Riffing on Ideas with Connor: Candles and Apps. Ep. #90

Welcome to the Kerner office. I had a friend of the pod back on today, Connor Gross. He's been on at least two episodes so far. I know. Number 43, number 67, and maybe something else I can't remember. Connor's an idea machine, and I love his ideas. And I got so much energy from this chat with Conor, we had to split into two episodes. You'll hear the next one next week, and I promise you the next one's even better than the one you're about to hear, which is awesome. Connor's the guy that I talked to about grill cleaning and programmatic SEO. We talked about two kind of core ideas and then some smaller ideas within them. One in, like, the time tracking space slash, production productivity space slash. How can I test to see if employees or future employees work fast? No one really talks about that. We talk about productivity, not being lazy, being smart, working hard. What about working fast? And then we talked about some ideas in the candle space because Connor's dad owns a big candle business in New Jersey. So you're gonna love this one. Come back next week for part two with Connor. Share it with a friend. We'll see you next time.

Literally this week, I get a call from someone. He's like, I think my employees. And I'm not gonna say his name at all, so there's no incriminating evidence. He's like, I think my employee has two jobs. I was like, well, is he doing a good job at work? He's like, yes. I was like, all right, well, why do you think that he's slow to respond? He works remote. Can't find him on LinkedIn anymore. So I also looked him up. I think he just deleted his LinkedIn profile. And then I got really suspicious. And keep in mind, I'm not saying my friend is sane. He's definitely a little crazy. But he said, I looked up house where. Where he lives on payroll. It's a $1.7 million house. Like, I know how much this guy makes. It's not 1.7. And I was like, all right, man. Well, like, first of all, people have trust funds. People have rich spouses. People get inheritance. Like, you know, I wouldn't judge the house situation, but all I will say is that he's not alone. You know, I've had three people within the last probably three months who have told me, and they're all entrepreneurial friends, that they think that their employee has a second job. And, you know, the. The telltale signs can be pretty easy. Obvious. They're slow to answer things. You know, maybe they screen shared and a suspicious email or Slack popped up. Whatever, they're not on LinkedIn or maybe even worse, they are on LinkedIn, but they don't listen to your company on LinkedIn. Like, there's some, there are some things there in terms of how to tell. It's definitely, it's something that people would pay for, but like, even like for myself, right? Like I want to know, going to make my employees download a Chrome extension or Slack extension or whatever to spy on them. Like, I'm just not that type of boss, nor do I care enough at all, but I would want to know. And so, like, what do. This is more of a problem than it is a business. Like, how do you solve that? Like, what does that look like, man?

I'm thinking this is a little awkward to say, but I've had an employee in the past that I hired on upwork. And upwork is very interesting because it will tell you how many open jobs any employee has at any given time. Any person on upwork, right? And so I have people that I currently employ on upwork that I can see. They have 9, 10, 13 open jobs now, big asterisk. Because a lot of times, like, there are jobs that I opened years ago that I never closed. And technically on their profile it says they still have an open job with me. So. But it doesn't count. But there are ways you can tell, and that's. You can see how many hours they've worked on that job. So if I see a job, it will say open job with this company since March 2021, you know, 862 hours work. I can do the math and know, wow, this guy's doing 15 hours a week consistently, huh? He's doing 10 hours a week here, he's doing five here. He's doing, oh, that's why he's not answering my emails.

Right?

But that's just upwork, right? So upwork solves for that, for upwork. But outside of upwork, where most of the world lives, that is a problem. And so I'm over here thinking, like, to, to install a Chrome extension on someone that you've already hired is like, there's just no going back from that. Like you said, right. And you said that it's like, it would just kill the culture, kill the vibe, just not going to work. But is there a way you could do it tactfully? I'm a fan of like getting ahead of things. Like, for instance, when I hire someone at this point, I just Tell them like, hey, I don't want to hop on calls ever. Whereas if I tell someone three months into the job, hey, I don't want to hop on calls, it's like, wow, you don't like me? It's like, no, it's not you. But if I tell them that up front, then they don't take offense because it's just now they know from day one. And so I wonder if there's a world where on day one it's like, hey, this is what we do. You do have to install this chrome extension. It sucks. But this is a low margin business and like we wouldn't be in business if it weren't for this. So hope that's not a problem. And their response to that one throwaway sentence is going to tell you everything you need to know. You might not even ever have to. You might not go through with them. Or you might go through with them and never even install it because you're they, they're clearly not worried about it. Right. It could just be like a litmus test on the front end.

I know. So I, I completely agree with all of that. I've also noticed the same thing with the upwork stuff. Random story there that I don't have to go into. But yeah, I think, I think that it's probably more of a management solve than it is maybe a product or a solution. Now the only two, because I spent some time trying to prep for this and like the only two solutions I could come up with are so overkill that they wouldn't be good solutions. The first is invent an entire entirely new payroll processor that tells you when one Social Security number is on two payroll processors.

I was thinking some sort of a centralized database that companies could refer to.

Well, so that's maybe so. So this is adp. It's gusto, whatever. But like, you know, ADP reports a lot of their payroll data to the US government for like census and job bureau data. Now whether or not they would report the number of double payrolls, I don't know. That seems a little bit too micro and exposure focused. Second idea is can you do a glass door for employees? I'm sure that must have already been solved for before. But like even in the back of my mind, like I have one employee for reference that I'm thinking of just like bad experience, not going to get into a lot of the specifics but like ended up letting her go whole thing there. I would be really like, I'm not going to reach out when she gets A new job. I hope she gets a new job, whatever. But like, I would like the new employer to know what happens or if, like, I think that that's fair. And also myself as an employer, like, I would want to know I somebody if somebody had a bad experience and they're just great on an interview, but then they become problematic. And, you know, I think that that could be an interesting concept. The tough part is, is that like, probably over biases for bad, but I.

Don'T know, it's tough. It's kind of like it reminds me of there needs to be a review system for Zillow, for Realtors or for homes, right? Like, people that went on a walkthrough, they could review, hey, avoid. Don't waste your time. And I think a lot of these problems are like, you have such a selection bias at play where it's like, the worst employees would never opt into it. And so you see, like, all these employees magically have 4.9 rating, you know, because they're pushing it and it might not even mean they're good. So then it's not even working. I wonder if the bigger issue is more of a management style. Like, I'm just of the firm belief that 80% of employees don't have enough to do. Right. I mean, it's really the 8020 rule, but it's like, just go talk to anyone and be honest with them. I talked to a guy last week that make 350 grand for Amazon, and he's like, I work 12 hours a week, like Max, and my performance reports are amazing and my boss loves me and I keep getting promotions. And like, I think that's a lot more common than people realize.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. I think it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out in the next couple years. But maybe, maybe the solution, I think, I think what you got at originally is expectations up front. Probably also hiring less, right? Like, that way you would. You would know if they're not doing the work. I also do think, like, even our employees are now, like, I don't think they necessarily have a ton to do. It's November right now. We're finishing out the year. But yeah, I agree with that. So probably more of a management solution than a true viable business, which I kind of felt like coming in, but I like breaking down the problems when I hear them.

Yeah, well, no, let me take your management solution and turn it into what could be a viable business. I think there needs to be a test. They have like, personality tests, right? Are you INTP or ENFJ or introvert or extrovert or you're blue or red or whatever. There needs to be a test for employers to give to impending employees to take that can gauge and measure how fast they work.

Right.

That's something I never hear people talk about. You talk about is that are they productive, are they not, are they lazy, are they hardworking? But no one talks about how fast you can work. Right. How quickly you can rip through a spreadsheet or rip through an email. Like, you probably have experienced this. I have a friend named Brandon, he's experienced this. Where, you know, Parkinson's law is very real thing for those listening. If you don't know what it is, it's like work time expands or contracts to fit whatever you give to it. So if you're in high school and you have four weeks to do your science fair project, you're going to do it in four weeks. If you have to do it tomorrow, you're going to do it by tomorrow. Like, I am such a believer in Parkinson's law. So if I had this standardized test that I could give to employees during the interview process before they're hired, that sent them through like it, it gave them like a faux inbox. Right. And it's like, all right, clear the Inbox, hit Inbox 0. Go to this spreadsheet. You know, basic tasks, basic formula. Clear this, solve for this. And it was like you just had a barometer of what is a fast employee and what is a slow employee. Because that way, like I can hire four of those guys.

Yeah.

Or I can hire one guy to fill four roles if he's that fast. Because it really is an 8020 rule. I just, oh man. Like, it's, it's maddening sometimes when I outsource something and it's like, are you done yet?

I think that that is one of the best ideas I've heard in a minute. Solely because I think it's easy to build and if you aggressively give it out for free, slash whatever the referrals that come in from it, assuming that it's like qualified and good would be great. So I mean, you know that I'm working on this recruiting business right now and like, don't have to go into that a ton. All I want to say is that we recently hired us based customer support roles for a fast growing e commerce business. One of the biggest criterias was type speed. I'm like, I think I'm nice on a computer. I think I'm like very, very fast in Terms of typing. I took a typing test that they wanted me to administer to all of their candidates, and I got like 75 words per minute. They want all of their candidates to be at least 60, which, you know, your job was responding to tickets. It's a volume game. That makes sense. It felt a little weird to like administer to people after the interview. But, like, I was like, that's fine. We got to the final round with like five really good applicants. And I think it was like four of the five. Or maybe it was three of the five. Scored like 35 words a minute. And I was like, wow. I was like, I wouldn't. Like, I thought I was fast. And then, you know, at some point it gets marginal and like, 60 felt right to me. Like, I was like, wow, you can't use a computer. I was like, yeah, I didn't, like, call me privilege is fine. But like, we had, you know, typing test stuff like the fourth, fifth grade. Like old hardware PCs. Like, to your point, on, hey, whether or not it's a screening and a criteria to join, like the typing speed. Honestly, Mike, to your point, Learning keyboard shortcuts and maybe that's a training when they join or whatever, like, whatever that looks like. I do think that that would be really, really valuable for a lot of new hires.

Yeah. Or, dude, even like, use this Mac app. It's called. I think you would like this. It's called Word Counter. I think it's this. This one solo founder built it like a decade ago. He's the only guy and. And it's the only app that I could find that does this. It's like $20 for a lifetime license, and it tracks how many words you type per day across mail, messages, Excel, Slack, Chrome, whatever, whatever app individually or in aggregate. And it was shocking for me to realize how many words I'm typing. Yesterday was like my all time high for the last four months. I typed 6,800 words yesterday. Damn, 6,800. But it's like that. But that's Parkinson's law. You just take on all these companies and projects and employees, and then you just, you. You rip through it so much faster. You're like, I'm not gonna put an email signature here. I'm not gonna use pleasantries. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna add that, period. That's a typo. People are gonna think I'm dumb. I don't care. I'm gonna leave. I'll leave all the typos because what do I care that they think I'm dumb. No. I'm gonna rip through these emails. Like, took me 15 years to get there. But if you could see how many words someone in a role where that is correlated to productivity. Just if you're not taking screenshots, you're not checking in, I think that would. That would give you. That gets you a lot of the way there.

I completely agree. That's cool. I like that a lot. Really like that.

And to your point, this was your idea. Like, you make this free because you want this to become the de facto standard. You want all these companies to start using it. Right. Like introvert and extrovert is household word. Like, I want whatever X, Y, or Z household word that's related to this test to become commonplace. Because then, I mean, your monetization angles are endless at that point.

There are a lot of paid ones, right? Like, the paid ones are. Is it predictive IQ or. I don't know. It's. They're. They're. If you look up, like, employee personality tests or something like that ahead of time. Predictive index, maybe. It's called there are a lot of paid ones. I do think to your point, can you get a more free version of this and then upsell something else afterwards? Gets more exciting.

Dude. Honestly, I. I would administer this test as an employer as just, like, I wouldn't tell them it. It we're measuring their productivity or their speed. I would just say, like, hey, this is like a. It's a trial run and we're going to pay you for it. Right. We'll pay you whatever your normal rate would be. And it's just so you can kind of get a feel for how we work. And then you give me feedback when you're done on what you thought.

Yeah.

And so it's like, oh, getting feedback. It's kind of a trick. But then at the end of it, you're seeing all these metrics that they don't even know that you're tracking.

You know, 100%. 100%.

Cool.

I like it.

That's cool. Me too. You could use AI to build that. Like, okay, here's what I'm thinking. What should I. Like, how should I use Zapier? Like, how do I fill a faux inbox? Like, what type of Excel formula should I use? Like, it should be, like, kind of skillful, but not really.

It's got to be a little sandbox.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Man, that's good.

I like that one. My dad, all my life. Like, I think in 08, he bought this business when I was 11 and I didn't know what like buying a business was or anything there bought a candle manufacturing business in South Jersey summers, scraping wax off glass, selling candles, making cold calls to mom and pop shops and you know, now he's owned this business now what is the math on this? 15 years, something like that. And he probably is going to sell it soon. He's grown the business pretty sizably all under their own brands. But the entrepreneurial direct to consumer e commerce brain and me is always thinking, damn, how can I launch a bunch of sub candle brands? And to be honest with you, like his candle brands are not super unique from anyone else. It's just they have his 15 years plus the previous owners 15 years ago they got 30 years in the industry of selling the candle. So they've built a little bit of a brand for themselves. But I feel like it would be really fun to launch like the liquid death candles and start with. I don't know what that looks like, but like the classic candle company candle decor is everything from all baked goods, crisp cotton, you know, I'm kind of like luscious smell and fragrance. Nobody wants their things to smell bad, so I think that's kind of off the table. It's kind of more of a gag gift. But like, can you create really intense branding that can appeal to a different audience and get a lot of headlines? What do you think?

What, what about like, what's it called? Like a mystery candle, where it's not going to be, it's not going to be something bad, but it's going to be something random. And you could even, you can even put them in themes like, like a wood shop mystery candle. And it might smell like cedar, it might smell like pine or sawdust or something. Or just like a man cave theme mystery candle. And it could smell like motor oil or just something. I don't know what it is. This is kind of random, but there's a small percentage of the population that genuinely likes the smell of skunk, myself included. Like we drive by a skunk and like my whole family's like, oh gosh, roll up the windows. And I genuinely love it.

Okay, so that's weird.

Maybe there's. It is weird, but maybe there's something there.

You know that there's a subreddit for people like you, I'm sure.

Probably.

Yeah. But so, okay, so one thing I can think of is like drive coffee. I don't know if you know this company, but they do really cool packaging design. So they kind of this Weird over like intersection of people who love classic cars slash adventure or whatever is the brand and the people who enjoy their coffee. They sell coffee beans in motor oil cans with like really sexy packaging. That could be cool. But as far as like what you're saying too, the candle market is pretty segmented in terms of like gag gifts, which is like the surprise. I know that there are candle companies that do like hide a diamond ring in one out of every 50,000 candles that they sell.

I love that concept.

And then. And then the other side is like the cozy in home. Right. Like candle sales plummet in the summertime, but they perform really well in the winter, fall time. Obviously. One thing that most people don't know about with the candle industry is that big players like Yankee will often. You make candles in two batches. You pour the wax, you let it sit, you adjust the wicks, you then reheat it so that way it's all straight. And then you pour the top layer of wax as well. That way you're not just like dousing a candle wick and wax. That's how the manufacturing works. That second portion of wax, Yankee, a lot of the big guys is where they put all of their fragrance. So when you're at a store and you're smelling it, you're sniffing smells. Really Fragrance. Because the fragrance is the expensive thing, not the wax here. Right.

Top heavy.

Top. It's a top heavy candle. Yeah. Like, you could probably have a pretty good marketing campaign. I've been pushing my dad to do this for a while of just emphasizing the difference and educating the customers on that core difference. I think that that would be really valuable and something that you can kind of like create an enemy out of, which would be nice.

Would you? Your dad isn't direct consumer already. He's only doing like wholesale white label stuff.

No, they're like a third or third or third. It's third. Amazon third. No, probably more like percent Amazon, 15% direct to consumer and then whatever. The Delta is a 55% wholesale.

Okay. And is he doing anything unique right now or is it just kind of your generic stuff?

Pretty generic. Like he's listening to this, which I doubt he is. You know, it's. It's a great candle, it's a great product. But I will say. And he's strayed away from this a little bit, but honest and partially because, like, this is also a little saturated. They had a very Christian Catholic emphasis when they bought the business. Since then, it's slightly watered down. They don't lean into that. That hard. Like, if you looked at the brand, you wouldn't necessarily know it unless, like, you've known it for 20 years. They. They have moved away from that a little bit. I do think if they went super hard in that category where it's like, hey, every candle has a. My mind blanking on the word. What's like, is it test, not testimony, Testament quote at the bottom. And you see it after you burn all the wax, Maybe there's something there. But honestly, I think above all else, if you're. If you want to call it the liquid death of candles, what did liquid death do differently? All right, they took a really boring category and they made it pretty extreme, pretty counterculture. And then they also changed the packaging. Almost no water bottles were in aluminum cans prior to this. So when you think of a candle, the first thing that comes to mind is probably some kind of glass packaging or maybe there's some kind of like, ceramic looking thing that you can buy on Amazon, some kind of votive jars as well. But, like, for the most part, it's all glass. And so you see the wax. Can you redesign the packaging to make it look like another piece of home decor within your house? Or do you want to have it be designed entirely for one room? Right. Do you want to sell bathroom candles? Therefore, do you make it white and porcelain like the toilet? Do you want to only sell candles for the outdoors? Do you want to only sell candles to go by, like, your fireplace? Like, pick the vessel that probably has the highest tan and can, like, also stand out and differentiate from the products. And then I think you just have to go really extreme in the marketing. And so what does that look like? It's. Is it. You know, do you take the liquid death, like, crazy rock star punk culture approach? Probably not, but can you do, like, oh, 100 would be a really good one. And I've actually. Oh. And I've thought about this for a while, you know, 19 crimes.

No.

Okay, 19 crimes is a wine company. Um, if you look up their bottles online, they're awesome. It's like a black and white photo of a prisoner in front of a cell. And they like, if you hover like an app over the. Over the bottle, it like, kind of animates it. It's like, I was arrested for this X, Y and Z reasons. And so it's pretty cool. I've always wanted him to do something similar. And if you think about the type of people that are buying candles, it can also be like the rom com and they really like fiction and like can you cross over that world with the candle world at all where there's some kind of story involved or there's characters that you like, really enjoy, you know, something like that.

Or if you could take. What about the concept of a refillable candle? And I know there's some weirdness with the wick, but I think you could do it right where you put something on top of the vessel to hold the wick in place. Like what if he found some popular Shopify stores or even like a home goods or hobby lobby that sells some sort of a decoration or a vase. And like on Shopify, if you put some like a URL suffix, you can sort all of their products by bestsellers, right. Basically just find some sort of a home goods decoration that's already like top 1% bestsellers. Copy the design somehow and then sell a candle inside that with like a subscription where you could order the wax in the future and you'd have to melt it down but like refill it over time. So it's a permanent fixture that is always a candle that you could always refill.

So, so they have melters. Melters are basically nightstand looking things or they don't have to be a nightstands, but they're nightstands. There's also ones that you can plug in and each for the wax specifically on top, it burns it off. That can, that can absolutely work. And maybe the entire game plan is, hey, we don't want to have something we light, we want to have something that cast a stronger fragrance. I like that idea. I think the vessel is the big question here, right? Because like in the same way that they're selling aluminum cans versus plastic, what do you sell? It's the opposite too. Maybe you downsell it, maybe you sell them without the vessel and then there's just a plate that collects all the wax. That might get messy. I don't know.

I like. More broadly speaking, I like the concept of Liquid Death for X. Right?

Yeah.

Like that needs to be a thing. I think Liquid death worked so well because A, the founder, I forget his name, is a freaking marketing genius, right. B, it's water, right? So you can make water punk rock and you're not going to really alienate a mark a market, right. If you sell something that everyone needs, you can go as niche as you want and it can become over time as broad as you want. Whereas with candles, you know, it's going to be hard to convince a dude that doesn't normally buy candles to buy candles. Right?

So maybe, Maybe that's the M.O. as well. Right. Like, you know, I think you see a lot of people raise VC money and they'll go after the, hey, I want to make a men's makeup brand. I think one of them just recently went under. Went under. Okay. Men. Men don't want to wear makeup. But from a candle standpoint. Right. I do think that you could probably have more of a crossover if it's like, oh, this candle helps you focus. Oh, candle. Give the illusion to your messy apartment. When you bring a girl over that, like, it's actually not so bad stuff like that other thing to really solve for, specifically candles. Just throwing this out there is, like, hard as hell to sell online. People want to smell it. So I don't really know the answer for that. Like, is it. Do you send a little sample pack? Last thing I would say on the Liquid Death for X category, I have a friend whose friend started a business, and I freaking love it. It's called Titan Caskets. And Titan Caskets is essentially the liquid death for caskets. So they take a very. When people die. And I just did this whole write up on funeral homes, and if they're a good business or whatever, people are very much caregivers, and they want to be there for you and whatever casket is. Like. They ran a Valentine's Day special called Buy Now, Die later, and they're very aggressive in terms of their marketing. They do a really cool, fun approach.

It's like irreverent marketing. It's all irreverent. Like, that's probably the best word for it.

Exactly. And it's. And it's on a category that you would never think of, but crazy high aob, right. Like, you know, these eight, nine, $10,000.

Caskets, I'm looking at the website right now, like, they're like punk rock. They got like stickers on them. Like, it looks like the back of my Jeep in high school. Yeah.

And they also just did a whole. They made the casket. I don't know if you saw this or not. For the Yeti and Liquid Death collab. Yeti and Liquid Death raffled off a casket for like 70, $80,000. And they manufactured the casket that essentially looked like a yeti cooler as a casket. And then they filled it up with Liquid Death and ice and whatever. Wow. Yeah.

That's random, but that's awesome.

But pretty cool. Yes. I think the Liquid Death for X category, you have to be good at marketing. Pick a big tam and then find something that also has to serve a little bit More of a. A problem, right? Like in, in Liquid Death's case, the kind of problem that they were solving was I want to drink water at a concert without looking like a wuss. And that, you know, it's oh my light. I can't tell. And I do think that you finding something like that could be very beneficial.

Dude. I'll also say the Mango Chainsaw Liquid Death is the best sparkling water on the planet. It's so good.

Hard. Disagree. I would love, I would a big sparkling water guy over here. Love the topo. Chico's. I'm a mountain valley guy, usually through and through. But like the mango, I think it's too sweet for me. I think it's whatever.

That's why I like it.

Oh yeah, Bought one. I think they were selling it at like a Chipotle and on Austin one time or something like that. And yeah, a little bit too sweet for me.

Dude, I just got an idea. I just got an idea. Okay, I'm sitting up.

So what?

We're just thinking. We're having like this, you know, the front brain in my conversation is conversing with you in the background. The back of my brain is just thinking like the smooth brain is just thinking candle ideas, right? And so I'm thinking, you mentioned smell. How do you sell a smell over the Internet? Well, it's hard. Can you send out samples? Then I started thinking direct mail, you know, could you do like a scratch and sniff direct mail? And it's like, that could be interesting on like a postcard. You could put 12 different samples. Oh, I'm obsessed with this one. QR code right here. You order from your phone, Apple pay. Frictionless. Love it, right? Especially if it's a subscription because direct mail is expensive, right? This would be even more expensive, I presume, putting smells on something. But if it were a subscription, you know, your AOV could be in the hundreds. So that's interesting. But then I'm thinking, okay, what about little co marketing? What about finding companies that are already spending a bunch of money on direct mail, Zillions of them. That's the only thing I get in my mailbox. Let's say it's a, like a nationwide, like Century 21 or someone that has a really big direct mail budget and doing a co branding campaign with them and say, hey, just give me like the, the left third of your envelope. Or if you're spending 36 cents per envelope for a four by six and it's 41 cents for a five by seven, let me just, you know, you only need four by six. Let me get the rest. I'll pay you a couple pennies. I save 80%. You're. You net out ahead or even or make up, you know, make a little more money. And I'm going to put these samples on everything.

I think it would work. Yeah. Honestly, I have not even thought about the concept of a scratch and sniff in the longest time, but I 100% do think that it would work. I also think that it would work from a gifting time if you want to put it in a bunch of just, like, catalogs and Q4 gifts, because that's when a ton of mail goes out as well. I do think that. Especially because that's when that intent is highest.

Dude, we got to bring snatch, scratch, and sniff back. Like, it's the other. It's physical. It's. It's like it has the. The first principles of, like, you're revealing something. What is it going to be?

So. So the other thing that if you want to. I. I've liked this idea. I'm. I'm so deep in the candle world at this point, and I haven't really thought about it, honestly, in a while. So it's called. Let me just Google it first before I say it. Yeah. Okay. Birth date can. Birth date. You know about this?

I think so.

John Fiorentina's company. Oh, wow. Their site has changed a little bit since I've been on it last.

I don't think I do know about this. There's one. It was like a hometown candles. Do you remember them?

No. Oh. Oh, homesick. Oh, homesick is great.

Yeah. Homesick.com. they were all over Facebook.

Homesick crushes. Homesick does a really good job. And I think they do, like, you know, it's there right now. They're selling a Jerry's apartment in Yankee Stadium fragrance and, you know, Barbie Dreamhouse. Like, they crush it on the partnership collabs. Everything's awesome. The birth date ones, they target people who are into horoscopes. Horoscopes. So, like, I can send you a birthday candle for your birthday. And the fragrances, I think are like, one of three, but on the front it says, like, June 23rd, Pisces. Here's what your sign tells me about you. All of this stuff. Actually, Dan, not gonna lie. Their site changed a lot since I've been on it last, but it's probably merchandise. 10 times better. Birth date pendant. This is crazy. $185. Are you. Are you on this website right now?

Yeah, I'M looking at it. Yep. Birthday pendant.

This has gotta be an expensive website. They definitely. They definitely did some things here. Very interesting though. So yeah lots to do in the candle space if okay here's here is a follow up on this. I have the in on the manufacturing front. All right. If anyone knows has a candle idea, let me know. Down down to play ball. The very last one that I'll say is that I only think people love more than you know, friends and gifts for birthdays is their pets. And so the last thing I'll say is can you have a fragrance that maybe isn't wet dog but smells better than that like freshly groomed dog and then you send me a photo of your dog and I print fluffy on the front of a candle and you have it as decor. That would go over really well too.

Oh dude.

Yeah.

Like or that just more speaking more broadly like incorporate pets with anything because pets is a standalone industry everyone knows is amazing but just a pet collab with any consumer packaged good. Yeah that's really interesting.

Anyway that's good customization programmatic SEO on homes to candles one for every niche town in America.

I mean that could be a thing.

I know, I know you'd like I.

Thought you were joking but I'm like no, no. This sounds like a good idea Connor.

Niche ideas of all time. But I like it.

Oh man. Even programmatic aside, like if you were just doing like hyper targeted Google Ads to people in those areas or people that used to live in those areas but now live in somewhere else.

Yeah, I like it.

Okay, don't forget to come back next week. I promised. Part two is even better than part one. Please subscribe on Apple or Spotify or wherever you are and share this with a friend.