The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - How to Start the Brookstone of This Generation. HoldCo Bros Are Back! Ep #065

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

HoldCo Bros are back! In this episode, Nik and I talk about more creative and unconventional business ideas. We talk about a funky trampoline business idea, a viral mattress business, and how to build the Brookstone of the 21st century, focusing on unique impulse-buy products. We also discuss how to leverage creators to grow your business in ways that we haven’t talked about before.Learn more about Nik here:http://linktr.ee/cofoundersnikTimestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Opening Highlights00:41 The Trampoline Dilemma03:19 Trampoline Safety Kit Idea04:52 App-Based Safety Solution07:14 Expanding the Safety Concept15:11 Viral Trends and Business Ideas21:06 Finding the Hook: Niche and Trending Topics21:24 AI and Social Sentiment Analysis21:58 The Power of Social Media Metrics22:59 Building a Social Credit System24:11 Viral Products and the New Brookstone27:14 Pop-Up Shops: A Modern Retail Strategy32:44 Instagram Influencers and Business Models

Here's the idea. I say you literally take these products. You find the ones that are the most popular based on how many views or how many comments they're getting and you build. Welcome to the Kerner Office. This is part two of the HoldCobros episode that we started last week. Nick and I, we're going to talk about a kind of weird funky trampoline idea of business, mattress idea, building the Brookstone of the 21st Century, that weird small store in the mall that has viral, stupid impulse buy products. Then we're talking about using creators to grow your business, which we've talked about before. but in a different way. And I think you'll like it. So please subscribe, leave me a review, share with your friends.

Go check out in economics. That's the next podcast as well. And we'll see you next time. Okay. I have an idea that is a, it's a stupid idea. I'm, I'm gonna tell you right now.

So don't make me feel insecure because I know it's stupid. Okay. But I don't feel insecure. That doesn't happen anyway. I'm really secure. But I want you to try to make it better. Okay?

Yeah. Have you ever seen a video of like a trampoline? So us snowflake millennials, the trampolins that we buy nowadays have the big walls on them because we don't have them forbid we fall off the trampoline, right? And the trampoline in my backyard has a protective wall around it. They all come standard that way. You ever seen a video of those like going airborne and just like completely flying away? Yeah.

They're like big sales that just sit there in your backyard. Okay. True story. I have 20 acres of vacant land to the east of me, 20 acres of vacant land to the west of me. owned by other people. And the land to the west of me, the wind is always blowing when there's a big storm. It'll blow it to the west. Has exactly two trampolines on it right now from me because the wind, yeah, the wind picked him up, carried him over to the trees on the other side of my property.

And one time we got home from vacation and we're like, oh, our trampoline's gone. Oh, it's in the neighbor's yard. Okay, I guess we'll get another one. And I just never picked it up. It's still there. It's like a little one. Why did you know one? from 2017.

Oh, because it was completely trashed and broken. So one day I'm going to have to get those things because it's not my land and it's still there. Yeah, here we go. Here we go.

What's up? I was asking like, why didn't you go get it off of your neighbor's land? And you were like, you thought my question was, why did you get it so you could use it again? And your answer was, oh,

because it was trashed and broken. Yeah, if I could still use it, I would go get it. Right, right, right. But since it's trash and broke, just leave it on your neighbor's land. Go on, no foul. I got to quote George Cassanza right now in the episode where he has inappropriate relations with the janitor of his office. Okay. And his boss finds out.

And he goes, is that wrong? Was I wrong? Was that wrong? So that's my question. Is that wrong? Should I go get those trampolines? Oh, my-hmm. Somewhere out there, my neighbor is listening to this.

And he's like, what the heck? What? I got two trampolines back there. He'd rent those out for $30 a day. You know much money I could be making? That land's been vacant for decades and no one's ever there. So I'll get him eventually. Who's it hurting?

Anyway, my point is those things went airborne. And the second one I had staked down and it still went airborne. Okay. So here's the idea. And it's not a business. It's a product. And I think it would sell, but it wouldn't be a big business. And I think it's dumb on the surface.

I think you could, there's a word. world where you could sell like a trampoline safety kit, okay, where it's like I'm picturing a flag, like a little flag that you attach to the top of the sidewall that's just heavy enough to where if it's blowing in the wind, then the wind is too strong and you should freaking get your kids inside or they're going to be airborne too. That makes sense? Totally. So it's like if it's 20 mile per hour wind or more, the flag is waving and no one should be on the trampoline. Watch out. Whereas if it's not, it's a little windy, then whatever. it comes with that. It comes with a tie-down kit, maybe $50, maybe $100. And it's just peace of mind for a parent to feel like their investment is safer in that their children are safer. And I think it would sell because you could use short form video of trampolines going airborne, right? You can even make it a little funny or you can Photoshop some kids in there or something. And I think the fear would sell really where well. So we're going to brainstorm on this. I'm freaked out at the moment, though, because like, is this

a real problem. Like, are there like dozens of kids who die a year because the trampoline got picked up and moved to the other yard? Well, let's find out. Like, that is just crazy to me. Because my first thought is, I don't need to help them have like a flag to say it's windy. I'd be like, help them move out of Texas. I'm moving company.

All right. So here's my first idea. I'm on board with the flag. Here's the problem with the flag. The flag is a. is a reactive mechanism. You need to see it, and then it tells you to do something.

What if instead, the trampoline maker charged, since apparently it's a problem in Texas, I don't know, 50 cents a month for an app. And all the app did was send them notifications when the weather

was outside of a certain parameter. Let's say winds hit at... Okay. Okay. Or like lightning, right, from like a thunderstorm or hail storm was coming. So, and like everybody's been sitting in church when all of a sudden you just hear, and it's an amber alert.

I would think that there's some way to allow your phone to notify you if something's happening. But that would be, I think, something that parents would be really interested in. It's like, okay, I'll pay a buck a month, 12 bucks a year. I don't know what it would have to be, but let's just say it's a buck a month, 12 bucks a year. For the peace of mind that this app's going to notify me when there's inkling. weather so that I can go pull my kids inside. All right. Can I level that up with a distribution strategy?

Absidoyantly. To me, this is like a white whale business because you build an app. I don't think it would cost that much or take that long. And then you just need one customer. You need one or two customers. And you say, listen, we're not going to pay you anything. But your trampoline is now going to be better than all the other trampolines out there because it's going to come with this app.

And to be fair, like how many competitors are there in the trampoline market? Right. Yeah. Right. Maybe you go to Springfree, right? because they're like the premium option. And you say, do your customers not have to pay, but you're going to pay us a licensing fee. Basically, anytime anyone downloads that app, you're going to pay us a dollar a month or $1 one time or $50 one time or whatever.

And that's going to enable you to sell more trampling because it's going to come. It's going to be tech enabled. I think it's going to be hard to get a consumer to pay for this. I think it would be easier to find one decision maker that would pay a little bit for this for everyone that downloads the app and actually uses it. Interesting. I just like it because it's like sell to one to sell to a million. right you've got to get that one decision maker you could do that before you even build the app right yeah because it's almost ready i can't imagine the app's really hard to build you're just

tapping into existing i don't know weather reporter sources and then notifying people after it exceeds certain parameters that you set for it you could even sell the app to other like outdoor kids product type companies right where it's like you're all right you're going to be the pay me this much and i'm going to sell to all the trampoline companies or pay me this much or pay me this much and you're exclusive to the trampoline companies. There could be a premium model for a physical product if you were able to, I'm like way out of my depth here, but install some component to the trampoline itself that was, that could easily recognize it as airborne. And then immediately, again, this would cost a lot of money.

I don't know how much it would cost, but like immediately disengage all the springs. So that the mat itself just drops out so it doesn't become a sale. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Like, the reason it becomes a sail is because it's lifting up from underneath. I think if you ignore physics, it makes sense. Why? I don't know how you would disengage all the springs, like technically speaking. Well, like, you put together a trampoline.

They come fitted with little slots. And so the springs are hooked on the one side to the metal base. And then they're hooked on the other side to the canvas, whatever you want to call it. I could see a scenario. know, if you built it out, that there's a mechanism that disengages on the metal side, right? Like, it just elongates. I don't even know how you would do it, but just disengages and then makes the trampoline. So that tarp or whatever, the canvas just drops to the ground. And yeah, you probably lose the canvas, but at least your kids are not airborne in the neighbor's yard.

I could see it being more of something like where the walls, like if the walls have enough wind pressure, they would just like collapse, right? And so they can no longer catch wind because I bet you anything, it's the walls that are making these things really fly a lot more than just the trampoline all by itself. Well, the problem with that is like the point of the walls is you don't want your kids to fly out of it. Right. Right.

And so if it was if the walls were weak enough where the wind pressure would cause it to collapse, like it's probably not going to catch your kids if they're flying off with the trampoline. Yeah. I'm thinking, I'm picturing like a hinge. Like if the walls were on like a hinge that only collapsed when enough pressure was put on them. So even if the kids were like jumping on it and like the wall starts to cave in on them, it's like, oh, geez, yeah, better go inside. You know what I'm saying? Dude, someone's going to be

listening to this yelling at their eyes. I know. That sounds so stupid right now. We need to stop. The point is, the point is, and I think there's a business idea here is finding things that parents are willing to spend money on in order to give themselves peace of mind. Like, if I lived in Texas and that was a problem, I'd spend money on that because it's like, yeah, I want you to notify me if there's a twister. period, right? And that's probably applicable sort of framework to use to find other business opportunities. What are parents going to spend money on? Another way you could do this. Like a year ago, I talked to the owner of trampolines.com randomly. From Twitter, I don't know how he found me or I found

him. But what they do is they sell in-ground trampolines, which are not susceptible to being blown around. And then they sell the install. And so I think he actually paid for a consulting call with me to figure out how to build a nationwide network of installers. Because their problem wasn't selling in-ground trampolins. Their problem was finding reliable people nearby to dig the frigging hole to bury the things. There's probably a play there where you could like refer business to these guys or I don't know.

Yeah, that's interesting. Because they've already got a network of people who they have actually sold to. Yeah. And it's like, oh, actually for everyone else that you go out to do this install. And it may not work for them, right? Because they're doing in-ground trampolines. they're not going to be airborne. But like the idea is there are probably networks of these people who are doing installs of

the tree house or kids play kit or like the swing set or other trampolines. And that could be an add-on service where it's like, here's the distribution channel for you to sell and you'll get X percentage of whatever we sell. This is reminding me of another dumb idea that I had from 13 years ago. Remember when the tornadoes came through Alabama? Uh-uh. What happened? I'm kidding.

Yes. I remember. I know. Jeez, Louise. You bring it up like every week. Don't embarrass me in front of my friends. Mohamed, edit this out. Muhammad, if anything makes me sound bad, edit it out. Anyway, so this is a dumb idea, but I think you could make it good. So tornadoes came through Alabama.

What does everyone say when tornadoes come through? Probably don't know because you've never lived in an area like that. Grab your sister and your wife. Same person. Get in the cellar. Is that not what they say? Cellar. You get a mattress.

You get a mattress. And you like get in the back. tub, you get a mattress, you put it over you. Or you get under a mattress somehow. Really? Yeah. Okay. It's the thing.

So when this happened, you live in Alabama, everyone's heard that. But then the tornado actually comes. And it's like, all right, let's, we know what to do. Get the mattress. Have you ever tried picking up and lifting a mattress over you? Yeah, dude. I'm trying to think of an analogy. That's like saying, all right, if you get in a car wreck, you're about to get in a car wreck,

just hold on to the wheel real tight. You won't go anywhere. Hey, if there's a hail storm outside, grab a sack of potatoes and you're going to run in the street for three miles in order to protect itself. It's like one of the things you never actually think about how it's going to impact you. Anyway, I get it. If you're in a hailstorm, just don't get hit by hail. It's not that hard. Oh, what the hell?

I saw that coming in a while away. I had to do it. Anyway, so I thought, I wonder if you could patent this very simple technology and license it to a mattress, man you've. where it's like literally just straps underneath a mattress, like a carrying strap. It's like, okay, for movers, it's easier to carry. And if for some weird reason you're in a tornado, it's easier to pick up and protect yourself. Just like a simple strap and you get it patented and then you license it.

And it's like for every mattress you sell, give me five bucks. That would be interesting. Here's a problem with it. It's like, think about it like this. In an airplane, let's say that of all the airplanes in all in the United States, there are, you combine all the seats from all the airplanes, and let's just say there's like a million seats. I'm just guessing. I don't know. I have no idea how many seats there are. And then you said, hey, let's just like increase the length of the seatbelt by six inches each.

Yeah, okay, that's six inches times a million seats. Like, it very quickly adds up to a lot. And these are like really low margin businesses. So I do wonder if the mattress company would be like, dude, in order for us to add the handles, you know how much. that would cost. Like, this is how many mattresses we're producing each year. It's going to cost us an extra,

like, $10 million. And that's, like, all of our bottom line. But I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it would be more suited. Like,

there's got to be like a shark tank product. Have you ever seen those, have you ever seen those commercials with the guy who's like, this sticks to anything? Like water is gushing out of this tank and he like stops the leak. Mm-hmm. So I would think maybe you have those and you buy them aftermarket. And it's Velcro.

And it just is really. Direct. to consumer. Exactly, right? And it's really sticky and it just attaches to the mattress itself. And so then, you know, you don't have to worry about convincing the mattress company. You just sell it directly to the consumer. And it's like, make this a part of your tornado kit. Don't forget about your handlebars. I don't even know, like, I don't know what you would call them. Tornaudle handles. There's someone right now saying, oh my gosh, tornado handles.com. I have to buy that. I have to buy that. I wonder if the play is to go direct to consumer, A, to make money, B, to show how much demand.

there is or not to a mattress manufacturer and say, hey, there's something to this. We've done the research. It's going to cost you an extra $7 per mattress. You can pass that on. And we'll give you an exclusive to this technology. That's a cool product. It's not a terrible idea. It's not your worst.

Thanks. Thanks, Mom. So you posted something, I can't remember if it was this the week or last week, whatever. And I didn't read the whole post. I just saw like the hook. And it was like, this video got 80 million. views. I think there's a business here. And this is what I would do if I was like trying to take advantage of it. Was that the mini jeeps? It was not the mini jeeps. It was like the guy in a river and you

would buy a bunch of inflatable stuff. I can't remember who it was. Anyways, like the point of it was that you were finding this viral video and then you were telling people how there could possibly be a business based on this. And I thought that was really interesting to me of, and this isn't necessarily novel, right? Like, anytime something goes viral, the hawk to a girl or founder mode or like anything like that, a product magically appears. So there's obviously people who are looking at the internet and just like looking for virality in order to trigger a business idea and they're just like trying to make money. It's like some of the idea that we were talking about earlier where it's a fad like Nikita Beer and he made really good money in the short window of time. That's like

these people's whole business model. I think that's stressful. I'm not. I'm not. like advocating for that. But what I do think is interesting is there are these businesses or moments in time that you can take advantage of. Perfumatic is one of those. You posted this video. It got a ton of views. People started reaching out and asking about it. And so we're building a business off of it. I think there have been some attempts at this. I can't remember the name of the app, but who's the guy that's always like, are you on TikTok? Gary V. Gary V talked about this app where it shows what's trending and like Twitter has a trending tab and there's break the web. That's what it is. There's like break the web. Twitter has the trending tab and it shows you like the trending topics.

I think if there was somebody who just like really loved social media, they could build a community that very similar to the way these, let me back up, you're in crypto and you've been in discords on crypto. Many of these discord groups are like pump and dump where it's ain't no kind of about it. It starts in the discord group. It, it, gains momentum. And like, if you're a part of the right Discord group, you can make $2 million because you caught the wave early and everybody else who's buying later, like has missed out on that wave. I think there could be something like a group that you could build that is just around virality.

So like you find out about founder mode in the first 12 hours, not four days later. You find out about Hoctua in the first six hours, not three days later. And you don't necessarily act on every single one. one of these ideas, but maybe you own a printing company and you see the Hoc2a girl and you, I don't know, throw up a landing page really quickly and start selling some banners or like, I think there's a bunch of different ways that small businesses could actually take advantage of these viral trends if they were able to catch them early. Like that's the biggest thing is you have to catch it early because if you're catching it when everybody else sees it, there's already a

landing page. Somebody else has already like staked out that opportunity. So creating a group, that you charge for people to be a part of where essentially you're curating viral content and then sending out updates really quickly when something is trending or like when something you're like, hey, this has all the markers of something that's going to go viral. I'm sure there's like a science tool that some of these companies do. Take a lookout for this. And so again, you're not acting on every single one of these. But if you're like you and I, it's like, oh, I think I could do this business because of

this infrastructure that we've built. Boom, you jump on it and you make $100,000. What do you think? I like it. So are you saying that you make money by arranging the community and charging for access? It could be both-sided, right? But I just don't know the community that currently exist. Like, if there was a community that currently existed that we could join, it would tell us something on the uptick of it going viral? Like, I think we would join that. I just don't know that it exists. It exists with Twitter or Instagram just because it's shown to you in your feed. But something that's like,

hey, this just passed 400,000 views and it's passed it in less than two hours, I think this is something that's going to hit 80 million. You should hop on it. So I'm speaking more about creating the community that sends out those signals as opposed to joining a community. I like it. This must exist, right? There's got to be people out there.

Maybe the play is to find the WhatsApp, the Discord, the Facebook groups, the Twitter groups that are already doing this to aggregate them. into one, like the community of all communities, because it's got to be happening, right? We really haven't spent any time looking to like basically be a secret shopper in each of these communities and to use an API to just push all the messages into one place. And then instead of it being an actual community, it could just be like a SaaS product, 10, 20 bucks a month where you just get a feed of what all these people are saying. Or you could curate it and like pay a little bit to people who are already known,

not influencers, but people who like see viral trends early, then they submit the viral trend to the group, right? Like so it's almost crowdsourced in a sense. It's not just, oh, we own the community and we are going to send you the stuff that's going viral, but the community itself is also sending things that they're finding that potentially could be viral. That would be hard because then it's like quality control and like how do you make sure it's not too spammy? Because like, how are you supposed to keep track of all these things that could go viral? but that could be a way as well to get viral content.

I think you're spot on with the non-scalable human aspect of this because I've looked for tools that do this. And I've paid for some. And I always churned a month or two later because they don't work or they don't work well. Like even that break the web app, you pull it up and it's like Paris Olympics, Paris Olympics gymnastics. It's like that's not, yeah, I know that's trending, but that's not what I'm looking for. I want to find the Haktua girl, right? Like, I want to find something that niche and trending. Edit that out, Mahomet.

No, so I think there's something to that because I've been looking for that and I haven't found it. There are companies, you go Google it and they, like SaaS products, they claim to do this. And it's just not what we're looking for. Like, you did something similar to this seven years ago when you built the algorithm when you partnered with McAfee, right? Like, you were essentially predicting where the coin was going to move based on social sentiment that you were mining from Reddit. Like that was basic, maybe Reddit and Discord.

I can't remember all the groups. So it's like, if you were doing that seven years ago, there has to be something with AI agents that could be crawling the web and finding this stuff. Like, it doesn't necessarily even have to be all human in its input. But anyways. I think why the human aspect is important is because like everyone's on social media, many people around multiple platforms, but everyone is. has their one favorite, right, that they just know inside and out, especially if they're creating

on that platform. Twitter, for instance, if you and I see a tweet pop up by Isaac French and we see in the first hour, it has 300,000 views. To 99% of people, that means nothing. To us, that's like, holy crap, this is going to get 20 million views. Right. And they do. We just know what to look for because we're addicted and we're degenerates, right?

And our wives present us silently. And our children don't know who we are. like we would be great I just heard that we would be great candidates to like contribute to a community like this because we know what to look for right and like of course

you could find software that could say an if then simple formula where if 100,000 views in the first hour push it forward but I'm not seeing anything that's doing that don't you'll be really interesting like what if there was like a social credit ranking system where Chris submits something and it's at whatever, 100,000 views,

but it goes to 10 million. And it's like, okay, Chris gets X number of points because that was a successful early viral post. But then you submit something the next day and it's like, you submitted it and it was at 10,000 views and it goes to 50,000. It's like, that wasn't viral. So some type of a mechanism to be like, here are the best individual predictors of viral. morality. So when, like when Chris posts something, oh, shoot, I'm going to go like, look at that. More weight is assigned to it. Yeah.

Maybe. Yeah. I think you can even get very creative with this. And if this actually became a real business, the people that submit the stuff that ends up being the most accurate, they could actually get equity in the product, in the community, in whatever. It's like rebuilding Reddit. You're building a social credit system, getting people to upvote, downvote.

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Can I take that idea and it adds to an idea that I already had that's very similar. Okay. So there's this guy on Instagram. Mick, I think he's European, maybe Serbian, M-I-K dot Xenon. Mick Zenon, okay?

And he has 2.1 million followers. And all he does is post these viral videos of dumb, stupid products from like Alibaba and Ali Express. Okay. These videos get tens of millions of views. I don't know if he's filming them, if he has a studio, if these Chinese companies know him because he's so popular. And so they send him stuff. And then he has like a little home studio where he films the usage of these dumb products.

Or if like the company itself is giving him the videos. I think he's filming them because they all have a similar theme to them. They all look about the same. For instance, hands-free canopy, 17 million views. Some of them only get a few hundred thousand or a floating cooler. right? A floating cooler, like for your pool or for the lake. Yeah. Okay. Or let's see, a shoe and boot removal tool. Like the stuff that like if it showed up at my house, I would look at my wife be like, what are we spending money on? This is so dumb. Like you wouldn't be surprised.

Right? You'd be like, you bought this again? You bought a back scratcher again? We have 17 of them. So an instant trailer lift product that's like 41 million views. And it's relevant because I have a lawnmower, a riding mower now, and I need to lift that thing up. And the lifts are like $300. And I am about to spend that, right? But this plastic thing is like $20 and it accomplishes the same purpose.

So here's the idea. Okay. I say you literally take these products, you find the ones that are the most popular based on how many views or how many comments they're getting. And you build a brookstone of. the 21st century. Brookstone is? Yeah, of course.

Stupid stores in the mall. Yeah, describe it. Yeah, it's a store in the mall that basically sells all kinds of dumb products like these that are like very virulable, very visual. They sell really well. Now, you could say, let's make an e-commerce store and just do the same thing. People are doing that. That's played out.

That's really hard because you've got to use Facebook ads. I think this needs to be an in-person business where you stock your store with 20 to 30 products. It's very small footprint, less than a thousand square feet, but you just have these products that people love and they're visual. And you could have a screen out front of the store. It could be a store in the mall, right? Yeah. And the screen is just showing loops of these products. And the margins are stupid, just stupid margins. And it's just like it's the new Brookstone. What do you think? I really like that idea. I got really surprised by that. Well, because we know there's a market for it, right? And people want to go and see and test these products out.

I remember going to Brookstone? I was like, I want to sit in a chair that massages, and I want to play with the helicopter that also functions as a pizza oven. They're just like random crap. And they're impulse buys. They're totally,

which the mall is perfect for. They're total impulse buys. Do you know what a pop-up shop is? Okay, I've heard of them, but I don't know how they actually work. Yeah. So do you know? Yeah.

Tell me. Okay, for instance, we went as a family, to a pop-up candy museum in Dallas the year ago. And it was next to like a Foga de Chia restaurant. And they're typically put in like high income, high traffic, outdoor retail areas that are that already do really well. They're put in spaces that are currently vacant, but probably won't be vacant for long.

So they're able to sign short term or month-a-month leases. They pay a little more, but they don't have to lock in. And you can introduce a concept that might be temporary, like by design, like a candy museum or an ice cream museum. Or you could just be testing the concept. And then once it works, you say, okay, we'll sign a 10-year lease,

please. This is good. So, like, I don't think you could have described it any better to fit like this. Like, this would seem like the perfect pop-up shop. It would be.

Right? Like, it would be. What's the CAPEX you need? Shelving? A desk? Shelving? Like,

a couple of products that you buy from Alibaba, so people can test out. I like this idea. This is a good idea, isn't it? I know. It's a freaking great idea. I like to say,

yeah. And then there's a place, go ahead. It's an impulse buy and this goes against the impulse buy. Like you wouldn't necessarily have to carry a bunch of inventory. If it's the Amazon delivered same day type of business, then they go, they see it. They test it out, make a purchase and it's like delivered to their house by the time that they get home. Which is true. So like you probably need to do it in one of the bigger markets first to test it in Dallas or L.A.

Or whatever. One of those markets actually have a bunch of fulfillment centers from a company like Amazon. on, but you could just name it the viral pop-up shop. And it's just like every viral thing that you've seen is at that shop and you can just go play around with it. The viral store. It could be a mall kiosk. It could be a mall cart. Those are month to month.

It could be like there's a shopping center in Plano called Legacy West and there's a Tesla store. There's an Apple store. There's a Peloton store. Peloton stores are not doing well. They're closing them left and right. I can see it working perfectly in like a repurposed Peloton store because they're like 800 square feet. And if it doesn't go well, you could bounce in one to three months. And I like the idea of not carrying any inventory.

Because if you're a Brookstone, you got to carry the inventory there, they're buying it at the point of sale. And then they're walking out with it. If you could do it in a way where you don't have to carry the inventory costs, people can come and just play with whatever, the samples. And then they order it. And hopefully within a day, it gets to their house. It's achieving the same, almost the same. Right. There is some tradeoff, right?

because some people do want it right away and maybe you lose some of those. But I think you'd more than make up for it in the fact that you don't have to outlay all this capital to buy a bunch of inventory to have on hand in order for the store to be successful. You could just have it. And people literally just, they come to you and they're like, hey, I want to buy this. Okay, cool. Here's the QR code. Like, you don't even need to set up a payment processing.

Just have it processed through Amazon with a seller that you have an agreement with. To me, what the unknown with that model is, once you tell, them, you're going to ship it, how many back out? Is it one in a hundred? Is it 10 out of 100? Because some people might want it right then. I agree. That's why I'm saying the tradeoff would be, then you don't have to carry the inventory. That's the downside of the other model. That's true. Is you have significant inventory carrying costs. Especially if you're a pop-up shop. You might not have much room in the back. Right. Or you're just like, I want to test this for six months anyways, or even one month. I don't want to spend $200,000 on inventory. So in my mind, the pop-up would be the perfect

test model and then you can track. Like, okay, yep, 10% of people back out because I tell them they're not going to get it same day. Cool. Now you have like just more data if you actually wanted to open up a store that offered that stuff. And what's crazy to me is this guy behind the Instagram account, he doesn't have an e-commerce store.

He makes money. He probably makes a lot of money from affiliate links because that's his, it is a business. He has like an Amazon storefront. But like I feel like you could make a lot more if you had a Shopify site that just where everything was drop-shipped on the back end. I wonder if you could make a deal where you build that. You put all of his products on there and just say, hey, link here instead. And I'll just give you a cut up everything.

It would have to be more than the affiliate link. That would be, you know what? That's like a really interesting business model to think about. Everybody's talking about, oh, malls are dying. People aren't renewing their leases and there's all this empty space. What do we do with this empty space? What if the empty space just became showrooms? Cool.

No inventory carrying costs. You want to go check out the latest golf equipment? Cool. Here it is. Go check it out. Right? And that online seller leases these spaces for probably well below market, but you can go and check out the golf clubs or, oh, you want to go and check out other sports things,

ping pong paddles, pickleball paddles. Cool. Here's the pickleball place. It's still in the mall. Like, you're still going to a centralized place. The economic for the mall obviously changed. You're probably having to charge a lot lower rent. But people want them.

They want to feel stuff. They want to test it out. They want to see how it works. And then that would eliminate a lot of the overhead and inventory carrying costs that companies would have that they typically have in the mall. Because, dude, there's so much. Think about how much inventory is tied up in a foot locker in the mall. Like, it's just so much that they've got stashed on that story that you don't need. You don't need all that space inventory.

I like that. I think it's a cool idea. Dude, while we're on the subject of Instagram, I found this interesting Instagram account called clean girl. While you're looking for that on the subject of Instagram, do all of your Instagram like reels, are they all just like half-naked girls working out in the gym? You already made this joke. You already made this joke. Okay, so there's this girl on Instagram called Clean Girl. And she has this foaming spray that's bright pink and her videos are in front of like a dirty gravestone in the cemetery or

something dirty. And she's like, hey, watch me clean this gravestone. And she's grown millions of followers. Yes. And I feel like she could be like an industry plant because she's selling this cleaning solution now. And it's not even ready yet. Gocleongirl.com. And it's like, I feel like there's some guy in San Francisco that had this idea that's like, all right, let's take a generic cleaning product. Let's white label it. Let's put a really attractive packaging on it. Let's go find someone that's already on Instagram, and we know that the before and after videos sell really well. We know that like the pressure washing videos sell really well. We'll take the, all of these innate concepts that just go viral. Cute girl, before and after, a progress video of something getting cleaned, and we'll tie it to a product that's very generic, but looks really special,

something that's already made. We don't have to develop it. We'll put it on a landing page and we'll sell a ton of them. I don't even think that's like a theory. I think that's absolutely what that, what some of these people do. Because like on the surface, this girl, which just has an Instagram account. And she just cleans stuff. And she's like, I want to monetize. So I actually get this product developed and sell it on my website. I think that's the story, right?

Yeah. If I was a big corporate company and I had $10 million in my annual ad budget, obviously I'm going to go the traditional routes. I'm going to go television, radio, internet, paper click, SEO, et cetera. But of course, I'm going to start allocating a part of my budget. to creating in-house content with influencers. And if it's like, if it's Procter & Gamble,

you can't do that with a procter and gamble new cleaning solution. Yeah. I think the only, not the only, but a big potential, I don't even know what the right word is, you have to disclose if you're selling something. Like if it were a big company,

you would see more hints you're saying. You'd have to disclose, but I could see these companies being like, we're not selling anything yet. we're just going to pay for you to develop this Instagram account. Oh, you want to take a trip to Bali? Here you go. Oh, and you want to like it's an investment in that person or that brand that they're

helping to develop over time. When Papa Warbucks comes calling, they're like, all right, it's time to monetize. Sure, they'll say paid promotion by Proctor and Gamble, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everything else before that and them helping to create the account has to be paid promotion. why wouldn't they do that? That would be actually a really good idea. We also have to assume that someone like Procter & Gamble is creative and they're like growth hacking like this,

which that doesn't sound like Procter and Gamble. I think it's more likely that it's just like some 34-year-old in San Francisco with a good idea. Or like a tech startup. Like I could see someone have a thesis where they're like, I'm going to buy a bunch of micro-influencers brands and then turn that into a marketing agency because I have distribution.

I could see that. Yeah. It's just, this is so smart. And it goes to what we talked about a couple months ago on this podcast where like starting a home service business, it's very visual, right? Like mowing lawns, like pressure washing and then selling something around that. That's exactly what they're doing here. Totally. I wonder how else you could do that. Like it's just so smart. Like the on the surface, it's like, I'm going to go find an influencer and have them promote my product. Okay, cool. Everyone's doing that. Or I'm going to go find an influencer that's not very big, a micro influencer. And you, say, hey, keep building your account. We're not going to touch your account. We want you to be the face of this new account, this new genre, new niche. We already know you're good. We've seen all your stuff. But we want you to sell X, Y, or Z product through this new account. We'll give you 49% of the whole business. And you can be an owner of something and not just do sponsored reels all day. That would be actually really smart of them. It takes away the leverage of that creator a year from now when they come to negotiate with the brand. Right. Because a year from now, when they come to negotiate with the brand,

they've got the audience. And they're like, all right, well, this is my price, take it or leave it. But if the brand is investing up front and is like, hey, we're going to, we're going to give you $50,000 this year. And this year, you're going to be a consultant for us, but it's to grow your account. And a year from now, we're going to launch a product. We don't know what it is yet. We're going to see what works. But a year from now, you're going to get 15% of that business. Oh, my gosh, are you serious? You're giving me $50,000 now and I'm going to get 15%. Yeah, you're going to get 15% if it works out. It's a no brainer, right? Because they just don't know any better. right. And also, to be fair, they're going to have to spend the $50,000 in order to grow. So like the brand is really investing in this person being successful. That could be like a search fund model. Why aren't there like influencers search or search fund models where you just, that's your thesis. I'm going to raise a million dollars and I'm going to find 20 influencers and I'm going to give each influencer $50,000.

And they're going to spend the next year, like it's a venture bet, right? They're going to spend the next year going their accounts. And they have a contract with us that we decide how they monetize their account. And so in a year from now, when they've gotten to X number of followers, we're going to figure out the monetization model. And this is the payback. So that's being done at a later stage. Kevin Espiritu, the plant daddy. Kevin Espiritu has the Epic Gardening YouTube channel with multiple channels.

He's doing eight figures in revenue. As far as YouTube creators go, that's a big business. Churnin invested like $17.5 million in him in like anything he does, right? So if you want to go buy a botanical seed company, we're going to own 20% of that. You want to go by this company, we're going to have 20% of that. YouTube ad revenue, we're going to 20% of that. So Chirnan is like one of three to five companies doing this, what you're talking about. But maybe what you're talking about is just doing this earlier.

Because Churnin is making the bet on a somewhat known entity, whereas it's almost more of a private equity model as opposed to a venture model, whereas what I'm talking about is you find people who are like sub 10,000, right? And just fit the profile. And it had to be somebody who actually knows and has an eye for talent and then invest in multiple of those. Because it is going to be like a venture fund. Probably eight of them are not going to hit, but two of them are just going to crush. I have the girl who was having like hair loss issues and her whole Instagram account was centered around the hair loss issues.

She was on MFM. I think they interviewed her. I don't remember her name. But she started a business selling this hair loss. cream or hair thinning cream or something and she hit eight figures in like three months. It's insane. Because she had perfect product audience fit. Like 80% of the people that followed her were like struggling with the same hair loss

issues as her and like watching her struggle through it and find these home remedies. So when she launched, it was huge from day one. So to reverse that, if I'm developing some product similar to that, maybe it's like an acutane competitor, right? Acne. I'm going to go find people like her. that are talking about that, but would never launch an Accutane competitor,

just not on their radar, and loop them in, give them some equity and say, hey, go listen to this podcast of this girl that did this with her hair. We want to do that with you. But we'll do all the manufacturing. We'll invest millions of dollars.

You're going to get 10% equity. You're going to be the face of it. Well, that's that it? That's it, brother. Okay, what did you think? Next Friday. We'll see you for the next hold code, bros. Have a good week.