My First Million - 3 Niche Business Ideas We Thought Would Fail… But Actually Crushed It

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Episode 551: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) were wrong. How wrong? You’ll have to listen to find out.  — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Jenni AI’s rise from $2k MRR to $300K MRR (4:00) The zoom-in pivot (7:00) First 100 customers (12:30) Fortune favors the bold (16:30) How to do a TikTok ad right (24:00) Sam's mea culpa: Hostage Tape update (27:30) Shaan's $500M L (34:00) How to pick the right market (44:00) Jason Kelce > Travis Kelce (48:00) Tracy Chapman's beacon of authenticity — Links: • Jenni - https://jenni.ai/ • The Mom Test - http://tinyurl.com/va428xyz • David Park Twitter - https://twitter.com/Davidjpark96 • Hostage Tape - https://hostagetape.com/ • Flo Health - https://flo.health/ • Palta Pitch Deck - http://tinyurl.com/ycf7e5hn • Tracy Chapman on Charlie Rose - https://charlierose.com/videos/11899 — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

May 25th, 2023, subject line. He said it was a bad business idea. Dot, dot, dot. Email out to his whole list, I think. Hey, folks, Alex here. Telling people you run a mouth-tapped business isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Did anyone think that that was sunshine and rainbows? You know what they say.

Running a mouth-tape and business. Everyone always asked me, like, how awesome is this business? 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. All right, what's up, everybody? Back to the greatest podcast of all time, My First Million, or we talk about business ideas.

We talk about businesses that are under the radar, crushing it that you haven't heard of. And hopefully, when you listen to this podcast, you get a little inspiration, you get a little wind in your sales so that you go out and kick a little more ass today. Sam, I have an ass kicking story for you. You want to hear it?

I love ass kicking stories. In fact, this is two ways. It's stories of other people who are kicking ass, and it's a story of me getting my ass kicked as an investor. So here's two investments that I passed on for two totally different reasons. And I'm going to tell you the reason why I missed it and the really cool story of what these companies did. All right. So this first one, two or three years ago, two years ago, I think it was.

And it's this guy, David, and he's pitching me a startup called Jenny. And it was at peak AI time. So this is 2021. You know, GPT3 was out. Everybody was excited about AI. and this guy had yet another AI startup idea. I didn't really know what to make of it. It was small.

It was only doing $2,000 a month in revenue. So he's like, hey, we've got great traction. I'm at 2K MRR. And I'm like, that's cute, son. 2K MRR. You know, like the pool guys make a 2K MRR. Come on, we got to do better than that. But really nice guy.

We get on a call and I don't remember what I said, but he told me afterwards. He was like, yeah, you were like one of the nicer people in terms of giving us feedback and telling us what to do. At the time, they had a pretty undifferentiating. product. So what they were doing was a product called Jenny AI. And what Jenny was doing was it was a writing tool. So it was just like Jasper, which was like, you just say, hey, I need a blog post. It writes you a blog post. You need SEO content. You need blog content. You need email content.

And it was just like writing blogs for you. And there was a bunch of starters doing this at the same time. Jasper was doing it. They were taken off. So it was like a kind of a hot space. But I was like, dude, I think you're late to that party. And he's like, no, no, no, we're going to make it. And I like the guy. He told me that at age 16, he had basically, He started being an entrepreneur at age 16, trying to build companies. Like, try to build a T-shirt company. Failed.

But like, you know, that's a right of passage is start your first terrible idea. He'd gotten that out of the way. And now he was onto this, which was cool. He's like, yeah, he's like, it's actually a funny story. He goes, we got on GPT2 when it was just like developer access mode only. And we told it to like, I don't know, tell us a joke or say something wise but funny. And it says, GPT go, what's the darkest place in the world? and they go, what?

It goes, a butthole. They're like, what? This thing is crazy. What is this tech? And so they're like, we got it all in on this. So they start trying to make ideas for this. And how old are they when they start working on this?

So they're about 24, I think. Okay, got it. And he's like, I got no money. He's living in his mom's house. He's like, literally, I have to ask my mom like, hey, can I get the credit card? I want to get Chipotle. And he's like, you know,

she didn't make me feel bad, which I get respect. Like, I know she probably felt bad. Because like, you know, Asian parents, like all their kids, all their friends' kids are like at Stanford and getting a promotion. He's like, he's still in the bedroom. He's, I don't know. He keeps 24 is the threshold where it's like cute from concern. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Enduring to concern. He was making that transition. And she's like, I don't know, he just keeps saying, thanks for hopping on the call, but nothing seems to

happen after that. Like, you know, he's pitching people all day in his bedroom and it's not working. But he makes a pivot. And he makes a pivot that made a lot of sense. He did what I call a niche down, a zoom in pivot. And so a zoom in pivot is when you basically say, I have this thing today that's kind of meh for everybody, but maybe for one set of people, it's awesome. And this is the same way that actually Twitch started. Twitch was you had Justin TV, which was broadcast anything.

It was this grand vision. Broadcast anything. Broadcast your life. Broadcast your backyard, broadcast this sports game, broadcast this video game. And only 2% of it was people broadcasting video games. And Twitch was a Zoom. And Justin TV was failing and they said, what if we just did the video games?

And it sounds counterintuitive. It's like, well, then we'll be too small. It's only just that little bit. It's only 2% of our current traffic. But it actually had the potentially be quite big once you specialize the product in that. So these guys did the same thing. They did it around college students who need help writing essays specifically, not like, oh, dude, it's like one minute before the deadline.

Just give me a full essay. I just want to like hand it into my teacher and make them trick them that it's AI. It's like, no, no, no. it's actually like a writing assistant. So you basically, you're writing your essay. And you don't just say, give me an essay about the Industrial Revolution. You start writing your essay. And then it kind of like, like, I know, auto correct.

It'll kind of like fill in the rest of the sentence. So if you're writing, it'll kind of like, if you stop, it'll like suggest what the next couple sentences could be. It'll help you cite stuff as well. So there. Site sources, exactly. Like you need. Their example online is like, is really well, is really great.

So it's the effect of the kinogenic diet on human longevity. And looks like he's talking about something. And it's like, hey, by the way, do you want to cite this paper that's already mentioned this or that? And it generates the well-formatted citation at the end. Or it'll run a plagiarism check for you. It'll be like, hey, let's just make sure that this is not copying what's already out there because your teacher's not going to like that. So has a couple of like specific tools. And you can, it's not like chat GPT where you're, it's just a chat interface.

Like you kind of click buttons and you select how you want this to help you. And then it helps you. You know how like Microsoft used to have Clippy who would like catch you making errors? They just need like a little picture of building. Alackman that says like, uh-a-uh, that's plagiarism. Exactly, exactly.

We're going to have Billy. He told me that like, basically at the end of the essay, less than 30% has been written by AI. So 70% is written by the student and 30% ends up getting filled in by the AI. Okay, so he gets this idea. But even still,

how do you know if this is going to be successful? So now he pitched me two years ago at 2000 NMR. It's currently doing 300,000 MRI. So 3.6 million a year. In fact, last year, he had an offer to, sell the company, I think, for $3 million. He thought about it. He's like, oh, my God, I could be a millionaire.

I can have $3 million. I'm young. I'm in early 20s. And he turned it down. And now this company's probably worth 10 to $15 million bucks today. So in six to 12 months, you basically, you know, tripled the value of the company. So that's great. So I talked to him. And I was like, dude, David, what's a story here?

What happened? He's like, well, you know, we talked to you. We did a bunch of things. So here's kind of the story of how they figured out. So do you want to know the kind of like the startup survival part of it? Or do you want to know the strategy of how they made it big? Well, the strategy. I mean, the startup survival mode of it, like he was just probably floundering,

but he didn't have any expenses. So like he was kind of default dead just not even in startup mode, but default dead just his life. Well, he was. But then actually Jason Calicanus's incubator launched, gave him 100K, just like over email. Like here's 100K. And so then they moved to Malaysia to be like, cool, this will last forever here.

And so he's like, Just let's, how do we just make this 100K last as long as we need to survive? Because we don't know if there's ever going to be another investor. They did end up raising more money. They raised like another 800K later. But how did they make this big? So I want to share a couple things. So first, he's like, you know, we do the obvious things.

We post about it, whatever. It's not really going anywhere. Then three, there's three interesting inflections for this business. Inflection one is he does the stuff that doesn't scale. He goes and he fights for that first hundred customers with hand-to-hand combat. And the way he did it is a strategy that I'll, the overall strategy of what worked here is I'll call influence the influencers. So he starts joining Facebook groups. And he wrote a long Twitter post about this.

You can check it out. So he joins Facebook groups. He's like, I joined a group of like, let's say 10,000 people. And he's like, what you can't do is join the group and then immediately post about your shit. And then it just gets taken down a flag. Does like promotion sales get out of here, dude. So he's like, I basically did a strategy where I was like, I'm going to warm up these groups so that like if I do ever want to post, how would it be like well received?

He was to work backwards from what situation would make this be well received? He's like, well, it would be well received if the moderators and admins liked me and they were rooting for me. And actually, they liked my product. They already used my product and that I was a familiar face in the community. They had seen me around adding value. And that even when I posted, I was really posting actually just for feedback and not for like, buy my shit.

So he's like, let me work backwards from that. So he joins the group. and he starts posting just like very helpful content. And in a Facebook group, the bar is pretty low, right? Because nobody's like professionally trying in a Facebook group. People are just very casual. Most people don't do anything at all.

This is like a Facebook group for researchers. It would be for like college students. It'd be for like grad students. Anything you had a hypothesis about. So he's like, oh, I think it should work really well for grad students. Got it. So he joins some school's grad student group,

which has like 6,000 people or whatever. And then he would get in. And what he would do is he first start making helpful post. So he's just very visible. and very helpful. People start to see him as like a regular. He's a regular at the bar. Okay,

then he hits up the admin. And the admin's like, oh, you're one of the regulars. Yeah, sure, what's up? He's like,

hey, man, I wanted to get your feedback on something. Would you be down to do like a 15 minute call? I know you talked about this in a previous post. I think I actually have something that can help you with that. And then the guy would be like, all right,

sure, I'll do it. So he gets on the call with them. He shows them the product. And then he's like, I'm not going to promote this until I see the eyes light up. He's like basically, if they don't like it, then I'm dead on arrival.

If the core power users don't like it, the casual guys aren't going to like it. So he's like, I'm going to keep iterating on my product until those guys are like, yeah, this is actually awesome. And I see that they're using it after the call. Like they keep using it.

So he does that. He asked them questions. He was like, I read the mom test like you guys said. These guys are fans of the pod. So we learned how to do these customer calls. Then I'm doing the calls and I'm finding out their pain points. And then I try to build a product that solves them.

And then I'm seeing do they use it on their own organically afterwards. Once they did, he's like, I got him. He's like, so then I would let them use it for a couple weeks. And then he's like, I would, by the way, he's also like, I'm going to circle back. So I would do the call. And he's like, a week later, he's like, hey, I took all your feedback and I made the product better, which that's like a key part of like winning users over is making them feel like they're heard and what you actually acted on what they said. Finally, he'd be like, hey, do you think I could post it in the group? Like, do you think other people would like this. And like, yeah, for sure. Actually, I'll post it for you. And they would go post it.

So now you get the kind of like cosign from the group admin or moderator that everybody knows, the leader is saying, hey, this is awesome. I've been using it. The founders in the group, if you have any questions, check this out. So we start getting a bunch of tracks. So you got the first 100 customers through this like very manual process, which was really not as much about getting customers as it was about getting the product right by winning over the customers. This is very similar to you doing the first hundred calls with Hampton members. right? Like you showed me your calendar and I called it the zebra calendar. It just stripes. Just 20 minute calls all day. Just like your whole calendar was striped.

Well, I did this with Reddit too, by the way. I did that when the hustle first got popular is because I posted on Reddit and I did the same thing. I wasn't as eloquent as he was, but I basically just said 10% self-promotion, 90% add values. So people start, you start getting a reputation. So did you see that there's a movie about the guy. What's his name? Some Roaring Kitty who like did the game step. Okay. So Roaring Kitty, the real person, is like a really good looking guy who would charismatic. Like he kind of looks like he could be an actor, like when you see him talk.

And I remember watching that movie. And I'm like, dude, the real, the real roaring kitty is cooler looking than this actor. I'm looking at David Park do this video. And I'm seeing how he dresses and I'm seeing like some of the home videos that he's taken of himself. I'm like, this guy looks like an actor playing him. Do you know what I mean?

This guy's got the it factor. Like, I can't even hear him talk, but I can just tell it by his body language, how he dresses. Like, this guy's got charisma. Got like the Gen Z haircut. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This guy looks, he looks like the actor playing him.

Yeah, he's like one of those people where if they wear like clothes that don't fit, it looks good. But if you wear clothes that don't fit, you look like a fucking idiot. He's one of those people who can actually wear clothes that don't fit. Now let me tell you, okay, so then here comes phase two, get lucky. And get lucky is, you know, we've done that thing before about the four levels of luck. The first one is just dumb luck. Lightning strikes you. The second one, which is fortune favors the bold.

He's taking a bunch of action and he puts himself in a position to get lucky. So there's two lucky breaks that happen. The first is this guy, Zane, who runs a AI newsletter. I think it's called Superhuman, I think it is, superpowered, superhuman, something like that. He does this Twitter thread, and it's called 10 websites so useful, it feels almost illegal to use them or something like that. That's so funny. That's so funny. Classic, like, you know, clickpady thing.

And this thread goes so viral, dude. Guess how many likes this thread has? I don't know, 10,000. $365,000. Dude, I can post a sex tape and not get $365,000. In fact, I probably wouldn't get any likes. But you can post a sex tape and not get $365,000. What was the joke that you had?

You're like, I can't believe what are your friends are the porn site. And it isn't popular. That's the worst job ever. That's like you. You release a sex tape and no one wants it. I was still talking about that later. Your friend who you said has a porn site that's not that popular. And I was like, wow, the worst-paced scenario.

How many downloads did he get from, or how many users did you get from that? So he's like, dude, he's like, I'd get 10 customers. He's like, it was just insane. And so he goes, he gets like this huge boost, like, you know, whatever. I don't know exactly how much, but like 10 X or more, you know, is the revenue. He's at 2000 before that. And now, so the first thing I described is how he got to the first 2000 in MR. Then he gets the viral Twitter thing.

And now he's in the like tens of thousands of monthly recurring revenue. So what happens after that? Jennifer Lopez does a commercial that's about AI with Virgin Air or something like that. And in the commercial, she's like, oh, I'm not Jennifer. This is Gen. AI. Oh, nice. And so Jen AI gets a bunch of searches.

He's the number one search for Jenny AI. And so he's like, I got a bunch of free traffic from that. That helped again. He's like, so I'm getting lucky. He's like, but I still don't know what to do to like really blow the top off this thing. And then they start posting TikToks. Now, this is what I want to ask you. Sam, you did a great job early on with the hustle.

I'm going to put you on the spot. This is going to be hard. You at the hustle. did some really cool ads. You basically were like, instead of just saying, here's my newsletter, please read it.

It's very good. I promise. You were like, my boss thinks I'm so smart, but what he doesn't know is I just read the hustle every day, right? And it was like value-based, right?

It kind of had that hook, which is what is the, what is the end, happy ending for this customer? It's not that your newsletter's great. It's that your boss thinks you're smart. Everyone thinks you're so smart. My boss thinks I'm smart.

I'm not. My secret weapon is the hustle, which I get every morning. That was the ad. Right. And you stole that from somebody and then now 100 people have tried to copy that. I wouldn't say I stole, but you could say that. You could say that. I don't think I would say that.

I would say I was heavily influenced by a random ad that I saw from the skim. And I changed it. And now everyone else has since stole it. A jury of our peers would say that. So this guy, now, I want you to tell me, if you had to do an ad, right? You make it a little short video, a TikTok, and you need to promote Jenny AI. Just let's brainstorm real quick, right? Let's do this.

Let's do it live, as Bill O'Reilly used to say. Tell me what you would think of. I know this is a very hard prompt, but if you come through, just imagine how smart everyone's going to think you are at this podcast. What would you do? How would you design this TikTok ad? Well, okay, I actually think that I would steal that same premise, which is like my teachers think I'm brilliant.

I'm not. I'm really just using Jenny AI. Video is harder. So all of my ads were texts in a photo on Facebook. to do this on video, that's like what young people are great at, that I'm really bad at. What would you do for the video?

I would do that same premise, but I don't know how I would struggle to display that. Yeah, watch this. By the way, if you're watching this, if you're on audio and you're like, oh my God, I really want to see this ad.

This ad sounds awesome. This is the ad that drove all of their growth. I want growth and I want to learn how to be better at advertising. Maybe you should go to YouTube. You should watch this ad with us. Maybe you should go to YouTube and subscribe and then watch this ad with us. What do you think, Sam? Is that good advice?

Well, so listen, earlier you're talking about Jenny AI and how they were doing okay and how they niche down and found their target market. That's basically this podcast. We took all of business. We took all of comedy. We niche it down to the very few people that actually want to joke about stupid stuff like us and dissect different businesses and that's how they all work. That's this YouTube channel.

So whether you're listening on YouTube already or you're on Spotify or whatever, go to the comment section because there's a lot of people making fun of us. But a lot of people actually adding value and like breaking down cool companies, click subscribe, help a brother out. So that was our version of this ad. Let's see this one. This TikTok has four million views. So the ad is basically, it takes a, instead of saying,

my boss thinks I'm so smarter, my teachers thinks I'm a different format, which is what I call the relatable struggle. And it starts, let's just break this ad down. So it says, it's a girl. It doesn't look like an ad. That's the first thing you do you know. It looks like Starbucks. If you want ads to work nowadays, don't make them look like ads.

That's the biggest thing. As soon as I see an ad, I'm insta swiping away. So this needs to be relatable. So it looks like it. college girl at a Starbucks and it says, doing an essay last minute, my goal is to submit over 12 a.m. It's done two things.

Relatable problem and it's established some stakes. Will this person or will they make it or won't they make it? All right. That's the thing. It's a door closing mission impossible. You've got to slide under the door. I've got to tell you the second thing. My experience is like $15 million in ad spend.

I'm going to say something right now that's going to make me sound horrible, but I'm just going to say the truth. Here's what I found my numbers. women that are so women get higher clicks amongst women women gets higher clicks amongst men and men or rather so women that are like just women do better amongst men and women for getting clicks so we've always I've always had a higher click through rate with women now here's the thing about the woman they have to look like you can approach them like I can have a conversation with them but they're aspirational If they're too good looking or too fancy looking, it doesn't work.

It has to be an approachable young woman. And I have found that that gets the most clicks amongst all demographics. And they did that wonderfully here. Did I say that appropriately? I love the level of nervousness in your voice as you're trying to say this without getting canceled. You're like, you're a fine, approachable young woman. You're a strapping young lad. Well, so we used to have that.

It was like, it was like a. If you use like 1940s language, you're like, if you're a young lass who's splendid and fine, then you're, it's like, dude, you can't just avoid cancellation by using old language. I'm going to call it next door hot. So whether you're a next door guy or next door girl,

next door hot always outperformed like beautiful or model or whatever. Yeah, runway hot. So that's frame one, relatable struggle. Okay, now two is, and then by the way, it says current time 1020. So here's 1020.

You got to submit this by midnight. Last minute research. and then it says, this is the key one, 1050, mental breakdown and she's crying, basically. And so now you're like,

all right, you kind of don't know. Is this going to be funny? Is this going to be like, it's obviously kind of like, it's planned, but it still doesn't look like an ad for any product. We're 10 seconds in,

no hint that this is an ad for product. Then it says coffee and TikTok break, relatable. It says back to it. And then it basically is like, shit gets serious. And it's her like clipping up her hair. Again, another relatable humorous, like, oh, that's so me.

I get it. I do that. I'm guilty of this, right? We're now 30 seconds in, and there's been no mention of the product. And so this does two things. Number one, the TikTok algorithm loves that. You're watching full length of videos rather than swiping away because it's like, oh, this is some ad.

The second thing is you're kind of invested. You have sunk cost. You need to see the ending. Even once you realize, and one of the top comments is it says, for a second, when you showed Jenny AI, I was like, I get. got bamboozled by an ad, all caps, because you didn't realize it was an ad until you're basically, what, 35 seconds in?

And then, even then, it doesn't, it's not some polished demo of the product. It's a phone recording, a laptop of someone typing in Jenny AI into their Google search. And then finally, it tells you what the product does for you, which is it'll help you write two times faster. And the happy ending is she submits it on time. Okay.

So, four million. Is this how, like, my doctor and lawyer and accountant, are where they're just like at Starbucks at 1150 trying to plagiarize a paper that's due at midnight well that's how they were eight years ago shit you know that you went to college with people who are now doctors you're like that guy I know that guy I know the real I know the real version of that guy right like I only drinks Yeagermeister like this guy should not be a doctor uh and so right now these guys so that ad was great so David Parker amazing. So they're at $350,000 a month.

$300,000 a month. So $3.6 million a year and doing really well. So congrats to the Jenny guys did great. By the way, he gets cancer then and he says this in that starter story video. He goes, he's like, I felt like my dreams and that hair's coming true at the same time. What's that? And he got, that's a footnote to his story. He got cancer. He got cancer during that last year or whatever. And then he had a surgery. He got out. He's good now. And so it's a crazy story, dude. It's a really crazy story. So congrats. By the way, I, I don't think, I wouldn't say this is going to be a smart investment yet. I don't think it's going to be a good investment, but I think it's going to be great for them.

You make $6 to $8 million, that's fantastic before $30. That's amazing. You're set. I like, so if I was David, this is a company I would love to own. This is not a company that I would love to invest in, but it's going to make him very, very rich, I think at a very young age, and it's going to make him like mildly famous amongst our little startup. Dude, this is a business I would love to sell. If I could sell this thing for anything above $18 million,

you won't see me. Bye. See you later. I'm gone. Wait, the paperwork's not even signed. I don't care. Bye. It's over.

I'm out of here. AI moves too fast, dude. I'm not trying to be in the middle of the hurricane of AI and hope that I'm not made obsolete by, you know, one-click chat GPT or some big company out of this. I think this is actually fairly protected. Like, I don't think it's so niche. I don't think too many people are going to go for it. But I just wouldn't want to mess with this.

I also think that college student essay writing isn't like the biggest tam either. So, you know, I would want to sell on the way up and get out and go do something else. Yeah. And also Sam Altman raised the equivalent of America's GDP, like $5 trillion for whatever he's. Like, whenever I see these numbers, I'm like, that just means nothing to me. I hope I'm dead by the time this becomes a reality. Is there any Sam Baldwin's story you wouldn't believe? No, I believe I would believe at all.

If I told you, the open AI headquarters is underwater's, would you be like, that's Or would you just be like, where? I would believe anything about it. Yeah, I'd be like, so like, should we scuba up and like go visit them? Or like, what do we do? Yeah, I believe it all. I've got, all right, I've got a big one. I've got a short one.

I'm going to give you the short one first and then I'm going to hear this thing about flow. But do you remember, I want to give an update. And I'm going to say with preference with this update, last time I gave an update on this guy, he took that update and he clipped our YouTube video and he turned it into an ad. And I got super fucking pissed. So I just want to tell you, don't turn this into an ad. You do not have permission. That's dumb.

It looked like I endorsed this product. I don't. A few years ago, I think it was three years ago, this guy started DMing me telling me he has this idea for hostage tape. Do you remember I told you about this? It's basically tape that you put over your mouth because mouth breathing at night makes you a bad sleeper, I guess is the premise. That's just gross.

I don't know what it is, but there's some health benefits. And he just got in right when the Hubermans. the Brian Johnson's of the world and all this stuff. So he timed it perfectly. He told me he was launching this and I was like, oh, this is really dumb. This is the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time. And he kept DMing me, kept sending me updates. I think in year one, he did $2 million in revenue. Now he just told me he ended 2023 with $14 million in revenue. And then he's saying that this year in 24, he's like, I think I can get $40 million in revenue. He's like, we're buying all these ads on Joe Rogan. We're going to be sponsoring the UFC. He's saying all this crazy stuff.

And I'm going to file this under the, I cannot believe this worked. I still can't believe it's worked. And he's totally proven me wrong so far. Has this guy been sending you updates? Not update. I've talked to him a couple times about one specific deal he was going to. I just try to help him out. By the way, May 25th, 2023, subject line.

He said it was a bad business idea. Dot, dot, dot. Email out to his whole list, I think. Hey, folks, Alex here. Telling people you run a mouth-tapped business isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Did anyone think that that was Sunshine and Ramos? You know what they say. Running a mouth tape in business.

Everyone always asked me, like, how awesome is this business? I didn't know anyone ever said that. I recently got called out on a very popular business podcast called My First Million. Maybe you listen to it. Anyways, I reached out to one of the hosts, Sam, to tell him my idea. He said it was a bad idea, all bold. That was over a year ago. Now, 1,400 reviews, hundreds of success stories later, I couldn't help but message him again.

well he didn't go and so he says um i don't know what i don't know what the thing is oh he goes um i thought it'd be really funny if the hostage tape army if you're if you're a customer of this and you're in the hostage tape army i mean none of these words should be going together by the way the hostage none of these words should be lumped at the same sentence the hostage tape army you know what i mean if that's on your bio like you're out but he said show up in the the comments and say, hey, Sam, hashtag, shut your mouth. I like that part. That part's pretty good. Hustas tape, shut your mouth.

I think that's good. Yeah, yeah, that one's good. It goes, I don't want to start a war, but these guys appreciate a good prank. We do. We really do. We do. So I don't know if he did do that. I'm going to click this. And by the way, he's getting the last laugh. If his tape is untaped, he is getting the last laugh. This guy, this guy's winning. He's making a lot of money. People actually want his product. I'm wrong here. He's right. I still think it's stupid, though. I'm looking at the comments, by the way.

I don't see one hashtag shut your mouth, Sam. So I don't think hostage tape Army showed up. The cavalry did not appear for this one. But I think it's funny that he's doing this. And I think it's great that he's winning. So God bless him. I got so angry when I saw my face on these ads. So I started getting these ads.

And I'm like, it said like, I was like, well, what the fuck? I was making fun of you. And you just totally jiu-jitsued me. And now I'm promoting you. All right. You shared an L you took. I'll tell you about an L I take. It's 2020 and I'm getting dinner with a friend.

And we're only like, I want to say 40 minutes into the dinner and he's like, I got to go. And I'm like, was me? Was it something I said? Am I chewing too much? What's going on? Why are you got to leave? He's like, no, no, no. He's like, I hate to leave, but I got to go meet with this founder from Belarus.

It was just you two at the dinner? It was us two at the dinner. And he just bounces. And I'm like, Belarus. I don't know where Belarus is. But I was like, all right, that's, I don't know if this is something, you know, elaborate excuse or what, but he leaves. So I finish up dinner, go home. I see an email for my friend.

He says, sorry, I had to jet so early, but this company is really interesting. He tells him about this company called Flow. And he's investing in this company called Flow. And he's like, if you want in, I can get you in. And I remember this because today or yesterday, I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see flow is one of the biggest success stories and consumer startups today. 192 million in ARR with 60 million active users, and it's been the fastest growing health app for like, you know, four years. And I'm like, $192 million in ARR.

I was like, why does this app sound familiar? I go back to look at my email, and I see that I could have invested in this thing years ago. Had I just replied to this email for my friend. What valuation? I don't know what it was back then because I didn't even reply to ask, but whatever it was, I should have done it because, you know, obviously the thing has been growing so fast.

that it is, you know, it's clearly, it's become a billion dollar company and it's, it's done really, really well. But this company is really interesting. Last pod, you talked about, I forgot what ammo or whatever it is, like some Eastern European like app builder factory. Yeah, they make a variety of apps, like one's muscle for men. And then another one was working out for women while the men, the women are on their period. Well, I see your Eastern European Women's Period app and I raise you because that's what

flow is. started by these guys out in Belarus, Lithuania, something like that. Two twin brothers, by the way. So the twin brothers, they're raised by a single mother who's a librarian. And they're like, you know,

we got to make money. Like they're 15 years old. He's like, I was going to school and then I would work a full-time job after school. So I go to school for eight hours, then I go work for eight hours. And that's what I did every day as a teenager. He's like,

and I just said this like deep, like, we have to figure something out. He's like, so I did two things. He's like, I taught myself out of code. He's like,

and I was teaching. myself using these like textbooks. He's like, so then I started actually writing books to make some money. He's like, whatever I learned, I would then package up into a book and I would write. He's like,

I've written, you know, a bunch of books. And then I started, I became a book publisher. I started publishing. It's like, I've published a thousand books now.

So I'm like, okay, random. He's like, the other thing that happened is 2008 and the iPhone app store comes out. And he's like, I think this is going to be big.

I think this is going to be like, you know, the internet was big. There was a bunch of winners. I think there's going to be some here. So he's like, forget the book publishing. Let's start making apps. And so they start a health app kind of fails.

Start a second app kind of fails. And people ask them, they're like, you know, would you learn? Was flow your first app? Or how'd you do? He said, no, no, I started two things before that. Similar space, but just didn't fully hit. He goes, but I believe that success is the sum of your attempts. He's like, in those first two attempts that I did for a couple years, that is the success

of flow. And I just love that quote. Success is the sum of your attempts. I think that's an amazing quote. And so he goes, we start flow and they're like, so you're a dude building a women's like period tracking app, the number one period tracking app in the world? Like, how does that happen? How does a dude in Belarus do that? I love this quote.

It's not my job to build the product. It's my job to build the company of people that are able to build the product. Exactly. They're like, how do you have the product intuition of building this? That's exactly. He goes, I was like, this is one thing I learned in those first two products was as a job, as a CEO, as a founder, my job is not to build the product. It's to build the company that will build these products.

And that's what they did. And so they actually built two things. They create this Holdco. And the Holdco owns like four apps that are all super successful. So they own Flow, which itself does about $200 million a year in revenue. And that's what's flow? So it's basically it started off with just simple like period tracking. So it's like a monthly kind of like tracker.

But then off that, they go into other things. So they created what they call a woman's health super app. And this was the pitch that I saw at the time. when my friend went and got dinner with them, but they were like, look, we built the number one period tracking app, and that's great.

And at the time, they had like 30 million users using this. And they said that in the U.S., 10% of adult women were using their tracker. So like, we built the best tracker. But a tracker is not going to be like the most monetizable thing, but they're like,

well, why do people track? Well, often they track because of health reasons. They track because they're trying to get pregnant. They track because maybe they're entering menopause. Like, There's all these other things that maybe they need health coaching.

Maybe they need these other things. There's a bunch of maybes from there. And they turned out to be right. And so they were like, we're going to make more money than any of these other health apps. So they're bigger than Com or these other meditation apps that are like in that kind of health and wellness space. This is a bigger app than all of those.

And it's run by these guys in Eastern Europe who, you know, have basically dominated the world in this one category. They're the number one in this category. And so they also own a couple of other companies. They own another app called Zing. And they know another app called Pr. Prisma, which is like a photo editor, and they owed, do you remember when Prisma went viral a little while back? It was cool looking filters.

Yeah. The Holdco has raised $100 million series B. And that's called, that's called Palta. Palta, yeah. And are they in America? No, they're in Lithuania. Really? And they have like hundreds of employees.

And this is like, in the pitch deck was like, yeah, we can hire like 10 super talented European coders for the cost of one, you know, mediocre engineer. San Francisco. They didn't say it like that, but I added the mediocre part, but that's, that's the implication is basically we have this like talent advantage. We're the, we're the big fish in the small pond, but the small pond is highly talented with really good programmers and we're super, super, super cost efficient. And so they were able to be very, very efficient as they've, as they've grown. You could have invested in this? Yeah. So this one, that one sucks. So I would say the first one was not really a miss in that like, even now, I don't think that would have been a great investment,

but great business to own, not a great business to invest in. This one would have been a great business to invest in, but it just didn't hit any of my patterns. It's like you have Eastern European company versus a Silicon Valley company. It's in the period tracking. I don't know how big that space can be. I don't really,

I underestimated, I'm sure many people underestimated how big that app can be. And in fact, that's why they said they're like, I love that these guys didn't bullshit. Like they didn't do the thing that all Silicon Valley startups do where they make up their origin story, where they're like,

well, the reason I got into this was that my, my aunt was having trouble, like, you know, like Jack Dorsey with Square. He's like,

um, you know, I was, I was, I was trying to buy this, this vase that was being, you know, this guy was blowing glass and making this vase for me.

And I wanted to buy it, but he couldn't take a credit card. And I thought, wow, the small business of America are like, you know, underserved. I should really change this.

In fact, actually, I think part of that story is true. The co-founder did do that as a, as a hobby. But I think most startups make up their origin story where they're like, you know, like native deodorant. He's like, my sister was pregnant.

I just did not want her to be having aluminum in her armpits. And so I created a pregnancy safe thing. Yeah, right, dude. You just, the shipping cost of deodorant was just a lot cheaper than mattresses. Exactly. That's why you did it. Unite economics is not as good a story. We're like, I went to Etsy and I was hunting for the most, most highly sold product

that didn't have competition that was under one pound to ship and had 80% gross margins. It's like, that's not as good of a PR story. So these guys, they didn't do that. They were like, why'd you do this? He's like, well, we just wanted to find the most underserved market. He's like, we just knew that no talented builders were building in this space. And we thought, well, half the world's population has this problem. They're completely underserved.

And we could build a, you know, a simple product that might have legs to grow from there. And that's what they did. This guy's amazing. We got to get him on the pot. So one of the founders, I guess you said two brothers. His name is Yuri Gerstki, I guess. He's from Belarus, but I think they kind of live in Poland. It looks in Cyprus.

They're all over the place. But he's really successful. So, like, you kind of acted like he was like a young kid just like blogging and packaging his blogs into books. No, no. These guys are gangsters. Yeah, like, these guys are ballers. And he's had multiple companies that he sold, one he sold to Facebook, one to, I actually

don't know how to pronounce this. What's mail. Are you? It's the Russian guy, Milton. Uri Miller. Yes, yes. He sold one to Google. These guys are hardcore.

These guys are awesome. Yeah, these guys are kicking ass. And so they, and you know, he's basically like, they're like, what do you think contributed to the success of this? He's like, well, the biggest thing is we picked the right market. And I love that he said this because I think this is where he even said this. He's like, most people, he's like, you need three things. The right target market, the right timing, and then the right people to execute on it.

He's like, most people don't get the first two right. But that's your rising tide. If you can pick the right market and the right. timing. He's like, we pick basically this underserved women's health market. And we started in 2008, right? When the Apsra came out, that's where we started making apps. So we were early and we went to the underserved market that had demand. From there, all we had to do was just hire good people. And it would work out. And I think that most people, when you talk to entrepreneurs or the way their brain works, if you had to make a pie chart, it would be like, number one is like, you know,

the, how cool is my idea? So it's like not market, but it's more product. They focus on the product. Then they focus on the people. And then last is like they kind of think about what market they're in. And they try what they try to do, which I think is a bad strategy. One mistake I made many times. Just like build the best product in the in a whatever market, in a meh market. But you'd rather go into an amazing market and build a good enough product. That's like a lot more success comes. And the best example of that, I believe it was a coin base. They were like, our website early on sucked. Like it went down all of the time. But we picked a market that people were baking for it and that they were willing to put up

with a really crappy product. And another, speaking of these apps, Michael, Acton Smith from Calm, he gave me this great, like, sound bite one time. We were just talking. And he was like, I'd launch these other things. And I kind of had to push the rock up the hill in order to make it work. But I knew that I picked the right, I knew that I picked the right market being calm and meditation.

He was like, it was as if I had just was surfing. and I just happen to catch this massive tidal wave. And my job was not to push the rock up the hill. It was just to hang on to this surfboard and hope I don't crash because it's pushing me and it's doing all of the work. And that's the difference between something really working and something and not working because he's like, I had all these amazing things. And he's like, I'm a really good entrepreneur.

And I kind of brute forced it into reality. But it was really, really, really hard. And I learned that when you pick the right market and you catch the right tidal wave, that makes life a thousand times easier. And the hard part is what people, get wrong is, okay, I want to pick the right market. So they just go to the biggest, flashiest market, right now, AI, I got to go into AI. And they go into a super competitive market that's, it is a hot market. There are going to be huge winners there. But the trick,

that like, you know, Peter Thiel one time went to a meetup and they were like, what's this key to investing? He drew two circles, like a Venn diagram. And he's like, seems like a bad idea. And then the other he wrote, is a good idea. He's like, the problem is, most people just do things that sound like a good idea. The problem is everybody else is also doing things that sound like good ideas. It's tons of competition. And you might be too late by the time it seems like a good idea. He's like, so the secret is can you find something that today seems like a bad idea, but is actually a good idea. Coinbase started back with Bitcoin was like not considered like an obvious crypto wasn't the wave back then. It wasn't the trendy thing to do. It was actually an

underserved market. But it wasn't and it was turned out to be a great market, but it wasn't considered already a great market where all the smartest people in the world went and were fighting this like war over there. That's what AI has to date. Everybody agrees it's an incredible market, so they're all going to go fight this battle over there. So you really have to, if you're going to have something, you have to niche down and find some section of that that's underserved or go somewhere that's today not seen as that. Not like forget AI. Find the thing three years from now, that's AI. This seems like the hostage tape guy giving his TED Talk. You know, he's got to be standing there like this talking about the Venn diagram of bad ideas.

And good ideas. His idea is just going to be in the circle of the bad ideas. You've got to be in the middle. I'm sorry, hostage tape guy. You're right. I'm wrong. You're the one winning. This is amazing.

These guys are amazing. I would love to get this guy in the podcast. I imagine he's an English speaker, right? Or partially? He probably speaks better English than us. Is there anything this guy can't do? Like, would you, if one guy had to save my life, and they were like, how about this guy? I'd be like, yeah, sure.

I'm sure he could do it. Yeah. Yeah. And if you Google this guy, so his name's Yuri Gerski. Sorry, I'm probably pronouncing it a little bit incorrect. He's got the perfect balance. He's got that next door, that next door hot look. You know what I'm saying?

It looks like you could, you could chill with him a little bit, but he also looks like he could really mess you up physically. Like, he does a good job of having that next door look. Sounds like you want him to mess you up physically a little bit. Dude, I get so many messages or comments of people making fun of me, and they either think I'm gay or they're just like, dude, why are you commenting about people's cabs all the time? And I'm totally just like giving into this. By the way, do you have something to promote today or what?

Now it's time. Right now we're talking about some of the best execution we've seen, some of the best, most talented people we've seen. And are they sitting in America? No, they're overseas. Actually, everyone has been overseas. Everybody we've talked about has been overseas. And that's because the world has changed.

There's talent everywhere. And for you as an entrepreneur, one of the things you should be doing is leveraging that global talent. The way to do that is to go to Shepard and just tell them what you need. All you do is you go there and you're like, hey, I think we need a developer. I need an engineer or I need a designer or I need somebody who could do all of our influence or marketing. Whatever you don't have time for, that's the bottleneck of your business. Go to Shepard. Tell them what you need.

And they will find you somebody. A couple weeks, you will have talent in place, usually for five times less than you've hired for in America. This is a not so secret secret anymore. For my e-commerce company, I think 40% of our staff is international. We get tremendous cost savings and we get some of the best talent by just by looking overseas, looking where other people aren't looking. If you're hiring in the same place to everybody else is hiring, you know, you're not going to make it. They're doing developers now? They do developers, yeah, because they do Latam. So one of the things I've been using is all their like Latam talent, so Latin America, where you get a lot more of two things. One is a shit ton

at MBAs. So like I needed an operations person. I was like, my C.O. is just like, I feel like every CO is overworked. Like, I don't know if you've ever had this, but like the entrepreneur always just gives the CO everything they don't want to do, which is like 85% of all the work in any business. It just gets dumped on the CO. It's like, yeah, that's operational. You should figure that out. And so I was like, dude, my CO needs a CO. And so we started hiring operations, people from South America because they have basically people who are, you know, MBAs. So they're like trained that way. They've been doing consulting for years. And they make like, you know, let's call it 3K a month.

And so compare that to in America, you'd probably be paying 12 to 15K a month for that same talent. So, you know, four to five times more. And so we found some awesome both developers and operations people in Latam. That's what I go for there. And then like kind of like customer service, design, anything that's like data marketing, marketing assistant. That's all Philippines for me. Wow. All right.

Well, and what's the URL? Supportshepard.com. go to sportshop.com, and then when you're there, tell them I sent you, they'll take care of you. Do we want to round up, round out with the three random things you have here? Yeah, I got some random things. I don't know which one we want to do. Did you watch the Super Bowl at all?

Yeah, I'm not like a sports guy, but I watched it just because it was a big deal. And you have Jason, how do you say the guy's last name, Kelsey? Kelsey. Jason Kelsey over Travis Kelsey. That Travis guy seemed pretty likable in his post game, like interview. He seemed like a big goofy. idiot in the best possible way. Yeah, he kind of is, although it was really bad for him.

I don't know if you saw it during the game. He like, basically got super angry at his coach and like almost like knocked him over and was yelling at him. The reason it wasn't cool was because his coach is old enough that you're like, oh, that's like you're, you kind of pushed an old guy. He like,

he like kind of lost his balance. He like almost pushed him down. And it was like, oh, everyone felt bad for like their own dad in that moment. That's what I mean. But I was like, oh, he's a little bit too old. But they like hugged it out and it seemed like they were fine afterwards.

Yeah, I think they're fine, but definitely all of the Taylor Swift fans were like, red flag, we need an emergency meeting. All the Swifties have like an emergency meeting. We're like, I'm worried about Taylor. I don't like what I saw out there. But did see the, I did see the brother. So he has another brother in the NFL, Jason. His brother dressed up like Zach Galfanakis from Hangover,

where he wore from Allen from the Hangover. He looked hilarious. Yeah, I basically wanted to do a TED talk, actually. I want to prepare slides and be like, here's why you should be Jason Kelsey and not Travis Kelsey. Because on paper, you want to be Travis Kelsey. He's the receiver. Jason Kelsey is a center, like the most unglamorous position that there is.

So it's like, you know, you have Travis Kelsey. He's a tight end. He's always catching passes. He's like, he's better looking. Like he's like, you know, more handsome. He's like more stylish. He could dance. The other guy's kind of awkward.

You know, Travis Kelsey's dating Taylor Swift. Oh, that's amazing, right? But Jason Kelsey's wife is a badass. She's like, great looking. former athletes, super fun. She, like, joins his podcast all the time. And she's, like, got a great personality and just seems like super down to earth. Like, she shows up to the box because they know you're going to show Taylor Swift like

a hundred times during the game, right? And it's Taylor Swift and she's there with like that actress. What's her name? Blake, whatever. Blake lively. Yeah. And it's like, and they know every time something happens, they're like doing YouTube thumbnail face. Like they're so exaggerated with their emotions because they know we're performing here.

Whereas like Jason Kelsey's wife is there in the background. She's wearing like her college hoodie. Like her, like, alma mater hoodie, no makeup. And she's just super comfortable. And she's having a great time. She's like eating food and drinking. She's like chilling out, not trying to get attention all the time. So it's like, and then, you know, Jason shows up.

You thought about this a lot, huh? I did because last week they played, or two weeks ago, they played in Buffalo. And the game, I don't know if you saw it. It was like crazy snow day. And Jason Kelsey was watching the game. He was watching his brother play. And he went and he was like, dude, I don't want to sit in this like luxury suite. He's like, I want to be out there with this is all.

This is awesome. This is like what you grow up loving about football. It's like a snow game. This is crazy playoff football. So he takes his shirt off. He jumps out of the luxury box into the crowd. He jumps out of the luxury box into the crowd with the Buffalo fans and starts chugging beers and just like having a great time with him.

He's like, that's the experience I want. And his wife was like, don't do this, like Taylor Swift here. They're going to see you doing this. He's like, I don't care what people see. I want to like, this is what I grew up like, you know, admiring. I want to have a great time. So you can tell this guy's having a. great time. He's not in it for the show. He's got the real relationship goals you should have,

not the Taylor Swift, like high school, you know, the cheerleaders dating the quarterback type of shit. And then he shows up to the Super Bowl dress like Allen from the hangover. I love Jason Kelsey. I am all about Jason Kelsey. Jason Kelsey over Travis Kelsey. That's my case. I'm looking at that. I just Googled Jason Kelsey's shirtless and you do see him in the box wearing great sweatpants, taking a shirt off and he's like in the drunk guy mode where he's yelling. What's hilarious about this guy is you see his face and you see some of the things where he sounds just like a goofy dummy. Like he's just joking like you're a fat friend. But they show him shirtless and you see a can of beer in his hand and it is so small.

This guy is a giant. This guy will kill you and eat you. Yes. This bud like it looks like a five hour energy in his hand. This guy is a freak. how like they're they're both I guess huge this guy does not look huge when you just see him from the neck up on the podcast this guy and you know he's got gray hair right so he like doesn't like look like an athlete you see him shirtless this guy looks like a freak that's the amazing yes yes exactly and I just think there's some life lesson there's some wisdom in this whole thing in fact another version of this by the way did you see like when the I don't know what it was the Grammys were on and the Tracy Chapman song was going super viral do you see this they did fast car her in Luke Combs. Yeah, she looked awesome too.

So do you know the back, you know her story, or do you know the backstory of like Tracy Chapman and that song? Yeah, she basically was just a normal person. She was just an average lady. And she, I think got discovered by like a friend of a friend. So the friend being the writer of billions, his dad. Yeah, his dad was worked in the music industry.

And Brian went up to Tracy and was like, look, this is always lame. They went to this in college. So they were in college. She's just playing like on campus. he's like, you're amazing. He calls his dad. He's like, dad. He goes, what he said was, he goes, look, this is like lame usually.

And I never like asked my daddy for a favor. That's kind of dushy. Right. But you've got it. Would you care if I make an introduction to my father? I actually think he might help you. I'm not just like blowing smoke up your ass. Like you actually, this actually could do something.

And I think it became something. It did. And so she kind of gets a contract, but she's like the anti-artist, right? She's the anti-pop artist. So she's not like, she's just going to make the music. she wants and she's not going to like just do what the record label wants. They were like, oh, tell us about your relationship. She's like, no, I prefer to get that private.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just tell us. She's like, on access Hollywood. They're like, but this song has to be about someone. She's like, well, it is about someone. But like, you know, I prefer not to share it. And I don't want them to feel bad about it or anything like that. So I'm not going to share.

And they're like, well, it's hard to promote this album. If you're not going to say anything, and she's like, I just want my music to speak for itself. Like, she was just like, to me, I watched a couple. I went down a rabbit hole after this. And I watch her and I was like, she is the beacon of authenticity. Her and Jason Kelsey are like, you actually want to be them. You don't want to be the pop answer.

And there's something to just being totally authentic and like not performing for everybody. Like she makes all the like little TikTok bitches look like little TikTok bitches. I'm just like, I don't know if you've seen the subreddit. I am the main character. Yes, I hate it. Full of people who are like think they're the main character of life. They're like, they put their camera somewhere on a flight. They stand up and they're doing a.

TikTok dance and everyone else is like, dude, can I, can I get to my seat? Like, what are you doing? Like, what is this? It's just like these annoying people who are trying to do stuff for attention. And so do you know, do you know how old Tracy Chapman is? She's like in her 50s probably? I don't know what is. She's 60.

She looks, she looks awesome. And she's like, she just goes gray. She's got no makeup on or whatever. She's like, they're like, you know, how do you, how do you promote your music? She's like, I don't know. I don't have social media. Though you don't have social media? She's like, no, I mean, I just hang out with my friends.

what do I why would I need that? And they're like, but because, because I'm, and you sound like an idiot trying to explain why you need social media. She's like, I don't know, I just make my music and I go outside and I play with my, hang out with my friends. Like, where would I need that? And then they're like, okay, but like, what do you do on your phone? And she's like, I don't have a smartphone either.

Haven't you heard the story of like the Mexican fisherman and the banker? It's like that where it's, you know, a banker, a rich banker's on vacation. And he's in Mexico and he's loving it. And he meets this fisherman who bring them fresh. fish every day. And the fisherman basically brings the fish in the morning to the banker and then he spends the rest of the chilling. The banker goes to the fisherman. He goes, hey, why don't you just go and like, your fish is the best. Go hire more fishermen. And like, I'll help you. Let's build this into a thing. And we're going to make so much money. And the Mexican guy's like, all right. But then what?

He goes, well, then we're going to like get grow revenue to like 15 million. And then we're going to sell it. And the guy's like, then what? He goes, well, then you're going to be rich and and you can do anything you want. And then Mexican guys like, what would I do? The banker goes, well, then you can just fish all day and just hang out. And the Mexican guy's like, I do that now. And that's like the whole parable of like, you know, I actually don't know what it's trying to say other than like your great life a lot simpler. You were so strong until the end.

And all this nonsense, whatever. Actually, I'm not sure what it's all about. Why doesn't be behind on the boat? Yeah. Be the banker. Let's go on vacation. Yeah, I think you missed the ending of that one. Yeah, I think you missed the ending of that one.

I think it's about knowing what you want and also knowing how to have it and have enough that there is such a thing is enough. Tracy Chapman has enough. Daisy Kelsey has enough. By the way, a couple other cool things about her story that I really like. One, you know,

be prepared to, you know, take the chance when luck presents itself. Do you know how she got her big break? Like what kind of cataple did her to become a star? Because obviously, she's not doing the normal stuff you do to promote yourself as a pop star. She doesn't look like a pop star.

Doesn't talk like a pop star, doesn't have social media, doesn't have a smartphone. So how does she get her break? Have you heard this story? No. So there was like a giant televised music thing that was for Nelson Mandela's 70th. Oh, yeah, yeah. And she's on the prelims, the undercard of the undercard, before the TV starts, stuff even turns on. So she goes and she plays two songs or three songs early in the day.

And then later in the day it was supposed to be the headline acts. And Stevie Wonder was supposed to go on. and perform. But Stevie Wonder got lost. I'm sorry. They messed up his backing tracks. And so he's like, I can't go on. Like my backing, this is not going to work. Like I need the audio to work.

And so they were like, shit, the audio's messed up. We need somebody to go fill like, you know, six minutes of time here before the next act and give us some time to fix this. Who can go on and who can play with no backing tracks and just go on acoustic and kill it? And they were like, Tracy, will you go on there and play a song? And she's like, okay. But it's just you and your guitar, nothing else. She's like, okay.

And so she goes out there and she plays fast car. And you can see this video on YouTube. Her voice is like quaking at the beginning. And she has no auto tune, no vocals, no backtrack. So it's like you can hear every imperfection in it. But then she gets, you know, she kind of comes into her own. She sings the song and people love it. People go nuts for it.

And that's how she kind of got her. her break into startup was by being prepared and being willing to go out there and take a risk and having obviously the talent to back it up. Her first album sells 10 million copies, which is insane. And then they're like amazing, huge hit. Fast car still is considered like one of the top 100 songs ever written or whatever. They're like, what do you do for your second album? Hey, the record executives come to her with like some ideas.

They have like a pitch meeting. They're like, you know, presentation. They like pull the curtain off the easel. And they're like, Tracy Chapman singing these pop songs. She's like, no, I don't think I want to do that. And they're like, but Tracy, you did 10 million. Your first time, you could do 20 this time, right? Like the banker to the fisherman.

And she's like, no, I don't really want to do that. They're like, well, what do you want to do? She's like, I'm not sure yet. I'm going to experiment and figure it out. They're like, experiment. What do you mean? You have to go to the studio and record. She's like, no, no, I'm not going to record.

What I'm going to do is she hired. So normally what a musician does is they go, they write their songs. They go to a studio. They hire like a studio musician to come and play the, like, the piano or the trumpet or whatever with them. there. They have no chemistry with them. They record. Then later they go on tour and they perform. She did it in reverse. She's like, what if I did the instead? What if I hired a set of musicians that I really like? I took the risk of hiring them. And what if we tour for a year, writing songs as

we go? And then through the tour, we're going to see what music is resonating with people. And at the end, we'll just record the stuff that they liked, almost like a comedian going to small clubs and working out their material. She did that for music. And so, and that's how she did her second album, and she was like, I'm so proud of how it turned out, blah, blah, I have no idea with the sales room, but like, you know, I like that approach. And again, I'm on an authenticity kick right now. And to me, I love that. Last year, I said, Sean, I'm going to be having a baby. Do you, could you tell me what are some of the highlights of having a kid? And this was in private. And you're like, it's just great, you know, my son and my daughter, like, I just,

I get so much as joy out of seeing that they admire all these little things. Like, they just love staring at the fan and it made me happier that like, oh, the fan actually is cool. And I like, I like am interested in now because they're interested in and I love seeing them grow. That's how I feel right now. A few years ago, a few years ago, I asked you about really simple things that I just thought you would understand like, Dolly Parton and you're like, Dolly Who? Now you're teaching me about Tracy Chapman. Next, for all I know, you're going to tell me who the Beatles are and you're going to do this

wonderful breakdown. And I just think that you have grown so much that you are. now like Tracy Chapman like I didn't know everything about her but I can tell you a lot of her songs and and now you've just discovered her and I love that you are bringing a new perspective of this and you're actually teaching me about an artist that I love next we're going to talk about you know Paul McCartney or Clapton and let's talk about all this stuff tell me who Mick Jagger is I like I used to stop believing but now I realize I should don't stop believing it's great song like I am getting so much joy and I'm learning now that you are

because you probably didn't know much about her before this, did you? No, I mean, I just heard the song. In fact, I didn't even understand what the song. You never heard that song? No, I love the song, but I don't know. Are you, so there's two types of people. I think there's people who listen to songs for the words and there's people who listen to songs for the meaning. Which one are you?

Like, I can hear a song a thousand times and not tell you, I have no clue what the song is about. I don't know. I've never even, actually, I've never even thought about the lyrics. I might know some of the words, but like, I couldn't tell you what the song is about, even though I've heard a thousand times. I care about the music. like particularly like rock and roll by like a lot of black people in the 70s and 80s. It's like civil rights stuff.

I enjoy like learning the story about it. Yeah. I don't actually know what fast car is about though. You should go listen to it. Go listen and like actually listen to the lyrics. It's an amazing story that she's telling in that thing. So I kind of got into it for that reason. I also like one other thing.

I watched the interview with her. And I think both of us appreciate poise as a trait. I think poise is something nobody ever talks about, but we all notice it when we see it. And those are things that I like to pick up on. what are things that nobody says they are into or practice? Nobody ever says I'm practicing poise. But when we see it, we all think it's badass and we appreciate. Tom Brady, he's so poised or that leader, he just has this way, carries himself well.

It's poised under pressure, right? Poise. And so she did this Charlie Rose interview. And Charlie Rose, again, she's kind of the worst interview ever because she doesn't say anything. She doesn't play the game. Yeah, she doesn't play the game. And so he's like, you know, tell me, you know, when you were a young kid, like, when did you first start playing music? She was like, oh, you know, I got a guitar and I started playing music when I was like five.

He said, by eight, I was writing songs. And he's like, and he's like, and that's when you knew you wanted to be a musician. She goes, I think that's what I knew I, she didn't say, I think. She goes, that's when I knew I was a musician. Oh, yeah. And totally was like, just realized he kind of just, she wasn't trying to say it to own him. But what a, what a statement too. And I think there's, what a poised way of saying something that she's just saying it as it is.

That's how it was. I realized I was a musician and that's me. That's a part of me. That's how I am. Like it wasn't, I'm going to try to do anything. Trying is like the least poised thing you could do. I am a musician.

I think she's a badass. I really respect her. And I think she lives in Ohio, which is sort of like Dave Chappelle, you know, these guys that are like they could have it all. They could be in the middle and the thick of it all, but they're in fucking Ohio.

Chappelle's another one on the authenticity of Mount Rushmore, right? Like walked away from $50 million because, you know, they were trying to control the show. And he's like, and then they called me crazy and said I was doing crack in Africa. He's like, no,

I'm not doing crack in Africa. What's the fuck you're talking about? He's like, he's like, I'm in Ohio. I'm not going to fight my image. I'm just going to go live my life and be happy. I didn't know that I actually up until recently thought he was in Africa.

He was like, because that was the narrative. It was Dave, Dave Chappelle got to like basically went crazy. He's doing crack. And then he went to Africa. He lost his mind. And he came out like years later.

He was like, no, like they were offering me a bullshit contract. I said no. And then I just went home and like just did other things with my life. Yeah. He's like, and then they started saying this crazy shit, but whatever,

okay, whatever. Yeah, he was like, I was in Ohio. That's where my father's from there. I was just hanging out with family. Right.

It's like, you know, the poised thing like when Mandela got locked up for whatever, like he was like locked up for 30 years or something like that. And then he came out and like, you know, whatever. solved the aparthe?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what history is. He did something good for, like, you know, black and white people. He put the Mexico and he fished. Yeah.

He was fishing with a bunch of Mexicans. Who knows what he did? But the thing that he said was badass. He was like, they were like, you know, aren't you angry or resentful at the people that put you in jail for 20, 30 years or whatever? And he was like, no, I was preparing.

He was, preparing for this. And I was like, that's awesome. That's a cool way of saying it. Sean, coming through big time. This is the Sean Purry episode. That was a good, good one. I'm like cultured now?

I think I'm cultured. I think so. I think the second you give props to Tracy Chapman and Nelson Medella, I think that you are officially, you've crossed the chasm, my friend. You know when you leave milk out for a while, it becomes yogurt, cultured? That's what happened to me. I just sat out for a while and it happened. It only took you a couple dozen, a few dozen years, but you've officially, you've crossed the

threshold. Congratulations. Good job, good pod. If you're a fan of this, you got to subscribe. If you want more Tracy Chapman stuff, but also the occasional joke about Mexican fishermen that we totally skipped over and don't understand the meaning of the story.

You got to subscribe. That's the pod. Thanks. 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.