How to Start the Brookstone of This Generation. HoldCo Bros Are Back! Ep #065

Here's the idea. I say you literally take these products. You find the ones that are the most popular based on how many views or how many comments they're getting, and you build. Welcome to the Kerner office. This is part two of the Holdco Bros. Episode that we started last week. Nick and I, we're going to talk about a kind of weird, funky trampoline idea business mattress idea. Building the brookstone of the 21st century. That weird mall store in the mall that has viral, stupid impulse buy products. And then we're talking about using creators to grow your business, which we've talk talked about before, but in a different way. And I think you'll like it. So please subscribe. Leave me a review. Share with your friends. Go check out Nickonomics. That's Nick's podcast as well, and we'll see you next time. Okay, I have an idea that is a. It's a stupid idea. I'm tell you right now, so don't make me feel insecure, because I know it's stupid. Okay? But I don't feel insecure. That doesn't happen. Anyway, I'm really secure, but I want you to try to make it better. Okay? Okay.

Yeah.

Have you ever seen a video of, like, a trampoline? So us snowflake millennials, the trampolines that we buy nowadays have the big walls on them. And because we don't, heaven forbid we fall off the trampoline, right? And the trampoline in my backyard has a protective wall around it. They all come standard that way. Have you ever seen a video of those, like, going airborne and just, like, completely flying away? They're like big sails that just sit there in your backyard. Okay, okay. True story. I have 20 acres of vacant land to the east of me, 20 acres of vacant land to the west of me owned by other people. And the land to the west of me, the wind is always blowing. When there's a big storm, it'll blow to the west. Has exactly two trampolines on it right now from me. Because the wind. Yeah, the wind picked them up, carried them over to the trees on the other side of my property. And time we got home from vacation and we're like, oh, our trampoline's gone. Oh, it's in the neighbor's yard. Okay, I guess we'll get another one. And I just never picked it up. It's still there. It's like an old relic from 2017. Oh. Because it was completely trashed and broken. So one day I'm gonna have to get those things because it's not my land and it's still there. Yeah, here we go. Here we go.

I was asking like, why didn't you go get it off of your neighbor's land? And you were like, you thought. My question was, why didn't you get it so you could use it again? And your answer was, oh, because it was trashed and broken.

Yeah, if I could still use it, I would go get it. Right.

But since it's trash and broken, just leave it on your neighbor's land. No harm, no foul.

I got to quote George Costanza right now in the episode where he has inappropriate relations with his. The janitor of his office.

Okay.

And his boss finds out and he goes, is that wrong? Was I wrong? Was that wrong? So that's my question. Is that wrong? Should I go get those trampolines?

Oh my.

Somewhere out there, my neighbor is listening to this and he's like, what the heck? What?

I got two trampolines back there. Renting those out for $30 a day. How much money I could be making?

That land's been vacant for decades and no one's ever there. So I'll get them eventually.

Who's it hurting anyway?

My point is those things went airborne. And the second one I had staked down and it still went airborne. Okay? So here's the idea. And it's not a business, it's a product. And I think it would sell, but it wouldn't be a big business. And I think it's dumb on the surface. I think you could. There's a world where you could sell like a trampoline safety kit, okay. Where it's like, I'm picturing a flag, like a little flag that you attach to the top of the sidewall that's just heavy enough to where if it's blowing in the wind, then the wind is too strong and you should freaking get your kids inside or they're going to be airborne too. That makes sense.

Totally.

So it's like if it's 20 mile per hour wind or more, the flag is waving and no one should be on the trampoline. Watch out. Whereas if it's not, it's a little windy, then whatever. Or it comes with that. It comes with a tie down kit, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred dollars. And it's just peace of mind for a parent to feel like their investment is safer and that their children are safer. And I think it would sell because you could use short form video of trampolines going airborne. Right. You could even make It a little funny, or you can Photoshop some kids in there or something. And I think the fear would sell. Really? Where?

Well, so we're going to brainstorm on this. I'm freaked out at the moment, though, because, like, is this a real problem? Like, are there, like, dozens of kids who die a year because the trampoline got picked up and moved to the other yard?

Well, let's find out.

Like, that is just crazy to me because my first thought is, I don't need to help them have, like, a flag to say it's windy. I'd be like, help them move out of Texas.

A moving company.

All right, so here's my first idea. I'm on board with the flag. Here's the problem with the flag. The flag is a reactive mechanism. You need to see it, and then it tells you to do something. What if instead, the trampoline maker charged, since apparently it's a problem in Texas. I don't know. 50 cents a month for an app. And all the app did was send them notifications when the weather was outside of a certain parameter. Let's say winds hit X.

Okay, okay.

Or like, lightning. Right. From, like, a thunderstorm or hailstorm was coming. So. And like, everybody's been sitting in church when all of a sudden you just.

Hear.

And it's an Amber Alert. I would think that there's some way to allow your phone to notify you if something's happening, but that would be, I think, something that parents would be really interested in. It's like, okay, I'll pay a buck a month, 12 bucks a year. I don't even. I don't know what it would have to be, but let's just say it's a buck a month, 12 bucks a year for the peace of mind that this app's going to notify me when there's inclement weather so that I can go pull my kids inside.

All right, Can I level that up with the distribution strategy?

Absolutely.

To me, this is like a white whale business because you build an app. I don't think it would cost that much or take that long. And then you just need one customer. You need one or two customers, and you say, listen, we're not going to pay you anything, but your trampoline is now going to be better than all the other trampolines out there because it's going to come with this app.

And to be fair, how many competitors are there in the trampoline market?

Right. Yeah, Right. Maybe you go to Springfree. Right. Because they're like the premium option. And you say, do your customers not have to pay? But you're going to pay us a licensing fee. So basically, anytime anyone downloads that app, you're going to pay us a dollar a month or a dollar one time or dollar fifty one time or whatever. And that's going to enable you to sell more trampoline because it's going to come, it's going to be tech enabled. I think it's going to be hard to get a consumer to pay for this. I think it would be easier to find one decision maker that would pay a little bit for this, for everyone that downloads the app and actually uses it.

Interesting.

I just like it because it's like, sell to one to sell to a million, right? You've got to get that one decision maker. You could do that before you even build the app, right? Yeah, because it's almost ready.

I can't imagine the app's really hard to build. You're just tapping into existing, I don't know, weather reporting sources and then notifying people after it exceeds certain parameters that you set for it.

You could even sell the app to other, like, outdoor kids product type companies, right? Where it's like, all right, you're going to be the pay me this much and I'm going to sell it to all the trampoline companies. Or pay me this much and you're exclusive to the trampoline companies.

There could be a premium model for a physical product if you were able to. I'm like, way out of my depth here, but install some component to the trampoline itself that was. That could easily recognize that it's airborne and then immediately. Again, this would cost a lot of money. I don't know how much it would cost, but like, immediately disengage all the springs so that the mat itself just drops out so it doesn't become a sale. Does that make sense what I'm saying? Like, the reason it becomes a sale is because it's lifting up from underneath.

I think if you ignore physics, it makes sense. Why? I don't know how you would disengage all the springs. Like, technically speaking.

Well, like you put together a trampoline, they come fitted with little slots. And so the springs are hooked on the one side to the metal base and then they're hooked on the other side to the canvas, whatever you want to call it. Like, I could see a scenario if you built it out that there's a mechanism that disengages on the metal side, right? Like it just elongates I don't even know what. How you would do it, but just disengages and then makes the trampoline. So that tarp or whatever, the canvas just drops to the ground. And, yeah, you probably lose the canvas, but at least your kids are not airborne. In the neighbor's yard, I could see.

It being more of something like, where the walls. Like, if the walls have enough wind pressure, they would just, like, collapse. Right. And so they can no longer catch wind. Because I bet you anything it's the walls that are making these things really fly a lot more than just the trampoline all by itself.

Well, the problem with that is, like, the point of the walls is you don't want your kids to fly out of it.

Right, Right.

And so if the walls were weak enough where the wind pressure would cause it to collapse, like, it's probably not going to ca. If they're flying off of the trampoline.

Yeah. I'm thinking I'm picturing, like, a hinge. Like, if the walls were on, like, a hinge that only collapsed when enough pressure was put on them. So even if the kids were, like, jumping on it and, like, the wall starts to cave in on them, it's like, oh, geez, yeah, better go inside. You know what I'm saying?

Dude, someone's gonna be listening to this, yelling at their.

I know. We sound so stupid right now. We need to stop.

The point is. The point is, and I think there's a business idea here is finding things that parents are willing to spend money on in order to give themselves peace of mind. I would spend, like, if I lived in Texas, and that was a problem. I'd spend money on that because it's like, yeah, I want you to notify me if there's a twister period.

Right.

And that's probably applicable sort of framework to use to find other business opportunities. What are parents going to spend money on?

Another way you could do this? Like, a year ago, I talked to the owner of trampolines.com randomly from Twitter. I don't know how he found me or I found him.

Okay.

But what they do is they sell in ground trampolines, which are not susceptible to being blown around, and then they sell the install. And so I think he actually paid for a consulting call with me to figure out, like, how to build a nationwide network of installers, because that was. Their problem wasn't selling in ground trampolines. Their problem was finding reliable people nearby to dig the frigging hole to bury the things there's Probably a play there where you could like refer business to these guys or I don't know.

Yeah, that's interesting because they've already got a network of people who they have actually sold to.

Yeah.

And it's like, oh, actually for everyone else that you go out to do this install and it may not work for them.

Right.

Because they're doing in ground trampolines, they're not going to be airborne. But like the idea is there are probably networks of these people who are doing installs of the treehouse or kids play kit or like swing set or other trampolines. And that could be an add on service where it's like, here's the distribution channel for you to sell and you'll get X percentage of whatever we sell.

This is reminding me of another dumb idea that I had from 13 years ago. Remember when the tornadoes came through Alabama?

What happened? I'm kidding. Yes, I remember.

I know.

Geez Louise, you bring it up like every week.

Don't embarrass me in front of my friends. Okay, Mohammed, edit this out. Mohammed, if anything sounds me, makes me sound bad, edit it out anyway. So this is a dumb idea, but I think you could make it good. So tornadoes came through Alabama. What does everyone say when tornadoes come through? Probably don't know because you've never lived in any.

Grab your sister and your wife, same person, get in the cellar. Is that not what they say?

Seller? All right, you get a mattress. You get a mattress and you, you like get in the bathtub, you get a mattress, you put it over you. Okay. Or you get under a mattress somehow.

Really?

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's the thing. So when this happened, like you live in Alabama, everyone's heard that. But then the tornado actually comes and it's like, all right, let's we know what to do. Get the mattress. Have you ever tried picking up and lifting a mattress over you?

Yeah.

I'm trying to think of an analogy that's like saying, all right, if you get in a car wreck, you're about to get in a car wreck. Just hold on to the wheel real tight, you won't go anywhere.

It's like, hey, if there's a hail storm outside, grab a sack of potatoes and you're going to run in the street for three miles in order to protect yourself. It's like one of those things where you never actually think about how it's going to impact you anyway. I get it.

If you're in a hailstorm, just don't get hit by hail. It's not that hard.

Oh, what the hell.

I saw that coming out of it. Anyway, so I thought, I wonder if you could like, patent this very simple technology and license it to a mattress manufacturer where it's like literally just straps underneath the mattress, like a carrying strap. It's like, okay, for movers, it's easier to carry. And if for some weird reason you're in a tornado, it's easier to pick up and protect yourself. Just like a simple strap and you get it patented and then you license it and it's like, for every mattress you sell, gimme five bucks.

That would be interesting. Here's a problem with it. It's like, think about it like this. In an airplane, let's say that of all the airplanes in the United States, there are. You combine all the seats from all the airplanes and let's just say there's like a million seats. I'm just guessing. I don't know. I have no idea how many seats there are. And then you said, hey, let's just like increase the length of the seatbelt by 6 inches each. That's 6 inches times a million seats. Like, it very quickly adds up to a lot. And these are like really low margin businesses. So I do wonder if the mattress company would be like, dude, in order for us to add the handles, you know how much that would cost? Like, this is how many mattresses we're producing each year. It's going to cost us an extra like $10 million. And that's like all of our bottom line. But I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it would be more suited. Like there's got to be like a shark tank product. Have you ever seen those? Have you ever seen those commercials with the guy who's like, this sticks to anything. Like water's gushing out of this tank and he like stops the leak. So I would think maybe you have those and you buy them aftermarket and.

It'S Velcro and it just is really direct to consumer.

Exactly right. And it's really sticky and it just attaches to the mattress itself. And so then, you know, you don't have to worry about convincing the mattress company. You just sell it directly to the consumer. And it's like, make this a part of your tornado kit. Don't forget about your handlebars. I don't even know, like, I don't know what you would call them. Tornado handles.

There's someone right now saying, oh my gosh. Tornado handles dot com. I have to buy that. I have to buy That I wonder if the play is to go direct to consumer A, to make money, B, to show how much demand there is or not to a mattress manufacturer and say, hey, there's something to this. We've done the research. It's going to cost you an extra $7 per mattress. You can pass that on and we'll give you an exclusive to this technology.

That's a cool product. It's not a terrible idea. It's not your worst.

Thanks.

Thanks, Mom. So you posted something. I can't remember if it was this week or last week, whatever. And I didn't read the whole post. I just saw, like, the hook and it was like, this video got 80 million views. I think there's a business here. And this is what I would do if I was like, trying to take advantage of it.

Was that the mini Jeeps?

It was not the mini Jeeps. It was like the guy in a river and you would buy a bunch of inflatable stuff. I can't remember who it was. Anyways, like, the point of it was that you were finding this viral video and then you were telling people how there could possibly be a business based on this. And I thought that was really interesting to me of. And this isn't necessarily novel, right? Like, anytime something goes viral, the hawk to a girl or founder mode or like anything like that, a product magically appears. So there's obviously people who are looking at the Internet and just like, looking for virality in order to trigger a business idea. And they're just like, trying to make money. It's like, similar to the idea that we were talking about earlier where, where it's a fad like Nikita Beer and he made really good money in the short window of time. That's like these people's whole business model. I think that's stressful. I'm not like, advocating for that. But what I do think is interesting is there are these businesses or moments in time that you can take advantage of. Perfumatic is one of those. You posted this video. It got a ton of views. People started reaching out and asking about it. And so we, we. We're building a business off of it. I think there have been some attempts at this. I can't remember the name of the app, but who's the guy that's always like, are you on TikTok? Gary Vee. Gary Vee talked about this app where it shows what's trending. And like, Twitter has a trending tab and there's Break the web. That's what it is. There's like break the web, Twitter has the trending tab and it shows you like the trending topics. I think if there was somebody who just like really loves social media, they could build a community that very similar to the way these. Let me back up. You're in crypto and you've been in discords. On crypto. Many of these discord groups are like.

Pump and dump where it's ain't no kinda about it.

It starts in the discord group, it gains momentum and like if you're a part of the right discord group, you can make $2 million because you caught the wave early and everybody else who's buying later like has missed out on that wave. I think there could be something like a group that you could build that is just around virality. So like you find out about founder mode in the first 12 hours, not four days later. You find out about Hawk 2 in the first six hours, not three days later. And you don't necessarily act on every single one of these ideas, but maybe you own a printing company and you see the hawk to a girl and you, I don't know, throw up a landing page really quickly and start selling some banners or like I think there's a bunch of different ways that small businesses could actually take advantage of some of these viral trends if they were able to catch them early. Like that's the biggest thing is you have to catch it early because if you're catching it when everybody else sees it, there's already a landing page, somebody else has already like staked out that opportunity. So creating a group that you charge for people to be a part of, where essentially you're curating viral content and then sending out updates really quickly when something is trending or like when something you're like, hey, this has all the markers of something that's going to go viral. I'm sure there's like a science to it that some of these companies do take a look out for this. And so again, you're not acting on every single one of these. But if you're like you and I, it's like, oh, I think I could do this business because of this infrastructure that we've built. Boom, you jump on it and you make a hundred thousand dollars. What do you think?

I like it. So are you saying that you make money by arranging the community and charging for access?

It could be both sided. Right, But I just don't know the community that currently exists. Like if there was a community that currently ex. That we could join that would Tell us something on the uptick of it going viral. Like I think we would join that. I just don't know that it exists. It exists with Twitter or Instagram just because it's shown to you in your feed. But something that's like, hey, this just passed 400,000 views and it's passed it in less than two hours. I think this is something that's going to hit 80 million, you guys. You should hop on it. So I'm speaking more about creating the community that sends out those signals as opposed to joining a community.

I like it. This must exist, right? There's gotta be people out there. Maybe the play is to find the WhatsApp, the Discord, the Facebook groups, the Twitter groups that are already doing this, to aggregate them into one, like the community of all communities. Because it's gotta be happening, right? We really haven't spent any time looking to basically be a secret shopper in each of these communities and, and to use an API to just push all the messages into one place. And then instead of it being an actual community, it could just be like a SaaS product, 10, 20 bucks a month. You just get a feed of what all these people are saying.

Or you could curate it and like pay a little bit to people who are already known. Not influencers, but people who like see viral trends early, then they submit the viral trend to the group.

Right?

Like, so it's almost crowdsourced in a sense. It's not just, oh, we own the community and we are going to send you the stuff that's going viral, but the community itself is also sending things that they're finding that potentially could be viral. That would be hard because then it's like quality control. And like, how do you make sure it's not too spammy? Because like, how are you supposed to keep track of all these things that could go viral? But that could be a way as well to, to get viral content.

I think you're spot on with the non scalable human aspect of this because I've looked for tools that do this and I've paid for some and I always churned a month or two later because they don't work or they don't work well. Even that break the web app, you pull it up and it's like Paris Olympics, Paris Olympics, Gymnastics. It's like, that's not. Yeah, I know that's trending, but that's not what I'm looking for. Like, I want to find the Haktua girl, right? Like, I want to find something that's niche and trending.

Edit that out, Mohamed.

No. So I think there's something to that, because I've been looking for that and I haven't found it. There are companies, you go Google it and they like SaaS products. They claim to do this, and it's just not what we're looking for.

Like, you did something similar to this seven years ago when you built the algorithm, when you partnered with McAfee, right? Like, you were essentially predicting where the coin was going to move based on social sentiment that you were mining from Reddit. Like, that was basic. Maybe Reddit and Discord. I can't remember all the groups. So it's like, if you were doing that seven years ago, there has to be something with AI agents that could be crawling the web and finding this stuff. Like, it doesn't necessarily even have to be all human in its input.

But anyways, I think why the human aspect is important is because, like, everyone's on social media. Many people are on multiple platforms, but everyone has their one favorite, right? That they just know inside and out, especially if they're creating on that platform. Twitter, for instance, if you and I see a tweet pop up by Isaac French and we see in the first hour, it has 300,000 views to 99% of people, that means nothing to us. That's like, holy crap, this is going to get 20 million views. Right? And they do. We just know what to look for because we're addicted and we're degenerates, right? And our wives present us silently and our children. So we are like, we would be great. I just heard that we would be great candidates to. To, like, contribute to a community like this because we know what to look for. Right? Right. And like, of course, you could find software that could say, and if. Then simple formula where if 100,000 views in the first hour, push it forward. But I'm not seeing anything that's doing that.

You know, be really interesting. Like, what if there was like, a social credit ranking system where Chris submits something and it's at whatever, a hundred thousand views, but it goes to 10 million, and it's like, okay, Chris gets X number of points because that was a successful early viral post. But then you submit something the next day and it's like, you submitted it and it was at 10,000 views and it goes to 50,000. It's like, that wasn't viral. So some type of a mechanism to be like, here are the best individual predictors of virality. So when they, like when Chris posts something oh, shoot. I'm going to go, like, take a look at that.

More weight is assigned to it. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I think you can even get very creative with this. And if this actually became a real business, the people that submit the stuff that ends up being the most accurate, they could actually get equity in the product, in the community, in whatever.

It's like rebuilding Reddit. You're building a social credit system, getting people to upvote. Downvote. Yeah, it's.

Yeah, that's interesting. Can I take that idea? And it adds to an idea that I already had that's very similar.

Okay, okay.

So there's this guy on Instagram, Mick. I think he's European, maybe Serbian. Mik Xenon. Mik Xenon, okay. And he has 2.1 million followers, and all he does is post these viral videos of dumb, stupid products from, like, Alibaba and Aliexpress. Okay. These videos get tens of millions of views. I don't know if he's filming them, if he has a studio, if these Chinese companies know him because he's so popular and so they send him stuff and then he has, like, a little home studio where he films the usage of these dumb products. Or if, like, the company itself is giving him the videos. I think he's filming them because they all have a similar theme to them. They all look about the same. For instance, hands free canopy, 17 million views. Some of them only get a few hundred thousand. Or a floating cooler. Right, A floating cooler, like for your pool or for the lake. Yeah, okay. Or let's see. A shoe and boot removal tool. Like the stuff that, like, if it showed up at my house, I would look at my wife and be like, what are. What are we spending money on? This is so dumb.

Like, you wouldn't be surprised, right? And be like, you bought this again. You bought a back scratcher again. We have 17 of them.

This. So an instant trailer lift product that's like 41 million views. And it's relevant because I have a lawnmower, a riding mower now, and I need to lift that thing up. And the lifts are like $300, and I am about to spend that. Right? But this plastic thing is like 20 bucks, and it accomplishes the same purpose. So here's the idea.

Okay.

Okay. I say you literally take these products, you find the ones that are most popular based on how many views or how many comments they're getting, and you build a brookstone of the 21st century. Brookstone is.

Yeah, of course.

Stupid stores in the mall yeah.

Describe it though.

Yeah, It's a store in the mall that basically sells all kinds of dumb products like these that are like very viralable, very visual. They sell really well. Now you could say, well, let's make an e commerce store and just do the same thing people are doing that that's played out. That's really hard because you gotta use Facebook ads. I think this needs to be an in person business where you stock your store with 20 to 30 products. It's very small footprint, less than a thousand square feet. But you just have these products that people love and they're visual. And you could have a screen out front of the store. Like it could be a store in the mall, right?

Yeah.

And the screen is just showing loops of these products. And the margins are stupid. Just stupid margins. And it's just like, it's the new Brookstone. What do you think?

I really like that idea.

I'm surprised by that.

Well, because we know there's a market for it, right? And people want to go and see and test these products out. Like remember going to Brookstone? It was like I want to sit in the chair that massages and I want to play with the helicopter that also functions as a pizza oven. And like they're just like random crap that, that.

And they're impulse buys. They're total, which the mall is perfect for.

They're total impulse buys. Do you know what a pop up shop is? Okay, I've heard of them, but I don't know how they actually work. Yeah, so do you know? Yeah, tell me.

Okay. For instance, we went as a family to a pop up candy museum in Dallas a year ago and it was next to like a Fogo de Chao restaurant. And they're typically put in like high income, high traffic outdoor retail areas that are, that already do really well. They're put in spaces that are currently vacant but probably won't be vacant for long. So they're able to sign short term or month to month leases. They pay a little more, but they don't have to lock in. And you can introduce a concept that might be temporary, like by design, like a candy museum or an ice cream museum. Or you could just be testing the concept and then once it works you say, okay, we'll sign a 10 year lease. Please. We. This is good.

So like, I don't think you could have described it any better to fit like this. Like this would seem like the perfect pop up shop.

It would be. Right? Like it would be this. What's the capex you need? Shelving a desk, shelving like a couple.

Of products that you buy from Alibaba.

So people, I like this idea. This is a good idea, isn't it?

I know. It's a freaking great idea.

I like this idea. There's a place. Go ahead.

It's an impulse buy and this goes against the impulse buy. Like you wouldn't necessarily have to carry a bunch of inventory if, if it's the Amazon delivered same day type of business. Then they go, they see it, they test it out, make a purchase, and it's like delivered to their house by the time that they get home. Which like you probably need to do it in one of the bigger markets first to test it in Dallas or LA or New York, whatever. One of those markets that actually have a bunch of fulfillment centers from a company like Amazon. But like you could just name it the Viral Pop Up Shop. And it's just like every viral thing that you've seen is at that shop and you can just go play around with it.

The Viral Store, it could be a mall kiosk, it could be a mall cart. Those are month to month. It could be like there's a shopping center in Plano called Legacy west and there's a Tesla store, there's an Apple store, there's a peloton store. Peloton stores are not doing well. They're closing them left and right. I can see it working perfectly in like a repurposed peloton store because they're like 800 square feet and if it doesn't go well, you could bounce in one to three months.

And I like the idea of not carrying any inventory because if like you're a Brookstone, you got to carry the inventory there. They're buying it at the point of sale and then they're walking out with it. If you could do it in a way where you don't have to carry the inventory costs, people can come and just play with whatever the samples and then they order it and hopefully within a day it gets to their house. It's achieving the same, almost the same, right? There is some trade off, right? Because you, some people do want it right away and maybe you lose some of those. But I think you'd more than make up for it in the fact that you don't have to outlay all this capital to buy a bunch of inventory to have on hand in order for the store to be successful. You could just have it and like people could literally just. They come to you and they're like, hey, I want to buy this okay, cool. Here's the QR code. Like you don't even need to set up a payment processing system. Just have it processed through Amazon with the, with a seller that you have an agreement with.

To me what the unknown that with that model is once you tell them you're going to ship it, how many back out? So 1 in 100? Is it 10 out of a hundred? Because some people might want it. Right. Then I agree. Right.

That's why I'm saying the trade off would be then you don't have to carry the inventory. That's the downside of the other model is you have significant inventory carrying costs.

Especially if you're a pop up shop, you might not have much room in the back. Right.

Or you're just like, I want to test this for six months anyways or even one month. I don't want to spend $200,000 on inventory. So in my mind the pop up would be the perfect test model. And then you can track like okay, yep, 10% of people back out because I tell them they're not going to get it. Same day. Cool. Now you have like just more data. If you actually wanted to open up a store that offered that stuff.

And you know what's crazy to me is this guy behind the Instagram account, he doesn't have an e commerce store. He makes money. He probably makes a lot of money from affiliate links because that's his, it is a business. He has like an Amazon storefront. But like I feel like you could make a lot more if you had a Shopify site that just where everything was drop shipped on the back end. I wonder if you could make a deal where you build that you put all of his products on there and just say hey, link here instead and I'll just give you a cut of everything. It would have to be more than the affiliate link, but that would be.

You know what, that's like a really interesting business model to think about. Everybody's talking about, oh, malls are dying, people aren't renewing their leases and there's all this empty space. What do we do with this empty space? What if the empty space just became showrooms? Cool. No inventory carrying costs. You want to go check out the latest golf equipment? Cool, here it is. Go check it out. Right. And that online seller leases these spaces for probably well below market. But you can go and check out the golf clubs or oh, you want to go and check out other sports things. Ping pong paddles, pickleball paddles.

Cool.

Here's the pickleball place. It's still in the mall. Like, you're still going to a centralized place. The economics for the mall obviously change. You're probably having to charge a lot lower rent, but people want them to. They want to feel stuff. They want to, like, test it out. They want to see how it works. And then that would eliminate a lot of the overhead and inventory carrying costs that companies would have that they typically have in the mall. Because, dude, there's so much. Think about how much inventory is tied up in a Foot Locker in the mall. Like, there's so much that they've got stashed on that story that you don't need. You don't need all that space, inventory.

I like that.

I had a cool idea, dude.

While we're on the subject of Instagram, I found this interesting Instagram account called Clean Girl.

While you're looking for that, on the subject of Instagram, do all of your Instagram reels are they all just like half naked girls working out in the gym?

You already made this joke. You already made this joke.

Dang it.

Okay, so there's this girl on Instagram called Clean Girl, and she has this foaming spray that's bright pink, and her videos are in front of like a dirty gravestone in the cemetery or something dirty. And she's like, hey, watch me clean this gravestone. And she's grown millions of followers. Yes. And I feel like she could be like an industry plant because she's selling this cleaning solution now and it's not even ready yet. Go Clean girl dot com. And it's like, I feel like there's some guy in San Francisco that had this idea that's like, all right, let's take a generic cleaning product. Let's white label it. Let's put a really attractive packaging on it. Let's go find someone that's already on Instagram. And we know that the before and after videos sell really well. We know that, like, the pressure washing videos sell really well. We'll take the. All of these innate concepts that just go viral. Cute Girl, before and after, a progress video of something getting cleaned, and we'll tie it to a product that's very generic but looks really special. Something that's already made. We don't have to develop it. We'll put it on a landing page and we'll sell a ton of them.

I don't even think that's like a theory. I think that's absolutely what some of these people do.

Because, like, on the surface, this girl just has an instagram account and she just cleans stuff and she's like, I want to monetize, so I should get this product development developed and sell it on my website. I think that's the story, right? Yeah.

If I was a big corporate company and I had $10 million in my annual ad budget, obviously I'm going to go the traditional routes. I'm going to go television, radio, Internet, pay per click, SEO, etc. But of course I'm going to start allocating a part of my budget to creating in house content with influencers.

And if it's like, if it's Procter and Gamble, you can't do that with a Procter and Gamble new cleaning solution.

Like, yeah, the only. I think the only. Not the only, but a big potential. I don't even know what the right word is. You have to disclose if you're selling something.

Like, if it were a big company, you would see more hints. You're saying you'd have to disclose.

But I could see these companies being like, we're not selling anything yet.

We're just going to pay for you.

To develop this Instagram account. Oh, you want to take a trip to Bali?

Here you go.

Oh, and you wanted to like, it's a, it's an investment in that person or that brand that they're helping to develop over time. When Papa Warbucks comes calling, they're like, all right, it's time to monetize. Sure they'll say paid promotion by Procter and Gamble, but it doesn't necessarily mean that everything else before that and them helping to create the account has to be paid promotion. Why wouldn't they do that? I don't like, that would be actually a really good idea.

We also have to assume that someone like Procter and Gamble is creative and they're like growth hacking like this. Which that doesn't sound like Procter and Gamble. So I think it's more likely that it's just like some 34 year old in San Francisco with a good idea.

Or like a tech startup. Like I could see someone have a thesis where they're like, I'm gonna buy a bunch of micro influencers brands and then turn that into a marketing agency because I have distribution. I could see that.

Yeah, it's just, it's. This is so smart. And it goes to what we talked about a couple months ago on this podcast where like starting a home service business, it's very visual. Right. Like mowing lawns, like pressure washing and then selling something around that. That's exactly what they're doing here. Totally. I wonder how else you could do that. Like, it's just so smart. Like the. On the surface, it's like, I'm going to go find an influencer and have them promote my product. Okay, cool, everyone's doing that. Or I'm going to go find an influencer that's not very big, a micro influencer. And you say, hey, keep building your account. We're not going to touch your account. We want you to be the face of this new account, this new genre, new niche. We already know you're good, we've seen all your stuff, but we want you to sell X, Y or Z product. Through this new account. We'll give you 49% of the whole business and you can be an owner of something and not just do sponsored reels all day.

That would be actually really smart of them. It takes away the leverage of that creator. A year from now when they come to negotiate with the brand, right? Because a year from now when they come to negotiate with the brand, they've got the audience and they're like, all right, well, this is my price, take it or leave it. But if the brand is investing up front and is like, hey, we're going to give you $50,000 this year and this year you're going to be a consultant for us, but it's to grow your account. And a year from now we're going to launch a product. We don't know what it is yet. We're going to see what works. But a year from now, you're going to launch a product and you're going to get 15% of that business. Oh my gosh, are you serious? You're giving me $50,000 now and I'm going to get 15%? Yeah, you're going to get 15%. If it work, it's a no brainer.

Right?

Because they just don't know any better.

Right.

And also to be fair, they're gonna have to spend the $50,000 in order to grow. So like the brand is really investing in this person being successful. That could be like a search fund model. Why aren't there like influencer search or search fund models where you just. That's your thesis. I'm gonna raise a million dollars and I'm going to find 20 influencers and I'm going to give each influencer $50,000 and they're going to spend the next year like it's a venture bet, right? They're going to spend the next year growing their accounts and they have a contract with us that we decide how they monetize their account. And so in a year from now, when they've gotten to X number of followers, we're going to figure out the monetization model. And this is the payback.

So that's being done at a later stage. Kevin Espiritu, the plant daddy. Kevin Espiritu has the Epic Gardening YouTube channel. It's multiple channels. He's doing eight figures in revenue. As far as YouTube creators go, that's a big business. Chernin invested like 17 and a half million dollars in him in, like, anything he does, right? So if you want to go buy a botanical seed company, we're going to own 20 of that. You want to go buy this company, we're going to 20% that. YouTube ad revenue, we're going to 20% of that. So there's churnin is like one of three to five companies doing this. What you're talking about. But maybe what you're talking about is just doing this earlier because Churnin is.

Making the bet on a somewhat known entity, whereas it's almost more of a private equity model as opposed to a venture model. Whereas what I'm talking about is you find people who are like sub 10,000, right, and just fit the profile. And it had to be somebody who actually knows and has an eye for talent, and then invest in multiple of those because it is going to be like a venture fund. Probably eight of them are not going to hit, but two of them is.

Going to crush the girl who was having, like, hair loss issues. And her whole Instagram account was centered around the hair loss issues. She was on mfm. I think they interviewed her. I don't remember her name, but she started a business selling this hair loss cream or hair thinning cream or something, and she hit eight figures in like three months. It's insane because she had perfect product audience fit. Like 80% of the people that followed her were, like, struggling with the same hair loss issues as her and, like watching her struggle through it and find these home remedies. So when she launched, it was huge from day one. So to reverse that, if I'm developing some product similar to that, maybe it's like an Accutane competitor, right? Acne. I'm going to go find people like her that are talking about that, but would never launch an Accutane competitor. Just not on their radar and loop them in, give them some equity and say, hey, go listen to this podcast of this girl that did this with her hair. We want to do that with you. But we'll do all the manufacturing. We'll invest millions of dollars. You're going to get 10% equity. You're going to be the face of it. Well, is that it?

That's it, brother.

Okay. What'd you think? Next Friday? We'll see you for the next Holdco Bros. Have a good week.