The "Form Factor" Hack That Built a $500M Empire⏐Ep. #252

It is AG1 in a gummy all. It is.

Sometimes you hear ideas and you're like, it's too easy. Of course that works.

They launched three years ago. I'm fairly confident it's 500 million in sales.

Oh my gosh, dude. That's a whole industry. 500 million in three years tells me way more demand than supply.

Take something that's already really popular and just change the form factor and it'll crush. OxiClean has done 5 billion plus in sales at this point. Big money industry, very big money. And so I think what you can do is try to figure out what are the other categories that you can put that in. Selling a very cheap thing for a pretty high markup because you're solving that embarrassment problem.

Yeah, that is an amazing idea. It's a no brainer. You may recognize Connor. He's been on the pod five or six times. He lives here in New York. So I flew to New York and sat down with him to talk business ideas. Please enjoy. So tell me what you've been learning about Billy Mays, man.

Billy Mays, Is he still alive? No. R.I.P. billy Mays. Four one out for Billy Mays. Yeah. This guy made billions basically. Long story short, you think like the late night infomercial that maybe like people's crazy cousins or crazy uncles now watch these days? He was the king of it. And what I wanted to come into today's conversation with was kind of understanding how he made so much money and like what the top products were. And like back then late night infomercials were the way to sell products is how you move, move volume. Now it's D2C. Now it's meta ads and like TikTok, TikTok, ChatGPT search. A little GEO stuff. And so I was like, he's clearly selling stuff that people wanted to buy. How do you sell it? Again in a way that is not on a TV and not using CTV because you know the audience for that has dwindled to a fraction of the size. And so I started diving into some of the top sellers. And do you know what his top sellers are? Have you done any research here on this? No.

Was he the flex seal guy?

Yes. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah. We spray painted an entire boat. He's like, we put a screen door in the bottom of this canoe.

Like what a visual hook on that commercial.

It was classic direct response marketing. Like yeah to a T. And now I feel like you have all these e commerce guys who are turning around and they're like, we're doing 45 minute long VSLs and like we are going after heavy hooks and all that stuff and all they're doing is they're just taking the stuff that worked in direct response back in the 90s and early 2000s and they're just putting on meta. And so what I thought was like what were the categories and the products that somebody who is as iconic as Billy Mays was, what was he selling? And how can you then apply that to social media and sell it again? And so you remember the Flex seal. Flex Seal is iconic. Slap it on. It's like the classic meme. But his number one product. Any guesses? Do you know any categories?

I saw your tweet so I'm going to act.

It's not that.

Oh really? Okay. So your tweet was about rotisserie chicken.

So that was not him, I don't think. Oh, okay.

Yeah, I don't even remember his products. Like what? Let's do this. Yeah, tell me all of his products and I'll try to guess the more successful ones.

You're gonna know when I say it. So it's, it's Oxiclean.

Oh, he was Oxiclean.

He was Oxiclean.

Okay.

And oxiclean has done 5 billion plus in sales at this point. So like simple idea of what Oxiclean is. Stain remover. Now they have it more on a spray. Before it was like this little tub and you would scoop out this powder, you put it on the shirt, you'd kind of like rub it in a little bit and you toss the shirt in the wash. And so Oxiclean was one of the top categories. You look at all of the other products. It's bathroom cleaners. It's like a glue that was remodeled to like fix up seams of jeans. And like if your couch cushion split like it was a fabric sealant, you have like hardwood floor, like cleaners, stuff like that. So it's all home products, all consumables and the type of thing that like has some unique level of form factor on it and something that you are going to use time and time again once you build up that habit. And so I'm working with a lot of D.C. brands right now. I think you know this and I'm seeing the best people that are consistently crushing it today have very small tweaks on form factor and then very good direct response marketing. And so like classic example that everyone's talking about in the news today is groons. You know groons like the, the vitamin gummy.

No, I Don't.

You haven't seen them?

No. Groons.

Gru with, like, the little two dots on top. Ns.

Okay.

It is athletic greens. You know athletic greens?

Yeah. It's athletic one.

AG1. It is AG1. In a gummy all it is.

Sometimes you hear ideas and you're like, it's too easy. Of course that works.

They launched three years ago. It's. Somebody who's watching this on the Internet is going to misquote or tell me the exact numbers. I'm Fairly confident it's 500 million in sales three years ago. Just think if we were sitting here a thousand days ago.

Oh, my gosh, dude. That's a whole industry. It's like XYZ in a gummy. We sell confidence in a gummy. What wouldn't work in a gummy?

So I think this is where I think you can literally come up with a laundry list of ideas of things that would work is take something that's already really popular and just change the form factor so you have this massive tam novel version of doing it. And then go direct response and it'll crush the other example. Also a very big business. Have you heard of the company called Starface?

No.

Okay. You have a daughter, right? How old's your daughter?

13.

She'll probably start using Starface soon, I'm guessing. It's like. It is a pimple patch thing. Have you seen this at all?

No.

No. So massive category. Proactive, Neutrogena, whatever. Like, and all these skincare brands for blemishes. Normally, that was how, when I was growing up, you clean your face, and I guess people still clean their face, whatever. But now if you have a pimple, you got acne, and it's on your face. The trendy thing to do is get a sticker a star, and you put it on your face.

Like, in public.

In public.

Wow. So, like, what Alex Hormozi's doing with his nose strip.

That is perfect analogy. Yes. So, like, before wearing a nose strip out in public, weird thing to do.

Nelly. Remember Nelly with the band aid? That was before your time.

Oh, yeah, the rapper. Would you just always wear a band aid? Yeah.

I mean, he only wore a band aid for what now? Nothing. That was his brand. He put a band aid right here.

Not even hiding, like, a little teardrop tattoo or anything.

No, that was just his trademark was the band aid on the face.

So this is something that's trendy. Starface, big company. And they basically said, people have acne. It's a big category. We're not going to try to fix it at its root. Cause we're going to try to give you a stylish way to hide it. And so I feel like the main idea that I came in here with, that I've been. I know I'm on short notice. I was trying to spin up some stuff quickly was like, with this Oxiclean, to bring it full circle. It's a not great form factor. Now they have spray, so I will be the first to admit it's a slightly better form factor. But, like, they have the tide to go sticks, they have the spray, they.

Do the magic erasers. Is that Oxiclean?

I don't know. They might probably. Probably like one of these big Unilever, Procter Gamble types of brands. At this point, I'm thinking, though, could you do this in a sticker? And I'm thinking, like, dad's wallets, mom's purses, you're out to eat. Rather than having something that's this big, that's kind of like a wand or Magic race or whatever, can you have something that, like, hides in your. In your wallet? You pull it out, you peel it, you stick it on the stain and it releases something instantly. It just stays on the shirt.

Ooh, okay, so like a stain remover sticker. Interesting.

And it can be different colors. You know, obviously I'm assuming white's gonna be the most popular to kind of blend in with a shirt or whatever. But maybe there's something out there around, like, it has to stay on it longer, therefore the sticker is better. Or like, you don't want to be walking around with a wet shirt. Or I don't know, like, do you want to be walking on the sticker? I don't know. But if you can make it cool. If it's like a little kid and he's getting food all over stuff, you put a dinosaur sticker on and you know that's going to clean it.

So for clothes specifically, that's my thought. Yeah, I think that makes more sense than, like, carpet.

Definitely.

There's not enough, like, surface area to. I don't know.

I'm thinking, like, you walk around, though, with like, a power range. I don't know if Power Rangers are still cool, like, dinosaur stickers, some kind of licensing, some Disney things, Pokemon. And next thing you know, it's got like, some kind of sticky residue on the outside with a cleaning residue on the inside. Put it on a shirt. I think that could work really well.

That is an amazing idea.

I. Sorry.

Because, like, first of all, it doesn't have to work all that well because that's not the problem you're solving. You're. You're solving embarrassment. The parent kid doesn't care. Right. If I'm out with my kids and they get a big stain on their shirt and we're about to go somewhere nice, it is what it is. They're kids. But if I could have a solution to that problem, I would buy it.

Yeah, right.

And if I could know as a bonus it's going to help that stain come out when you do throw it in the wash, it's a no brainer and it's consumable. So you buy more and more of them.

Buy a pack of them. You're selling a very cheap thing for a pretty high markup because you're solving that embarrassment problem.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I want to know more about Starface. Like do you know what their founding story is or so I think the.

CEO does a lot of these beauty products and is really good retail connections. And so I think they've gone a little bit of a different way rather than going traditionally D2C. But I know that they've scaled up fast in just a couple of years time and like, I think culturally they've really defined a lot of stuff.

Are they in stores or is it.

Yeah, no, I think it's like it's Ulta Targets, all that, all that stuff.

Are boys wearing them?

I'm not wearing them.

But like is it a thing just for girls or are both genders wearing it?

I've seen guys wear them.

Really?

Yeah.

Even in your 20s, 30s, people wear them.

I think it's one of those things where like you're in a city like New York, you're going to have a lot of people wearing them. Like I'm trying to think like you go to like raves or like if you go to like music festivals. This stuff is done all the time. I think it's something that like would you. Would I wear it to work? Absolutely not. Would the average creative maybe?

Yeah.

Like I think middle school, early high school, those are a lot more like kind of the target markets and like the early times.

See I would think that draws more attention to a pimple.

It definitely does, but it's not a pimple anymore.

Do they tell people what it is or why they're using it?

I think people know. I think people know at this point and honestly like I didn't know and then as soon as I heard it, like, I bet I don't know if it's as blatant as, like, you're gonna walk to the, go to the airport after this and see them, but, like, you'll start seeing them pop up in your life. And what I would have originally attributed to, oh, maybe someone's going to a concert or they're doing some special event later. I'm now realizing is, oh, no, they're just, they're going to the library, they're going to the supermarket, and they just had this cover up on and it's that simple.

Do you know how they grew? Was it just Facebook ads?

I think retail, I think a lot of retail connections, which is interesting. It's like you have a lot of these different buyers. Once you form a connection with them in one category, like, you know, you have Target, you have Walmart, you have Ulta, you have Sephora. I think so far, as a part of Ulta, once you get connected with like the health and wellness buyer or the beauty buyer or the whatever buyer, then that's your channel, Right? And so now it's. It is. Let me sell as much as possible. Let me make sure that the product is good, but now let me get more products to also sell to you because now I can fill up more shelves and I talk to them and I say, hey, what's your worst product on this category in the, let's say we're talking supplements. Like, what is your worst? Are you guys moving a lot of taurine today? Are you guys moving a lot of creatine today? Oh, we're moving ton of creatine. Okay, like, what can we do to get another product in there that's a differentiator? Oh, we've been talking with our buying team and, like, people want to see creatine with caffeine. Great, I'm going to work on that. I'll get back to you in six months. And you build up those relationships really strong.

What, have people not put in a gummy yet? What's left out there?

That's the ultimate question. There's caffeine, there's, there's every, there's every health one, right? Like, I don't know if you ever took, like the Flintstone gummies growing up, but, like, that was a staple. I think what you have to do is find the most annoying form factor. And like, the creatine gummies are blowing up. I'm sure you've. Have you seen those?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, those are great because creatine's chalky and it's annoying to take. So then you see, goalie was the original guys of it, and I think they did the apple cider vinegar ones. But so green juices, people want that. I think, like, maybe like better magnesium gummies. But these days gummies are. You're probably late on the gummy curve.

Yeah. At this point, when I hear $500 million in three years with a gummy, I don't like, I'm asking the question to you, what other things could you put in a gummy? But really what the question is is like, should someone just go compete directly.

With them with grins? Yes, I think they have a lot.

But like 500 million in three years tells me way more demand than supply.

Big market.

A little bit of a different angle or the same angle. Just capture a little bit of that.

Okay. So the other thing that they've done that I think is really clever is if you go to CVS and you go down the vitamin aisle and. And you're looking at a bunch of gummies. It is this big plastic tub with 150 gummies in it and you pick it off, whatever. What they've done, which is really cool, is everything is a travel pack. So you get this big bag and then within that bag, environmentalist, cover your ears. There's like 50 more little bags.

Oh, I hate that so much. Like, as a capitalist, I love it. As someone who just doesn't want to.

Waste stuff, I get it, I get it. But it probably increases consumption so much because then you're traveling for a week, you don't want to break that habit.

And.

And then you have to go grab a bunch. So I listened to the founder on a podcast before and he talked about how that packaging, no co manufacturer would do it for them. Like, they literally had to go to every single one of these co mans and have them reinvent one of their processes to figure out how to get. I don't know the exact number. I think it's like seven or eight little gummies into one sachet and then put that, all those sachets into one bigger, like, bigger bag. So, like, that was. That was a lot of the innovation that had to go in there.

Yeah, I mean, they wouldn't have done that if they didn't think it would work.

Agreed. So I think if, if the question is what other gummies are gonna work? I know that Groons just released an immunity one which is different than, I guess, greens. It's like, you know your vitamin C stuff. I know that sleep is a massive category that gets talked about a lot these days. I think that caffeine would be a really interesting one as well.

What about custom gummies?

Talk to me like, what about you.

Go to a fancy shopify site and there's a little form and you say, what do you want to optimize for sleep? Creatine, health.

Right.

And maybe like, on the back end, there's like 20 different combinations. That way there's not like 2 million combinations of supplements. And you just order your own custom gummies.

I think that makes a ton of sense.

Like, you're never going to go somewhere else to buy those.

I think. I think as long as it's easy enough to make or like, you have to buy a year's worth or something like that. I think that the hard part there is the manufacturing, but the marketing sells itself.

Yeah.

The two biggest categories in D2C right now are probably the gummification of things and electrolytes. Right now, you just see every electrolyte brand under the sun just running up.

Still need to make my busy juice and sell that.

I think it would do well. I think it would do well. Maybe some kind of combination of that. Right. Rather than like. Like the Gummy of Gatorade, basically.

Yeah. Gummy of Gatorade.

Like that. The gg.

I like that.

Yeah.

This is. Reminds me of an idea I've had. So one of my hundred, two hundred domain names is race tattoos dot com.

Okay.

Now, I used to run ultra marathons, trail races. And have you ever ran, like, a trail race?

I've done a marathon, not a trail race.

Okay. So even with a marathon, like, there's two things you want to kind of keep track of throughout the race. The elevation profile. When am I going uphill? When am I going downhill? And like, the. The pacing. Where are the aid stations? Is this three loops? Is it end end? Is it out and back? Is it like a lollipop? Right. They have all different types. And like, when you're out there, especially for five to 50 hours, like, you kind of want to know, where am I at? Right. So I thought it would be cool to kind of do like a permissionless marketing thing where you make these temporary tattoos. And there's a bunch of companies that make them, but they're. It's a temporary tattoo of the elevation profile of your race, and you could do it for 5Ks. It doesn't have to be ultra marathons. Right. And then you get there. You. Anytime you do a race, you get a little packet, a shirt, metal or whatever. Ads. What's the lmnt? That?

Yeah.

You get stuff like that.

That's great.

And you just pull out a temporary tattoo and you put it on before the race. And as you're running, you're just like, oh, here. Oh, I got an aid station coming up. It's like a Google Maps.

I think that's static. I think that's great. And I feel like there's so many ways you can play with it, too. Like, even if it's like, if you're making bespoke ones, it can be like, all right, let me overlay, like, what I want my nutrition plan to be on it to, like, at this mile marker, I should eat. I don't know if you already have guides that and aids that, like, do that for you, but, like, it at least gives you a couple of, like, reminders or things like that you can keep in the back of your mind, too.

Yeah, well, it's also, like, it's very Instagramable. If you put that on, you're going to post it. Right. And they have, like, semi permanent tattoos that will last for, like, weeks or months. Right. And if it were something like that, then it's like, it's just free marketing. So to the race to the tattoo company.

I think it would do super well. I also think that, yeah, like, you get it in your. In your starter pack or whatever like that. I think another version of this that could be really interesting. And this depends on. Depends on how hard it is to make custom temporary tattoos. So. Hinges a lot on the manufacturing. So have you. You're down in Dallas. Have you ever been to ACL or like, any of these big kind of like, music festivals things? No. Okay.

Austin City Limits?

Yeah. No, haven't been. So you basically get this crazy lineup at the beginning of the thing. And I'm going to connect this idea in a second, but you get this crazy lineup of, like, here's three days.

Here'S 100 acts, whatever these bands on Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

And so then you get in a group chat with your friends and you say, who do we want to see? And every single day. And these things literally draw hundreds of thousands of people out to them every single day. What people that are my age do will be. They get their Friday lineup and. And they highlight it and they'll make something kind of bespoke and they'll screenshot it and they'll put it as their phone background. And then Saturday they'll wake up.

You're always referring to it.

Yes. And then Saturday they'll wake up and they'll be like, here's like, I want to go from stage one to stage two to stage three.

Yeah.

I want to see this person at 7pm and this person 9pm so you're going 100%, right? So. So you're going to the weekend.

Yeah.

And it's EDC Orlando and it's Friday. We got this stage, this time, this person, and it's like you're walking around, it's like, oh, where are you going at seven? It's like, let me check. Yeah, exactly. And it's like it's a big event. It's something that like people spend a lot of money on. Tickets for these things can range from 500 to $1200, if not more for the full weekend type of event. You're paying for lodging already, you're paying for food, you're paying for all of this stuff that like, if you tell me it's $50 for a bespoke thing because girls and everyone's already paying for like, you know, makeup and hair, other stuff. I think it could be a pretty big market.

Oh, dude. The question is, do you try to get the people to pay for it or do you get Austin City Limits to pay for and include it for free?

Yeah, I think if it's. You get everything, then Austin City Limits will do it. If it's no, I want Chris's lineup and I want like, I don't care about Rascal Flats, but I can't miss Zach Bryant and therefore Rascal Flats is not on here. But the Zach Brian at xfinity stage at 7pm is then that would be a better one.

Yeah. Because when I first started looking at this idea, I found a dozen companies that will make custom temporary tattoos.

How much do they cost?

A few bucks.

Really?

Yeah, it's not bad.

Oh, it's pretty great.

Just send them a design and they're like, you know, 100 piece minimum or whatever.

Oh yeah.

The cheaper it gets. Yeah, but so you don't have to become like a manufacturer. You're just like white labeling it. Yeah, Listen, Beehive has always been the best newsletter platform for monetization. Their ad network and their analytics are unmatched. But they just had their biggest update ever. And it's something that all digital creators have to hear about. It's not just newsletters anymore. They just dropped their own AI website builder, dynamic podcast website feature, native analytics, direct digital product sales, and a link in bio capability. And let me tell you, the podcast website feature is outrageous. I can pull my entire podcast directly into my Beehive site, and it automatically creates episode pages with show notes and audio player and embedded YouTube videos. This replaces PodPage. And I've already started messing around with their digital products. Now you can sell ebooks, courses, templates, whatever you want directly to people who are already reading your stuff. So stop paying for five different tools to do all of this stuff that Beehive offers within one platform. I've been using Beehive for two years at this point, but it's about time you got started. So switch over@beehive.com Chris and use the code Chris30 to get 30% off your first three months. That's B E H I-I V.com Chris. If we go back to races, like, there's no company that only puts on one one race a year, right? Like, generally, it's a business. They'll have multiple races a year. And so I would just proactively send the race director. You know, if I know they. They have 3,000 spots, I'll send them 3,000 tattoos and say, hey, this is free. I thought you'd like it. Go ahead and put them in every bag or whatever. They're for sure going to come back and buy from you. Assuming people like it, they get good.

Feedback and putting hats on them would be pretty hilarious.

Yeah. I mean, racetattoos.com right there, right?

Or I'm thinking like. Or like, sell ad space on the tattoo. Nobody, nobody has successfully gotten tattoo advertising down the way that it should. So, like, if you're selling, like, use Gatorades as an example. Like, but you have Gatorade on top of it, and you can tell Gatorade, hey, I know for a fact, you know, we have a 10% adoption rate of all that we send. New York city marathon is 50,000 people running it. We're going to have 5,000 people with Gatorade temporarily tattooed on their arm for the next week. It's pretty good. Oh, all day, right?

Oh, man. Especially if you could get, like, you could get multiple people to pay for it. Yeah, you could get Gatorade to pay for it. You could get the race to pay for it. And then you could even. You could upsell, like, more custom temporary tattoos to the actual participants if they wanted to show it off. Right. You could just direct people to your website with a QR code or something. Cause I'm thinking, like, if I have all that surface area for people wearing my product, I want to try to sell them something as well. Now, what is that? I don't know. Maybe it's just Like a semi permanent tattoo business where they can say, like, I ran an ultramarathon.

Yeah.

You know, for, like, three months.

So, honestly, what I was expecting you to say when you first brought up race tattoos, it was like a badge of honor type of thing. And, like, you know, I'm sure if I was a bigger runner or like, people who are just, you know, the true Hanes of the world, whatever, like, these guys could probably start checking it off and almost make it, like, a cool, like, badge thing. I wonder if there's something there. Or it's like, fill it in and you like, the hard part. There is, you know, a big enough market size, and then you make it culturally relevant. So, like, the idea of you showing up to a race right now with all of your races that you've ever run tattooed, I'd be like, okay, this guy's pretty fricking legit, and that's probably a small market size. But if you can make it culturally relevant of like, we're going from the L. A to the New York City Marathon, or we just did the Moab 240, now we're doing the Bigfoot 200. Like, that would be a lot cooler, I think.

Yeah. Especially because it's such a passionate audience and they're proud of what they did. It's like a. It's like a human bumper sticker, right? Like, how many times have you seen a bumper sticker? This is 13.1.

Yeah.

26.2.

Yeah.

It's like a tattoo version of that.

I like that.

Dude. Here's another idea in the same vein. So bike races, right? I read this stat that said road cyclist ingest so much exhaust from cars, it more than offsets the health benefits they get from cycling. It either more than offsets or it partially offsets to where it's like, you net out even.

Yeah, right. That's a crazy stat.

It's crazy. And so I was looking into these things, and we all remember the COVID era, the face mask. This guy, like, in India or somewhere, invented, like, this nostril mask, and it's just like a little sticker. You put one there, you put one there, and it's a filter, right?

Yep, love.

So same distribution idea. You give it to the races for free. They put them in the bags, and cyclists can wear them. And then when they pull up to a stoplight and they're behind cars, they just don't open their mouth, and it filters out the crap. How well does it work? Nobody knows.

Yeah. Yeah.

Certainly better than not Having anything. Right.

I mean the reality is with a lot of this stuff, it is problem solution framework. It is deer.

Yes, exactly.

Solution framework. Like everyone who cycles is health conscious obviously to start and so to even just be basically say like this will do something and like have some results. Like don't, don't be selling snake oil, whatever. Like to have some results people are going to buy it. And the nice part is it's subscription and you're going to be able to have these different packs like similar with.

Like hostage and you can ship as from coming from an e commerce background. Like you could ship it in an envelope for like $0.54, whatever the cost of a stamp is because they're so flat it's less than an ounce.

Do you cycle?

Yeah.

Do you. I'm just thinking, do you breathe through your mouth or do you breathe through your nose?

I don't, I don't even know.

Well, the reason I ask is because I'm wondering something that's already pretty popular is a lot of this mouth tape for sleeping.

Yeah.

So you think of like hostage tape, think of a couple other companies like that. Could you just do the mouth tape for cycling? Like can you take the same exact product and rather than putting somebody sleeping on it, just put somebody cycling and then because like your nose is already natural filter.

Yeah, yeah.

And so if people have the tendency and listen not medical advice, consult your doctor. But like if people already have the tendency to breathe through their mouth, however people can breathe through their nose and it is just a habit that needs to be formed and you can say your nose is a natural filtration device, whatever. Then I think it would be interesting to sell bike tape right over your mouth.

Well, it doesn't just have to be cycling either. Like I don't remember but I've heard like in running to optimize your breathing or endurance or whatever you like inhale through your mouth and exhale through your mouth. Something like that. And that's like common knowledge. Right, for runners. Clearly I'm not a runner because I don't remember what that knowledge is. But if you were to just sell like the mouth tape for that, like a functional mouth tape for a different purpose.

Yeah.

That might not work five or 10 years ago before the mouth tape company, but now that people are accustomed to seeing the ads, seeing that it's normal, it's like, oh, this is just for running. This is to help me remember to run better. Therefore I have more endurance and I'll get a better time.

Yeah. Theoretically, I think it Makes a lot of sense. I think also the. The fear part. There's the. There's a benefit part of I'm gonna be a better athlete out of this, which is, like, aspirational. Sell that vision, whatever. Then there's the. Don't you want to actually make sure you're not breathing in toxic stuff, especially when you're breathing the most that you ever do in any given day? And I feel like that would sell really well.

Yeah, yeah. With the nostril things. I love that it's already a product because it's. Right now it's being marketed as, like, a slimmer alternative to the face mask. Right. You just license that thing, put it in different packaging.

There's, I think, a big trend in a lot of products around there, around filtration, filtration of water, filtration of air, filtration of all of the dust that's in your vents, which is, I guess it's the air part of it. Big money industry, very big money. And so I think what you can do is try to figure out what are the other categories that you can put that in. I love the filtration of air for cyclists, filtration of air for athletes, filtration of water. I don't really know. Like, you see a lot of, like, the shower head stuff popping up right now, a lot of faucet stuff, a lot of harsh chemicals that, like, there's probably a lot of money to be made in that space just with, like, more niche positioning.

Yeah, I know that they have, like, filtered shower heads. Right. What are those filters supposed to be removing? Chloride.

Chloride, yeah. Heavy metals is what they tell me, but it's. It's heavy metals. It's a lot of, like. I don't know if it's bacteria. I don't know what exactly it is, but it's stuff that impacts your skin and your hair. Like, the value prop that you see on a lot of the ads is better, fuller hair cleaner, healthier skin, all of that stuff.

Do they have one for microplastics, like a shower head to filter out microplastics?

No, but that would be interesting. Somebody just launched a company that audits your environment. Have you heard about this? Do you know what I'm talking about at all? It's like, I haven't heard of the.

Specific company you're thinking of, but I'm familiar with the concept with the industry.

So I think, like, might be wrong about this. Somebody will come to your house or somebody will do a zoom call around your house and they'll say, show me how you cook.

Yep.

And you'll, you'll show them a not stainless steel pan. They'll be like, okay, check mark's mark. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, you hate your kids.

They'll be like, all right, like bring me up to your event. All right, I see some dust over there. Like see your filter or whatever it is basically like a, I don't know if it's an at cost or a free consultation to then upsell all these product enhancements, whether it's the lighting, your ceilings or the shower drain or whatever the hell it is. Right. And so to your point on filtering out microplastics, I think this initial consulting service based business is really great to capture a large audience. And then as far as filtering out microplastics is probably, probably a new microwave or like it's probably like not heating the plastic or like removing like it's a hard, it's a hard holistic problem, I think, you know.

Yeah, I feel like with those home audits, people would pay for that. Like they would pay to be upsold other products.

So this is where like you and I might have talked about this in the past. Mare Health, do you remember this at all? We might have not talked about it. Marth Mariscalf, something like that. It is a company that will do a relatively low cost blood test because for them the blood test is like, all right, we're going to get you in the door and we're going to be like the pioneers of data. Like, we're going to be very consultative and you're going to trust us. And then once you get the blood test back, it's like, Chris, you're actually really low on iron and vitamin D and like you're pretty deficient in these other five categories. We can put you on a program that's customer bespoke to you and buy all the gummies and vitamins through us directly and just stay on subscription and then we'll test your blood again in six months and you'll see if we've improved anything. And that's a really good way to do it because you get this consultative, these people are smart approach. And then it's, well, you just gave me the problem, now give me the solution. And I think for the, what's wrong with my environment? There's like, you can change out iridescent light bulbs. Like I'm currently in my apartment right now just going through all of that phase of doing like floor up lighting and like trying to make it a softer space. At night. And like I watched a bunch of these YouTube videos and kind of hacked it together. But if there's somebody that could call instantly and I'm like, hey, here's my apartment, like, give me five lamps and like where to put them in and like set up my Alexa for me. Like that would be a great service. Yeah, you could do that for your environment, for health products.

Yeah. Have you heard of Function Health?

Yes. Yeah, they're big. You can't use them in New York City though.

Really?

Yeah, I think it's. I think there's some legal thing there.

Okay. I'm using them.

Do you like it?

Yeah, I mean it's like, I think it's like six or 800 bucks a year and that includes two blood tests.

It seems like a no brainer.

Yeah. And you just go to like a Lab Corp or whatever and you get like 12 vials of blood drawn and two weeks later they give you your testosterone, your blood sugar. Like, oh, it's like 103 different biomarkers.

Right.

What I did with that is tediously screenshotted every single result.

Yeah.

And it was like green, yellow, red. It's got beautiful design. It's like an Airbnb feel. And then I just uploaded it to a ChatGPT project and I was like, fix me. And now I take pills every night. Like a boomer, right?

Yeah, but do you add that up? Do your new biomarkers look better?

I haven't taken the second one yet.

Okay.

It's been like three months. I'm going to get another one in three months. I take fish oil, I take niacin, I take vitamin B complex. And like, I just think it's so funny when people start like taking pills and they're like, dude, I just feel so much better. I just feel so. It's like nothing. Do you.

It's cheap insurance.

I just, I've never had a period in my life where like I just, I always feel good. I was £260 and I felt good. I just don't know. It's all confirmation bias.

Right. I think there's so much. There's a personality type that is super optimized, heavy, and as a result of that, it makes it such that you actually never feel good because you can always be doing a little bit better. And I actually think this is maybe a side tangent that's not as business related. But the good that probably a lot of the Huberman and Ferris stuff of the world has done can probably also be pretty offset by the person who actually feels worse the next day because they got seven hours and 55 minutes of sleep versus the exact, you know, eight and a half hours that they were regimented to get. Or like, you know, God forbid they looked at their phone within an hour of going to sleep. And like, at a grant, at a high level, I think all of this advice is actually very helpful and directionally correct. But like, when you are obsessed with getting the perfect thing, whether it's the perfect level of fish oil in your bloodstream or like the perfect weight on the scale or whatever, you're actually never going to feel good no matter what. And so I think that it's just like a mindset shift, honestly, for a lot of it. Like the, the pills do very little, especially with these supplements.

Yeah, I'm really. The only thing that makes me feel like, really good is caffeine. Everything. Everything else is just secondary.

I will say, I think, I think creatine does a little bit for me at the gym.

I need to do it, I need to take it.

I think, I think there's like the meme of like, what you think you're going to feel like when you have creatine. And it's like the Instagram video of everyone using those fake glass bottles, toss me a beer just smashes in his hand. Like, the reality is you'll probably get one or two more reps on everything in the gym. Okay, that's kind of it. And that's if you're consistent with it. But it's like very tiny gains.

Yeah. I was listening to another podcast and they said that of the top three best selling creatine gummies on Amazon, two of them had zero creatine.

Yep, zero.

And so what SUPCO does is they'll test everything. They'll. They'll take it into a lab. Unbiased third party. They're not. Like, they strategically don't have affiliate links. Like, they're unbiased. Like, they charge for the app. That's how they make money. Right. Because they know they have to. Right. Be unbiased. So you can go use the app and see, like, oh, like I need to take these creatine gummies. Oh, these might be good, but they haven't been tested yet. Oh, these? I thought that's a really interesting business model. And I'm wondering what else you could do that with.

I'm trying to think, it's like, it's almost like giving. Like you're selling trust. Right. And so I'm thinking, like, it's like the Michelin, Michelin stars of rating or like the IMDb which if that was actually relevant, or the rotten tomatoes whatever of food. I don't think you need that in a different category like, or I guess you do for the sake of like thinking of new business ideas. But like there's Korea Pure is the name of the brand that everyone goes to and you almost want to see their manufacturing brand on their logo and you see like David's Protein. But spot, I forget. Do you remember talking about like the epig thing?

No.

They bought like whatever protein allows them to have like this crazy caloric difference.

Oh, I did hear about that.

So manufacture, I don't think it's epg, it's just something like the David bar. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think finding like a trusted third party of one specific thing, whether that's creatine, whether that's the bioavailability of a certain supplement, I think makes sense. I know that there's another company out there called Seed Oil Scout.

I've heard of that.

You've heard of them? Yes. They will do like all of the restaurants in New York City and show you the ones that do not use.

And they have like a Yelp, like a directory for.

Exactly. I think you just have to find something that people really care about. Like probably a good one based on the earlier conversation would be like filtration and like air quality. Yeah, or something like that. Like can you have someone test air quality at every Marriott across America and therefore you're staying in hotels that like only actually are sanitary and like follow a code or something like that.

What if you did like a subco for popular snacks or foods for their, their caloric contents or their ingredients. Right. So I, I love old Trapper beef jerky and they have this, it's like teriyaki and they have these medallions and they're really good and, and I was eating em last summer like a ton and they were like, I think they were like 10 calories per medallion and I was just crushing em, right. But then I looked at the weight and it was like one medallion was like 28 grams, which is an ounce. And when I did the math on the nutritional facts differently, it was off by 100%. Right. So basically I just divided by the weight of the serving size or something. They were 20 calories per. And I think it was because they were like 14 pieces for 140 calories. But when you looked at the weight, it was actually 280 calories. And I was like this Is like a massive brand. These are sold in every gas station, every. And it's wrong by a hundred percent. And it's just because I happen to do the math, it's gotta be wrong everywhere.

I don't know how it works with some of these companies that you'd think that they would be more conscious of it. So that way they don't get in trouble with like the FDA or whoever monitors this type of stuff. I can tell you right now, for the supplement space, it is like, it is probably the one thing that you can get away with so much. As you kind of just pointed out with subs, I mean, at the end of the day, like, people are going to eat that beef jerky because they like. It tastes good and it fills them up. Whatever. No one is taking supplements because they taste, I guess the gummies maybe, but like, because they taste good and because it like fills them up necessarily, you're only doing it because you want the desired outcome, that you think this will make you more healthy. And so if it's not accomplishing that goal, the efficacy was just really important for this type of stuff.

Well, I found out the same thing when I was trying to make my busy juice drink. I was trying to buy lemon powder and I learned by accident that this lemon powder I had been using for mine, it was supposed to be pure, a hundred percent lemon. That's what the. It showed. But it wasn't at all. It was like crystallized. And I talked to this chemist and he's like, if it's crystallized, they've added these sweeteners. Like, this should not be sweet at all. And it was, I'm like, very tart, very light. Like, isn't anyone looking at this? And then when I was doing keto for like six months, I had like this product from Trader Joe's and it was like two net carbs and like I was testing my blood for ketones and it was outright wrong. So it's like, okay, the three times that I've actually held the nutritional value. Feed to the family.

Yeah, that's crazy.

They were all wrong.

Yeah. So just. So a food. A CPG version of subs.

Yes. All you need is a. It's called a bomb calorimeter. It's like this little device that anyone can buy where you, you take food, you grind it up, you dehydrate it to get all the water content out, and then you put it in like a pill form and you burn it. And the machine measures how much energy is emitted from burning it that's the calories. Those are the calories. Right.

That's cool.

And however many heat calories are emitted, that's how many calories that that food had. So you had to get. You got to basically take a slice of pizza, you let it dry 100%, blend it up, put it in a pill form and. And then you light it on fire in this enclosed space and it measures how much energy is coming out.

Oh, that's super fun. I have no idea.

You would basically take like a box of Cheez Its or something and you would do all that and then you'd say, all right, we can affirm that this lot number has actually this many calories. The carbs are this much, the fats are this much. And so, you know, a lot of these foods we eat every single day. Like I'll eat a quest bar one to two times a day. The same thing.

Yeah.

And it could be completely wrong and it could be having a completely detrimental effect on my body. And I have no idea.

That's really interesting. Eat whole foods, I think is the. Eat whole foods and develop subs for cpg.

There you go. That I think there could be a business there.

Especially if there's just like a verified. Like I think you have to basically. How do you do it though? Because I think you have to make a marketing campaign that your nutritional labels are lying to you.

Yeah.

And basically an attack on the government and the FDA and whoever makes that kind of stuff and says if you want the real information, come here and basically start with a whole like actually audited version of the app that could.

Spread so easily with short video.

Yeah, I like that.

All right, what's your idea?

All right, how much fun do we have? All right, we got. We got three minutes. Let me. You're going to get an elevator pitch and if we want to do a deep dive on this later, we can. So you're in New York right now. There are a ton of bath houses here and one that has recently popped up that is taking over New York City. And if you're in your 20s and 30s, like you've probably heard about it because it's a big like social wellness thing is other ship. Other ship is crushing it. They are this like sauna, cold plunge, steam room type. I don't know if you ever seen it. Steam rooms. But really cool, novel experience. And they took this, you know, however many year old, hundreds of year old concept, hot and cold and they made it trendy and cool. So there's another concept that is hundreds of years old or has been around for a while that has gotten a little bit trendier, but honestly hasn't had like a good brand dominate it. And that's silent meditation retreats. And so we've seen it pop up more in the last, I don't know, tech era of like the last 15 years, whatever, of like these tech gurus, they're going away for three days, five days, seven days, whatever. They're not talking to anybody, no phones, disconnected from technology, they come back, they were healed, they had the realization about themselves, whatever. But if I asked anybody, you know, what, what sign of meditation did you do? There is not a, there's no brand. There's no brand. There's not a clear one thing. And maybe that's because the market's not big enough, maybe that's because the version of it is not accessible enough yet, whatever that looks like. But like, you know, people made tiny houses trendy via like getaway. They've made cold plunges and sauna is trendy from other ship. And so there's a lot of ways that I think that you can make this concept trendy. And a lot of it probably comes down to, you know, make it more accessible. You didn't do a seven day silent meditation retreat. You did a 48 hour silent meditation.

Retreat or four hours or like an afternoon, honestly.

Yeah, yeah, probably. And I think maybe you can do it within a place, right? Like, hey, I'm going here on a Thursday night to just clear my thoughts and not think about anything like shut the world out and they take my phone in the beginning or whatever. Four hours a. It's actually probably the smarter version. I didn't think about that. I was gonna say do it, you know, within a 90 minute drive of a city. To your point, do it in the city. Like New York City is the loudest, most busy place on the fricking planet, or at least in the US and if you can walk in and reliably say, I'm going to give you this, I'm going to use my phone. Maybe there's like some distress protocol. And then it's four hours sitting at a fricking wall. And like you're in a distraction and free environment where you're like, why don't you do that in your living room? It's like my tv, my Kindle, my iPad, my laptop, my phone. And so like this forces me to be present. What do you think?

I love it. And kind of like people taking supplements saying, I feel so much better, they're going to come out of there being like, that was incredible.

Yep.

I changed my life.

Yep. And it's going to spread and it's going to be. I've got a lot to think about. I'm going to go into chamber. Whatever you want to brand it as. I think they could do really well.

Call it a quiet place.

Quiet place.

Like the movie.

Yeah. I was going to say get quick, quick lawsuit. And then we're right back.

Fine. That's fine. Yeah, that's a good one. You wouldn't need a lot of space. It could be like a very small room.

I think it could be a very small room. You could probably have two versions. You could probably have like, like a phone booth, like a wework phone booth kind of set up almost where it's like, all right, I'm here. And then you could probably have a group room where it's like you walk in. And I've talked to some people who have done these things and some of it's like, you know, they walk in a circle for four hours or like they sit on a pillow and they look at the wall. But like, the point is it is intentionally pretty unstructured and unguided.

Yeah.

And I would say for something like othership. Othership got a lot of notoriety because they'll do like these classes and they'll do these breath work classes. And so there's probably a world where you can mix breathwork into it. There's probably a world where like you can work with somebody on like setting intentions going into it or like get a prompt to reflect on or like there's a coaching element to it. There's probably a lot of upsells and flavors of it. But I think that you could also sell. To your point, could you sell a two hour slot for 120 bucks? Would people pay that? I don't know. But you're basically selling the ability to get away from all distractions.

I bet people would pay it. I love it, man. Yeah, thank you.

Cool.

All right.