The Startup Ideas Podcast - Peace of mind business ideas (and why they print cash)
Episode Date: June 24, 2024Join us for an engaging conversation with Natalie Ellis, founder of Boss Babe, as we explore a wide range of startup ideas and business opportunities. In this episode, we discuss the huge potential of... building an all-in-one health company focused on pregnant women, a social media insurance company, and an AI wealth advisor. Natalie shares her insights on how to build a successful business and why she believes it is still possible to stand out. We dissect how to grow these companies using various tactics, from audience building to cold calling, and provide frameworks behind those strategies so you can apply them to any business. Whether you're aiming to launch your first million-dollar business or are curious about cutting-edge entrepreneurial strategies, this episode is packed with actionable advice and inspiration. Don’t miss this essential guide to launching a successful startup!Want more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: [gregisenberg.com/30startupideas](http://gregisenberg.com/30startupideas)🚀 My FREE 5 day email course to learn how to build a business of the future using the ACP funnel:https://www.communityempire.co/free-course🎯 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.communityempire.co/📬 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 NATALIE ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://x.com/NatalieEllis91Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamnatalie/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieelizabethellis/ To scale your revenue faster with conversion-focused creative sign up to https://designscientist.comEpisode Timestamps: 0:00 Intro01:39 Startup Idea 1: Health Tracking Platform for Pregnant Women 16:00 Startup Idea 2: Social Media Insurance Company29:45 Startup Idea 3: AI Wealth Advisor
Transcript
Discussion (0)
There's an opportunity to build a social media insurance company.
I mean, if you have an email list of 400,000 people, like, that's easily worth
four plus million dollars.
That's a mansion.
That's a mansion on 20 acres, you know?
So it's like, of course you would spend a certain amount per year to make sure that if a
Black Swan event happens or you do something wrong or you have an employee who goes
a wall, we will write you a check for X, XYZ amount, or we'll help you get back that account.
You're selling peace of mind.
Yeah.
And if you can sell peace of mind, you're going to be very wealthy, I feel like.
Natalie Ellis, the queen of startup ideas herself, blessing us.
Thank you for coming on.
I'm excited about this.
I love getting a chance to talk ideas.
I always daydream about starting other businesses when I should not be starting any more
businesses. So this is a perfect excuse. Exactly. This is, for me, this is fast food. Like,
this podcast is fast food in the sense like, I need, I need to get this out there. It's my,
it's my guilty pleasure. I need to put these ideas out there. And I know you have some ideas
for us. Yeah. I have loads. Tell me why you want me to start. Wherever you want to start.
You know what I've been thinking about lately is, um, obviously just had a baby two years ago.
and have been in my own postpartum health journey, which is before I had a baby, I found it really
easy to work out and be healthy and like do all the research and I had more time than I have now.
But since having a baby, I've realized for me wellness is very much, it's mental health,
it's your physical health, it's everything all in one.
And I've been daydreaming about starting this company that's specific, like I love a niche.
I feel like you do you.
I love a niche that's specifically for.
pregnant or postpartum women to come and just take every single box when it comes to health
and make it so easy for them. Like, I would love when I was pregnant for someone to just give me
this all the list of like the mineral testing that I should be doing, the gut testing,
the blood work and then have one person read, the MRI, like have one person read all the information
and then give me a full plan based on that because I'm so used to going to different people for
different things. Or I do feel like a lot of the companies out there that do this are very masculine
and male focused and are like, oh, fast, cold plunge, like all the things, which is great,
but not necessarily what you want when you're in like that stage of your life. So that's,
that's one idea that I have that I just wish someone would run with. I feel like you could make
it really high ticket, like make it expensive, put together these packages that, you know,
you sell, you sell to fewer people, but you just give the best service. And
really take care of women and like take that one thing that's in their mind like I'll completely
off their plate. So I feel like any market where there's an overwhelming amount of information,
which is this and people willing to spend money, which is this. Like, you know, if you're newly
pregnant, for example, like you want to spend, you know, it's all about your baby. And so I think
checkbox, checkbox. I think it could be really interesting.
if you did either a text or email, like it's basically a newsletter or or just like a text every week.
Like every week we're going to send you a text and like here's what you need to know and and I, you know,
and just make it like remove the noise. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I could totally see that.
Like they text and it's like here's the specific things you want to focus on this week and it's just done.
And you could maybe even text them back to get more specific advice.
like I'm having issues with this.
I'm having issues with my milk supply.
Like,
because there's so,
like I remember when I was postpartum,
there was so many supplements I couldn't take.
But then you can't just like call your doctor every single time.
Can I take this?
Can I take this?
It's like having someone that you can just ask those questions to.
I feel like people would pay so much money to have that solved for them.
Totally.
And then,
and then,
yeah,
I think once you,
there's a few ways where you can extend this business.
So one is,
of course,
so you can go after postpartum.
You can, you know, as the child gets older, you have new needs, so you can, like, extend it that way.
Eventually, you can, you know, as soon as someone gets pregnant, download this app or whatever.
So you can, you could extend it.
I like that.
How would you actually grow something like this?
So let's just say you wanted to build something like this.
How do you know, I know, you're, you know, you've built Instagram audiences with three, four,
or five million followers, you know, probably hundreds of millions of views at this point.
You've done eight figures in revenue from those audiences.
Like, would you do an audience first approach with this?
I think if I was to do this, what I would do is put together like a very detailed package
and a very detailed person.
And I would just do direct reach out, like actually email the person, something like very
compelling, direct response, like, here's exactly what I'm going to do for you, and just directly
reach out to people, get them on calls and sell them in. I would probably also do it for free to a bunch of
influencers who have audiences of the women I'm going after, like looking for influencers who
have audience of women who are pregnant or newly postpartum and actually are looking to pay for
a service like this. But when I started CEO, Mama, which is a mastermind for seven to nine
figure mom entrepreneurs. This was my approach. I literally wrote down in my notes app,
all of the women that would be a dream to have in. And I just reached out to them one by one.
And it was so easy. Like they were like, this solves my problem. I sent like a seven minute
loom video. They were like, this solves all my problems. Sign me up. So I feel like I'd probably
just do more of a sales approach than an audience approach with this one and really get that product
market fit. Because I feel like people are going to come back and say, well, does it include this?
does it include this? I'm looking for this and you can like tailor what you're offering.
But I feel like you could get to seven figures so fast just doing that with no audience at all.
And then if you wanted to build an audience, you totally could. But I feel like I probably wouldn't.
Would you?
Hey, everyone. If you're anything like me, you've got a ton of design work that you need.
Websites, landing pages, emails, social assets, you name it.
But you don't just want beautiful.
pages are beautiful websites. You want the stuff that's going to convert. You want the stuff
that's going to actually drive value. That's where DesignScientist.com comes in. It's an agency that for
one monthly price will do all your design work, all your copywork, all your engineering, and do stuff
that actually scales your revenue. You don't need a designer. You need a design scientist. Let's go.
Designscientist.com. I liked it so much.
I invested in the business.
I mean, I always start with building an audience just so I can, even if I don't use the audience,
just so I could understand the audience better and understand the positioning and A, B, test the offer.
So I would concurrently build the audience, even if I don't really use it.
I have a question for you on, like, that loom video strategy, that worked for you because,
I mean, if I'm getting a DM from Natalie Ellis, like, I'm opening that.
But how important was the fact that people trust you or, you know, do you need a creator type co-founder with something like this?
I don't think you need it. I will say it's definitely been an advantage for me, but I received this
email from someone about a month ago and she is a stylist and she sent me this email and I've never
heard of her before and she was like, hi, I'm getting back into business after taking the last
decade off to have babies. I was a stylist. I'm getting back into it's just open very honestly.
It's like I went ahead and pulled 10 looks for you that I think you'd absolutely love. I've linked all
the looks in the PDF. You don't even have to reply to this if you don't want. Just go ahead and
buy the outfits if you love it. If you do like it and you'd want to work in a more formal way,
let me know. So I opened this, it was like this PDF made in Canva and it was 10 looks pulled for
Natalie Ellis. Here's Natalie style, summed up. And then it was 10 outfits on 10 different pages with
all the links. And I went through. I absolutely loved it. And I got back to when I was like,
okay, I want to work more formally with you. And I've just spent, I think, I think I've spent maybe
$2,500 with her to have her pull all my looks virtually. I'd never heard of her before.
But I feel like she reached out with such a personalized approach.
She doesn't have an audience or anything like that.
But she just put so much time and effort into it.
It really caught my attention.
So I could see if you didn't have the social capital doing something like that could actually really work.
Totally.
Yeah, I think you don't really need the social capital.
It obviously helps.
You just have to your offer needs to be dialed.
Your offer needs to be super dialed.
And you have to build the trust another way.
So I just hired someone who came personalized approach, like you said, loom, which by the way is the best for a two-minute loom. And it was just like, hey, I'm 23 years old. I've done XYZ things. I think that I can help you in this category. It was like growth. And just made it really easy for me. And I was like, okay, it was $7,500. And I was like, okay.
This is a random DM, but like, here's my credit card.
Yeah, when someone reaches out and they directly solve your problem in the most convenient way,
it's, you're like, yes, please.
I'll totally sign up.
And I feel like you could do that with this idea or similar spaces.
If you don't have the audience, then you are like, okay, my revenue goal is this.
I would just do more of that.
But it's like, I also feel like, and this might upset people, but I feel like sometimes people are not willing to go the extra mile.
and they like just put out the most basic shit and expect it to work.
Like, I'm hiring right now.
And some of the applications I get in, I'm like,
on what planet do you feel like this is a good application?
Oh, I get some people reaching out selling me stuff in my DMs.
And it's such a generic copy paste.
I just think if you just went the extra mile,
there's so few people willing to do that, you're going to stand out.
And I think that's the approach you need to have,
especially in the start of a business.
it's like, how can I go the extra mile to really dial in my offer and make it completely irresistible?
Maybe do some of the things that aren't scalable, but it's going to attract the right people to me.
It's going to give me feedback on my product and then you can scale that way.
But I don't feel like a lot of people are willing to go the extra mile or I don't see it.
I mean, they're not.
And on hiring, like, I actually review every single person that applies to lay checkout.
And I'd say 20% of the people that apply to lay checkout, there's like a reason field.
it's like, why do you want to join? And they say to learn, the number one reason why they're applying
for this job is to learn from late checkout or learn from Greg Eisenberg. It's like, that's not why,
oh, I'm going to go pay you $80,000 a year or $100,000 a year to just like come and learn what we're
doing. And then so you can just, you know, in six months or nine months, just go and start your own
version. Like, no, that's not the right offer. You know, the positioning should be, you know,
you've got this business. I think I'm uniquely able to help. Here's a couple ideas for you. And
you know, hire it. When you apply for a job, it's the same thing as you're selling yourself
ultimately, right? And sometimes we'll have people complete test projects. And I've even had,
like I have them complete the test project and put it into the application, have some
responses saying, I don't work for free. Like, well, you're not working at all. Bye-bye.
Mike drop. That's so good.
Oh my goodness. It drives me insane. But yeah, it's like taking that approach.
Like I feel like every successful entrepreneur that you speak to has and probably is still willing to just fully roll their sleeves up and do the things most people aren't willing to do.
And, you know, spend the time on a proposal that might not even get a response, but know that the work you're putting out you're really proud of.
And you can see where this is going. And I think you have to be willing to do that.
with any idea.
And then you can pivot.
You'll get great data.
But yeah, I don't think it's hard to go the extra mile.
I don't think it's hard to like do something incredible because most people won't do it.
Yeah.
Totally.
And I think two minute looms.
Oh my God.
Just do a two minute loom and get your background right.
Get a microphone.
Spend $50 or something on a microphone.
So you sound good.
Be excited.
And write a script.
Yeah.
Don't just like talk.
you know, just, oh, let me, yeah, I'm just going to talk.
No, no, no, no, write a script.
Write a script.
Do you ever think about that, if you want to start from scratch right now?
Like, yes, people can say, you know, the job market saturated or the entrepreneurship space is saturated.
This industry is saturated.
Whenever I'm looking at starting again from scratch, I actually feel like I'm so well
positioned to start again because I'm just willing to do those things.
I'm willing to think about, does my background look decent? You know, am I willing to prep for this call?
I'm just willing to do those things. And I feel like if you go into this, into anything, applying for jobs, start of ideas, anything with just this attitude of expectation, you're just not going to get there. And I know that's like harsh to say. But I also don't think this like Gen Z movement, the quiet quitting all that stuff. I don't think that's really setting people up for success at all. I have strong opinions.
on all of that. A friend of mine texted me this morning. He was like, has your experience
with the Twitter algorithm recently been? And I wrote, most tweets get way less impressions, but sometimes
you go ballistic. He writes, my engagement has been trash. And he works with a ghost writer.
He writes, my content guy, who's Gen Z, literally quit because he couldn't deal with the low
engagement. Ha ha ha. If that doesn't sum up this conversation, I don't know what it is. Right. Like,
that's who you're competing against.
Like you're, in the hiring market, you're competing against that.
And the job market, you're competing against that.
And then, you know, in the startup ideas and startup space, that's who you're competing
again.
So I think that going back to your idea, it's like, you just have to be a little more polished.
You just have to do a little more and people will appreciate it.
And that's why cold DMing does still work.
Yeah, it really does still work.
not such I don't feel like and you know I'm still a big advocate of building audience on social I don't
think it's too saturated I just think it's the way that you approach it if you're going to approach
it trying to do the same thing that everyone else is doing and have this low effort approach I don't
think you're going to get the results that you're looking for so yeah across the board um what are
some of your start ideas lately I'm like oh let me consult my my list all right I'm going to pull my
Okay, here's one for you.
Okay.
A friend of mine called me the other week and he goes,
dude, you're not going to believe it.
My Twitter account got suspended.
This is a person with 500 plus thousand followers.
And why did it get suspended?
He was basically in an engagement pod.
So he would tweet out something.
He'd post it to this group chat.
they would all come in, reply, sometimes retweet him. And it's actually against Twitter,
Twitter's terms of service to do that. His account got banned. He was in tears,
guys literally in tears. And it got me thinking that there's an opportunity to build a social media
insurance company. Okay. So pay us $1,000 a year.
and in the case that, you know, your account gets taken away, we will write you a check for
XYZ amount or will help you get back that account. It's basically just, you know, I would pay for
that, you know, and I'm my own, I don't do engagement pods or stuff like that, but I would just pay
a fee to make sure that I don't lose my account from some Black Swan event.
this exists. I just got pitched on this. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I just got a company
reach out to me pitching me. That's all they do is social media insurance on your account.
And they'll pay you out. Oh, let me find it. There's actually, when I looked into it,
even the company that we currently work with for business insurance now offers this. It's wild.
Let me find, see if I can find it in my inbox. Like it blew my mind that this was a thing.
get dash notch.com
slash Instagram
but it's insurance for digital assets.
So it says this is for influencers and shop owners
to coaches and artists.
Insurance for digital assets is essential for anyone
who relies on web for their content and their income.
So they will literally ensure your Instagram,
your YouTube, Twitch, TikTok, NFTs, soon to be Twitter.
Yeah.
It's genius.
So this is brilliant.
This is brilliant.
The way to do this, so I still think there's an opportunity.
Notch is going very horizontal.
So they're basically saying like,
they're trying to be the GEICO of digital assets.
I think the way to do this is I would create a bunch of sub-brands.
So it would be like Twitch insurance, X insurance, YouTube insurance.
And then it's just a bit more niche.
And I think that if I got reached out by someone who just focuses on
Twitter X insurance, and that was where my bread and butter was, I would trust them maybe a little bit more than something like notch.
That's really smart. Like you feel like they would just fully focus in on that. Totally. Also, also, like, you know, I see it says Twitter insurance coming soon. I don't want to be the first person that they're going to insure. I had a, you know, there's a 401k company. I won't name them. But two years ago,
they launched. And I have my 401k with some like boring bank fidelity or something like that. And
they hit me up. Great pitch. Great pitch. Great loom with it. And, you know, cold DM. And I was like,
I love this. And once I went and looked at moving my 401k, they're like, oh, you're going to be the
first person to actually move your 401K. And I was like, respectfully, dude, I'm out.
I'm out.
Yeah, no one wants that.
No one wants that.
Yeah, okay, good call.
I like that.
I like that idea of having sub-brands, actually.
And just like feeling, even if it's the same company,
but feeling like they know exactly what they're doing,
they understand it inside out.
Because you're right as well.
Most people do go heavy on one platform specifically.
Yes.
So that makes total sense.
I also feel like, I wonder if people would ever ensure our email lists,
because that's also such a panic for people.
What would happen if I ever?
Yeah.
If I ever lost my email list, oh my God.
Like, do they, would they ensure email lists?
How big is your email list?
I mean, it changes all the time.
It's around 400,000 now.
But I had a situation last year, last October, I had this cold DM.
I mean, we're talking how they can be good.
This one went kind of south.
And it was a cold email.
And they were talking, they were on my email list,
and they feel like we could boost.
our open rates, our open rates are about 32%.
Could boost our open rates, click through rates.
And I dug into this company and I actually knew the founder, not super close, but knew
the founder, had mutual friends.
And I thought, yeah, let's give this a shot.
Anyway, they came in and what they actually did in our account got us blacklisted with
Google.
So our email open rates went from 32% to pretty much nothing.
Like we were getting barely anyone opening the email list.
And overnight, I was worried my entire business had just like.
like went to shit. And we had to go through a whole process of resurrecting it. And that was a whole thing.
But in that moment, to have insurance on your email list would have been golden. And also having
someone, like having an insurance company like that, you could reach out to and say, okay,
I've lost my entire email list has been blacklisted. What am I going to do? Like, they would probably
have steps to recover. I felt like there was nobody could help me. I was getting different advice from
everyone and most people are like, you know, this is just a process. I eventually did figure out
how to do it. But it was a nightmare. And I would pay for insurance to have someone to like call
in an emergency situation to just resurrect things. 100%. I mean, if you have an email list of 400,000
people, like that's easily worth four plus million dollars. So that's a mansion. That's a mansion on
20 acres, you know? So it's like, of course you would spend a certain amount per year to make
sure that if a Black Swan event happens or you do something wrong or you have an employee who goes
on, you know, AWOL, there's someone you can call. And I think, I think this is a really big business
idea. And the way I would do it is I would again focus on these different niches. So let's just say
newsletter. I'd even start even more granular. I'd be like, I'm only doing Behive newsletters.
So I would be like the Beehive newsletter insurance person and company.
And what I would do is I would prove out the model and then eventually partner with Beehive.
Right.
So once you partner with Beehive, they can just upsell it.
You split the revenue.
They're happy because, you know, they're making more money.
You're happy because you now have distribution through them.
And eventually I see you can easily sell one of these businesses to Beehive.
because they're going to want that internally.
That is a genius idea.
Wait, how do you do this podcast and not go start new businesses?
How do you...
Well, the beauty is my job is to start new businesses and buy businesses.
Okay.
So, like, I might start this business, honestly.
I might text, you know, DM Tyler after this from Beehive and be like, let's do this thing.
Can I be involved?
Yes, yes.
I mean, that's why I'm...
That's why I do this, you know?
That is actually a genius idea, though, because I would have absolutely,
and beehive, by the way, were the only people that helped me resurrect my list of anyone.
Really?
Yeah.
So it was costing me, I was spending $50,000 a year on a different platform.
And when this happened, I couldn't get in touch with anybody.
And I've been with them.
I've had a big email list for a really, really long time, like eight years maybe.
and way before it was cool.
And I couldn't get in contact with them.
They kept sending me to live chat.
People kept saying they couldn't help me.
I was asking for a phone number.
No one would help me.
And I reached out to B5.
I was like, please can somebody help me?
Like, I have this list.
I don't know what to do.
They got on a call with me right away and we're like,
okay, let's talk this through.
And it was the most help that I've had.
And we switched to them.
We went from spending that much money to spending 10K a year or something like that.
And it's been the best experience ever.
And just instantly, they, this helped me.
Like, it actually felt like someone cared enough to, like, help me solve the problem.
But that blows my mind when you can be a client for so long and spend so much money with
someone and you can't even get them on the phone.
Like, that's the easiest way to lose business.
And that company keeps losing more and more business to platforms like Beehive.
Totally.
Totally.
Yeah.
I mean, I think what they did for you is almost like something they should have charged for,
but they don't.
just give it away for free. And I think that's why this insurance idea for Beehive makes so much
sense because they'll be able to upsell that. And that's the reason Shopify has, I think,
three plans. I think it's Shopify, the regular one, which is like 30 bucks a month, and they've got
a mid-tier. And then they've got Shopify Plus, which is basically their enterprise plan. And a big
reason why you're on their enterprise plan, which I think is $2,500 a month, is you have someone to talk to,
you have a shoulder to cry on.
And that's worth a lot.
It's worth so much.
When your whole business is wrapped up in your email list,
which most businesses should versus social,
you have to have someone that can support you.
We need to do this idea.
And I also discovered something during this process
of how to resurrect your email,
which I don't really want to share right now.
But if anyone's like in the situation,
they can message me.
But I learned a lot and I feel like an insurance company
you could totally charge for that information because it's very niche information.
Like you Google it and you're not going to learn how to get off a Google Blacklist
unless you're like sending, you know, to a very small segment of your list over and over and
over again.
The company that we initially worked with, they charged us 20K for consulting.
They couldn't solve the problem.
They were like, yeah, it's how are you going to be three months and we'll just start
by sending emails to a couple of thousand.
And I was like, this doesn't work for me.
I can't have my whole business stop for three months.
So.
Yeah.
What planet do you live on?
Yeah.
Like that's not going to work for me.
I need a solution like tomorrow.
I need to.
And I had partners.
Like I had to cancel partnerships, like sponsors,
because I wasn't going to put it out and then have no one open it.
So it's like it impacts so much of your business.
Like let's say you have,
so we have sponsors locked in for 12 months at a time.
You should be able to give that info to your insurance company.
and like let's say you have to close that sponsorship down,
you'd still get paid out what you would have from your sponsor.
Like it's worth its weight in gold.
And I feel like a lot of people on Beehive would want to do that
because they are locking in those longer term sponsorships now.
They're monetizing like crazy.
100%.
So I think the one takeo I have for people is if you're coming up with startup ideas,
this category, this trend is businesses for people.
their shoulder to cry on businesses.
You can just brainstorm 100 ideas just on this.
And I think it could be beehive.
It could be a bunch of different categories.
But those are some of the best businesses to be in.
And that's why Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway,
their biggest businesses are insurance businesses,
GEICO, etc.
Because they understand, you know,
what is an insurance business?
And insurance businesses,
there's a certain amount of risk
that a bad thing's going to happen.
But you're an expert.
You understand what that risk is.
So, for example,
I was just watching the annual meeting for Berkshire Hathaway,
and they had this guy named Ajit,
who runs all their insurance businesses,
and he was saying how there was, like, a year or two
where Berkshire Hathaway did not insure any homes in Florida.
Because they, based on their research,
they're like there's going to be a hurricane and they're going to lose a lot of money.
But now, for whatever reason, they have data that's saying we are going to insure in Florida.
So as risks changes, they decide, you know, what to underwrite and how to think about this.
But insurance is an incredible business. Why? Because you're selling something, let's say, for $5,000 a year.
And it's literally a piece of paper that says if this bad thing had bad things, this
bad thing happens, I will give you money or something. But it's, you're, you're getting all the funding
in the beginning, right? Yeah. So it's a beautiful business model if you understand how to underwrite
for risk. That's so smart. I even think too about like shoulder a cry on businesses like when
your ads account gets shuts down and your whole business relies on ads. Like there's so many
of these little spaces where business owners need shoulders to cry on. I love it.
We have time for one more idea.
I could either give you an idea that you can give feedback on or you can give me an idea.
That's up to you.
Yeah, give me an idea.
Cool.
Let me pull it up.
So I saw this tweet by this guy at Canada CAS.
Someone needs to build an AI agent that is good at financial analysis.
They will make an obscene amount of money and make the world a better place by freeing thousands of hours a day that some of our smartest people spend.
typing numbers from annual reports into Excel sheets.
And then people responded, there's this guy named Shil Monote, who writes, I get at least
one pitch a week on this topic, but I haven't seen anything compelling yet.
I think this idea around a financial advisor agent is kind of the dream.
I'm curious, what do you think of something like that?
Because when you think of a financial advisor, for example, they act like an agent.
They act like AI, right?
They're like, okay, what's your risk tolerance?
What are your goals?
And then they have like, you know, a model based on, based on that, we're going to buy companies like this.
And it just feels like something that the best possible financial advisor to me is probably an AI agent
because they'll just have access to way more data.
And they'll act with less, you know, humans act when fearful, when they're fearful, when the market goes down, they often sell.
when the market goes up, they end up being greedy.
So I'm curious, what do you think about this idea around building AI agents for the financial
world?
Yeah, I could totally see that.
I feel like, too, it would be really great to have someone that you can come to or like
AI that you can come to and say, give me, just lay out all my options.
Because I sometimes feel like with financial advisor, the quality of that advice you get is
the quality of the questions that you ask.
But I often don't know the kind of questions that I want to ask.
and so I could see someone an AI coming and like laying out all your different options
and playing out all the different scenarios for you and you deciding which one you go you want
to go into because if you're someone like me who doesn't know I just fully trust my financial
advisor I don't really know the kind of questions to ask I'm like take out my money and help me
make more but I don't really I would love to have that more laid out for me but I also could
see that working generally in the business space like I'm not from America so having a
company here, I find really confusing.
Like setting up your company and then the different reports, you've got to file every year.
And then all the tax returns and all the, all there's so many things.
It would be so great to have an AI that just is on top of all of this stuff and comes to you and says,
okay, we need to file this report now.
We need to do like, there's so many different things like that for every different country as well.
And if you're running a company in multiple countries, be so good to have an AI that just scours,
like all of the different laws and different things you need to do and brings it to you.
Okay.
Here's the idea.
I've got it.
It's called Have You Thought of This.com.
That's good.
And what it is, it doesn't replace your financial advisor.
It doesn't replace your lawyer.
It doesn't replace your business advisor.
But it acts as a third party that's unbiased that sends you a weekly email or text.
that says, have you thought about these three things?
So, for example, in the financial advisor thing, it's like, have you thought about, you know, buying
Berkshire Hathaway this week because the stock price went down 10%, but their earnings went up 5% in the last quarter?
And then you can take that information that's distilled.
And actually, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, where there's so much information
people just want curation that you can go to your financial advisor and,
be like, hey, have you thought of Berkshire Hathaway?
And then you can have that conversation with your advisor.
I like this a lot.
And even when we're talking about like the social media insurance piece,
just having this AI that just sends you these things,
have you thought about insuring X, Y, Z?
Have you thought about like there's so many things that you have to think about
when you are a business owner or you own property or you have money that you want to invest?
There's so many things to just have it distilled like that.
I think would be genius.
Like, it's almost just like a family office, AI.
Yeah.
Explain, you know, talk more about that.
Okay.
So I just feel like family offices are great if you hit a certain wealth threshold.
But there's a lot of people that maybe don't meet the threshold that actually still
need a lot of the support.
Like have businesses, have property, have some money that they want to invest.
just have a lot of moving parts in their life.
And it would be so great to have one agent, one AI, one person thing, robot responsible
for just keeping everything in check.
Have you paid your property tax?
Have you maxed out your 401K?
Have you submitted your workforce report?
Have you, like, all of those different things?
And like maybe you come to the AI and there's like a detailed question and you
fill it out with all of your.
different things that you have going on in life. And then everything just gets like every month,
maybe January, the stuff to do, February the stuff to do. And you can input all. And I could honestly
see it going like, I'm a granular person. I could see it being like a whole manual of being able
to run your life and business for you with all the details. Like even as detailed as like here's,
if you own three properties, here's how often you have to change the air conditioning unit.
here's how often you need to do XYZ.
Like the mental load of having stuff or running things is so high.
If you could have AI take that mental load,
I think people would be willing to really pay for that.
How much do you think people would pay for something like that?
I don't know.
I think it's probably a sliding scale based on the net worth of their businesses and property.
Like, you know, as we start owning more and more property,
I just realized the mental load gets bigger and bigger,
so I'd probably pay more and more per month to manage more things.
So I could, like, you know,
when you sign up for a newsletter,
when you, like, slide the scale to say how many subscribers you have
and it gives you a price.
Almost you could slide the scale to say, like,
here's what my property and businesses is all worth.
And then it gives you a monthly fee.
Totally.
Yeah.
And for you, you're like, it's peace of mind.
You're selling peace of mind.
Yeah.
And if you can sell peace of mind,
you're going to be very wealthy, I feel like.
Totally. And that's another trend, right? Another way to think about business ideas is, you know, how do you, how do you sell peace of mind to different niches? Because that's another thing like shoulders to cry on, people will pay for peace of mind. Yeah. And convenience. And yeah, I think the mental load just continues to get bigger and bigger every year. And if you could just take that mental load off and give it to an AI. And I know, you probably get a report.
every week and then things that you need to do.
And it's just like, you know, okay, I'm not getting sent to jail because I forgot to do
my tax return or my house isn't going to burn down.
And I'm not sure like there's not, you're able to mitigate those risks.
You can sleep easier at night.
Totally.
And I think from a, you know, how I'd grow this perspective, I think there's so many stories,
like sad, bad stories that, you know, someone forgot to, I don't know, file their tax return.
and they have all this interest or, you know, someone, you know, some bad thing happened.
And you can just sell fear, basically.
So you create Instagram, Twitter, whatever, TikTok, and you're just going to be a, let me tell you the story of how XYZ went from a $10 million net worth to, you know, in debt a million dollars.
And you tell these stories and then it's like, buy our product, follow us for more of these stories.
Oh, yeah.
I think, yeah, that's what you do.
Have you heard of Johanna?
No, tell me about it.
Johanna, it's Y-O-H-A-N-A, and it's the personal assistant app for parents.
So it's this app.
They call it the ultimate parenting hack.
And basically, the goal of Johanna is to take the mental load of parenting off of you.
So like some of the things that they do is plan date nights, hire handyman, plan birthday parties, book appointments, weekly meal planning, order costumes, maintain the car, clean.
service, babysitters, like, the mental load of parenting, basically, they handle and they
use AI and then they also have real people, which I feel like they'll probably switch to AI,
fully AI in the near future. I think it's kind of like this. It's Johanna, but for like family
office or like the different areas of your life. But basically, they're selling peace of mind for
parents. Because as a parent, there's like always so much shit to do. There's like always a
holiday coming up. There's always a birthday coming up. There's always, you know, your normal life
to-do list and then your parenting to-do list. And they just take that whole thing away. And I think
that is a big trend and people are willing to pay for it. And they've been able to make it really
affordable too. Yeah, it's really affordable. It's $129 a month. Like I expected it to be way more.
Yeah. My guess is so they, this is started by, this is like a crack team. So they, this is
started by Johanna, I guess, is her name. No, Yoki. And she co-founded Google X. So she developed Nest,
like the Nest thermostat. So she's smart. She knows what she's doing. She knows what she's doing.
My guess is they've raised tons of money. I'm going to check real quick. It's really smart to just
release people's mental load and in specific niches.
I could see this.
Oh yeah, tell me what you're finding.
So first of all, they launched with a $249 membership.
So they've actually cut it in half.
And I wonder if it's the AI that's just making it a little more efficient.
I personally wouldn't want, I think this is a great business.
I don't know how much they've raised, but I'm guessing tens of millions.
I personally wouldn't want to compete with them because they've got an app that they've
built and it just seems like they're subsidized.
They're probably not making much money on that $1.29.
But yeah, what could you unbundle from this to compete with them?
That's a question.
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that.
But that's interesting.
And it's cool.
I'm happy you brought this up because I do think that, yeah, this is a peace of mind
play.
And like even when you go to their abode page, it's literally like, it's literally like a person.
with like their brain and doves coming out of their brain.
Oh, God, that's such a sure.
I feel like it could be like a Johanna for entrepreneurs,
Johanna for property.
Like there's so many different vehicles you could go into with this.
And it's the same business model, but you're,
if I was going to do this and use AI,
I would probably go for more of like a higher priced service,
like a very white glove.
But I feel like the way Johanna's doing it,
it's just very affordable and approachable.
which is also amazing for parents.
Totally.
Cool.
This was fun.
Wait, I don't know that I could do this as often as you do.
I want to go and start so many new businesses right now.
You're like, you're ready to just run through a wall right now.
Let's go.
Oh my God.
You're like, did we just start four businesses?
I feel like I don't have the willpower to talk about ideas this often.
You know, different strokes for different folks.
Do you ever get people listening to the show and then writing and saying,
oh my God, took this idea, ended up starring it.
Here's where I'm at.
Dozens of people have taken ideas over the last couple of months and built them.
Some are generating revenue and it's really, really cool, quitting their jobs and everything.
But the vast majority of people listen and they're just like listening to,
they're just, they find it fun to get their creative juices flowing.
and it also might spark something in their own life.
You know, it might be like,
wow, I never heard about Johanna.
I'm going to go and use that.
That makes sense.
I love it.
So fun.
Natalie, where could people learn more about you and get to know you better?
The best place is my podcast.
You can just search for the Bossley podcast.
We released twice a week.
Cool.
Yeah, check it out.
I listen to episodes and it's, you're good.
You're good at what you do.
So I highly recommend it.
Thank you.
Later.
