The Startup Ideas Podcast - Launch a $1M+ Startup tomorrow (3 Data-Backed Market Trends)

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is with Cody Schneider. So we gave away three trends that we think you can build a bunch of internet businesses on top of it. One is AI landing page builder. I'm becoming obsessed with this trend because I, like this is something that we do internally. And it's an absolute pain and all the tools that are out there just suck. So one is the Buy It for Life trend that we got from Reddit. Dude, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with this community, by the way. Like, I am one of these people. And the third is viral formats on TikTok and how to build a business around that.

Starting point is 00:00:40 The opportunity here is that people are trying to find the formats or the TikTok templates that are going viral currently. These are three trends we think are super, super interesting. We tell you why we think it's interesting. We give you the tactics on actually how to build businesses there. And you're going to to learn a lot from this conversation. People gatekeep the sauce, but we don't gatekeep the sauce on the startup ideas podcast. Enjoy the episode. All right, we got Cody Schneider on the podcast. The men needs zero introduction. Today, what we're going to talk about is we're going to go through the few trends, the three or four trends that we're thinking about. And from those trends, we're going to come up with startup ideas on the fly. Welcome to the pod, Cody.

Starting point is 00:01:36 What's good? Dude, I don't know, man. It's been so busy. I'm stoked to be here. This week has been chaos. But I'm wired. We got, we're caffeinated. We're ready to go.

Starting point is 00:01:49 We're ready to go. Okay. So the first trend we're going to talk about is the buy it for life trend. This actually came to me from the subreddit. Dude, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed with this community, by the way. Like, I am one of these people. So.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Yeah, maybe talk about what it is, what the movement is. And let's go from there. So from my understanding, it stems from anti-consumerism. I look at it more of like, I just want to buy the best of whatever it is. So for example, we just bought a blender. And I bought this like industrial blender that is their suggestion, like their buy-it-for-life suggestion, basically. where it's like, oh, this thing is going to last multiple generations. And so there's this pushback right now for like kind of buying cheap stuff that's going to break, right?

Starting point is 00:02:48 And whether it's closed, whether it's like home good products, et cetera. And so this subreddit basically people go in and they ask and they're like, hey, I want X thing or I'm about to purchase X thing. what should I get? What's the best quality that I can get, you know, for whatever the category is in? And then people come in and they basically will tell their story. So that's kind of the high level of what this looks like. Are you in this or do you kind of like, are you a part of this, G? Or did you just find it and find it interesting?

Starting point is 00:03:22 I heard about it. I just started perusing it. I saw, you know, one of the posts. I think it might have been this post went on the front page. I gave my dad this Batman wallet 10 years ago. I was like four or five years old and I got it in preschool. He uses it to this day.

Starting point is 00:03:37 So from this post, I think I started just perusing. And then I just started going to Google Trends. I use an app called Glims. I'm not associated with them or anything. I just think it gives you like a better view on Google Trends. So I saw that and I was like, okay, is this a big movement or is the small movement?

Starting point is 00:04:01 And it seems like it's literally, I mean, it's gaining a lot of steam, 69,000 searches in the past month. And it just got me thinking that there's an opportunity, yeah, there's an opportunity to build some businesses on top of this trend. 100%. The first one for me, and like I wish this existed, again, being in this kind of buyer persona, I want to be able to make a wish list of like all the products

Starting point is 00:04:30 that I'm looking to purchase that are these buy it for live. So to take a step back, how the community works is it's like every category, they have like a whole list of like for every category, here's the best product that you can buy for each of those categories. So say you're trying to get like a washing machine, right? And you want it to last for forever. You can go in, you can find their list of washing machines that are the best washing machines. But the thing is, is what I want is I want basically alerts for when those washing machines come into, like, they're on sale, basically.

Starting point is 00:05:09 So how I'm imagining this is like a platform that's like, you know, scraping all of the major retailers for these specific products. And then I get a notification when like a price or, you know, sale happens basically. Like I would pay for this tomorrow specifically for like, you know, there's. these pair of boots, right? They're like Doc Martins, but it's the, it's the company that used to manufacture Doc Martins. And then Jack Mark and Martin got bought by PE and the quality went to shit. And then this company started producing their own boots. They're like out of the UK. Super expensive. They go on sales sometimes. And so I'm just imagining like it's basically a listening tool for that for these buy for like products. Because a lot of these products typically they have like a higher. I mean,

Starting point is 00:05:56 they're more expensive, right? Because the quality is so good. And so I imagine you could build something like this, and this entire community would probably be all over it, right? And it's just, again, this listening software. There's probably an affiliate play as well. So it's like, you know, for example, it goes on sale, you know, on Walmart or Nordstrom's or whatever. And you get an affiliate commission for all that traffic that you're driving. But I feel like this could be a combo. Like maybe it's a newsletter is what it starts out as.

Starting point is 00:06:24 And then from there it evolves into like a whole platform. But I'm curious your thoughts like business wise. makes what you think is an opportunity. Yeah. Okay, first of all, you know, if you're looking at my screen, it shows clothing, bags, kitchen, tools. It basically creates a directory of these threads where people are recommending products. This is like surfing Craigslist. This is ridiculous.

Starting point is 00:06:53 Like when I see this, you know, my eyes light up because there's an opportunity. to build the directory, just way more with filters, way more beautiful. No one wants to cycle through this. This is not going to hit the mainstream, right? So I think that there's an opportunity to build. First, you build the directory, and we've talked on the show about how to build the directory. You can use tools. We had John Rush come on, and you can use a tool.

Starting point is 00:07:19 He has a tool called Quick Break in the Pod to tell you a little bit about startup empire. So Startup Empire is my private, membership where it's a bunch of people like me, like you, who want to build out their startup ideas. Now, they're looking for content to help accelerate that. They're looking for potential co-founders. They're looking for tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them, how do you do email marketing? How do you build an audience? How do you go viral on Twitter? All these different things. That's exactly what startup empire is. And it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas or it's for people who have a startup but just they're

Starting point is 00:08:03 not seeing the traction that they need. So you can check out the link to startup empire.com in the description. Anyway, if you go search John Rush, you'll find it. You'll find it. And or recently we had someone else come on the pod that was like just make it using WordPress and figure out the keywords with HRFs. Anyways, the point being that you can build a directory like pretty simply nowadays or honestly use cursor or or lovable or a bolt so you create the i mean you figure out what uh what domain like what domain do you think would make sense for a directory like this i would try to get it like as exact match as possible um so like something that has like buy it for life in it uh i mean that would be you know

Starting point is 00:08:58 know, what I would go after personally, because I would want to try to rank this for the exact match keyword, right? I don't know. Let's see if buy it for life is available or something. By the way, you know what I was thinking about recently. I just, I just went to goaddy.com. You know you're over 30 when you go, you still go to go daddy.com. I love it.

Starting point is 00:09:20 Right? Do you know instant domain search? No. Check it out. It basically like will live streams like in the application. the options. So if you do like buy it for life, you'll go like.

Starting point is 00:09:31 Oh, sick. Yeah, this is great. So maybe it's like you want to buy it for life.com. And what I would probably look at too is like, uh, like buy it for life products. Some variation that looks like it's taken.

Starting point is 00:10:00 Um, you get, you know, find some variation of that. Buy it for life product. com. Boom. Right there. somebody's going to go snack.

Starting point is 00:10:06 For sure. And also you want to buy it forlife.com available as well. So these exist. Don't tell us that you can't get the dot com. We don't want to hear it. 100%. So I would do that personally. And then I think the angle that I would go at this from,

Starting point is 00:10:26 I mean, you could probably use the subreddit as the way to like drive initial traffic if you did it really. basically provide a ton of value and then at the bottom of the post like be like oh I also made this curated list directory where you can filter by specific things and then the retailers that sell this etc but I'm just looking at SEM rush on my side though gee and there's all these long tail keyword variation so buy it for life vacuum buy it for life couch buy it for life shoes wallet cookware jeans socks belt list goes on there's about a thousand of these that you could go after

Starting point is 00:11:03 So it would be build this directory and then you make these landing pages where it's the for each of those long tail keywords. Build some backlinks too. I mean, it's easily the way to kind of get the initial traction for this. And then from there, I think you could sell where it's like you have a, you know, again, a sale listener. They exist. They're easy to build. Or you just have an affiliate like play on this directory where it's like, oh, you drive them off to again Nordstrom or wherever. and you get an affiliate commission for that traffic that you're driving.

Starting point is 00:11:35 And they'll pay you for that traffic, right? So that traffic that's coming off that page. You can then take that and you, I mean, that's kind of the initial way to get traction. The other side is then, you know, put Mediavine or one of these ad display ads companies on that site and get traffic from that as well. Or get ad spend basically paid for that traffic that you're, you're, you're, you're, getting from people coming there. By the way, with the Reddit thing, you bring up a good point, which is how do you get

Starting point is 00:12:09 traffic from Reddit without getting your post band or your account band? And something I usually do is I'll, I'll respond, I'll create a post and just add as much value as possible. And then at the end, just sign my name and like Greg. and then, you know, Greg from Buy It for Now Products.com and just link that. So you're not even saying like, go here, check this out. It's just like people are generally curious. And especially if you're going to get that domain and you're speaking to that community,

Starting point is 00:12:46 like you will get free traffic. 100%. And I, there's actually a newsletter play that I see a lot of people use for local newsletters. they go to a subreddit for that area. So like Toronto as an example. And they're like, here's 20 things you can do this weekend and Toronto. And then it's like you want more like this.

Starting point is 00:13:07 And then at the bottom of the post, they're like sub to this email newsletter. Such an easy tactic that is just like crushing it right now. And so then strategically what you do is you do the posts in the super early morning. So like 4 a.m. or whatever. and typically the mods of that location are geography based. So they're going to be in that location. And then you go and you can buy Reddit upvotes. And you can basically ride the wave into people waking up and scrolling Reddit.

Starting point is 00:13:37 You hit page one and then you'll go to the top of the page. So random tactical thing that I know exists that friends have shown me works. Love it. Okay. So that's idea number one. Pretty simple. basically building on top of that community, pick the domain name with the exact term, build a directory, mostly using AI, you know, layer on a beehive or a newsletter piece for sales,

Starting point is 00:14:08 and then get traffic via SEO, Reddit, that sort of thing. Dude, go to buy for life.com right now. This is literally the exact business. that we're talking about, which is hilarious. I have not seen this, just throwing this out there. I just went to it. If you Google Buy it for Life, you don't go to it. I just went to the exact domain because I saw it was owned by somebody. And this is literally the exact business.

Starting point is 00:14:40 So when you see this, when you see this, are you like, okay, I don't want to create this business now? Like, what's your thought process now? Immediately I'm like validation. Cool, I can go and compete in this, right? Like, people get so worried about competitors in internet businesses and, like, online businesses. And I think that it is such a terrible way to think about it. Like, there's 20, you know, 50 window cleaning companies in your, wherever you live, there's like a ton of businesses that clean windows.

Starting point is 00:15:08 And all of them can exist and make money. But for some reason, we don't think about the internet in the same way. Like, all of these businesses can exist and make money, especially in a category like this, where there's like 70,000 searches per month or buy it for life. You're telling me that that you can't go and compete in that category. Like you can 100% do that. What do you use to check if a website has traffic? I just use SEM rush and then similar web.

Starting point is 00:15:35 I can look them up on similar web right now. Give me a second. So SEM rush, not a ton of traffic, but it looks like it's real like they're brand new. like in July of 24 it looks like they started publishing and then let me go to Similar Web will do the same thing Yeah similar web's showing about 5,000

Starting point is 00:15:56 in traffic a month So again, probably super early Or sorry, not even 5,000 About 2,000 in traffic per month So it's interesting The guy who started this, Darcy Buy It for Life I'm on his ex account.

Starting point is 00:16:14 He tweets about investing in domains, right? So this is a guy who's a domainer. 100%. Yeah. This is like the easiest business on the planet is something like this. Like you find a subreddit that's like starting to pop off. You validate with Google Trends and H-Refs. You either build the domain or you buy the domain.

Starting point is 00:16:33 And then you start with the directory. You add a newsletter and then you eventually add some software business. 100%. I just bought a job description. description generator.com for $800. Okay, and what are you going to do that? So what we're seeing in SEO is that when there's branded searches for the website, you can create these niche sites basically around them.

Starting point is 00:16:58 So little history, all the niche sites got clapped with all the Google updates, right? But all the sites that were performing really well, they had some amount of branded searches going to them. And so our thesis was like, okay, well, like Google is factoring in. Is this, like, is branded searches coming to the website? And then if that's a portion of the traffic, like a decent amount, then that means that like, this is kind of a real company, right? So we're like, okay, let's go buy this exact match domain. I just got it like two weeks ago.

Starting point is 00:17:31 So we're still in the process of doing this. But go buy that exact match domain. We go build backlinks that are job, just like exact match keyword backlinks, niche edits that are a job description generator. We get that page to rank for that exact match keyword. But then the long term play is we go and we do job description templates for every job that exists, right? And then you basically turn this into a niche site.

Starting point is 00:17:59 But because the homepage of the website is like a tool, naturally what will happen is that when you hit page one for that target keyword, you're going to create this. like link flywheel around that website, right? So people search job description generator. They land on the site. It writes a job description for them. They then will then, you know, include that within their blog post or, you know, a journalist includes that within their blog post.

Starting point is 00:18:26 It naturally will build links for that website once you hit page one. And so because of this, you're going to build this domain authority. You're getting branded searches to come to the website. And then I can go and build out, you know, 10,000 long-tail landing pages that are blog posts for every template, every, you know, every other keyword that's in this category, right? Then you go and you turn this into, you know, it's probably some type of display ads play. For us, how we're thinking about it is as a way to drive traffic to our talent sourcing agency. So we get all of this. If you're searching job description generator, typically early signal that you're trying to hire.

Starting point is 00:19:07 We can use that to drive traffic to people that are trying to hire. And did that idea, did it come to you just naturally or were you like kind of searching around? Like how did, I'm just curious of how it came to you. Yeah. I mean, this was based off of everything that we were seeing on the SEO side where it's like, I mean, I've owned niche sites for the last, you know, 10 years and tons of them got clapped. You know, I had this one that was doing like, I don't know, close to 30,000 in traffic a month. and now is doing like, I think 100, right?

Starting point is 00:19:42 And I mean, and it's an old site. Like, it's like, it's been around for forever, right? And so when we saw that, we're like, okay, why aren't these real brands being affected? And the kind of thing that we landed on is like, oh, it's because people are searching for this real brands. And so Google is prioritizing companies that look like real companies, right? Like there's branded search that's coming to it. And so if that's the case, then, you know, we again started thinking about, okay, how do you build, how do you build niche sites that can exist in this new, you know, new paradigm? And then from there, kind of connected these two ideas of everybody's been using building calculators, tools, generators as a way to create link magnet flywheels for their websites, right? So for example, like one we just built recently was remodeled. cost calculator. We built that for a client. We embedded on the website. We build niche edits back to

Starting point is 00:20:40 it. That starts to rank. It naturally builds links. And so like the links that we build become even more effective, like more at getting the site to rank. And so then connected those two dots together. Well, hey, let's, you know, let's buy an exact match domain. But we know that branded searches are a factor in niche sites ranking. We'll build links to that exact match. The tool does a thing. The tool naturally build backlinks and then this turns into a niche site and again super super early idea but this is this is something that I think is a huge opportunity for somebody that's trying to start their first online business is go find like all the long tail keywords related to generator related to calculator related to tool uh if you can find an exact match domain go buy it um there

Starting point is 00:21:27 some can be expensive like the more the more competitive they are they're going to the more expensive that are going to be. And then go use these like, again, AI tools like, bowl, like lovable, like, you know, whatever to spin, spin these up. Embedded on the homepage, like on a word, you know, on a literally it's a WordPress website is like the job description generator.com. We just embedded the app like on the homepage. And then we're just going to use the classic WordPress like CMS functionality to do all

Starting point is 00:21:55 the blog. Like it's not complicated, right? So anyway, that's kind of where the origin of all this came from. Yeah. I mean, and to think that there's people listening to this podcast that want to go out and buy real estate, get like a million dollar loan from the bank, right? It's insane. Yeah. It's literally insane to me.

Starting point is 00:22:14 Like, I tweeted this, I think yesterday. It was, I'll read it right now. It's like, why would you buy a business anymore? You could start one in an hour by end of day. You can have 30 clips and you got a thousand views on each of those clips. and your first sign-ups, why would you buy a business? Yeah. And like, yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:36 And also it's like, you know, and that's why I wanted to do a trend episode with you is, it's not like we have to guess around the trends, right? No, the data's there. It's public. The data's there. It's public, right? Cody, I want to go through two more trends before we head out today. Let me share my screen real quick.

Starting point is 00:22:58 So the second trend, AI landing page, what were you thinking about here? Yeah, so I'm becoming obsessed with this trend because I, like, this is something that we do internally. And it's an absolute pain and all the tools that are out there just suck. So landing pages, why you use them. So for example, we run paid ads for clients. We need to build specific landing pages so that the media that we're, we're running aligns with the page that they're landing on. So somebody searches, you know, X keyword and then they land on a page where the H1 of that

Starting point is 00:23:35 landing page is that X keyword. So a lot of the times clients, like, they don't really have a CMS that they're using for their current website that, like, allows for us to go build 100 different landing page variations, right? So you'd go and you'd do something like instant pages or lead pages. There's this new one that's absolutely crushing it right now. I don't know if you've heard of it yet. It's called Perspective.

Starting point is 00:23:58 It's Perspective.com. It basically allows you to build. It's basically a funnel builder, Greg. It's so sick. You should have Neals on the show also. He's a gangster. They're out of Berlin, out of Germany. Self-funded, bootstrapped, 10 million ARR in like three years.

Starting point is 00:24:14 Absolutely stupid. Literally using their software for all of their acquisition. So the difference is that it's built for mobile. So it's funnels, but built for mobile. And it feels like an app. You can kind of see it here on the screen where it's, like you can have like yes no check boxes and they click it in it like does confetti it like it feels like an app when the when the user opens it but it's actually just a lead form that

Starting point is 00:24:36 gets them down the funnel um but the the I think the the opportunity here on the on the landing page side is I want to just be able to go in and be like here's kind of this brand's like aesthetic go build me a landing page template like based off of this automatically I don't want to have to like drag any of these blocks around, do any of that. And I think it's possible right now. Like, you're seeing this already with like how people are using V0 or using lovable. Like, you can do this. But there isn't an easy way to deploy it to a subdomain. So for example, we use like LP.example.com, right? So we're living on that subdomain for our clients. So how I imagine this working is you have like a brand template for each of your

Starting point is 00:25:21 clients. And then it goes, it generates this landing page template. And then you can go and and modify these landing pages using, you know, a point and click solution, right? So I think there's a huge opportunity here just to do that for these, this category. And you can see it there. Like, tons of people are searching for this. But the, I've been pitched so many of these. Like, I've talked about this idea for like the last, you know, three months. I've been pitched so many landing page builders.

Starting point is 00:25:52 And it's like a full website builder. Like, I'm not trying to do that. the angle here is digital marketing agencies that are running ads or just anybody that's running display ads or Google ads, that's who you're selling this to, right? It's not, you know, really what this is is like imagine webflow, but you could chat with it like you do with cursor to create a landing page. Like that is, that's what you're trying to accomplish with this. And then once you figured out that template, okay, I can go and duplicate that 100 times, change the H1, 100 times, etc. So. I saw it last week WebFlow launched a AI assistant.

Starting point is 00:26:32 Did you see this? No, I haven't. Is it good? Have you tried it yet? No, I haven't tried it yet. Someone needs to try it. I'm going to try it this weekend, probably. But that's my question to you on this.

Starting point is 00:26:48 It's so obvious that the website builders, the final builders, are going to have this. And also Shopify launched one, I think, as well. I saw Toby tweeted it. Toby, let me pull it up. Toby the founder of Shopify, both Toby and Harley tweeted it. So you know that it's like... They're going to push it.

Starting point is 00:27:10 Yeah. We're going to push it. Describe your business and AI will get you started with just the right design. We have lots more coming on this front. So he's teasing it. Incredibly excited about how much more accessible entrepreneurship will become

Starting point is 00:27:23 due to the power of AI tools. So again, like we talked about competition. When you see things like this coming from Shopify, WebFlow, you still think it's a good business idea? 100%. I mean, that's just Shopify, right? Like, think about, I mean, I think Lead Pages does 50 million a year, if I remember correctly. Like, that means it's a huge category. Like, this is a huge category that you can go.

Starting point is 00:27:50 This is the same thing. Like, I mean, there can be mailchamps and clavios and, you know, you. know, kits and beehives and all of these email service providers and they can still all be massive companies because it's such a huge category. This is one of those categories, right? This is the fact that perspective can come in and in, you know, years bootstrapped go from zero to 10 million error, like signals how big this audience is. Right. So again, and also if the big dogs are doing it, that is a strong signal that people want this. So, I mean, you just got all the validation.

Starting point is 00:28:30 You have the search following value validation. You've got the incumbent validation, and they're going to move super slow on it. I mean, you can probably like a crack team of two engineers go do this and then you just run Google ads to it for landing page builder. Or you go sponsor YouTubers that run, that do Google Ads videos, right? Like how to do Google ads for real estate agents or whatever, right? And you pay them to use your tool within their video when they're teaching people how to run Google ads. By the way, side note, for people watching this on YouTube, the perspective AI website is the most gangster beautiful website I've seen in a long time.

Starting point is 00:29:09 It is gorgeous. It's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. And look how much video is on this, right? Like, it's 20, 25 people. People don't want to read. They want these videos. You know, they're on Instagram stories going through stories.

Starting point is 00:29:26 they'll watch your videos and the affinity that you're going to get, your conversion rate's going to go through the roof, and they do it in a really tasteful way. Are you kidding me? The 15 Min Express demo pop-up? Beautiful. I'll intro you to Neal. You need to have them on.

Starting point is 00:29:42 He's just like, they're so locked in on this, G. Like, it would be a great episode. Okay, cool. We'll do. All right, you have time for one last trend? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, TikTok template trend. 98,000 searches in the past month.

Starting point is 00:30:02 What are you thinking about here? Yeah, so to me, you had Lauren on recently, right? And he was talking about basically how they're using TikTok to get mobile app downloads. I think they went from zero to 100,000 downloads on the app store in like 15 days, if I remember the data, right? insane. And the opportunity here is that people are trying to find the formats or the TikTok templates that are going viral currently. So I think there's an angle to go and build like an email newsletter that's basically like, hey, here's the formats that are going viral this week on TikTok. And here's how you can go and use these for your brand right now. Right. So I'd almost just look at like

Starting point is 00:30:49 what Jason Levin is doing with meme lord technologies, I think is the brand name. And they have an email newsletter where like daily. They basically drop like here are the viral meme templates that are going viral in the last 24 hours. One button click and you can jump into their editor and like make your own version of it. I think it could be the same idea where it's like here's the viral TikTok formats, the templates that are going viral at the moment. and then basically drops them right into it so that they can go and build these, right?

Starting point is 00:31:22 That's how I'm kind of imagining it as the step one. It could evolve into where it's like a whole video editor that's specifically for it and maybe there's like a social scheduling application. But I think the first, and then my acquisition would be literally like, it would just be Twitter threads with like, here's the five formats that are going viral on TikTok this week, right? And it's like, boom, boom. And then it's like it breaks down each of the formats.

Starting point is 00:31:45 and then at the bottom of it, it's like, join my email newsletter to get these daily or whatever, right? I think that that tomorrow is a company that anybody could go start. You know, crushes it on those threads? Yes, 100%. With short of mine. You saw this guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Short of eyes.

Starting point is 00:32:04 Yep. No, they do. So he's doing pretty much what you're saying, right? He's going and saying, you know, this prayer meditation app is doing. a million MRR, 5 million downloads. And then usually he didn't in this particular thread, but he'll, oh yeah, here, he did do it. He'll show what is the content mix and how they're doing it, what is the format so that

Starting point is 00:32:30 you can go and copy it? Totally. And just imagine this exact same, like, template, but the call to action is, you know, sub to my email newsletter so you can get this on a daily basis, right? then that email list you go and monetize it you know it's the classic just playbook and then from there you can build tech i mean you can take it as far as you want right where you go and you build technology on top of it etc but i mean i you can make it a paid email newsletter where it's like the free version is only once a week and then the paid version is daily yeah exactly i think people

Starting point is 00:33:06 sleep on paid newsletters 100% dude i yeah i stand behind this i think we talked about it on the on the show at some point in the past, but basically redoing Scott's cheap flights, but doing it just as an email newsletter. So you can set up alerts on Google flights for specific airports to other airports, and then any time that the price drops for a future flight, it'll email you. So like literally all you'd have to do is put like an email listener on the email for like whatever location you're trying to fly from, you know, say it's Seattle. And then you go and like every time that a go, you basically do a roundup of all the Google flights for that day. And then each day you send the flights, right? I think you could charge for this super easily because those flights, they'll only be

Starting point is 00:33:56 cheap for like 72 hours. And so basically like people, you know, they'll, it's, it's, there's like a time sensitivity to it. Also going just like sucks now. And so I think because of that, there's a disruption opportunity. And I don't think it'd be crazy. It sucks. The name is, the brand name, just like, you don't feel anything, right? Totally. You felt something with Scott's Cheap's Flights.

Starting point is 00:34:22 Like, you kind of resonated it. And this is exactly how not to brand something in 2025. Totally. Totally agree. All right, dude. It's been a pleasure. Always a pleasure having you on. Thanks for hosting, man.

Starting point is 00:34:37 Like always, I will include links to where to find Cody and follow him. His X account, his YouTube, and more will be in the show notes. Cody, is there one thing you want to leave people with at all? I think the last thing I want to leave people with is just to be anti-boring businesses. Like, don't go buy a wash, you know, like a coin laundry store. Like, why would you do that right now? I just feel so also, it kills me to because these, the gurus that pitch this, there's so many of them, right?

Starting point is 00:35:16 Like, do boring businesses. And it's like, okay, what's the first thing they do when they get success is they take the money that they made from their boring business and they go buying all, they go buy online businesses that are cash-rolling assets for them? Like, immediately action after it. Like, if these boring businesses are so good, why aren't you reinvest? the funds that you're making back into these boring businesses, like if there's such a good business. So anyway, with that in mind for everybody that's listening, like, it is easier than ever

Starting point is 00:35:45 to build these online companies. Like, you can literally just ask perplexity, how do I do this? And it's going to give you a step by step, you know, process for how you build a WordPress site out or whatever, right? And I, yeah, that's the kind of, I just want to brainwash everybody to think about it that way. Like, if you're, if you're trying to get your first, start your first company. Yeah, you don't want to be that person, you know, in 2052, in the year 252, where your grandson, Jimmy, comes up to you and said, you know, hey, grandpapa, you know, what did you do in 2025? Oh, I decided to buy a laundromat in Des Moines, Iowa, while the greatest gold rush of all time was happening, where there were literally all the data and trends around this is what you can build and then software and assistance to help you. go build them? 100%.

Starting point is 00:36:36 100%. Again, I think, I don't think people understand the moment that we're in right now. Like, this is the greatest time ever to start online businesses. I'm like, not sleeping because of this, right? Like, we're just like, how do we go faster? How do I hire more people to move quicker? So anyway. Yeah, totally.

Starting point is 00:36:58 And we've been in the game for a while. Like, you know, I've never felt like this personally. 100%. Not at the rate that you can move now. It's just, it's the most, again, I, like in an hour, you can have a company live and people on the website. Like, I just, I literally, we just did this with AI infographic generator.com, right? Like, Replit built the application in an hour. We had it live in an hour. And then I put a tweet out and we drove, I think so far over like 20,000 people have gone to the website and we validated the idea because somebody bought it. And like, yeah, like, you know, I already know the comments.

Starting point is 00:37:40 They're going to be like, well, you have an audience already. So it's like, it's like, dude, all I've done is like every Sunday I just write 70 tweets. Like, this is, it's not hard. It's just, it's like very simple how to do this, right? It's just like nobody wants to show up and do the work. But it's easier than ever to show up and do the work for this. So anyway. Also, people forget, a year and a half ago, two years ago, you didn't have an audience.

Starting point is 00:38:03 No, I zeroed it. Like, I was ghost on everything, right? And I was like, you know, it was intentional. Then we realized, oh, this is this massive leverage point, like, if we go and build this. So it's like, cool, just go to each channel, figure out the game. Like, right now I'm figuring out LinkedIn, right? I have no idea how to do LinkedIn. But, like, I'm almost there from cracking it.

Starting point is 00:38:22 Like, there's two formats that I'm seeing work. You do a video that's about news and then your take on that news goes viral every time. And the other side is, like, make some huge. claim in a long format post and then have an image that is a vertical aspect ratio. So when somebody's scrolling on their mobile device, the post takes over their whole screen with like some huge claim. If you just go to my LinkedIn, you'll see this exact format. Those are working.

Starting point is 00:38:50 But this game is the same. For every channel, it's like figure out what works, do more of what works and less than what doesn't. You can build these audiences, dude. It's like 24 months. That's all it takes. It's not. it's just showing up, right?

Starting point is 00:39:04 Like you show up, you're beating 95% of people. And to be the best, like to be in the top 1%, all you have to do is just look at what works and do more of that. And what works is public. You can see what works. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's been funny watching you like grow, Greg,

Starting point is 00:39:22 because I feel like all of these shows have popped up now that it's the same format. It's like, here's these business, you know, here's startup ideas. Here's these business ideas that you can do. And this is like, this is the game, right? Like you invented this new format or remix this, you know, this format. And then suddenly it goes viral and then all these other people go and copy it.

Starting point is 00:39:43 And then it's just like you just do this. Do this in every platform where you're trying to build audience. Totally. And it's a game of constant reinvention. So you have to be okay to switch it up, switch formats. And that's kind of like vibe marketing and a lot. of ways, I guess, right? You're like reading vibes to see like, is this, is this format working? Is it not working? And you're kind of iterated on the fly. 100%. Like my, the thing I, they're, what I always

Starting point is 00:40:12 tell people are like founders in particular when they're trying to grow companies is like, you are agnostic to what works. Like your job is just to do a bunch of things, see what's performing best and then just follow that data, right? Like you, you don't have an opinion on it. The data is going to tell you the best outcomes. Your job is to not have to. an opinion, it's to just let the data speak for itself and keep pulling that thread. But I think it's the hardest thing for people. They like want to impose. I see this all the time where they're like, oh, this content format isn't working on this channel. It's like, of course it's not working on that channel. That's like, that's like when the internet first started and they

Starting point is 00:40:50 just like move print like on to to a website. Of course it's not working. Right. And then what worked? It was like this new format. It was like blog content. And now suddenly, you know, the New York Times is actually making money again because they transitioned over this. That's a whole other conversation because they're actually a games company, which I find fascinating. They're like a media company that sells subscriptions to games and like, that's actually how they make their money. That's a whole other,

Starting point is 00:41:16 you know, rabbit hole that we don't need to go down. My other quick rabbit hole that I'll just seed people with is that YC is a YouTube channel, not a startup accelerator. A thousand percent. They're a media company. They're not a, they're media company. Totally.

Starting point is 00:41:30 Yeah. But they, But specifically their YouTube channel, I don't know if you've been paying attention. Like they've been putting so much effort into growing it. And they're actually doing an amazing job. They're crushing it. And they're crushing it. They're absolutely crushing it.

Starting point is 00:41:43 No, I say this with like, good on YC. Like, it's cool that like if I were doing, if I was the CMO of YC, I would be doing exactly what YC is doing. A16 Z is also killing it. I think they're doing the game. It's crazy to me too that like every VC doesn't have a podcast and an email newsletter. like, insane to me.

Starting point is 00:42:03 What are you doing? Dude, it's nuts. They're like, they're like, oh, we, we naturally get the best founders. And I'm like, okay. Like, like capital is basically a commodity at this point. So the only differentiation is going to be like you being, you know, a cult leader personality. And so the fact that they're not investing in this is insane.

Starting point is 00:42:26 I mean, this, we're working with Ed for the, podcasting agency that I own. Like we're working with some investors on this. They're like we're working at this finance company, right? And in the last two years, we made the founder like from nobody knows them in the industry to he's famous to the point where like big four banks are trying to sponsor the show, right? Like that is what can happen. But for some reason, they're like, oh no, like we're core, man.

Starting point is 00:42:52 Like we're not going to do this. I'm like, this is, it's just ridiculous to me. So all right, man. Well, I appreciate you. And I'll see you next time. Thank you, brother. We'll talk you soon. Hey, everyone. Peace.

The Startup Ideas Podcast - Launch a $1M+ Startup tomorrow (3 Data-Backed Market Trends)

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