Making $100,000 a month with COOKIES? [the Diet Chef]

The most predictable way to set yourself up for a seven figure business and also an eight figure exit is to control an audience, a group of people who want what you have to sell them. So when I was contacted by an influencer with 500,000 YouTube subscribers, 400,000 people following them on Instagram, and a sizable email list in my favorite niche market, that's food, I had to bring this person onto the podcast and do a one hour consult with him. Now, I had a sneaky reason for bringing Joe Duff onto the podcast, and that's because he's in my favorite market and he's my ideal type of person to work with on a one to one basis. Because I know that by pointing out a few specific things that he does in his business, he could have a seven figure business en route to an eight figure exit. As a result of you listening to this consult, you're going to walk away with two things. One, you're gonna see the clear plan that I give him to launch a successful business and grow something that I think can be an absolute smashing home run. But the second thing you're gonna get is some insight into how the influencer mindset works. Because if you're a brand builder or a new entrepreneur, working with an influencer can sound intimidating or out of reach. But what you're going to discover after listening to this conversation is, is that influencers see equity or business building as just as difficult as some people see building an audience or putting out content. And it's a beautiful opportunity to partner with someone that already has the reach. It's one of the things that we encourage our students to do inside of the capitalism incubator is to partner with people who already have an audience and use their audience to to launch your business and to get the exposure that you need to take something to seven figures. In fact, that's what I end up recommending that Joe do partner with someone within our community and launch his business. So if you're a part of what we do inside of the incubator, this might be an opportunity that comes your way here soon. This is a one hour consult that I did with Joe Duff on how he can leverage his audience to build a seven figure business. Enjoy. Joe Duff, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited amp to chat with you. My first question for you though is, is Duff your real last name?

Duff is my real last name.

It's the most badass manly name ever. Joe Duff. So we found each other's work. I've been a fan of your work because you post high protein recipes of people's favorite foods, which is like my jam, my hobby, if you will. You found my work because you've got this following. It's over half a million people, if I remember correctly. And now you're thinking about going into the physical products world and you've been thinking about this for a few years now, is that correct?

That's right. I've been thinking about it for a while. I thought about it for the first time in 2019. I met with a local co packer. But I just, I, you know, I didn't listen to the. I listened to a lot of your stuff obviously. So it was just one meeting. You didn't really give me the confidence to like move forward necessarily with.

Well, then you weren't listening close enough. Joe.

I've had repeat for like the past three weeks. And so I feel like I'm starting to warm up to that idea again just because I come from, obviously, like you were saying, more of a online creator space, digital creator space. I enjoy having a digital business because there's just less, I feel like.

Problems involved maybe with that, just with storing inventory, shipping inventory, customer service. There's obviously like a lot of different limbs of having a physical product, but listening to your stuff has changed my mind a little bit and I just want to pick your brain and, and dive into it. Thank you so much for.

Of course, of course. I mean, I want to treat this like a true consulting call where we come up with a plan for you on how to move forward because you're in the perfect position. You're honestly my ideal client. You're my ideal person to work with for two reasons. One, you make your money someplace else, so you're not gonna have the stress of like, I have to make this work. So that's number one. And number two, you have an audience that consumes your content on how to do things in the food space, which is the most valuable space. Like, the valuations are huge in the food space and it's easy to get customers in that space. So this is my jam, Joe, which is why I wanted to get on here and just wrap with you about the seven figure opportunities that you're probably sitting on right now. Just to catch me up to speed though, tell me a little bit about the business where the biggest profit centers are, how you pay for your life. Just give me like a high level view of your current business.

All right. First and foremost, I am involved in sort of an ownership stake of my dad's restaurant, which is Duff's famous Wings. We are the oldest family owned and operated chicken wing restaurant in the world. We didn't invent chicken wings, but the inventor of the chicken wings, the family doesn't own that restaurant anymore. And since we're the second oldest chicken wing restaurant, we're the oldest family owned and operated. We've been selling wings since 1969, but open since 1946. So some of my money comes from being involved in the restaurant. Besides that, I have the Diet Chef brand, so I make money off of first and foremost. The. The blog is my biggest revenue stream, ranking for a ton of different obviously high value keywords.

And is that the Diet Chef dot com?

It's with an S Diet chefs dot com. I own the Trick Chef. But when I originally made this website, which was eight years ago, the diet chef was like $8,000, which was crazy to me. And I wasn't making it. So I was like, I'll put an S on it. And there we go.

Okay, Got it. Yeah. I'm just looking at your SEO and you have a ton of traffic coming to this site. And when you say that the primary revenue driver is the blog, how does the blog make money?

Mostly through ad income. So the blog made just under $200,000 last year itself, which was great. Besides the blog, obviously, there's some affiliate money that's. That I'm separating off from that. So that's just ads almost that 200k.

And so there's some affiliate income from Amazon. My YouTube channel is my second highest a driver of revenue, which is it was around a little over a hundred.

Thousand last year from, like, from ad revenue.

Yeah. And then sponsorship opportunities just on Instagram. I've had some TikTok reach out and on YouTube as well. So I do several of those sponsorships throughout the year. And then last in. In 2020, in November of 2020, I reached out to my business partner, my cousin, who was kind of affected by Covid. He was in sports performance training with athletes locally, mostly at the high school level. And when all the gyms closed, he kind of was out of work. But my business was still going.

Yeah, you had a great year.

I want to do what I'm doing, but I want to open it up to the regular food space. Just normal stuff. Because I. This is a passion project for me, the Diet Chef and diet based recipes and healthy living. But I also knew that there was a huge opportunity in the regular food space because once you and I know you've kind of started in blogging, I don't know the real origin story of how you got involved, but I've heard like 2006 you were doing stuff from your dorm room.

Yes, sir.

Yes, it was, dude. On a dial up connection in 20 2006, where was.

You have been listening to my content, Joe? Yes, yes, it was a lot harder back then.

Dude, I told you I've been binging your stuff for like.

Thank you.

So, so once you kind of know how the Internet works, like a lot of people, you know, they think it's Google is how the. And that's sort of how it works. But I'm talking about ranking content on the Internet, how you would make a piece of content and get it to rank on the first page. But hopefully number one in SEO. And a lot of those same principles and lessons learned I applied to YouTube and back and forth. Right. Because you've got the top two search engines in the world. So a lot of my low carb keto based recipes, which is a lot of my following on YouTube ranks number one for a lot of search terms that I, I've tried to rank for a lot of really high value terms like pizza and ice cream and tortillas and things that have a lot of search. So there's, you know, traffic day in and day out from the search. Not just, you know, I do this one off video and it got a ton of views and then it never gets views again. Yeah, my, my secret sauce is usually I make something and I, I'm trying to have that get traffic day in and day out forever.

Okay. So Joe, I have a pretty good idea of like the high level of the business now. But there's some other things. Like you have cookbooks for sale.

What percentage of that is for revenue?

So when those launched, in total they've done about almost $100,000 in the two years combined. Combined. So the first cookbook is in 2020 and then I did a cookbook last year and it's been about six figures. That though has like kind of dwindled a little bit because I as, you know, like keto low carb, I think the trend has lowered with that. It's not as hot, but every month that equates to almost $1,000 for me.

Okay, so we have the blog revenue from ads and YouTube makes up 70 ish percent of the business revenue. We have the cookbooks and we have sponsorships kind of round out the rest of it. What about an email? Listen, the email list size and their responsiveness.

So that's a weakness of mine for sure.

Okay, let's talk about it.

A lot of bloggers and you know, YouTubers, they would get people onto an email list. It's never been something that I've spent a whole lot of time doing actually in the past since I've been binging your stuff, I've been making that more of a priority. But even though it hasn't been a priority to me, I have a list of about 10,500 people.

Great.

And I've been sending out emails. I'll get about a thousand clicks. It's not, it's not a.

It'S total clicks are about a little over a thousand. So.

Okay, great. I mean we've got, we've got more than enough to do damage here. So let's talk a little bit about, about your, what you're considering in the physical product space, what you want to do. Because right now I feel like a mosquito at a nudist colony. There's so much opportunity and I could go in so many different directions and it all looks delicious. I see so much opportunity just in these five minutes of getting a high level view. So tell me where you want to go, where you're thinking about going and then let's talk about how to build a million dollar business.

So I think for me the first idea that I have, the first product that I think would be a win and that I could build products off of would be actually a protein blend of a cookies and cream protein shake. Because something that I've made myself pretty much every day for over a year now is this basically Oreo protein shake. And I've had a lot of cookies and cream flavored protein shakes that are on the market. And even the one that Ori there's like ghost protein, which is Oreo chunks. It still tastes like chemically to me. I bought it, I thought I'd love it. I just thought it was meh because I love Oreo.

Same thing with Quest. Like they have, they have an okay cookies and cream blend, but it's not quite Oreo cookies and cream.

Yeah. So usually it's because there's not enough black cocoa is what I think. But anyways, this has been in my Instagram story a ton. The YouTube video gets a lot of traffic. I get 300 views a day on my website to the recipe. The YouTube video probably gets at least 500 views day in and day out.

Okay. So it does very well.

And obviously I'm linking out to the protein that I used to make the recipe. However, I could blend everything because a lot of people reach out to me and they say, where can I get black cocoa? Or I've got to pick up black cocoa. And I just want to make it easy for people to just have it done and then you can get it and hopefully enjoy it. Because like we were talking about before we started the podcast, I have a lot of Oreo based stuff too. Like I did an Oreo protein bar kind of using my blend that I use for the shake I've got. I actually just made Oreo cookies which are incredible, these high protein Oreo cookies. And so you could use protein powder to make those cookies. So that's sort of what I, I think is my first product. And then, you know, obviously I've been listening to a ton of your stuff. So from that protein powder, I think that there could be.

A pre workout that's involved with that because there's usually like some kind of thing to attach to the protein powder as an upsell almost or some, something that somebody could get a deal with. The reason I say the pre workout is because again, on my website I rank number one for best pre workout for weight loss. So if you search that, there's a good chance if, if I'm not number one for best pre workout for weight loss, you're going to see me number two. It depends like on the day obviously.

Sometimes Google's now, Joe, I just want to, I just want to challenge you on something just for kicks. I want to see what happens to your brain when you think about this. I want you to pretend, for example, that you ranked for no keywords, but you still got the same amount of traffic and people were still following your stuff. But the, but the SEO guy in your brain that is like, you know, focused on what are we ranking number five for that we could get to number one. That had to go away and you just had to think about the people who are showing up for Joe Duff's stuff. That person who is making recipes, that person who is making changes to their diet and adding in more protein is following a macro plan.

What does that person want or what does Joe think that that person really needs in their life?

I think that there's a large group of people who follow me for really no sugar added stuff. Yeah, I have a huge keto based community. Like I said before, in recent months I've pivoted to more no sugar still my, my good move, good move is sugar. But I think where things are going in the next one to three years and I think where my community will move because I think A lot of people see a lot of success with keto, but I think keto is more of a jumpstart is what I see it as. It is, yeah, there, there's definitely like a product if I'm, if I'm thinking of that person. It's maybe it's a high fat, zero sugar, low carb, moderate protein type of thing, or there's just something that's low calorie and high protein and no sugar added. But I think that.

And what is, what is that thing? What I'm trying to get you to see, like, what I'm looking for from you is, is when you say, man, I would, I do a lot of air fry recipes and I would love to have a high protein baking flour that would juice up the macros for anything that you baked, or a high protein, protein pancake mix, A low carb, high protein pancake mix. Or I mean, I love the cookies and cream protein shake. But I want you to start, I'm inviting you to think about what that person wants that maybe you don't rank for keywords, but it, but it makes you excited. Because the fact of the matter is, Joe, if you show up on a YouTube video or an Instagram and, and you. And you are selling like, I'm drinking a non alcoholic beer right now, right? If you show up and you're like, this is the best non alcoholic beer I've ever had, people will buy it, right? And if you, if you say, I developed this for you, I developed this protein shake, I developed this high protein baking flour, and you really believe it and you really have juice behind this idea.

You will get to 2550 sales a day very quickly with high review rates, high margins. And I want to get you excited about that, not just about what you rank for right now. That's awesome. To build out a product line. I love the cookies and cream base. It's a great product number two or three, maybe a product number one, if you're really excited about it. But I'm looking for that muscle. What else would Joe want to bring to the table that he'd be really excited about?

I think that what you said is really the baking blend is what I would want to do because obviously, as you know, I do a lot of cooking. Most of my stuff is making recipes.

So some kind of unflavored, probably a whey casein blend. Just because I think that the blend of whey and casein together is usually superior to just like a whey blend. I think that.

And would that be A baking flour or would that be like a. Would that be like a muffin base? Like what type of flour would that be?

Well, so that would be more all purpose. It would just be.

You could use.

Wonderful use across a lot of different things that anything you wanted to add some protein to and still have it taste delicious, that would be what that would be for.

I love that. Okay, cool. So you jumped right at that one. Is there anything else that you might add to that list?

So outside of that, I just think that there's opportunity with like a Nutter Butter cookie or something like that where. And I know like, you know, you have. I don't know his last name, but Damien does the low sugar cookies, right? And they're. It's sort of like a High key cookie in, in that kind of sense. But I think if you could, you.

Know, you know, the founder of High key is also a capitalism.com community member.

I've re listened to that episode where you talks at the conference a lot and obviously a brilliant guy. But I think, like I had mentioned just a few seconds ago, I think where things are going though is a lot of those products are almond flour based. They're obviously pretty high fat. I think if you can bring something to the table that isn't actually almond flour based, that's something else. Something lower calorie, because almonds are really high in fat. Obviously if you can bridge that gap of a low calorie, high protein, no sugar Oreo, that's amazing. That's something that people will buy.

So that. Would that be like a packaged product that you're thinking about?

A packaged product for sure, yeah. Like just. Will you hold on a second?

Yeah.

Can I, can I show you this Oreo that I made? Is that okay?

Hell yeah, you can.

Oh my goodness. I'm so excited for this cookie right now.

Hopefully at the end of this podcast, Joe will be sending me a package of these high protein cookies that he is about to bring on camera. In 3, 2, 1.

So I only made, I stamped the Oreo.

The real Oreo, on this, but this has no sugar added to it. The filling is even protein powder. So it's a protein powder sweetener and protein milk blend. These are giant, by the way. They're like one and a half times the size of a normal Oreo. But if you actually made like a package of two of these or something, or four of them, because in four of these there's over 30 grams of protein. So that's like nine. It's like eight grams of protein per cookie. It's a lot.

Yeah.

And these.

Might have.

I don't. I don't even know. It's, it's really low calorie. They're not a high fat. It's made with oat flour. So the base is oat flour and protein powder. Like we were saying. My Oreo protein mix is kind of how I made the, the cookie part of this. Yeah.

But if you can do that.

I'm, I'm totally tracking with you here, Joe. With like, like I wrote down a protein powder cream filling. That's a product. A high protein cookie. A package. Good. That's a product. Nutter Butter cookies. That's another product. Away Casein all purpose baking flour. That's a product. A pre workout of cookies and cream. Protein shake. So we've been working together for 20 minutes, less than 20 minutes. We have six product ideas that are all pretty exciting. I'm pretty sure that if we spent the next 15 minutes, we could come up with six more. So this is all really exciting. And it's in alignment with what you do, the content you create, and the audience that you have. So what, if anything, is preventing you from picking one of these, going and getting a prototype and doing this thing?

So that's where your expertise comes in. Because as much as I am.

Kind of somebody who could come up with the product and I'm somebody who has the audience, I have an audience. Like you said, I could sell the beer. I can sell these things.

I have no expertise in packaging and in finding a co packer. And I can. I'm pretty good with design. I know what I want the design to look like. I think I know what appeals to people with that.

But that whole world is not necessarily my world. Like, I'm a creator first, right?

Yes.

And so what I've learned just in doing this and creating for now eight years is I know what I do really well. And so I just double, triple down on that. And I have a team that helps me on the diet Chef, on our thing that I was talking about, my cousin, business partner, we've built teams. And I take myself away from the things that I just. That's not my genius. I like what I do well. I will amplify that to a thousandth degree. But everything else, I know, the value of that person, it's their expertise, they know. Is this a good price for bags? Is this the shipper that we should use to do this product? And all that kind of just like I feel like weighs on me as a creator Like, I just want to create, I want to ideate, but I don't necessarily want to take on all of the mental stress. Totally that part of the business.

So, Joe, have you ever heard me talk about the owner's model?

I have, but you'll have to refresh my memory because.

Okay, so the owner's model is when you want to bring an idea to life, but you have other things going on. How do you cast a vision for a business and oversee its execution without it taking up 40 hours of your week of it taking up 5 or 10 hours of your week? And the way that you do that is you focus on prioritizing relationships, you raise the capital, you hire an operator and you create partnerships with influencers and other agencies that can help you grow the business. So people are reporting to a primary operator and they're reporting to you. So is there anyone on your team, is there anyone in your network that would love an opportunity to own a piece of a business that you were the face of, but you just got to endorse the rather than you were running the business?

I. I think maybe. But also.

Would that person need operating experience?

What.

What does that look like?

What is that? So the, the best partners that I have worked with are the people who are operators through and through, but not necessarily in the e commerce space. So they are really good project managers. They are really good COOs. They build systems and processes. They're good at building relationships, but they don't need to know the e commerce world. It helps if they do. But if you have someone on your team or in your network that says, give me the challenge and I'll go have the relationship with the co packers and bring samples and set up listings so that you can be the endorser and promoter. You're home free. So is there anyone on your team that comes to mind when I bring that up?

I not on my team currently, but I do have a very good friend who is in supply chain but for engineering company.

Okay.

And he would be the number one person. If it wasn't him, then the answer would be no. He's really like the guy just because I know he's worked with manufacturers in the engineering space. But the problem being is I know he does fairly well for himself working for this engineering firm. I don't know if, like, I don't know what that looks like for a job for him.

That's funny. Well, you have so many options here right now, Joe. So like one of the things, like the easy answer is you need to tell your partner to go through the capitalism incubator so that he learns about casting a vision and raising capital and building the foundation of a seven figure business. Like you could do that. Another option though is if this is something that you're like, look, the position I want to be in is I want to be endorser, I want to be promoter, I want to be ideator, I want to be creator, I want to be a partner. Then the thing that I would recommend is that you seek out one of our members that knows how to build this stuff, that knows how to build the foundation of a seven figure business and you just put it in your mind that you're going to find a partner and that partner might be this friend of yours, it might be somebody from our incubator that knows our processes, maybe has even built a six or seven figure business in the past and loves the idea of partnering somebody with an audience so that you're in visionary mode, in creator mode, and you partner with that person that has the operational experience. Is this making sense so far?

For sure, yeah.

So like my, this is not an offer. I'm just dreaming for a second. Like my, like my dream for something like this would be you partner with somebody, possibly from our audience and you cast a vision together and your partner then puts together a pitch deck that combines. This is our product line, this is our influencer, this is, this is our co packer, this is our game plan, this is where we're going. And then I help raise the capital for something like this because it's such a slam dunk with somebody who got trained from our community in the incubator, plus somebody who has half a million followers and hundreds of thousands of people that read his blog and trust his endorsement. It's such an easy way forward in this space. It's a can't miss million dollar business. And so all you are missing is one person. All you are missing is one. And guess what? There's lots of people in the e commerce space. There's lots of people who are a number two or a number three at a business that now wants to start their own thing and be a partner in something like this. There's lots of people in our community who are listening to this podcast right now and are like, oh my goodness, the opportunity to partner with somebody who has a ridiculous audience and Ryan would even consider helping raise the capital. This is a ridiculous slam dunk. So you can kind of dice this up however you want, but you can be protective about your time and your focus, which frees you up to just think of new creative ideas to promote, to endorse, to bring in other relationships, to say, hey, this other influencer over here has a podcast. I'm going to go on this podcast and talk about how excited I am about this protein blend that I just launched. And I will be in that world while my partner is over, making sure that all the operational pieces are in place. That's all that's missing. And I think in your mind you're wondering, well, like, do those people exist? And they absolutely do. There's people listening right now that are raising their hand saying, pick me. So before I keep rambling.

How does that sort of structure sound of choosing one person that you partner with and then allowing them to carry the operations while you are in the visionary and promoter seat? For sure.

I think that that makes a ton of sense. I would love to do that.

I guess, you know, it's really just finding that right person, you know, because obviously having rapport with somebody, getting into a business with that, that person.

Relationships mean, obviously they really mean a lot to me. So I think that that's just the only hurdle with that.

Totally. So this, this, this would be my invitation to you. My invitation to you is to allow your brain to go in the visionary direction for this brand, which is, what do you want it to stand for? What types of products would you like it to have? Make that list of four to eight products that you would really be excited to bring to your audience because that's easy and exciting and light for you. And then set the intention that you're going to find the partner that has the ability to carry out that vision. And that's a beautiful relationship because there are lots of people out there, visionaries like you and me think everybody can envision things. That's not true. And operators think everybody can operate, and that's not true. So everybody has their own unique skill set. But if you are kind of, if you are set in this vision that you have at least the beginning stages of it, then we can slot in the operator who has a piece of the company and they can start executing forward.

That would be amazing.

Yeah, and it's. And it's a layup. It's a lab. Do you know how fast this becomes a million dollar business?

It's hard to imagine.

All right, so you make it sound. Well, it's, it's so easy with you, Joe. This is such a layout. So first of all, let me give you kind of my recommendations, right? And you can do these at whatever pace you want. But the thing that I'd like to see you do is for you to start being a little bit more aggressive with email acquisition on your website. And the way that I would do that is just use some email captures app. Sumo has some good ones where they'll just slide up on your blog and you know, get, get my three, get my three most popular high protein desserts.

Mm.

They enter their email and it takes them over to, you know, a PDF or a blog post that are the three most popular. And you're going to choose three of the popular ones that you're likely going to build a physical product around. So let's just say it's through three Oreo recipes. Three Oreo recipes that have no sugar and ridiculous amounts of protein. So that post is those three recipes. Now that email list specifically wants those things. When you go to, when you've got the first bag of white powder, that is the protein powder and you hold that up on a page, you're like, look, I just made this. We're in pre sale right now. Let me show you a video of how this works. And you show yourself making those cookies that you just showed me you could pre sell. I mean if your email list is 10,000 now and you get 1000 clicks, you'll probably pre sell 500 to 1500 units at full price. Knowing that it's going to be four to six weeks before that product shows up. That's all the capital you need to place the first inventory run, get reviews, get feedback, take screenshots of people's reviews, post them on social media, get your whole audience excited about this line.

Still tracking with me.

Oh yeah, that's something I.

We've been talking about getting that email capture on the website, which it isn't right now. We've just been capturing emails on Instagram and on YouTube.

Okay.

So that should be done by next week. But something I hadn't given thought to was making the opt in related to possibly that product, whatever that product would be.

And not directly but like the most popular posts, they're gonna feed into the things that you know people are gonna wanna buy from you in the future.

Yeah.

And that could be air fryer recipes. If you're doing an all purpose baking flour that is going to a coating on chicken wings, that kind of stuff.

How you feeling right now?

I feel great. I think that this has been super productive so far. I'm excited to possibly go down that road.

Yeah, I'm highly encouraging you to go down this road. And here's why? Joe, this is my sales pitch for you. You, you make a full time income in your existing businesses and these are cash flow businesses. It's going to be hard for you to ever exit the Diet Chef. It's, it's you. And the truth is you probably will never want to sell it. It's your baby, you love it and it's, and it's an amazing asset for you to have. But if you create a diet Chef's food line, that is something that you can sell independent of your blog, it's something you can sell independent of your audience and you don't need the money from it. And since you don't need the money from it, you can roll all of that cash flow back into more product development, which means that this is a million dollar business within a year for sure. Right? Like, I'm shocked if it's not. Like I would, I would invest in this now because I'm. Because it's such a layup. Because if we look at the product line that we've, we've outlined, the cookies, Cookies and cream protein shake, okay, we have 300 views per day on this, 500 YouTube views, plus your email list, plus your excitement. That gets to 20. We can pre sell that, get reviews on that and have that at 25 sales a day pretty quick, Quickly.

Every time I put that in my story, it gets hundreds of clicks on top of that.

Boom, there you go. So we're at 25 sales a day. If you were to do a story a day for 30 days and then let the reviews kick in. Done. Okay, so there's product one. Number two, we do the whey casein all purpose baking flour. Awesome, right? That gets to 25 sales a day very quickly too, because it's a universal product for everyone in this space.

Sweet.

Number three, we do some sort of a mix that's a protein powder filling. You know, use it for, use it for frosting, use it for a cookie filler, use it for whatever like a, like a, you know what I'm talking about. Right?

So that's, there's product number three, that might be a nice little additional product in there that doesn't crush it, but it gets to 20 to 40 sales a day. So we've got three products that we could launch within.

Three to six months that get to 25 sales a day very quickly. And the snowball just keeps rolling on.

Top of that one idea we didn't talk about. But I know like you said, if we kept talking, we'd have tons of ideas.

Yeah.

But I've got this chocolate chip cookie recipe that has, you know, one carb per serving. This is more of a keto product, though. But it would be a chocolate cookie baking blend.

Okay, great.

Would be that like a dude and.

You could do this all day long of coming up with ideas.

Yeah.

So fun. This is so fun. So I want you to give yourself permission to go in this visionary ideator creator mode and come up with lots of ideas. And I want you to give yourself permission to think about what this brand might look and feel like. And I want you to just set the intention that there are partners out there that you can choose that will work just for equity and come in as a partner on this business. Or if you need to pay them, you raise capital and, you know, you pay them.

Now when you say that. Ryan.

Should I. And I, I want to have this conversation before we join the 1%. I'm not a member of the 1% yet. Like I said, how dare you?

How could you?

I started consuming your stuff like three weeks ago. Really?

I think that that's what makes this first initial podcast great, is hopefully we're going to have more, you know, hopefully that, like somebody who's not even in the ecosystem yet, just getting into it and that whole journey through.

I'm happy to document this process with you. Yes.

But is that somebody that you recommend? I'm sure I'll get reached out to after this podcast is over. But with that said, I trust you because I follow your stuff, so I trust your judgment. There's obviously a level of approval that if, if you, if, if you put your hat on, X, Y, Z, person or persons, I'm probably more inclined to be like, well, yeah, Ryan is giving that thumbs up to that person. That would carry more weight with me.

You know, so this, this is, this is what. I will make you an offer, and then I will make an. And then I will give you an idea. That's not an offer, but I would consider it. Okay, so the offer is when this podcast goes live, I'm going to bring you into the capitalism incubator and introduce you to the group. Because my members who are trained in this process, there's probably five of them that would love an opportunity like this. Right. And I work my team and I work really closely with them, and I can help you vet the right, the right person for you. Right. So we'll do that, period. So for everybody who is listening, if you're not a member of the capitalism incubator, these are the types of Opportunities that I love to bring to the capitalism incubator. This is a multimillion dollar opportunity that I'm just bringing into the incubator. So you should probably get in there now. A second thing that we could discuss is kind of what we talked about earlier, of you serve as influencer. I go out and find a partner, I go raise capital and we document a multimillion dollar business being built, launched around your brand, which is something we can talk about later once we know who the operator is going to be. But yes, I think you're sitting on something and I would love to be of service to you.

Cool, man. Obviously I appreciate it.

This is fun. This is fun. Well, Joe, I mean I feel like we just sat here flapping our gums, talking about ideas the whole time. I had a great time, but is there anything that you'd like to take away that we didn't have a chance to hit in this conversation?

I think that that's really everything to start, honestly.

Cool.

That's a great, I think initial point my laser beam at, you know, this is what I need to do and just like focus on that, you know.

Good. Now one, one question for you. You mentioned that you worked with a CO packer back a few years ago. What was that experience like and why didn't you move forward?

So we had one initial meeting and he kind of, you know, I gave him some product ideas like a cake mix and you know, kind of like we talked about, I think there was like three or five ideas and at the time he gave me just like this crazy number, like almost six figure number of like that's the first order, like minimum order quantity. And I was like, I don't, I don't know if, yeah, like $100,000 for a first run of a product, like that sounds wild to me. And it also didn't. The reason I didn't go forward was because it was just like that meeting, you know, I kind of like I was sort of alluding to before is like, I, I kind of, we kind of, I kind of feel like I know you, right? Like I've watched a lot of your content. I feel like for me, and knowing what I know now, two or three years later, it's like I know the value of partnering working with a small team. I have no desire to like have a large team. I just think that there's more people to manage and things move slower.

I understand.

A small team of people who each bring expertise to the equation.

Really allows everybody to do what they do best. And so part of that problem was not just the big number, which was like, like I said, close to six figures, but it was also like, well, I'm going to have to figure out the sales channels, the.

The whole headache that comes with the operating side of the business. And, and like we said before, you know, I'm a creator. I'm a just ideator. I like, I can, I have the audience. I'm an influencer, if you want to say that. But that.

Don't you hate that word?

Yeah, it's terrible.

Well, Joe, did, did you, did you get a prototype from this, from the Skull Packer?

We, we didn't, we didn't go down that road.

Okay, initial conversation because there are plenty of co packers that are happy to develop prototypes for, sometimes for free, sometimes for a few hundred bucks, sometimes a few thousand dollars. But there are plenty of proto, plenty of co packers who recognize the value of a relationship like this and will help you ideate in those early stages. And I'd encourage you just to have a few phone calls with a couple different co packers, like a couple different people that you just reach out to them via email to say, my name's Joe Duff. That's my real name because I'm such a badass. I have 500,000 YouTube subscribers, almost half a million follow me on Instagram and I'm looking to launch a high protein food line.

I have interested investors and I'm courting partnerships right now. And I'm looking for a co packer that's willing to work with me while I'm new and nimble. Is there anyone on this team who would speak with me about testing some of your products? Like that canned email sent to four different co packers that you find through your network or that you just, you know, Google local co packers will open up conversations that might surprise you. And I always say you go with the manufacturer and the co packer that communicates fast. So if you've got somebody that jumps in was like, joe, I checked out your stuff. This is really interesting. I love the idea of this being a food brand. In fact, you remind me of this client over here.

We were Lecanto's co packer for a while before they took their manufacturing in house. And we did their blueberry muffin blend and their chocolate brownie blend. So yeah, we totally have the infrastructure for this. I'd love to send you some of the white label stuff that we have. Right. If you get a response like that now, it's like, okay, this is worth exploring just as A conversation and you can be honest with them and say, hey, I just want, you know, I'm new to this space, but I'm courting a partner with somebody who's familiar. But I just wanted to start the relationship early, you know, before. This is a multimillion dollar business. And if you're honest and forthcoming about that type of conversation, there are co packers who can see the potential and where this is going and are happy to work with you in the early phases.

Interesting. I will definitely start to do like a little Google searching and see. Would you recommend. You said local. I don't know. I know that that one co packer locally exists, but in Buffalo, I don't know if we have that.

It doesn't need to be local. It doesn't need.

I remembered that you said the one that you went to was, I think, somewhat local. So. No, it doesn't matter if they're local or not. The best ones are going to be distributed all over the place. Okay.

I didn't know if I should prioritize anything just with shipments or anything. If it mattered.

It shouldn't matter. Shouldn't matter. Well, Joe, I am eager to continue connecting with you. I'm excited to introduce you to a couple of people and, you know, if you launch this thing, which again, I think you should, I'd be thrilled to document it on the podcast and to track the progress because, like, I don't, I don't know if you ever, if you ever heard me say this. I have always wanted to do a protein baking line. I've always wanted to.

I, I think like you, you, you messaged me that on Instagram and, and that excites me, obviously.

I've always. So I'm, I am. I will help you out for fun and then we'll explore, you know, what it might look like to collaborate on something like this. But I want this to exist in the world because I think it's an eight figure opportunity and I want the products myself. So we'll just, we'll just stay in touch, my friend.

Yeah, I'm excited to thank you so much for, for everything today. I really appreciate it.

You bet, Joe. Reach out to me anytime. I love this conversation. I'd be happy to help any way I can.

Thanks.