My First Million - Business Brainstorm: AG1 For Dogs, Sexy Sweaty Startups & Luxury Newsletters

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

Episode 517: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) are joined by Greg Isenberg to brainstorm 6 business ideas you can start with no funding.  Want to see the best clips from MFM? Subscribe to our clips channel here. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (7:00) Playing for style points  (11:00) AG1 for Dogs (15:00) Daily Fabler (22:00) Sweaty Franchises (35:00) Entrepreneur Operating System (39:00) Luxury Newsletters (45:00) Veblen goods (48:00) Stripe Atlas for Trademarks (55:00) Greg’s Life Hacks — Links: • Late Checkout - https://www.latecheckout.studio/ • Boring Marketing - https://www.boringmarketing.com/ • Daily Stoic - https://dailystoic.com/ • Pink’s Windows - https://www.pinkswindows.com/franchising • EOS - https://www.eosworldwide.com/ • ResiBrands - https://resibrands.com/ • Playing Field - https://www.playingfield.com/ • Raya - https://www.rayatheapp.com/ • Superhuman - https://superhuman.com/ • Little Lifehacks Guaranteed to Improve your Life - https://tinyurl.com/2zhdz2uh — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ 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

And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now. Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I can see it now. Yeah, great headline. Formerly respected individual, Greg Eisenberg. Yeah. Discraces himself with good water.

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 All right we're live son what do we got What's up Greg is here Friend of the House What are the original

What are the original friends of the house You said something on an earlier pod That has always stuck with me You were talking about I think names You had a you had your iPhone out And you're on the notes app And you go I just got

Banger names for businesses that don't have a business yet with them. And you were just spitting off names. And one of the formats was anything with the word Bueno at the end. And I can't tell you how many times I've used this. When somebody's asking me about a name, and they're like, yeah, we do medical imaging scans.

I'm like, scan Bueno. And they're like, what? And they never pick it, but goddamn, if it doesn't break the ice. Greg, welcome. And do you still have that note with all those names? I've got all the names. I've also got, I don't know, 150 startup ideas in a note file. But before I started, I got to get something off my chest.

I got to be real with you. All right. What we got? Producer Ari. You stole my producer. Did we? We don't know about this. It filled me in.

Yes. So all of a sudden, you guys send me a text and you go, what do you think about Ari as a producer? I see you work with him with her. And I go, she's amazing. She's the best. you know, there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong about her. And then all of the sudden, I'm getting a text from R and being like,

dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I've just got the craziest job at my first billion. If I ever call you for a reference check, just know it's Mr. Steele, your girl coming at you right there. I thought she worked on it in the past. I thought that was over. Yeah, that's what I thought too. I thought there was an end date.

It's okay. Is it? It happened. It happened. Is it okay? It's not okay. Well, sorry and thank you. Okay.

Moving on from that one. Greg, you, people should know what you do. You have late checkout, which is badass. You get one of the best websites of any, like, I don't know, company. You make really amazing landing pages. So you have late checkout, which is combination. studio agency. How do you describe it? Holding company, building businesses that have audiences and communities part of them.

And you are kind of becoming this like Greg the community guy. I feel like that was like a phase of your life. Is that still the phase we're in? Are we, is this making fetch a thing? Or did it stick? Did the Greg, the community guy happen? Or what's going on with that? I think so, man. I think so. I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's a thing. If you start calling yourself the community guy, and you're just, you know, so yeah, it's definitely working. I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times trying to call myself the guy. Even actually today, I was thinking about, I was thinking about Gary Vee. I was thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers, Cody Coe. And I was like, why am I not Sean Pee? What is Pee doing

for me? I got to drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean Pee. And I really wrote a note to myself. I said, go all in on Sean Pee. That's stupid. No. Hey, we're workshopping it. You've got a weird enough first name. S-H-A-A-N. I think you're good.

You're good. The only reason why Sam is saying that... Yeah, jealous? That he's... Well, no, you know Sam. He wants to be Sam Pete. He wants to be Sam Pete. Come on.

No, man. I'm happy. I've got a two-syllable first and last name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname. When it's that short, you're good. Sean Bueno? Dude, Greg, late checkout. Studio.

I hate your website. You're doing, it's such a designer website. I can't click anything. I got to like scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man? Yeah, I think, listen, there's two ways to create a website. One is to be conversion centric, right? Like, convert as many people as possible.

The other way is you're building a brand. And this is unlike, any other website on the internet, I think. So you'd be surprised how many million-dollar deals we've been able to close because people like our website. You've done something that I think a lot of people were trying to do, but you've done it well. So let's talk about this kind of personal hold co.

Because you went the venture path. When I met you, you were raising money from all the big name VCs. You were building a social network. Like, we were both playing that, like, it's not even a lottery ticket game. analogy I gave is somebody handed us a bottle or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning. And that was our like stated game plan. It was like, ah, yes, I shall create the next hit social network now on demand, which is not how any of them got really built in the first place. So you played the VC game. You have backed off of it. Give us your kind of two second

philosophy on how your mindset changed going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now. there was a group of us now in our 30s who watched the social network that movie and we all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg if we're being honest with ourselves. I mean, I would have been happy with a Winklevoss too, but like, yeah, I wanted to be suck, yes. We saw that movie. It jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley to go and raise a bunch of money to build social apps. And, you know, we try. We tried. We tried. And the truth is, it's, you know, I remember meeting one of the world's best investors. And he once told me that a third of our deals fail, a third of our deals, we get our money back. And a third of our deals, we make one X to Google Times. So that got me thinking that what he's basically saying is that the best founders in the world, because he's only backing the best founders, two thirds of them, basically the founders and their teams don't see any money from acquisitions. That means a third of companies are basically seeing

any profit. It's just so difficult to win in that game. And yeah, so that's why I've been focusing more in profitable cash-fowing businesses. Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company? Yes, absolutely. Do you like your life better? Yeah. And do you have a goal like a cash flow goal? You're like, okay, my goal, to get to 10 million in cash flow or whatever. Like, is that how you're thinking about? Is that the game that you're currently playing? No, the game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points, baby.

What does it mean? Is there anything else to say? No, that explains everything. Next question, maybe. What's the style point? We were talking about when Sam was working at HubSpot, he was like, I'm an artist, baby. I got to create.

I think that's what Greg's talking about when he talks about style points. The other part of style points is like the lifestyle. So in Silicon Valley, this idea of a lifestyle, lifestyle business is like a, it's a backhanded compliment. So it's a way for people in Silicon Valley to pat you on the head and be like, that's cute. That's a cute business. Like, good for you.

Good. That's swell. But like, to me, I'm like, that's crazy. Like the point of these businesses to give myself and my team awesome life. lifestyles. Like, what else are you, what are you trying to do if not that? I don't even understand. And so I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now is, especially if you're from the tech industry, is the whole tech industry is so brainwashed that it's all about creating multi-billion dollar companies that a lot of people who would actually be super happy

if they created a lifestyle business that gave them two and a half million dollars a year of cash flow won't ever go that path because it's seen as kind of this like lesser, lesser thing to do it. We all have friends who do that. You know, I tease, or we, we teased them on air, Andrew Wilkinson for doing, for doing that. But you know what was funny is, do you guys see Chimath from All In? He, so Chmoth for the listener, I, I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, many, many hundreds of millions, very, very wealthy. The other day, he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter. And I think it was $100 a year. And what's funny is, there's two things.

that I've found to be true is I've talked to someone who says they don't want to be public and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something and they taste that dope with me and they go, ooh, this is nice. I'm going to do this again and they love them even though like, you know, the people who are like, oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do. I don't want to be a whole guy. They get in a public guy and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is even people who have big companies that are maybe venture back companies and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy, even making $50,000, $100,000 a month, that can be a dicting. I wonder what Chmots plays with that, but he has a paid newsletter now.

Well, even worse, he's like, yeah, we're going to have it be paid. And so that's really cool because the revenue from that, it makes this whole thing sustainable. Like, we can, we can use to hire more researchers and do better research. I was like, hey, why don't you take the 0.1% interest on your savings account that you have with JPMorgan right now and use that to pay for seven researchers? It's fine, actually. Like, it's crazy to me that, like, you know, people say, like, what's the point of you money if you don't say fuck you? Like, what's the point of being a billionaire if you're going to do a paid newsletter? Like, what is happening right now? The point is it's addicting. And so my point being is where a lot of people who, like, would make fun of lifestyle

businesses once, I mean, and I was that person. I was like, I want to go big. And then I started tasting like a monthly income that's good. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. I was texting Andrew Wilkinson making fun of him, too, because he was. doing a paid Twitter subscriber thing. And I was like, dog, you have a foundation.

You're talking here signing the giving pledge. Like, what do you care about this like 10K a month you know, subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to like perform and give them their value? But it hits for him. Like there's something to it that for that that's like giving him that value. I was, I couldn't

believe it to the point where I told him. I was like, the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is you're using the Twitter paid features so that Elon is like see this guy's doing it and he starts retweeting you because you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work and then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk and I said that's the only reasonable explanation for this

when he denied it he didn't I I actually get Andrew doing his his premium X thing a little bit more because like he's having interaction with his fans but the Chama thing around like putting up gated content makes absolutely no sense. Did you have, Greg, did you have any other ideas or niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest? Let's just rapid fire. All right. Give us one.

This one's a happy idea. So it's a crazy one, but a happy one. It's listen to me now. Athletic Greens for Dogs. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Go on. AG1, Athletic Greens came out of nowhere, started sponsoring all these podcasts, YouTubers, and I don't know if they're, what do you think their revenue is, Sam? 600 million, 500 million? I think they kill it. But I'll do the homie move and say 100 million.

Yeah, okay, more than 100 million. They're really, really crushing it using that model. Now, dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water, they drink tap water. and the question is, what if dogs drank something that was better for them, better for them, than plain old water? Okay? So, here's the playbook. You find the Andrew Huberman for dogs. You sponsor every top dog creator and animals-lovered podcast. You give packets to restaurants and bowls that say this brand for their dogs, and then you profit.

it. The name we call it, the name we call it Good Water. And our slogan, we do, good dogs deserve good water. Now, we have to figure out what we can put in the water so that it actually is better than water itself. But this is a good example of how do you create a category of one? How do you build something where you're building something where no one else is playing. And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now. Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I can see it now. Yeah. Great headline. Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg. Yeah. Just Discraces himself with good water.

Cope and their Sean P. says, it's really better than water, I swear. Is Gatorade for dogs the next great thing? Yeah, like, this is some stupid shit, right? We're going to good water more like bad idea. This sounds like something misfits or what's that called? What's that company called that? Mischip.

I got to tell you when Craig Clemens came on. the pod one time many years ago and he was like guys we're like what ideas you got he's like VR for dogs and this is the guy who's made like 10 hit product so he's not like some one hit wonder he's got 10 he's had 10 great ideas and on he comes on and says VR for dogs and both of me and you were like we didn't know that well to be like

roast him like we just did Greg but we were like tell us more but you know we were not in on it but then I swear every time I leave that because he was like look he's like I would pay anything if my dog could be entertained when they're alone, like, or just, you know, I just don't want them to be bored. And now, I swear, every time I leave the house and my dog's sitting there just going to stare at a wall, and I'm like, I bet your ass I'd strap on a pair of, you know, Oculus for dog goggles if it actually kept my dog entertained. So I think he was right on, right in spirit.

Great, I want to talk to you about some of these ideas because you, the first one, you talk about Ryan Holiday, who's been on the pod, he's my buddy. I'm a huge fan. of and you seem like you're in a spicy mood. I'm always in a spicy mood. I just want to put that out there. The record. The record is said. For the record. The record is said, okay? Yeah, let's talk about the first idea.

So, Ryan Holiday, incredible, incredible guy. Like, he's built such a huge brand around stoicism. Stoicism was basically the dead unless, you know, you were studying philosophy at Columbia. these people like Seneca, Aristotle. Maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was basically dead. And what he did is he introduced Stoicism, the great name, by the way, daily stoic, to millions of Gen Z and millennials.

So I think that there's an opportunity to do exactly what Ryan Holiday did, but in the fable space. So do you remember Aesop? Aesop Fables? No, what is that? Okay, so Aesop is just one of the most well-known storytellers

of all time. Of humanity, he did like the tortoise and the hair or the wolf and sheep's clothing. So it's basically these little stories that use animals to tell you know,

the moral of the story. And it's got a lot of great stuff in there, just like Seneca had a lot of great stuff in there. So I think that if you got the handle, the Daily Fabler and you started telling these incredible stories and quotes from it, you can build an audience really quickly through that. And similar to how Ryan Holiday, you know, Ryan, holiday, for those who don't know, monetize via courses, but he also monetized via his book. But he also, my favorite part of how he monetizes is he literally sells, it's a coin. He calls it a medallion.

So he's got this medallion called Memento Mori. Hey, I have one. Okay, why did you get one? Because he gave it to me and I thought it was awesome. But I do think it's cool. I carried it around with me for years. I thought it was cool. I forget, what is moment?

It means like you're going to die or like live the day or something like that. Yeah, basically means. like seize the day, right? Like, you're going to die. And if you know you're going to die and you're facing mortality, then... It's Greek for Yolo. Yeah, it's Greek for Yolo. Memento Mori is Greek for Yolo.

So that's a... And people pay $30 for this. And I'm sure that he's making millions of dollars selling coins to his audiences via Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram and YouTube. It's the same model but for fables. He told us this on the pod and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, yeah, I sell this coin. It's like, you know, cost me whatever.

I don't know what it was, but like, let's call it a dollar. Just be generous. Assume this coin cost a dollar. He partnered with this mint in the U.S. They mint the coin. He sends it. He's like, yeah, you know, I've sold shirts before. I think he worked at American Apparel.

He was like the head of marketing American Apparel. He's like, you know, apparel sucks. merch sucks, shirts, t-shirts suck because there's so many sizes and colors and whatever. He's like, there's one skew. It's one coin. There's no returns. I sell it in a two-pack. I sell it in a two-pack.

It ships in an envelope because it's the lightest weight thing. So like shipping is easy. Making it is easy. Selling it is easy because it's a, you know, it's a single skew product. He's like, it was the low headache way to have a merch store for stoicism. And I was like, this guy's genius.

I remember, I don't know if he told us or I was doing some math when I was thinking about it. I'm pretty sure he's made over $20 million just selling this coin. I think on the pod, he said he sold tens of thousands of coins. Yeah, and then if you do the math, it's like whatever. I think that, you know, $20, $20 a coin or something like that. Yeah, I mean, he told us and he's killing it. But what did you say here?

You said, it's harder to be Seneca than it is Sahill Bloom. It's harder to be aerosadle than Alex Hermosie. Yeah, so there's a bunch of tailwinds with this business. So first of all, creating content is way more difficult than curating content and distilling content. And I want people to know that because there's a ton of businesses that you can create where you don't need to come up with any original ideas. You can just curate amazing ideas that other people have. Hey, you're talking to two of the guys that did that. The hustle did that.

Milkrow did that. Exactly. It's way easier to get your own podcast producer that distill your podcast producer. You know what I'm saying? Also, my newsletter, the five tweet Tuesday, it's the highest rated newsletter I've ever made. It's high open rate, get the most feedback on it. And it's also the easiest thing because I'm just curating five of the most interesting tweets versus trying to create my own original blog post every Tuesday.

So yeah, so yeah, it is easier to be Sahel Bloom than Seneca. And it is easier to be Alex Hermosey than Aristotle because they could just take other people's concepts and curated. So this daily fable idea has that tailwind with it. And it's got a few more tailwinds to it. Another one is that Gen Z basically doesn't believe in

God. Almost 50% of Gen Z is either unaffiliated with any religion or does not believe in God. But they seek out it's just human nature to seek out some greater meeting and purpose in life.

So that's why they're filling their time with daily stoic and could fill their time with, you know, something like the daily fable. And this is what I call like the unbundling of religion. What is this pink thing? Pink's. So pinks, someone I work with, a partner of mine, Jordan,

he's rolling around Austin and he sees this pink, truck outside a house. And outside this pink truck is these men with mustaches and mullets with these pink shirts tucked in.

He's thinking of himself, is this a porno shoot? Like, what is going on over here? And then he sees this logo pinks, pink's window cleaning. And he finds out that it's a It's a new window cleaning service based at Austin.

And it's actually a franchise business. And if you go to their website, thinkswindows.com, they basically, you know, they've got this boring business window washing and they jazzed it up. And they even have like a merch store where they've apparently sold thousands and thousands of hats. Oh my God. Look, I was at dinner the other night, and Bar Shop is wearing this hat. And I look at it, I go, I think I even said, I go, what's this? There's something cool. What is this?

I know you're doing something cool. What is this? Because he's, Barthor's one of these guys that, like, he knows the indie bands. He knows the cool restaurant to eat at. He knows cool shit. And so he's like, because I'm like, why else would he be wearing a window washing hat? This makes no sense. And he's like, ah, it's his brand called pinks.

really cool. I'm like, they're cool. Window washing? How do you even, like, compared to what? I can tell you one window washing brand, let alone the coolest one. And he's like, yeah, I'm like, so you bought the hat? He's like, I bought the hat. Style points, baby. And that was the, that was the end of that story. I went back home and I ordered a pink's hat because I was like, if it's cool, then I will be the follower and try to do it too. So this is a part of a bigger trend, which is that I think this is kind of like the dollar shave clubification of boring businesses. So I think a lot of people, younger people are going to be buying some of these businesses. You know, boomers are retiring.

You know the story there. But I think what they're going to do is they're going to make it feel like an indie bend. You know, you remember the dollar shaved club video, right? It was funny. Yeah, it took something. boring, razors, shaving, Gillette, and made it like super cool and fun. And that's what Pink's is doing. That's actually super smart because that actually kicked off like a huge wave of DDC brands. Like Sam always jokes. Sam, what's your joke about DDC brands? How do you know a DDC brand when you see one?

Well, because they like, it's always lowercase. It's the same, it's the same font. It's, they always use millennial pink. Yeah, exactly. And so you, so it kicked, a dollar shave club kicked off this wave of DDC brands from Casper, away luggage, and then, you know, like just one after another. And, you know, there's hundreds of them at this point, which was basically like take boring category. Do best in class like kind of branding around it, put a shit ton of money into the, like, or creative effort into the branding, and then sell that kind of commodity product online. And what you're saying is people are now going to do that for these, these,

sweaty startup businesses. So instead of doing the boring, like if you go look at self storage or U-Haul, like these are some of the worst-looking brands you'll ever see. And maybe instead of the soft, the lowercase, you know, block letter font with the soft, you know, that millennial pink,

maybe it's this like vintage retro indie band look that's going to become the like the go-to thing for window washing, trash hall removal, you know, HVAC, all this stuff. Is that what you're saying? Because I think that's actually kind of brilliant. Yeah, I'm going to call my shot here and say that pinks is the beginning of this whole new generation. Over the next five to ten years, you're going to see pinks for X. You're going to see pinks for

lawn care, pest control, car wash, catering, pet grooming, snow removal. And I think it'll, it doesn't necessarily need to be like nostalgia. bus design, but it could also be just, it's just different, interesting, and unexpected. So the guy, it looks like the brand behind pinks is called Rezi Brands. It looks like they own three or four things. They own one called Garage Up, which is like making your garage look cool and clean. Then there's pinks. Then there's that one painter. And then if you Google it, you can find the guy who owns it is this guy named Stephen Montgomery. And he's young. He's young with like sleeve tattoos. He looks maybe 30. He looks. He looks. He looks.

looks like a kid. It's pretty fascinating. This is a really interesting fine. Do you know what their revenue is for Resi Brands? Is it going well? Yeah. So, first of all, he is young. I think he graduated college like five or six years ago. Resi Brand started recently and within the last couple years and their painting brand, that one painter is the fastest growing painting company in the United States. So this is a model that's starting to work. And if I'm like a PE fund. Like, this is what I'm doing. I'm basically acquiring boring businesses.

I'm hiring an agency like late checkout. And I'm building brands, not boring businesses. He's like, I'm joining Hampton. Then I hardly check out. Find some talent on Shepard. Exactly. Bada big, boon, boom, I'm there.

We, uh, I was, I was, uh, I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started 1-800 got junk and he was telling me all about franchises and so 1-800 got junk was its own thing he started it with just one trunk or one uh one truck and grew it and i think now he owns 100% of it it does like two or three hundred million dollars in revenue really valuable business but he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises franchises that's when they really started kicking ass but dealing and working with franchise owners he said, or I don't know if he said it or a CEO of Cameron. He was like, it's very, very, very hard. And I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, oh, it looks so simple.

You just do this, you do that. But doing it every single day, I think is a huge challenge. It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover or you got to deal with fights every once in a while. I think it has a similar type of headache. Yeah, it's probably hard to manage. And yeah, I want to be clear on this. Pinks is actually now, it started as one location in Austin, and now they're, you could franchise your own pinks, like if you want to bring one to New York or wherever. So they basically charge 2% marketing fee, a 7% royalty fee and a franchise fee of at least $49,000, I think it's $49,000 to $100,000. And they actually share some of their revenue numbers. So for their, one of their Austin locations,

They've got seven employees. They're doing 742,000 in revenue, and they're making 36% profit on that, to $268,000. So it's a pretty good business. And, yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage some of those employees, but there's something here. Although, I got to say the disclaimer,

we don't know if this is a great business, is not advice, and also, you know, franchise headquarters tend to share the numbers of like the best performing thing, not like the average or the medium because we talked about a business that has a franchise that was like, oh, this is a cool idea. I think, you know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it might have, you know, here's a guess at how much it was making.

And then their franchise calendar got booked out, like the meetings got booked out for like four months after the pod came out. So definitely can't say, I personally don't endorse this. maybe Greg is, but I personally do not. It's not my first million sponsored. Okay, so what I was going to say on Pink's is I went, I didn't know anything about franchises until, like any internet entrepreneur, I didn't know anything about franchises until going down the Pink's rabbit hole. And I didn't realize that franchises for sure are regulated by a franchise board. So that, that's also just an interesting thing to know about if you want a,

do a franchise. You have to go to these portals. You have to apply. There's only certain information that they can disclose. So I found that quite interesting. And then the other thing that got me thinking about pinks and franchises is I started thinking about like, what is franchise model? What does that look like for the internet? So what is a franchise? A franchise is basically a set of, it's a business model in a box, and a brand in a box, and support in a box for an entrepreneur. How can we bring that, or is there an opportunity to bring that to the internet? I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency, about how scaling agencies is hard, and maybe, I don't know why, but franchising was on my mind. And I was

like, I wonder why, like, if I was, like, if I'm me and I have a big audience, I have a large ability to create a brand and get customers. The painful part is the operations. What most people do is they partner with somebody. They run the operations, but they're going to run into the scaling headaches and bottlenecks along the way. And I was like, what if I franchised it? Meaning, you could spin up, you could become one of my operators or a partner in the

business. I'm going to hand you customers automatically. You don't have to know how to do internet marketing. You don't have to build your own brand. You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate. And we kind of, like, let's just say it was. design or web development or something. I don't know.

I don't know what category makes sense. But like you could just have a three person team that's going to bang out high quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate. But like we don't have to create a hundred person agency headquarters that's going to like have managers and managers and ensure the quality of work and then have to like increase prices because of we all these layers of management.

Like maybe there's another way. Maybe there's a way to do it. I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling agencies. Maybe what we're saying is the next generation of creator-led agencies actually look more like franchises

than they do what they are now. Right. Because normally a franchise, the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically expand. So why did Chipotle initially franchise out? It was because this concept works. We can physically only launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the time we have.

we can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some Chololays in Alabama, so they find a franchisee there. With the internet, you don't have the geography problem. So that's why I think most internet companies never franchised. However, I do think that for things

that are like service, like a service is rendered, I think that's kind of similar in that you run into servicing bottles. So where I disagree with you on the geography thing is, I think it's not that we don't have a geography problem on the internet, it's just that geography is defined differently.

Geography is defined in the real world, like, you know, at the corner of 25th and 5th Avenue versus on the internet, like, you have an audience, you have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography. So I think that if someone could figure out, and this is for the audience, if someone could figure out, and us, honestly, if we can figure out how we could take the benefits of a franchise model and figure out how we can, you know, the reason, okay, if you go to Chipotle in New York City, you go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same.

The problem with the creator let, going back to the credo that agencies is the type of product is very different as those businesses are scaling, unless the operators are, you know, have been doing this for many years. So I think there's something here. There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet. Are you guys familiar with EOS? No. Okay, so EOS is basically a operating system for an entrepreneur.

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

But you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company that will apply to like, you know, 80, 90% of businesses. And so what EOS did was this guy wrote this book. I don't know the full backstory, but the guy wrote a book called traction. And in traction, he's talking about how to run a, like how he runs his business. It's like, oh, we come up with our annual plan and we use the scorecard. Here's a scorecard template. You can go download that for free.

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

Or is somewhat similar to it, which is like a goal setting system. So EOS is actually like kind of a monstrous business from what I understand. And the way they work is kind of through this franchise model. So what they do is they have these implementers. So EOS basically takes the lead. And then they're like, cool, you're interested in implementing EOS? and it's really expensive. It's like, Sam, when you did it,

what did you do for Hampton or for Hustle? For the hustle, I just read the book and then I just implemented it and I showed people I'd do it. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but it's many tens of thousands of dollars for like a two-day workshop, I think.

25 or 50K or something like that. So it's quite expensive for most people to like swallow that. Or it's just like, I don't know, you have to have a lot of conviction that that's going to really help you in order to pay this. But there are a bunch of people out there

that are just simply EOS implementers. They're not like, they're not part of the company, but they are basically like these kind of freelance people that will do this. I don't know the exact structure. So I'm talking a little, you know,

off the top here. So I might get some things wrong here. From what I understand, you have traction, which is the book that generates a lot of leads, people who are interested in implementing this. They go to the website. They say,

great, I want to do this, they book a call. And then they either, you sort of like, you know, buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever.

And then they're paying a person who's like, kind of their coach to help them implement this system. and then whatever. And I actually know a bunch of people that have done this. What I've noticed is it's kind of more

beginning entrepreneurs. It's like the best operators, I know typically weren't the ones who were telling me they used EOS, but that's just an observation. I don't know if that's, if that's fair or not. But it is quite heavy.

It's like a lot. It's like a full on system. It's like a full revamp of how you, what meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff. I've had this craving to do a lightweight version of EOS because I have a system that works for me. I've used it for like 15 years.

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

And if you fix the process, you'll fix the issue. And I don't know if it's a perfect process, but like it's lightweight, which I think is more for someone like me. Like I'm not going to go hire EOS and pay these guys, you know, $30,000 and spend six months revamping my company probably. Like, I don't really want to do that. But if there was a lightweight version, I would do it.

And I think the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't want to have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that. Whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically come train, like, come to my workshop seminar and do like a four-week certification process to learn exactly how to do it. And then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it. That would be fun. I would do something like that.

I think that's how EOS works. Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if that thing makes like $30 million a year and like $15 million a year in profit. The people who are into it, they're obsessed with it. Greg, what's this, what's called playing field? I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating because I go to the website and you can't even sign up. So Nathan Barry from ConvertKit told me about this one. Basically, it's Tom Brady's.

manager. He's got this newsletter. It's the most expensive newsletter in the world. You had my attention and now you have my interest. His company is called Playingfield and his newsletter is called The Brief. It's invitation only. I think there's a maximum of about a thousand subscribers. In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner or you have to be just like a really badass top player. And this is like a part of a bigger trend, which I think is like luxury newsletters. So or even a bigger macro trend, which is, you know, there's all these mega ultra luxury rich experiences popping up for the top 1% be it like Sohouse or private Disney tours or Amon, that hotel that charges like 5K a month. 5K a night.

K a night. 5K a night. 5K a night. and you're seeing that in the market, like, reflected. Like, Hermes has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know? So I think the same thing is happening with newsletters, and I think there's an opportunity to basically do to what everyone is trying not to do.

What everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter to get to the hustle level or to get to Milk Road level. But what if you tried to do the complete opposite? What if you created a newsletter for the top 1% that was very, very niche focused, and you just treated it like a nightclub? My favorite quote is Andy Warhol. I think he said, Studio 54 is a dictatorship at the door, but a democracy on the dance floor. and I think there's a way to bring that studio 54 mentality to building luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces.

How much do you think they charge for this? I mean, we got to buy an NFL team to find out. So how much does it? That was it the Jets cost. This idea? Style points. I mean, wow. This is incredible.

What a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes sense when you think about it. There was a guy was a big article in some something like, you know, Forbes or whatever. And it was about this guy. And he's got this, like, you know that Raya was like the dating app for like hot celebrities or whatever? This guy created like the raya of like experiences or something. Oh, I saw this. Is the guy he partnered with Justin Timberlink? Miria, I guess.

Yeah. This guy's specialty is getting like super VIP experiences that like one of a kind of experiences that you can't, you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else. Yeah, basically Andrew Wilkinson told me about it. If I remember correctly, Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars. One of those like things. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo on the red carpet. And I was like, what the hell? He goes, yeah, I was part of this community or this service called.

I forget what it was called. But the guy started with Justin Timberlink or something like that. Went through YC. And it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know the right people. Right. Right. Okay.

I'm going to read you some of the quotes from this thing. So here's what it says. It goes, you know, somebody will call him and they'll say, like, he could basically get you treated like you were an American diplomat. And like, you needed to be, like, handled. Like, he could do that for you. And so he's like, you know, you need this epic party in Mexico with private chefs.

Just you just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest. It's going to happen. And so what he'll do is he'll create like, okay, you're not just going to the Beyonce concert. You're going to get to go to the dressing room and you're going to get to hang out afterwards or she's going to call your kid on stage and get to sing with them. Like something that these like one-of-one style, style experiences.

So here's what it says. Mirror only accepts ultra-high net worth. People define as people worth over. 30 million. He says, this isn't the 1%. It's the 0.03%. You must be willing to spend an average of 1 million a year on lifestyle alone. So just on these experiences, you're willing to spend a million bucks in order to get in.

Let me see if it has. He's focusing on the needs of the top 10,000 people in the world and we're going to do for them what nobody else can do. And so he's like, he's like almost like a fixer, like in, you know. the wolf fiction he's like he's like the wolf

he's like the one you call in when you need you just need that special something yeah so that's that's for like physical experiences

but I think what you're starting to see also is this trend around apps and software newsletters as a status symbol what's another example

of that Raya was a great example of that but I think superhuman is another good example so superhuman is that

email software that a lot of VCs use. And it's kind of, it's like 30 bucks a month or something. It's kind of a flex that you can say sent from superhuman, sent from superhuman. It's like Gmail is probably better than superhuman. Let's be real. But having sent from superhuman adds this like layer of, oh, I take my, I take my job really seriously. Like, I'm a part of the one. So I think there's an opportunity for people to not only create playing fields for X, but also superhuman for X and other software for X. Well, like, the easiest one of this on the internet is NFTs, right? NFTs were exactly this.

So, like, just to your point of Hermes having a higher market cap than Nike, well, when, you know, when NFTs were out there, basically luxury, art. I figured out somebody said this thing, you know, art is just money you can hang on your wall. I was like, yeah, that's great. Well, you know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile. And that's why, you know, people would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk because it meant something. And when these were happening, my buddy Vishal, he told me he's like, oh, yeah, these are Veblen goods. And I was like, what's a Veblen good? I never heard of that. Do you guys know what this is? No, what's that word? I didn't mean.

that word means. Yeah. So basically a veblen good is something where the demand increases as the price increases. So most goods, they follow the traditional supply demand curve, which is that as price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A vebleng good works the exact opposite way. As the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight because if the price runs up, it puts that

product in more demand. but if the price starts to crash, that NFT value is crashing with the price. The demand crashes with the price. And so once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this, then it explains a whole class, like, you know, the first time I heard about a Birken bag, I was like, oh, so it's got like an elevator inside?

What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care? And so, well, they care because you can't buy it. I'm like, well, you can't buy it. What do you mean? Why don't they sell it? They should sell more of these.

And they're like, no, no, no, you have to be, you have to earn, the right to buy the Birken bag. And it's like, I had a cousin who flew to Paris to, like, go to the store to try to buy a Birken bag. And I'm like, this, you made a vacation out of this?

And she's like, yeah, like, I'm, I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags just to be invited to possibly buy a Burk and... Holy shit, dude. These bags are... I'm looking at a used one on some website. It's a quarter of a million. And then there's other used ones for 30,000. So it's like the cheap end is

$30,000 for these bags. I think it's like, 50K if you just buy it from the storyish. Holy shit. And, you know, and so it's a status symbol because even amongst luxury buyers, you can't buy, like, you can buy all, you can have all the money you want. You can walk into Louis Vuitton, you can buy everything. You know what you can't buy? A Birken.

Why? Because a Birken is even elevated above that. And I'm like, wow, there's no end to the status game that gets played when it comes to this stuff. And it makes you think, like, you know, remember when the iPhone came out and that guy made like the app that cost $1,000, and it was called the I'm Rich app or something like that. It was just, it was like a red light or something would turn on. And that means you bought the I'm rich app for $1,000.

It did nothing else besides that. And it got so popular, Apple then started to take it, it took it off the store because it was like, this is not what we want. But the fact that that worked tells you something about the psychology of people that they would, they would do that to signal, you know, their status. Man, this is amazing. I've heard that word, but I've never. actually seen these bags. This is wild to me. This is insane. Wow. All right, what do we want

to do now? We got to wrap up in a minute. Yeah, give us one more, one more, Greg. Strype Batlist for trademarks. So we recently filed a trademark. We bought the domain boringmarketing.com, and it's dope. and the business started scaling and we're like, oh shit, we needed a trademark here. And I don't know if you guys have filed for trademarks, but the process is insane. It's a pain in the butt. It's a pain in the butt. It's actually quite expensive. And you even have to finish your work on going on these like Craigslisty-looking sites.

And it's pretty brutal. Well, let's explain it. What happens? Typically what you do is you hire a lawyer. So that's, you know, already start off on the wrong foot. Then they're like, great, can't just file this. Kind of do a search first. You want the light search for 300 bucks.

Or you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for $800. You're like, I guess I'll do the search. Because if you don't do that, I'm like, what if I don't do the search? Like, well, we can file it and that'll cost you money. But then you don't know if you get it or not. I'm like, cool for like how long? Like a year, maybe a year and a half. Like, but then I have to operate my company, right?

like so what happens if I don't get it? Like, oh, you might need to change your company's name. Like, all right, I guess I'll do the search. Then they're like,

great, now we can file. Hey, which class do you want to file in? And you're like, you're on USPTO, the Craigslist looking site you're talking about, and you're trying to figure out

what the hell's going on. And finally you file it, and then nothing happens. And then nothing ever happens, basically. Like a year later, you'll get a letter you got to prove. And then you're like,

was that even necessary? And then you're like, this is, this is just a crazy process. overall. Exactly. So, and then, so it's, it's very similar to, uh, what happened with Striat Atlas. So for those of those of people who don't know what Striat Atlas is, it's 500 bucks and you can basically, uh, you know, form a legal entity, issue stock the founders filing an 83 of the election, which is super painful in the United States. They basically took something that was really

painful and expensive and made it easy and cheap. And the smartest thing about that for Stripe, which is obviously a payments company, is once you've set up all those things, they basically send you a Stripe link, and Stripe makes money when you sell stuff. So you're all ready to go, and it basically onboards you to Stripe, which is brilliant. There is the same opportunity to do that for trademarks. So the name I would use, if I was doing this, would be Mr. Trademark. The slogan would be something.

something like putting you out of your misery. And I think that either something like this gets bought by a stride. So I think there's an opportunity there. But I actually think that you probably would try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services. And I think you can expand this beyond this trademarks to patents as well. I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. I don't know if patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs.

But, you know, because I've actually, I've had a, I've, you know, I've been at companies where we've had patents. For example, stumble upon, which was basically this, they acquired my company and I was on the management team there. And I find out, like, one of the reasons I sold the business was because I was like, these guys have the patent on like recommendation engine. which is mostly nonsense right dude it was like they're like we have the patent on this this alone is worth you know 500 a billion dollars because basically they had a patent on if you upvote something or downboat something and there's a recommendation engine at the core of it that is their patent aka ticot i i think that's worked that's worked a couple times though on the internet uh i believe reed hoffman and mark marcus pink mark or marcus pinkis the guy who's

D'Rzenga. I think they had some, what I guess is name wrong? What's his name? No, we're going to go with that. But yeah, Marcus Picus is a- Marcus Pekis? Whatever. Ficus would be such an outrageous name. I don't know. He's an outrageous guy. Didn't he own, didn't they own the patent that I believe, if memory serves correct, I believe they owned a patent on the algorithm for social media. And I think they sold it to Facebook or maybe even they gave it to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story? No, I don't know that story, but when we bought the Bebo brand back, we got these patents with it. And they had a patent for the, uh, for the whiteboard feature, meaning like you could go on someone's

profile page. I don't know if you remember this. Like, you could go on someone's profile page and doodle, like just draw on a like a Microsoft paint looking whiteboard there. We had the patent for that. And I was like, cool. But Facebook has that feature at the time Facebook had something called the wall. that was the same thing. They used to have that feature too. And you used to be able to, in MySpace had graffiti. And like it was the same feature.

And they were like, yeah, these don't mean anything. And I was like, nothing? Like, isn't it patent like ironclad? They're like, yeah, just like not on the internet.

And that's been my experience with, I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it seems like trademarks kind of mean something because if you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you you're, you can't keep operating under that name, which is painful.

And when you sell a company, They like for you to have everything buttoned up. Like, yes, I'm incorporated. I paid my taxes. I have my trademarks. I'm free and clear to be bought. But I don't think patents do anything on the internet, what I understand. Well, okay.

So in 2000, yeah, so Pinkus and Riehoeven, they own this patent called the Six Degrees patent. Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for $700,000. But, yeah, there's an article called, Who Owns Facebook's Most Important Patent? So apparently it was a thing. Cool. Greg, so you're going to come on next time. Are you going to have Goodwater.com? Or no, you're a .io type of guy.

Well, shot's fired. Shot fired. Well, you're, what's your agency now? There's two wars happening right now, and that was a hate crime you just committed. You called him a dotio guy. All I know is that just I'm wearing glasses and, you know, but oh, here we go. It's sam p.io just joined the chat.

What's your, where do people connect? It's a, is it public school or late checkout. Dot studio? Late checkout. Dot studio. See, I knew you're not a dot com type of guy. You have late checkout.com. Right?

I like your newsletter. What else do you want to pimp? You're always tweeting cool shit. You always tweet stuff with the first line being like, the future of blank is blank, which I dig. Greg back in the day wrote a series of blog. post called like tiny little life hacks or something. What's the name of that post, Greg? It was like 10 years ago. Little life hacks guaranteed him for your life. But this is before like Threadboy. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You were ahead of your time. Now today, these are, you know, you see these all the time. But back then, these were great. And I actually implemented many of these little ones that you, you did like a three-part series. It was so good that people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So go read that series. If you want to love Greg, if people read that, they'll fall in love with you. I guarantee you.

Your first one is dress formal when you go on flights. Do you do that? It worked back in the day. It actually worked. This is years ago. Yeah. What else on that list?

Yeah, read off a couple of others. When you're out with people breaking bread, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah, that's a good one. Poor people's drinks before yours. People appreciate that. So, Siva, my bud, Siava, he did that to me this weekend.

And I was, I was wooed. He, he wooed me. And I saw a picture of you and see him today and looks like you guys are dating. Yeah, I'm obviously working. I'm leaning into his arms. It definitely worked. Scheduled 30 meetings, not one hour meetings. You get through just as much.

Yeah, I totally believe that. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. This is all obvious now. So I'm good at saying that, like I looked like an idiot back then. like all these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now. Goodwater, Stripe atlas thing. I'm just joking.

I think good water, you could definitely make that work. Yeah, I'm the guy who looks stupid in the moment, but looks good in five years. A cursed life. Well, number three is to send postcards to friends. So I'll be on the lookout for a postcard. Yeah, you had one that was like, go to this little website and they have a bunch of unique gifts. and it's like just show up, not on a gift-giving occasion, but when you go meet someone,

just bring one of these for them. Like, you know, people obviously remember, these are sound, just like, you know, how to win friends and influence people, but it's real. And like, especially in Silicon Valley, like, the social, like, IQ was like so low that if you did any of these things,

like, you know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, yeah, you pour the other person's water first, or you show up with a gift. But, like, you know. I mean, I almost sold my last company because I met someone, I gave them a tiny Buddha, and they remembered me. Like, they made an offer to buy my business. So it does work. It's one of those things where you're like, of course I should do this, but you don't actually

do it. And then you read it. And I'm like, all right, fine. I'll start sending gifts. That's a perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, yeah, I know. I know those. Those aren't new. And then if you just said, okay, cool, let's look at this question differently. How many of these do you do regularly? And now all of a sudden, instead of knowing 10 out of 10, you do one out of ten regularly. Like that gap is why I like that blog post. Greg, dude, we appreciate you coming on. You're full of ideas.

You were supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry, I crashed your party today, but things change. But I appreciate you doing this and coming with us. This is a blast. I was smiling the whole time. Good. That's a win. All right, appreciate it.

That's the pot. 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 less travel never looking back