted out on September 1st, dear internet, I'm gonna raise a million dollar rolling fund uh only from Twitter buddies and internet strangers, not taking any money from real life friends. I'm trying to go from zero to one million in twenty one days. And I said Um and look at this. Like within five days we crossed a million and within twenty one days we crossed two and a half million and then we shut it down. We we stopped taking money and And I was like, There's a good story there, you should tell it. And then he wrote the story. Uh, so that was good. That's great. Um, I wanna talk about two things, but the first thing is what was the outcome of that article.

Anything, as far as I could as far as I could tell. Um although there was no real clear to act uh call to action or something like that. But yeah, I think I got one person reaching out being like, Hey, I'd like to invest. Uh so that's one. Um, which you know I think this podcast will bring five if I mention it on the podcast versus one and just this is insider. I shared it. Um and the second thing, um, which is not to be displayed. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm a I'm a subscriber. This is not a disrespect to you, but those lists Can we talk about how bullshit all those lists are? Such bullshit there's that what's that quote where it's like I don't want to be a part of any club that will accept me as a member. That's how I feel about these lists. Like here's what I think is just nonsense. So I remember when I was a little bit younger, I was like, I want to be on Forbes 30 under 30. And then I got I was like I went through the process and

And I was not I think someone nominates you. I got nominated. It might have been my co worker who I I I really don't even remember. But I went through the process, I was like, Oh, this is bullshit. This is this is fake. This is awful. Right. This is not this is not prestigious prestigious at at all. And um And it's kinda laughed at in the in our community, at least. It's like uh a negative mark uh of honor. It's like, oh you played that game to try to get that th like fake prize? Oh that tells me all I need to know about you. Yeah. So let's walk people through this. So the Forbes, first of all I don't want to sound too harsh and and because Forbes is still good in many real in in many ways, but in general, Forbes.com is kind of bullshit.

It's like a pretty laughable publication. Um the magazine I think is still kinda cool, but the the contributing system on Forbes is just utter bullshit. And In order to get into that Forbes thirty under thirty, like your PR firm will like submit you

And then if you like buddy up to the people who's making the picks, you get in It's bullshit. It's horrible. I I I wrote a recommendation letter this year for somebody. They so this is some per somebody who is Uh they're my friend. I think they're cool, but they're not like The thirty under thirty, right? That should be like something really remarkable and prestigious and like Why not? Why not just make the list of badass people? Why why does it have to be this weird, like

Not pay to play, but like If you play the game, you get to you get you get to be in. So I referred this person, first of all, who am I to even be able to write these recommendation letters? And then who is he to actually get it and he became thirty out of thirty like mission accomplished by just trying. He asked two people to write recommendation letters and they did it and then he got in. Th it's such bullshit and I don't like want to hate on it because a lot of my very close friends who I love uh are on it and it makes them feel good. So that's cool. That's wonderful. But let's just acknowledge that it's like Stupid. Right. Uh they're not stupid, but it's stupid. Uh the there's a very few lists that I think are worthy. One of them is ink

Inks five hundred. Or what's it called? Inc. five thousand. Five thousand, I think. Yeah. That's a legit list. So that's a list that m does revenue growth uh for like the fastest growing companies by revenue over the past three years. Uh I believe you need to show your financial statements in order to get that. So I think that's like a legit list. Not everyone applies, obviously. They phrase it like these are the fastest growing companies in America, and that's just not true. It's these are the fastest growing companies who submitted their information to us. But I think I think that's a great list. Um I don't know any other lists that are interesting, but uh if it's on How or Forbes, it's probably bullshit. Yeah, so first of all, like I wish I could just buy Forbes because I think the name still has value, even though they've just been pissing on it for seven years about like just having no quality filter. Uh so I wish I could just buy Forbes and like turn it into what it should be, which is like

the brand that if you're in Forbes, that means you're something. And um and they they should, you know, the figure out a business model that works there rather than what they did. Um Secondly, the only lists that matter, in my opinion, are lists uh that are merit based. So like the app store charts. Like I'm interested in that list, right? Like who's in the top grossing? Um I I would like I would like to see that list um versus any of these kind of like vanity lists. But the opposite is also true, which is Um for all these systems, I try not to judge it. I just try to understand it and then abuse it. So I myself have dabbled with Um making lists like this where to y to be the list maker is a great position to be in. Because you just declare, you know, I and I have a friend who did um the Hottest Guys in Tech.

So created a viral list of hottest guys in tech. Uh, I can't say the name is an anonymous builder, uh, tell you offline. And um, and so they made this list. I think it was like twelve people long. The the website's still probably up. It's like hottestguys in tech.com or something weird like that. And um put a bunch of people on it that they knew would retweet. So the the criteria was not who is the hottest. It was who's most likely to share this about themselves, either bragging or as a joke. Um, because I want this to spread. And then Yeah, people will say this is uh you know, objectify and and stupid. Uh hot guys of tech dot com. That's it. Judging off who's number one. I I would not the brain.

Greg didn't make this? He's not the builder, but it's somebody who knows Greg. Yeah. So so he put Greg there because he knew that Greg had that like mix of like had a little following, would share it, wouldn't take it too seriously, like, you know, like not gonna like push back on him or whatever. Um so anyways I thought this was really funny. So I've I've been a fan of this. Jason Calicanus did this back to make his name when he was um in New York with Silicon Alley Insider, I think is the name of his like original thing. Um he wanted to become kind of like a power player in the New York tech and business scene. And so he created the Silicon Alley, what was it? Silicon Alley Um I don't even remember what it was called, but it was like the top

hundred or something like that. And um Yeah, Silicon Alley Silicon Alley one hundred, I think it was called. I I don't remember exactly, but he he basically was like, Oh, this was my excuse to meet Every single power player Uh, they did an interview with me, they sent me their headshots, they wanted to be on the list. I could kinda decide who's in front of who, and because I was the kingmaker of deciding who's on the list, all of a sudden I became a power player uh in that scene. And I just think this is like massively underrated. If I was at any college, I was a bored college kid, I would one hundred percent Uh do two lists. One is the hottest hottest guy list. Um and then the like the other one would be kind of like the power rankings of just the who's gonna be the most successful

person out out of this college. So two things. First this let's talk about that as a business, but before that, so when I launched so my company before this, we had a roommate matching app. And in order to make it popular, we weren't gonna spend any money on marketing, but I knew how to make things go viral. And one of the there's a few tenets or a few rules for making things go viral. A couple of them are to uh be very specific and name names that only certain people know, but they're passionate about. And when we had our app, we were g we launched in Chicago, Boston, New York, LA. And San Francisco and I f one other city. And we made infographics that ha it was like the stereotypical roommates of

And we said like and we very specifically did it this way because it was just like all right So for those who don't live in San Francisco, the there's this neighborhood called the Marina and their stereotyped is Frapro. So we put like eats at this restaurant every morning. Um Uh wears this type of clothing, which is like a local marina shop. Get eats cupcakes here. We did all that type of shit. And it got shared like crazy. So w the the the strategy was name as many names as possible.

And we piled it with names and then we emailed all the people who we mentioned and it got seen by millions of people in the first month and we got tens of thousands of free users from it. It works so well. I love that. That is an ex that is a perfect example of this this marketing idea and tactic that I've always like, again, observed. Hey, this is pretty effective. It's also kind of bullshit wait, could I create some bullshit like this and have those effects? And I've always wanted to have some excuse to do it, and I never really did have the excuse to do it. And that is an amazing perfect example. I love that. I'll I'll find it. And the way that we did this was And like Look at this. Like I just found an art an article. Like so we did it about different neighborhood uh different neighborhoods and check this out. So

Um I just thought you wanted to be able to do it. I might have seen this, by the way, before I moved to San Francisco. I think I saw this because I wanted to know which neighborhood to live in and uh there was this one and there was another like guide to San Francisco neighborhoods that were like designed like this. Like you have a but for people who can't see it, uh he just sent me a a sh uh article on Curbed, Curb.com for Chicago, and it's like all the different neighborhoods, and there's like a little illustration and it's like Here's what the rent is. Here's kind of like where you're gonna find this person. You know, like Bronzeville, you'll probably find this person. protesting a new billboard on thirty first street. So it's like

These things that are gonna get a reaction out of people. Smart. And What's funny is that I had never even been to Boston when I wrote this, or I I don't I didn't know any of this. We found all of it on Yelp. We just went on Yelp and we looked at which had the most reviews and that's what we used. Um, the s and the second thing that's really interesting about these lists is that I like, do you realize that when we say like the Fortune five hundred? It's named after Fortune.

magazine. Like I I use that but I use that word so often that I like don't even I I be it's like when you say like a Michelin star restaurants you forget that that's like Michelin Tires or um New York Times bestseller. Like you often like it's bigger the New York Times bestseller is bigger than New York Times. Um and there's like many lists like that. Like I I would have to think of a few, but I think these lists can actually be big businesses. Same with JD Power Award, which is a billion dollar company. Same with um There there's just so many. Uh so these lists are like shockingly big businesses. I think sometimes they're scams, but not all the time. But it the this list making business, we have to categorize what this is and like come up with cool ideas around it. I I call it king making. Um when you decide who's who's who, right? Like so so Abraham found uh Silicon Alley reported one hundred was a list of the hundred most influential people in New York technology. Put like

You're you're just deciding who's the king. And because you're deciding who's the king, you're the actual king. Uh your your name is on the list. Everybody starts catering to you. You start getting access, people start submitting applications. And Literally the fucking thing didn't exist before you just arbitrarily decided to name it and everybody You know, even if they mock it initially, they will buy in. Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the list. Nobody wants to be left off the list. And the thing is, is that a lot of people are like, Well, who am I to start this list? Um

It doesn't matter. As long as you as long as you make it. And the people who are involved will likely share it. Like I share all that shit if I'm involved in it. It takes some finesse. Yeah, like if I told you right now we just shot on Forbes thirty under thirty, if they said Sam, push this button right in front of you. If you just put the push the X key on your laptop right now.

And you're on the list. And if you don't want to be on the list, just don't push that X key. Would you push it? I would push it. I'd be like I'm on. Yeah. Yeah. And like I realise that sounds hypocritical, but Yeah, whatever. Fuck'em.

But it's not, actually, if you think about it. Yeah, I'm saying it's a bullshit game, but I'll play it every once in a while. So this uh what I wanted to talk about was you uh you had this thing called all access paths And You shut it down. Can you tell me why and what it w what it was and why you shut it down? Right. Okay, what it was. So

Uh the podcast that we do here, we just do a bunch of ideas. So let's say the let's take the idea we just did. Uh hey, there's this business model type that you uh or maybe it's a marketing tactic called King Making that you guys talked about. That's really cool, cool idea. And what we do is the conversation has now ended and then we're gonna move on with our life. We're gonna talk about the next topic and the next topic and the next topic and we're never gonna go past that surface level, right? Like the podcast is designed to be about ideas and it's about it's designed to be more like rapid fire. We're not like Promising some thorough investigation of ideas. So The number one question I would get, and I'm sure you get it too, in your inbox all the time, is like

Dude, I love that idea. I want to do it. Like, will you advise me? Or like how would I how should I do it? Or I have this other idea. Uh how would you do it? And it's like, dude, I don't know. Like he's so context dependent. I don't know. I'd have to take time to figure figure shit out. I don't just like know the answer. Like the answer isn't spending a bunch of months trying to figure it out. And so um So I was like okay, well And people were asking me, like, do you want to do a course? Uh like a course where you teach people about like how to do a startup. I was like, Well, there's no like Just catch all like how to do it. Uh that's too generic. I said, but maybe I could do something different. I said I spent a lot of time in my life.

Doing like zero to one. of businesses. Uh I ran a freaking idea lab for six years. And an idea lab, you're just cooking up an idea and you're trying to make it ha make it happen every single time. Zero to one, zero to one. And so I thought I'm pretty like I am I have gotten good at this over time. What if what I did was I have a few projects in mind of things that I think could be cool to do.

Um What if I just built them in public? So what if I just published Uh not just like how it went, but like the day to day, what did I do today? What did I do tomorrow? What did I do the third day? What did I do the fourth day? And so people can follow along. And like it's not gonna really like apply to their project like one to one because they're not gonna be doing the same thing as me. And then I can have the same exact skill set as me.

But I thought You know, the way one of the ways I got good at shit was just by shadowing other people who were really good at shit. And then you see how they execute and you're like, Oh fuck. That's the level of aggression, action taking. Uh, that's the framework they use to think about things like I should be like that. So anyways, all Access Pass was this experiment where I said, All right If you pay me two hundred bucks a month

You get on my paid newsletter and the paid newsletter is gonna go out five or six times a week. And I'm basically just gonna say, day one of this project, what did I do? Day two, what did I do? Day three, what did I do? And I said, I'm gonna do this for a season. My season's gonna be four months long. And so I've now done it for three months and I just yesterday emailed the whole list. Um of people saying, Hey, I'm gonna shut it off after three, like and here's why. Um so that's a high level like overview. We can take it whatever direction you want. Can you say how many people signed up? Or do you have one too? Yeah, yeah, sure. Like now that's over. Who cares? Um so basically I was like this will be good.

If I can get uh twenty K a month of revenue coming from this. I thought that would be like twenty K as in uh two hundred times or uh sorry, a hundred times two hundred. Yes, exactly. Uh what ended up happening was I had about three hundred something subscribers. There were two prices. Initially it was one fifty, then it became two hundred. Uh so I was making fifty K a month off this for the last three months. And so some people were like, Are you nuts? Dude, your paid newsletter is making fifty thousand dollars a month. You're gonna turn it off like you know

What kind of asshole are you? And uh you know, I feel that, but I had my reasons to be like, look This is a lot of time and energy it's taking and that time and energy I I won't kinda want to put in other places. Did you do you think So when I hear two hundred dollars a month, I'm like that's pretty expensive.

Do you Um Was that priced correctly? I think so. So I think it it's the most that you can charge for something like this. I think once you go into like a thousand dollars or whatever, you're really like only a certain type of person who has a certain t business that's already really successful can pay for that, uh, can justify paying for it, or you'd have to get their work to pay for it. Um

So for this case, I think this was like it was high, right? Most paid newsletters, if you go to Substack or whatever, like I bet you I was like, I don't know And the top Point oh one percent of sub stack earners. You would have been the most expensive one. Yeah, well, I'm just saying like overall revenue per month. I'm sure there's some that are like publications that make a little bit more, but like as an individual and from day one, like I think that was Pretty high. I was a l it was a lot more than I thought I was gonna make. Um

And I didn't do it on substack because I didn't want to pay them the five or ten percent, whatever they take. That th that'd be like ten grand a month, you know? So that was a lot. So Um Anyways, I lost my train of thought. Oh uh the price. So so I priced it at just like what I thought it was like what I thought the market would bear. Um I think it was the right price because I think it was a lot for most people don't have a subscription that's two hundred bucks a month, period. And they're like

their monthly bill. But at the same time, like for anybody who's Doing a business. Which was kind of the the group of people that were that were tuning in or people who wanted to do a business. Um I made damn sure that they got the value. And I'm not just saying that, like I obviously I'm not selling anything now, like I shut it down. But like I felt like this extreme obligation because I was like fuck.

For these people, for most people, 200 bucks a month, I for me, like that's a that's a expensive subscription. Like for an email, this email better have like golden nuggets that's gonna like show me something, teach me something, help me with my thing. way more than two hundred dollars of value. And if you have a business, it's not hard to get an insight that's gonna give you more than two hundred dollars of value back. What was your turn? So the retention was ninety three point something percent uh over the months. So over one month or or the three month? Over the three, yeah.

That's great. Yeah, so that was great. And most of it was just in the first month, like just you know, people who were like, Oh, you know, I've I can't pay for the next month or I didn't like this, or just not what I expected. Um so the retention was amazing, 93% retention. Um, let's see, what are what are the other stats that matter? Yeah, that was kind of it. And then I had a free version also. So I was like, yo, if you can't pay, um there's a free version basically every Sunday, I'll send you one of the five Post of the week, I'll unlock it for you and you can tune into that. And then so that grew my free list basically like double, like 2X kind of like my free list through people sharing that stuff.

And ultimately the reason I shut it down was because My life goal Is I've talked about this kind of cheesy, but like whatever. My life goal is I wanna be Uh like a teacher. Like I want to be a teacher at scale. Like I want and I set myself a goal for the decade, which was in 10 years, can I get to teaching 70 million people?

uh which is like one percent of the world's population. And can that can, you know, for seventy million people can they think of me as like a teacher who really helped them. Uh one of their favorite teachers. That would be like my decade goal. And so I thought, well I'm doing a lot of teaching right now, but I'm teaching like 350 people. Um You know Yeah. That's not gonna I'm making a lot of money, but my reach is so small.

And I was like, fuck it. I need to switch. I need to put all my effort into the free audience because that's gonna be the mass audience,'cause that's my actual goal. My goal is not to add an extra, you know, zero to my bank account. Do you um Uh uh the business that you're d uh the business that you're documenting, I know you don't like talking about it, so we're we don't not gotta talk about it, but Was it is it doing well, like well enough that you're like, I gotta focus on this? Yeah, that was part of it. Um like

you know, the business itself is an asset that's like, you know, that the time spent there versus writing the email is is is you know, better spent. Um so so I basically did d did I promise three things. I said I'm gonna launch a fund, which I wanted to do anyways. I said I'll show you how I raise this money. How do I launch this fund and what what are my tactics to do that and what goes into this. And so I I did that one. That was successful. That was the first month. And then the second month was uh e-commerce. So I showed people how do you get e-commerce ideas, where do I look for ideas, how do you validate demand for that product? How do you know you're not, you know. Working on a dud. Uh, how do you get it sourced? You know, how do you work with a factory? How do you negotiate all this stuff?

And then how do you actually grow an e-commerce store? And so that's kind of what I s, you know, w was showing. Um, and I was using my wife's uh like uh e commerce store for that. So I so I didn't have to I did the sourcing separately and then for the growing a store, because sourcing takes time, right? There's like a lead time of like two months to get a product. Um so I I didn't want to Let leave people waiting. So that's kind of how I did that one. And the last one was gonna be an online course.

And I ended up doing like a workshop and some things like that, but I was like This is just A too much work and B I invested in um our our mutual friend Guggan Bayani's new education startup, uh new course platform. And as part of that that deal was obviously very hard to get into because

He's a baller entrepreneur. He built Udemy, he built Sprig, like a lot of people wanted to invest. And part of my pitch to let me into the round was, yo. Let if you let me invest, I'll launch my course on your platform when it's ready. Um, and so Uh it's not ready yet. So basically I ha hadn't done that project.

Yeah, I saw he asked me to or he invited me to have a discussion about it. I didn't end up doing it'cause I was too busy and I just missed a call. Oh we didn't schedule a call. I was like I I can't really focus on this right now. Um maybe I'll regret it, but uh And you helped him figure it out because he did a course on with the trends community as one of his like like w in his investor deck, he's like, Here's what I've been doing,'cause like with the we don't have users, we don't have revenue, but how do we how can I say I have traction? It was like, Well, I've actually been prototyping and testing this, I did one I did a course with the trans community. I did a course with this other thing. I I became a student in these five courses and that's how I've learned about And that's informed my new business.

Yes, and uh He introduced me to his co founder and I was like, Hey, I'm just I have a way too much on my plate at the moment. I I don't wanna get I can't I can't get involved in anything else. I'm sorry. I don't I have a feeling that's gonna cost me some money, but that's okay. I I couldn't get to it. Um Yeah, that's a phrase I need to learn. What's that? Like I just I have too much on my plate. I can't do this right now, sorry. Yeah, I I couldn't I just I didn't have time and

I actually I acknowledge that I would He's g he's gonna be At least mildly successful. I just I didn't have the bandwidth. Um D what did people say when you canceled were they upset? You know, by the time you get to m like

month three of a thing and you know, I put out fifty pieces of content uh that were like not just like Pieces of content like I tried to make them all fucking good. Um And

I put out fifty pieces of content in like, I don't know, seventy days or something crazy like that. So um By that point I think people A understood. Like, yeah, this this does seem like You know. This is keeping you up at night, right? I'm sending these emails at like one AM because After work, after the baby gets to bed, after I walk the dog, after you know, we do the podcast, after all my obligations are done, then I would bang this thing out. So I think they understood like

Yeah, this is probably, you know, a lot of work. And then the second thing was Um I think you you you earn some loyalty and trust. I'm sure some people were like pissed, but people are polite to your face usually. There's there was one or two people that were like kinda dicks about it. They were like, dude, you said and I was like, Yeah, I know I said I'm sorry. Like

But you're getting your money back, right? Or like you're canceling it. It's not like they're paying for anything. But they were like, Oh, I really wanted to learn the course thing and you never got to it. I'm like, Yeah, no, sorry. Shit happens. That's pretty funny. And did all the people come from this podcast? Uh majority, I think. Uh like

To promote the thing, uh I basically put out some free written stuff and then I did a six minute little podcast teaser about it uh that I posted on the feed. And so those are the two and I posted the Facebook group as well. So those are the three things I did to promote it. I didn't do anything beyond that to to promote it. It's pretty crazy how And I should definitely say, by the way, I didn't do this myself. So uh I recruited somebody from the community, this guy, Ben, uh, to be like kind of like the main operator of this thing because I didn't have the time and and I was very upfront about that to everybody. I was like the you know, this email is like written by Ben. Ben did this thing. Uh it's not me doing everything. Um And so Ben Levy was like the reason I was able to do this. If I didn't have Ben, it would have been impossible and it would have sucked. And I would have quit way earlier because I'm a quitter in that sense. I definitely am like amazed that like so this podcast lets us be

Round up a little bit. We're in like the four hundred thousand ish. uh listeners per month. Listens per month. I don't know if I actually don't know if that means unique or what. But But it's still like modest. It's not like the biggest thing. It's not small, but it's not the biggest thing. I still shocks me that that's how much revenue can be generated from a relatively small audience. Uh it shocks me. It it i it really is. Uh it really is quite shocking. Uh but I think it's like, you know, this is the theory, right? Like The reason I do the podcast, the reason I did the paid newsletter, the reason I do all that stuff is cause like I'm a big fan of this model of

Solopreneurship and being a creator, making stuff and then having fans Who like the stuff you make, pay for it. Um, I just think that that is a really good business model. I think it keeps you honest. I think it keeps you making good stuff over time. And I think it's really defensible. Um and so So I'm a fan of this and like you know, the company I work at, Twitch, is literally the mission of the company is to like empower creators. Um Twitch is just full of like a million, you know creators who have their own channel and they they run their own business and they share the revenue. And um

And so I'm just a big fan of this like creator Like the creator economy, basically. This was my experiment to dabble and be a creator and not just like building tools for creators. Great. I'm all in. I think it was cool. Um, I got a f couple ideas I wanted to throw you away. Let me start with this first one. This is this is an idea that already exists. Uh it's called Cul de Sac. Have you seen this startup called Cul de Sac? No, I'm pulling up our list and I'm gonna uh I'm not going to be able to do it.

They spelled it a little funny. A five minute city, cul de sac. Exactly. So Their tagline is it's a five minute city. So it's basically a startup where they're They're in Tempe, Arizona. And they're building it.

I know. I know this well. So tell me what you know, but more Uh it's uh they have big name people. Who is it? So I think uh the it's a lot of I think they're ex open door people. Um and so Keith Rabois, I think was one of their investors, but Um I'm not sure I don't I don't have a ton of information of who's, you know, ultimately behind it. Um

I think they went through Y C or they're going through Y C right now. Uh or no, they went through Y C twenty eighteen. So they they w a while back. There's not a lot of information about it, but Basically they're building a five minute city, which means that You know, where you work, where you exercise, where you eat, where you hang out, your outdoor space is all five minutes away. So it's a walkable, it's like a total walking walking lifestyle. And you're in this little neighborhood that has every single thing you need from you need to get fresh produce, you want to get uh, you know, coffee, you wanna eat at a restaurant, you wanna work out. It's all there. And I Lifestyle wise, I I would love to live in a five minute city. I think that's like kind of a dream. Um

What do you think of this concept as a liver and as a business? Okay, so I first want to acknowledge how douchey this is. Like This is like if it if it becomes like the startup thing and it's a bunch of like startup y people and peop a very like homogenous group

Uh like we have to acknowledge that that's just a circle jerk and it's kinda lame. At the same time, it's cool and I would want to participate in it. Do you know what I mean? Like That's the theme of this episode. Bullshit things that I'd love to be a part of. Like I would probably have fun. Um but it it's basically like a TED talk that you if it turns into a Ted talk that you live at

then it could get a little exhausting. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. That's great. That's a great way of putting it. Like that's that's that's what it looks like. I see like Three different golden retrievers in the picture, an airstreamed a an airstreamed shit trailer, and tons of white people l wearing Lululemon. Like that's what like the picture is. So I think like I would be a little nervous about participating in that, yet at the same time I'd probably be into it. Right. Exactly. It's like if Lulelemon and Whole Foods and Barry's Boot Camp like decided to share a space, basically. Um so so I think that there's definitely like a douche factor that's that that's possible and will naturally be attracted to something like this. But okay, here's here's my take.

I think Commuting definitely fucking sucks. And I think that like the lifestyle where you know, I'm in a suburban neighborhood now. You drive fifteen minutes to some shopping center. You get so I you know, I take my SUV to a shopping center in a park. I get out, I go into some big store and then I like have no relationship with them and I buy my thing and I drive back. I think that's kinda lame. Um And so

I love the idea of the five minute city. I think The douche factor is really real where you wouldn't the the key would be to not just get the same type of person. five hundred times uh to live there. Uh, and make it just like this totally homogenous city.

Um, and then the other thing is like as a business, I wonder how this will work. Cause I think this is like Basically you know, real estate development play. Branded as a tech startup and raising money as a tech startup, which I think makes no sense. Yes, I also want to acknowledge that, which is I think this could be a great business. But

This isn't like new. Like there's m it's it's just a planned community. Which they ha they've we've had this since Nineteen ten. Like this is like it's it it it works wonderfully. Or it can work wonderfully. Plan communities can be pretty great, and they're great because they're often planned quite well. And so I'm on board with that. I do I do want to acknowledge that it is

An old idea that just uh done with cute branding, which I'm on board with. Um, so I think this is gonna be pretty cool uh I don't know man. Can you convince a bunch of people to move to Tempe though? Yeah, I I don't think so. Um I'm surprised surprised they chose that um as their location was Austin because that's where everyone's going. Aust Austin or somewhere where like Yeah. Like Chicago or like where there's a lot of people willing to be already.

So there's one um there's one variant of this that I think is is different. And uh where you I don't know if you'll be able to find the name of this. I can't I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but Somebody told me about a version of this planned community that I think is also cool, which is actually catering towards immigrants that live in America. So people like my parents. So my parents are Indian, they Uh, mostly in their social circle have like Indian friends'cause like the holidays and the food and like the whatever there's that's who they get along with. Language is easy. Um

And so Somebody and and being an immigrant in America is like hard in a whole bunch of ways. You're sort of at a disadvantage and Um not welcome to not accept it in a lot of different uh scenarios. Uh, but I found some real estate developer who's basically was building these little neighborhoods that were just for like You know, like

Brown parents. Uh and it wasn't like uh it's obviously it's not reserved for that. Like anybody can buy there. But like word spread and a bunch of Indian families. parents whose kids all went to college and moved away. And these empty nesters all moved into this one neighborhood. And in the center of the neighborhood, they had like these kind of shared amenities, uh, which was like, you know, like Maybe like a religious place and maybe like a food like

Like kind of a dining hall where they could like have a a chef that's always making food there. And I thought this was a great concept. I would love to put my parents in a place like that where their social scene is like made for them. So they're not just like alone in their house. Yeah, till they get old. Well it's called the nursing home, but yeah.

No choking. So like My uh Neville, my best bud Neville, he's Zarastrian, which is like a uh he calls himself Uh he was like, We're kinda like Jews in India. Uh, which I don't exactly know that means, but it basically uh it's a subset of Indian c I don't really know exactly what it is. Uh I think it's a religion or a cult I don't know how they define themselves. Anyway, for even trying. Okay, go ahead. I think it's a I don't know if it's culture, race, religion, whatever it is. He identifies as Zoroastrian and he said that when him and his parents moved here, they surrounded themselves

on the same block with some just as well as other Indians. And so he was like, it was the best thing ever. We were raised around other immigrant parents, but we were trying to fit in and be American, but we still had Indian roots. So it was really nice to have that. And so what we're doing now here in Nat or uh Austin where I l I'm living now is I bought a house and Neville is gonna move down the block. He's looking at a house on the block, and then Ramon is moving here in January, my other best buddy. And so we're all trying to move on the same block because we're trying to recreate this. Yes and so I'm totally I'm totally into it. That that is the dream. Um, I I love that. Uh so anyways, I think it's a cool idea. And more than this cul de sac idea is actually I like your idea better, which is

I think uh Life would be great if you basically had a you know, your family lives in your house and then your friends live on your block. Uh, I think that's like You know, the most the most h quality of life improvement you could you could possibly have. And

Isn't I I I mean, I don't know too much about Indian culture, but I do have a bunch of Indian friends. It's quite normal to have your f to for the families like m mom and dad to live with you Until you're old, right? I mean like it's normal that to have like a shared house. Yeah, traditionally the parents would live with I think the oldest son, maybe. Um

But depends kinda how old school you are. So like for my family, my family's pretty like modern and my mom like, you know, torrents movies off of like BitTorrent and shit. Like you know, like we're not like in that like kind of old school mindset. And so so that's not really kinda how we think about it. Um, although I think it'd be great. I would love for my mom to live with me. It'd be dope, but But uh she doesn't you know, she doesn't want to You know who another guy who's trying to do something like this that I'm actually I'm realizing it's not the same entirely. And he's I think he wanted to come on here and he's like a kind of a shady Well, I'm not gonna judge him, but a lot of people would call him kind of shady, is that Grant Cardone guy. So this guy, he sells like courses like Ty Lopez for like two thousand dollars on how to sell or something, and he uses that money to buy property. And at this point, he's got this whole line of properties called like 10x properties.

10 X properties or something. And the reason why I thought of him is a Bray you just shared the founder's LinkedIn of this Uh what's it called, this uh cult attack. And people also viewed People who work at Grant cardones, ten X properties. So I wonder if they're trying to poach a bunch of people from there. Um but it's uh

He's trying to do something similar to that as well. It's an interesting play. So so here's another kind of f fun idea. Uh curious what you think about this. The uh do you know who this guy Tiago Forte is? Yes. He's like, you know. Uh also a creator kind of solopreneur guy online teaches courses about uh

Think it's called building a second brain. Uh I don't know. It's kind of a weird Weird idea, but people are into it for whatever reason. It's like a note taking app, uh note taking course, I guess. Uh, how to be organized or something like that. And uh this dude's like crushing it. He's making like a million and a half dollars a year easily, uh, on his courses. And um She I think it was him. He tweeted out like

Yo, I uh you know, we've been talking about like these tiny homes or prefab manufactured homes. A tweeted out, Hey, I Bought these I think in Austin actually. Um a few of these cabins and You know, uh it's underway and next year we're gonna have a retreat for, you know, um, makers and kind of creators. to be able to just come and stay and this will just be a year round place. You can come and stay and be in a little you're in your cabin and your the the cabins next to you are other creators and makers and we'll just be able to rent these out and um I'm making my own little kind of creator village.

Um, I think I got the the concept at least half right. A barry just showed me the tweet. Um So he says, Here it is, forte shelter. uh to be delivered but next year to Creator Cabins by Jonathan Hills. Okay, so maybe it's not him. Um A cre a set of creative work spaces for remote workers, online creators, and entrepreneurs um which also fund conservation efforts and it's creatorcabins.com is the the concept of it.

Um, where you can go as a creator and go live in these fucking cabins. What do you think? I'm looking at it now. Um, this is gonna be huge. All right, I don't know if it'd be huge, but it's gonna be pretty good. Um There's another business that we mentioned a few weeks ago. It's called uh Getaway. Um Yeah, this is gonna crush.

This the uh it I'm on uh forte shelter dot com. Right. Okay. Maybe that's uh I think creatorcabins.com, maybe it's the same thing. I don't know. Uh no, Forte Shelter, it's the guy this is him. His picture's here. I guess he makes these little tiny home things. They're just trailers or something like that. Anyway I'm totally in on that. I think this is gonna be cool. Uh So what I think is cool about this, uh what I'm studying about this, I I I don't really personally it's just lifestyle laws. I'm not gonna go to this cabin now, but maybe when I was younger, that would have been awesome. Um

You know, the the what I like is that the solopreneurs are are are dabbling with different models. So like for example I looked at all the different solopreneur models um that are out there. I looked at Tim Ferris, I looked at Pomp, I looked at uh Tiago Forte, I looked at a whole bunch of different guys that are out there, Seth Godin. And what was striking to me was that the old wave of like most famous One. Uh Tim Ferrers, Gary Vee, uh Seth Goten.

I felt like we're hugely under monetized. Like the models that they picked to like capitalize on their f their rabid following were like the Paris' is is great. He probably made two hundred million dollars. Well, he made two hundred million dollars off of an Uber investment, not off of his fan base. Um right. Like so m you could you could say that, like, okay He got access to the Uber investment because he's Tim Ferris. That's a part of it for sure. But he didn't a raise a fund, so he was investing his own money when he could have been uh using f fan money basically to to invest. Um, didn't do a course, would have I bet his course would have been pro pulling in five million dollars a year easily. Um uh around the four hour work week right he chose books and ads from a podcast as his two models and he's so popular that he still made a killing doing those two. Uh but that killing is like there's people with a f audience a fraction of his size. that are making as much money, if not more, than he's making off his podcasts and books.

Um Tiago Forte being a great example. I bet you Tiago Forte is making almost as much as Tim Ferris does off his podcast ads or his books. Um off of his course. And um Pomp is another great example. I think Pomp is doing a great job of his monetization model of using you know Pomp raised a rolling fund. Pomp uh has a paid newsletter. Pomp ha right. So he has like all these different like stacks of different ways that he's

Converting audience trust into value for for him. And um Uh, Seth Godin is another one hugely popular. He used books and then he created the Alt MBA, which is like a big set, you think. That's pretty big. Um so that does a that does definitely a few million dollars a year.

Um, so he was kinda like first one, but it took him like he was famous for like a decade plus before he even like s dabbled in something like that. And um Gary Vee like started an agency, okay, that you could say that that worked, but I think that's like a really hard path. And so I'm looking at some of these new models and the different ways that guys are doing this. And this is one of them, right? Create a create uh turn your fame into real estate value.

So if you're Tim Ferris, if Tim Ferris had made Uh, you know, the Tim Ferris, you know, sort of Zen retreat area, which is basically like a year round place where you can come if you're a maker. You're trying to pursue a thoughtful lifestyle, you're a lifestyle, you love being in nature, all the things that are the the lifestyle Tim Ferris preaches He could have just made essentially a resort.

Um, or a creator cabin like this and just Airbnb the shit out of it. I think you're a little wrong. These aren't solopreneur. This is just like the Oprah Martha Stewart type of thing. Like Seth Godin has a huge team, I think. Banner Media has like eight hundred or nine hundred people. I think what you're talking about is just monetizing influence, which like that Kylie Cargener. What the fuck's her name? The What the fuck is that liquor? Yeah, Kylie Car Jenner, what'd she do? Tell us you X the the makeup the makeup girl. Uh the Jenner or whatever she is. The famous the famous one on Instagram that my wife watches on TV. Um

I mean she crushed it. She probably m became a m close to a billionaire off that. So I do think some people are doing it really well. Yeah. Okay. So you could say this is influence. I I I agree with you. Uh, you know, I I the other word I'm using right now is like a is a personal media company. I see it's just a pr it's a person's brand. They are the media company. Uh they're not a part of New York Times or Fox or CNBC or whatever. They're just they're an independent um media brand themselves. And that's what Yeah, the Kardashians are now, and that's what uh Seth Godin and Tim Ferris and all these guys. Another w person who did it well is that bulletproof coffee dude. Um yep.

So there's so there's products. Like, for example, I have this new one that I just came out came out with this Chrome extension, and I'm gonna give it to like the first I don't know, like hundred people just to test it out. Um, because I have this I have a a to-do list, I have a method of productivity, right? I have this one thing I call I have this method I call the w the one big thing, the OBT. And I say fuck a to-do list. You need to have a single focus of if I did this one thing today, the day is worth it. The day is a win, it's in the win column. And everything else is just noise. And I have this one focus. And so my Chrome extension is the one big thing Chrome extension. It basically says, Good morning, Sean. Your one big thing today is, and I type it in. And every time I open a tab, I see this fucking thing. And I love it. It's great. I had it made for me because I liked it. And now I'm just gonna give access. And so I'm gonna be in the software game. I'm gonna be in the fund game. I'm gonna be in the physical products game. I'm gonna be in all these games eventually. And so I'm studying these models and I I'm gonna crack the code. Do you think that that will be more fun than starting a business where no one knows who you are? Um Like just starting to make it.'Cause I'm kind of an attention whore in that way. Like I I I I like

being known for it. I know a lot of people who th this whole thing doing a podcast And having people, you know, listen to you and having people DM you every morning. That The same thing that gives me energy would be a pain in the ass to them. Um, they're like, no, dude, I just want to like look at a spreadsheet and I just want to like make a decision and I wanna invest the money and then I wanna like go play golf. And like that's winning for them. And that's not winning for me. So Yeah, I think I think it depends on the person.

That's interesting. I uh Yeah, I don't know if I would want to do that or not. Maybe, maybe not. Uh Hm. I think it's interesting though, and I think that you'll Definitely be able to pull this off.

That's for sure. Yeah, I think it takes time. Um okay, I got a coup I got a couple more ideas I wanted to throw at you. See what you think. Do the handwritten letter one or a different one. Yeah, that that's the one I wanted to talk about. So Discover this company again.

Podcast success story. A listener to the podcast is guy Steve Morin, who's a baller. He's like I think he's head of mobile at Asana or something like that. Um So he Uh he's a listener to the podcast. He sent me this. He's an investor in my fund and he was like, Yo, you should check out this company I invested in. It's doing really good.

And uh it's called addressable. And so their their thing is just addressable. Uh I think it's addressable app.com or something like that. And what they do is they give businesses like let's say the hustle or really where they focus is real estate and nonprofits. Um They give uh companies like that that have this big kind of client base, right? If I'm a real estate agent, I have a bunch of people who are like clients and potential clients. If I'm a nonprofit, I have a bunch of donors and potential donors.

And I really want to have this like personal relationship. I want to be top of mind for them uh when the time comes. You know, for real estate, it's when it's time to sell your house. For nonprofits, it's like So that, you know, w we give you a personal thank you when you donate and, you know, during the holiday season when you feel like giving, we're top of mind for you. And So they were like, look, the direct mail industry is huge, right? If you go to your mailbox, you'll see all the junk you get there. And so like how do you not just have that be just a giant paper printing waste?

And they're like, How do you get your stuff read and how do you get it like acted on? So what these guys did is kind of amazing. Um, he showed me their office. They have these robots and the robot it's this giant robot treadmill. It's like a treadmill looking thing. With a robot on top of the treadmill, and then in the robot's hand is a blue ballpoint pen. And basically, this is robot that all day, every day is writing. quote unquote handwritten letters. It looks exactly like a handwritten letter with a real pen. Um, onto a letter and it basically pulls your data from your database. So you could be like you could you could do this for trans subscribers, for example. You could be like, hey, you know, I wanna thank all the trans subscribers for, you know, once they hit the first month um for for being a part of it and just say personal thank you from Sam.

And so it'll be like, Hey Sean. you know, pulls from the database. Yeah. Just wanna thank you for being a trend subscriber, for X number of months. Um means a lot to us, blah blah blah.

From Sam. And uh and then they'll the whole and then the when the robot is done writing the thing, the treadmill shoots it to this next robot, that robot. Puts it in an envelope, like fucking licks the envelope, closes it up, puts it in the bin, and then some like dude comes and takes the bin and mails it out. That's interesting. It's amazing. Why is that so when I was in New York, I saw ads on the street constantly for this thing called bond. Bond what was it called? Bond writing. Bond letter or something like that. Bond letter. And they did the same thing and I looked it up and I didn't think that it was booming. Like so they sold m a few years ago. Kind of like a modest sale didn't didn't go go go crazy. What They did wrong, in my opinion, as as I as I looked at this, was I think m a lot of these companies that were doing this, they were trying to do it for consumer. So they were like oh.

That's why they have a fucking billboard out there for you. It's like you should use us to send a a letter on your behalf to your mom and your auntie and whatever for for Christmas. And what these guys zoned in on, I think, was A, their tech actually is really good. So the the like they can make it look like your handwriting if you want. Um so like The thing is not like laser printed on where it's like a handwriting font, but it's printed. No, it's like this is an actual fucking pen that actually writes the thing. It really does look in indistinguishable from a human doing it. The second thing is they went for businesses and the segment of businesses that really need this that really have this problem in a big way. So they have like you know, Salvation Army and a bunch of other groups that are like big that that spend millions of dollars a year on this stuff. Who are now realizing, oh shit, if we do this, we get better results. And that's the last thing is that they actually track the full result. So they know who they sent it to, and because they hooked into your database, they can tell you when that person takes an action, they can show you the full ROI on this campaign. So they turned it into like a Facebook ad, essentially. How many people work there?

Still a small company. It's pretty cool though. Based in LA. How much d is it public how much they've raised? If you want to invest, you you should invest in this company. I think it's gonna be a good company. I'm interested. They had only raised uh up until now, they had only raised like a million and a half dollars. So they were they were doing well uh on a on a small amount of money. Wow, I'm super interested. Who's the who started it? What what's their story?

Uh the guy's an engineer. He was uh engineer at OK Cupid. Which I was like, boom, love it. Yeah, love it. Uh you know, any time you when you come from a a company that's like pedigree is like kinda like growth hacking, I'm like, Yes. Uh so Oka Cupid Engineer, then Facebook PM, I was like, Okay, great, love it also. And then uh this whole thing made a lot of sense to me. It sounds like your portfolio is gonna be pretty badass. Is that do you think so? I mean like I hope so. I'm also just easily excitable, so like, you know There's always a counter argument to fucking everything, but uh but yeah, I like it. You know, if I if I didn't I wouldn't invest.

That's pretty badass. No, I'm into it. I I don't I think that's a company that for sure can make tens of millions in revenue and be very profitable. Can it be like who know like uh does someone like if you have to act like a s a douche VC, you have to say like Alright, who's gonna buy it? Can it be huge, who's gonna buy it? Or like and to those like I don't know what the obvious obvious answer is to that. I'm sure there's some direct mailing company that makes billions a year in sales who exactly none of us know about. Exactly. That that's it, that's my bet as well. Um, I don't even know their name. I just know that direct mail is like this whatever, like eighty billion dollar industry that every year is dying because more of that budget's going to Facebook and whatnot. And also I'm I have a philosophy. Uh I was gonna say thesis, but then I'd have to be a douchebag, so I gotta say I have a idea, um, which is that when Um When when when the whole world moves one way, it actually creates the opportunity

Back for the other thing. And so like a great example of this is when Facebook got so popular, and Facebook was like, Everybody's on it. Every post you do is public. Every it like your timeline and your photos is all permanent. So as the world became more and more public permanent, everybody's on it, it created the demand for something like Snapchat, where it's private, it's ephemeral, and not everybody, your mom's not on it. And so like it's not that Snapchat was always a good idea. It's that Snapchat actually becomes a better idea the more Facebook dominates. And so I actually think the same thing's happening in this case, for example, where the more everybody pours all their money and attention into digital ads and that becomes more saturated and harder to win. Like these other channels like print media and like billboards. Like I'm I'm a big fan of these other channels now because

Marketers are gonna look for where where can I get an all a different ROI? How can I differentiate my marketing mix that's not the same playbook as everybody else? And um if you could provide a better product, then then great, you know, and that's what I think these guys are doing. What's the URL of this company? I think it's addressableapp.com. I mean, I shouldn't even have to give them money after that fucking testimonial. That should be the the whole investment. Uh addressable mail dot com, sorry. By the way, we talked about uh the fascination Recently.

Yes. They the founder reach out to me. Um I'm gonna uh meet up with him uh online or on Zoom, I think on Friday. It's the guy who started Lisa Mattresses. Yes. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that. And uh Anyway, I was gonna I'll I'll have to talk to that guy, but addressable mail but that was'cause that's another hard name to spell. Addressable mail dot com. I'm on the website. Uh yeah, this is gonna be pretty sick.

Cool. All right, I had three more ideas, but we're out of time. So we'll save it for the next one. All right. Sweet. Bray, what'd you think of that episode? Let's let's leave this in the episode, but but give us the uh Give us the rating. And Abreu, by the way, loves shitting on me and Sam, so so it's he's the right person to ask because then we have the real deal. No, it was a fun episode. You guys know I'm A D D, so whenever you guys are Rapid Fire, those are my favorite. This wasn't Rapid Fire?

No, this was. This was boom boom boom. Idea idea idea. And what do you think uh what was the most interesting one of this to you? I like the sole entrepreneur talk, um,'cause I think that's a little different than the stuff that we normally talk about. Um And I also like Sean, you opening up about the all access pass, giving a little perspective of why you're shutting that down. I think that's a little different. Um And we can take this out. Would you be willing to all the paid newsletters to put it out to the members of our Facebook group that you can do that? Oh, you should no. Don't give that shit away for free.

That's what Ben keeps saying. Ben's just like, dude, you should just sell these for a hundred bucks, sell the whole archive. Yes, you know, just day one through through whatever. And I was like, Ah, sounds like a lot of work. We'll leave it there. I don't know. I was like, I don't wanna do the work of going and finding customers to buy this, but like, yes, we should Sell it for anybody who wants it. The Facebook group to look forward to that? At some point. Uh yeah, if you want that, I don't know, just email me and I'll

Sell it to you for I don't know, a hundred bucks. You get the whole thing. Let's see if this little mention actually gets you anything. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll talk to you soon. Cool. All right, later guys.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.