The Guy Mafia, Agency Affiliates, Mini Katanas, and More

Okay. Next one. Um Uh hosted buyer meetings on a plane. B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight. It's like the timeshare idea. It's like so you get a free flight. Uh But it's you're gonna get out a plane uh full of vendors. It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane. But it says snakes, it's just be to be software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for

The next seven hours on your way to Maui. So here's I'm gonna tell you about something that's interesting. There's a guy who I love. And his name's Anand. Do you n uh he started CB Insights. Do you know him? Yeah. Listen to the pod, love the guy.

Yeah, he's a great guy. He's one of my good friends. And I was thinking about this. So there's a lot of things that second time or third time entrepreneurs think about that mostly first time entrepreneurs don't think about. One of them being distribution. So they'll think like oh I'm just gonna make a cool product and it'll somehow get into people's hands. That's false. You gotta have marketing baked in or like it's gotta be part of like the ideation phase marketing. The second thing is pricing. Uh, they think, Oh, I'll just charge five dollars a month and I'll get like millions of people to buy this. And then you actually start doing it and you're like, wow, this is incredibly challenging to get. Thousands or tens of thousands, let alone millions of people to buy something. That's really hard.

And so I've been thinking about that pricing thing. So things That fit my wants and my needs and my skill sets. So for example content. There's industry dive, which probably only has five or ten million

People a month reading their website, but they make shit for like people who own grocery stores, like content for people who own grocery stores versus BuzzFeed, which makes stuff for stay at home moms who like cat videos. Buzzfeed worth a hundred million. Industry Drive does the exact same thing, way smaller audience, makes or uh sold recently for five hundred or six hundred million dollars. So like I've been thinking about like the those that price dis like that that d the different ways of packaging. And so Anand from C B Insights, he's got this company that's brand new. It's only ninety days old. It's been way low key and under the under wraps. And I recently discovered it and I asked him. So it's called Yardstick. So go to yardstick.com and tell me what you see. It's called yardstick. So it's the word yard, like a backyard, and it's stick is S T I Q. He's getting a little cute on us.

Uh let's see. Okay, so yardstick powered by CV insights. Learn what software buy think about their vendors. Great title, great headline. Yeah, And then it says access thousands of analyst led conversations.

With software buyers to quickly understand pricing, competition, evaluation criteria, and subscription and satisfaction. So basically They interview software buyers and they get the scoop on how do you really feel about X tool. And then they summarize it so that you can You could see how other people

Think about this tool before you buy it. Exactly. That's it. And they charge like something like thirty or forty they charge Yeah, it's really smart. And I'll explain how this works. But they charge like thirty or forty thousand dollars a year for this. And I think this could be a hundred million dollar year business and they're just I I'm I'm downplaying, but right now the MVP is just interviewing people and showing transcripts. Eventually I'm sure they're

I remember you talked about this back in the day'cause there's that website, what is it? G two crowds. Yes, exactly. And um There's basically like software is a massive category and people are like, Oh, which CRM should I use. And it's like oh you know, it's hub spot fighting with ten other people to try to be the answer to that question. And so reviews is always this thing that people are trying to like

I think people in general want the idea of a review, but it's hard to trust reviews nowadays. You don't know if the reviews are faked. Uh, you don't know if they're from people like you who have the same problems as you. Uh and the website like you know, GT Crowd and these other ones, they're pretty bad. And I've seen a I've seen several people try to create a new software review site to compete with them.

And they have to do two things. One, they have to actually be better at the reviews, and two They have to rank higher in SEO. for when somebody searches for, you know, whatever, X tool alternative or What's the best Which is hard.

Sales tool for me to use. And it's really hard to beat their SEO. And so they're fighting a very uphill battle. This I think is smart for two reasons. One They already have a bunch of customers that they could just sell this sell into with this. Two.

The idea of instead of saying, Okay, well, whoever reviews it, hopefully they're good reviews, they're like, No, we're just gonna hire people to do these conversations and like the math works out. If we get these brands To say What they think about these tools. You know

We might only need to invest. I don't know. two hundred thousand dollars into the to the to the collection of that data. And that gives us like a better review s a better um content system.

And you've nailed everything, and there's a third thing though. which is basically G two or um software reviews dot com or a lot of these websites, the way they typically work is they give an affiliate fee or some type of like advertisement fee. They they collect that from the brand who wants to advertise on the website, which means they have to go and get traffic. And they've got to convince these brands to give money. Whereas this business, Yardstick, it does exactly what I said before. It changes the way they package it. And so they just go, No, you're the customer, you're gonna read this and you're gonna get value from this. You're giving us thirty grand a year. And so we're just gonna make shit for you. And it's just that's our that's our that's our exchange. And so that's what we're gonna do. And so basically the background behind this business is

Uh, this is something that I didn't know about until recently and probably you didn't either, because we both had small companies. And so a small company in this definition is anything that's below a billion dollars cap or value. Meaning Typically the people who buy this shit have five hundred employees. And the reason that's important is when you buy a software provider or you buy a CRM or you buy like Some type of um What's it called where you uh like uh your customer like you do give customer feedback, like or you uh like interact with your customers and your customer service agents use it. Doing business, I don't know, customer happiness. I don't you know whatever like the software is like a Zen Desk or something like that. So but like picking

the wrong software, if you are a five hundred percent company, it will cost you like so much money. And so you have to do actually a fair bit amount of research, including like who invested in this company so I know they're not even gonna go out of business. And I never even a million years thought about that. I'm like, dude, I'm just gonna Google like what's better Gusto or Zen of It's and like we'll just pick one and then we'll just switch if it sucks. And so what Yardstick is doing is they actually have just tr it's Anon and seven other employees are the the early people starting this company and they basically just ask like seven questions to people who have bought software. Uh, in the last two years and they say like, Who else did you consider? Who'd you pick? What price did you pay? Would you renew? What's your customer satisfaction?

And then um the people who purchase this yardstick product are either investment bankers, so people who are like making investment decisions for in the public markets or or private markets and they want to know what the customer satisfaction is, or people who are going out and buying software and they could see these other reviews. And it's just like a really interesting business because there's there's a companies like GLG. You know GLG? It's like uh you get paid two grand an hour. GLG calls back in the day. Yeah, you get paid two grand an hour to like answer questions, but that's one to one. And so what they're saying is like, no, we're not gonna do one to one, but we'll just make it so you can just read like dozens and dozens of interviews. So anyway, interesting company for all everything I said, but secondly, it's an interesting company because this business is only ninety days old. And I think if you go and sign up for their email list now.

It's kinda like you can watch like a big business being built in real time real time. Yeah, this is really good. Like I'm jealous I didn't think of this idea. Um I kinda wish he had just done this outside of CP insights. I feel like this could have g been his next hit. I think it's gonna be as big. As C B insights. So I think there's

S uh slight, you know, although it's good to be able to sell into the same customers. I think it would have been worth it to uh you know, spin this out. But you know, that's a that's a com more complicated decision. By the way. This guy Anon, he has A giant list of startup ideas. Have you seen this?

No, where? I'm trying to find the list. I remember seeing it on Um Twitter one day. But uh

Here, w look for a second, but uh the the background behind Anand is he started CB insights. They're close to a hundred million in revenue. He's kind of a shithead in a really good way. For example, he signs he he writes their daily newsletter and he signs the newsletter with I love you or in his Twitter file it tro profile it says Please sign up for CB Insights I owe people money. Like he is like like kind of like a cheeky mis like mischievous guy and very likable and that's and his content's amazing. And so that's Anand's really interesting. If you if you want to know what speaks to our heart. You gotta be

Somebody who's trying to do something. So you gotta be ambitious or successful in some way. And the second thing is A little bit of a shithead. So you know, like have that s I don't like to eat my wings without sauce. You gotta have a little dipping sauce to your personality if you're gonna if you're gonna get me on board. And he's got the sauce. All right, so let me tell you some of these ideas. So I don't have the full list. I remember seeing this. Like a year ago or something like that. Um we should get'em on the pod, but let me just read a couple of the ideas that were tweeted out.

From this list. Okay. So First one. Tough mutter for kids. So here's what he says. Really any sort of manufactured adversity for semi affluent or affluent kids.

Parents talk about wanting their kids to have perspective, resilience and reduce their entitlement and get them off screens. Um tough motor for kids. Super high margin, unsure. If uh You know, unsure exactly how it worked, but money to be made for sure. Okay. Did Spartan Spartan Race is now Spartan Race is I'm I'm signing up for one. They actually have a kids version right now.

Tiny Spartans. I don't know if this house it's called, but you know, we can pretend. It's good. Startup idea. Duolingo for teaching finance or accounting. Teach the principles of accounting or finance via gamified Duolingo style app. What do you give that one?

Uh yeah. That's cool. Okay. Next one. Um Uh hosted buyer meetings on a plane. B2B decision makers get a free vacation if they agree to have X number of conversations on a flight. It's like the timeshare idea. It's like so you get a free flight.

Uh But it's you're gonna get on a plane uh full of vendors. It's like that movie Snakes on a Plane. But instead of snakes, it's just B to B software vendors just waiting to just barrage you for The next seven hours on your way to Maui. And just tons of Coke and and just everything that like a forty five year old guy named Todd who wears tight blue jeans and brown shoes, whatever they need to like. This is Jennifer.

She wants you to call her Jenny and she happens to like you. I think it's actually uh I think you actually Could build a business that way. If I sign up for a free trial, you get to go to first class, that'd be great. Uh yeah, this is actually uh kind of a genius idea. Okay, here here we go.

Biable Google Doc travel itineraries. So friends often share their travel plans via Google Docs. You know, here's what I did in Iceland. Um sincer's, I chess your judgment. Um You know, the idea would be let me just buy the whole itinerary with a buy now button, my vacation plan is done. Awesome. Okay.

Um that's a small business, but cool. Win loss reporting for employee hiring and attrition. So when somebody doesn't accept your job offer The service would Would dig in and find out the real reasons why. When somebody service digs in and finds the real reason why.

It would maybe anonymized or synthesized the insights over time. Today the process is very ad hoc. That's a great idea. That's a great idea. Uh wow, that's a that's a solid one. Okay. Uh here's a not so solid one, but more fun. The Nike of Baby Diapers.

So create high performance premium diapers. Use sodium polyacrylate to make them super absorbent like astronaut diapers. Other tech to increase comfort make cleanup easier. Why?'Cause parents spend a stupid amount of c money on their kids. Okay. Dude, anytime. Anytime you say it's the Nike of something, it's like when I see a restaurant on the side of Road that says world's greatest coffee or like the best pie in town, I automatically buy it.

That's my rule. If it says it's the world's greatest, if you're just bold enough to think that I I've gotta try, I bet. Dude, I had the same realization yesterday. Where I was listening to some talk where Johnny Ive was talking. And um

And I kne I knew somebody who met Johnny Ive, like used to hang out with Johnny Ive regularly. They like lived near each other in San Francisco. And I was like, oh, what's Johnny Ive like? For those who don't know, he's basically the the head designer at Apple for like all the great products, iPod. Yeah, whatever. Macintosh, uh you know, iPhone, all that good stuff. So this guy's like the basically the greatest product designer in the world. He's the guy Steve Jobs trusted the most at Apple. I was like, What's he like? And they're like, Oh, you know, he's kinda like you would expect. He's like, you know

Yeah. He's got a sort of a dry but But funny personality. He's a he's a pretty focused individual. Like he's not like effing around a whole lot. Um, you know, he works really hard. And um

They'd be like, Yeah, John they'd come to me and be like, Yeah, Johnny had an idea. I was like, Oh my God, what's this Johnny I have idea? No, I don't remember the specifics. This was like eight years ago or something. But it'd be like A closet that's beautifully designed. What does that mean? And then I realized I started using this. I'd be like, you know what you guys should do? Like I was giving somebody advice the other day. I was like, you know when your p uh when you guys it's an e-com brand, I was like, when you send your package. You should put in there just like

Beautiful pamphlet. Just look super well done. That just will make somebody they'll read it, they'll know your story. But just Just a beautiful pamphlet. And then I realized I was like

Wow, if you just say like A beautiful th And then just like generic thing. And say just super well done. The idea goes from like a whatever idea to like that's a great idea. Yeah, I could see that when honestly, it's not totally BS. There is something to it. If you said like

You know, let's just make Like a really like just Hilarious. YouTube video. It's like actually that is the correct strategy.

You know, but there's not much more to it. It's just a question of can you can you do something that's actually beautiful or really well done or really funny. But honestly, that's not a bad business plan for most things to just say Just a beautifully done. All the details nailed. It's like when Andrew Wilkins.

Andrew Wilkinson says, We try to buy wonderful companies. Right. And like our beautiful businesses. We want to buy beautiful businesses. Yeah. Like wonderful. You're right. That is it's wonderful. He's like, Okay, we're gonna bake this cookie. But It's just gonna

Melt in your mouth. And you're like, okay, all right, all right, I'm in. It's like you know otherwise it's just a cookie. And so I think there's something to this. But um all right I'm gonna keep going. By the way, I feel like I'm reading this guy's diary. And just you know, I feel I feel wrong just taking all these startup ideas here so rapid fire. This could be like twelve episodes of content for us, but I'm gonna kinda go through it. Let's just steal it.

Well I know, but I'm like I wanna just use them all now on a binge eat this whole like tub of ice cream right here. Let me give you a couple more. Um

Happy Cam, a highlight reel of the best moments of your life. How? A wearable camera that records audio and video only when you're laughing. Hapters the conversation of who you're with and great moments. All right. Fictitious. Even the great ones are gonna miss once in a while. Yeah. Just to show a little balance here. Um Okay.

How about Let me pull up another one. Okay, how about this? Um He also wrote Bad startup ideas, I think. So bad but sexy. So th start up ideas that suck you in.

But they're actually bad startup ideas. Here we go. Yeah. Personal CRM. Always a bad one. Preach into the choir. Yeah. There's recommendations.

Well in most cases it's bad, but hey look, that's what you, me, and also. It's something gonna be like a college campus, like Craigslist and then like laundry on like uh delivery laundry. Here's one. What are my friends up to right now, apps? These apps promise you, hey, what if your friend was two blocks away? You didn't know this with this app, you could have met up with them. No. Wrong.

Dude, by the way, did you know that girls share their location on their iPhone with other girls. Like my wife does this with her friends. So do you know people like that? Safety purposes? I don't know why they do that, but like I was out with like my wife and a bunch of her friends and they all did the same thing with themselves, like that group of friends and other people. Like they know their where their real time location is at all times. Hold on. Honey, why you going to the car?

My friend's going to the restaurant but she wanted somebody to go with her. I don't even know how to use that feature. I don't even know where that feature is on a phone. I don't know. You click a thing and it says like share location for an hour or share indefinitely. Yeah. Seems like a trap. Yeah, not gonna happen. To do list software. Yep, that's one classic STERP idea that everybody does. Um

Glass door for VCs, a website that rates VCs. Nobody really cares very much about VCs. They're infrequent decisions for most entrepreneurs. They'll take money from who they can get. Yeah um in in most cases. Founders are lucky enough to have a good choice, they probably already know who's good. Okay. So those are some of those bad bad start up ideas. But he's got a bunch here. I'm not gonna We should have them on Yeah, the guy's interesting he's pretty sp he's earned his spot for sure. I forgot to remind you these last few times, you being the listener, about our gentlemen's agreement. So like

Uh have you ever Yes. Uh there's like have you ever gone to seven eleven and you've seen like a Like an Alzheimer's or like a sick children's like bowl and you like leave a quarter and you take a piece of candy. Right. So that That whole thing works. And they use this thing called an honor system, a gentleman's agreement, where you put down a quarter and you take a piece of candy and it's just

It just works. That's kind of what our podcast is like a little bit with subscribing to our YouTube channel. So Sean and I spend all this time. We talk about stuff constantly about what we're gonna do on the pod. I live an epic life actually just so I can talk about it on the pod. I dedicate my life to this, and all I want in exchange is not even a quarter. It's just for you to click subscribe on YouTube. So if you're listening to this on iTunes or Spotify, whatever, just go to your YouTube and just click subscribe. That's all we want because that helps the algorithm, we get a little bit higher and then we'll just it helps our ego. But today if you're making the choice between Alzheimer's children and us

Make the right choice. Choose us. Yeah, and it's great. It's crazy. Sixty percent of our YouTube views come from people who don't subscribe. And all I can ask them is Are you not entertained?

Do you not want more of this? Clips. All right. So that's that. Uh gentlemen's agreement. Reinforced. Well everyone's been doing it lately. So if you don't do it, you're gonna you'll look silly. So I think you should do it. Um all right. Okay, I wanna talk about a different little trend that I've seen on Twitter. And I call this

The guy Mafia. I saw that line. I thought that was really funny. I mean I would have called the guy mafia just the mafia, but the guy mafia. Well what what am I what am I calling the guy mafia? You've probably seen this trend. Like I feel like it's kinda new. But it's basically a whole bunch of Twitter accounts. That are

Branded like Car dealership guy. Mobile home park guy, strip mall guy, self storage guy, right? There's like And they're basically just saying it's an anonymous account, so you don't know who's behind it. The promise is basically, hey, I'm in

I've been in this s this this space for a while. I got you know, I've been doing this for ten, twenty years. I will share Insights but also kinda like industry secrets. about the way our industry works, the yeah, the the the dirty laundry.

And um These accounts are blowing up. They get really blowing up. Really fast. I just bought a car from car dealership guy. Did you really? I just yeah, I I just dropped it. Dude, I almost bought a car from him too. I almost bought a car from him too. Tell people who he is.

Well no, I don't want to say his his identity. He did uh he did eventually tell me his identity, but I know who he is too. So he's Cartoon Guy on Twitter, he's basically he's always just treating tweeting out about like, you know Insights into the m car market. Right, which I like following, right? Because I wanna know About the car market without doing any work. So he's a little bit more.

He said the market is literally flooded with Buicks. They're riding on car lots like trash. You could score a deal on these if you're willing to suffer the embarrassment of being seen in one. Bwicks are on a hundred Bicks are at a hundred and twenty one day supply. For context, Toyot Toyota is less than thirty day supply. Ridiculous. The simple people terms. Day supply means the number of days it would take to deplete the current new car inventory at the current rate of sales. And so Immediately I went

Let's go look at a Buick. Ha. Yeah, these guys are very influential. I'm telling you, I uh spent a lot of money on a car uh through the through this guy that I never saw. So what he's doing with his like conjunge service, which so okay, let me give you the the full idea then Then I'll break it down. But here's it we'll use him as an example.

So he creates the car dealership guy. And I don't think he's been at it for very long. So uh December twenty one. So December twenty one. So that's one year basically. He added ninety three thousand followers in the last thirty days.

Oh my God, he's at two hundred and twenty five thousand now. L literally when we wrote this thing like, you know, two days ago, we did the root research for this, you said two nineteen. So like Two days he added six thousand followers. This guy's Blowing up. Um and what he's doing is tweeting out insights like okay, you know, here's what the used car prices are doing, here's what the market is, here's which models and makes or

our hottest right now. Here's why G Wagons are selling for this and here's where I think that's going. Here's what's happening with auto loans and here's what that means for the industry, all that good stuff. Okay, so he g he gets the following'cause he's twitting out interesting stuff. Secondly He then

says okay, well what do I do with this? What do I create a newsletter, paid community, you know, people are like The Sam and Sean playbook. You know, they open up their little like red red book and they're like, Is this what I wanna do? But actually he got some good advice from a buddy of mine. Who said Screw that. Don't don't make a newsletter and then try to find ads or sponsors are paid per he goes.

Just help people buy cars. You're building up a load of trust on Twitter. People will buy cars from you. In fact Go buy me a car. It's like I wanna buy a t Toyota Sequoia.

And I think there's like It hasn't been updated in like fifteen or eighteen years or something like that. Like the last update was like in two thousand four or some shit like that. And there's like a hundred thousand person waiting list for the Toyota Sequoia. Some like crazy number like that.

And he's like Yeah, but I bet there's gotta be one somewhere in the country. Uh you know what? I'll give I'll buy in any color, any goofy color. And This guy, because car dealership guy

Is uh has a background as a dealer, he can at least we think access the car dealership the car dealer network. So basically they can buy cars They have like their own little MLS system, right? So they can buy cars out of auction and uh And what that's how dealers acquire cars and then they can sell those cars at a retail market.

And so what he's doing is he's just buying cars out of the auction. Not really applying the retail markup. And just charging a flat He as a concierge. for purchasing the vehicle.

Which we talked about before. We talked about negotiating a s uh negotiating car price as a service from a guy who like knows the in and outs of car dealerships and knows the time of month, who to talk to, what to say, things like that. This is like that, but More in depth. And so I told the guy I was like hey, um I want an escalate. And he's You want it Escalate? I said I want it Escalate. By the way, hilarious thing. I go

I was like, you know. Let me just re I was like, I'm I'm not gonna go test drive these cars, nothing. So I was like, let me just go read the reviews online real quick. But if you search for like reviews, you get these like It's like dude, is this just like some SEO optimized website? So I go, Reddit. Let me go to Reddit and see what people are saying. Let me tell you how people on Reddit feel about The same way that people in prison feel about pedophiles.

Like People on Reddit do not like escalates. They are like Dude, I've never met A non jerk in an escalade, right? Like escalate smoking cigars. Drug dealers and desperate housewives.

And then I was like Hey guys, category number three, Indian podcasters. Here we go. And so Wait, are you getting the hybrid one? Or the electric one or something like that? No, no, no. You gotta go full on. But they have good self you know, they have great self driving technology. I actually looked at one too.

I didn't do that much research to be honest with you. But um just got the the big one. So the the the extended version. So anyways, the My point is. Lot of trust, but anyways bought a car with this guy. So Dude, you live in the suburbs of San Francisco and you drive an escalade, you are warping into something. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely a stereotype that you're fitting into.

You're like the Tony Soprano of Danville. Mm. Let me tell you some of these other guys. So we have strip ball guy who you know he's

Basically, like These little like B class shopping centers. Uh there's the wolf franchise wolf. Franchise Wolf is a guy who talks about buying franchises and what franchise is doing. Oh crumble cookies.

Exploding like crazy. Here's what's going on with that franchise. That's a great That's a great niche to be in because Interested franchise buyers are super, super valuable. That's that customer, a lead who's interested in buying a franchise is worth

Tens of thousand dollars to these Uh companies. Um Secret CFO. Another great name.

I didn't go with the guy, but I like Secret CFO. So I like Franchise Wolf. I like Secret CFO. These are great names, great brands. And I think they work for a couple reasons. Number um The the watch guy. I talked to him, I almost bought a watch from him.

Yeah, there's a it's a he's it's a watch guy. It's called um I think just Watch Guy actually. I didn't know. I see a new one like every day right now. And by the way, this tactic is gonna get flooded. It's already getting flooded because people see it. Now that we're talking about it and breaking it down. Everybody who's like I am a dental hygienist.

Mental hygienist guy. You know, like there's gonna be like just like a ton of these coming out. But I honestly And they all use cartoons as their avatar. By the way, I sent you in the Riverside chat the luxury watch guy, and he does the exact same thing. He goes, Here's what I'm seeing. This uh Rolex retails for twenty thousand, it's an eight month wait, and so Therefore, what we're actually seeing is people are buying it for thirty five thousand. Or this month, mostly because of the crypto guys, this particular br uh model of Rolex is going way down because they're selling it'cause they need to afford rent. And by the way, if anybody wants to Do the the NFT guy, uh, you know, for for for crypto. Uh, you know, we'll hire you for the bill card. We'll pay you to build this account, um, if you're good.

So So so basically th this is the trend. Okay, so why do I think this works? Number one. Um The value proposition is in the name. You don't even need to click to the bio.

They're a walking billboard. for what value they're gonna provide to you. What what they're gonna teach you about. I think that sets them apart from just like Oh, this is Steve, uh, you know, Steve Irwin. You you know, you don't know that he's the nature guy, right? Like you don't know that you have to th there's still a leap of faith. You have to click in, read the bio, then you get the val then you understand the value.

Here it's right on top. Second thing. They promise basically data. insights and industry secrets and people really like industry secrets. And so you can go viral with some of these like

Here's the dirty little secret about buying a used car or buy go about what happens when you walk into a car dealership. I sat in these rooms for thirty years. I know what conversations the bot the seller is having when you walk in like a fish. And it's like I gotta click this, I gotta read this, and at the end of it I'm gonna trust them as a niche expert. Um

So I think those are the two kind of like core reasons that it works. It's also just a focused feed. So versus My account. Sometimes you're gonna hear me talk about sports, I'm gonna crack a joke, I'm gonna complain about my kids. Sometimes I'm gonna tweet tech stuff. And in reality, people just kinda want you for one of those things at at up front. Up front, a focused feed is gonna do better.

So I think that's why these are these are working. And um and I think all of these People who do this are gonna make at least low millions of dollars. And a few of them.

who really learn how to capitalize capitalize on this are will make tens of millions of dollars of a business That basically the core of their business is just this Twitter account. Where they are the um, you know The gas station guy. Like I saw one yesterday, it was Mobile Home Park Guy.

Tweeted one interesting thing about mobile home. I insta followed. I have no real desire to buy a mobile home park, but I kinda wanna know about it, be smarter about it. And then Turns out the guy DMs it's my friend. I'm like you you do this? He's like, Yeah. I was like what the hell's going on here? And so, you know, you never know what's going on in the dad. Your dad's doing this side hustle. I uh I think this is a really, really good insight. that you've had. Um and I completely agree. I think someone like a c the car guy

I think could make Tens of millions of dollars. Now let me give you the so what what I do about this. Let me add to it, right? So uh by the way, another good thing about this, you can have ghostwriters or contributors because you're just under this anonymous umbrella brand. Um so it's that's another benefit here.

Um okay, so what can you do with it? So first I think Avoid the Yeah. Let me do shout outs, let me do paid ads in a free newsletter. Let me do a community.

Like If somebody says the word community, you should stiff arm them in the in this if you're doing these. You got like you wanna do it where the thing I would you actually get towards the transaction. Uh, maybe a high ticket course can work, but like I I do think you wanna be more like the car dealership guy who's actually doing this or you want to be the shit mall guy and you wanna raise a giant fund off of Well, dude, have you asked why?'Cause I'm the same way. I would I almost sold my car recently and I had him give me a quote on it to tell me how much they're selling for

And then I go, Oh, I and I made a hundred thousand dollar plus decision because hi of his advice. Have you asked yourself why do we trust just these guys? Like they don't even they use a cartoon. It's the same reason. People trust us from this podcast or from Twitter, which is that I think when you get to see somebody

Think out loud, which is what writing is. Or we're talking on a podcast. Um And they're not talking to you. You're overhearing them.

And they're not selling you anything. They're just giving, give, give, give, give, give. Right? This is the Gary Vee Playbook, right? The jab jab jab hook is Give, give, give, ask. And so that's what they're doing. Right now, they're just in give mode. And I think that's the absolute right way to be. Give, give, give, give, give insights, insights, insights.

And then there's A surprising number of wealthy people who will say, Hey, can you help me I wanna do this. I wanna buy one of these or I wanna Get your opinion on this. And they will come to you hat in hand like me and you did to these suckers. Like suckers to these guys. Okay, so that's the first thing.

Um Secondly. I think that I would get away. I called it the guy mafia. But I'm calling it right here.

It's time to start the Gal Mafia. We need We need car dealership lady. We need Strip c strip club queen. We need

We need the female version. M L M Queen. Yeah, exactly. We need the uh it's called uh network. marketing or some shit like that, by the way. That's how that it's like When you meet somebody who's proud of being in an M L M, you're like Wait, you know you're in an M L Might like, Yeah, I'm a I'm a gr I'm great at network sales.

What the fuck's network sales? If you can say the word I have a downline, like if those words have come out of your mouth, That's what the that's what the that's what the Twitter profile w should be. Like does does the word downline make you weak at the knees? If yes, you're at the right place, my friend. Right. If I presented you the shapes circle, square, and triangle and you're you immediately gravitate towards triangle like those like psych tests, the Vorsak test or whatever. Um

Okay, so I think you should brand it as a woman, whether you're a guy or a girl, to be honest with you. Um, I think you know, catfish away. Go I think I think that's the first opportunity. Um second, you gotta go find all all the valuable niches. So Luxury watch. Sneakers, cars. Gas stations, real estate, I mean what else? There's franchises, there's

Dude, but are women using Twitter? I surveyed my audience and I go select if you're a male or a female. And it was it was ninety-through cent. It was all dudes. It was probably all dudes looking for a father figure. Like it was all young men. Are like have you when me and Sahel did the meetup, it was like Uh literally a hundred to one men to women. It was crazy. If you're a single woman, you gotta come to our meetups. You will love it. Um Do you have any women followers, you think? Like it it's or is all Twitter this way? No, I think it's more us than it is all of Twitter. I think Twitter probably skews, but not to the ninety percent.

Uh, that's like that's kind of a crazy ratio there. But Okay. By the way, so here's here's my crazier ideas. Okay, so first of all I think Twitter's the wrong place to do this. Um I think it works on Twitter for sure.

But I also think LinkedIn. I think that there are other networks where you should probably be able to do well with this. Um I don't know if LinkedIn allows like anonymous accounts or like fake names. Maybe it doesn't. But the second thing is

Honestly, I think there could be a whole social network. That's basically just yo, you join here and there's just Verified like people who are industry insiders. That you get to read their content from and s and f and subscribe and follow them. I think you could literally like It is not

Likely to work. But it's more likely than a lot of stupid social app ideas. Uh,'cause it has really clear value prompt. So anyways, that's my like long shot idea around this. Yeah, I think this is a really, really good insight that you've had, and I completely agree that there's a massive opportunity here. I tried to make the argument this summer that there's gonna be a billion dollar empire started on Twitter, just like there has been on YouTube and all these other things. And I think one of these people, it wouldn't it's not out of this world that one of these folks could be that person. Another thing that I've noticed on Twitter And um I didn't pr entirely plan this, but because you brought it up, I'll bring it up. Have you noticed

Um people doing affiliates For Agencies. So basically Um who W a question that you and I probably get asked a lot is like who's a good accountant accounting firm?

Or who's a good growth marketer for newsletters. Or Uh you know, there's like eight questions that you and I get asked all the time. Um, and I did this with my body tutor. So my body tutor, they were like, Hey, do you just want to like earn money every person you send to us?'Cause you're already sending tons of people. I go, Hell yeah, give me a link. I was like, Are you getting uh kickbacks here or what's going on? I feel like you've tweeted no I haven't. Uh I just started doing it for my body tutor because they're like, dude, you've sent us so much, like we'll just give you some money if you want. But no, I've uh n I've not. Uh who have I tweeted out lately? I just I just

It was them and it was one other one that I saw that I was like, uh Jason Yanovitz. It w it was your uh Diego, my video guy. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I no, I just like I'm just like fuck it, dude. You've done I well what I told him was I go, Hey, if you're good for free, right? I go do it for free for me. And if you're good, I'll tell people about you. And so I made'em do it for free f for me for six months. And And so I was just like I'll just share you with you. But then you and I have friends and I've seen people do this

And I think they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by referring people to certain agencies. And the right way to do this is to find a product or a service that you're already a fan of and ask for an affiliate or go and start the thing with someone and just be an affiliate and uh I think that there's like this world we had Neil Patel on the pod and he basically founded an agency And the reason why he was considered the founder was he did start it. But he wasn't running it, but a lot of the early leads and probably a lot of the leads to this day came from Neil Patel.com because people were using his website to search like SEO stuff. And

We haven't seen people do that on Twitter, but it actually is really good because Twitter, unlike the other social media platforms, is ideal for link clicks and that makes it really easy to attribute growth. And I think that there's a lot of people making a significant amount of money. referring people to these high ticket products. And I think we can continue to see that. And it might be a lot pretty quite quite big. I've thought about doing this. So one thing I've been thinking about doing is post milk road. Okay, we sold the milk road. Got some time.

What do I want to do next? I kinda wanna Focus on the pod, make the pod bigger. uh better, all that all that good stuff. One of the ways I think But the pod, you know, the pod itself, yeah, is free. If you're listening to this right now, you've paid me, you know

Zero point zero dollars. So how how does this ever Yeah, become something that That you could justify saying, I'm not gonna go build another business, I'm gonna do this instead. And one way is that Can the pod basically provide some kind of win win value for people? And so this one thing I was thinking about was like

I kinda wanna buy A bunch of businesses that like of people that I've worked with, like either, you know, like go to my accountant or go to my lawyer or go to my estate planner. And basically buy. the m a majority stake in their firm.

And in exchange be like, Cool, there are a lot of other founders like me who also want State planning. Legal help, who also want trademark help, who also want Accounting. And basically just build a MFM style like back office.

Um set of businesses and instead of an affiliate, like actually own them, make sure that they're They're great. Like trust in them. And um And then drive a bunch of value to the to those businesses and then in return

There's a bunch of people founders like me who are constantly asking for recommendations about like yo, I'm trying to find a good blank. And I've Burned through Seven accountants before I found one I like. Same thing on the estate planning side. Same thing. And so it's like No not everybody should have to redo that work. And so that's one thought I've had as to like

A cool business to build that just kinda Helps. Kind of founder, entrepreneur. You know Types.

Um And yeah, just like own those b own a own a collection of those businesses that And then uh you know Have audience, you know, people in this audience who want that want those same services be able to just go find who we use.

Yeah, and the The cons are like Can you possibly vet the right people and have like actually quality? But the pros are like This is pretty much what Ran Richard Branson did with Virgin. And so it's definitely possible. I often wonder why like more celebrities like the Kardashians and stuff, like why don't they own an equity stake in more things than they do? It doesn't seem like they do for a lot. They have done for one or two things that ended up being quite big. And so I wonder like what's the strategy, like where where's where does'cause every celebrity has thought about this too.

And so I think like, well, where's the downf where's the Where's the thing? Like you know, how much how many if you're gonna take equity stakes, you know, how much How many things can you promote and how many things can you you know, you're better off basically in the in those cases like you're better off Finding The one or two product categories

That You can own a large uh ch uh chunk of and go big, right? This is like scams for for Kim Kardashian. This is Kylie's lip stuff. This is Connor McGregor's whiskey Irish whiskey. Like You know, he took the Irish whiskey thing was like, Oh, I'm just gonna put this on blast.

I'm gonna own a chunk of this. I'm gonna put this on blast. I think they sold it for five hundred, six hundred million. Um within three years, something like that. So, you know, that was like worth a lot more than like affiliate linking out to twenty services or trying to own. Tiny chunks. of twenty businesses and then have to use your clout to promote twenty different businesses, that's kind of exhausting.

So I think that's why. You want to do a different topic? Yeah, I um Well let me brainstorm or do you wanna go to is there pain for tamement? Really good.

Uh both of my things here I think are pretty good, but I can save'em'cause we're getting to the end. Go, go, go. Go. Uh which one do you want? Painful Tainment or the Katana Store. The Catanosaur's a horrible name. So what is that actually? I've seen this. Is this the guy who keeps tweeting about his YouTube page?

Yes. Yes. I thought that was beautiful. And I kept I'm like, Wait, Katana, is this a joke? Like you literally just sell swords? Yeah. Exactly. Okay, so I see this guy. I've been I've been seeing this guy for a while now. And so he says I think his website's called mini katana dot com. So it's mini

Katana's. But what does that mean? Like a tech deck? Like a like a like a tech deck, but a sword? You remember the minifinger skateboards? Oh no, it's not that small. It's like, you know, like two feet in length. Instead of like a full samurai source like, you know, five feet or whatever. Uh this is this is uh you know, like half the size of of a normal thing. Maybe

you know, two feet and set a four. I didn't know the I didn't know the standard size of a katana, if I'm just going to do it. Yeah, I realized I said that and like, you know, the katana guy is gonna come after me here. And I that's not who you want on your bad side. All right. So If you go to this website. you'll see that it does about one to two million monthly visits, which is a lot. That is a lot of traffic for an e com store. Uh I ha I he tweets about their revenue sometimes. Wow. The the website is actually awesome. It's like the supreme of like swords.

Yeah. That's a good thing. So I think this business does it it does he said eight figures. It does at least ten million a year in revenue. I think it's probably closer to twenty. Um so I think it's probably closer to twenty based on the traffic. And one of the main ways that they do it is through YouTube. Okay. So really there's two kind of like hardcore takeaways that I have out of this. So this I'm calling my um I'm calling this my new theor my updated theory on what it takes to have

A great Ecom brand. By the way, these are dope. I'm I'm finna buy me a fucking sword. These are Yeah you went from making fun of this to add Descartes in like six seconds. Okay. Yeah, I'm gonna buy me a gold sword. Who doesn't know I call this the stranger things law. Which is basically if you wanna make it an econ, one of the things you gotta do.

Is find people who are strangely and unapologetically obsessed. With a certain lifestyle. And then you just need to sell them things. So uh so y you know, that's that's the whole model, right? So Here's an example. Katana Storm, right? So it's like

You have this People you have people who are just obsessed with Japanese culture for some reason. And they're always like fidgeting. Super into Japanese culture. Not Japanese people. And uh and so you're like, um And and and there's people who are really into something that's kind of irrational. And I remember me one time I met this guy. who was the first product guy, first product manager at Twitter.

He joined when Twitter was maybe like ten, fifteen people uh total. And I was like, I remember talking to him and I was like, So was it obvious at that time Twitter was gonna be huge? He goes, No, no, no, like Twitter was It was like basically nothing at the time. It was very small. It was just kind of this thing that tech people were doing, but even the tech people who were using it Kind of felt like

Well this is stupid, right? Like we're all just text messaging what we're like what we're having for lunch right now. Like That doesn't seem like the next big thing. And he goes. But luckily I had learned a very valuable lesson, which is anytime you observe a weird behavior. People doing a phenomenon where people are in mass just doing this thing that makes no sense.

My first your first reaction is So that's weird and you kinda judge it. He goes, but I've learned you've got to lean into that phenomenon. If people are doing it's playing video games. There's a reason. Exactly. This reminded me of my experience when I was in college. I remember freshman year of college. I walk into my buddy Till Feeks.

Dorm room. And I was like Uh I see him playing video games and he's got his back to me. He's playing uh I don't know, Starcraft at the time I think. And then I'm like, oh toe. And then he turns around. And I'm like, Oh sorry, I didn't like I didn't realise you were in a game and he'cause he took off his headphones, he turned around.

And I noticed that the game is like still going. And he's not he's not touching the mouse anymore and I was like What are you wait, what are you doing? What are you just like in d like a demo mode? What is this? He goes, Oh no, I'm not playing, I'm watching. I know your watch this is two thousand ten. I'm like uh two thousand uh

No, it doesn't. Seven or something like that. Two thousand eight. And um I'm like, you're watching Somebody play video games?

And he goes, Yeah, I have w I always do this. I'm like, You woke up. I was like, It's eight thirty in the morning. You woke up at eight thirty in the morning and started watching somebody play Starcraft. Why don't you just play? He's like, No, this is a this is like one of the best players, I just want to watch him. And I was like Nerd I was like hold on, let me go get four friends so we can make fun of you together. Yeah, when I got grabbed my roommate, I was like, Come see what your feet's doing. This guy's literally w I was like, Do you know is this your friend?

Well yeah, then you start like making fun of him, but you actually like sit next to him be like Well hold on, hold on. Let me like it. Why'd he do that with his dragon? Well why did he go left? Now And I was like, You are the weirdest nerd. And but this guy is the weirdest guy. Uh he he does like many, many weird things. This was one of them. And I remember just laughing at him making fun of him. Fast forward ten years.

I go and I I'm like Announcing in our uh LinkedIn or whatever, like, hey, we sold our company Bebo to Twitch, super excited, joined the exec team at Twitch. He call I get this call from Tuffy. Tuffy calls me Oh you know, twice a year. I get this call from Tope. I pick up I'm expecting cra congratulations, he just goes.

You little bitch. And I'm like what? You used to make fun of me for the shit and now you're Mr. Twitch and I was like Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Dude, you were way ahead of the curve. I should have listened to you. Like I could have created Twitch if I had like if I had leaned into this insight that people want to watch other people play video games. God, I love a guy who holds a garage for ten years, by the way. Dude, he was he was ready. I like the cut of your jib guy.

I'm about it. And so anyways that that's kinda the the the Mm. Learning of if you see people doing the strange behavior, right? Like I remember seeing people wear those vibrum five toe shoes where you're like

You're gonna run Barefoot? Why do you do that? Like, you know, and they're like Super into that lifestyle. I saw a video of Joe Rogan talking about

People who hunt. White. Bucks or some shit like that? Like yeah, with some certain type of Year, I guess. He goes, dude, people don't realize how crazy this lifestyle is.

And he started explaining that people will build. Fields. Of like food and like Lounge areas to try to attract these bucks in. They like spend months building these like, you know

Man caves for bucks just to attract them. And then they hunt them, right? And I was like That's crazy. People getting cold ice baths every morning. People ice baths every morning, just like you.

People who um I met a guy yesterday makes five million dollars. Doing a woodworking course. Woodwork. No way. And it's like why? Because people who are into woodworking are not just kind of into woodworking. You can only be

Really into woodworking. And um So this is cra if you see the strange obsession, that is the basis for a store. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?

See most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software's the best. HubSpot. Grow better. So That's the first thing. Second thing. These guys are crushing it with YouTube.

Or organic content. They built their YouTube channel up to two million subscribers. I think this is one of those like really cool growth acts. I think it's worth going and looking at where They just do these unboxings. They got like You know like cute girls who are into katanas, like nerding out about katanas as they unbox them. It's like Yeah, I can see a bunch of dudes getting really into this channel. That makes sense to me. Like I think that's gonna be like

I think there's a lot of people who are gonna like this brand and like this content there. So I think they're just doing a really good job. I think it's good really good execute like ten out of ten execution at like a Five out of ten opportunity. Um, but like, you know, still nonetheless, a lot lot you can kinda learn from this. Dude, I'm looking at their YouTube. I don't understand a lot of these references because it's like anime based, but they don't do that many videos. It looks like they do one or two a month.

And They all kinda hit. This is also do I think a lot of TikToks maybe. So I think they do they do tick tocks. They basically just move their Facebook ad budget into hiring a full time female creator to do this content and That sort of thing. And so

Uh yeah, I think they're It's it's a really cool really cool brand. So I just wanted to show you. I forget his name, but on Twitter he's like showing all the back end, like he's taking screenshots of their YouTube And he's a really, really good follow. He's really been fascinating. Uh I forget his name too. I'll find it, but

He said something like um. He said something like they uh they got something like two or three hundred million Views. in the last year and they only started This past year.

Uh and he's like, We're getting eight million a month. Isaac. What's his name is Isaac. He's the Isaac. Med M E D. And his bio says scaling a sword brand to nine figures with organic video marketing.

Well if that ain't exactly what we just described, like perfect description. Yeah, he did a really good job. He's really cool. Also, I like his profile picture a lot. He kinda looks like a madman. He did like a good clear head shot. But he kinda looks like a madman instead of like a tryhard. And I just appreciate anybody that's not a tryhard. By the way, pet peeves. I feel like all of Twitter is so Cringe and try hard. And I don't know if anything changed or I changed.

But do you feel this way? Like I feel like ninety percent of tweets And including my own tweets. I'm like, is there a tweet that's not cringy? I think that we were the tryhards and now we're over it and we're making fun of people that are doing the exact same thing that we did.

Ha Yeah, I love that. You use the ladder, climb up, and then you pull the ladder up behind you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what we're doing, you know. When I did it it was cool, but when you do it That's small boy stuff. Yeah. I think I think we're just uh being haters.

Which is cool. Uh, which is fine. It's it's a nat that's a natural thing. Let me uh explain w I'll I'll wrap up with one quick thing. Um, I posted a a researcher job. So basically I don't really have a researcher. You do, and I'm envious of that. I want that. I need a little help'cause you're you're you always come with fire. I need a little help coming up with good content for the pod. And by the way, if you want to see the job, just go to my Twitter and like scroll down and you'll see like a Google form. But so I I tweeted this out.

I got like three hundred applicants. And in order to apply I was very specific. I was like if you screw up one thing on these directions Like I'm not even gonna consider hiring you. I was like you have to like put your LinkedIn here. Well yeah, because I was like, dude, if you're not gonna sweat the details on this, then you're not gonna

That's what I said. I if you if you don't do the good job on this, I I I don't believe you'll do a good job on anything else. And I made people I was like I was like really simple, come up with three ideas and make it in a Google Doc and put the Google Doc link in in this form, make it so it's readable so I can just click it. If it's not readable, I'm not even gonna ask to like uh I won't even look at it. And um I got hundreds of applicants. About half of them follow directions.

And About And Good chunk, twenty five percent. We're actually pretty legitimate. What do I do with like these hundred like

Decent. People, you know, it's kind of like an interesting this is like an interesting business problem or a bus an interesting problem. If you have people so we did this with apartments. So our my first business that was an online company was basically look in San Francisco, an open bedroom for a twelve hundred dollar a month apartment Uh an open bedroom and a three bedroom house. that gets like five hundred applicants and all five hundred are interested in living in the same neighborhood. They're all interested in this ad, so they clearly have similar interests. We should just group them into their own thing and move them into their own par apartment. And that was the premise of my first company. With this, I'm like, man, I got like three hundred people, one hundred are are somewhat qualified. What do you do with this group of people? If I can it's kinda seems like such a waste that I'm just using one of them.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Unfortunately not a lot of people need a researcher like this, so I think you just need to translate it to like Something like most people don't have a podcast that requires researching random business stuff. So what could these people do that's What's a job that's more common?

that these people would be really good for. Is it like chief of staff type roles? Is it like something like that, you think? I don't know. I I have to I I just started thinking about this ahead of time, uh, like right before we start re recording. But I did think this is like The uh the app the application process

Is and this is just a little small thing. Imagine if you're uh Burger King or something or some huge company and you get like You know, a million applicants a year. Uh it's like kind of interesting where If you You can only hire a couple of'em and so you're like are wasting ninety eight percent.

You know, in the same way that Ford decided to make charcoal out of their burnt wood that they were using to heat their furnaces when they were making iron. Can I what can my charcoal be of these two hundred ninety nine applicants that I don't actually hire? Yeah, that's a great question. Um I don't have an answer. I don't have an answer. Sorry. Yeah, sorry people, like this is the uh letdown, but

Yeah. Interesting question. The thing to do would be like what What common job do these skills translate to? And then you have now a cohort or a pool of people that are, you know, somewhat vetted. that you could create like a job board or some sort of like matching m marketplace or service where people could just hire

You know. people like this for for that common job. But uh I'm not sure. Like the people who have enough probably don't care, but but like The people who like the the engineering companies or some someone who's getting like a uh a startup that's getting an engineering company. Uh getting engineers to apply.

What they should do is just like Be like, Hey, I'm sorry, you didn't get the job, but here's like five other gigs that are kind of cool and just take like the thirty thousand dollar referral fee. Do you know what I mean? So our buddy Brian Hoover kinda did this. He

He was hiring an a a a researcher or like a analyst for his fund. And he's like, dude, I got like hundreds of applicants. I interviewed them and he's like, These I forgot how many, let's call it thirty just for an example. He's like these thirty were really good. I just I can't hire thirty. I only needed one. And so he emailed me and a bunch of other people who had funds. He's like, Do you need an analyst? Like, here's our

kind of vetted analysts that we thought were good. Um If you need one, like I'd love to help these people get a job. Like he wasn't asking for any money'cause Ryan's a nice guy and you know This is not how he's looking to make money, but like It was kinda great. At the same time I was sort of like

Not looking for the sloppy seconds, like These these people weren't good enough for you. Why why are they good enough for me? There's a part of me that's like that too, so I think you have that Challenge. If I'm a tech company, I'm looking for engineers and I hire these people and you didn't hire me, but Hm. You know, Facebook didn't hire you, but Google should. And I think Google's got a little problem with that. So you have to find some way around that's fair signal problem.

Uh same thing with investments. If I Send an investment to you like Hey, great deal. Not doing it though. You should. Yeah, you you should invest in this. It's like that those are the worst intro those are the worst emails'cause it just Sometimes it's true. It's like oh this is just your niche or it's your stage or whatever.

But a lot of times it just adds like a negative flag to it for no reason. Well, and the answer to this might be there's nothing I could do. Fuck'em. Sorry, guys. Like you gave me you you did all this work for me and you're just not you're not gonna get the job. And there's some guys who have applied for like eight jobs that I've had throughout the years, and I feel so sad. I'm like Sorry. Yeah, you miss the we're not hiring that many people, right? So it's just a hard

Hard thing to do. Um All right, let's wrap it up there. Good episode. And uh yeah, we'll see you guys up there.

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