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

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) host today's podcast. They discuss: - Shaan and his fund were featured in Business Insider - The guys talk about the business of "list making" - Shaan explains his reasoning for shutting down his All Access Pass newsletter - There is a movement towards "5-minute" cities and communities. Culdasac is a startup doing this - What is "solopreneurship"? And why is Shaan so bullish on it - Tiago Forte is building tiny homes - The guys discuss startups doing handwritten notes such as Addressable Thank you to our sponsor this episode, EPOS! EPOS are fantastic headsets that make it easy to work flexibly across situations and locations, with portable headsets including hassle-free device compatibility. If you are an IT manager running a big department or a head of a growing company looking to give your employees the best headset solution to work from home, check out eposaudio.com/millions for a free trial! Companies mentioned: - Shaan featured in BI https://www.businessinsider.com/this-vc-has-over-100-lps-on-the-waitlist-for-his-hot-new-rolling-fund-2020-11 - Sam's "city guides" https://chicago.curbed.com/2014/4/23/10110584/this-week-in-chicago-neighborhood-stereotyping - Culdasac https://culdesac.com/ - Tiago Fortes' tiny homes https://twitter.com/fortelabs/status/1325969162083004418 and https://www.forteshelter.com/about - Addressable https://www.addressablemail.com/ Have you joined our private FB group yet? It's a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they're already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. We live, we live. All right, I'm looking at Sam.

He's got like crazy background, a purple background right now because he created a podcast studio in his closet, I think, which is kind of amazing. It's a, we're at our office. I took over a closet and I put like the, what are these things called? These panels.

Why we put these panels on here. So like I built the studio for, I think, less than $200 and I think it probably looks pretty good and sounds good. It looks better than Joe Rogan's ugly red capsule that he sits in. Imagine being so rich and famous and then building your custom studio and then it looks like that. That's all right. He did it. I think he said he was going to move, and in two weeks, he moved and had the studio.

Maybe he'll fix it. Right. All right. What are we talking about? Let's talk. Okay. You tell me, okay. So, Sean, first of all, you were in business insider today.

Yeah. Congratulations to me. I bought the $1 pro trial so I could read the article because I was like, I was like, yo, to the writer. I was like, can you just send me the PDF of this? He's like, no, you have to buy the trial. I have a subscription. I would have given it to you. Yeah, it turned out okay.

Yeah, how'd that come about? So a guy reached out and he was asking about, I didn't remember what he was asking about originally. He was asking about something else. And so he's a journalist and he was asking about something, from my opinion on something. And then I was like, by the way, what happened? He goes, oh, he was asking me because I had talked about parlor. I had tweeted about parlor. And he was like, yo, do you know who's behind this?

And I was like, I was like, no. And he was like, okay, whatever. And then he was like, hey, congrats. You made the top 100 list of emerging VCs, which who the hell knows what this list is. Really? Yeah. And so he's like, you made this list. And I was like, thank you.

And he's like, could you send me a picture? I was like, yeah, sure. And then I was like, and then I like shot my shot. I was like, by the way, like, you should do a feature. on rolling funds. These things are interesting. Like, look at this. I just, like, I tweeted out on September 1st, dear internet, I'm going to raise a million dollar rolling fund, only from Twitter buddies and internet strangers, not taking any money from real life friends. I'm trying to go from zero to one million and 21 days. And I said, and look at this. Like, within five days, we crossed a

million and within 21 days, we crossed two and a half million and then we shut it down. We stopped taking money in. And I was like, there's a good story there. You should tell it. And then he wrote the story. So that was good. That's great. I want to talk about two things, but the first thing is, what was the outcome of that article? Anything? Nothing, as far as I could tell.

Although there was no real clear to call to action or something like that, but yeah, I think I got one person reaching out being like, hey, I'd like to invest. So this one, which, you know, I think this podcast will bring five, if I mentioned it on the podcast versus one and this is insider.

I shared it. And the second thing, which is not to be disrespectful. It's behind a paywall, right? I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'm a subscriber. This is not a disrespect to you, but those lists, can we talk about how bullshit all those lists are? Such bullshit. Like, there's that, what's that quote where it's like, I don't want to be a part of any club that will accept me as a member? That's how I feel about these lists. Like, here's what I think is just nonsense. So I remember when I was a little bit younger, I was like, I want to be on Forbes 30 under 30. And then I got, I was like, I went through the process and I was not, I think someone nominates you. I got nominated.

It might have been my coworker who I really don't even remember. But I went to the process. I was like, oh, this is bullshit. This is fake. This is awful. This is not prestigious at all. And it's kind of laughed at in our community, at least. It's like a negative mark of honor.

It's like, oh, you played that game to try to get that like fake prize. That tells me all I need to know about you. Yeah. So let's walk people through this. So the Forbes, first of all, I don't want to. to sound too harsh and because Forbes is still good in many, in many ways. But in general, Forbes.com is kind of bullshit. It's like a pretty laughable publication. The magazine, I think, is still kind of cool, but the contributing system on Forbes is just utter bullshit. And in order to get into that

Forbes 30 under 30, like your PR firm will, like, submit you. And then if you like buddy up to the people making the picks you get in. It's bullshit. It's horrible. I wrote a recommendation letter this year for somebody. So this is somebody who is, they're my friend. I think they're cool, but they're not like 30 under 30, right? That should be like something really remarkable and prestigious and like, why not?

Why not just make the list of badass people? Why does it have to be this weird, like, not pay to play, but like if you play the game, you get to be in? So I referred this person. First of all, who am I to even be able to write these recommendation letters? And then who is he to actually get it? And he became 30 to 30. Like, mission accomplished by just trying.

He asked two people to write recommendation letters and they did it and then he got in. It's such bullshit. And I don't like want to hate on it because a lot of my very close friends who I love are on it. And it makes them feel good. So that's cool. That's wonderful. But let's just acknowledge that it's like stupid. Right.

Right. They're not stupid, but it's stupid. There's a very few lists that I think are worthy. One of them is Inc. Inks 500 or what's it called? Inc. 5,000, I think. Yeah. That's a legit list.

So that's a list that does revenue growth for like fastest growing companies by revenue over the past three years. I believe you need to show your financial statements in order to get that. So I think that's like a legit list. Not everyone applies, obviously. They phrase it like these are the fastest growing companies in America. And that's just not true. It's these are the fastest growing companies who submitted their information to us.

but I think I think that's a great list. I don't know any other lists that are interesting, but if it's on Huff Po or Forbes, it's probably bullshit. Yeah, so first of all, like I wish I could just buy Forbes because I think the name still has value, even though they've just been pissing on it for seven years

about like just having no quality filter. So I wish I could just buy Forbes and like turn it into what it should be, which is like the brand that if you're in Forbes, that means you're something. And they should, you know, figure out a business model that works there rather than what they did. Secondly, the only lists that matter, in my opinion, are lists that are merit-based.

So, like, the App Store charts. Like, I'm interested in that list, right? Like, who's in the top grossing? I would like, I would like to see that list versus any of these kind of like vanity lists. But the opposite is also true, which is for all these systems, I try not to judge it. I just try to understand it and then abuse it. So I myself have dabbled with making lists like this where to be the list maker is a great position to be in because you just declare, you know, and I have a friend who did the hottest guys in tech. So created a viral list of hottest guys in tech.

I can't say the name. It's an anonymous builder tell you offline. And so they made this list. I think it was like 12 people long. The website still probably up. was like hottest guys in tech.com or something weird like that. And put a bunch of people on it that they knew would retweet. So the criteria was not who is the hottest.

It was who's most likely to share this about themselves, either bragging or as a joke because I want this to spread. And then, yeah, people will say this is, you know, objectifying and stupid hot guys of tech.com. That's it. Well, I'm judging off who's number one. That's not the brother. Greg didn't make this. He's not the builder, but it's somebody who knows Greg.

Yeah. So he put Greg there because he knew that Greg had that like mix of like had a little following, would share it, wouldn't take it too seriously. Like, you know, like, not going to like push back on him or whatever. So anyways, I thought this was really funny. So I've been a fan of this. Jason Calacanis did this back to make his name when he was in New York with Silicon Alley Insider, I think is the name of his like original thing. He wanted to become kind of like a power player in the New York tech and business scene. And so he created the Silicon Alley.

What was it? Silicon Alley. I don't even remember what it was called, but it was like the top 100 or something like that. And yeah, Silicon Halley Silicon Alley 100. I think it was called. I don't remember exactly. But he basically was like, oh, this was my excuse to meet every single power player. They did an interview with me.

they sent me their headshots. I wanted to be on the list. I could kind of decide who's in front of who. And because I was the kingmaker of deciding who's on the list, all of a sudden, I became a power player in that scene. And I just think this is like massively underrated. If I was at any college,

I was a bored college kid, I would 100% do two lists. One is the hottest guy list. And the like the other one would be kind of like the power rankings. So just the who's going to be the most successful person out of this college. So two things. First, this, let's talk about that as a business.

But before that, so when I launched, so my company before this, we had a roommate matching app. And in order to make it popular, we weren't going to spend any money in marketing. But I knew how to make things go viral. And one of the, there's a few tenants or a few rules for making things go viral. A couple of them are to be very specific and name names that only certain people know, but they're passionate about. And when we had our app, we were going to, we launched in Chicago, Boston, New York, L.A. and San Francisco and one other city.

And we made infographics that it was like the stereotypical roommates of different neighborhoods. And we said like, and we very specifically did it this way because we should like, all right. So for those who you don't live in San Francisco, there's a neighborhood called the Marina and they're stereotyped is fratbro. So we put like eats at this restaurant every morning. Where's this type of clothing, which is like a local marina shop, eats cupcakes here. We did all that type of shit. And it got shared like crazy. So the strategy was name as many names as possible.

And we piled it with names. And then we emailed all the people who we mentioned. And it got seen by millions of people in the first months. And we got tens of thousands of free users from it. It works so well. I love that. That is a perfect example of this marketing idea and tactic that I've always like, again, observed, hey, this is pretty effective.

It's also kind of bullshit. Wait, could I create some bullshit like this and have those effects? And I've always wanted to have some excuse to do it. And I never really did have the excuse to do it. And that is an amazing perfect example. I love that. I'll find it. And the way that we did this was, and like, look at this.

Like, I just found an article. Like, so we did it about different neighborhoods and check this out. So I just sent you one that we did. I think I might have seen this, by the way. Before I moved to San Francisco, I think I saw this because I wanted. to know which neighborhood to live in. And there was this one and there was another like guide to San Francisco neighborhoods that were like designed like this. Like you have a for people who can't see it.

He just sent me an article on curbed. Curb.com for Chicago. And it's like all the different neighborhoods. And there's like a little illustration. And it's like here's what the rent is. Here's kind of like where you're going to find this person. You know, like Bronzeville, you'll probably find this person protesting a new billboard on 31st Street. So it's like these things that are going to get a reaction out of people.

smart. And what's funny is that I had never even been to Boston when I wrote this or I didn't know any of this. We found all of it on Yelp. We just went on Yelp and we looked at which had the most reviews and that's what we used. And the second thing that's really interesting about these lists is that I like, do you realize that when we say like the Fortune 500, it's named after Fortune magazine? Like, I use that, but I use that word so often that I like don't even, I, it's like when you say like Michelin Star restaurants, you forget that that's like Michelin Tires or New York Times bestseller. Like you often, like, it's bigger, the New York Times bestseller is bigger than New York Times. And there's like many lists like that.

Like I would have to think of a few. But I think these lists can actually be big businesses. Same with JD Power Award, which is a billion dollar company. Same with, um, there's a, there's a. There's just so many. So these lists are like shockingly big businesses. I think sometimes they're scams, but not all the time. But this list making business, we have to categorize what this is and like come up with

cool ideas around it. I call it king making. When you decide who's who's who, right? So, so Brady found Silicon Alley reported 100 was a list of the hundred most influential people in New York technology. Put like, you're just deciding who's the king. And because you're deciding who's the king, you're the actual king. Your name is on the list.

Everybody starts catering to you. You start getting access. People start submitting applications. And literally the fucking thing didn't exist before you just arbitrarily decided to name it. And everybody, you know, even if they mock it initially, they will buy in. Nobody wants to be at the bottom of the list. Nobody wants to be left off the list. And the thing is, is that a lot of people are like, well, who am I to start this list?

It doesn't matter. As long as you make it. the people who are involved will likely share it. Like I share all that shit if I'm involved in it. It takes some finesse. Yeah. Like if I told you right now, we just shot on Forbes 30 under 30. If they said, Sam, push this button right in front of you.

If you just push the X key on your laptop right now and you're on the list. And if you don't want to be on the list, just don't push that X key. Would you push it? I would push it. I'd be like I'm on. Yeah. Yeah. And like I realize that sounds typical.

But yeah, whatever. Yeah. But it's not actually if you think about it. Yeah, I'm saying it's a bullshit game, but I'll play it every once in a while. So what I wanted to talk about was you had this thing called All Access Pass and you shut it down. Can you tell me why and what it was and why you shut it down? Right. Okay, what it was.

So the podcast that we do here, we just do a bunch of ideas. So let's take the idea we just did. Hey, there's this business model type that you, or maybe it's a marketing tactic called King Making that you guys talked about. That's really cool. cool idea. And what we do is the conversation has now ended and we're going to move on with our life. We're going to talk about the next topic and the next topic is the next topic and we're never going to go past that surface level. Right. Like the podcast is designed to be about ideas and

it's designed to be more like rapid fire. We're not like promising some thorough investigation of ideas. So the number one question I would get, and I'm sure you get it too in your inbox all the time, it's like, dude, I love that idea. I want to do it like, will you advise me? Or like, how would I, how should I do it? Or I have this other idea. I, I'm how would you do it? And I was like, dude, I don't know. Like, he's so context dependent. I don't know.

I have to take time to figure shit out. I don't just like know the answer. Like the answer is in spending a bunch of months trying to figure it out. And so I was like, okay, well, and people were asking me like, do you want to do a course? Like a course where you teach people about like how to do a startup. I was like, well, there's no like just catch all like how to do it. That's too generic. I said, but maybe I could do something different.

I said I spent a lot of time in my life doing like zero to one. of businesses. I ran a freaking idea lab for six years. And an idea lab, you're just cooking up an idea and you're trying to make it happen every single time. Zero to one, zero to one. And so I thought, I'm pretty, like, I have, I have gotten good at this over time. What if what I did was, I have a few projects in mind of things that I think could be cool to do. Um, what if I just built them in public? So what if I just published, uh, not just like how it went, but like the day to day, what did I do today? What did I do today? What did I do the third day? What did I do the fourth day. And so people can follow along. And like, it's not going to really like apply to

their project like one to one because they're not going to be doing the same thing as me. And they're not going to have the same exact skill set as me. But I thought, you know, one of the ways I got good at shit was just by shadowing other people who are really good at shit. And then you see how they execute. And you're like, oh, fuck. That's the level of aggression, action taking. That's the framework they used to think about things. Like, I should be like that. So anyways, all access pass was this experiment where I said, all right, if you pay me 200 bucks a month, you get on my paid newsletter and the paid newsletter is going to go out five or six times a week. I'm basically just going to say day one of this project.

What did I do? Day two, what did I do? Day three, what did I do? And I said, I'm going to do this for a season. My season's going to be four months long. And so I've now done it for three months. And I just yesterday emailed the whole list of people saying, hey, I'm going to shut it off after three. And here's why.

So that's a high level like overview. We can take it in whatever direction you want. Can you say how many people signed up or do you want to? Yeah, yeah. sure like now that's over who cares um so basically i was like this will be good if i can get uh it's 20k a month of revenue coming from this i thought that would be like 20k as in uh 200 time or uh sorry 100 times 200 yes exactly uh what ended up happening was i had about 300 something subscribers there was two prices initially was 150 then it became 200 uh so i was making 50k a month off this for the last three

months. And so some people were like, are you nuts? Dude, your paid newsletter is making $50,000 a month. You're going to turn it off. Like, you know, what kind of asshole are you? And I, you know, I feel that. But I had my reasons to be like, look, this is a lot of time and energy it's taking. And that time energy, I kind of want to put in other places. Did you, do you think, so when I hear $200 a month, I'm like, that's pretty expensive. Do you, um, was that priced correctly? I think so. So I think it's the most that you can charge for something like this. I think once you go into like a thousand dollars or whatever, you're really like only a certain type of person who has a certain business that's already really successful can pay for that, can justify paying for it or you'd have to get their work to pay for it. So for this case, I think this was like, it was high, right? Most paid newsletters, if you go to substack or whatever, like I bet you I was like, I don't know, in the top 0.01% of substack earners. You would have been the most. expensive one. Yeah.

I'm just saying like overall revenue per month. I'm sure there's some that are like publications that make a little bit more. But like as an individual and from day one, like I think that was pretty high. It was a lot more than I thought I was going to make. And I didn't do it on substack because I didn't want to pay them the five or 10% whatever they take. That'd be like 10 grand a month, you know? So that was a lot. So anyways, I lost my train of thought.

Oh, the price. So I priced it at just like what I thought it was like what I thought the market would bear. I think it was the right price because I think it was a lot for most people don't have a subscription that's 200 bucks a month period in their like their monthly bill. But at the same time, like for anybody who's doing a business, which was kind of the group of people that were tuning in or people who wanted to do a business, I made damn sure that they got the value.

And I'm not just saying that. Like obviously I'm not selling anything now. Like I shut it down. But like I felt like this extreme obligation because I was like, fuck, for these people, for most people, $200 a month, for me, like, that's a expensive subscription, like for an email. This email better have, like, golden nuggets that's going to, like, show me something, teach me something, help me with my thing, way more than $200 of value. And if you have a business, it's not hard to get an insight that's going to give you more

than $200 value back. What was your turn? So the retention was 93.something percent over the months. So over one month or the three month? Over the three, yeah. that's great. Yeah, so that was great. And most of it was just in the first month, like, you know, people who were like, oh,

you know, I can't pay for the next month or I didn't like this or just not what I expected. So the retention was amazing, 93% retention. Let's see, what are the other stats that matter? Yeah, that was kind of it. And then I had a free version also. So I was like, yo, if you can't pay, there's a free version basically every Sunday. I'll send you one of the five posts of the week. I'll unlock it for you.

And you can tune into that. And then so that grew my. my free list basically like double, like 2x, kind of like my free list through people sharing that stuff. And ultimately, the reason I shut it down is because my life goal is, I've talked about this, kind of cheesy, but like whatever. My life goal is I want to be like a teacher. Like I want to be a teacher at scale. Like I set myself a goal for the decade, which was in 10 years, can I get to teaching 70 million people, which is like 1% of the world's population? And can, you know, For 70 million people, could they think of me as like a teacher who really helped them, one of their favorite teachers?

That would be like my decade goal. And so I thought, well, I'm doing a lot of teaching right now, but I'm teaching like 350 people. You know, that's not going to, I'm making a lot of money, but my reach is so small. And I was like, fuck it. I need to switch. I need to put all my effort into the free audience because that's going to be the mass audience because that's my actual goal. My goal is not to add an extra, you know, zero to my bank account. Do you, I, I,

The business that you're, the business that you were documenting, I know you don't like talking about it. So we don't, not going to talk about it. But was it, is it doing well, like, well enough that you're like, I got to focus on this? Yeah, that was part of it. Like, you know, the business itself is an asset that's like, you know, the time spent there versus writing the email is, you know, better spent. So I basically did, I promised three things.

I said, I'm going to launch a fund, which I wanted to do anyways. I'll show you how I raise this money. How do I launch this fund? And what are my tactics to do that? and what goes into this. And so I did that one. That was successful. That was the first month.

And then the second month was e-commerce. So I showed people, how do you get e-commerce ideas? Where do I look for ideas? How do you validate demand for that product? How do you know you're not, you know, working on a dud? How do you get it sourced? You know, how do you work with a factory? How do you negotiate all this stuff?

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

And the last one was going to be an online course. And I ended up doing like a workshop and some things like that. But I was like, this is just A, too much work. And B, B, I invested in our mutual friend, Guggan, Beani's new education startup, a new course platform and as part of that that deal was obviously very hard to get into because he's a baller entrepreneur he built you to me he built sprig like a lot of people wanted to invest and part of my pitch to let me into the round was yo if you let me invest i'll launch my course on your platform and it's ready um and so it's not ready yet so basically i hadn't done that project

yeah i saw that he asked me to or he invited me to have a discussion about it i didn't end up doing it because I was too busy and I just missed the call. We didn't schedule a call. I was like, I can't really focus on this right now. Maybe I'll regret it. And you helped him figure it out because he did a course with the trends community as one of his like, in his investor deck, he's like, here's what I've been doing. Because like, we don't have users.

We don't have revenue. But how can I say I have traction? It was like, well, I've actually been prototyping and testing this. I did one, I did a course with the trends community. I did a course with this other thing. I became a student in these five courses. and that's how I've learned about, and that's informed my new business. Yes, and he introduced me to his co-founder, and I was like, hey, I just, I have way too much on my plate at the moment.

I don't want to get, I can't get involved in anything else. I'm sorry. And I have a feeling that's going to cost me some money, but that's okay. I couldn't get to it. Yeah, that's a phrase I need to learn. What's that? Like, I just can't. I have too much of my plate.

I can't do this right now. Sorry. Yeah, I couldn't, I just, I didn't have time. And I actually, I acknowledge. I would, he's going to be at least mildly successful. I just, right. I didn't have the bandwidth.

What did people say when you canceled, were they upset? You know, by the time you get to like month three of a thing and, you know, I put out 50 pieces of content that were like, not just like pieces of content. Like, I tried to make them all fucking good. And I put out 50 pieces of content in like, I don't know, 70 days or something crazy like that. So by that point, I think people, A, understood like, yeah, this does seem like, you know, this is keeping you up at night, right? I'm sending these emails at like 1 a.m. because after work, after the baby gets to bed, after I walk the dog, after, you know, we do the podcast, after all my obligations are done, then I would bang this thing out. So I think they understood, like, yeah, this is probably, you know, a lot of work. And then the second thing was, I think you, you earn some loyalty and trust. I'm sure some people were like piss, but people are polite to your face, usually.

There was one or two people that were like kind of dicks about it. They were like, dude, you said. And I was like, yeah, I know. I said, I'm sorry. But you're getting your money back, right? Or like you're canceling it. It's not like they're paying for something you're not getting. But they were like, oh, I really wanted to learn the course thing and you never got to it.

I'm like, yeah, now, sorry. Shit happens. That's pretty funny. And did all the people come from this podcast? A majority, I think. That's crazy. To promote the thing, I basically put out. some free written stuff.

And then I did a six minute little podcast teaser about it that I posted on the feed. And so those are the two. And I posted in the Facebook group as well. So those are the three things I did to promote it. I didn't do anything beyond that to promote it. It's pretty crazy how. And I should definitely say, by the way, I didn't do this myself. So I recruited somebody from the community, this guy, Ben, to be like kind of like the main

operator of this thing because I didn't have the time. And I was very upfront about that to everybody. I was like, you know, this email was like written by Ben. Ben did this thing. It's not me doing everything. And so Ben Levy was like the reason I was able to do this. If I didn't have been, it would have been impossible and it would have sucked. And I would have quit way earlier because I'm a quitter in that sense.

I definitely am like amazed that like so this podcast let's just be round up a little bit. We're in like the 400,000ish listeners per month, listens per month. I don't know if I actually don't know if that means unique or what. But it's still like modest. It's not like the biggest thing. It's not small, but it's not the biggest thing. I still shocks me that that's how much revenue can be generated from a relatively small audience. It shocks me.

Yeah. It really is. It really is quite shocking. But I think it's like, you know, this is the theory, right? Like the reason I do the podcast, the reason I did the paid newsletter, the reason I do all that stuff is because like I'm a big fan of this model of solopreneurship. and being a creator, making stuff, and then having fans who like the stuff you make, pay for it. I just think that that is a really good business model. I think it keeps you honest.

I think it keeps you making good stuff over time. And I think it's really defensible. And so I'm a fan of this. And like, you know, the company I work at Twitch is literally the mission of the company is to like empower creators. Twitch is just full of like a million, you know, creators with their own channel and they run their own business and they share the revenue. And so I'm just a big fan of this, like, creator, like the creator economy, basically. This is my experiment to dabble and be a creator and not just, like, building tools for creators. Great. I'm all in. I think it was cool.

I got a couple ideas I wanted to throw your way. Let me start with this first one. This is an idea that already exists. It's called cul-de-sac. Have you seen this startup called Coldac? No, I'm pulling up our list, and I'm going to go to it. URL is like... They spelled it a little funny. A five-minute city, cul-de-sac. Exactly. So their tagline is it's a five-minute city.

So it's basically a startup where they're in Tempe, Arizona. And they're building a little... Ah, yes. I know this. I know this. I know this well. So tell me what you know. They have big name people.

Who is it? So I think it's a lot of... I think they're ex-openedore people. And so Keith Rabeoy, I think was one of their investors. but I'm not sure. I don't have a ton of information of who's, you know, ultimately behind it. I think they went through YC or they're going through YC right now. Or no, they went through YC 2018. So they went a while back.

There's not a lot of information about it. But basically they're building a five-minute city, which means that, you know, where you work, where you exercise, where you eat, where you hang out, your outdoor space is all five minutes away. So it's a walkable, it's like a total walking, walking lifestyle. and you're in this little neighborhood that has every single thing you need from, you need to get fresh produce, you want to get coffee, you want to eat at a restaurant, you want to work out, it's all there. And lifestyle-wise, I would love to live in a five-minute city. I think that's like kind of a dream.

What do you think of this concept as a liver and as a business? Okay, so I first want to acknowledge how douchey this is. Like, this is like if it becomes like the startup thing and it's a bunch of like startup-y, people and a very like homogenous group. Like we have to acknowledge that that's just a circle jerk and it's kind of lame. At the same time, it's cool and I would want to participate at it. You know what I mean? That's the theme of this episode.

Bullshit things that I'd love to be a part of. Like I would probably have fun. But it's basically like a TED talk that you, if it turns into a TED talk that you live at, then it could get a little exhausting. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's great. That's a great way of putting it. That's what it looks like.

I see three different golden retrievers in the picture, an airstreamed, an airstreamed trailer, and tons of white people wearing Lulu Lemon. Like, that's what, like, the picture is. So I think, like, I would be a little nervous about participating in that. Yeah, at the same time, I'd probably be into it. Right. Exactly. It's like if Lula Lemon and Whole Foods and Barry's Boot Camp, like, decided to share a space,

basically. And so I think that there's definitely, like, douche factor that's that that's possible and will naturally be attracted to something like this but okay here's here's my take i think commuting definitely fucking sucks and i think that like the lifestyle where you know i'm in a suburban neighborhood now you drive 15 minutes to some shopping center you so like you know i take my SUV to a shopping center in park i get out i go into some big store and then i like have no relationship with them and i buy my thing and i drive back i think that's kind of lame um and so i love the idea of the five

I've been at city. I think the douche factor is really real where you would, the key would be to not just get the same type of person 500 times to live there and make it just like this totally homogenous city. And then the other thing is like as a business, I wonder how this will work. Because I think this is like basically, you know, real estate development play branded as a tech startup and raising money as a tech startup, which I think makes no sense. Yes. I also want to acknowledge that, which is I think this could be a great business. But this isn't like new. Like there's it's just a planned community, which they have they've, we've had this since 1910. Like this is like it's it works wonderfully or it can work wonderfully.

Planned communities can be pretty great. And they're great because they're often planned quite well. And so I'm on board with that. I do, I do want to acknowledge that it is an old idea that's just done with cute branding, which I'm on board with. So I think this is going to be pretty cool. I don't know, man. Can you convince a bunch of people to move to Tempey though? Yeah, I don't think so.

I'm surprised they chose that as their location. They should have just chose Austin because that's where everyone's going. Austin or somewhere where like, yeah, like Chicago or like where there's a lot of people willing to be already. So there's one, there's one variant of this that I think is different. And up where you, I don't know if you'll be able to find the name of this. I can't remember the name off top of my head, but somebody told me about a version of this planned community that I think is also cool, which is actually catering towards immigrants that live in America. So people like my parents. So my parents are Indian.

They mostly in their social circle have like Indian friends because like the holidays and the food and like whatever. That's who they get along with. Language is easy. And so somebody and being an immigrant in America is like hard in a whole bunch of ways. You're sort of at a disadvantage and not welcome to not accept it in a lot of different scenarios. but I found some real estate developer who basically was building these little neighborhoods that were just for like, you know, like brown parents. And it wasn't like, obviously it's not reserved for that.

Like anybody can buy there. But like word spread and a bunch of Indian families, parents whose kids all went to college and moved away. And these empty nesters all moved into this one neighborhood. And the center of the neighborhood, they had like these kind of shared amenities, which was like, you know, like maybe like a religious place and maybe like a food like kind of a dining hall where they could have a chef that's always making food there. And I thought this was a great concept.

I would love to put my parents in a place like that where their social scene is like made for them. So they're not just like alone in their house, you know, until they get old. Well, it's called a nursing home. But yeah. No, I'm joking. So like my Neville, my best bud, Neville, he's Zerastrian, which is like a, he calls himself, he was like, we're kind of like Jews in India, which I don't exactly know what that means.

but basically it's a subset of Indian. I don't really know exactly what it is. I think it's a religion or I don't know how they define themselves. Anyway. You're brave for even trying. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I think it's a, I don't know if it's culture or race, religion, whatever it is. He identifies as a Zerastrian.

And he said that when him and his parents moved here, they surrounded themselves on the same block with some Zoroastrians as well as other Indians. And so he was like, it was the best thing ever. We were raised around other immigrant parents, but we were trying to fit in and be American, but we still had Indian roots. So it was really nice to have that. And so what we're doing now here, or Austin,

where I'm living now is I bought a house and Neville is going to move down the block. He's looking at a house on the block. And then Ramon is moving here in January, my other best buddy. And so we're all trying to move on the same block because we're trying to recreate this. Yes, that's the dream. I'm totally into it. That is the dream. I love that.

So anyways, I think this cool idea. And more than this cul-de-sac idea is actually I like your idea better, which is, I think life would be great if you basically had a, you know, your family lives in your house and then your friends live on your block. I think that's like, you know, the most quality of life improvement you could possibly have. And isn't, I mean, I don't know too much about Indian culture, but I do have a bunch of Indian friends. It's quite normal to have your, for the families like mom and dad to live with you until you're old, right? I mean, like, it's normal to have like a shared house.

Yeah, traditionally the parents would live with, I think, the oldest son maybe. But depends kind of how old school you are. So, like, for my family, my family's pretty like modern. My mom, like, you know, Torrance movies off of like a bit torrent and shit. Like, you know, like, we're not like in that like kind of old school mindset. And so that's not really kind of how we think about it. Although I think it would be great. I would love for my mom to live with me.

It would be dope. But, but she doesn't, you know, she doesn't want to. You know who another guy who's trying to do something like this that I'm, Actually, I'm realizing it's not the same entirely. And he's, I think he wanted to come on here. And he's like a kind of a shady, well, I'm not going to judge him, but a lot of people would call him kind of shady. Is that Grant Cardone guy. So this guy, he sells like courses like Ty Lopez for like $2,000 on how to sell or something.

And he uses that money to buy property. And at this point, he's got this whole line of properties called like 10x, 10x properties or something. And the reason why I thought of him is a bray you just shared the founders LinkedIn of this what's it called this cul-de-sac. And people also viewed people who work at Grant Cardone's 10x properties. So I wonder if they're trying to poach a bunch of people from there. That's funny. But he's trying to do something similar to that as well.

It's an interesting play. So here's another kind of fun idea. I'm curious what you think about this. Do you know who this guy Tiago Forte is? Yes. He's like, you know, also a creator, kind of solopreneur guy online teaches courses about things called building a second brain. I don't know. It's kind of a weird idea.

But people are into it for whatever reason. It's like a note taking app, a note taking course, I guess, how to be organized or something like that. And this dude's like crushing it. He's making like a million and a half dollars a year easily on his courses. And he, I think it was him. He tweeted out like, you know, we've been talking about like these tiny homes or preforms. Fab manufactured homes. He tweeted out, hey, I bought these, I think in Austin, actually, a few of these cabins.

And, you know, it's underway. And next year, we're going to have a retreat for, you know, makers and kind of creators to be able to just come and stay. And this will just be a year-round place. You can come and stay and be in a little, you're in your cabin and the cabins next to you are other creators and makers. And we'll just be able to rent these out. And I'm making my own little kind of creator village.

I think I got the concept at least half right. I just showed me the tweet. So he says, here it is, Forte Shelter to be delivered next year to creator cabins by Jonathan Hills. Okay, so maybe it's not him. A set of creative workspaces for remote workers, online creators, and entrepreneurs, which also fund conservation efforts. And it's creatorcavins.com is the concept of it where you can go as a creator and go live in these fucking cabins. What do you think? I'm looking at it now.

This is going to be huge. I don't know if it'd be huge. It's going to be pretty good. There's another business that we mentioned a few weeks ago. It's called Getaway. Yeah, this is going to crush. I'm on Forte Shelter.com. Right.

Okay. Maybe that's... I think Crater Cabins.com. Maybe it's the same thing. I don't know. Oh, no. No, Forte Shelter. It's the guy...

This is him. His pictures here. I guess he makes these little tiny home things. They're just trailers or something like that. Anyway, I'm totally in on that. I think this is going to be cool. So what I think is cool about this, what I'm studying about this, I don't really, personally, it's lifestyle allows.

I'm not going to go to this cabin now, but maybe when I was younger, that would have been awesome. You know, what I like is that the solopreneurs are dabbling with different models. So, like, for example, I looked at all the different solopreneur models that are out there. I looked at Tim Ferriss. I looked at Pomp. I looked at Tiago Forte. I looked at a whole bunch of different guys that are out there. Seth Godin.

And what was striking to me was that the old wave of like most famous ones like Tim Ferriss, Gary V, Seth Godin, I felt like were hugely undermonetized. Like the models that they picked to like capitalize on their their rabid following were like Tim Ferriss is great. He probably made $200 million. Well, he made $200 million off of an Uber investment, not off of his fan base. Right. So you could you could say that like, okay, he got.

got access to the Uber investment because he's Tim Ferriss. That's a part of it for sure. But he didn't a raise a fund. So he was investing his own money when he could have been using fan money, basically, to invest. Didn't do a course. His course would have been pulling in $5 million a year easily around the four-hour work week. He chose books and ads from a podcast as his two models. And he's so popular that he still made a killing doing those two.

But that killing is like there's people with the audience, a fraction of his size that are making as much money, if not more. he's making off his podcast and books. Tiago Forte being a great example. I bet you Tiago Forte is making almost as much Tim Ferriss does off his podcast ads or his books off of his course. And Pomp is another great example. I think Pomp is doing a great job of his monetization model of using, you know, pomp raised a rolling fund, Pomp has a paid newsletter.

So he has like all these different like stacks of different ways that he's converting audience trust into value for him. and Seth Godin is another one hugely popular. He used books. And then he created the alt NBA, which is like a course. How big is that you think? That's pretty big. So that does definitely a few million dollars a year.

So he was kind of the first one, but it took him like, he was famous for like a decade plus before he even like dabbled in something like that. And Gary Vee like started an agency, okay, that you could say that that worked, but I think that's like a really hard path. And so I'm looking at some of these new models

and the different ways that guys are doing this. And this is one of them, right? create, turn your fame into real estate value. So if you're Tim Ferriss, if Tim Ferriss had made, you know, the Tim Ferriss, you know, sort of Zen retreat area, which is basically a year-round place where you can come if you're a maker, you're trying to pursue a thoughtful lifestyle. You're a lifestyle hacker. You love being in nature. All the things that are that the lifestyle Tim Ferriss preaches, he could have just made essentially a resort or a creator cabin like this and just Airbnb did the shit out of it. I think you're a little wrong.

These aren't solopreneur. This is just like the Oprah, Martha Stewart type of thing. Like Seth Godin has a huge team, I think. Banner Media has like 800 or 900 people. I think what you're talking about is just monetizing influence, which like that Kylie Cargenner, what the fuck is her name? What the fuck is that? Yeah, Kylie Carjner.

What'd she do? Tell us more, you expert. The makeup girl. The Jenner or whatever. she is. The famous one on Instagram that my wife watches on TV. I mean, she crushed it. She probably became close to a billionaire off that. So I do think some people are doing it really well. Yeah. Okay. So you could say this is influence. I agree with you. The other word I'm using right now is like, there's a personal media company. I see it's just a person's brand. They are the media

company. They're not a part of New York Times or Fox or CNBC or whatever. They're an independent media brand themselves. And that's what, you know, the Kardashians are now. And that's what Seth Godin and Tim Ferriss and all these guys are. Another person who did it well is that bulletproof coffee dude. Yep. So there's products. Like, for example, I have this new one that I just came out of this Chrome extension.

And I'm going to give it to like the first son and I know, like 100 people just test it out. Because I have this, I have a to do list. I have a method of productivity. Right. I have this one thing I call, I have this method I called the one big thing. the OBT. And I say, fuck a to do list. You need to have a single focus of, if I did this one thing today, the day is worth it. The day is a win. It's in the win column. And everything else is just noise.

And I have this one focus. And so my Chrome extension is the one big thing, Chrome extension. It basically says, good morning, Sean. Your one big thing today is. And I type it in. And every time I open a tab, I see this fucking thing. And I love it. It's great. I had it made for me because I liked it. And now I'm just going to give access. And so I'm going to be in the software game. I'm going to be in the fun game. I'm going to be in the physical products game. I'm going to be in all these games eventually. And so I'm studying these models and I'm going to crack the code. Do you think that that will be more fun than starting a business where no one knows who you are? Like just starting a fun for me because I'm kind of an attention hoarding that way. Like I like being known for it. I know a lot

of people who this whole thing doing a podcast and having people, you know, listen to you and having people DM you every morning. The same thing that gives me energy would be a pain in the ass to them. They're like, no, dude, I just want to like look at a spreadsheet and I just want to like make a decision and I want to invest the money and then I want to like go play golf. And like that's winning for them. And that's not winning for me. So yeah, I think I think it depends on the person. That's interesting. I, yeah, I don't know if I would want to do that or not. Maybe. Maybe not. Hmm. I think it's interesting though. And I think that you'll definitely be able to pull this. off. That's for sure. Yeah, I think it takes time. Okay, I got a couple more ideas I wanted to throw at you to see what you think. Do the handwritten letter one or a different one. Yeah, that's the

one I wanted to talk about. So, discovered this company, again, podcast success story. A listener of the podcast, this guy, Steve Morin, who's a baller, he's like, I think he's head of mobile at Asana or something like that. So he is a listener to the podcast. He sent me this. He's an investor in my fund and he was like, yo, you should check out this company. I invested in, it's doing really good. And it's called Addressable. And so their thing is just addressable, I think it's Addressable app.com or something like that. And what they do is they give businesses like, let's say the hustle or really where they focus is real estate and nonprofits. They give companies like that that have this big kind of client base, right? If I'm a real estate

agent, I have a bunch of people who are like clients and potential clients. If I'm a nonprofit, I have a bunch of donors and potential donors. And I really want to have this personal relationship. I want to be top of mind for them when the time comes. For real estate, when it's time to sell your house for nonprofits, so that we give you a personal thank you when you donate and during the holiday season when you feel like giving, we're top of mind for you. And so they were like, look, the direct mail industry is huge, right? If you go to your mailbox, you'll see all the junk you get there.

And so like, how do you not just have that be just a giant paper printing waste? And they're like, how do you get your stuff read and how do you get it like acted on? So what these guys did is kind of amazing. he showed me their office. They have these robots. And the robot, it says this giant robot, it's like a treadmill-looking thing with a robot on top of the treadmill. And in the robot's hand is a blue ballpoint pen. And basically this is robot that all day, every day is writing, quote-unquote, handwritten letters.

It looks exactly like a handwritten letter with a real pen onto a letter. And it basically pulls your data from your database. So you could be like, you could do this for trans subscribers, for example. You can be like, hey, you know, I want to thank all the trend subscribers, you know, once they hit their first month for being a part of it and just say personal thank you from Sam. And so it'll be like, hey, Sean, you know, pulls from the database. Yeah. Just want to thank you for being a trend subscriber for X number of months. It means a lot to us, blah, blah, blah, from Sam.

And then they'll, and then when the robot is done writing the thing, the treadmill shoots it to this next robot, that robot puts it in an envelope, like if I can licks the envelope, closes it up, puts it in the bin. and some like dude comes and takes the bin and mails it out. That's interesting. It's amazing. So when I was in New York, I saw ads on the street constantly for this thing called Bond. Bond. What was it called Bond writing? It was Bond letter or something like that.

Bond letter. And they did the same thing. And I looked it up and I didn't think that it was booming. So they sold a few years ago, kind of like a modest sale, didn't go go crazy. What they did wrong, in my opinion, as I looked at this was I think a lot of these companies that were doing this, they were trying to do it. for consumer. So they were like, oh, that's why they have a fucking billboard out there for you.

It's like, you should use us to send a letter on your behalf to your mom and your auntie and whatever for Christmas. And what these guys zoned in on, I think, was a, their tech actually is really good. So they can make it look like your handwriting if you want. So like the thing is not like laser printed on where it's like a handwriting font, but it's printed. No, it's like this is an actual fucking pen that actually writes the thing. It really does look indistinguishable.

from a human doing it. The second thing is they went for businesses and the segment of businesses that really need this, that really have this problem in a big way. So they have like, you know, Salvation Army and a bunch of other groups that are like big that spend millions of dollars a year on this stuff who are now realizing, oh shit, if we do this, we get better results. And that's the last thing is that they actually track the full result. So they know who they sent it to. And because they hooked into your database, they can tell you when that person takes an action, they can show you the full ROI on this campaign. So they turned it into like a Facebook ad essentially.

How many people work there? Still a small company. It's pretty cool, though, based in LA. How much, is it public, how much they've raised? If you want to invest, you should invest in this company. I think it's going to be a good company. I'm interested. They had only raised up until now, they'd only raised like a million and a half dollars.

So they were doing well on a small amount of money. Wow. I'm super interested. Who started it? What's their story? The guy is an engineer. He was engineer at OKCupid, which I was like, boom, love it. Yeah, love that.

You know, anytime, when you come from a company that's like pedigrees, like kind of like growth hacking, I'm like, yes. So, OKCupid engineer, then Facebook PM. I was like, okay, great, love it also. And then this whole thing made a lot of sense to me. It sounds like your portfolio is going to be pretty badass. Is that, do you think so? I mean, like, I hope so. I'm also just easily excitable.

So like, you know, there's always a counterargument to fucking everything. But, but yeah, I like it. And, you know, if I didn't, I wouldn't invest. That's pretty badass. No, I'm into it. I don't, I think that's a company that for sure can make tens of millions in revenue and be very profitable. Can it be like, right?

Like, does someone, like, if you have to act like a douche VC, you have to say like, all right, who's going to, who's going to be? Can it be huge? Who's going to buy it? Or like, and to those, like, I don't know what the obvious answer is to that. I'm sure there's some direct mailing company that makes billions of years in sales who none of us know about. Exactly.

That's it. That's my bet as well. I don't even know their name. I just know that direct mail is whatever, like 80 billion dollar industry that every year is dying because more of that budget is going to Facebook and whatnot. And also, I have a philosophy. I was going to say thesis, but then I'd have to be a douchebag. So I got to say I have a idea, which is that when the whole world moves one way, it actually creates the opportunity back for the other thing. And so, like, a great example of this is when Facebook got so popular and Facebook was like,

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

other channels now because marketers are going to look for where can I get a different ROI. How can I differentiate my marketing mix? That's not the same playbook as everybody else. And if you could provide a better product, then great, you know, and that's what I think these guys are doing. What's the URL of this company? I think it's addressable app.com. I mean, I shouldn't even have to give them money. after that fucking testimony. That should be the whole investment. Addressablemail.com, sorry.

By the way, we talked about the fascination recently. Yes. The founder reached out to me. I'm going to meet up with him online or on Zoom, I think on Friday. It's the guy who started Lisa mattresses. Yes. I didn't know that. One of the co-founders.

Yeah, I didn't know that. And anyway, I was going to, I'll have to talk to that guy. But addressable mail. because that's another hard name to spell addressable mail.com. I'm on the website. Yeah, this is going to be pretty sick. Cool. All right.

I had three more ideas, but we're out of time. So we'll save it for the next one. All right. Sweet. Abrae, what did you think of that episode? Let's leave this in the episode. But give us the rating. And Abraeu, by the way,

love shitting on me and Sam. So he's the right person to ask because he'll give the real deal. No, it was a fun episode. You guys know I'm ADD. So whenever you guys are rapid fire, those are my favorite. This wasn't rapid fire? No, this was. This was boom, boom, boom, good, idea.

And what do you think, what was the most interesting one of this to you? I like the solo entrepreneur talk, because I think that's a little different than the stuff that we normally talk about. And I also liked, Sean, you opening up about the All Access Pass, giving a little perspective of why you're shutting that down. I think that's a little different. And we can take this out. Would you be willing to all the paid newsletters to put it out to the members of our Facebook group that you've been doing stuff?

No, you should sell those. Don't give that shit away for free. That's what Ben keeps saying. Ben's just like, dude, you should just sell these for $100. Sell the whole archive. You know, just day one through whatever. And I was like, yeah, it sounds like a lot of work. We'll leave it there.

I don't know. I was like, I don't want to do the work of going and finding customers to buy this. But like, yes, we should sell it for anybody who wants it. The Facebook group to look forward to that at some point. Yeah. If you want that, I don't know, just email me and I'll sell it to you for, I don't know, 100 bucks. You get the whole thing.

Let's see if this little mention actually gets to anything. All right. Thank you, guys. We'll talk to you soon. Cool. All right. Later, guys.