The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to skip the line and build a $1M business in a week. Ep. #027

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

HoldCo Bros Chris (x.com/mhp_guy) and Nik (x.com/cofoundersnik) discuss ideas for building a big business FAST by partnering with the unlikeliest of influencers...Timestamps below. Enjoy!Ask me a question on or off the show here: http://form.typeform.com/to/Eb8KaY0pLearn more about me: http://chrisjkoerner.comLearn about my company: http://cofounders.comFollow me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/mhp_guyFree weekly business ideas newsletter: https://newsletter.chrisjkoerner.com/---00:33 Exploring 'Nature is Metal'04:08 Challenges of Selling Merchandise07:51 Leveraging Content for Business Growth14:27 Innovative Marketing Techniques at Concerts21:50 The Power of Podcasting for Artists25:08 Niche Podcasting Opportunities31:31 Pet Peeves and Allergies35:43 Dog Chaos at the Library38:29 Thoughts and Shoutouts

This new framework I have is if some sort of a business or creator or someone with an audience is just selling t-shirts, then it means they don't know what they're doing. Because when you go to sell a t-shirt, that's the first thing that people that don't really have a business brain think of. How do I do that? Let's sell a hat. Let's sell a t-shirt. But in almost every instance, and I can think of one exception, that is not going to be the highest and best use. So I got more ideas. I got them full of ideas today.

Okay. All right. Do you follow the Instagram account, nature is metal? No. Oh. You have not. What you love in Russian dash cam fight videos, I love in watching animals kill each other. Okay.

What? Yes. And me and seven million other Instagram followers. So nature is metal is a very, very popular Instagram account that just shows like random home videos of a bear attacking a moose on the side of a road or an eagle picking up a salmon and dropping it. Like, it is the coolest stuff. Quick aside, I'm not saying it was right, but I get why the Romans had the Coliseum and we're like, I want to see a lion fight a bear. It's awesome. Like, who would win? A lion or a bear? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I got to find out. We can't do that now. It's like taboo. You can't do

that. Yeah, they started with that. Then they're like, I want to see if Greg could kill John. All right, let's give Greg some num chucks. Let's give John a lance. Okay, okay, that's boring. I want to see if Greg and John could kill a lion. Two Gregs on lion. Two lions on Greg. There are so many computations of this year.

We really got to try this for a couple hundred years. Anyway, if I go to Nature's Medal's homepage, you've got a bobcat attacking a squirrel. you've got a bunch of snails attacking a Portuguese man-of-war. You've got a crocodile eating a baby hippo. You've got a guy wearing Lulu Lemon pants wrestling an alligator on the road. It's so cool. It is so cool. And I followed these guys when they had 500,000 followers.

Now they have 6.1 million. Okay. So I was thinking about oftentimes I'll see a cool social media account that's not really monetizing. And it just, it pains me. It pains me because 99% of people are not going to create content. And that's great. That's fine. But I think for all the entrepreneurs out there listening to this and wanting to start a business,

it's all right in front of your face when you're wasting time on social media. These accounts you follow have no idea how to monetize. And so I have this framework that I just thought up where if you see. Hold on. Or let me just say it in a different way. They're monetizing to a level that they think is good. they're like, oh, that's what I'm getting at. That's what I'm getting at.

This new framework I have is if some sort of a business or creator or someone with an audience is just selling t-shirts, then it means they don't know what they're doing. Because when you go to sell a t-shirt, that's like the, that's the first thing that people that don't really have a business brain think of. How do I do that? Let's sell a hat. Let's sell a t-shirt. But in almost every instance, and I can think of one exception, that is not going to be

the highest and best use. Now, it's great because you've got a walking advertisement, right? That's cool. But unless you are a merch or a clothing company, you're probably just selling t-shirts and hats because you don't know how else to make money, right? Right. So nature is metal. That's how they make money.

They sell t-shirts. So they'll post a video of a squid eating a turtle. And then at the end of it, there will be just like a quick flash of like new shirt in stock on our website. And it's like, you can't even click these links in a reel. someone has to go type in nature is metal.com. They're not going to do that. Their conversion must be terrible on these shirts.

Here's why I hate this business model and you will agree with me. It's the inventory. Now, they probably are doing this stuff on like consignment or I don't know the exact term. But to scale their business quickly, it's not going to be selling t-shirts. You know this from from Send Eats and Texas snacks. It's a hard business model operationally. to execute well. And again, I know they're not the ones who are actually doing it, but it just, it would be not, it would not be what I pick. Yeah, they're probably doing print on

demand. So they don't need to have inventory. They don't need to have a warehouse or anything. But it, that just means that their margins suck, right? Right. There's just a tradeoff. You print your own church. You got inventory headaches, but you have a great margin. Print on demand. You don't have to do any work, but your margin sucks. Either way, you lose. And so I just, it pains me that this website is monetizing by t-shirts. I feel like nature is metal could be like the national geographic of the next generation. Like this could be a whole media brand. It could be a whole media because it's really hard to monetize an audience outside of what that audience is.

Let me say it a different way. I would bet that let's say 40% of their viewers are 30 to 40 year old white guys. Okay. Typically speaking, I'm over generalizing, but 30 to 40 year old, white guys, aka millennials in America, are generally a pretty good demographic to sell things to, right? They're mid-career. They make decent money.

But, and so let's say, all right, you're going to take that knowledge and sell, I don't know, what would you sell to a 35-year-old white guy? Right now? Pickle ball paddles. Pickleball paddles, perfect. Yeah, or something health-related. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's okay. Yeah, they're here to watch nature videos, but these guys are playing pick a ball. So no, it would not do well at all because that's not why they like you. That's not why they're looking. Just because they're buying that stuff, even on a daily basis, doesn't mean they'll ever want to buy it from you. That's not their reason for looking at your content. Right. So you have to find a product audience fit for the people watching that.

And the people watching that want to watch more of that. And so I feel like you could have like a Netflix for animal attacking, animals attacking other animals, right? Two bucks a month, five bucks a month. And it's just a funnel. You find them on their Instagram account. And then if you want to see the rest of this video, or if you want to see 13 more videos just like this, click go to nature is metal.com.

I think about how many experiences they could sell, right? Like a company that does African safaris or a company that does Alaskan, Alaskan hunting tours or fishing or just farm it all out. Yeah. Like it's literally just funneling them to what they're interested in. Now the hard part is like identifying what they're interested in, but from an experience standpoint, That would be, I think, very easy.

Or even a company like Dix or a company like Sportschalet or what's the really big one that has like the pyramid in Memphis? Bass Pro Shops. Bass Pro Shop, right? Like some type of affiliate relationship or an agreement with them because hunters are more apt to watch that channel. Yeah, there's so many other things that you can do. It's actually leading me to this idea as we're talking. Do you remember when 10 years ago, maybe even more 10, 15 years ago, maybe even more 10, 15 years ago, These digital agencies started popping up and they would go to boomer businesses and be like, hey, John's barbecue restaurant, you're not even marketing.

I was like, well, yeah, I am. I got a website. Like, yeah, but there's no reviews. You don't have any content. And it, like, this whole industry of digital marketing, SEO, payper click, et cetera, popped up around these boomer business owners who didn't know how to utilize that. I think, I think that's happening right now on a much smaller scale around content. content where people are building businesses around helping content creators monetize their audience. Where in the past, taking the website analogy of Bob's whatever barbecue restaurant,

he just threw up a website, content creators and I'm like, I sell t-shirts. I'm making money selling t-shirts. It's like, no, there's a better way. You're not, you're not even monetizing. And I met a guy at Main Street who does this where he literally helps brands launch companies off of their audiences. It was just fascinating to talk to them because a lot of people don't. don't think of it this way. Yeah. I mean, KSI and Logan Paul did this with Prime like starting two

years ago. So I think people that are like in the know and in the MFM Twitter bubble are like, oh, it's being done. It's played out. I think we're way early on that curve. And can I tell you something interesting? It's relevant, but not as. Okay. Whenever we talk about being a content creator or creating content, the retention on our podcast drops like people tune out. Did you know that? Yeah. And this is pretty meta. We're getting pretty meta here.

Yeah. But it totally meshes with a newsletter I sent out three months ago that was basically how to grow on Twitter, right? It was my worst voted. Yeah. Like the people in your group loved it because they're self-selected to want that stuff. I had another newsletter about how to go viral on Reddit. It did not do well at all because I have a poll at the end of every newsletter, right?

Subscribe at Chrisj.j.com. that go well. It didn't. And that's fine. I feel like I'm creating content now and it's almost like a good. We're just in this world. We're in it. We're already here. So let's just keep leaning into it. But I think if you re-roll my life eight times out of 10, I'm not creating content for a business. I'm just doing business. Right. Like I accidentally fell into this. Anyway, my point is. I'm the opposite. If you do roll, rerold my life, I'm doing content eight times out of 10. That's true. Music. This like a something. Yeah. So all that to be said, I want to be very clear. I'm trying to sell the idea that people listening or watching this that are business-minded

should start businesses with creators. Not that they should create their own content, because that's a grind and it takes years to ever see a dollar from it. But you can skip the line by finding creators. There are zillions of like small 5,000 to 100,000 follower creators that have loyal audiences, that have really good content that don't know what to do. And you want to know a niche where I see this a ton is comedy. Really? And you see it on Twitter too, right? If you see these comedic Twitter accounts, less so on Twitter than on TikTok and

Instagram, but people that are just really funny, people don't want to buy stuff from funny people. If that's their brand, right? Hear me out. Right, right, right. If you're Nick Huleski and your brand is how to buy a business and you're funny, that's the cherry on top. That makes you better.

But if your brand is funny, and we've, we've talked about this. You're like, I should open a parody account and don't do it because people don't buy from them. Robert Sterling is an example of that. I'm just curious to see how he's, I'm sure he's doing fine, but he's funny. He's like a parody account. And sometimes he tweets something beautiful and insightful and poetic. And I read it and it, I think everyone has got no reach. That's not just that, but people are like, is he being real?

Is this a joke? Are we? Where's the joke in here? Chris Bakke is another one. Like, every now and the. then he'll say something serious. And it's like, is this, are, and that's friction. The last thing you want is for people to have friction when they're reading your content.

I think what you're articulating is the fact that in business, distribution is incredibly important. In fact, like there's a saying in the venture world, first time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution because it doesn't matter how good your product is if you can't sell it. And you can't sell it without people knowing about what your product is. So you have to know what distribution is. And that's, for me, that's why I become so obsessed with content. I think that's why you become so obsessive content. It's because all of a sudden it's like, whoa, this is a cheat code.

If you do good content, you build an audience, I have distribution. And then I can do whatever business because I'm business agnostic. I'm not dogmatic about which types of businesses I invest in. I'm agnostic. I just want to be interested in the business and have employees that I can take care of and that I can gamify and make sure that I'm growing. So all of a sudden, if I have then an audience, it makes my ability to choose whatever a business I want much easier and I can leverage that into selling and take audience, take social

media out of it. If you have a business, you have to figure out how to sell that business, period. I mean, I don't mean sell it. Right. Sell your product or service. Sell your product. So how are you going to do it? Is it paper click?

Is it SEO? Is it the best way to do it is to build trust and the best way to build trust at scale is through social media. So that's why for us, I know we're obsessed with it right now. And even more so if you're actually doing business things or have done business things because 80, 90% of guys out there have not. Like they tasted making money on content and they're like, oh, content is the business. Right. Whereas people like Alex Hormozzi, they're actually doing things and he's actually done things.

And that's why he has millions of followers because I would argue he's not a guru. I would argue that a guru is someone that hasn't actually done or is doing things. Yeah. Well, I talked to a... I talked to a YouTuber this week that I can't name. I'll tell you offline. I'm very rich. Anyways, there's two camps.

People who know YouTube and people who know business. And on YouTube, I knew more about business than 95% of the YouTubers. And then of the guys who actually knew business, I knew 95% more about YouTube. than they knew about YouTube. That's why I hit this niche and I grew and business has been fantastic because he understood the distribution as well as the product where sometimes people just focus on the product. I'm not here to grow my audience. If you build it, if you build it, they'll come.

Yeah, I don't worry about that. I don't worry about that. I don't look at the numbers. The guy who says he doesn't look at the numbers, it cannot take his eyes off the numbers. Spoiler alert. He looks at the numbers. I got something else for you. You ready?

I do have more about the content stuff, but I'm going to, I don't want people to stop listening. So I'll save that for another pod. How's that for transparency? All right. I went to a concert last night with my son Brady. And I'm wearing a shirt right now. Okay. If you're watching on YouTube, taking back Sunday, I've seen this band probably 17 times more than any other band in my life.

It's great band. And Brady loves it. Have they taken back Sunday yet? They're still working at it. Wow. It's a grind band. It's a grind. Something very interesting happened at the show.

So this was at the Southside Ballroom, which is in downtown Dallas. So sweet. And I would guess there were two to three thousand people there. Okay. Standing room only. Got one big stage, a couple bars on each side. And why? What's so funny?

Whenever I hear standing room only, I always think of, oh, there was so many people there. And you're like, so there's 35 people there, standing room only. There were literally no chairs. Anyway, it was. But there were no chairs. There's no seats, right? And something interesting happened. So you know that time in between sets, the opener comes out.

They sing, they sung 10 songs. And then taking me like Sunday had to set up all their gear. And it takes longer than it should. It took 45 minutes. And so at minute 35, Adam Lazara, who is the lead singer, his voice came out. And everyone knows his voice. And they're like, hey, guys, this is Adam Lazara. And everyone starts cheering.

And they're like, oh, he's coming out. He's coming out. The moment when the artist comes out is just magical. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, hey, guys, is Adam Lazara. Hey, while you're waiting, go ahead and pull out your phones, open your browser and type in set. Dot.

Live. That's a website. Set. Dot live. And you go to that website and enter your email and you're going to be entered to win a personalized video for me, a free t-shirt. And maybe you can come out on tour with us. Yeah. It was a commercial.

Okay. I don't know. I've never heard of a killer. I, that. I've never heard of set. dot live and I yes it was because it was a kind of a it was a bait and switch oh adam he's coming out he's coming out he's coming out yeah guys this is adam lazara i want you to go to w w w wdardt target dot com backslash adam lazario backslash soccer balls for kids you're like

whoa what what just happened here and i i looked around and like people were because this is like this is a new marketing channel i don't care about sett dot live i didn't do a deep dive on them but i care about new marketing channels. Okay. I start looking around. And it's like mixed. Some people are just kind of, huh. And some people pull out their phone and I can tell they're doing it.

And I'm like, this is very interesting. This is why I've literally been to probably 130 to 150 shows or concerts, right? Okay. I've never, ever experienced this. And why not? It's a captive audience. It is the most relevant audience that are in love with one or two specific things. Maybe the genre, maybe that art.

Why aren't people partnering with artists big and small from Taylor Swift all the way to unknown emo band to do this? Well, dude, okay, like there's the one tangent, which is going to be all the ideas that you could do this with. But then there's the other tangent. What's the one thing you hate when you send somebody a newsletter or a link or you're trying to get them to click on something? Friction. Right? We hate friction. Mm-hmm.

Why wasn't there like an SMS push notification? Why wasn't there a QR code? Why wasn't there like something that made it easier? You had to pull out your phone. I mean, Ticketmaster had all our emails. Yeah, you had to open the browser and type in set dot lot. Like how many more people could you have converted by just having it frictionless? Or having a QR code displayed on the curtain.

Super easy. Hey, take your phone out. Take a picture of this. Like, it's the easiest thing in the world. but I guarantee 20% of the audience, 20% more would have clicked on that had it been easier for them to click on. But to probably the point that you wanted to make, what a cool way to meet artists that you've always wanted to meet.

Oh, dude, I know. Wouldn't that be rad? I was watching John Nolan up there on the guitar thinking, that guy's just a dude. He lives in a $600,000 home in Wilmington, North Carolina. Don't ask me how I know that. And he's got like, he's got like 3,000 Instagram followers. or something. And he's one of the most, in my opinion, those brilliant artists of our time. And he's just a dude. And I want to have him on the podcast. And I want to ask him, how much money do like mid-range artists like

you guys make? Because we know what Taylor Swift makes. We know what a guy makes in the bar, $100 bucks and tips. What do you make? What was your best year ever? Are you a millionaire from this? Do you make $100,000 a year? Did your money come from T-shirts? Does it come from Spotify? Does it come from touring? Like, I know you can Google some of this stuff. But I actually, found a viral YouTube video. Oh my gosh, dude. Hear me out. Hear me out. I know, I know. Keep going. One way on YouTube, if you want to see what's trending, what's popular, is find, find a YouTube creator that has one or more videos that like 100x the amount of views as subscribers, right? So there's this random Nashville country guy.

No, he has like 5,000 subscribers. And he had a video called, how much do touring musicians make, okay? How much do touring musicians make? And it had millions of views because it's a question that's not answered on the internet. I've literally been asking this since I was in high school. I'm just so curious, you know, these guys that play in 3,000 to 5,000 person stadiums, is that good money? And I can do the math.

I can, you know. And it changes. There's a reason why they sell merch. It's because they don't make all the gate, right? They have to pay the venue in order to rent it. They have a crew. Spotify screws them. Spotify screws them.

And so their merch is where they make a lot of money. But what you're saying is blowing my mind because what we saw, great, we're going back to content. What we saw on Twitter over the last five years are these big accounts learning how to monetize and turning it into a business. How could that be applied to other platforms that have audience? Music is one of them, right? Music is one of them.

I'm trying to think of something else. because he may not necessarily be huge on Instagram or Twitter, but if he puts out that he's playing a show, he's going to get, I don't know, 250,000 people to come to his shows, right? They're going to go on 50 dates.

They're going to be all over the country. Each show is probably going to have between 5,000 and 10,000 people, right? That's a lot of people on eyeballs. It's high intent. So, like, I get the set dot live, but could you be doing something better that is taking advantage of that?

on it. Oh, he's nodding. My friend, you are a dirty boy. Okay. I'm a dirty boy. Dirty Dids and the Dund, Derrchip. Power through segment number two. So I thought about this before. Do you remember at SM Bash when that boring guy spoke? Sorry if you're listening, but you were boring. Oh, every talk? Except my. He, the first thing he did was like, hey, guys, I just wrote a book. It's on Amazon. It really helps the rankings if you can buy my book. And you're all here in one place. I don't think anyone did it, right? So that's go against what I'm about to say. But I think you can do that right. And I think you could be the guru, the smart young whippersnapper that partners with artists like Adam Lazara that knows nothing about business.

And you can go in there and be like, dude, Adam, why don't you have a newsletter? Why don't you have a podcast? Oh, my gosh. Hear me out. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. Yeah. Soup it in a good way. Oh, in a good way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hear me out. Do you know what it takes?

And I think you do. So just play along with me and say you don't. Do you know what it takes to rank a podcast in like the top 50 of whatever category? I actually try to research this and I'm not just playing along. I still don't get it. So yeah, some today I get like 30, 20 to 30 new subscribers to this podcast. Okay. But if I have a tweet about the podcast, do really, really well.

I'll get one to 200 in a day. A hundred new subscribers in one day on Apple podcast is enough to put it in the top 50 for a competitive category. Okay. Wow. That's not a lot. It is absolutely not a lot. So now imagine this. Imagine Taking Back Sunday has a podcast.

Yes. They have a podcast where it's like behind the scenes on tour. They're talking or like behind the songs. Like they just need to talk. But someone needs to produce it for them. they need to distribute it they need to help him with strategy then help them collect emails why is adam lazare not saying Chris himself not hear me out stop from the stage not a recording not a bait and switch recording like i heard but like hey guys we just launched a podcast can you please

it would mean a lot if you pull out your phones just subscribe there's no ads we just want to stay in touch with you that's 2,000 subscribers not in one night but every night on tour they have 80 tour dates they could be like a top five podcast. They could monetize it with ads. They could sell merch through their ecommerce store. Like why isn't every artist doing that? Because they don't know. They don't know.

Someone could partner with it. I'm not saying that people should go out and start bands to start a podcast. You should partner with bands like this to help them with it and take a cut of all their ads. Take a 30% cut. I'm going to quote from a book that both of you, both you and I have read, they're kept from the truth because they know not where to find it. Okay. It's true. They just don't know.

It's true. I can't wait for the four people who, like, they're going to be like, oh, I know that. They get it like text us. But, dude, they just don't know. Okay, this is crazy. You and I purposely do not send our ideas to each other because we want it to be fresh. Right? We call each other the Frize Bros because we keep it so fresh.

All right. We're out. We keep it so fresh and so clean. One of my ideas, and this was the one that I was like, I'm not sure I want to talk about it on the podcast. Last week, I'm going to go on a little. detour here. Last week, my brother-in-law reached out to me. He's on the board of this conference that's getting up and started.

And he's, hey, we were talking about getting the word out for this conference. And I said, my brother-in-law has podcasts. He could help you guys get started. So they may reach out to you. I'm like, okay, cool. So they reach out to me. We're having a conversation. And they're going to fly me out.

I'm going to go to the conference, help them with some content. They're going to pay me for it. It's great. But as I'm having that conversation, In the back of my mind, I've already been thinking about, we should do a podcast that's all in for SMB Twitter. And then I think, oh, else we should do. My brother-in law is really connected in the sniff space. We should do an all-in podcast for the sniff space.

Like, that would make a lot of sense. And then as I'm thinking this, I get a text from somebody who gets about 500 to 1,000 downloads per episode for their podcast. who makes $3,600 per podcast. Per episode? Yep. Per episode. And I'm like, that's an outrageous number. He shouldn't be making $3,600 per episode, but he is.

And I started thinking, what if we helped these niche industries find the top four or five people and created the all-in podcast for those industries? We wouldn't need thousands of listeners or downloads or subscribers. but because they're niche and they're high intent and they're going to be getting listeners, we could still charge per ad slot as if they're getting 10,000 downloads per episode. Right. And they just don't know how to do it. If I wouldn't listen to a sniff podcast right now and be like,

Hi, I'm Julie Baker and I am the chief nursing officer. I don't want to listen to that. I want to listen to people who have chemistry who know each other that are funny, that are smart, that are compelling, that have actual experience. talk about my industry. That's what makes All In great is every week I'm like, I want to hear the Allend guys talk about this. I can't wait to tune in and hear what they have to say. And if you could replicate that throughout all these niche industries and take a cut of that somehow,

I don't know exactly what the business model would look like. To me, that's a massive opportunity. And so we had almost the same idea, obviously a little bit different. But I don't know why they're not doing it. I don't know why people aren't doing it more. This is the Agora for podcasts. Do you remember where Agora newsletters are? I know I have agoraphobia, but I don't know what Agora is.

This is different. This is, I want to say there are like a $500 million plus company that just has like 40 to 60 newsletters that are all insanely niche. But they're all in lucrative industries, healthcare, financial services, everything. High intent, wealthy. Yeah. Yeah. They sell subscriptions to these that are two to three thousand a year.

plus ads on them and they print money. But if you take like your average CPM as in what you would get from an ad in a newsletter, it's 10 to 20x that because of how niche it is. The niche is the rich. The niche is that's the feature. Yeah. So this is that for podcast. Riches and niches.

That's right. I totally agree, especially for artists. Like they already have the skill of holding attention. They already have people who trust them. The reason you like taking back Sundays is because you like to listen to their music. They already have the audio aspect dialed in. Why would they not launch a podcast? It makes no sense to me.

That is freaking. And they have all the equipment. Like they have the sound guys who can engineer it. They could easily get the mics. Like they're used to it. That's their job. Their job is like performing in front of people. Why not capture that stuff behind the scenes?

Yeah. How many artists are out there that you could do this with? Thousands. And you release it once a week and you just call it Taking Back Sunday. We're releasing it on a Sunday then? Yeah. Is that the, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. That's a good idea. That's a great idea. You just copy and paste the same playbook with everyone. Yeah.

You do it one time. Genius. That's right. What else you got for me? That was it. You took my last idea. I just think in general, it's really funny on Twitter. And you see this both with stocks and with crypto.

And I used to be, I used to be guilty of this. Let's say that you're, just a crypto bro and you're shilling the coin base stock. Okay. Okay. Every time someone list out a dozen reasons to buy a stock and you're going to be able, I hope you're going to be able to play on this really well. People get much more ridiculous as they go down the line. Right. It's like, here's 13 reasons why you should buy coin base stock. Number one, they have more cash on their balance sheet than their market cap is. And it's like, oh, wow, that's legit. Okay. Number two, Binance just went out of business.

So now they own the market. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Number three, Brian Armstrong, the founder. His mom just got cancer. Now he has a chip on his shoulder to really drive profits.

It's like, well, okay. Number four. Coinbase starts with a C. C is the third letter of the alphabet. Number five. You're like, whoa, what? Wait, when did we cross? Everyone.

It's just so funny how it's very clear. There's only like a couple good reasons. And they're always going to be the first two. Yeah, were there variations of the same reason? Yeah. It's like, number one, Coinbase has more cash on their balance sheet than their market cap. Number two, Coinbase could buy every person in America a happy meal if they wanted.

Number three, they have enough cash to last for seven months, which their competitors don't. You're like, okay, we get it. Number five, cancer is a terminal illness. So he's really going to be fired up to drive profits. My favorite with those, and I'm so mad we went away from this, was when they had the headline, Top 13 reasons. Coinbase is going to annihilate the competition. And then they said, number seven will shock you.

It got me every time. Every time. I knew. I even knew that was just a tactic. And I was like, I got to see what number seven is. I still got to see it. I think BuzzFeed invented that. Did they?

They were good at that. They were good. Why don't they do it anymore? you think. It's probably just, hey, what does your boy CK say? What's the direct quote from your boy CK right here? iterator die. It's not that small. Micro triggers me every time. The effectiveness of a growth hack is directly correlated to its lifespan. The more effective a growth hack, the less time you got to milk that growth hack and vice versa. Okay. Okay. So, so, just not effective anymore. Yeah. Yeah, it's played out. That's pretty funny. I have a personal

thing from this week. Let's hear it. My wife is a pet person. She loves cats, freaking loves cats. In fact, when we were married and we didn't have kids, Chris would always tease me that my wife's favorite line was pets are people too. Is that why her nickname for you is peeve, pet peeve? It is actually. It is. Yeah. It's very interesting. But when When we had Royce, I was like, I can't have a cat anymore. I can't do it. I don't hate cats. I actually liked them.

They would always come sit on my lap and I'd pet them and they'd purr. But they wake me up in the morning. My wife calls it the zoomies. When they, in the morning, they're like just running around. They got all this energy. And I was like, no, I don't want to deal with that anymore. Okay, we have kids. She's been wearing me down.

She's, can we get a cat? Can we get a cat? I'm like, I don't know. And we were like very close to getting a pet. And then we found out Royce has allergies. And I only voice has allergies. Good for you. And the only voice of allergies,

Otto has allergies. I'm like, Sweetie, I would totally get a cat. I would, but for the children. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

So what does my wife do? She goes on Google. She does her research. She's like, Nick, we can get rid of these allergies. We can take them to the allergy clinic. And with a year and a half worth of shots,

they'd be fine. And I was like, oh, that's a year and that's a year and a half away. What? Oh, okay. It's never going to happen. Oh,

we're going to, we're going to stick them full of mercury for 18. months and then he'll be safe. Is that what you're saying? Stick of full of mercury. So anyways, so my kids go to the allergy clinic. They get treated. They're tested. They're like better. I don't know what better means, but they're not as allergic. And then at the same time, just to be extra safe, she tells me, did you know that they breed cats and you can score them on the scale? It's like hypoallergenic cats. I'm like, oh, okay. And so we're looking. We find these cats and they're like the best cats and they take their saliva and they test their saliva to see how

much allergy they have in their blood, piss. I don't know what the word is, whatever. And hey, well, these cats, they have the lowest levels of allergies. I'm like, oh, cool. She's like, so can we get one? So we're only going to harm our kids a little bit. Yeah. Just a outs. So she's like, can we get a cat? I'm like, okay, it's fine. It checks the boxes. The kids are no longer allergic. My wife has been a good trooper. I don't have kids that are six months old anymore. My kids want a pet. I think a dog would be better because I have four boys and there's no way like the boys are going to sit there and be like, comes in on my lap, Fido. Like, no, my kids are going to freaking chase them around the house because they're, they're cooligans. So we're getting,

she takes them up to Grass Valley or wherever this place is to see the cats just to make sure that there's no allergic reactions. She's been up there three times. It's an hour drive each way. She loves the cats. She's got a cat picked out. She called me on the way home from Capitol Camp two days ago and I was like, what would you think of two cats? I'm like, I think they'd be twice as annoying. I don't know what you want me to say. Well, if you think about it, they play with each other.

They wouldn't bug us as much. See, if she were smart, she would ask you right then how much Capital Camp cost? She didn't know. Turns out these cats cost $5,000 a piece. but we got a discount. So instead of paying $10,000, we paid $9,500. Oh, that's a deal. If you do the mask, that's like a, that's a 50% discount right?

Did I do that right? It is actually. 55, 55%. I come home. I've already had a litter box in my freaking bathroom. It's cat food. I'm already pissed. I'm just freaking, I'm irritated as heck.

But my kids do love it. And I'm going to be 100% with you, Chris. I haven't seen my wife this happy in years. Wow. Well, she's been married to you for 16, right? I know. There's a correlation there? In this case, correlation does equal causation.

I got a quick animal story for it, too, if you don't mind. Oh, you're an animal. I wasn't planning on telling you this, but it only happened two hours ago. So it's relevant. Okay. We go to the library right before this podcast. Whole family, my kids read a lot of books. So I send the kids in to go get their books so I can eat my Chick-fil-A in the van, right?

Yeah, sure. Of course. they wanted to bring the dog just to ride in the car with them. And so I'm getting into my salad and they open the van door and the dog sprints out. We're in front of the library where this nice Indian family is walking out. I don't know why I need to know their race, but sure, that's fine. Yeah, that's a good point. Edit that out, Muhammad.

Anyway, so my dog is very nice. He's not mean at all. He's a golden doodle. He looks nice. He's not like a Doberman, right? But some kids are afraid of dogs. Yeah. I was for years.

Okay. Yeah. Me too. Okay. Yeah. And so my dog has this thing where if you sprint, he thinks you're playing a game and he'll chase you like. And so this kid probably 12 or 13 carrying an armful of books. Oh, no.

Clearly terrified of dogs. And so I'm not exaggerating. It was like I was watching a skit because these books go flying. Like he somehow threw him up. And there were white pages everywhere all over the grass. And my dog is sprinting after him. And this kid isn't just running. He is screaming like bloody murder.

Ah! Oh my gosh. And my dog is like, oh, this is awesome. He wants to play. He wants to play. Like this kid is convinced if my dog catches him, he's going to die. When my dog just wants to lick him. And so I feel terrible.

So I'm like trying to get him. My wife gets out. We're all like trying to corner him. And he's, oh, everyone's. playing this game. And his family was laughing at him, which made it feel better. Okay, that was better. Yeah. And I was just apologizing. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And then I was very kind to victim shame him by saying, stop running. He's only chasing you because you're running. So you just need to stop running. And I thought that's much akin to telling a drowning person to stop panicking and just

swim. Right? I realized that after. And he did not, in fact, stop running. And And so then it only ended in one way. And my dog was just like, I'm going to add insult to injury. And he just squatted down. You're burning your dog? No. He just took a big old dump right in front of the door. And so we grabbed his collar as he was pooping.

And so that's my dog. That's it. Oh, my gosh. That's my dog story. You're like, and in like the chaos of it all, my wife somehow ate my chick filet. It was just so crazy. That'd be a problem. It would be a problem.

Wow. Well, it's a good day. It was a good one. Chris, it's good to see you. I have to tell you something else. In our last episode, you got really weird at the end and you said, Chris, I love you so much. I think about you at night.

You can see our retention drop off a cliff right as you start that. So no more weird stuff. It was like four seconds away from an ending. No more weird stuff. It was longer than that. Okay. I know how long four seconds is. Okay.

also I got to give a quick shout out to my sister-in-law Ariel she is a religious listener of this podcast and she always texts me stuff that she hears and I love you Ariel thank you for listening you're a great sister-in-law that's right so that's all I got that's it this was good hey what's up Ariel okay please stop listening now everyone oh my gosh