Business Brainstorm: AG1 For Dogs, Sexy Sweaty Startups & Luxury Newsletters

And I'm really obsessed. With These types of opportunities. Uh Because

It's easy to get pressed. Like you can see the headlines now. Idiot creates water bread for dogs. I can see it now. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to

I put my law in it like my day song on a side. Alright, we're live, Sean. What do we got? What's up? Uh Greg is here, friend of the house. What are the original What are the original friends of the house? You said something on an earlier pod that has always stuck with me. You were talking about. I think names. You had a you had your iPhone out and you're on the notes app and you go, I just got

banger names for for businesses that don't have a business yet with them. You were just spitting off names and one of the formats was um Anything with the word bueno at the end. And I can't tell you how many times I've used this. When somebody's asking me about a name And they're like, Yeah, we do. Um

We do medical imaging scans. I'm like scan bueno. And they're like what and uh they never pick it, but God damn if it doesn't break the ice. Uh, Greg, welcome. And do you still have that note that note with all those names? I've got all the names. I've also got I don't know, a hundred and fifty startup ideas in a note.

File. But before I started, I I gotta get something off my chest. I gotta be real with you. All right, what we got? Producer Ari. You stole my producer. Did we? We don't know about this. Fill me in.

Yeah. So All of a sudden you guys send me a text and you go What do you think about Ari? As a producer, I see you work with him.

With her. And I go She's amazing. She's the best. Yeah, she There's nothing wrong nothing wrong about her. And then all of a sudden I'm getting a text from Ari being like

Dude, thank you. So much. Thank you so much. I've just got the craest job at my first million.

If I recall you for a reference check. Just no. It's Mr. Steel Your Girl coming coming at you right there. I thought she worked on it in the past. I thought I thought that was what it that's what I thought too. I thought there was an end date. It's okay. Is it? It happened. It happened. Is it okay? It's not okay.

Okay. Moving on from that one. Greg, you uh people should know what you do. You have late checkout, which is badass. You have one of the best websites um of any like I don't know, company. You make really amazing landing pages. Uh so you have late check out, which is combination Studio. Agency. How do you describe it?

Holding company, building businesses that have audiences and communities part of them. And you are kind of becoming this like Greg the community guy. I feel like that was like a phase of your life. Is that still the phone? Are we Are we is this um making fetch a thing, or is uh did it stick? Did the Greg the community guy happen or what what's going on with that? I think so, man. I think so. Um

I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's It's a thing. If you start calling yourself the community guy Uh and you're just you know, so yeah, it's It's definitely working. I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times trying to call myself the guy. Even actually, uh today I was thinking about I was thinking about Gary Vee. I was thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers, Cody Co.

And I was like Why am I not Sean P? What is Puri doing for me? I I gotta drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean P and I really wrote a note to myself. I said Go all in on Sean Pete. No That's stupid. No. Okay. We're work shopping it. You've got a weird enough first name. S H A A N. I think you're good. You're good. The only reason why Sam is saying that jealous.

He d he that he's well, no, you know Sam. He's he wants to be Sam Peter. He wants to be Sam Peter. Come on. No, man. I'm happy. I I I I've got a two syllable first and last name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname. When you're when it's that short, you're good. Um Sean Bueno? Dude, Greg, latecheckout.studio. I hate your website. You're doing this it's such a designer website. I can't click anything. I gotta like scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man? Yeah, I think listen, there's two ways to create a website. One is to be conversant.

conversion centric, right? Like convert as many people as possible. Uh the other way is You're building a brand. And this is unlike any other website on the internet, I think. So we you you'd be surprised how many million dollar deals we've been able to

Close'cause people like our website. You've done something that um I think a lot of people were trying to do. But you've done it well. So we've let's talk about this kind of personal hold co. Uh, you'cause you went the venture path. When I met you, you were

raising money from a all the big name VCs, you were building a social network, like we were We were both playing that like It's not even a lottery ticket game. The analogy I gave is Somebody handed us a bottle or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning. And um

That was our like stated game plan. It was like Ah, yes, I shall create the next hit social network now on demand, which is not how any of them got really built in the first place. Um, so you played the V C game, you have backed off of it. Give us your kind of two second philosophy on how your mindset changed going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now.

There was a group of us now in our thirties who watched the social network. That movie. And We all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg.

If we're being honest with ourselves. I mean I was I would have been happy with a w a winkelvoss too, but like yeah, I wanted to be sucked, yes. We saw that movie. It jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley. to go and raise a bunch of money to build social apps.

And You know. We tried. We tried. And the the truth is it's it's You know, I remember meeting one of the world's

uh best investors and he he once told me that A third of our deals fail, a third of our deals we get our money back, and a third of our deals we make. One X to Google Times. So That got me thinking that

What he's basically saying is that The best founders in the world,'cause he's only backing the best founders. Two thirds of them. Basically The founders and their teams

Don't see any money from acquisitions. That means a third of companies are basically seeing any profit. It's just So difficult to win in that game. And

Yeah, so that's why I've been focusing more on profitable cash flowing businesses. Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company? Abs yes, absolutely. Yeah. Do you like your life better? Yeah.

And do you Do you have a goal like uh like cash flow goal? You're like, Okay, my goal is to get to ten million in cash flow or whatever, like is that How you were thinking about it, is that the game that you're currently playing? No, the game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points, baby.

Wha what does that even mean? Is there anything else to say? Next question, maybe What is what's the style point? We were talking about when Sam was uh working at HubSpot, he was like, I'm an artist, baby. I think that's what Greg's talking about when he talks about style points. Uh the other part of style points is like the lifestyle. So In Silicon Valley, this idea of a lifestyle lifestyle business is like a um It's a backhanded compliment. So it's a it's a way for people in Silicon Valley to pat you on the head. And be like, that's cute. That's a cute business. Um like good for you. Good that's you know, that's swell.

Um but like To me, I'm like that's crazy. Like the point Point of these businesses is to give myself and my team awesome lifestyles. Like What else are you what are you trying to do, if not that? I don't I don't even understand. And so

I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now is in especially if you're from the tech industry. Is the whole tech industry so brainwashed. That it's all about creating multi billion dollar companies

that um a lot of people who would actually be super happy if they created a lifestyle business that gave them two and a half million dollars a year of cash flow. Um won't ever go that path because it's seen as kind of this like lesser lesser thing to do. We all have friends who do that. You know, I I tease or we we tease them on air, Andrew Wilkinson for doing for doing that.

Um, but you know what was funny is you guys see uh Chamath from All In. He uh so Chemoth for the listener, I I I would I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, many, many hundreds of millions Very very, very wealthy. Uh the other day he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter. And I think it was a hundred dollars a year.

Um, and what's funny is There's two things that I've found to be true is I've talked to someone who says they don't want to be public and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something and they taste that dope that dopamine and they go Ooh, this is nice. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this again. And they love the even though like, you know, the people who are like, Oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do it, I don't want to be a public guy, they get in the public eye and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is even people who have big companies that are maybe venture back companies and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy. Even making fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars a month, that can be addicting. I wonder what what Chamas plays with that, but he has a he has a paid newsletter now.

Well, even worse. He's like uh Yeah and we're we're gonna have it be paid. And so that's really cool because the revenue from that, um It makes this whole thing sustainable. Like we can we can use it to hire more researchers and do better research.

It's like hey why don't you take The point one percent interest on your uh savings account that you have in i with with uh JP Morgan right now and use that to pay for seven researchers, it's fine actually. Like it It's crazy to me that Like W you know, the people say, like, what's the point of fucking money if you don't say fuck you? Like what's the point of being a billionaire?

If you're gonna Do a paid newsletter. The point is it's addicting. And so my point being is where a lot of people who like would make fun of lifestyle businesses, once I mean I and I was that person that I was like, I wanna go big and then I started tasting like a monthly monthly income that's good. I'm like Oh, this is awesome. I I was texting Andrew Wilkinson making fun of him too,'cause he was doing a T paid Twitter. Subscriber thing.

And I was like, dog, you have a foundation. You're talking here signing the giving pledge. Um, like what do you care about this like ten K a month? Um You know, subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to like perform and give them their value.

But it hits for him. Like there's something to it. Uh that fur for that that's like giving him that value. Um I was I I couldn't believe it to the point where I told him I was like The only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is your Using the Twitter paid features.

So then Elon is like See this guy's doing it and he puts you he starts retweeting you. Uh,'cause you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work, and then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk. I said, That's the only Reasonable explanation for this. And he denied it. He didn't know. Uh

I actually get Andrew doing his His premium X thing a little bit more'cause Like he's having interaction with His fans?

But the Chama thing around like putting up Gated. Content makes absolutely no sense. Did you have Greg, did you have any other ideas or uh niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest? Let's just rapid fire.

All right, give us give us one. This one's uh So it's a crazy one, but a happy one. It's Listen to me now. Athletic Greens. For dogs.

Okay. Okay. Keep going. Go on. A G one athletic greens came out of nowhere. Started sponsoring all these podcasts, YouTubers. Uh

And I don't know if their what do you think their revenue is? Sam. Six hundred million, five hundred million, I think they kill it. But I'll do the homey move and say a hundred million. Yeah, okay. More than a hundred million. They're they're really, really crushing it using that model. Now

Dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water. They drink tap water. And The question is, what if dogs drank something that was better from them? Better for them than plain old water. Okay.

Mm. So Uh Here's the playbook. You find the Andrew Huberman for dogs. You sponsor every top dog creator in Animal Lovered podcast.

You give packet to To restaurants. And and bowls that say this brand. Or their dogs. And any profit.

The name we call it The name we call it Goodwater. And our slogan. We do. Good dogs deserve good water.

Now What we can put in the water. So that it actually Is better than water itself.

But This is a good example of How do you create a category of one? How do you build something? Where you're building something where no one else is playing.

And I'm really obsessed. With These types of opportunities. Uh Because

It's easy to get press. Like you can see the headlines now. Idiot creates water bread for dogs. I can see it now. Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg disgraces himself. It's really better than it's Gatorade for dogs the next great thing. Yeah. This is some stupid shit, great. We're gonna good water born like bad idea. This it sounds like something uh misfits or what's that called? What's uh what's that company called Mischip.

I gotta tell you when Craig Clemens came on the pod one time many years ago and he was like Guys, uh we're like what ideas you got? He's like VR for dogs. This is a guy who's made like ten hit products. So you he's not like some one hit wonder. He's got ten he's had ten great ideas. And on our pod he comes on and says VR for dogs and both of me and he were like

We didn't know him that well to be like roast him like we just did Craig, but we were like Uh tell us more. Um but yeah, we were not in on it. But then I swear every time I leave that'cause he was like, Look He's like I would pay anything if my dog could be entertained when they're alone, like or just You know, I just don't want them to be bored.

And now I swear every time I leave the house. And my dog's sitting there just gonna stare at a wall and I'm like Bet your ass I'd strap on some a a pair of pair of uh, you know, Oculus for dog goggles if if it actually kept my dog entertained. So I think he was right on right in in spirit. Greg, I wanna talk to you about Some of these ideas because

You the first one you talk about Ryan Holiday, who's been on the pod, he's my buddy, I'm a huge fan of And You seem like you're in a spicy mood. No, I'm always in a spicy mood. Uh I just want to put that out there. Uh the record is set. For the record. The record is set, okay?

Uh yeah, let's talk about the first idea. So Ryan Holiday. uh incredible, incredible guy. Like he's built such a huge Brand around stoicism. Stoicism.

was basically the dead Unless You know, you were studying philosophy at Columbia. Uh these people like Seneca. Aristotle.

Um maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was basically dead. And what he did is he introduced Stoicism. The great name, by the way, Daily Stoic. to millions of Gen Z and

Millennials. Um, so I think that there's an opportunity to do Exactly what Ryan Holiday did. Uh But in the fable space.

So Do you remember Aesop? A fables. No, what is that? Okay, so

Asa Uh It's just one of mo one of the most well known Uh storytellers Uh

Of all time, of humanity. He of humanity he did Like the tortoise and the hare. Uh Or the The wolf in sheep's clothing.

So it's basically these little stories. That use animals To Two Tell

You know, the moral of the story. And It's got a lot of great stuff in there, just like uh Seneca had a lot of great stuff in there, so Um I think that if you, you know, got the handle the daily fabler.

Uh And you started Telling these incredible stories and quotes from it. Uh, you can build an audience really quickly that. Um and similar to how Ryan Holiday

Um You know, Erian Holiday, for those who don't know, monetized via courses, but he also monetized via his book. But he also my favorite part of how he monetizes is he literally sells It's a coin. He calls it a medallion. Uh so he's got this

Medallion called Memento Mori. Hey, I have one. Okay, why did you get one? 'Cause he gave it to me and I thought it was awesome. But I I do think it's cool. I I carried it around with me for years. I I thought it was cool. I I forget what is moment it means uh like you're gonna die or like l live the day or something like that? Yeah, it basically means

Uh Like sees the day, right? Like you're gonna die and if you know you're gonna die and you're and you're facing mortality, then It's Greek for Yolo. Yeah, it's great for you, though. Memento Mori is Greek for Yola, so

That's a And people pay thirty dollars. For this and I'm sure that he's making millions of dollars. Selling coins. to his audiences via

Twitter. TikTok. And Instagram and YouTube. Th it's the same model. But for fables.

He told us this on the pod and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, Yeah. Um I sell this coin. It's like you know, cost me Whatever. I don't know what it was, but like you know, let's call it a dollar. Just be generous. Assume this coin costs a dollar.

He partnered with this mint in the US. They mint the coin. He sends in he's like, Yeah, you know, I've sold shirts before. He I think he worked at American Apparel. He was like the head of marketing, American apparel. He's like You know, apparel sucks, merch sucks, uh shirts T shirts suck because there's so many sizes and colours and whatever. He's like There's one skew.

It's one coin. I sell it in a two pack. I sell it in a two pack. It ships in an envelope'cause it's the lightest weight thing, so like shipping is easy. Making it as easy. Selling it is easy because it's a it's a m uh you know, it's w a single skew product.

He's like it was the low headache way. To have a merch store. For stoicism. And I was like this guy's genius. And I I remember I don't know if he told us or

I was doing some math when I was thinking about it. I'm pretty sure he's made over twenty million dollars just selling this coin. I think on the pod he said he's sold tens of thousands of coins. Yeah, and then if you do the math it's like whatever. I think that you know Twenty five twenty dollars a coin or something like that?

Yeah. I mean he told us and and he's killing it. Um but what did you say here? You said uh It's harder to be Seneca than it is Sahil Bloom. It's harder to be Aristotle than Alex Hermosy. Yeah, so There's a bunch of tailwinds with this business.

So first of all Creating content is way more difficult than Curating content. And distilling content. And I want people to

businesses that you can create where You don't need to come up with any original ideas, you can just curate Amazing ideas that other people have. Hey, you're talking to two of the guys that did that. The h the hustle did that. Milk Road did that. Exactly.

It's way easier to get your own podcast producer than to steal your podcast producer, you know what I'm saying? Al also my newsletter, the Five Tweet Tuesday, it's The highest rated newsletter I've ever made. It's high open rate. Get the most feedback on it. And it's also the easiest thing'cause I'm just curating five Of the most interesting tweets.

versus try to create my own original blog post every Tuesday. So yeah, so yeah, it is easier to be Sahel Boom than Seneca. And it is easier to be Alex or Mosey then uh Aristotle because they could just take

other people's concepts and curate it. So this This Daily Fable. Idea. has that tailwind with it. And it's got a few more tailwinds to it.

One is that another one is that uh Gen Z. Basically doesn't believe in God. Almost fifty percent. Of Gen Z.

Is either unaffiliated. With any religion or does not believe in God. But they seek out Uh It's just human nature to seek out

uh some greater meaning and purpose in life. So that's why they're filling their time with Daily stoic and could fill their time with You know, something like the Daily Fable. And this is what I call like the unbundling of religion. What is this uh pink pink thing?

Panks. Yeah. Pinks. Uh someone I work with. Uh

harder mind Jordan. He you know, he's rolling around Austin. And He sees this pink Truck. Outside a house.

And outside this pink truck is These men. Yeah. With mustaches. And mullets.

Uh With these pink shirts. Tucked in. You know he's thinking to himself Is this a porno shoot?

Ha ha. Like what is the what is going on over here? And then he sees this logo pink. Thanks window cleaning. And he he finds out that it's a uh

It's a new Uh window cleaning service. Based in Austin. And it's actually a franchise business. And if you go to their website.

Things windows dot com. Uh They they basically, you know, they've got this boring business window. Washing and they they They jazzed it up.

And they they even have like a merch store where they've Apparently sold Thousands and thousands of hats. I was at dinner. The other night.

And bar shop. Is wearing this hat and I look at it and I go I I think I even said I go, What's this uh Just p something cool. What is this? I I know you're doing something cool. What is this?'Cause he's partially one of these guys that like

He knows the indie bands. He knows the cool restaurant to eat at. He knows cool shit. And um And so he's like'cause I'm like why why else would he be wearing a window washing hat? This makes no sense. And he's like, Ah, it's this brand called Pinks. They're really cool. I'm like, They're cool.

Window washing? How do you even know like r compared to what? I could tell you one window washing brand, let alone the coolest one. And he's like, Yeah, I'm like So you bought the hat? He's like, I bought the hat. Style points, baby. And that was the that was the end of that story and I went back home and I ordered a pink sat'cause I was like, if it's cool Then I will be the follower and and try to do it too. So this is a

Part of a bigger trend which is That I think This is kinda like the uh dollar shave. Club. Boring businesses.

So I think Uh a lot of people younger people are gonna be buying some of these businesses, you know, boomers are retiring, you know the story there. But I think what they're gonna do is they're gonna

Make it feel like a an indie band. You know, you remember the Dollar Shave Club. Video right. It was Funny Yeah, it it it it took something

Boring. Razors, shaving. Dillette? And Made it.

Like Super cool and fun and And that's what Pink's is doing. That's actually super smart because that actually kicked off like a huge wave of D to C brands. Like

Sam always jokes, W Sam, what's your joke about D D C brands? How do you know a D D C brand when you see one? Well, because they like uh it's always lowercase. It's the same uh it's the same font. It's uh they always use Millennial Pink. Yeah, exactly. And so y you and so it kicked off the Dollar Shave Club kicked off this wave of D D C brands from Casper away luggage and then you know, like just one after another. And you know, there's

Hundreds of them at this point. Um Which was basically like take boring category. uh do best in class like kind of branding around it, put put a shit ton of money into the set of sort or or creative effort into the branding. And then sell that kind of commodity product.

Online. And what you're saying is people are now gonna do that for these These uh sweaty startup businesses. So instead of doing the boring stu like if you go look at self storage or U Haul, like These are some of the worst looking brands.

You'll ever see. And maybe instead of the sop the the lowercase You know, block letter font with the soft pal you know, the the That that millennial pink.

Maybe it's this like vintage retro indie band uh look that's gonna become the like the go to thing for window washing, trash hall removal. Um, you know, H VAC, all this stuff. That is that what you're saying? Because I think that's Actually kinda brilliant. Yeah, I'm gonna call my shot here and say that

Pinks is the beginning. of this whole new generation over the next five to ten years. You're gonna see pings for X. Uh you're gonna see pinks for Uh lawn care, pest control, car wash.

Catering, pet grooming. Uh Snow removal. And I think it'll And does it necessarily need to be like nostalgia?

But it could also be just a little bit. It's just In different, interesting, and unexpected. So the guy it looks like the brand behind pinks is called Resi Brands. It looks like they own three or four things. They own one called Garage Up, which is like making a garage look cool and clean.

Then there's Pinks, then there's that one painter. And then if you Google it you can find the guy who owns it is this guy named Steven Montgomery, and he's young. He's young with like sleeve tattoos. He looks Maybe thirty. He looks like a kid. Uh it's pretty fascinating.

Uh, this is a really interesting find. Do you know what their revenue is for Redzi brands? Is it is it going well? Yeah, so First of all, he is young. I think he graduated college like Five or six years ago. Um Rezi Brand started recently and

Within the last couple years and Their painting brand, that one painter, is the fastest growing painting company in the United States. So This is a model that Starting to work. And if I'm like a

He Fun. Like This is what I'm doing. I'm basically Acquiring boring businesses.

I'm h hiring an agency like Lay Checkout. And I'm I'm building brands. Not

Boring businesses. He's like, I'm joining Hampton. Then I hardly check out. Find some talent on Shepherd. Exactly. Bada bing bada boom. I'm there. We uh I bec I was I was uh I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started uh one eight hundred guy junk. And he was telling me all about franchises and so one eight hundred got junk was its own thing. He started with just one trunk. Uh or one uh one truck.

And grew it and I think now he owns one hundred percent of it. It does like Two or three hundred million dollars in revenue, really valuable business. But he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises franchises. That's when they really start kicking ass. But dealing and working with franchise owners, he said

Or I don't know if he said it or a CO Cameron. He was like it's very, very, very hard. Yeah, and I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, Oh, it looks so simple. You just do this, you do that. But doing it every single day, I think is a huge challenge. It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover or you gotta deal with fights every once in a while. I think it's it I think it has a similar uh uh a similar type of headache. It's probably hard to manage and and yeah, I wanna be clear on this. Pink's is actually Now It started as one location in Austin and now they're

You can franchise your own pinks. Like if you want to bring one to New York or wherever. Uh so they basically charge Uh Two percent marketing fee, a seven percent royalty fee.

And a franchise fee of at least forty nine thousand dollars. I think it's forty nine thousand to a hundred thousand. Uh And they actually share some of their revenue numbers. So for their One of their Austin locations. They've got seven employees. They're doing Seven hundred and forty two thousand in revenue and they're making

Thirty six. percent profit on that. So two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars. So it's a pretty good business. Um And

Yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage Some of those employees. But Uh there's something here. I don't know

I gotta say the disclaimer, uh We we don't know if this is a great business is not advice and also uh You know Franchise uh Like headquarters tend to share the numbers of like the best performing thing, uh not like you know the average or the medium. Um

Because we talked about a business that has a franchise that was like, Oh, this is a cool idea. I think this thing could I you know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it it might have Yeah, I here's a guess at one which I was making. And then their franchise calendar got booked out, like the meetings. got booked out for like four months after the pod came out. So uh

Definitely uh can't say I I personally don't endorse this. Maybe Greg uh is, but I personally do not. It's not my first million sponsored. Okay, so what I was gonna say on pinks is I went I didn't know anything about franchises until

Like any internet entrepreneur. I didn't know anything about franchises until going down the pink's rabbit hole. And I r I didn't realize that franchises for sure are regulated. By

A franchise board. So that That's also Just an interesting thing to know about. If you want it.

do a franchise, you have to go to these portals, you have to apply There's only certain uh information that they can disclose. So I found that quite interesting. And then the other thing other interesting thing, um

That got me thinking about pings and franchises is I started thinking about like what is Franchise model. What does that look like for The internet.

So what is a franchise? A franchise is basically Uh a set of It's a business model and a box and a brand in a box. And support in a box.

For an entrepreneur. How can we bring that Or is there an opportunity to bring that to the internet? I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency, about how scaling agencies is hard. And maybe

I don't know why, but the franchising was on my mind and I was like I wonder why Like w if I was a like if I'm me And I have a big audience. I have a large ability to Create a brand and gener get customers.

The painful part is the operations. What most people do is they partner with somebody, they run the operations, but they're gonna run into the scaling. Headaches and bottlenecks along the way. And I was like, What if I franchise it? Meaning I could you could spin up you could become one of my operators or a partner in the business. I'm gonna hand you customers. Like automatically. You don't have to know how to do internet marketing. You don't have to build your own brand.

You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate. And We kind of Like let's just say it was um I don't know. design or web development or something. I don't know. I don't know what what category makes sense.

But like You could just have a three person team that's gonna bang out high quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate. But like We don't have to create a hundred person agency headquarters that's going to like

have managers and managers and ensure the quality of work and then have to like Increased prices because if we all these layers of management like Maybe there's another way Maybe there's a way to do it. I I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling agencies. Maybe Maybe what we're saying is the next generation of creator led agencies actually look more like franchises.

than they do what they are now. Right. 'Cause nor normally a franchise, the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically expand. So like why does Chipotle why did Chipotle j f initially franchise out was'cause This concept works. We can physically only l launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the like time we have.

We can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some Chimolas in Alabama, so they find a Franchise you there. With the internet you don't have the geography problem. Internet companies never franchise.

However. I do think that for things that are like service Like um, you know, a service is rendered. I think that's kind of Similar in that You run into servicing problems.

Where I disagree with you on The geography thing is I think it's It's not that we don't have a geography problem on on the internet. It's just that geography is defined differently.

Geography is defined. in the real world, like You know, at the corner of twenty fifth and fifth Avenue. versus on the internet, like

you have an audience, you have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography. So I think that if someone could figure out And this is for the audience. If someone could figure out And us, honestly.

If we can figure out how we could Take the benefits of Uh a franchise model and figure out how we can Uh

Yeah, the reason Okay, if you go to Chipotle in New York City or you go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same. The problem with the creator led going back to the creator led agencies is The the the The type of

Uh product is very different. as those businesses are scaling. Uh unless The operators are You know, I've been doing this for many years.

So I think there's something here. There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet. Uh are you guys familiar with EOS? No. Okay. So uh

EOS is basically a So basically Uh we've all felt it. You're a CEO, you're running your business. And you're making it up as you go. So it's not not just like what's that analogy, like oh, we're building the plane as we're flying it. It's like no, we're literally like trying to figure out what is a pl like what what shape will fly while we're flying it. And so

Um, you're making up how to run your company. But you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company. That will apply to like, you know, eighty, ninety percent of businesses. And so what EOS did was this guy wrote this book. I don't know the full backstory, but the guy wrote a book called Traction. In interaction, he's talking about how to run a like how he runs his business. It's like oh we come up with our Annual plan and we use the scorecard. Here's the scorecard template. You can go download that for free. And like

Basically there's like here's a a blueprint, a model for how to run your company. I've never used it. I used it. I know a lot of people use it and it's like you have rocks and like each person's responsible for three rocks and it's like this whole like strat strategic thing.

Okay, or there's a sum a somewhat similar uh to it, which is like a goal setting system. Um So US is actually like kind of a monstrous business from what I understand. And the way they work is kind of through this franchise model. So what they do is they have these implementers.

So EOS basically takes the lead. And then they're like Cool. You're interested in implementing EOS and it's a it's really expensive. It's like Like Sam, when you did it, what'd you do? For Hampton or for Hustle? For the hustle. I just read the book and then I just implemented it and I showed people how to do it. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but I it's many tens of thousands of dollars for like a two day work. So

It's like quite expensive, uh, for most people to like Swallow that. Um Or it's just like I don't know, you have to have a lot of conviction that that's gonna really help you in order to pay this. But these There are a bunch of people out there that are just simply EOS implementers. They're not a s they're not like

They're not part of the company, but they are They see like these kind of freelance people that will do this. I don't know the exact structure, so I'm talking a little little uh uh you know, off the off the top here. So so I might get some things wrong here. From what I understand.

You have traction, which is the book that generates A lot of leads. uh people who are interested in implementing this. They go to the website, they say, Great, I wanna do this to book a call. And then they either you sort of like, you know, buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever. And then they're paying a person who's like kind of their coach.

To help them implement this system and then whatever. And I actually know a bunch of people that have done this. I'm not you it uh what I've noticed is it's kind of more beginning entrepreneurs. It's Like The best operators I know typically We weren't the ones who were telling me they used EOS, but that's just an observation. I don't I don't know if that's

If that's fair or not. Yeah, but it is quite heavy. It's like a lot It's like a full on system. It's like a full revamp of how you What meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff. I've had this craving to do a lightweight version of EOS because I have a system that works for me. I've used it for like fifteen years.

I've like fine tuned it along the way and I'm like And every time I meet an entrepreneur and they have some bottleneck they're hitting, I'm like, okay, well let's trace down to the root cause of this. Like W what's getting you into this pickle? And then usually it's that there's something in their process.

That's causing them. to run into this issue. And if you fix the process, you'll fix the issue. Um And I don't know if it's a perfect process, but like it's lightweight, which I think is more for someone like me. Like I'm not gonna go hire EOS and pay these guys, you know, thirty thousand dollars and spend six months revamping my company, probably. Like I don't really want to do that.

But if there was a lightweight version, I would do it. And I think the the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't want to have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that. Uh, whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically Come train like

Come to my workshop seminar and do like a four week certification process to learn exactly how to do it. And then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it. That would be fun. I would I would do something like that. I think that's how EOS works. Yeah, and and I wouldn't be s surprised if that thing makes like thirty million dollars a year and like fifteen million dollars a year in profit. Um Uh uh the people who are into it.

They're obsessed with it. Um Greg, what's this uh what's this? What's called playing field? I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating.'Cause I go to the website and you can't even sign up. So Nathan Barry from Convert Kit told me about this one.

Um Basically It's Tom Grady's manager. Uh, he's got this newsletter. It's the most expensive newsletter in the world. You had my intention and now you have my interest. So uh

His company is called Playing Field and his newsletter is called The Brief. Um it's invitation only. I think there's a a maximum of about a thousand s subscribers. In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner. Or you have to be just like a really badass top player.

Um And This is like a part of a bigger trend. Uh, which I think is like luxury newsletters. So

Or or even a bigger macro gem, which is You know, there's all these Uh mega, ultra luxury. Uh Rich experiences popping up for the top one percent, be it like So House or private Disney Tours or Amon, that hotel that charges like five K a month.

Five K five K a night. Okay, night. Five day a night. And You're seeing that in the market.

Like reflect that. Like Hermes has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know? So Uh, I think the same thing is happening with newsletters and I think there's an opportunity to Uh Basically do Uh

to what everyone is trying not to do. What everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter level or to get the milk road level. But What if you tried to do the complete opposite?

What if you Created a newsletter. For the top one percent. That was Very, very

These Focus. Um And You just treated it

Like A nightclub. My favorite My favorite quote is uh Andy Warhol, I think he said Studio fifty four is a dictatorship at the door.

But a democracy on the dance floor. And I think there's A way to bring that Studio fifty four mentality.

to building luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces. How much do you think they charge for this? I mean we gotta buy an NFL team to find out. Yeah. So how much does it how much do the Jets cost?

Did this idea? Style points. I mean, wow. This is incredible. What a what a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes Sense when you think about it.

There was a guy It was a big article in some uh Something like you know, Forbes or whatever. And it was about this guy. And he's got this like you know that Raya was like the dating app for like hot celebrities or whatever.

This guy created like The r the ri the ria of like experiences or something. Oh, I saw this. Is the guy you partnered with Justin Timmerlink? Mirya? I guess as limit.

This guy's specialty Is Getting like super VIP experiences. That like one of a kind experiences that you can't um You can't like you m you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else. Yeah, basically Andrew Wilk Andrew Wilkinson told me about it, if I remember correctly.

Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars. One of those like things. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo uh on the red carpet and I was like, What the hell? And he goes, Yeah, I was part of this Community or this service called I I forget what it was called, but the guy started with Justin Timberlink or something like that, went through Y C and it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know the right people. Right. Right. Okay, I'm gonna read you some of the quotes from this uh this thing. So here's what it says. It goes Um, you know, somebody will call'em and they'll say, um

Like he could basically get you treated like you're an American diplomat. And like you needed to be like handled. Uh like he could do that for you. And so he's like, Oh um You know, you need this epic party in Mexico with private chefs. Just You just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest.

It's gonna happen. And so what he'll do is He'll create like okay, um you're not just going to the Beyonce concert, you're gonna get to go into the dressing room and you're gonna get to hang out. afterwards or she's gonna call your kid on stage and s get to sing with them. Like something that He's like one of one style, um

style experiences. So here's what it says. Mirror only accepts ultra high net worth. Uh people defined as people worth over thirty million. This he says this isn't the one percent, it's the point oh oh three percent. Um You must be willing to spend an average of one million a year on lifestyle alone.

So um Just on these experiences you're willing to spend a million bucks in order to get in. Um See if it has He's focusing on the needs of the top ten thousand people in the world and we're gonna do for them what nobody else can do.

And so he's like he's like almost like a fixer like in uh you know Uh The wolf. He's like he's like the wolf. He's like the one you call in when you need You just need that special something. Yeah, so that's that's for Like physical experiences.

Um but I think What you're starting to see also is this trend around Uh Apps and software. Newsletters.

uh as a status symbol. What's another example of that? Raya was a great example of that. Um But I think Superhuman's another good example. So superhuman Is that email software that a lot of BCs use.

And It's kinda it's like thirty bucks a month or something, and it's kinda it's kind of a flex that you you can say it sent from superhuman. Send from a superhuman. It's like Gmail is probably better than Superhimming, let's be real.

Um But Having sent from superhuman adds this like layer of, oh, I take my Um

I take my job really seriously. Like I'm a part of the one percent So I think there's an opportunity for people to Not only create

Playing field for X. But also Superhuman for X and other software for X. Well like um The easiest one of this on the internet is NFTs.

Right, N F Ts were Exactly this. So Um Like just to your point of Hermes having a higher market cap than Nike. Well

When you know, when NFTs were were out there basically Luxury art. I forgot somebody said this thing uh You know. Art is just money you can hang on your wall. I was like, Oh, that's great. Uh well.

You know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile. And um that's why, you know People would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk. Because it meant something. And When these were happening, uh

My buddy Vishall, he told me he's like, Oh yeah, these are V Veblen goods. Uh and I was like, What's a Veblen good? I never never heard of that. Do you guys know what this is? No, what's that word? I don't even know what that word means. Yeah, so basically available good is something where The demand increases as the price increases. So

Uh most goods it they Follow the s the traditional supply demand curve. Which is that. As uh price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A Veblin Good works the exact opposite way.

As the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight, because if the price runs up, it may puts that product in more demand. But if the price starts to crash that NFT value is crashing with the price. The demand crashes with the with the price. And so Once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this Then um

It explains whole class like you know, the first time I heard about a Birkenbag I was like, Oh, so it's got like an elevator inside? What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care? It's like well they care'cause you can't buy it. I'm like, Well you can't buy? Why don't what do you mean? Why don't they sell it? They should sell more of these.

And they're like, no, no, no, you you have to be you have to earn the right to buy the Birkenbank. And it's like I had a cousin who flew to Paris. To like go to the store. To try to buy a Birkin bag. And I'm like

This you made a vacation out of this? And she's like, Yeah, like I'm I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags. Just to be invited. Holy shit, dude. These bags are. Uh, I'm looking at a used one on some website, it's a quarter of a million, and then there's other used ones for thirty thousand. So it's like the cheap end is thirty thousand dollars for these bags. I think it's like fifty K if you just buy it from the story ish. Holy shit.

And you know And so the it's a it's a status symbol because even amongst luxury buyers You can't buy like you can buy all you can have all the money you want. You can walk into Louis Vuitton, you can buy everything. You know what you can't buy? A Birkin.

Why? Because the Birkin is even elevated above that. And I'm like, wow, there's No and To the status game that gets played uh when it comes to the stuff. And it makes you think, like, you know, remember when the iPhone came out? And that guy made like the app that cost a thousand dollars. And it was called the I'm Rich app or something like that. It was just it was like a red

Light or something would turn on and it That means you bought the I'm Rich app for a thousand dollars. You did nothing else besides that. And it got so popular Apple then started to take it d took it off the store. 'Cause it was like this is not what we want. But the fact that that worked

tells you something about the psychology of people that they would they would do that to signal, you know, their status. Man, this is amazing. I I've heard that word, but I've never actually seen these bags. This is wild to me. Um Th this is in this is this is insane. Wow. All right, what do we wanna do now? We gotta wrap up in a minute.

Yeah, give us one more. One more, Greg. Stripe Atlas for trademarks. So We recently filed a trademark.

Uh We bought the d domain boring marketing. Dot com And It's dope.

And the business started scaling and we're like, Oh shit, we need A trademark. Uh Here. And

File for trademarks. But the process is insane. It's the pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It's actually quite expensive.

And you even have to finish your work on going on these like Craig's listy looking Uh Yeah. Sides and it's pretty brutal.

Well let's explain it. What happens. You Typically what you do is you hire a lawyer. So that's, you know, already start off on the wrong foot. Then they're like, great, can't just file this. Gotta do a search first. You want the s light search for three hundred bucks or you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for eight hundred dollars. You're like, I guess I'll do the search. Uh,'cause the I'cause if you don't do the I'm like, what if I don't do the search like Well, we could file it.

And you're that'll cost you money. But then You don't know if you get it or not. I'm like, cool, for like how long? Like Not like a year. Maybe a year and a half.

Like, but then I I have to operate my company, right? Like so What happens if I don't get it? Like, oh, you might need to change your n company's name. Like, all right, I guess I'll do the search. Then they pay then you hire'em for the search and then they're like, Great, now we can file, hey, which class do you want to file in? And you're like You're on US P T O

The the Craigslist looking thing you're talking about and you're trying to figure out What the hell's going on? And finally you file it and then nothing happens. And then nothing ever happens, basically. Like a year later you'll get a letter you got approved. And then you're like, was that even necessary? And then you're like, This is this is just a crazy process overall.

Exactly. So And then and then Yeah. So it's it's it's very similar to

Uh What happened with Stripe Atlas. So for those of those of the people who don't know what Stripe Atlas is, it's five hundred bucks and you can basically Uh

You know form a legal entity, issue stock to founders filing an eighty three of the election, which is Super painful in the United States. They basically took something that was really painful and expensive and made it Easy and cheap. And the smartest thing about that for Stripe

Which is obviously a payments company. Is once you've set up all those things. When you they basically send you a stripe link. Um Stripe makes money when you sell stuff.

So you're all ready to go and it basically onboards you to strike. Which is brilliant. There's the same opportunity to do that. Or Uh

Trademarks. So like the name I would use if I was doing this would be Mr. Trademark. The slogan would be something like Putting you out of your misery. And

I think that Uh Either something like this gets bought by a stripe. So I think there's an opportunity there. But I actually think that

You probably would would Try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services. And I think you can expand this beyond just trademarks to patents as well. Um, I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. Like I don't know if Patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs. Um

But You know,'cause I I've I've actually I've had a I've you know, I've been at companies where we've had patents, for example Stumble upon. Which was basically this

Uh, they acquired my company and I was on the management team there. And I find out Like one of the reasons I sold the business was'cause I was like, These guys have the patent On like Recommendation engine.

It's like Which is mostly nonsense, right? It was like They were like, We have the patent on this. This alone is worth You know, five hundred a billion dollars.'Cause basically they're the patent on If you upvote something or downvote something.

And there's a recommendation engine at the core of it. That is their pet. Aka TikTok. I think that's worked that's worked a couple of times though on the internet. Uh I believe Reed Hoffman and Mark Marcus Pink Mark or Marcus Pinkus, the guy who started Zynga. I think they had some What I get his name wrong? No, we're gonna go with that. Marcus Picas is a Marcus Picasso? Picas would be such an outrageous thing. I don't know. He's an outrageous guy. Didn't he own didn't they own the patent?

Th I believe if if memory serves correct, I I believe they owned a patent on the algorithm for social media. And I think they sold it to Facebook or maybe even they gave it for f to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story? No, I don't know that story, but

When we bought the Bebo brand back, we got these patents with it and they had a patent for the uh for the whiteboard feature, meaning like you could go on someone's profile page. I don't know if you remember this, like you could go on someone's profile page and doodle Like just draw on a w like a Microsoft Paint looking whiteboard there. We have the patent for that. I was like cool.

But Facebook has that feature at the time Facebook had a something called the wall that was the same thing. Like they had they used to have that feature too, and they used to be able to gr in my space had graffiti and like it was the same feature. And they were like, Yeah, these don't mean anything. And I was like nothing? Like is it patent like ironclad that like Yeah, just like not on the internet.

And uh That's been my experience with I don't know if that's actually true or not, but It seems like trademarks kind of mean something because If you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you your You you can't

Keep operating under that name. Which is painful. And when you sell a company, they like to you to have everything buttoned up like yes I'm incorporated I paid my taxes I have my trademarks I'm free and clear to be bought.

Um But I don't think patents do anything on the internet. What I understand. Well, okay, so in two thousand uh yeah, so m uh Pincus and Reedhoven, they own this patent called the Six Degrees Patent. Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for seven hundred thousand dollars. Um But uh yeah, it w it there's an article called uh Who Owns Facebook's most important patent. So apparently it was a thing. Cool.

Greg. Uh, so you're gonna come on next time. Are you gonna have goodwater dot com? Or no, g you're a good w you're a dot I o type of guy. Well shot's fired. Shots fired. Well, you're about your agency now. It's um it's there's two wars happening right now and that was a hate crime you just committed. Call called him a.io guy. All all I know is that just ca I'm wearing glasses. And You know.

But Oh, here we go. It's uh Sam P dot IO just joined the chat. What what's your uh where do where do people connect? It's uh it's uh is it public school or late? Latecheckout.stud. Latecheckout.studio. I see I know you're not a dot com type of guy. You have latecheckout.substack. Dot com right. Uh I like your newsletter. Where else uh what else do you want to pimp? You you're you're always tweeting cool shit. Uh you always tweet stuff with the first line being like

The feature of blank is blank. Greg back in the day wrote a series of blog posts called like Tiny little life hacks or something. What's the name of that post, Craig? I it was like ten years ago. Little life hacks guaranteed to improve your life. But this is before like Brad Boy. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You were ahead of your time. Uh

Now today these are you know You see these all the time. But back then These were great. And I actually implemented many of these little ones that you you you did like a three part series. It was so good. That people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So Go read that series. If you want to love Greg

Like If people read that, they'll fall in love with you. I guarantee you. Well, is that why I'm going to do it. Your first one is dress formal when you go on flights. Do you do that? It it worked back in the day. It actually worked. You know, this is this is years ago. Yeah. What else what else on that list? Yeah, right off the other list.

When you're out with people. Breaking bread. Put your phone on airplay mode. Yeah, that's a good one. Uh Poor people's drinks before yours. People appreciate that. So Sieva, my bud Sieva, he did that to me this weekend and uh

I I was I was wooed. He he wooed me. And I saw a picture of you and save it today and looks like you guys are dating. So that obviously works. I'm leaning into his arms. Uh it definitely works. Um schedule thirty meetings, not one hour meetings.

You get through just as much. Yeah, I I I totally believe that. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is all obvious now. So I'm good at Saying that Like I looked like an idiot back then. Like all these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now.

Good water. Stripe out listing. I'm just joking. I think good water water you could definitely make that work. Yeah. I'm I'm the I'm the guy who looked stupid in the moment but looks good in five years. A cursed life.

Well, one n number three is to send postcards to friends. So I'll I'll be on the lookout for a postcard. Yeah, you had one that was like um go to this little website and they have a bunch of unique gifts and it's like just show up. Not on a gift giving occasion, but when you go meet someone, just bring one of these for them. Like.

Uh you know People obviously remember it. These are Sound. Just like you know, how to win friends that influence people, but it's real and like Especially in Silicon Valley, like the s the social like IQ was like so low. But if you did any of these things, like you know

You know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, Yeah, you pour the other person's water first, or you show up with a gift. But like you know, I mean I almost sold my last company because I Met someone, I gave them a tiny Buddha. And they remembered me. Like they made an offer to buy my business. So it it does work.

It's one of those things where you're like, Of course I should do this, but you don't actually do it. And then you read it and I'm like, All right, fine, I'll start I'll start sending gifts. That's a perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, Yeah, I know I know those. Those aren't new. And then if you just said, Okay, cool, let's look at this question differently, how many of these do you do regularly? And now all of a sudden, instead of knowing ten out of ten, you do one out of ten regularly, like That gap is why I like that blog post. Greg, dude, we appreciate you coming on.

Um Uh, you're uh you're full of ideas. I you're supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry I crashed your party today, but things change. But uh I appreciate you doing this and coming with us. This is a blast. I was smiling the whole time. Good. That's a win. Um all right, appreciate it. That's the pot. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to I'm putting my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back

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.