New Opportunities For Internet Entrepreneurs #WednesdayWithWyan

A lot of you or a lot of people are trying to, like, figure out in your head, like, how do I optimize for this? But you're optimizing for computers. You're optimizing for algorithms, not people.

Hey, capitalists. It's time to crack open your favorite beverage. I like Zevia. This is Wednesday with Wyan on capitalism dot com.

Hey, greetings from Austin, Texas. I decided to talk about what opportunities exist in the marketplace right now because I know a lot of you who are either running businesses that are doing okay, but maybe they've plateaued a bit, or you are looking for the next opportunity and you're kind of upset that maybe you missed some of the boat in the last opportunities, like the wide open west periods of Amazon or the opportunities that existed to build audiences when it was really cheap and easy to do. So. So I want to tell you a little bit about some of the opportunities that I'm pursuing right now and also the opportunities that exist just in the marketplace overall right now. So I'm really, really excited.

About a new project that have actually a couple new projects, but there's one in particular that I am like.

If everything burned to the ground, this is the one project I'm so confident in. I'm just so absolutely positive about this project. And it's a food company that I have joined. I'm not the founder, but I'm getting it on the ground floor as an advisor. And. And it's a idea that I have wanted to pursue for a long time and this team was ahead of me. And so I have brought come on as an advisor to two of the founders and I'm so jazzed about this project. They're not funded. They're not like, you know, they're not selling them. You're not even at a million dollars in sales yet. It's just a small business. But I am 100% confident that this can be $100 million business just because I so believe in the strategy that is being being outlined and they're doing things in a way that you can model without copying anything. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I think it'll really give you some insights in how to grow faster. Also, at any point, one of my business partners, Max, is going to be showing up. We're going to be outlining one of our new projects, which I'll also share about because we're following similar strategies. So I want to talk about the food project first because they're doing some things that are really Cool. And I think will give you a little bit of a tweak in your mindset. You see, I built a lot of my following talking about Amazon and how we were taking a lot of sales on Amazon.com. what a lot of people don't know is that my most successful projects that took sales on Amazon were not done in the way of, like, looking for an opportunity on Amazon and then releasing a product that filled that opportunity and selling it and optimizing for Amazon. Those were my most successful projects. In fact, those were my least successful projects. My least successful projects are when we were looking at internal Amazon data, making decisions on what products to release, and then releasing those projects, those products to the marketplace. My most successful products and my most successful businesses were the ones where we had an idea that we thought would be cool for a group of people. And then we used Amazon as the store, as the delivery mechanism, if you will. And then we optimized for Amazon with reviews and all this good stuff. So where I really struggled in businesses like I had a business, one that I was, the last one that I sold did really, really well when we were creating products that were. We wanted to use that our audience and our marketplace wanted. And then we optimized for Amazon, but we really struggled when we were trying to find the hole in the marketplace and then release products for that. And.

Some people might say, well, isn't it risky to invent a new product or do something new and cool? And my answer to that is, well, it's no more risky than trying to release a product that anyone can copy. If anyone can copy you with a few clicks above, a few buttons, that's pretty risky if you're just looking for an opportunity on something like Amazon. So this food project that I'm a part of, that I've joined, that I'm advising is, I know 100%. I told one of the founders yesterday, I said, you know, I'm fairly confident that I can help you get this to $100,000 a month on Amazon in about 90 days, maybe less. Now, the thing is, there's no internal data on Amazon that says that that's possible. There is no demand on Amazon for this product.

It's a new product that's never existed before, a new type of product. And I'll be sharing more. I'll be documenting the process, the build out of this company, really, really excited about it. But for now, I'll just say it's a new product, there's no demand for it, and it's, you know, Three times the price, at least twice the price of any products that are similar to it at all. So how can I be so confident in that? And the reason is because.

It'S cool.

And there's a literally hungry group of people who would like it if they knew that it was available. So there's no internal, like, hey, Amazon says there's demand for this, so let's do that. It's what would a group of people want and like? And let's release it to them. And I'm 100% confident that's going to be a, a multi million dollar company within the next few months. In fact, it's funny, I have this phrase I like to say that when things are right, they're easy. It's easy and effortless to promote this product on social media, to get influencers to talk about this type of a product because it's just cool and it adds value to the world and people will want it when they know about it. That's when you know you have a winner. So a lot of you or a lot of people are trying to like figure out in your head, like, how do I optimize for this? But you're optimizing for computers, you're optimizing for algorithms, not people.

And when you switch it, things become a lot quicker and easier. So for example, one of my business partners, Max, is on his way over. We're outlining a new project right now, which ironically is also a food company.

Very different, very different market, but the I like food and food brands. But anyway.

He and I are getting together to map out a new project that is completely based off of a connection with certain influencers. And a lot of entrepreneurs right now are looking for like, I've got this widget, I want to sell more of this widget. What, what influencer should I bring on? And I look at it differently. You see, the same way that I look at Amazon is how I look at influencers. I look at, okay, what would a group of people want? What would a group of people need and be excited about and how do I release that to this group of people? And so if you look at Amazon as a way of, okay, there's a group of people on Amazon who are buying and what do they need? That's opportunities, at least short term opportunities. And then if you look at influencers, it's the same way. There's a group of people who are consolidated around one message or one person. What would they want or need and how do we release it to them? So we work on long term relationships with influencers and there's one we're working on, has about a million followers, a little bit more. And we're gonna be releasing some products around her audience and that is kind of the foundation of the strategy of this business because we have got an immediate delivery mechanism, a way to talk about the business to a mass group of people really quickly. So I tell you all of this for a couple of reasons. One of the biggest opportunities right now is if you're selling physical products, really any product, but, but in physical products there's so much attention and demand and talk about optimizing for channel like Shopify or Amazon, but these are just delivery mechanisms. I keep using that word mechanism. But the real shift happens when you are creating products that have newness to them. You've got, when you have a cool factor to it. Right over there I've got some Quest chips, they're high protein chips. And I asked Tom Bilyeu when I was on stage with him at the Capitalism conference, he's the founder of Quest, what do you do when people copy you? Because they were first to market on a lot of things and then people copied them. He's like, we innovate, we make new product. Like we keep innovating and you know, now that's a billion dollar company. They've done okay. So the opportunity, there's so many opportunities right now because there are groups of people who are underserved. There are groups of people that you can release products to who will rally behind you. One of the best ways to do that is by partnering with influencers, finding out what their community needs and then go and create that. And then you can use things like Shopify and Amazon to collect the order. My buddy Moise Ali started a company called Native Deodorant and it's a natural deodorant company. He started it with $500, he sold it for 100 million in two years. And you know, he said when we were on stage together, he said.

My business was built on. I forget what he said. Woocommerce or something. He's like, I have the ugliest website with the most janky backend. Has everything to do with the product, it has everything to do with the community. The group of people that we're serving. I'm great at Shopify. We're not even on Shopify. We're not great at Amazon, we're not even on Amazon. They're great at creating a product for a group of people that want it. That's where opportunities are. And there's lots of different ways to do this. So, for example, I just started working with one of my businesses, Foxbrim. And if you're in the 1%, you've heard, you know, you've seen. We were starting to document the rebuild of foxbrim inside the 1% because that business has struggled. And the reason it has struggled is because we were playing just the purely Amazon game, trying to sell more Argan oil, trying to sell more eye cream, the same way everyone else was doing it. Like I said, when you do it the way everybody else does it, you really struggle. I really struggled. I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I've really struggled when I've operated from that place. So what we've been doing recently is developing new products and partnering with influencers on that in this vein, in this direction.

I was going somewhere with that. Forgive me, but. Oh, that's right. I started just working with somebody on foxsproom who is. They come from another company that is a physical products company. And this person is a copywriter. This person creates new sales platforms, new sales channels based on copy and based on funnels. And the previous company that he was at sold a product that was really similar to what a lot of other people sold in the marketplace. But they did. They went from zero to $8 million a year in less than 12 months. Actually, it was 800,000 per month in.

I think it was 10 months, I think so, you know, that's a $10 million run rate. They weren't on Amazon. Actually, they were on Amazon, but they were only doing, like, this much on Amazon. They weren't in retail stores. It was all through their own store, not on Shopify, on a different platform with a really ugly webpage. And it was quite literally four times the price of all their competitors. The reason you're able to do that is because of the way that they were communicating to the person, the way they were getting in front of.

The ideal customer. Now, it's not as predictable as just finding a product on Amazon that you can sell 10 items a day, but it's the type of product that has really high profit margins and that you can scale to $10 million in one year. And that was what this person did. And so we brought them into Foxbrim. And that's one of the opportunities that we're pursuing right now. All these opportunities exist when you are thinking about bringing unique value to the marketplace to a group of people that want it. And that's one of the opportunities we're pursuing right now. So working with influencers is one. Writing long form copy around funnels is another one. I also just recently hired one of the best content marketers in the world. He's on my team now. And we're doing things with Google and search engine optimization to have long term valuable traffic that on simple content for high traffic keywords. And we're ranking in the top five keywords.

Top five spots on Google for really high traffic keywords in as little as like 12 hours for, I mean, really, really high traffic valuable keywords. And what we're doing there is we're building a long term audience, a long term asset that we can use to build up leads and sales over the long term. So there's all these opportunities that exist when you start thinking outside of the bubble of every, every podcast, what other people are doing, how other people say that they're killing it, giving you the formula. When you let that go and you start building unique products for a specific group of people, everything can change. Now. One of the mistakes that I have made, as I said, was releasing the same product in the same way to a lot of other people. And that really held me back.

And when I would do that, it would sometimes make a company that was doing well really start to plateau and struggle. That was one of my mistakes. And I've talked a little bit about how we've fixed that. But another one of the mistakes that I have made a little bit more selfishly or a little bit more surface level is I have worked with groups of people on helping them make this transition or build these types of businesses based on a lot of mistakes that I've made in the past and correcting them for other people. And I've watched some of those businesses scale and sell, often for tens of millions of dollars. And the mistake I made was not partnering with them. You know, I really should have partnered with them when they were on the ground floor and help them make some of these changes or grow from scratch under this methodology. And you know, when they sold for. I've had one client sell for $50 million. You know, if I had taken 20% of that company when it was just a $1 million business, which is when, when I started working with them or when I started communicating with them, you know, I'd be.

That would have been as big, 20% of that would have been almost as big as my last exit. So, so I've made the mistake of not partnering with people instead of, you know, which is, which is what I should have been doing. So that's why with this food company that I've mentioned.

I'm not doing anything but coming on as an equity advisor, which is really fun for me because I get to be mentor while they build their business and it's really exciting. So the reason I tell you that is because I've started to work with some entrepreneurs and some individuals on that type of a basis. I've really enjoyed it. So I just started working with a new client. His name is John. I mentioned him in a couple of emails recently where John has about a $1 million business. And I can see it, man. Like I can see what he's got or what it could be like. He can't always see it, but I can. And so it's my job to remind him how.

You know what I see up here for his business. And we just started working together. But a couple of. I think Max is here. So. A couple of. Yeah, so a couple weeks ago I started working with John and.

He just sent me an email saying.

What his like insights have been and the direction that he's taking the business. I'm like, he's got it, he's got it, got it. And now I know that he can build like a 10 or a $20 million company with this vision and this message versus what he was doing before. Just gonna unlock the door so Max can find his way in. But anyway, I am telling you all of this because I am starting to open up spots for my backroom, which is something that I haven't promoted in quite some time and isn't something that I have really been talking about because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with it up until this point. And what I would really like to do moving forward is have more relationships. Like I'm outlining where I'm advising the team, I'm advising the founder or founders of the entrepreneur. And if we like working together. After about a year or so, I'm interested in exploring partnerships rather than just, you know, pay, pay me to say some fun things. Now the back room used to be more of like a group where we got together a few times a year, we talked about business, I came up with some answers and then we moved on and it served its purpose. But now it's more of an intimate, hands on, high level group of people who are up to cool things. And I'm really only interested in bringing in people that I'm interested in working with for a really long time and maybe even doing partnerships with. And it's basically your seat at the table for the opportunities that are in my sphere of influence and the knowledge the whole group, including myself, brings to the table. And as I mentioned, I'm working with these copywriters and I have my content manager and I have relationships in retail. I have all of these opportunities that now become opportunities for you to pursue in your business as well. And these relationships with people on my team or people that I work with in my network can become part of your network as well.

The backroom is expensive, but the way that it works is you pay a reasonable fee up front.

It'S not cheap, it's in the thousands of dollars up front. And then the rest comes out of profit. So the idea being that you join, you grow and everything else from there comes out of profit. So if after a few months you aren't growing, this probably wasn't a fit and we need to remove you from the group. So it's made to help you grow quickly and have all of the other fees come out of profit. And that pays for us to get to know each other, work together for you to grow and then for us to look at. Okay, is this something, do we want to partner together on really growing this over the next several years? That doesn't mean like we're going to partner with everybody. It just, you know, it'll probably take a year for us to understand each other enough to be able to do that. If this is out of your budget or you are not ready yet.

Because this is not for everybody. This isn't for the person who's just getting started. This can be for the person who has been successful in the past but is starting a new type of business. If you're looking for new opportunities that might be a fit, but this isn't for the person who's like, I have never made money before. If you're not ready for this, there's two other options. One is you can wait. We're going to be doing, it looks like we're going to be doing an online version of the backroom which will just. I'll be less involved, you won't be at my house meeting with me. We won't be having like quarterly check ins together. But you'll have access to my team and the content that we create together and that'll be a little bit more affordable. That'll come later this year. Or I have one other option and that is I do workshops at my home for like 12 to 15 people at a time, sometimes less. Sometimes it's only four or six people. And I go through the overall model and right now it's me teaching it, but eventually it's going to be a couple other people teaching it with me. But right now it's still mostly me. And we go through the model, we go through your business and we give you a shift for three days. You take what you learn, you implement your business, you grow, and then you can decide or not to join later. And we do that about once a quarter at my home. So I've included applications to both below. Just know a couple things. One, I'm only looking to add about 20 new people to the back room for the rest of the year. So those could be filled up over the next 10 days or 10 months. I honestly don't know. But I'm looking for more.

I'm looking for more intimacy rather than scale. And then on the workshops, you know, it's only going to be me teaching it for the next couple workshops and then it'll be some other people. So if either of those call out to you, this is probably something you want to do faster rather than waiting for it. So I've included applications to both below and I would love to see if experiences complement one another. So I hope this video was helpful and enjoyable for you and I hope to work with you in the future. Thanks for watching.

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