The Startup Ideas Podcast - 3 Easy to Start Big Startup Ideas with Jordan Mix

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

I’m joined by Jordan Mix, Operating Partner at Late Checkout, to discuss some of the best business ideas on his mind: a productivity app that will kill Notion, the “upside down” desktop app, a brand-in-a-box service for internet-native companies, and so much more.🚀 My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel: https://www.communityempire.co/🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.skool.com/community-empire-6150/about📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com70,000+ people are already subscribed.FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/FIND JORDAN ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/jrdnmixLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-mix1/

Have you seen this dude Martin Rees? He's the water Somalié. He worked in a restaurant or like in the restaurant industry for like 20 years. He's blown up on socials now. So I've actually seen this guy in TikTok. I saw him like go into a Costco, like review different waters. And that just goes to show you like you can be whoever you want to be. Yeah.

That's why branding and naming is so important is you want to brand and name yourself something that people think of you. And they're like, oh, I need a water sommelier. I need a sleep sommelier. And we're live. But we're actually not live on the Where It Happens podcast. Are we not? RIP, the Where It Happens podcast. We have a new name.

Let's hear it. The Startup Ideas Podcast. Wow. Now, I know you're thinking, you're like, you couldn't come up with a better name than that. And that's the whole point of the name. There's a million podcasts out there talking, interviews, interviewing entrepreneurs. But I noticed that we just kept talking about startup ideas on this podcast.

So I figured, let's name it. When you think of startup ideas, when you think about getting your creative juices flow in, you're going to come to the Startup Ideas podcast. And Jordan, it's great to have you here chatting some ideas with me today. It's great to be here. Startup Ideas Podcast. Take a sip. Take a sip.

Yeah. I mean, I want these conversations to be more like jams, like startup idea jams. Like we have them all the time where we're kind of like, hey, I saw this thing on Twitter, this huge opportunity in XYZ. What do you think about that? Or, you know, just these random ideas. You and I are both startup idea junkies. So this podcast is for people like us.

And my hope is that people take these ideas and run with them. That's the beauty of it. One idea will trigger the other ideas too, you know. Exactly. Yeah, there's a big trend that I'm noticing just in social content and across the board people's desires to just be a fly on the wall. And where it happens, how did that feel of being in a room where you're not supposed to be? But being a fly on the wall for jams, ideas, sparking ideas, I'm excited to see where this goes

and have the conversations continue in the comments sections on YouTube. And maybe success stories, people starting ideas from the startup ideas podcast. All right. So, cheers to, you got a coffee or something. A bottle of water, plastic water, Mr. Microplastics himself, Jordan Mix, on the pod. I didn't want to be this guy, but Saratoga was all sold out because the microplastics. Plastics are too trendy. So I'm a microplastic man today, unfortunately.

Did you see liveoasis.com, live dash oasis. Oh, what is this? So I think it was Sampar who tweeted it. It's a directory of water. So I just pulled up the website. Do you know what's in your water? 90% of your water contains toxins, microplastics, and other contaminants.

And then you can go and see like there's heroin, on Springwater, Castle Rockwater, you can click into it. There's my Saratoga. Boom. But it'll tell you like how much, you know, the microplastics, what are the contaminants and how to buy it? What do you think about this business? Yeah.

I'm checking out my Saratoga Springwater, which I've been on recently. And I'm sad that it's all locked behind paywalled content. But I don't think this is the best way to monetize this business, but I really like what they're doing here. And it's really clean, clean directory. And they have the tap water ratings too. Yeah. So for $10 a month, you can unlock all the data, the ratings, the research.

There's AI search, search, personalized recommendations. So these are one of these, like, I'm happy that this exists, but it should be unpaid-walled. Because I just think that it's not like you're switching water that often, right? Like you're a Saratoga person or you're, what is it, mountain? Valley water, spring water person. So you want to know what your contaminants are in your, in your daily water. But, you know, you're not going to keep it for five years. So my question to you is, if you are running this, how would you monetize it?

Yeah, let's jam on that. So this is a sprint term monetization, but there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of things you can do here. I mean, an affiliate is one way to do it, which is pretty obvious. But another thing you can do is upsell report based on your water resource. I know the tap water locally, you could get a lead magnet report and then match someone to come out and test your water at your house. So I was at Costco once. And these guys were like basically trying to get me to bring tap water back to them to Costco to like show me that like there was a bunch of hard metals and stuff in the tap water. And they they basically sold a $9,000 like water softening system that they put into your house.

And that was an eye opening experience. It was like a $300 test report and then a $9,000 like system. And I think that would be a really, use this site as the top of funnel and monetize it with backend services based on the information that you provide. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, the problem of water is you're not spending a lot of money on water. You know, if you go to the website, it shows like different filters that you can buy that are hundreds of dollars and doing affiliate to that.

Like, that's obviously where more of the money is. I actually get, have you heard of a lot? Live water? Uh-uh. So alivewaters.com. So I get this delivered to my house in Miami. And they've got a whole good stick with like, it's alive water. And I don't even know what that means.

Like there's some like, I honestly have no idea. Like I'm trying to read like what, you know, certain water is dead. I don't know. Apparently like the alive water is good for you. I don't know if I'm getting fleece. or whatever, but... Yeah. Probably.

I think it's like from a spring, it looks like. Yeah, it's like living, you know, like moving, I guess. Exactly. So that's the thing. And you get these really cool looking jugs. They kind of look like crystal jugs. Do you see them? Yeah.

Oh, man. And they have these trucks that deliver it and these like guys who deliver it. They look like they're front. They all look like they're from Venice, California. They're like wearing like fedoras and like ponchos and stuff like that. Like they're very like in touch with themselves. They're like these good looking guys and they come and they put, you know, do the water delivery. Anyways, that's my life now.

And we spend a lot of money on it. So I wonder if you can just sell the, you can sell those leads basically to someone like a live water. You could also make products that, I mean, they've got these crystal jugs, but there's other form factors that you could make and sell as well, or partner with like some artist or something and do some like collab vessels and make your water feel like art and have it be a talking piece in the home. I think that's, I'm big into those things right now. Yeah, it is.

It is a talking piece. Like people, people show up to my apartment and they're like, whoa, what is that like weird looking crystal water thing? Oh, let me tell you about a live water. Yeah. You know? So, let me tell you why I'm an idiot for spending hundreds of dollars a month on water. Is your water dead?

What do you mean your water's dead? Bro. Yeah. So you've seen this dude Martin's, Martin Reese? No. He's the water Somalié? No. Where's this guy been my whole life?

I know. He worked in a restaurant or in the restaurant industry for like 20 years. He's blown up on socials now. And I guess he has a film I'm looking at right now. But he literally is a Somalié of water. I didn't know that this was a thing until I saw Martin the water Somali. So I've actually seen this guy in TikTok. So I think he, I saw him like go into a Costco and like review different waters.

I didn't know he's a water Somelier And that just goes to show you Like you can be whoever you want to be You so much I guess the trend that you know People can take away from here is Somalié for X Like what's something that requires some curation and expertise But that you can be that sommelier

So that people can come to you The carbon monoxide Somalié Exactly Do you sleep with the your door closed in your room. I'll give you, sleep sommelier is just like a no-brainer huge idea. Lay up.

Like, are you kidding me? I can't even believe we're giving that away for free. It's a little tap in Bertie for the Masters this week. Totally. Like, if I'm Ate Slee, like I'm creating an Instagram,

Twitter account, I'm hiring a creator in-house. It's the Sleepsum LIA brought to you by Aet's lead. Like, come on. I mean, Is this pot over? Yeah, it's worth on here.

Like, that idea is just too good. Because there's, there's all these baby sleep coaches, you know, like when new parents get baby sleep coaches, there's no adult sleep coaches. Like someone that could analyze, I guess there is, but I don't know about them. Well, I think it's just about branding yourself as that person. I mean, even what I'm doing with this pod, it's like, okay, the startup ideas pod, I want people to think I need creative, my creative juices following. bam. I'm going to go like listen, you know, I'm commuting for 30 minutes. I'm going to go put on Greg for a bit.

That's why branding and naming is so important is you want to brand and name yourself something that people think of you when they're, when they have the need. And they're like, oh, I need a water sommelier. I need a sleep sommelier. And podcasts don't really do that. Like, they all have cute, really cute names. Yeah. Well, it's all like the Joe Rogan experience. Lex Friedman pod. It's very personal brand driven. Right. You're starting to see a few, like, diary of a CEO. I mean, that's just like, I don't love that name personally, just putting it up there. Like, yeah. It just seems so, I love, I think he does an incredible job on his pod, like, incredible.

And he's an amazing interviewer and his sets are amazing. And he's a, he's a professional versus, like, someone like me who's an amateur. But I will say like just diary of the CEO does not connect with me at all. Very much like people trying to figure out routines and processes and the story behind. But diary? When I think of diary, I think of like dear diary. Yeah.

I don't want to write a diary. Yeah. I'm not, dear diary. Like I interviewed Jordan today and he didn't laugh at my joke. So yes, going back to it, I think like, yes, having the name, owning that expertise, really important. And thinking about, like, as a framework, so Maliafrax. I think with going back to the live oasis, I think it's, on one hand, I don't like the business

because when you start a business, you like this, you don't want to be selling $20 or $40 a month worth of product. You want high ticket stuff. So I don't love that, but I think it could transition into more high-ticket stuff, like if they do more high-end subscriptions, if they do more high-end water products. But if I was running this, here's how I would change it. I think the bigger trend in movement is around clean. Everyone talks about clean.

Clean is our generation's version of low-fat. In the 80s and 90s, everyone was talking about low-fat, low-fat this, low-fat this, low fat that. That's why diet cola got so big then. There was just low fat sections within grocery stores. But then we realized that turns out a lot of that stuff was not good for us. Aspartame, not that good for us. Superlose, not that good. Not that good for us. So now we're in this conscious world where clean things are good for us. And you're either clean or you're dirty. If I was live oasis, I would be building the directory of clean. That's the huge opportunity. and I would never have a paywall.

Like, build that SEO juice. I love it. Yeah, run the ACP framework on it. And just explain what the ACP framework is for people who don't know. Audience community product. So building the audience, the directory of clean, people can see the directory of clean and subscribe to the directory of clean. And then maybe there's like a clean badge or like a clean coin or some momentum that you get

or momento that you get and you get involved in this like community. And then the products can be all the things that we talked about, affiliates and selling services or upselling other people's leads or systems. So, but yeah, I'm frustrated at this paywall. Like I checked out it and I was like, immediately I'm a churned. So I'm just mad. Yeah, totally. Cool.

So what I, what startup idea is. are on your mind right now. We've got a couple simple ones around productivity, some low-hanging fruit MacOS apps. I'm really frustrated with Notion, and it's just very big and clunky, and I don't enjoy opening it. Do you like Notion?

I sigh because I'm, I wish I want to like it. Like, Notion is like WhatsApp for me. You know, like I log on to WhatsApp, and I'm like, I want to like this, but it feels like Android. It's the best way to describe it. And what I don't like about Notion is, for me, it's like slow and I need fast.

So I use Notion to write startup ideas I have and content ideas I have. So I have this running, these two running lists that are super, super long. And when I open it up, it's just slow. So, and then it just like ruins my flow. So I've been actually using more of Google. Google Docs, Apple Notes. And then I use Notion, just because Late Check, I use the Notion, and I want to see everything. But yeah, we pay thousands of dollars a month for Notion, like two, three, I don't know,

thousand a month. It's crazy. Yeah, I just wish I liked using it more. I did used to love it. And then, yeah, slow, clunky, the formatting and stuff. And then I've started using Apple Notes as well because it's so quick, fast. But the thing about notes is they need to be readable and digestible so you can reference them. And that's my gripe with Apple Notes is it takes like 20 clicks to format something.

So I really want there to be an Apple Notes version that is a lightweight notion. Like if Notion and Apple Notes got together and like basically created an MVP to make beautiful, readable notes, nothing more, I would use that in a heartbeat. And I think a lot of people would use that as well. I think having like an AI piece to that where it just takes your notes, like, Notion could build this, where it just takes your notes and just puts it in a zone with a lot less clutter and just formats it. But they're probably not going to build it. Yeah.

So I think what James Clear just put out with his Adams Habit app, I think there could be this lightweight, flexible app that basically just had toggles, some headings, and maybe even like AI for formatting too. So, like, you can kind of train the app on how you format your notes, and you could basically have these things shorthand formatted, like how you do headings, how you do bullets, etc. I just love my notes to be really dialed and have pictures and colors and things because that makes me actually go back to read them. Yeah, exactly. I go into Notion, and it's just like, it's like a wall of text and it gives me like some anxiety. So, and the thing about Notion and a lot of these tools is that,

It puts the onus on the user to create the headlines, to bold certain things. And I think the future of content, creation tools, and productivity tools is the machine should know what you're thinking and should automatically format things. Formatting will be a thing of the past. It'll auto-format things for you. And then you can just edit and realize, oh, hey, you know, I wanted to make this bold and it was italicized. Yeah. It'd be beautiful. That'd be beautiful, right?

I'd get fired up by that. I would love opening that. I think that's what I'm, that's how I'm judging products these days. It's like, do I love opening them? I love opening Figma. Why? It just fires me up.

It's just beautiful. I see other people's creations in there when I'm reviewing work. You can, the infinite canvas, you can just buzz around it. And yeah, it's a social. with creativity and productivity together. So I just love opening Figma. Well, so it's bottling up that feeling. So if the, what was his name, the water simile guy.

Yeah. Like you're bottling up this idea around this person who's like dressed informal and who knows everything and you're getting this high touch experience in the same way that Figma, even the word Figma, and you think of spatial and moving around in a blank canvas and colors. Like it feels like this fun, creative zone. So whenever you're creating a product,

you have to think about what feeling I want to give to people. And I think that's, that's what you're picking up on. Yeah, so that's, that's one. If anyone wants to do that, let me know, beta test it for sure.

Yep. And then another one is just, my desktop's always messy. And I hate cleaning it, but I love seeing everything on like a big desktop. style view. It just, it feels good. And so I have this little idea that someone probably could build in a weekend. So do this. It's called the upside down. A little nod to stranger things. But basically it's a alternative desktop that's behind the scenes. That's basically just a file

folder, but looks like a desktop. So you can save things to the upside down, but it's not your actual desktop. So your performance will increase and your computer will perform. better and then you can have a clean desktop. But when you want to see that messy desktop, you just go to the upside down and all your files are everywhere. Would you use that? I would use that. I feel like my flow is I wait until I get 12 files on my desktop.

And then I'm like, I'm an adult. I can't have 12 files on my desktop. And this needs to go. And like, I'll look at it just like quickly and be like, yeah, I don't think I need any of these things. And I just throw them all in the trash. Yeah. And I do this every 10 days.

So yes, I would love, I would love that. And sometimes I like seeing, yeah, to your point, I like seeing everything just in one place, even if it's chaos. Yeah. Because it sparks ideas and reminds me of certain things. And then you can flip it back. Yeah, with a background too.

That doesn't look like a file folder. Like it's got a beautiful picture. You could even have multiple upside downs. You can have your personal upside down. on work upside, you know. But they're basically just folders, but it just feels psychologically different than searching things in a folder.

I like this idea. It reminds me a little bit of the Clack app. Basically, what the Clack app is, is it's a Mac app that turns your keyboard into high fidelity sounds, like a mechanical keyboard. So it turns your regular keyboard into a mechanical keyboard. just with software.

And you can change the volume and change the switches and how it sounds and everything, which is really cool. And it's like $5. I bought it. No brainer. It breaks half the time, which sucks. But I imagine, like, they, even with like a half working app, it still probably generates hundreds of thousands of dollars a year of revenue.

And I think we're going to see a lot more. of these simple Mac apps. Yes. I was just thinking, I don't know if it's economically makes that much sense, but it would be so cool if these were rolled into like a holding company or like an app sumo type marketplace where you could get the clack. You get screenshot X, which I use for screenshot. I just saw this girl like basically made like a loom kind of screen recording competitor.

That looks beautiful. I forget the name of it. I'll have to find it and put it in the show notes for people. I think it was like Screenify. I would love to plug her because she's just an incredible maker. But like rolling these things into like helping them get discovered, helping them monetize, selling them as a bundle. I just love these like beautifully done productivity apps that make work life so much better.

Totally. Yeah. There's definitely a Holdsco opportunity there. and, you know, if you can buy some of these smaller apps, like Clack, put them under, maybe give them some capital to make it work better and add more engineers. A lot of these people are just solo, solo people. So, yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity there. And, like, the way to do it is you scour, you scour product hunt.

And you don't scour today's product hunt, but you scour like 6, 12, 18 months ago and certain things lose steam. and then you reach out and you see if you can make a deal. Yeah, that's good. I think that would be really cool. That would be cool. That would be cool. What else you got for me?

What else we got? Swag up for premium blanks. Basically, I've been trying to, for my little brand, do within, make a couple sample hats. I'm just frustrated with the whole process of making a hat. that is not just a print on demand or embroidery on demand type of thing. But I also don't want to start a hat company and like don't want to be in like a direct-to-consumer merch situation. And we think about this a lot with late checkout too and how can we have high-quality products

that we can give our customers, team members, you know, future partners. And I think there's a big opportunity for a brand in a box for gear that, feels really cut and sew high quality, but isn't a print on demand type, you know, churn and burn system. So I think you layer on 3PL, like, and fulfillment on the back end of that, warehousing, et cetera. And you could basically build like a marketplace. If you have the, um, the suppliers and the production, you could facilitate these like brand in a box experiences for companies that are not traditionally doing things. like IRL or with physical products.

So I saw Notion a couple weeks ago launched these really beautiful chore jackets and just had the little Notion icon. And I don't like using Notion, but I would wear the mess out of that thing. It was so cool. And the photo shoot was amazing. And I think there's just these internet-based businesses

are going to want to close the loop on IRL and have provide real-life experiences, real-life gear, tangible things. And it's not easy to do that right now. It's dealing with factories, dealing with logistics, all of the things. I think there's a big opportunity to make like a gear brand in a box for Internet native companies. And high-end, high-end, right?

So I think one of the- Yeah, cut and sew. Yeah. One of the insights there is that most tech companies and a lot of companies now just have swag, but it's the same Gilden T-shirt or whatever. hat and you're trying to stand out, you know? So how do you, even if the cost is 2x or 3x, like happy to pay that if it's 3x word of mouth or 4x or 5x word of mouth. Like, I'd rather produce less, but have higher word of mouth. So I'll tell you a little story.

I don't think I've ever told you this. So in 2017, 18, with Islands, which was like a Discord, startup I was running and it was like a discord that became popular on college campuses. We wanted to get college, we wanted to grow more on college campuses. So what do we do? We hired, you know, an amazing fashion designer. Her name is Melissa Gross. She's done, she's designed stuff for like the weekend and did stuff with Justin Bieber and like OVO, like all like cool stuff.

And she had, she had a factory in downtown LA through her company Gross Garments. And we produce like really cool hoodies, really cool crew sweatshirts and just like everything like beautifully done. And then we did a photo shoot in L.A. with like aspirational college models, basically. Guys and girls who like, if you were in college at the time, you would look up to them. And what we did is we created a Shopify store and on Islands's website. And it would be $100, $150 for a sweatshirt, $80 for hat. $70 for a t-shirt. And it all said sold out.

So we use that to give to people on college campuses because they wanted it so badly because it's sold out. And then all of a sudden, like, the word of mouth train begins. So that was like a really, really easy way for us to create a lot of word of mouth on a bunch of college campuses as a tech company by not spending a lot of money, really. So smart. Word of mouth arbitrage. What about the arbitrage.

So what you're saying is basically that in a box. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To the tune of like a hundred. Yeah. It's like if I want a hundred custom hats, I can get them.

And it's like, yeah, I'm paying double the price or maybe triple. But it's a loss leader for what you're actually trying to do. You're not trying to profit off of these things. Like, I think hats are billboards. Like I'm wrapping the masters right now for free. You know, pay me up, masters. But yeah, like,

I think the movement and the word of mouth arbitrage, that's the ticket right there. So just making that really easy to do. And if it goes well, then maybe it does become like a D to C e-commerce tycoon. The master's hat is an interesting example, because where did you get that hat? At the Masters. Exactly. And how do you, correct me if I'm wrong, it's not easy to get a ticket to the Masters. No, my brother-in-law won a lot.

So what you're saying is you either need to be extremely connected, have a lot of money, or win a lottery to get access to buy that hat. And people who see that hat know that. Like people who know the masters know that. Yeah. So that's another way to think about merch is it's almost like a check. You know, you've been here, right? Like, you've done this thing.

So it's like for notion, for example, like if you, you know, write 100,000 words or whatever it is, you get the notion hat or something like that. So that's another way to think about like it's not just about giving out merch. It's like how do you layer on levels and gamification? And that's where this whole like, you know, community based approach, I think is to it is you create these layers and you create, you know, just create one merch item. You create eight merch items. And you don't just create one level. you create eight levels. Yeah.

And make it aspirational, like the play button for YouTube. You know, like people drive for the play button on YouTube. Like, they're like, that's their main goal. I love that. Totally. I mean, literally 36 minutes ago, I got an email, just pulled it up. I just got a invited to join the Top Voice program on LinkedIn. Wow.

Congrats. Top Voice. Top Voice. God. Godly. Screenshot. What a legend. I got to call my mom. Got to call my mom. But like a little thing like that.

Speech. Thank you to God for the Pop Voice badge. But yeah, things like that, right? Like it doesn't cost them anything, LinkedIn, anything to create that bad. But a lot of people want it. And I got that email. I was like, cool. Like, great.

Great. Great stuff on Monday. Let's read. Yeah. Let me post more on LinkedIn. Yeah. Even if it's subconsciously, right? And the same thing with your hat. It's like, oh, yeah, I'll watch I'll watch the Masters. It's like, of course I'll watch the Masters. I have the hat. Yeah. I might take a nap during it, you know? Just like that Jim Nance's smooth voice in the background. Too good. Too good. All right, man. This has been fun. In inaugural episode, the Startup Ideas podcast. If you're listening to this, you've got to share the podcast. This is, you're you know, if you're an idea, junkie, it's time to share the podcast, post it on Twitter, subscribe on YouTube, comment on YouTube. I literally read every single comment and I reply to a bunch of them.

So you'll see me there. Review the podcast on Spotify and Apple. And I know you're probably like zoning out of this because so many people say this, but it does matter a lot. And welcome to the journey. And I want to thank Jordan for. coming on. Thanks, buddy. Pleasure.

Comment who should be on the next episodes. True. Yeah. I want to bring on who you want me to bring on and who you think are interesting. And if you like Jordan, if you can come on again too, he works at Late Checkout, Operating Partner. And so he works with me across the portfolio. And he can follow him on Twitter on X, Jordan Mix at J.R.D.N.M.I.X.

We'll see you there. See you there. Later. Peace.