My First Million - #194 with Justin Mares - The 4 Types of Side Hustles and how to launch a $100M DTC brand

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Justin Mares (@jwmares) joins Sam (@TheSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) on this episode. Justin breaks down his most popular blog post, the 4 types of side hustles, and brings all kinds of ideas for how you can start your own. They also talk about Justin's DTC businesses - Kettle & Fire, Perfect Keto, and Surely Wines. They end the episode with a few ideas around camping, a new dating app, and how to leverage VAs & no code tools. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (1:23) How Sam & Justin know each other * (5:17) Justin's DTC bone broth company * (10:00) Frameworks for side hustles * (13:22) Side Hustle 1: Buying an asset * (17:51) Side Hustle 2: Launching on top of a marketplace with demand * (22:08) Side Hustle 3: Unique product that grows through paid acquisition * (25:31) How Justin balances all his projects * (30:38) The $30K/year CGM experiment * (39:09) The skinny on Duck Duck Go * (42:32) Ideas: Airbnb camping * (45:27) Idea: Non alcoholic wine * (51:10) How to naturally boost your T levels * (1:01:04) Idea: Dating app based on your credit card usage * (1:03:49) Idea: The no code automation officer * (1:07:28) How to follow Justin

I feel like there's a world where this, like, let's be conservative. I feel like this is very clearly a $10 million a year thing that makes $2 million in profit. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. Dude, there's like a picture in the background that is just getting my attention so much. That crooked, there's like a crooked picture.

You see it? Yeah, yeah. there's a whole subreddit called like uh i forget what it's exactly called but it's about like minor things that are just slightly off like what were they thinking it's like mildly like there's mildly interesting like yeah mildly irritating or something like that no it's called mildly inferior that did you did you just guess that well i know about mildly interesting so yeah uh anyway what's going on Justin um do you know you know what you're getting into like do you know what we're what we do yeah no i know a good bit all right good

So we'll just do like a really quick intro, but you've done a bunch of stuff. I've known you since 2013, I think, right? Yeah, I think actually a little earlier when you were doing the roommate. How did you guys? We both had roommate businesses. And we just became friends. You moved to San Francisco. I ended up introducing him.

Or no, he met one of the girl he dated for a long time in the elevator on his way up to our meeting, who was my co-work. worker. And so we just ran in like the circle of friends for years. That's pretty good. So did you get the number into elevator or what was the elevator? It's not, it's only a two floor. You're on the second floor, right? So that's not too long. It was a fast. It was a fast close. Yeah, how'd that happen? Tell me about it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you want me to share this? I'm happy to. Yeah, do it. I don't know. Sweet. Yeah, I mean, we met and this girl walked into an elevator and I was like just making a joke. she was, I think, like, maybe a tiny bit drunk and tried to hit a button, but there were no buttons in the elevator. It's one of those fancy ones that, like, you walk into and the attendant send you somewhere.

And so I just started sort of making fun of her for that. And in the several story ride with like two other stops, I was like, hey, we should hang out. And then we hung out at Sam's apartmentless party and Shane numbers and a bed friend since. Amazing. Okay. And Sam, did you know that Justin was going to go on to do great things at the time? Did you spot that early or no? Was he just another dude? Yeah, well, we were both scheming. We were only 22, I think, when we met. That was a while ago.

And he had this roommate thing, and I had a roommate thing. And I think anyone who ever started, that's like, there's like three things that you start right when you graduate college. And like, that's like one of them. And so they never work out well. Like, they're never that good. So anyway, by the way, those three are like music discovery. Oh, why is it so hard to find new music? We can solve that problem.

It's roommate. Roommate discovery is another one. And then it's food delivery. I see the t-shirt. It depends who you're... And then like, or like college Craigslist. Yeah, exactly. Local Craigslist.

Sometimes it's to-do list or sometimes if it's like your first time commuting, you're like, if you're, I know this for engineers. I met like 10 engineers that all made the same thing first, which was basically like a bus tracking software. It tells them when the bus is coming because they just like you're so tired of the unpredictable like, is it seven minutes more or less? And they're like, I need to make an app for this. Well, so yeah, we were we were both doing that and I knew, I mean, whatever.

That was a stepping stone for both of us. And then he started, you co-wrote a book with a guy, or no, you sold a company or you joined a company. Somehow you were working with my friend Terry and their whole business was buying and selling stuff. And that was like pretty successful, I believe. And then you also started working on writing this book called Traction with this duck, duck go guy. Gabe is his name, right? Yep, exactly. And then it was, and then he was doing Udeme courses.

And I was like, yeah, I mean, we're all like schemers. he had like Airbnbs and I think you did you buy cars and rent them to Uber people? No, my roommate was doing that. I was looking at doing it but decided it was a miserable business. So, it didn't end up doing it. And we were so we were always doing stuff. We had you had a Udeme course. I probably was selling some type of information stuff.

And then he started this thing called kettle and fire, which first of all, like I thought it was so stupid on so many capacities or so many plays here. But let's go through the worst. So first I was like, he was like, I want to start like, selling like this like hard good. I'm like, bro, like we work in the internet. Why would you ever want to like start like a goods thing? Then he was like, it's going to be food. And I'm like, uh, your kid like, like, why would you ever do that? Then he said it was bone broth. And I was like, bone broth. People drink bone broth. And then this was like before like this whole like,

I don't even think the word D to C was a was a thing. And so I mean, I thought it was the dumbest thing ever. And I was wrong. Right. Like it's been a, it's been a smashing success. And he started this kettle and fire thing. And it's quite big. You've also started my neighbor, Sean, is this guy named Anthony. I don't know who did it first. One of you guys had this thing called Perfect Keto where you're selling keto products. And then you guys like combined.

So we partnered up on it. Basically, we, I was like running kettle and fire. And as I do sometimes looking for like another side hustle thing to start on the side. And he had another business that was in the supplement space. But the two of us were just like, hey, we should work on a small side project together, make something that does 20 grand a month. And once we hit that threshold, we'll blow it all on a ridiculous trip to Japan.

And that was like the whole goal of the business. And it's like pretty big, right? Yeah, I mean, we thought it would take like a year or two to get to 20 grand a month. And we did it in the first like 45 days. It was insane. And then kettle and fire is like a big thing too. You guys like, I think did you raise money or did you sell portion of it?

Yeah. So kettle and fire, we raised money. We bootstrapped for the first 18 months. raised a tiny bit of money, less than a million dollars, ran in another like 16 months and then decided that the opportunity was big enough that it made sense for us to raise. So we raised $16 million in 2018. About half of that went to secondary and the other half went to like actually putting money into the business. So I've heard a number that either kettle of fire or perfect keto or both did 100 million in revenue. I don't know if that's a cumulative lifetime number.

I don't know if that's an annual number. Is this a public number or is this, what, can you tell me about this? Because that was a big number. I was very surprised. And I'm a customer. Yeah. So, like six of your bone broths, you know, sitting in my pantry right now. Yeah, I really like. I love that. There's one flavor I really like. And I feel like I never get it in any store. And then I'm like, all right, let me try these other five and see if any of them can match that one I really love. What's the one that you're super into? I don't remember which one is it's like the top. It's like, I think it's like one of the Thai lime. The Tom Yum. Yeah, I think it's either the Tom yum or one of the other ones like that's like a Thai curry type flavor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one of my favorites. Yeah, and some of those, by the way, are nasty, but some of them are really good.

And so I'm like, it's like, you know, those like when you get a pack of cards, you're like looking for a hologram, like a holographic charizard inside and then you get a squirrel. That's how I feel about kettle and fire. I know this is not common, but that's just my personal experience with so far. Thanks, Ben. I'll take it as a compliment, I guess. Okay, but back to the business side. So I was a customer, but I was shocked when I heard that 100 million number. that number? Yeah, so that's not cumulative. You know, we we stopped sort of disclosing revenue

numbers recently, but I can say in 2019, like the two businesses combined did north of 100. Gotcha. And what is perfect keto? So I know kettle and fire. What's perfect keto? Yeah, so perfect keto is a line of supplements and food products for people interested in lowering their carb and sugar intake. And so we have like a clean label line of foods and supplements for people on a ketogenic diet or who just like want to eat fewer carbs and no sugars. Gotcha. And are you keto? And Sean, the guy who started it, or his partner is literally my next door neighbor. Yeah, but you also say everyone's your neighbor, so I never know what to believe.

And then I came to visit you and you drove me around. You're like, that's where this guy lives. That's where this person lives. That's where this person lives. So now I believe you. But somebody's listening to the pod. Wait, he said his neighbor is Neville. Then he said his neighbor is the guy who made the ice barrel thing that we talked about last time. Then he said his neighbor is the student loan guy.

Then he said his neighbor is the southern thing. Student, student loan hero guy and ice hero guy are the same guy. So they live like, he lives like 20 houses down. Anthony literally lives direct like, like 30 feet from me. Right.

Yeah, like literally right. So the content, I guess the context here is you knew Justin, Lucy, and I've never met Justin. No, I did not lose. Oh, you know, well, okay. Intimately. And you've done two things.

I think that are really interesting. One is the perfect keto stuff and kettle and fire basically building a brand that's been pretty damn successful. And then the other is you write content. And I want to actually talk about some of the content stuff you write. So you have the book traction. That's a good book. But on your blog, there's one blog post that I remember it's been sent to me several times. So I know other people like it too.

So let's start there if you're cool with it, which is you have this side hustle post on your blog. And I'm assuming this is probably one of your more popular blog posts. Is that right? Yeah, definitely. And you basically outline that you've done a bunch of side hustles and then you have like, kind of like break it down as like there's these four types of side hustle. So can you give us kind of like give us the side hustle bit here, which is like. And if you scroll all the way down to that sheet you're on, you'll see your. Yeah, which is basically like what are the side hustles you've done?

How do you think about side hustles? And then break people, break those four down for people. Totally. Yeah. So the reason that I got into this is when Sam and I met, you know, the two of us were like, we want to do this entrepreneurship thing, but in many ways, it's actually a lot easier and like emotionally bearable to start a company if you have just like income coming in that's covering your expenses. And so when I moved to San Francisco, you know, the city is super expensive.

And so I started like doing a bunch of side hustles just to try and make income that would give me the freedom to like spend my time trying to launch a company that would really create a lot of like equity value and sort of like life changing, you know, financial freedom. And so when I, what I did, when I moved to SF, I like started Airbnb being our place. We at one point, you know, this is 2013. We had like the number third, like the third ranked Airbnb in San Francisco. And so we were, we were like renting out either our living room most nights or, you know, over summers, we'd rent it out for like 15, 18 grand a month. And then we just and we were paying three grand a month for the spot. So like that was incredible.

at the time and we just travel and then launched like utomy courses there was a period where I was buying motorcycles that were on Craigslist in Oakland and selling them in San Francisco because there was like an arbitrage there. So I was just doing a bunch of random stuff. And so when I wrote this article, so many people that I've talked to were like, you know, I want to understand how to make side income and how to think about this stuff. And so I just kind of like broke down like the different sorts, in my mind, like the four kinds of businesses that you can start as a side hustle. You know, some of these that I've done actually ended up being more real businesses. But like, do you want me to just talk through the categories and kind of what I've done in the

disclaimer, which is like, look, first things first, except that what you're doing is not meant to be the next Facebook. It's not meant to be a startup. It's like you're trying to make money. You're trying to get some profitable cash flow from a business quickly without a ton of like, you know, without waiting seven years for this thing to pay off. So like first, let's call it what it is. All right. Let's call a spade a spade is I thought an important disclaimer. And then you had these four four groups. So let's run through them. And then Sam, you tell me if you've also done any

in these categories. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I think truly, if you're Mark Zuckerberg or like a Collison brother, like fucking raise money, do like the massive thing that you're working on. I just think for most people, entrepreneurship is a means to an end. And that end is like a lifestyle that people are trying to create. So the more that you can, like, create that and the faster you get financial freedom, I just think that's a useful thing for more people to have in general. So the four like kinds of side hustles that, that I talked about in my blog post, the first one that I talked about is like buying an existing asset. Basically, you can look at like what's an existing asset that you could try and purchase, leverage your skills, connections, resources, whatever, to upgrade that,

make it more cash flow positive, make it do better, whatever. And then you get to capture the value created by upgrading that asset. I did this with, like Sam, I'm sure you guys could do this if you bought an email newsletter. You know, you know how to run that better. Buy it for a million bucks, improve it. You could probably sell it for, you know, three to five a couple years later. Yeah, I was, my friend Ramon bought something that I had a small part of. And it was a software, very small software app that when we bought it, maybe it was doing 20,000 a month.

And all we did was we doubled the price of the product and it doubled the revenue. Amazing. And you did that too. Didn't you own a or you bought a thing called FOMO, right? Yeah. Yeah. So a partner and I bought a Shopify app called FOMO. It was doing 14K a month at the time we bought it.

You know, we bought it. We paid less than 400. I'll say that. Less than 400,000. And yeah, which was like a super good multiple at times. And you didn't put the whole thing down, right? So you get seller financing or what did you do? Yeah.

So we had a really, like the guy basically wanted out. It was a single founder. And we were like, hey, we know how to market. We have connections. We can like really help grow this thing. And so we bought 85% of the business. We bought it. And then we were basically like, we're going to buy this and pay you in monthly chunks for the next 20 months.

And so every like month for 20 months, we use the revenue that we were making from FOMO to make our payment to him. And like my partner and I basically came out of pocket. at $0 to acquire this asset. We were obviously working on running it. We had to throw in. I think it ended up being $5,000 each to pay the developers the first couple months. But yeah, I mean, it was like an incredible acquisition. How big is it now?

Now it does about $95,000 a month. Sounds like a good deal to me. Yeah, it's a good deal. I mean, it's a good deal for everyone. The guy, like, has gotten his time back. He's started other companies in the interim. And like, when we exit this thing, he'll make probably more than he would have made on the exit than, you know, how do he continue to run this for the last three years? And with no headache,

it's like a nice. So you're talking about buy. So category one, buying an asset. This can be a house that you Airbnb. It can be a internet company that you just, you know, you do what Sam did. You go in the code. You push, you know, control F. You find the price and then you change the number to double, which is like Sam's genius or what you did was. You know who I learned that from was Terry. I don't know if she was your boss or what, but she taught me how to do that. How to how. to find the price part of the code or what? Well, she was like, she was like, look, the whole thing is that engineer-led businesses typically are priced poorly.

And if you just double the price, it works. And she was like double the price and then find out which emails, URLs are being used a bunch of times. So for example, if you have like 18 people using at uber.com, contact the HR department or whoever, the procurement and like sell enterprise. She kind of taught me the stuff that Justin's old company was doing. Yeah, exactly. So I ended up, I really like this buy an asset thing.

I think sometimes you have to have money. Other times you can sell our finance. But we ended up doing this too with an apartment building in Vegas where we bought a 14 unit apartment building, could put it all on Airbnb, basically like tripled the cash flow and then sold it 18 months later for, you know, it's 70% more than what we paid for. By the way, in the blog post, you had a couple examples I think are useful. We don't have to go too much into them. But you were like, you talked about this thing, which is like, okay, if you know you have the to like improve the value of the asset.

So for Airbnb, you were like, all right, to get more Airbnb bookings, like, you know, first, if it's not on Airbnb, we should put it on Airbnb. If it is on Airbnb, we can like boost the bookings by like these three things, right? Put more and better photos up. Okay, easy. Anybody could do that, but most people haven't optimized that. Second, like instantly respond to every inquiry so that we get a fast response rate. The algorithm likes that.

And then the last thing is like whatever, like five star reviews at the end or something like that. And so you're like, I can just take the. those three levers and I can apply it to any property now that isn't optimized for Airbnb. So if they think it's worth 100, I already know it's worth 120 because I know I can just do that playbook again on any property. Yeah, exactly. And that's like that actually leads to the sort of like the second bucket of side hustles that I talk about, which is basically look at what is a marketplace with existing demand where you

don't have to go out and find the customer. You just provide the supply side stuff like buying, you know, putting a property on Airbnb all I have to do is understand how does the property like or how does Airbnb dictate where I rank, you know, and what does it want from me as a supplier? And then my shit is going to get booked up. Like, I don't actually have to go find every individual customer that's traveling to San Francisco that can rent our apartment because like Airbnb is doing that for me. And you did that with like, you used to have a thing. It was called a sequel for programmers or what was it called? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, exactly. So I've done this on a couple platforms like Amazon is a big one, like a bunch of people are starting FBA businesses. But I sort of think that focusing on up and coming platforms where the supply side isn't crazy competitive is actually a really good place to start where you could like when I was when I launched my first Udeme course, you know, I filmed it literally over five days in my bedroom in San Francisco. No like good quality, no good editing. It was just like it candidly like was not.

not an amazing course from a student experience standpoint. But the content was good. But Udeme was such an early platform that I put it up there. And just by being literally the first guy to talk about, here's how to learn SQL as a marketer. Like that course sold, I think, like 60 grand over the next couple years. And to this day, I still get like $1,000 a month from that course from Udeme, which is absurd.

And that was all because like, here's an emerging platform. They want people creating stuff on the supplies. side. How do I create a course or whatever that just like can reach people who are already looking for something on a platform and focus on that? I don't know if you did this for that, but there's ways to basically figure out what are people searching for. So there's like tools like AHAs or whatever. You can figure out what Google searches are people doing and in what volume. But even on individual platforms, there's ways to figure it out. Like I know I looked at this business to buy and it was this girl selling a waste trainer. Do you know what a waste trainer is? No. It's basically, do you know,

You know what this thing is? It's like I had no idea what this was before. So it's basically like, you know, like, okay, I'm going to, here's the, here's the mansplain. Here's three dudes talking about waste trainers. All right. So, you know, like if you watch like Pirates of the Caribbean or some, any movie or a show that's like based in kind of like olden times, girls wear that like corset, it's like this. It's like this super tight thing that you're like you squeeze into this and then you wear your dress on top. So your figure gets like your stomach gets squeezed in and your boobs get squeezed out.

Spanx or something. It's like old school spanks. And so what waste trainer. are that. It's basically like a cinch you wear around your stomach constantly. And it makes you look good in the moment, but also the idea is that it trains your muscles or your body to like to tighten up. Because you kind of have to keep it flex in a way for it to not like kind of be uncomfortable, I guess. I don't know what the theory is, but that's my guess. And like the Kardashians kind of like, you know, talk about the stuff and it kind of got a little more popular. So this girl who was building

this business, I was like, cool. So like, what do you spend every month in marketing? She's like, oh, we don't spend anything in marketing. So how are you growing so fast? She's like, oh, I just saw that on YouTube, nobody was owning the keyword for waste trainers and like how to size one, how to wear one, do they work. So she just created like the YouTube channel to be the answer to every search question

about waste trainers on YouTube. And you can go, if you go search waste trainers right now on YouTube, you'll find all her videos. And so all her sales just come just from that. And she was doing a few million dollars a year of revenue, a million dollars of profit per year, just through that one channel alone. Amazing.

Good for her. But yeah, I think exactly what you're talking about. It's like find where people are searching for something and there's no supply there. And that's a really good place to focus. Like when I launched SQL for marketers, there was literally almost nothing under the like marketing, like the technical marketing or like the data analytics, data driven marketing section for Unimi. And so it's like, cool. If I put that up there, that seems like it'll resonate. and do well, which ended up being correct.

And what are the third and fourth ones? Yeah, so the third one is basically like launch a unique product in an area where you can buy customers via paid acquisition. And again, I think all of this is like super important to remember that you're not building Facebook. You're just like, if you look at Google AdWords or waste trainers, as you're saying, and there's a gap there, you can figure out how to make a product. And your goal is not like make a hundred million dollar business, but make one that does a

million dollars a year. Like, there are almost infinite niches on the internet where you can just make a product, buy some rough keywords, and just sell through in a category that, you know, where you're like the first to market or the first to do a really good job. What's an example? What's an example in that category that you've seen either from yourself or a friend or someone you've seen recently that's doing that, that model? Yeah. So there, there's a company actually that is doing, that's like vests for dogs, but the vests are spiky so that coyotes don't attack your dog. So you can put this vest.

Yeah, exactly. Like you could put this vest on a dog and then it won't get eaten by coyotes because it's got like spikes all over it. So, I mean, what an incredible niche product. You know, that's definitely not going to like go public, but that could be an incredible business. And so that stuff like that. I mean, honestly, that's what, that's what kettle and fire was going to be when we first launched it. I had no idea that Bone Roth would be such a compelling category and the trend would take off like it has.

Like our plan was basically we looked at, we looked at Google searches and we were like, I think we can build a like 20 to 40 grand a month business. So when you say we looked at Google searches, what does that mean in practical terms? Most people have never done that. So what did you? Yeah. Fair. So we use like Google AdWords keyword tool just to say like how many.

That's like discontinued now. Yeah, I know. Now you'd have to use A.RFs or some SCM rush or. something. But at the time, we used a tool that was basically like, there's 2,000 people a month looking for like buy bone broth online. And so if we can be the supplier that will sell you bone broth online, like, you know, assuming we convert like even 10% of those people, 200 orders, $50 a month, like, you know, that's a pretty material side hustle. And so that was like the reason that we launched kettle and fire. Google is like, you know, it's like a magic lamp. And on one side,

you have all the Aladdin's out there making wishes and then you just get to be the genie. So it's like there are these tools that tell you, here's the wishes. People are entering into this magic box. They're just hoping for something. And if you notice that that's more people than I would have expected saying this thing or asking this question or wanting this thing. And you go search for it and you're like, wow, these results suck. Okay, how do I just become the top result for that thing? And so you thought, you thought Kettle and Fire would do that.

So give me a sense of how long did it take for you to get from idea, like seeing that key, word or being like, oh, maybe we could do this to actually making like, I don't know, $1,000 a month. How long was that process for you? Yeah, so the process took about a year. Most of it was because I'd never done a physical product before. And so it was like just bumbling around in the dark, like trying to find someone that can make this stuff, had a bunch of false starts. But it took us basically 12 months to go from like, hey, I think this is an opportunity to actually

having product in box. But once we had product in box, you know, we did over 20 grand our first month that we were alive. And you, are you the CEO of Kettle and Fire? I am, yeah. You've got like three, we're going to talk about this other thing that you're thinking about doing. How are you balancing all this time? It's a good question.

I honestly, I've never had a good answer to this. Are you balancing it well? Okay. I mean, some of these things, like perfect keto. Like I don't have a day-to-day role in it anymore. You know, so I like co-founded it, but I've completely stepped away. One of the things that at Kettle and Fire that I think I'm proud of that we've done really well is like we have a phenomenal team. And so to that to that extent, I get to work on stuff that only I can do uniquely well, like writing long 15 page posts about how beef is actually like not bad for the environment and shit like this that I'm kind of interested in.

But a lot of the day to day is handled by like the team that we've built over the last, you know, five, five plus years. So I really am in control of my time in general, which is quite nice. When you partner with a guy like Anthony or whoever you're partnering with and you aren't doing, how many of these things do you have right now where you have your hands and roughly right now? Like five probably. Okay. But there's one that's your day job, right? Yeah.

Okay. So for the other four, when you make these structures with people, so a guy like Anthony or it doesn't have to be him, that represents him, are you taking a draw from that business at all? Or are you just only going to pay yourself if it sells? Yeah. So at this point, I'm pretty focused on like creating equity value. And so, you know, for example, like a company I incubated Shirley wines, it's like a non-alcoholic wine company. We launched earlier this year. I recruited, I like basically had the idea, tested it, validated it, lined up supply chain, hired in the operator, the operator and CEO. he's taking a salary and like I probably won't get a dollar out of that business

for until we eventually sell that business or whatever happens with it. Like I put in a bunch of my own money to capitalize it and get it up and running, but I'm just like I'm not going to suck money out of that thing until we have a good outcome. So then really the only thing that you, not the only thing. I mean, the thing you're bringing the table is you are bringing a little bit of cash and also you're bringing some expertise and your guidance. Yeah, totally. But it also like it's incubated the whole idea in that in that one.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think it's basically like trying to create a compelling opportunity for someone where, you know, someone can go instead of going, if someone wants to be a founder, CEO, today their options are like jump, take no salary for 12 to 18 months, hope they can figure out an idea and raise money and do all that kind of stuff or like build a side hustle, which is again, like a totally different skill set that we're kind of talking about. And so with this one specifically, like I incubated the idea. had everything lined up, validated that it was big, brought investors, and basically it was like, hey man, if you want to be a founder and CEO, you can just walk into this role. You take zero health care, zero salary risk, and you're good. Like, you're a founder. You have a ton of upside. You're this operating CEO. We have investors lined up. It's a big opportunity. It sort of works for both parties. You know. Are you, do you regret or are you thankful that you raised money for kettle and fire? Oh, definitely thankful. Really?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, with kettle and fire in particular, like, the business had grown to a really meaningful amount. And I still had like most of my net worth wrapped up in that. And so I think getting some secondary was like personally really meaningful. And it also meant that like I felt more okay pushing for a bigger outcome. It also meant like I think I will probably raise for most things that I do going forward or invest my own money just because the caliber of the team that we,

were able to hire around us, like what we were doing on a shoestring budget versus what we could do after was just night and day. Like we have an amazing team, but amazing people are expensive. And so it's definitely like made my life a hundred times easier and more enjoyable getting to spend other people's money to increase the value of my equity by hiring amazing people. It's like, that seems like a no-brainer to me in a lot of ways. Yeah, when you explain that way it does. But if I was one of your investors and you're doing all this other stuff, I'd be like, what the fuck, dude, only do this thing. I just gave you money. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, it's something that I had to work through with our investors for sure, was very upfront with it with them about it and was like,

look, this is my main focus, you know, which was very true. And it was definitely something to manage around. I also think, though, that like, it's one of those things where as long as the business is going well, no one's going to complain. You know what I mean? But certainly, if things went sideways, then it's like, okay, this is an easy area to point fingers. It's like, Elon can run Tesla and SpaceX. And everyone's like, wow, he's amazing and those businesses are amazing. And then Jack does the same thing with Twitter and Square. And if Twitter misses its earnings, it's like off with his head.

How dare he, you know, he's a part-time CEO. What the hell were we thinking? And so people are pretty, they do what's called resulting pretty hard in that case. And you also did a pretty fun experience. I don't know if this was a side hustle or what would you call this where me and Sam were both Guinea pigs in your your continuous glucose monitoring trial. So you basically tweeted out. Yeah, I was sending him like, I was sending him like shirtless picks of myself like every week. Yeah, it typically that was a optional. That was not even like recommended.

Yeah, there was like a piss spot in one of my picks. A piss spot? What is that? When you're boxing like you know, when you go pee and you like leak a little on your boxes. Yeah. So Sam sent me like a just him and his boxers. photo and they're just a little T-spot to show his body fat. I was like, all right, dude. And so you were doing this thing where you were like, hey, I need like 20 people or I don't know how many, maybe it's 40 people that you ended up using. Yeah, 50 people.

And you were like, hey, we're going to do this experiment. And what you did was you sent us all a levels glucose monitor and then continuous glucose monitor that we just, you know, punctured into our arm basically. Now, okay, that's measuring. And then you put us all in like a WhatsApp group and you're like, hey, here's the idea. and it was like financial incentive, I think it was like, you would pay us out every day that we stayed in range. And if we missed it, like you kept our money or something like that. What was that experiment and what did you learn out of it?

Man, it was awesome. Like that, that experiment was kind of like many things in my life. I just had the idea, tweeted it immediately and got such a strong response from people. But we had like a wait list. Yeah, totally. Where I was like, okay, now I got to figure this up. You know, Sam was texting me every day being like, this is sweet. like I'm going to get all my fucking money back. Like you're very into it. I loved it. I was into it.

Yeah. I was super good. Yes. Awesome. But yeah, so learned a ton, man. I mean, one of the craziest things I think was just how well that incentive of like $25 a day really work for people to keep them, keep them honest. Like you go through, you know, pay $950 bucks for 30 days every day that you stay under a

barrier. I like give you $25 back. And just that tiny little behavior like incentive where. where that brownie or whatever is not $4, but it's $29. Like that, I think that little incentive goes a really long way and it's somewhat competitive and all this. And so we have had with literally no marketing, you know, we've filled up 50 person cohorts every month since launching that in February.

Oh, it's still live. Yeah, yeah. People can still sign up. It's wearable challenge.com. We've had one person go through it seven times. They've lost about 50 pounds. It's like unbelievable. to see the results of this.

Who's running that? Yeah, so one of the guys in the first cohort, Aaron, got so excited about the idea. I was like, hey, do you want to run with this? And so he's been running it the whole time. That's amazing. And is that a business to you or what is that? Not really. I mean, we're kind of thinking about like how to make it a business, but it's actually a perfect

example of a side hustle. Like I will probably make, you know, somewhere between 20 and 30 grand this year from doing that. Yeah. Maybe more if Sam joins and blows a bunch of his glucose levels. When I saw that, I was like, hey, this is fun. And it's kind of like on brand for you because of the stuff you talk about and your businesses. But then I was also like, oh, this is a great business because everybody wants the outcome. Everybody wants to eat, right, lose weight.

And the biggest hack is not knowledge, but accountability. And I like that you were coming at it from an accountability point of view. And I actually think like, you know, the company levels could do something like this. or there's going to be a company that does this, right? Whatever Weight Watchers is as a business model, like I haven't studied it. I'm assuming you have given what you do and what this business is, but could this not be like Weight Watchers 2.0? I think it could be. I mean, it just, it would need someone to like run at it really full time.

But I do think that there's something here. I mean, there's a couple companies like stick and like one other that I'm forgetting where you can sort of like bet money on different outcomes. And, you know, I think that that's sort of. I actually think the really powerful part of this is like it's a cohort. It's a challenge for a set period of time and you lose money only for that set period of time. And so like I would love to expand this and we're sort of have some ideas in the in the hopper about like what expanding it might look like. But it's definitely not my like full time thing at all.

Have you heard of stick, Sean? That's actually an interesting company to buy. I haven't been there in years. But when I used to go there, it was even when I went there like years ago, it was considered like old. So it's stick. It's spelled stick. I think there's two Ks at the end, right? Yep.

It's like a physical place? No, it's a stick.com, but two K's at the end. And is the website still all old and janky looking? Yeah. Okay, so it was like old back then, or in 2013 or 14 when I used to use it. And what you do is you enlist a friend to be the referee, and then you create, I believe, an anti-charity, where you select something that you hate,

and then you upload money to it. And then if you fail at your challenge, your friend clicks a button and it automatically goes to that place that you hate. And I think there's a varieties of the service. Tim Ferriss talked about this, I think, in four-hour work weekend. I think it got a lot to it from that. Yeah. Yeah. Did you think this company makes money, Justin?

I would imagine so. I don't know how much, but it could be an interesting thing to buy. I mean, it's actually not that hard to replicate, but like if they already get traffic, it could be an interesting. This would be an interesting thing to buy in, uh, this would be an interesting thing to buy in, uh, revamp and make a little bit better because I think they get a lot of traffic. When I, when we owned Tuddle Do, there was this one guy, an author. I think he wrote a book, Getting Things Done. GSD. Yeah. David Allen. Yeah. And he mentioned Tuddle Do, this app that me and Ramon bought. And most of our customers came to us because they read about Tudel Doe. Like,

it just mentioned them in like a sentence or something in the book. And that's where most of the customers came from. And just because Tim Ferriss mentioned Stick, I bet that's where the vast majority of their customers come from. For sure. Yeah, that's funny. There was this thing called gym packed too. I don't know if you guys have seen that. I don't know if it made it. It was like, it came out five years ago or something like that. But it was you would basically pledge that you're going to go to the gym with some some frequency and other people would too. And it basically, I think what they were doing was like in your case, you're the house. You're like the bank. It's like I give you the money and then you pay me back. And in this case, it was like it would match you.

with somebody else. And if you ever didn't do your thing, your money would go to that person. If they did it and you didn't go, your money would go to them. And if you both went, your money would be safe. And so you're like making a pack that you would go to the gym for some amount of frequency. But I do think there is something to this like kind of financial incentive, accountability, you know, betting, betting on yourself, betting on your habit model. That I think is pretty cool. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, we're actually looking now at like, could you, apply this to run little health boot camps in like LA or Austin or something like that where you have 30 people, 50 people opt in, we'll handle your meals, we'll give you levels, like we'll do all

this sort of stuff and a more like premium offering that, where it's like, hey, you're almost guaranteed to lose weight or get in better shape at the end of this month. That would for sure work. That's a little bit better than my weight loss idea, which is called kidnap where you just go and you take a person and you bring them to the desert in like Vegas. And you just like, Kidnap with two peas at the end. Yeah. Kidnap S.

Or we'll call it hostage. And we just bring you to like a farm. And we just like, it's like, look, you only 1500 calories a day. Do it every one all day. But like this is it. I love that. Can I ask you?

The refund rates would be high on that. Well, you know, it'll be guaranteed success. So I want to get to some of these ideas. But I first want to ask you about duck, duck go. So you're friends with that guy, Gabe, right? The guy who started it or owns it. And are you?

bullish on that business because you're one of the few people I know that has insight onto it. And I look at their traffic monthly, like, because they give out these monthly updates. That does that, is that business like a like kind of like an under the radar thing? Do you think this is going to take over the world? Because that's kind of how I feel. Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's crushing. Like I think that you always see like there's always like a counterpoint to some massive trend or

massive amount of success. Like you have like Amazon taking over the world, but then you have Shopify, which is crushing it. And I think that Duck Duck, Go is like the counterpoint to, uh, to like Google and, you know, privacy eroding across the board, all this sort of stuff. Like, I do think there's an opportunity to be a big tech company, but with privates, like privacy is a core value rather than, uh, you know, selling ads to everyone. And so I think duck, dot go really has that, the opportunity to like be that company. And they have a lot of tailwinds that are working in their favor at this point. Um, it's also crazy.

Like Gabe, he's been working on that company for like 12 years. Five of those years. Is it longer than 12? It might be, actually. But like for a large chunk of that time, he was just a solo founder building a search engine to compete with Google. It's like, wow. So I mean, they do north of 100 million in revenue, I believe. Yeah.

I believe it. Do you know how like, I don't know if you, I don't know if you knew him during those early years, but like did you know him at the beginning or no? Not not the very, very beginning, but I knew him when it was like him and, one other person working on Duck DeKo. And so I'm guessing at that point, it wasn't, it wasn't a case where it's him and one other person and man, it's crushing it. It's him and one other person. And it's sort of crawling forward.

Yeah. What were those, like, what were your conversations? Like, what was the outlook? I mean, I find it fascinating when people work on these businesses that don't take off right away and they stick with it. And then they either like the world just changes or they figure something out or just compound slow, slowly. But then all of a sudden it starts to take off.

Like, what was that like they're in the flat part? and then what do you think caused it to grow? Yeah, I think that he was, he was just getting like small bits of positive feedback from communities. Like hacker news community was like, duct, go is amazing for like stack overflow searches or, you know,

X, Y, and Z very specific niche sorts of searches. And then as he got good feedback from those groups, it's like, okay, let's invest in product to make this a little better, a little better. And I think that after, you know,

let's call it 12, 14 years that he's been working on this, the product has gotten a lot better. But also the like sort of, like sort of trend line of where big tech is going has it's just gotten like way more way more invasive and way more like privacy is way more of a concern for people today. Especially as you're seeing a lot of the censorship stuff and you know, some of this that's happening in the big tech world right now.

I think that Ducks at Go is like one of the few companies that for over a decade now has been like privacy is one of our like core things. And they've built an incredibly complex product to compete. with Google that's just not easy to spin up overnight. You know, it's not a side hustle. It's not like the type of thing you were I can build with a couple hours a week over, you know, a weekend. Can we talk about, can we go through some of these ideas?

You want to start with Airbnb camping because I, you were texting me about this. And I want to learn about it. I just looked at a house the other day, by the way, down the street from my house to buy for Airbnb. I'll have to send you the numbers. I don't know if it seems like a lot of work for not a lot of output. We'll see. Yeah.

I think that's probably true for a lot of Airbnb right now. I think the thing that is compelling to me is like, we talked earlier about new platform stuff. Like Hip Camp and some of these other like camping platforms are exploding. And again, I think if you could like leverage capital, build up the supply side and provide like, you know, water, toilet tree, like all the basics in locations that people actually want to camp at, you could build a pretty material business.

And again, it like may. may not be a $10 billion business, but I think it would be a really solid side hustle and cash flow asset. And it would require a lot less, a lot less like management and work than Airbnb because at the end of the day, fucking camping. Like, sorry, you know, it's not like the stove burner doesn't work or the AC is off. It's like a plot of land. You're welcome. Plop a tent on there. The experience I provided for you. Where nothing worked and you had to fend for yourself. That's what you wanted. Exactly. Maybe I can host hostage up there.

Exactly. When you were doing this, what numbers were you modeling out? Yeah. So I was mainly modeling it on like an NOI basis, which is net operating income, which is like a term that's used a lot in real estate. But basically I think that you could get like 30 to 40% cash on cash returns by following this strategy. That sounds like the greatest thing ever.

Why have you done it? Because I am getting high returns from my time elsewhere. I would love to find someone to run. If somebody's listening to this is like, oh, I'm the perfect guy for this. I love camping. I know I have a camper. I have a camper myself. I'm in an area that's like a high demand thing for hip camp or auto camp or whatever.

Yeah, great. You be the operator. We'll put up the cash. We'll buy the RVs for you and you run the thing and let's split it. So email me, Sean at shan puirri.com and then I'll loop in these guys. And we will fund your, we will fund a small. rental business of campers, if anybody's in the location that does this. Because that's a great idea. You're absolutely right. They're basically tons of demand and their supply constrained. And so if

you just build out more supply, you're going to get bookings and you're going to get great returns off. Yeah, exactly. And it's one of those things that's like that can scale really nicely. These platforms are here to stay. Like there's a lot of venture dollars going into making these more of a thing. I think that you could crush it on these platforms. Is it something I want to do full time at this point in my career, no, but do I think someone younger who like cares about camping more than I do could really do well here? Like absolutely. Right. Okay, great. That's a great idea. What else you got? Alcohol, baby. Let's talk about that. Yeah. So near and dear to my heart as a as a as a as a as a non-alcoholic beer drinker. Yeah. So, you know, a couple earlier this year launched a company that I talked about

Shirley, hi shirley.com. S-U-R-E-L-Y. But we're basically like, We saw so much interest going into the non-alc beer space. Bud Light bought three spots of the Super Bowl. One was the Celzer spot. The other was for Bud Light. The other was for Bud Zero, which is like the non-alk thing is so interesting. And like there's so much attention going towards it.

And we saw like a ton of really good non-alc beers, some really good like non-alc spirits options and nothing in the wine category. And so we decided to build the first clean label, really high quality non-alcoholic wine brand and wine company. I hired like real winemaking talent and the like. We launched earlier this year and it's going, going super well. So I'm, by the way,

I want to brag. I've been talking about this shit for like four years now. Haven't I, Sean? I don't know if that's a brag or really it's a, it's a knock on you. You had the inside. He took the action. Well,

I don't want to do that. I mean, I don't. That's true. That's true. I mean, yeah, I'm just talking shit.

But you have been. So I get like a, I get like a, just like a like a like a add-a-boy yeah yeah I deserve an add-a-boy for that for sure so I think you were gonna kind of ask him something like how much did you put in to start this basically how much of your money did you did you have to cede into making a venture like this happen yeah so I put in a close to 100k to make this happen and some portion of that was a loan that that that I got out just as like revenue started to come in but yeah it was about 100k it's been up not a lot that's great no

yeah it's not a crazy that's a weekend for Sam thank you um I feel like, I feel like, okay, so if you're telling me you could start this with 100 grand, and how many hours a week are you working on this? To get it spun up, I mean, it was much more like hiring the right contractors and people. So it was five, ten, maybe at most. Okay, I feel like there's a world where this, like, let's be conservative. I feel like there's a, like, this is very clearly a $10 million a year thing that makes $2 million in profit, right? Like, like, it could definitely be way bigger.

But I feel like that's a relatively like I'd be disappointed if it didn't hit that mark, right? That's kind of what you're saying. Yeah. That would be expectations at least. Yeah. So right. Like, and let's give it six years to do that. Let's go, let's grow slow.

I feel like that's like a, it's pretty sure fire away you're going to get that. Would you agree? Uh, yeah, I certainly do. And so seems like a good investment to me. If that was the case, right, a DDC brand like that can sell for like one X revenue, let's say. So you could turn 100K investment and let's call it even 20, hours a week for a year to spin it up to you turned 100K into basically, you know, 10 million bucks worth of total equity value in terms of the company in that case.

I don't even think it'll take six years. I think that's two years. Yeah, I'm being like alternative. Yeah, I agree. But yeah, I mean, that's a basic thing. Where are the other opportunities in the space that you, when you were researching? Yeah, I mean, there's a ton, right? Like, I think that we're at this generational shift where people, you know, 10 years ago,

everyone was like let's go out maybe this is just me getting older i don't know but all of my friends were like let's go out to the bars and get really drunk now all my friends are like let's have one glass of wine and then like have a great long dinner and or try you know or not drink at all right and instead young people i don't young people i don't think drink yeah it's it's becoming much more common shockingly that's what i'm saying like the gen zers like like it's not as common like when the second i could drive have you heard sam's Gen Z analysis that he does, his trends analysis on Gen Z. He's like, they don't have sex, they don't drink, and they're depressed.

But they're really cool looking. What do you see what he called them? They're really cool. They got nice teeth. They always wear vans, and they like, they always have, like, proper fitting jeans. What color do they like? What do I say, like, red or millennial paint? I think you'd have, like, a really sweeping generalization for that.

Dude, it's like the truth. You don't you use TikTok? Like, they all have, like, sick-ass haircuts. It's true. They all got like amazing. Justin's got a Gen Z cut right now. He's looking at Gen Z. Dude, the young people, I'm saying they don't, they don't have a lot of sex,

not nearly as much as before. Even with all that teeth and hair, they can't, they're not having sex? What's going on? Dude, I don't know. Male testosterone is down 50% over the last like 40 years. That's right. Yeah, maybe that's it. It's like there's something going on here.

And they also don't like alcohol. It's a health thing or I don't know. what it is, but they don't drink. Yeah. I mean, I honestly think one of the reasons I'm bullish on the non-alk space is like we're getting to the point where there are just better drugs. Like if people want to, you know, alter their state of consciousness, I'm seeing a lot more friends that are like opting into cannabis or ketamine or some of the, you know, psychedelics or some of these other things that don't give you the hangover, don't give you the 30 extra pounds over a year of heavy drinking. Like I just think people are opting for for different sorts of compounds.

to give them the experience they want. Yeah, exactly. I tried that recess drink. You guys tried that? Yeah. Don't do shit, does it? CPD, kind of like carbonated drink. Great branding. Amazing branding, I would say, drink tastes like shit and didn't do anything. So I was like, well, I'm out on that one. But I love the idea of that. I kind of wish it. If they just put LaCroix in that can, I'd feel amazing. I'd be like, yeah, this is the best. This is the future. But instead, you know, they tried their own thing. What are some businesses that you're like, you mentioned testosterone. We invested in this testosterone replacement company because we were like that same.

Which one? It's called Peak. Or they're just rebranding to hone, but basically it's at home. Directs consumer, you know, testing for your T levels. And then when you get tested and it's,

if it's low, you're, there's like a telemedicine doctor who will be like, hey, by the way, if you want this to go up, you know,

like there are some solutions that we can offer you. Basically, they have their own. You've not heard of that, Justin? I've heard of TRT. I didn't,

I didn't heard of like peak or home. It's basically, it's also not my space. TRT, right? To throw six letters out. You don't believe in it? It's real. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's not a well-said thing, but I tend to think that some of these things, it's like, you know, your testosterone levels are low. It's like, okay, the reason that they're low is some inputs from your environment are not healthy. And so rather than trying to fix the symptom, like you should try and fix the environment. What are the biggest inputs you can change to boost testosterone from your opinion?

I think diet, sleep, like inflammation, and then also trying to cut out like endocrine disrupting disrupting hormones, which are, I think, like a horrifying thing that not a lot of people are talking about. What is that? Talk about it. Go on. So different plastics compounds, like you've heard of like BPA-free and all these sorts of things. The whole class of something called p-th-h-l-A-T-E-S that effectively have like a really strong negative impact on one's testosterone, one's like endocrine and hormonal systems,

and they're that are in like everything. They're basically from plastic or they're from something else? Yeah, a lot of plastics. Yeah. So these are like synthetic materials that are just in like water, plastics, food packaging, creams that you use. Like they're all they're in there. So what's something you do lifestyle wise that I'd be like, dude, why are you doing that?

Like I went to my friend's house one time and he instead of using toothpaste, he was like, he dipped his toothbrush in like this powder and started brushing his teeth. I was like, hey man, what the fuck is that? Because he's always like three steps ahead in health and like products. And so at first I used to judge him. And now I'm like, oh, oh, am I killing myself by using toothpaste? Should I be using this powder shit? And like, you know, what are those?

Can I? Can I? What would yours be? Can I guess? Can I guess? Can I guess? Do you use a microwave? No.

No. I didn't think. Okay. Although that is. Yeah. But like you go out of your way to not use a microwave. right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Do you, you definitely only have glass Tupperware, correct? Yeah, for sure. What else is there? Do you, I've got a few more. I've got a few more I can peg you, but you tell me.

I got this like 19 step home water filtration thing installed at my house that's like, the metal one. It's like 25 feet tall and in this outside. It's insane looking. It's outdoors? The plumbers, yeah, yeah, they're at every step. So there's one other sink. There's one outside that, like, filtered all the home water. The guys came into install it. They were like, we have never seen anyone install something like this. But, yeah, so I have that set up that I just recently got. The Tupper stuff, pretty diet cautious in general.

Are you super ripped? I can't see you. Your neck up here. Are you like, okay. No, he's lean. Yeah, you're lean. You're like 10% body fat, right? I'll send you a pee spot photo.

Yeah, I was going to say. I need a pee. Well, I've seen you without a shirt. You're not like huge, but you're like, you look like a like a soccer player. Sam, who's more fit? You're adjusting. It depends on what we're talking about. Do you aspire more for your body or for his body?

Go. I would prefer, right now I prefer to be leaner and skinnier. So I'm trying to lose fat and look a little bit more like him. All right, great. All right. So you have the insane water filtration system. And what is that, by the way? What's the name of it?

It is called the Radiant Life, I think. But there's another one, Sean, that all the people, all. I do. I haven't saw it in my backyard. Is it infrared or is it a hot stone? No, it's the, yeah, it's like the hot stone one. And like red lights on your toes or something in the morning? Do you do anything with any kind of light UV, anything?

No, I try to get outside. I mean, this is one of those things that I think is like, there's some people that I think overoptimized where they're like, oh, I need more light exposure. So I'm going to stay inside and like shine red light on myself. And I'm like, just go outside. Do you only use zero-drop shoes? No. What is that?

I did for a while. I just didn't really notice a difference. Basically shoes with no heel. Yeah, most shoes have some type of, yeah, but a lot of people believe that that ruins your Achilles and hurts your calves and a bunch and ruins your posture. Do you only eat meat from salt in time? I tried to. again. It's the best meat in Austin for sure. Where do you get your meat from? So I, now I eat most of my

meat is from salt in time or stuff that I've hunted or a friend is hunted. I love it. This is awesome. Okay, great. Did we miss any other ones? Any other good, like sort of self? I don't, what do we even call these? Well, look, I think what we're teasing, but there is truth in this. Like, guys who are on the cutting edge and things that we joke and laugh at, I believe that's going to be normal. You know, like, I remember like years ago, I got into this hobby about raw denim, which is like a,

at the time, it was like super nerdy and everyone made fun of me. And it didn't get entirely mainstream, but a little bit mainstream. It got quite popular. And that was, that's kind of like what we're talking about here. So like,

I remember years ago, people were talking about ayahuasca. And I was like, what the fuck is that? And now like I know so many people that are doing this stuff. So, oh, and Dan said you use nonstick pans.

You definitely, you don't use nonstick pans for sure. I can tell that. Yeah, I use a ceramic set or cast iron. Yeah. Yeah, that's an easy one. But anyway, go ahead. What was the answer?

Are there any other things that we can learn from how you live? Yeah, I mean, I think that like cutting out things that are causes of inflammation or the obvious ones, it's like don't microwave stuff in plastic, try and like buy stuff that is overly, not overly processed and package. And I think actually like avoiding vegetable oils is a tremendous, tremendous thing that like you said about. raw denim or ayahuasca, you know, five years from now, 10 years from now, a lot of people are going to be way more conscious about vegetable oils and the damage that they specifically like a compound called linoleic acid in there, the damage that does to like your inflammatory system. What will they use instead?

Olive oil or peanut oil. Yeah, I mean, hopefully olive oil, avocado oil, animal fats, lard ghee, butter, stuff like that, coconut oil. Do you want to talk about, you want to talk about one or two more of these, Sean? Or what? Yeah, let's do, let's do, you pick the topic. Let's do one more topic. Oh, I know I was going to ask you really quick.

All these things that you're doing, this like no microwave, all this stuff, do you actually feel a difference or is it, is it like? Are these all long term or is there any short term pleasure and benefit I can get out of these? Like, do you feel different? Yeah. So the way that I think about this is like from a baseline standpoint, you know, if you, if you are pretty high baseline, like imagine you're super strong. it's going to be really hard for you to notice if you're a bodybuilder if you're putting on like

1% you know two pounds of muscle or something if you already or if you're already like weighing 225. So I think that I have a pretty high like health baseline. And so a lot of these things are more preventative and not like, oh my God, I feel amazing. You know, whereas I felt like shit the other day. But for I think the average person like if your baseline is relatively low, you want to lose like or average, you want to lose weight. You're not sleeping well. your stress hormones are all over the place. A lot of these interventions, like, you'll feel a material difference after like 20 or 30 days.

I think there's a world to build like a wire cutter version of this. So, for example, like you're saying a lot of stuff. And my best friend, my best friend Jack is into all this stuff. And I stay at his house and I visit him. And so that's how I like, I see how he lives. And Jack's really honest. And I'll say, he takes all these supplements. I go, do any of these do anything?

And he goes, no. Like, I don't feel any different. And like a guy like you, I imagine you actually. care about longevity and also you just like to tinker and you like trying gadgets you know i like try and gadgets as well i just want to like see the latest and grace it's fun to experiment i would love but but the issue is is that someone like you like or not you but some of the folks in your world like they can get a little woo-woo and i'm like i don't know if they're like talking about fucking crystals or if this is actually going to make a difference in my life it's really hard to know like

uh if like this actually truly is meaningful i went and i went to peter peter attia's blog about this as well to learn about fitness. And he talks about so much stuff about fitness and diet. And I'm like, just give me the, if you just do this, life will be a little bit better. And you're 80% there. Yeah, I think there's a big opportunity for that. I think that one of the problems is like, if you're an influencer, you're going to get way more attention and interest from people when you talk about butthole sunning than you are about like eat a healthy diet. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah, totally. Like I think that's the problem. Yeah. You've seen that. Yeah, or perineum bathing. What's that mean? Same thing. You never seen this article to say it?

It went like super viral. I'll send you a hot-to-media. A bunch of naked people. They were going on it like they're tanning, but then they raise their legs above their heads so that the sun goes directly into their butt. And they're like, oh, you know, never felt better, you know? The sun's energy right into your fourth eye. Do we want to go over one more thing or two more things? What do you want to do?

It's your call. Well, we can't end on a butthole something anymore. Yeah, I guess that will probably leave a bad taste. Okay, so I've got an interesting, you have something interesting. And I want to, so I've got a friend named Nick. You know Nick, I bet. And Nick, he jokes about it, but he's being serious. He matches with girls on Tinder or whatever app he uses, and he calls them for a pre-screening for a date.

He's like, let's just talk to each other because he's, Nick's, he just wants to get down to business. Like, do we want a date or not? And he calls them. And one of the questions he asked Sean right away is what's your credit history or like, do you have debt? And odd here, Justin has, he goes, I think I could create a dating app that based off your credit card history. But this wasn't just to be clear.

It's not your credit rating he's talking about. Not like I only want to very rich credit worthy people. It's more like if I know what you want to be rich to have a good credit for. What he's saying is I want to look at your purchase history basically. The stuff you buy, if you shop at Whole Foods, if you go to the gym, if you go to the gym, you don't, whatever, you go to the bar, you ring up a bill, that'll tell us how compatible we are. That was your idea? Yeah, exactly. And are you dating right now? Are you single? I am reasonably engaged. And if you matched you and your fiance's bills up before you got

engaged, would you have been a good match? Great fit. Great fit. Yeah, for sure. I think that like where you spend your resources tells a lot about someone that a hinge profile doesn't. And so I suspect if like you were to say, hey, we are matching. the two of you up because you spend an absurd amount of your income at this like weird butcher shop in Austin or at Whole Foods like we're probably going to get along, you know, or at least have a higher odds of doing that from a lifestyle compatibility standpoint than then Hinge does, you know? Sam, what do you think? All right, let's do.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think no. I think this is one of those things that people say they want. I think we're going to give that one a no, but I enjoy that you said it. Yeah, like I think my opinion is like when it comes to dating, you really just like you want to optimize for getting laid quickly. I think like regardless of that's what people admit or not, but like they just want to get to like date one so they can get in bed for step two. And I think that really people like they say they, like so when we had our roommate matching app, I don't know if you could actually vouch for if you saw this on your end. People said they wanted this. They wanted this. And then they would meet someone and they're like, nah, fuck it.

Like I'll just do it. Right. And so I think the same is with dating. You say you want to do this, you want to do that. But then if I show you like a person who you just think is attractive, even though you had all these rules, you're going to say, ah, all right, whatever. Let's just do it. Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's probably true. I think this probably would be better as a like matchmaking service than a broad based dating app. Right. And and then, well, let's wrap up with the one that we've actually talked about before about this automation officer. Yeah. Let's do it. Basically, I think with the rise of no code tools, virtual assistance, all this. sort of stuff. Like, I think the average company, and we do this at my company, could just be 30% more productive. Like, we, we have basically one virtual assistant hire for every two people that we have that are on the team. And we give them like a training that's like, here's how to use virtual assistants, get all

of the repetitive stuff off your plate. And I just wish I could hire someone to do that as a service where like he or she sits in product meetings or marketing or logistics team shit. And it's just like, we're going to automate these five pieces and just, continually does that across the company. Where did you learn that from? That's so, so interesting to give VAs to every two people.

Yeah, I just started doing it when we started the company. I think that's pretty amazing. Right. How did you learn the how to manage a VA? What you can use them for what you can't? Where did you learn that part? Obviously, you started working, but like what was the spark? Yeah, when I left, when I left like,

the company I was working with Terry at, we got acquired. And then I was kind of like starting to do my own stuff on the side and was like, okay, I want to try and scale myself to do more stuff on the side. So like originally hired VA is to help with responding to Airbnb requests and then view to me requests and then like slowly got them more integrated into my life. I love it. And did you take a course or something like where did you, this training that you have for your employees, is that modeled off something or what?

No, we basically like we have some internal documents that myself and other people on the team have written up around how to leverage virtual assistance. And we just do that. You should publish this. Yeah, I feel like that's, I think you're like you're kind of like this. You're not dismissing this, but you're kind of like brushing over this. I feel like that's actually one of the more interesting things that I've learned today. I think that's actually pretty amazing. I've had a lot of people ask me for this. And I actually suck at using VAs and don't really use them, but I know I should and could do more. And this is one of if I kind of like pinged the audience. I was like, all right, if I could teach you anything that you think like, what do you think I could

teach you that I know that you want to know. And surprisingly, this was like number five on that list. And so I plan to eventually, A, learn it myself and better so that I can like offer this others. But I was very surprised to see that on the top list of things people wanted to learn that they felt like they were just curious about and they felt that there was value there, but they didn't know how to unlock it. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, maybe this is something that I should publish at some point. And I don't know. How much do what, how much budget do you allocate is it like two grand a month per two people or what? We, yeah, we probably about that. Like, call it like 10-ish grand across like the whole company. So what do you guys have? You have 20 people? We have 33.

Dude, that's pretty sick how you've kept it like relatively small for I have no intel. I would imagine your revenue is in the 60 million range if I had to guess. And that's pretty a lean, mean team for how much value that is definitely and i think the va piece is a big part of it like we just have a very efficient team that's pretty focused on getting stuff done that they uniquely can do and the vAs are super helpful with the rest well dude this is sick man i i can't see sean's face i can't see where he's yeah my camera overheats uh this is a recurring problem i moved it all that i moved my whole setup inside for this but then i also got two babies inside so i thought all right do i want to risk babies crying or my camera overheat, guaranteed camera overheat. And I chose the camera. Justin,

do you want to promote yourself? Where do you want, where do you want people to go to? A lot of people are going to listen to this. So what, your dot com, your Twitter, where are you going to, what are you going to pimp? Yeah. So probably my Twitter, I'm at J.W. Mares or my website, Justin Mares.com. I have a monthly newsletter that I send out where I talk about various things. I think about health business and whatever else is kind of on my mind. That seems like people like, I think Sam, you like it too, right? Yeah, I'm looking at your stuff now. I'm a subscriber. I get your, it's not a substack. It's just a blog, right? Yeah, but I have a monthly newsletter that is on substack, but yeah, that's right. I get your emails in my thing or in my email and I,

and I message you about it. I'm like, oh, I just saw your Airbnb thing. Because I actually want to do that. I think that's sick. I think that'd be a great way to finance like a pretty large bit of land. I think that's fun. I went, I went to this place out in Texas where you shoot guns and then afterwards you go and ride ATVs. And it was like, I was in heaven. I was like, this is just the most fun I could possibly have. I have to go and buy a place so I can do this all the time. It's awesome. What are you going to say, Sean? I was going to say, Justin, I got to give the compliment. I'll give your blog is that your, your content is so good. It made me question. I was like, is this guy really like a good entrepreneur or is this like, because like usually, like,

there's some people who are truly great at putting out content and truly great at actually like walking the walk and doing the business side have actually done it themselves or not just like studying others and writing content. But often what you'll find is that people are good at one the, I know a bunch of amazing business people who don't want to or suck at creating content. And I know some great content people that I'm like once I meet them, I'm like, oh, you've, this is your business. You've never done a business outside of this content business. And so then when I found out that you were good at both, I was like, okay. props to you for both.

But that's how good the content was, that it made me do the research and say, is this guy legit or what? I appreciate that. I'm definitely not good at like the content business side of things or posting frequently. But I like really enjoy putting it out. You've been doing this for years, though. Yeah, you've been doing it for years. I'm looking at your site now.

I'm reading your 2020 review. I just clicked off Central Athlete because you talked about Central Athlete. I mean, it seems like you've been doing this for years. So, I mean, that's consistent. definitely I like it but in small doses not as a full-time thing all right great we should wrap it up dude thanks for coming on this was fun you're like a perfect fit for like the type of audience that we have they're going to love I think the content that you uh the ideas and stuff you shared so that was great yeah this is awesome thank you thanks for having me all guys it was fun 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 bad