How to skip the line and build a $1M business in a week.

This new framework I have is if some sort of a business or creator or someone with an audience is just selling T shirts, then it means they don't know what they're doing. Because when you go to sell a T shirt, that's the first thing that people that don't really have a business brain think of, how do I do? Let's sell a hat, let's sell a T shirt. But in almost every instance, and I can think of one exception that is not going to be the highest and best use. So I got more ideas. I got them full of ideas today. Okay.

All right.

Do you follow the Instagram account Nature is Metal?

No.

Oh, you have not. What you love in Russian dash cam fight videos. I love in watching animals kill each other. Okay.

What?

Yes. And me and 7 million other Instagram followers. So Nature Is Metal is a very, very popular Instagram account that just shows, like, random home videos of a bear attacking a moose on the side of a road or an eagle picking up a salmon and dropping it. Like, it is the coolest stuff.

Quick aside, I'm not saying it was right, but I get why the Romans had the Coliseum and were like, I want to see a lion fight a bear.

It's awesome.

Like, who would win a lion or a bear? Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. I gotta find out.

We can't do that now. It's, like, taboo. You can't do that.

Yeah, they started with that. Then they're like, I want to see if Greg could kill John. All right, let's give Greg some numchucks. Let's give John a lance.

Okay, okay, that's boring. I want to see if Greg and John could kill a lion.

Two Greg's on lion. Two lions on Greg.

There are so many computations of this. We really got to try this for a couple hundred years.

Anyway, if I go to Nature is Metals homepage, you've got. You've got a bobcat attacking a squirrel. You've got a bunch of snails attacking a Portuguese man. O War. You've got a crocodile eating a baby hippo. You've got a guy wearing Lululemon pants wrestling an alligator on the road. Like, so cool. It is so cool. And I followed these guys when they had 500,000 followers. Now they have 6.1 million. Okay, so I was thinking about, oftentimes I'll see a cool social media account that's not really monetizing. And it just. It pains me. It pains me because 99% of people are not going to create content. And that's great. I. That's fine. But I think for all the entrepreneurs out there listening to this and wanting to start a business, it's all right in front of your face when you're wasting time on social media. These accounts you follow have no idea how to monetize. And so I have this framework that I just thought up where if you see.

Hold on. Or let me just say it in a different way, they're monetizing to a level that they think is good.

They're like, oh, that's what I'm getting. That's what I'm getting at.

Yeah.

This new framework I have is if some sort of a business or creator or someone with an audience is just selling T shirts, then it means they don't know what they're doing. Because when you go to sell a T shirt, that's like the. That's the first thing that people that don't really have a business brain think of, how do I do? Let's sell a hat, let's sell a T shirt. But in almost every instance, and I can think of one exception, that is not going to be the highest and best use. Now, it's great because you've got a walking advertisement. Right. That's cool. But unless you are a merch or a clothing company, you're probably just selling T shirts and hats because you don't know else how else to make money. Right?

Right.

So nature is metal. That's how they make money. They sell T shirts. So they'll post a video of a squid eating a turtle and then at the end of it, there will be just like a quick flash of like, new shirt in stock on our website. And it's like you can't even click these links a reel. You. Someone has to go type in natureismetal.com. they're not going to do that. Like, their conversion must be terrible on these shirts.

Here's why I hate this business model. And you will agree with me, it's the inventory. Now, they probably are doing this stuff on like consignment or I don't know the exact term, but. But to scale their business quickly. It's not going to be selling T shirts. You know this from. From Sand Eats and Texas Snacks. Like, it's a hard business model operationally to execute well. And again, I know they're not the ones who are actually doing it, but it just. It would be not. It would not be what I pick.

Yeah, they're probably doing print on demand, so they don't need to have inventory, they don't need to have a warehouse or anything. But it, that just means that their margins suck. Right?

Right.

There's just a trade off. You print your own shirts, you got inventory headaches, but you have great margin. Print on demand, you don't have to do any work, but your margin sucks. Either way, you lose. And so I just, it pains me that this website is monetizing by T shirts. I feel like nature is metal could be like the National Geographic of the next generation. Like this could be a whole media brand. It could be a whole media. Because it's really hard to monetize an audience outside of what that audience is. Let me say it a different way. I would bet that let's say 40% of their viewers are 30 to 40 year old white guys. Okay, typically speaking, I'm over Generalized generalizing, but 30 to 40 year old white guys, aka millennials in America are generally a pretty good demographic to sell things to. Right. They're mid career, they make decent money. But, and so let's say, all right, you're going to take that knowledge and sell. I don't know, what would you sell to a 35 year old white guy right now? Yeah, Pickleball paddles. Perfect. Yeah.

Or something health related.

Yeah, yeah, but, and so okay, yeah, they're here to watch nature videos, but these guys are playing pickleball. So that, no, it would not do well at all. Because that's not why they like you. That's not why they're looking. Just because they're buying that stuff even on a daily basis doesn't mean they'll ever want to buy it from you. That's not their reason for looking at your content. Right. So you have to find a product audience fit for the people watching that and the people watching that want to watch more of that. And so I feel like you could have a, like a Netflix for animal attacking animals, attacking other animals. Right. Two bucks a month, five bucks a month, and it's just a funnel. You, you find them on their Instagram account and then if you want to see the rest of this video or if you want to see 13 more videos just like this, click go to natureismetal.com or think about how many experiences they could sell.

Right. Like a company that does African safaris or a company that does Alaskan, Alaskan hunting tours or fishing or just farm it all out. Yeah. Like it's literally just funneling them to what they're interested in. Now the hard part is like identifying what they're interested in. But from an experience standpoint, that would be, I think, very easy. Or even a company like Dick's or a company like Sports Chalet or what's the really big one that has like the pyramid in Memphis?

Bass Pro Shops.

Bass Pro Shop. Right. Like some type of affiliate relationship or an agreement with them. Because hunters are more apt to watch that channel. Yeah. There's so many other things that you can do. It's actually leading me to this idea as we're talking. Do you remember when 10 years ago, maybe even more 10, 15 years ago, these digital agencies started popping up and they would go to boomer businesses and be like, hey, John's Barbecue restaurant. You're not even marketing. Was like, well, yeah, I am. I got a website. Like, yeah, but there's no reviews. You don't have any content. And it like this whole industry of, of digital marketing, SEO, pay per click, etc, popped up around these boomer business owners who didn't know how to utilize that. I think, I think that's happening right now on a much smaller scale around content, where people are building businesses around helping content creators monetize their audience. Where like in the past, taking the website analogy of Bob's whatever Barbecue restaurant, he just threw up a website. Content creators now are like, I sell T shirts. I'm making money selling T shirts. It's like, no, there's a better way. You're not, you just, you're not even monetizing. And I met a guy at Main street who does this where he literally helps brands launch companies off of their audiences. It was like, just fascinating to talk to him because a lot of people don't think of it this way.

Yeah, I mean, KSI and Logan Paul did this with prime, like starting two years ago. So I think people that are like in the know and in the MFM Twitter bubble are like, oh, it's being done, it's played out. I think we're way early on that curve. And can I tell you something interesting? It's relevant, but not as okay. Whenever we talk about being a content creator or creating content, the retention on our podcast drops. Like, people tune out. Did you know that? Yeah. And this is pretty meta. We're getting pretty meta here.

Yeah.

But it totally meshes with a newsletter I sent out three months ago that was basically how to grow on Twitter. Right. It was my worst voted. Yeah, like, it was like the people in your group loved it because they're self selected to want that stuff. I had another newsletter about how to go viral on Reddit. It did not do well at all because I have a poll at the end of every newsletter. Right. Subscribe it. Chris J. Kernock, go. Well, it didn't and that's fine. I feel like I'm creating content now and it's almost.

We're just in this world.

We're in it, we're already here. So let's just keep leaning into it. But I think you reroll my life eight times out of ten. I'm not creating content for a business, I'm just doing business. Right. Like I accidentally fell into this.

Anyway, my point is I'm the opposite. If you rerolled my life, I'm doing content eight times out of ten.

That's true.

Music, this like something. Yeah.

So all that to be said, I want to be very clear. I'm trying to sell the idea that people listening or watching this that are business minded should start businesses with creators, not that they should create their own content because that's a grind and it takes years to ever see a dollar from it. But you can skip the line by finding creators. There are zillions of like small five thousand to a hundred thousand follower creators that have loyal audiences that have really good content, that don't know what to do. And you want to know a niche? Where I see this a ton is comedy people. And you see it on Twitter too. Right. If you see these comedic Twitter accounts, less so on Twitter than on TikTok and Instagram. But people that are just really funny people don't want to buy stuff from funny people if that's their brand. Right? Hear me out.

Right, Right.

Right. If you're Nick Hulesky and your brand is how to buy a business and you're funny, that's the cherry on top that makes you better. But if your brand is funny and I've, we've talked about this, you've. You're like, I should open a parody account and don't do it because people don't buy from them.

Robert Sterling is an example of that.

Yeah.

Like, I'm just curious how he's. I'm sure he's doing fine, but he's funny. He's like got a parody account.

And sometimes he tweets something beautiful and insightful and poetic. And I read and it. I think everyone has. Let's not just that, but people are like, is he being for real? Is this a joke? Are we.

Where's the joke in here?

Chris Bakke is another one. Like every now and then he'll say something serious and it's like, is this. And that's friction. The last thing you want is for people to have friction when they're reading your content.

I think what you're articulating is the fact that in business distribution is incredibly important. In fact, like, there's a saying in the venture world, first time founders focus on product, second time founders focus on distribution. Because it doesn't matter how good your product is if you can't sell it and you can't sell it without people knowing about what your product is. So you have to know what distribution is. And that's for me, that's why I become so obsessed with content. I think that's why you become so obsessed with content. It's because all of a sudden it's like, whoa, this is a cheat code. If you do good content, you build an audience. I have distribution and then I can do whatever business. Because I'm business agnostic, I'm not dogmatic about which types of businesses I invest in. I'm agnostic. I just want to be interested in the business and have employees that I can take care of and that I can gamify and make sure that I'm growing. So all of a sudden, if I have then an audience, it makes my ability to choose whatever business I want much easier and I can leverage that into selling and take audience, take social media out of it. If you have a business, you have to figure out how to sell that business, period. I mean, I don't mean sell it.

Like right, sell your product or service, sell your product.

So how are you going to do it? Is it pay per click, Is it SEO? Is it? The best way to do it is to build trust and the best way to build trust at scale is through social media. So that's why for us, I know we're obsessed with it right now.

Well, and even more so if you're actually doing business things or have done business things, because 80, 90% of guys out there have not like they, they tasted making money on content and they're like, oh, content is the business. Right. Whereas people like Alex Hormozi, they're actually doing things and he's actually done things and that's why he has millions of followers. Because I would argue he's not a guru. I would argue that a guru is someone that hasn't actually done or is doing things.

Yeah, well, I talked to it, I talked to you. I talked to a YouTuber this week that I can't name. I'll tell you offline, I'm very Rich. Anyways, there's two camps. People who know YouTube and people who know business. And on YouTube, I knew more about business than 95% of the YouTubers. And then of the guys who actually knew business, I knew 95% more about YouTube than they knew about YouTube. That's why I hit this niche, and I grew and. And business has been fantastic because he understood the distribution as well as the product, where sometimes people just focus on the product. I'm not here to grow my audience.

If you build a quality, if you build it, they'll come.

Yeah, I don't worry about that. I don't worry about that.

I don't look at the numbers. The guy who says he doesn't look at the numbers, it cannot take his eyes off the numbers. Let's get spoiler alert.

He looks at the numbers.

I got something else for you. You ready? I do have more about the content stuff, but I'm gonna. I don't want people to stop listening, so I'll save that for another pod. How's that for transparency? All right. I went to a concert last night with my son Brady, and I'm wearing a shirt right now. Okay. If you're watching on YouTube. Taking back Sunday, I've seen this band probably 17 times more than any other band in my life. It's great band.

And have they taken back Sunday yet?

They're still working at it.

Wow.

It's a grind band. It's a grind. Something very interesting happened at the show. So this was at the Southside Ballroom, which is in downtown Dallas.

Southside.

And I would guess there were two to three thousand people there. Okay. Standing room only. Got one big stage, a couple bars on each side. And why? What's so funny?

Whenever I hear standing room only, I always think of, oh, there was so many people there. And you're like, so there's 35 people there. Standing room only.

There are literally no chairs. So anyway, it was packed, but there. No. There were no chairs. There's no seats. Right. And something interesting happened. So, you know that time in between sets, the opener comes out, they sing. They sunk 10 songs. And then take Mac Sunday. Had to set up all their gear, and it takes longer than it should. Took 45 minutes. And so at minute 35, Adam Lazaro, who's the lead singer, his voice came out, and everyone knows his voice. And they're like, hey, guys, this is Adam Lazara. And everyone starts cheering. They're like, oh, he's coming out. He's coming out. Because the moment when the artist comes out is just magical, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And he's like, hey, guys, it's Adam Lazara. Hey, while you're waiting, go ahead and pull out your phones, open your browser and type in Set Live. That's a website. Set Live. And you go to that website and enter your email, and you're going to be entered to win a personalized video for me, a free T shirt, and maybe you can come out on tour with us. Yeah, it was a commercial. Okay. I don't know. I've never heard killer I. That. But I've never heard of Set Live. And I. Yes, it was because it was a kind of a. It was a bait and switch. Oh, Adam, he's coming out. He's coming out.

He's coming out. Hey, guys, this is Adam Lazaro. I want you to go to www.target.com backslash Adam Lazario. Backslash. Soccer balls for kids. You're like, whoa, what. What just happened here?

And I. I looked around and, like, people were. Because this is like, this is a new marketing channel. I don't care about Set Live. I didn't do a deep dive on them, but I care about new marketing channels. Okay. I start looking around and it's like, mixed. Some people are just kind of. Huh. And some people pull out their phone and I can tell they're doing it, and I'm like, this is very interesting. This is why I've literally been to probably 130 to 150 shows or concerts. Right.

Okay.

I've never, ever experienced this. And why not? It's a captive audience. It is the most relevant audience that are in love with one or two specific things. Maybe the genre, maybe that artist. Why aren't people.