Analyzing Business Ideas from Viral Instagram Reels⏐Holdco Bros Discuss! Ep. #119

How do you make the experience so great that it makes it even harder for the parent to say no? The middle is messy. So either be the lowest cost option and just be the Chuck E. Cheese or go up market and be the expensive option.

All you got to do is put on a cold sock and lose £80. Like, just come on. But this thing has like 10 million views here. You could also start a business that just sets these up for existing businesses.

If you're going to do it, do it well. Don't half a it.

It's made better by the fact that it's new and unique and fresh. All right, so let's do a new type of episode today. I'm going to call this Igenius, as in genius things I saw on Instagram. Okay?

Oh, okay.

Okay. Ig. Yes.

Yes. I love that. Should we buy the domain Igenius?

Why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we? I don't get it.

Spoiler alert. I've had it for five years. Always have.

The focus change on the camera when you do that. That's pretty good. All right, so if you're listening, I'm going to explain what we're watching, and if you're watching on YouTube, you're going to see it on my screen. So I'm going to pull up a couple Instagram reels and we're going to talk about what they are and how we'd improve it, what we like about it, what we don't like about it.

Like, about from what perspective. To, like, get it more views or to. If it's a business.

No, no, no. Like from a business perspective. Because these are all business ideas.

Basically, these are all business ideas. These are reels of business ideas. And so we're looking at them, evaluating.

Some of them are not business ideas. But as I like to say, any good idea could be a good business idea. So two.

Very true.

That's the idea.

Like religion.

Yeah. All right, let's see. Here we go. Look at this freaking thing right here. New trend alert. New trend alert. This is blowing up around the world in two different concepts. This is day eight of showing you my favorite 2025 business ideas. So follow for more. One, for kids, stay a boring old coffee shop. The coffee might not even be that great. You put a sandbox in the middle of it, which encourages kids to encourage their parents to go to that coffee shop instead of the other one. How much does a sandbox with remote control toys cost? Next to nothing. The second concept is the thing for adults, for dads. Because guess what? I'm 37 years old, and I would love to go to the shop and play with remote control. I don't drink coffee. So you can watch this video and think, oh, man, that's a brilliant idea. So I need to do something about that and then never do anything about it. And then in a couple years, you're going to see someone else do it in your area, and you're going to say, oh, I had that idea. I could have done that. Or you can actually do something about it with this full business plan right here. Look at this.

All right, Would you plan our social media clips now? Okay, hold on a second. I got something.

This is all a ploy to get, like, four more Instagram followers.

To the ones of people listening who don't already follow you on those platforms.

Yep. Yep. All right. So for those just listening, we just watched a video of this coffee shop in Dubai that has a huge sandbox in the middle of it. And you've got kids and adults, like, just playing with RC excavators and toys in the sandbox. And this was, like an insanely viral video. The one that I copied had, like 30 million views on it. So we think there's something here. What do you think, Nick?

I love that idea. So, again, I just talked to Craig Fuller from Freight Waves. He bought a model train museum that was going out of business. 80,000 square feet.

So big.

He's bringing it back to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and he is going to build. And the way he was talking about it, he's like, I want it to be an immersive experience. I want it to be like Disneyland, right where you come in. And this isn't a model training museum, like a LEGO set where it's really small. He's like, the buildings are 10ft tall. Like, you're in the middle of it. Like, you feel like a giant, Right? You're Godzilla walking through it. I think this. I think what he's talking about, these immersive experiences. We, when we went through Covid, it fast forwarded what we thought was going to happen. Oh, we're all just going to go to remote work, and we're all going to work at home, and it's going to be amazing. And people are going to buy online and we're going to get groceries delivered, and Shopify is going to go crazy. All those things happen. But I think people realized, I don't like this. I like doing stuff. I like meeting other people. I like doing things. So this. The businesses that you just showed me it's like I'm out doing things like, okay, I went to the coffee shop, but I'm also digging dirt. You know what I mean? It's not just sitting around drinking. It's experiential. And so I like the idea of coupling these businesses, traditional services businesses, with some type of an experiential component.

I.

So I really like it.

You could also start a business that just sets these up for existing businesses, right? It's like a sandbox as a service. It doesn't have to be a coffee shop. It could be a restaurant. It could be a trampoline park. It could be anything that already has traffic that would fit this demographic. And you could just install it and manage it for them for a fee.

Or you could go to the companies who are already doing that and say, hey, you. You install this, great. I'll bring you business. I just want 30% of whatever you like, whatever the number is. That gets worked out, right? You become the sales channel and then start going and finding local businesses that you can implement this with. And then you don't even have to worry about the fulfillment or any of the work. You're just essentially a distribution channel.

Totally agree with, like, the experiential stuff. We're getting outdoors more, but just on a more base level. Like, you've got a zillion coffee shops out there. They're all about the same. It just makes one extremely different for a very low additional cost.

Right?

Like, what's the downside of this?

There are already places who do this. And, like, food is a secondary experience. Dave and Buster's is an example of that. Chuck E. Cheese's, if we want to go back to when we were kids. But like, Dave and Buster's food isn't great.

It's terrible, actually.

But the experience is fun, right? Like, because I get to go do stuff and. And it's, it's an activity. So it's kind of flipping that paradigm, right? Food is the primary. The experience is secondary. I. I like that framework a lot.

Well, there's another business idea that I hadn't planned about talking about planned on talking about. That reminds me of this. So I'm friends with a guy named Sherman and he's in Utah, and he found this business in Saratoga Springs, Utah. It's like a kids play area, right? Think like trampoline park. It's got all of the climbing stuff that you can play on. Very generic when it comes to that, but it's very clean. It's kind of like a planet fitness model, 20 bucks unlimited play per month per kid. 10, maybe even 10. Very cheap. But the differentiator is like upstairs there's like this elevated platform where the parents can watch their kids and they have like really good food, like very high quality food. It's like a. We work up there and it's like really fast Wi fi leather couches. Super nice. Like because you walk into a trampoline park and it just feels gross and it's just a bunch of gross kids. It's like a very nice play area for kids.

You know where else I'm seeing this is pickleball clubs where it's like there's a pickleball club and then they have a bar upstairs. But you could. It's also also like a. We work. You can get up there and actually work out of there. They have WI fi and it's a really good experience. I also like this framework of deciding where you're gonna go.

Don't.

The. The middle is messy. So either be the lowest cost option and just be the Chuck E. Cheese. Just own it or go up market and be the expensive option. So it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we do cost 50% more than the competitor and we're way better. Just own it. Otherwise you're like in this weird game where you're trying to compete on price but then you're also trying to compete on quality and that's a really difficult place to be. So with these experiential places, these ideas in particular, if you're going to do it, do it well. Don't half a it. Don't make like, oh, this is a homemade sandbox and you can still see the particle board on the side. You know what I mean?

Like, it's very obvious.

It's very obvious. So do it well. Or hey, bring your own excavator if you want. We got a freaking ditch in the back. You know what I mean? Like those are the two options. Pick one of those. Don't go in the middle.

Well, this place in Utah is slammed, by the way. It's their first location. They just opened it and they are crushing it. Crushing it. Yeah.

So we should open one of these.

There have been talks.

No, no, I'm sorry.

But. It's interesting because you go to the trampoline parks and it's super expensive. You pay by the hour and these guys are just like flat monthly fee, come as much as you want. And then they make money on food, they make money on socks and all this other random stuff. But supposedly the owners have like not slept since opening it, basically because they've just been slammed in a good way. Granted, Utah is like the perfect market for this, but in a way it's should be like the most oversaturated market for stuff for kids to do.

Dude, fly out. Let's go. Let's go do a video with them.

I'm down.

That'd be a great video.

It'd be a great video.

Let's do it. Okay, fine. Do it tomorrow.

Where's my ticket?

You won't do it. You won't do it.

Trying to put a chip on my shoulder.

You won't do it. You won't do it.

All right, here we go.

Cold wet socks before bed is magic. People also call them magic socks. Let me explain. So how does this work? When cold water is applied to the soles of the feet before bedtime, it causes the blood vessels in the feet to constrict. It warms the body. The body wants to shunt all of the blood to the feet, which in turn increases body wide circulation. And increasing circulation brings oxygen and nutrient rich blood to the internal organs and the immune system. This can help improve overall health and aid in the. So let me show you. You need wool socks and you need some cotton socks. It's so easy. This could be done at home. All you have to do is take a pair of cotton socks, put them in cold water, wring them out, put them right on your child's feet before bed, then take your wool socks and cover those cotton socks with the wool socks. Now by the end of this therapy, these cotton socks will be dry. The body will work hard to warm up those socks. And this is where the blood flow goes from the feet. Totally. This body wide circulation that helps to warm up the tough and aids in the healing process. It's such an easy therapy and so effective.

Tim Robinson, Gif of him going.

Okay, so what we just watched was a woman holding up some socks, basically saying, get socks wet, put them on your baby's feet and then put wool socks over that, I'm assuming so they don't get too cold.

Put coldness on the feet and then put something on the feet so they're not cold. Sure, got it. Check.

If they don't call this cotton headed nitty muggins, I don't know what we're doing here. Okay, anyone who's seen Elf knows that reference. But like it's right there. It's on the tip of the tongue.

It's right there. All right, so I don't want to bias you. I just want to know your. Your gut. Take right off the bat what's in your head right now.

Hate it.

I, like, I really do hate it.

Mike. Are you kidding me?

Are you?

So I have four boys, you're telling me we got to go freaking. Let's get the socks wet, wring them out, put them on the baby, then put the wool over it. Like, yep. My kid's not going to sit through that. And then they're probably going to take the socks off as they're going to bed.

What is the female version of bro science? I'm just so, like, done with these. Bro science. Like, all you got to do is put on a cold sock and lose 80 pounds. Like, just come on. But this thing has, like, 10 million.

Views here, so I think people. People are so desperate. They're desperate.

How do we monetize it? Nick, how do we monetize this?

Oh, thirsty boy. Okay, okay. Oh. So the reason it has 10 million views is because people are desperate to figure out there's demand.

There's some sort of demand, even if entertainment demand.

What was the problem in the beginning? It's that you don't have good circulation. Or does circulation help you sleep?

She doesn't even say there's a. There's a problem. She just says it. It helps with, quote, overall health.

Oh, my gosh. Well, yeah, I would make the problem clearer, obviously, but in this for kids, it's not even for adults.

Yeah. So maybe the idea is to, like, to. To market this at adults. Like, people buy much dumber stuff than this, right? Much dumber stuff.

Oh, yeah. Much dumber stuff. I would market this at adults. As a parent, I'm gonna guess she doesn't have any kids. Or she has, like, one daughter who's just an angel. But, you know, anytime you layer 2, 3, 4 kids on top of it, I just. I don't know how you do that. It's like, this is my child's bedtime routine. Starting at 6pm, we read books. Then we take a bath. Then we take a walk. Then we watch this movie, Then we journal. Then we do our gratitude. Paul. Not done. And then we eat dinner. Then. Then I yell at her father for 17 minutes. She takes notes. Then we change, then we go.

Then we do breath work, Then we do breath work. And then my skincare routine.

9:30, she's ready for bed. At 9:45, she wakes up. I go in there. It's like, nobody has time for all that crap. So I would market this at adults.

The Problem with this is, like, there's no before and after. If it, like, removed a rash and it, like, clearly worked, you could see that it worked. It's like, okay, there's something here. Here's an example. So when I was a teenager, 13, 14, I had warts all over my hands.

Ew, dude.

Yeah, it was gross. I hate it.

I shake those hands.

You do now? I had warts, and it was super embarrassing. And I remember. Remember the desks at school that had, like, the cubby. You put, like, a notebook. And I would, like, keep my hands under my desk because I was so insecure about people seeing them.

I could see that.

Yeah. And you will never believe what got rid of them. My mom was like, all right, we got to get them frozen off. And I'm like, nope. Not doing needles, not. Not doing pain. Not doing hard things.

Washing them. Is that what that was?

Turns out there's something to that.

It's so crazy. I wash my hands twice a day, and all of a sudden they're gone.

All those signs in the restroom have some truth to them.

They're not just for employees. Even though they say for employees. No.

Someone told me once, and this is, like, the most bro science of the 90s ever, but it was take vitamin E gel pills, right? Just, like, from the grocery store, vitamin E and pop them and rub the vitamin E gel all over your hands before bed, and then take two or three vitamin E pills before bed and then cover your hands with socks, okay? To keep the moisture in, to keep them on your hands, and then go to sleep. Fall asleep with socks on your hands, and do that for, like, two weeks every single night. And when you wake up, you take more vitamin E pills. And I did that for two weeks, and they completely disappeared. Really? Every single one of them. And I tried other things, like other home remedies gone, and they never came back. So could you monetize something like that?

I totally think you can monetize remover kit. Here's a little wart. You know, be rid of that little wart. That little wart shows up, you're like, what's the little wart?

Them little froggy bumps, those little.

You're like, is that a booger on my finger or a wart? I don't know. It's been a hard winter. Anyways, I think, like, it's just human psychology in the SMB space. What's the sales pitch? You can buy a business for no money down. It's super easy.

It's passive.

It's the Same thing. It's the same thing, right? Like, oh, you want better circulation. All you have to do is this one little trick. Or you want to lose 30 pounds.

So you can't prove that your circulation is better.

If we're strictly talking about marketing and packaging it. That. That's. I think that's a really good way to market and package something is to appeal to the. What's the one thing that's going to solve everything and then build. And then build out around there. If I were to do something like that, water would be something right now. Like, microplastics are a big deal. Your family, you just bought a steel drum or. I don't even know what it's called.

We bought a. We bought a Berky, but then we switched it out with a reverse osmosis under the sink with a.

A furky. I think something like that. It has to be something like, you do this every day that people are reading about microplastics. That might be a cool wholesale business that you start selling those types of units.

So, like, three years ago, I bought a bunch of domain names related to microplastics, and I just got an offer for one of them because they're, like, listed on, like a domain marketplace passively. I usually don't get offers for anything. Yeah. But the domain that I got there that I got an offer for is nevertouched plastic dot com. And I think there's a marked or never touched plastic. So, like, buying food, drinks that have never. Like, not like, not pvc, not a plastic bottle, nothing.

What was the offer for?

Oh, not very much. But just the fact that someone out there is looking for domain names around avoiding plastics.

You know what's interesting? I. So I bought a domain name a couple years ago as a joke, but I got a. I got an email from another company as well.

They're.

They're a plastic company. It's called micropeas.com and they want it because they're like, you know, no micro peas. And then the website is nomicrop.com.

We'Re moving on from this. All right, I'm gonna show you another.

Video to the one guy on YouTube who said, I'm too immature. I'm sorry.

Hey, here's who he is, warts and all.

You look like the cat who ate the canary.

Oh, all right, here we go. All right, that's it. That's the whole video.

What was that? I don't even know what that was.

All right, if you are watching this clip right now, you are watching this on YouTube. And if you are a fan of podcasts, please check out my podcast while you're at it. Because sometimes I have podcasts that aren't on YouTube and sometimes I have YouTubes that aren't on podcast. Podcast. So check out the Kerner office on any podcast platform or you can go to tkopod.com also my newsletter will throw that in there. There are no ads. It's weekly. It's different content than my podcast and YouTube newsletter.chrisjkerner.com you'll see the link and we'll see you there. It's clearly in Asia. It's a maybe a seven year old girl in front of like a kind of like a claw machine vending machine. On the left side is an aquarium with live goldfish in there swimming around. And she has like this plastic scoop and she has a joystick and she scoops it down and then some fish swim above it and she like catches a fish, a live fish in the scoop and then pulls it out above the water and then moves it over and then drops it in like a bin. And then we don't really know what happens to that poor fish. Is it like, is it a more interactive way of buying fish for your aquarium? And you can pick them that way. They're really small fish so you can't eat them. So I don't know what's going on here, but it gave me a good idea of something that could be going on here. Okay.

Okay. It gave me an idea for a framework as well. Keep going.

Okay, so this machine is being sold. The Instagram account that posted it is some random Chinese company that sells these live fish vending machines. And you know we love vending machines around here, right?

I love me a vending machine. I never met a vending machine I could refuse.

Okay, that's good. I've never heard that one actually. So is it a new bit you're trying?

It's a new bit.

I'm trying it out. I like it a little bit. Okay, so you take that machine. On the left side is the fish tank with all the fish. And then on the right side you get like a, just a simple 10 gallon aquarium. You fill it with coral toys. It's crystal clear. It looks just like a fish paradise. And there's no fish in there. And on the left you just have fish packed to the brim. Terrible living conditions. And they, the kids save the fish. Well, the, the left side looks like what we see in the video. Right? It's just a bunch of fish. Right and the kids get to save them and put them in, like, fish parents, they pay money to move them over. And then at the end of the night, when the business closes down, you just put those suckers right back with the other fish. What do we think? What do we think?

First prep.

We started first.

What if we started a business with dogs? They're all in the same 9 by 9 kennel. There's 400 of them stacked up. You come in, you look at the.

Dogs, you're like, oh, that dog looks.

Like he's in trouble. You could save the dog today. So you put him at the dog park, but at the end of the day, we put the dogs back in the kennel, baby. I hate that.

But it.

I do like the idea of this framework, which is, if you're a business that sells things to kids, how do you make it more attractive to the kid? And by this is what I mean. Have you ever gone to the store and your. Your favorite child really wants something?

And every single time I go to the store, every three seconds, really, really wants something.

When do you give in?

I don't.

Okay, I give in. I'll give it every time. Every other time. But, you know, you give in when you're like, oh, wow. Yeah. Johnny has a hobby that does this. Let's get that. Or like, oh, it's a color. He's been asking for this. Okay. It's an impulse buy. Whatever. Either way, it's hard for a parent to say no. So how do you make the experience for the kid such that it's so great that it makes it even harder for the parent to say no? Here's an example. If you're a dick sporting goods and you sell soccer balls, like, leave some soccer balls. Like, leave a little pitch. Let the kids play soccer with them. I know that's not, like, 100 feasible, but I'm just painting the idea here. A Lego store have Legos out that the kids can play with with the actual Lego set in a box. And then after they've played with it, you know, they want to buy it. So this is that on steroids, right? There's fish. You scoop the fish out, you move it and plop it down. Daddy, I want the fish I just saved. Like, how do you say no to the kid after they just saved a freaking goldfish in front of you? Okay, yeah, I guess. Let's get the fricking goldfish.

You're right. You install these at, like, a Petsmart.

Exactly.

You install them somewhere that people are going to make you make money on.

The machine, but it's really a big upsell ploy. They're paying you to be upsold.

Exactly.

Like going to Alex Hormozi Conference 100. Pay a lot of money to be upsold.

You don't have a sales guy walking the floor to tell you all of the features. Oh, this puppy's really good. Because they're a good breed, and you can see why. Blah, blah, blah. No, you let them go play with the freaking puppy for 20 minutes, or you let them scoop out the fish. Or, like, that's going to be a much better sale than anybody trying to convince them. So I. I like that framework if you own a children's business.

Yeah, I like my idea, too, though. I do.

You're a dirty dog, man.

You're freaking crazy, bro.

I don't think, like, FEMA's, like, not even going to approve that, bro.

FEMA?

I don't know.

Emergency management. I don't know. I'm just spitting.

I'm just spitting.

Here. All right, I got another one for you.

Oh.

All right, tell us what's going on here, Nick.

I don't know.

Every cut is, like, half a second.

I don't even know. I know there's dogs involved and there's a car and that and that. It's, like, somehow mobile, but I don't really know what their product is because it, like, wouldn't stay long enough on any one thing. Is this. Is this because we're too adhd, or is this because they're an idiot?

It's probably combo. I mean, we're idiots, too, right?

So what is this?

I'm not saying anything you don't already know, right?

What did we just watch? A pink car? Some type of pet grooming?

You wouldn't know what's happening here unless you read the caption. So we just watched. Was this millennial woman that opened a mobile bookstore. It's this pink car that she put bookshelves on the back of, and she rolls up to events, farmers markets, conferences. And she specifically sells romance novels. Like, very niche, but supposedly she's doing really well.

What's the name of her Instagram account?

Good Girl Books Knox, as in Knoxville. I think she's in Knoxville.

Hey, Good Girl Books Knox. You need to figure out what you do, okay? Because that video, I had no idea you sell freaking romance novels in a mobile unit.

Like, thought I thought it was a.

Dog grooming business that you could, like, read books to. No idea.

Her dog was in it a lot. You had all Summer. To think about it.

You need to figure out what you do with your marketing game.

So many. I think you should leave references today.

It's very good. That's a weird business. A mobile bookstore.

Yeah.

Oh, like Apple Bookstore or Amazon Physical Books.

So I think this is interesting. What if, for instance, what if you had a mobile bookstore of business books and you rolled up to Main street in Columbia, Missouri, and you parked right outside the.

That's a great idea.

You think you wouldn't sell some books there?

That's a great idea. Can I tell you something? I know I've mentioned Craig, but it's just because I just interviewed him. I asked him. I was like, he buys all these media properties up. Magazines in particular. He focuses on magazines. I'm like, why? Why do you keep the magazines? Everybody's getting rid of print. You're keeping the magazines. And he's like, there's something very interesting. You are indistractable when you're holding a book or a magazine in your. Think about that. If you're on Facebook, if you're on Twitter, if you're on your Instagram on your phone. Bling notification.

Bling notification.

Oh, I got a. Like. Oh, I got a text. But you could be watching anything.

Yeah.

But your attention.

Yeah.

Is not necessarily fully there. You bring. You bring up a book or a magazine or, you know, something.

That's such a good framework.

You're indistractable. Right. Isn't it freaking great? Even though I crapped on her video because I. It was just so confusing. I didn't know what the freak I was looking at. I think it's a great idea because you're bringing the book to them. They're indistractable and you have their attention. And now you got to be careful and smart about how you use their attention. But I really. Gosh dang it. I really like that idea because it's almost like we've swung so hard towards digital that people are now willing to pay a premium for physical experiences. And this plays into that. It's a great idea.

You could work with a major publisher like Penguin and buy their books at wholesale and just follow conferences around, like, very niche conferences and only supply those types of books.

CES is going on right now.

Yeah.

Consumer Electronics Show.

Show, show.

There we go. Park out there.

I know.

They're, like, seeing all these digital products all day, and then you just have a, you know, a book or whatever that comes out. Yeah. You're probably going to get a small percentage of people who are going to come and look at it, but they're going to. People will come and look at that stuff. That's a great idea. Conferences, business conferences in particular. Man, that's a great idea.

Any vending concept or mobile concept or, like, party bus concept or food truck concept that's on wheels and different and unique. People look at it with a positive confirmation bias because it's unique. It's like it turns heads. It's like, huh. Even if the idea itself is bad, it's made better by the fact that it's new and unique and fresh. That makes sense.

It is. Yeah, it does make sense. And you can do something. I think. I think you'd want to do something that is unique. So this is what I mean by it. Let's say they sell Lord of the Rings books, because that's one of the books that I know. Could I buy a Lord of the Rings book on Amazon? Easily. Send it to me. Other than it's in person. And you're going to like this mobile book. Like, what else could you do? Maybe there's a QR code with every single one of them that links to something. Maybe there's, I don't know, custom bookmarks. Like, I just think there'd have to be something else that's like, oh, the mobile book place is coming. I know I could get this book on Amazon, but I like them because of X, Y and Z. Yeah.

I love the word indistractible. I don't think I've ever heard that word.

I made it up.

Wow.

He said the same thing. I'm dead serious.

He said the same thing to me.

He's like, it's a really good word. You're indistractable.

There's a documentary about Jerry Springer right now, and Jesse and I were watching it last night. Okay, Remember Jerry Springer?

Do I remember Jerry Springer? I don't know. Is this your girlfriend's mom's brother that you had with.

Are you kidding me?

Of course I know J. Springer.

Yes. So that his producer said something really interesting. You're going to like this. You're going to like this. He said, we wanted something to be happening on the screen at all times to where if you're flipping channels with the sound off, you would stop and like, their craziest episode ever, which you probably never heard about because they aired it. They aired everything in New York City first, but then this was so crazy that they stopped airing it. And it was a guy that divorced his wife and married his donkey and brought his donkey on the show with him and, like, was French kissing the donkey on the show. And the still image of that was a guy sitting next to his donkey and it said, you marry your donkey. Like, you can't tell me if you're. Because, like, flipping channels back in the day is the same thing as swiping on social media.

Yeah.

Every platform just wants us to stop swiping or stop scrolling and to stay on their app. It's the same principle. It's first principles. And did you realize that he was rated higher than Oprah for a time?

I'm not surprised. I didn't know that, but yeah, I'm not surprised.

Back then, the ratings were like, if you had 2 million views per episode, you were solid. So back in the day there were like 20 talk shows. This is like late 90s, I believe, mid to late 90s. And to get a rating of 2 as in 2 million viewers, that was like, pretty solid. Like, it just meant you weren't going to get canceled. Wasn't amazing, but. But solid. Oprah was at 16, 16 million viewers per episode. Jerry Springer, his first show was like one, one and a half million viewers per episode. It was like, okay. And it was just like he would, like, reunite people that hadn't seen each other for 30 years. It was kind of like a heartwarming show, which I had no idea he started as that. And then someone had the idea to just go off the rails and no one had ever done that before. And they described it as like the Gladiator, the television version of Gladiator, like the modern day Gladiator. Because it was just people fighting, like on stage. Right?

Yeah.

And he, after, after that donkey episode, his ratings were higher than Oprah's for a time, which is like, to think that like 2 million is solid. Oprah was at 16 million. Jerry was at 17, 18 million.

It's insane.

It's crazy. If you're on like TikTok or Instagram and you're swiping, you will see that principle in action where because, like 30% of people that look at short form video have their sound off. Right. So you'll see crazy hooks that have 100 million views. Like this one common hook is a guy standing in the middle of a road with a rope tied around his neck and arm and the other end of the rope is tied to a car and the car will be speeding away from him. And like, so the, the assumption is this guy's about to get thrown backwards because he's tied to the car and you will not scroll Past that, if you see it. And so people are just doing more and more outlandish things to stop the scroll. And it's just. That's humans. It's first principles.

I actually didn't make up the word indistractable, but I thought that was a really interesting framework that he gave, which is like, he's not going to go away from the magazine because people are indistractable. Like, they're, they were 100% focused on it. So somehow bringing these types of businesses into the real world, whether it's through a community, whether it's a product that kind of floats around, I, I really like it.

Or like you said, it could be like all signed copies, like something unique about the book, like a limited print or first edition or something that would be even better.

You know who Scott Galloway is? I heard him talking recently about. And maybe it wasn't Scott Galloway. I don't know. They all run together. But he was talking about that our economy is an addiction economy. He's like, look at the biggest companies of all time. You've got pharmaceutical companies, tobacco companies, Apple selling cigarettes. Well, that was his point, is like Google, Facebook, Apple, they are trying to get your attention. They're trying to keep you addicted to the product. Like, we're in. We're an addiction economy. And in this instance, your attention is what they're trying to capture.

Right.

And I think it's interesting to think about ways to bring people off platform, ways to get people to focus on you and be, you know, to not be distracted. The first idea that we talked about, whether the Tonka trucks that are digging in the sand, you're indistractable, right? Like you're focused, laser focused. 100 on digging that hole or whatever. So creating environments where you can be laser focused and not distracted, I think is a, is a good framework to think about for businesses that are bringing people in to their product.

I saw something online where someone was talking crap about parents like you. And I frankly that, I mean, any, any parent is on their phone around their kids occasionally, right? Some of us more than others. And I try to be conscious about it when my kids are with me, around me. I try to be off my phone less very hard. But it's tough and it's an addiction. But I was reading like back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, it was the same thing. It was just the newspaper. Like, the dad would get home from work, he would sit in the armchair, he would open the newspaper. Dad, look what I did at school today. And he's just in, like, it's first principles. We're humans. We're creatures of habit. We. We get addicted to stuff.

So I spent two hours wrestling with my kids last night. And I've been. I mean, it's stupid, but I've been trying to, when I get home, put my phone away and just wrestle because it's, because it's like they're only going to be young for a small period of time. And I don't want them to make, like, to do an imitation of me looking at my phone or on my phone or like, whatever that is. So I do try to make time to mess around with them, but I was sweating, dude. It was a freaking workout. My kids are getting big. It's a problem.

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