What Is Programmatic SEO and How Can You Profit from It? Ep. #043

There are 200,000 average monthly searches for Botox alone only in the US and the competition is low. So top of page bid is five bucks, but it's still low competition. 22% year over year change. So completely sold on this. More generally speaking, I'm completely sold on lead generation sites with programmatic SEO and basically automated AI generated content, plus paid Google Ads. Like, kind of like a three tier strategy. So we're trying this. All right. Welcome to the Kerner office. I'm still fired up from this episode I just had with Connor Gross. He's a guy I met on Twitter that's a lot like me. He's 10 years younger than me. He lives in New York, but he has an E commerce business. He buys self storage, he wholesales self storage. He made 360 grand profit on a wholesale deal. He's just always ideating, launching things, hacking. Like he's all like me. And, and so I want to start interviewing people like that where we can just riff on ideas. And we had no shortage of ideas. Programmatic SEO, lead generation sites, Botox, Hyrox selling energy bars, you name it. For like 50 minutes we just jammed on ideas nonstop. And it was really fun. So let me know if you like it. And I want to have Connor on every month or so. Enjoy. We've got Connor Gross here. Connor is a friend that I met on Twitter and he's a lot like me, except younger. You're in your 20s, right, Connor?

Yeah, I just turned 27 last month.

So 10 years apart. I'm 37. So Connor lives in New York and he buys self storage and he starts businesses and he's in E commerce and we're doing a lot of the same stuff. And he's definitely an idea guy. So I just wanted Connor to come on and just talk business ideas and just riff on some cool stuff.

Yeah, man. I mean, it's funny hearing you say the idea guy part too, because I was on a call yesterday with a friend who actually lives in Dallas, Fort Worth. So remind me to connect you with him if I haven't yet. And we were talking, he's two years younger than I am and he was like, oh, yeah, I want to launch this business because I'm doing these things. He has two companies right now. Both of them pay him a ton of money and he makes good money on it, but he's like, I'm not going to spoil the idea that he wants to go after only because it's, you know, he's very into it, but he's like, I want to do this, and I want to do this for the next 50 years, and this is going to be my big thing. And he's like, I have so many ideas. I hate the fact that I'm getting, like, shiny object syndrome. And he was like, what about you? Like, what's your favorite business that you run on now? It's like, well, if I'm being honest, like, it's probably going to be the next one, because things always seem better when you haven't started them yet. And it's like that classic. I don't know if you've seen the graph before, but it's like, you know, you have this idea. Why isn't anyone thought about this yet? And then you start getting into it. You're like, oh, there's actually a ton of competition for this. And then you start launching it, and you're like, this is really hard. And then you get a win or two, and you're like, okay, it's actually not as bad as I thought. Like, coming from the idea guy background, it's like your favorite idea is always the next one, because you don't know all the headaches and frustration struggles that are going to be a part of that journey.

I know. And it's kind of like we're hardwired to forget. Like, forgetting is a feature, not a bug. Like, when I run ultramarathons every single time throughout the whole thing, I'm like, this is stupid. I'm an idiot. You're dumb. Why are you doing this? No one cares that you're out here. This literally doesn't matter. You. You're in extreme pain. This takes 36 hours. Never do this again. And then I cross the finish line and I feel good. And then it's like, okay, Whew. That was awesome. I'm glad I finished, but never doing again. And then, like, two days later to, like, as if I could set an alarm to it, I start looking up the next race. It's like, what? And same with businesses. Like, all right, this is really hard. This is really hard. Like, let's stick to what you know. Like, don't go out of your comfort zone. And then I just. Either I'm an idiot or I just forget and I do it all over again.

No, it's. I think it's human nature to forget. Like, right now, I'm living in New York. I'm in Jersey at the time of this recording, but my girlfriend took the bar, the New York law bar, last year, and I remember her being extremely Stressed out the entire. Stressed out the entire time. And she was, we were talking about it this past weekend because everyone's getting ready to take the bar again. And she was like, oh, it wasn't that bad. I was like, you forget. It's very, it's very common nature to only remember the good things from a situation. So.

Yes, yes. So you texted me about this idea. What is Teagus?

Oh, you don't know Tigus?

I don't know Tigus. Is that like an indie band Tegus blew up?

Tegus is. Well, okay, let me just Google their things. That way I can read out the exact name of it. But it's effectively like intelligence research, insights. So if you ever heard of these companies where they'll effectively say you have $100 million funds and you want to figure out, you know, you want to get involved in, let's just use self storage because it's relevant. You want to get involved in the self storage sector, great. You know nothing about self storage. Tigus is going to connect you with everyone who owns or with professionals and people in the industry who own or like are involved with self storage. So realtors, brokers, owners, sellers, wholesalers, whatever. Like, if you are in the space and you know what you're talking about, they're going to connect you with them. Now there are plenty of these, like consulting style platforms. The really interesting and arguably genius part of what Tigas is doing is they're not marking up the conversation. So if I turn around and say, you know something, I'm about to have conversations all day long about self storage. Put some time on my calendar. Tigus, you know, build me out at 250 an hour. The normal company is going to say, all right, we're going to charge $500 an hour to meet with Connor and we are going to take the difference.

Is that like Catalan?

I think Catalan does that. Yep, Catalan does that. Who are Alphasites does that? There are a couple other ones that do it and they, you know, they mark you up as for your service, but they're also bringing the client in so they provide a value. What Tegas does is pretty interesting, is so you play, pay a platform fee. Kind of forget what the platform fee is. I'm on their website right now. But like any good company, they pricing page and built the pricing on the other website. So they will say, all right, I think it's like five or ten grand a year, let's call it. You pay that, you get unlimited access to the people you want to talk to. And with no markup. So it's like the Costco esque model. But more than that, what you're also paying for is you get access to a database or a library of all of the other conversations that have ever been had on the platform because they transcribe them. And, and so what they tell you is like, all right, if you book a time with Connor and you talk about self storage and you talk about how you want to take advantage of a deal down in southeast Florida, whatever, they'll remove like the incriminating slash highly personal details of the conversation, but they will include the key insights and they'll give you a two, I think it's a two to three week head start to act on that information. And then afterwards the transcribing of the recording of the data is, is then put into their database as well. I think that this is a super interesting type of business because it gets you all of this really unique data without you having to build it at all. Like it's crowdsourced data effectively. I think building some kind of research company that can then turn into a data product. I have another example after I finish this ramp, I think can be really, really profitable.

So who's paying the platform fee? Is that people like taking the calls or making the calls?

The people that are making the calls. So if you are.

If I'm a big hedge fund and I want to learn about self storage, I pay five to ten grand a year and then the self storage expert doesn't pay anything, he gets paid an hourly rate.

Yep, the self storage expert gets paid an hourly rate. Right. So there the tigus is reaching out to these experts and they are saying join the platform, it costs you nothing. You can only make more money. So it's a no brainer pitch.

Okay.

It's also pretty cool. Like you know, from just to give you an idea in terms of like their customer base, they have 3,000 customers. And so like I don't know you and I come from the e commerce world. 3000 customers is cool. It's not anything crazy. But they have 3,000 customers, but they're valued at 4 billion. They do a lot in revenue and they have grown like a weed in the last five to six years. So I think that one is really cool. And so let me give you another breakdown in terms of this business model applied in a different industry. That can be a little bit.

Because I think, yeah, something that's like more like we could wrap our heads around.

Yeah. So I've got a friend, college buddy, one of my old roommates. He is in the food sector. So crazy background. But, like, he graduated college and moved out to Montana, lived on a bison ranch, and started basically creating their bison jerky line and, like, marketing it towards independent grocers and chain stores and all of that, he quickly realized, damn. If you want to navigate either any of these small stores, like, you know, Joe's health food store on the corner of 123 Main street, or if you want to get into Kroger's nationwide, it's really hard because the little guys don't have their contact information online because they don't need it, and the big guys don't have their contact information online because it's a hell of an org chart and it's difficult to navigate. So he has since left that jerky business and he's working with someone else right now. And what they do is they. They sell a service to small independent brands. So if you have Chris's coffee, and he says, okay, I'm going to get you into every, you know, I'm going to be your business development arm. You're great at making coffee. I'm great at sales. We are going to call around all of these stores, try to get you into all of the shops that you need. Our markup is we charge a small flat fee, slash a reoccurring fee plus X percentage of whatever the PO is that we get you at that company, right? So that alone is a good model. It's. It's a. You can back into the profit on that model. It's reoccurring revenue. You eat what you kill. So, you know, you only get in part of the upside. And it's niche, so, like, it appeals.

Well, he's kind of like a broker, right? Like, he builds up all these relationships. Maybe it's with Joe, the owner of one grocery store. Maybe it's the regional buyer for Albertsons. And he's like, hey, I've got some bison jerky for you. Hey, I've got some organic coffee for you. And just cut of the purchase order.

And so he's a broker in that sense. And, you know, he builds up the business development arms for these different companies. But the other really interesting thing that he does is he's. He's basically like turning the light switch on in the room. And he's like, all right, here's the contact information for the small guys. Here's the org chart of who's the buyer in this category with their email and their phone number in this category. And he takes all of this information and he basically sells his CRM. So he sells his CRM as a data product where he says you're a small independent company, you want to get into retail, you don't want to pay me, that's fine, you don't have to pay me, buy my data product instead. And I think that's really cool because the data is essentially the sawdust, let's call it, of all of the work that he's doing for this service brand which is already profitable. And now the cost of goods sold or like a product essentially that he's selling is a $0 fulfillment cost because he already has it built out.

So he's doing both. He, he's doing like the higher ticket but harder part of just calling these guys on behalf of the food brands. And then he's just. Is the data that he's selling just a monthly subscription or a one time fee or what?

Yep, monthly subscription. You get access to it, it's updated on a daily basis. You get new buyer information, you get their email, their contact information, where they're at. Like it's a cool concept.

That is cool because I mean he's probably going to end up making more than these food brands are.

He will definitely. I mean unless he's working for the RX bar, right? You know, eventually the food brands, this biz dev in house. But he will definitely be making more than the food brands, I think.

Yeah, I mean I like we used to own a company called Send Eats where we did all the logistics for these niche, these niche food brands and they don't make any money. Most of them go out of business. It's a really brutal, tough business. So I'd rather be on the data side of it.

I agree there. I went to school up in Boston, went to Northeastern. There were two guys, one while I was in school, one after I graduated that I got in contact with. And the poster child of entrepreneurship at Northeastern during the time that I was there was this company called Eat yout Coffee. They sold essentially called RX bars with caffeine infused in them. Cool concept. It was really niche. And like this is also coming during the time when like right now I feel like if I'm on Twitter, if I'm reading entrepreneurship stuff, people, people are leaning more towards the business, the boring stuff, the things that are proven ideas. This was during the time when like people wanted that Uber, people wanted to hear run a company. Not just that it's a painting company, but it's a sexy brand. And the guys that were running this company. They, you know, they launched it, they formulated a way to get caffeine into a bar. They scaled up, they got some, you know, some fundraising. They got into retail. But I think at the end of the day, they had, you know, an okay exit. Like, not to down talk them good friends of mine, but, like, sure, you know, they had a fine exit. It wasn't like, like, they are retiring on a beach somewhere after that. You know, I'm now two or three, four years postgrad at this point. I had a conversation with this other kid who's at Northeastern, and he's like, I am launching Seaweed chocolate bar. And I was like. And he's like, oh, there's all the benefits of the Seaweed. And I was like. I was like, dude, you seem smart. Like, you seem like a hustler. Like, I can tell just based on the fact that we're on this phone right now. Like, you like coming up with ideas. You like launching stuff. You're like an entrepreneurial person. Like, you will be successful in something that you do. I'd never want to be the bearer of bad news when it comes to it. Like, prove me wrong if this is the case. But I would say you can probably make more money doing something that is more proof now.

Yeah.

So, you know, unless you're. Unless you're like the RX Bar founder who I know, I don't know if you've seen recently.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you seen the new product that he's launching?

What's it called?

I think it's called David. I think it's called David's Bar.

I don't know if I heard of that.

Is it in Florence?

I think so.

Like the Greek sculpted God. Yeah, it's gonna be cool. I don't know how he does it, but it's like 100 David protein. Yeah, it's 150 calorie protein bar with 28 grams of protein.

Holy cow. I'm looking at it right now. It has like, a gold wrapper.

David's protein.

Yeah.

So I don't think. I don't think he's launched it yet. But if you're like, hey, you're the RX guy. Rx guy was like, the pinnacle of all of this stuff a few years ago, and now you're building this ultra macro bar, you're going to be pretty successful.

Well, the problem with these food brands is you don't make any money until hopefully one day you get a big exit like RXBar. Because if you're growing, then you have no cash. You're constantly raising cash and spending it on new inventory.

So is the, the inventory game. Yeah, that's the problem.

I mean e Commerce game.

I know, I know. I will say on that, though. Do you want to talk about the other thing? I text you because this is a food company. I won't say who told me it because I, I don't like outing people in public. And if I don't think these numbers are private. Do you know Element, I would assume. Right?

Element what?

Just lmnt. Maybe electrolytes.

No, I don't know if I do.

Oh, you don't know these guys. Okay, look them, look them up. And then just for the sake of this call.

So, yes, I've seen this, I've seen this before, but I don't consume this.

You don't any reason why or just. Just haven't gotten around to it?

I don't see it around. Like, it looks familiar, the branding looks familiar. But yeah, I don't see it around.

Okay, so I know, I know we're kind of putting on the spot here right now, but these are electrolyte packets. They've got salt in them. They have potassium, magnesium. Like their whole thesis is the FDA or whoever's in charge of the narrative around nutrition in the U.S. always, always saying, salt is bad, sodium is bad. Yeah, have less salt, have less sodium. They're like, okay, if you are sedentary in your lifestyle and you have like diabetes, sure. If you're an athlete, if you're mildly fit, if you sweat during the day, if you like, have cognitive functions that require a lot of your focus throughout the day. The average American is actually not getting enough salt for their, for their day to day. And so they create these really easy supplement packets where you can drop in your drink. I buy them all the time. They taste great, they're solid. And genuinely notice that, like, if you. Not even if you're hungover, but like, if coffee's just not doing it for you because maybe you've drank in your third cup of coffee and you're super dehydrated at this point. These actually make me feel better, both physically and mentally because it's like, oh, yeah, I'm like replenishing something in my body. Seeing what you see now. How much do you think they do in sales and profit? I know that's a loaded question.

First of all, before I even get there, I totally agree with you. I did keto a while back and all of the issues that people have with keto is because lack of salt, right? And like, if you can get enough salt, magnesium, potassium in, you're fine. And when I was running ultramarathons, like, it all came down to two electrolytes. And I genuinely believe that not enough people are drinking electrolytes on a daily basis. So I'm sold on the thesis. Like, geez, I don't know. Nine figures top line, eight figures bottom line, 130 million in sales. And with like, let's say, 22% margins.

Okay, you're extremely close. 200 million top line, 40 million bottom line.

Dang. Okay. Wow.

For a salt packet, that's pretty crazy.

It's crazy because I want to launch something like this. I wrote a newsletter about it. Did you read that? It's called Busy Juice.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yes, I did. I did, yeah.

It's just because, like, I have the same problem. I want to drink a gallon of water a day, but water's boring, right? And so I started getting those MEO packets just to make it more flavored. And then it's like, okay, this is like 100% red dye number 40, and I'm drinking a gallon of it. Like, I don't know what I'm doing, but this can't. And it's not like I felt bad. I felt. I just thought, this can't be good for me. Right?

Yeah.

And so I just started. Yeah, I just started ordering crap on Amazon and kind of experimenting, tinkering, and came up with this lemonade. And it tastes like chick fil a lemonade, but. But it's just lemon stevia and caffeine. And I drink again. And so I like, I know exactly what's in it. And it's caffeinated, and it keeps me energized all day long, and it keeps me hydrated. And I can even put light salt. So light salt is like part potassium, part sodium. And then you just gotta throw some magnesium in there and you've got all your electrolytes. So I've been drinking this myself, and, like, I plan to sell it one day, but it's one of those things where it's like, you've got a consumer package. Good. And it's e commerce. Like food. It's like all the hard things. So I'm not. I'm not excited about starting it, but I also want to.

But I will say so, you know, don't sell the liquid. Right.

Like, I think I was going to only do powder.

I bet you could probably do that. So I know I've read Own the Day own your life by Marcus Albrecht. Anyway, like, a lot of cool things from that book. It's like, you know it all, but it's like a good read because it just talks about, hey, here's how to think about having a successful day as it relates to relationships, working out, eating, like, all of this type of stuff. But it always talks about and something I did for like a year afterwards, and now I'm more in the element game. But you wake up in the morning, you're already dehydrated. Rather than just, like, don't drink coffee right away. Like, you know, this is all the Angie Rubberman stuff too now. But drink a glass of water and squeeze, like, a wedge of lemon in it and a little bit of salt. Drink that chill for like 20 minutes and then get your coffee. And I started doing that. I was like, wow, this is like, maybe placebo. Sure. Noticeably different for me. And I feel like for your busy juice thing too, I could also see, like, you know, maybe something that Elements not doing is they got the magnet. Magnesium, potassium, whatever. But, like, even very small particles of dehydrated lemon, dehydrated orange could potentially be cool as well. So, I mean, I don't want to just make this an ad for, like, an electrolyte thing. I think the reason I texted it to you from a business standpoint is this is also an idea that I've had for a while. There is this entire category that I've talked about for two to three years that I really like, but unfortunately, the hard to execute upon category. And the category is essentially like, minimalism in a sense. So I really like the idea of detoxing, you know, using your phone less. I really like the idea of meditation. I like the idea of fasting things that are essentially removing the stimulus and, you know, extra things that are constantly sold to us on a daily basis. The tough part about that category is, like, by nature, it's hard to create products and services in that category because you want to do less. And I think that with Element, knowing how big it is, and I think people are starting to begin to see that they are either, you know, doing a lot of sales or everywhere. I think that doing very niche versions of that would be extremely beneficial. So niche versions from one of two ways. One is the. What does it help with? Okay, collagen element for nails and skin and all of that. That's starting to get overdone a little bit. But the one that I wanted to do was just called fast, right? Or something like that. And it's literally element designed for people who do intermittent fasting.

Like, it doesn't break their fast.

Exactly. So you wake up in the morning, you put this in the water, exactly what I just described here from the beginning of the day side. And it's got supplement style margins, right? You sell, you sell the thing for, you know, 80, 90% gross margins on it. And you just put it in your water in the morning and you get after it and you drink your black coffee and you have this doesn't break the fast. Make sure you have your electrolytes, no flavoring. You can add flavoring if you want, whatever. But like, I think that is a cool concept. Or you could genuinely just take it and like slap a sport thing on it and so have it be element for soccer, element for football, element for track, whatever.

What about like, even Element four, like ultra endurance events? And you could, you could distribute that by just sending free packets to all the races to just put in like the race packets.

Yep. LA marathon a couple years ago. And like there was noon everywhere. The noon things. The idea is not new. It's like there's a bunch of these coming out. But everyone wants to be the Nikes. Everyone wants to be the something to everyone category. Like, even. Okay, I don't know if you did this, like, would you always eat before you would go on runs?

Not usually. I usually ran fasted same.

So I feel like a sick name would be Run fast.

Yeah.

And it's like little salt packets before. And it's like, yeah, catch. Double entendre. Is that the word where it's like, okay, you're running in a fasted state. Make sure you at least have the electrolytes that you need prior to going.

Dude, one of the stupidest good ideas that I had about a month ago on this podcast is, is electrolytes for dogs. Because I went on a run and I came home and my dog just started licking me, which he doesn't normally do. And I'm thinking, you just need electrolytes. Like, you are leeching my salt. Then I thought, huh, if I were like a dog lover, I would think, oh, you poor thing. You know, like, I need. I'm. I'm not. I love my dog, but I'm not like a dog person. So that you could totally just get, literally get some co packer that has salt, magnesium and potassium to put it in a container and just say, put this label on it, four dogs, dog. And just sprinkle it on their food.

I was going to say everyone's targeting the dog food bowl, right. Like you look at Farmer's dog, it's $100 million plus business. Everyone's targeting the dog food bowl. No one's talking about the dog water bowl. And it's just water. Like literally. I same exact story I would. I'm down the shore in Jersey right now. I went swimming in the ocean yesterday. I came back and my parents dog was just like, looking at my ankle. I was like, oh, yeah, probably want the salt. But the most fun thing that happens to a dog's water bowl is people is you put ice in it. There's got to be something better than that for the dog. And especially people who want the supplements or whatever. I think even honestly, I wonder if I would change the taster if they would notice. But people who give dogs their supplements, that's a big category. Know if anyone is doing dog supplement powders where you just mix it into the water bowl? That seems pretty interesting to me. I don't know. You know, dogs don't drink all their water in one sitting, so maybe like, it, it recrystallizes or you have to mix it occasionally. That might be annoying. I don't know if it's viable, but I could see that being kind of cool.

You know what else you could do that isn't like, it isn't as easily shippable as a powder. But have you ever. You ever been deer hunting or anything?

No.

So when you go deer hunting, you can buy like these salt blocks and you'll put it out there by, by the stand and the deer will come and just lick it because they need salt. And I wonder if you could get those, like, get the same manufacturer to just like break them down into much smaller pieces and just put that like next to the bowl or like the food bowl or the water bowl, because that is one concern is like, your customers might over salt the dog and like kill them and it could be a big liability. But if it was like, if the dog could control the level of salt that he was taking in, it could be a different experience altogether.

Oh, 100%. I will also say just that was reminded me of a small story that you would appreciate being an ultra runner. So I have a friend, his name's Ryan. We grew up in the same town together. And the guy is just a savage. He runs ultramarathons several times a year. Like he's done like the Moab 240. And like, like that was insane. It's insane. Well, what the craziest part about it too, isn't the Moab 240. Like, I always joke about this. It's like 242 miles, and they're like, we're just going to round down. When you're at the point where it's so many miles that, like, you just round down. But anyway, the guy is not built like a runner. He's 5 10, 190 pounds, stocky guy, but he's. But he's just mentally different. And he was telling me this story where he had one dnf. And for listeners right now who don't know what a DNF is, DNF is. Did not finish. He's had one DNF in his entire career. And the DNF came because he was training here in New Jersey all summer for this race. I forget what the. I think it was the Bigfoot something. One of the Bigfoot races.

That's one of the other 200 milers. It's in Washington, like Mount Olympus.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So he was training for that. And when he was out here training, I guess you know this as well. Like, you take salt packets because you sweat so much, and it's. It's not like you're running a marathon where it's like, okay, I can get through it. Like, there are points where, like, if you don't have the salt or electrolytes, like, you're shutting down. And so he's taking salt packets out here because it was summertime and he's sweating like crazy, and he goes to run the race. And he made two mistakes. The first mistake he made was he bought salt packets, but he, like, just bought them out of a CVS or whatever and didn't look at them. And they were three times the strength of what he had been taking out here.

Yeah. And then.

And then secondly, the climate was dramatically different. I think if you said Washington, I thought it was Colorado for some reason, but, like, it, like, somewhere was just drier and less humid, and so he was sweating less naturally. And so he's taking three times more salt and sweating. You know, call it 30% less. And he hit a point where he's like, mile 95. And he's like, my feet are so swollen that I physically cannot move anymore. And, like, I think he broke some bones and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a. Not. Not to derail from the. From the dog supplement one. But it's a crazy story.

No, I've done that because it's really hard to regulate or even know how much salt you need to. Like, I'd run ultra marathons, and I'd roll up to an aid station and they'd have salt pills, and I'm just like seven sure, you know? And then, like, I go to change my shoes and my feet look like elephant feet. They're insane. And then. And then I'll start peeing, like, every 10 minutes on the trail, like an insane amount. And it's just getting all those fluids out because you've been retaining it, so I could totally see that happening.

They're a crazy business. It's also great. Well, sorry. Actually very unimpressed with businesses, it seems like from. From Ryan, who I talked to, he says how, you know, he'll go to a race and there are a ton of volunteers and There are like 35 people in the starting line. I was like, is the. Is the race making any money? He's like, I know. No, these people. These people just love their stuff.

I know. Like, I. I wonder the same thing. They're always begging for volunteers, but then they have, you know, 3,000 entrants paying 200 bucks a piece. And I'm like, how are you not making money on this?

What are your thoughts on Hyrax?

Okay, what is Hyrox?

You don't know Hyrax, Dude, I don't. I don't know Hyrax well, so, okay, so look it up. So. So Hyrax is. I think it'll start taking off. It is CrossFit, but different.

Okay. It's like a tough mudder, but for CrossFit. Yes.

Yeah. Well, well said. So. So it's. How to explain anyone who listens to this right now that actually does. IROX is going to critique the hell out of my description. So I'll read.

That's fine. Hey, I never even heard of it.

Yes, I'll read the summary right now. With over 40 plus global races in 2023, seeing over 90,000 athletes and 50,000 spectators, welcome to the World Series of Fitness Racing. Irox is a fitness competition that combines an 8 kilometer of running and 8 functional workout stations. It is an indoor hybrid fitness racing event that alternates running with functional exercises. It bills itself as the World Series of Fitness Racing and a sport for everybody. So.

So is it like the CrossFit games with more running?

I think it's the CrossFit games but more accessible. And I think. Here's the cool thing. If so, I do a combination and you know, I think my knees pretty banged up right now. So less so right now. But I do a combination of running Jiu Jitsu and lifting. Probably going to not do as much jitsu in the future because I'm getting way too hurt. But I think people like running in part from the, you know, the health benefits and set PRs, whatever. But it's specifically, I think that PR element where when you're running you can say, damn, I shaved off some time on my splits here or I set a new PR for how far I was able to go and there's like this cool trophy case Strava badge, you know, feeling to it. Lifting, you don't get that as much unless you're sending PRs. And to be honest, like if you're trying to PR all the time, like, you'll probably get hurt or things just like you, you look good, you can lift heavy, but you don't feel that good all the time because you're just like, damn, things are tight things. I just tweaked my back, whatever. So I think that Hyrox is pretty interesting because it gives people back that competitive nature that they want and that people love as a sport, but in a more functional way that has maybe hopefully a lower injury rate and it's growing like crazy. Like if you look at even just Google trends on high rocks or you look at all of the gyms that are popping up that are specific gyms for high rocked athletes, you'll see that it's consistently been picking up for the last three to five years. And I think that there's a big opportunity to build everything that has already been built for the CrossFit space for the, you know, every other sport in the world space specifically for Hyrax and have a lot of success.

Hmm. So Hyrax for different sports basically?

No, I think, I think different businesses for Hyrax. Okay, okay, so, so let's, let's break it down. Like TRX for example, TRX is a really. TRX and Rogue are two really big CrossFit brands and I'm sure that both of them can be applied to Hyrox as well. But like one thing that Hyrox does as an example is they're really big on assault bikes and ski erg machines. I know that. Again, I've never done this. So if people have more information, apologies, but they're really big on those two machines because it's like kind of functional and it's a little bit more cardio based and pushing yourself. Like, can you develop things that make you better at those machines? Can you develop a supplement brand as we were talking about before? That is the supplement of Hyrox, you know, can you build a content and news site that is specifically for Hirox? Will you build, like, I have a buddy who is building a gym right now over in Denver where the average membership for that gym, the average amount that people spend every single year, that gym is $20,000. And they're marketing themselves as the premier Hyrox gym. And they do the blood work, testing, and they do recovery and. Yeah, recovery. I'm a big one here. So I think that there are a lot of opportunities to see how you can make money from this growing sport.

Pig piggyback on hyrocks in other ways.

1,000%.

I like that. I can't believe I never heard of. I mean, like, I've never been involved in CrossFit or any of that. Like, I just like to run and ride my bike all by myself for many miles at a time. That's all I do.

Yeah, well, I, I mean, this, this. I don't know if you have a competitive nature. I don't know if you're running.

I do.

More for yourself. I think it's worth a shot. I also just like it from the standpoint of I've done CrossFit before. I think CrossFit's cool lately. I don't know. I'm about to sound older than I am on this podcast, but, dude, shit just starts hurting and I'm like, I just tore my meniscus last month. I re herniated a disc three months ago and I'm at this point where I'm like, I like having hobbies, but I also like walking. And so I need to start picking my hobbies a little bit more carefully.

Yeah, I think I'm built like, I'm built like a Cadillac. I'm. I'm like thick and like, I don't get injured ever. Knock on wood. But I know that if I run and I cycle, like, I'm just, I'm not fast, but I'm just like sturdy. I'm just like a V8. I'm not going to win any races, but I'm just, I'm just sturdy.

So that's good. That's a good one. Maybe update your Twitter bio. Built like a Cadillac.

I want to hear about your lead gen business idea because I'm doing something in this right now and it is. I. I'm like, so excited about it and I just want to copy and paste it in all the, all the industries.

All right, so this is. I was hesitant to share this one because, like, I genuinely want to Start this one. But in the spirit of not gatekeeping business ideas and all, preface with this is. If you hear this idea and you're like, that's a good idea, I'm going to do that. Just like, DM me and like, let me be a part of it. Like, I'm gonna put a money for it in some way or like, I don't know anything I want. I think it's such a good idea and will 100% work. So here's the concept. My girlfriend can't burp. And there is a large community of individuals who cannot burp.

That was Andrew Wilkinson, right? He just came out. Yeah, he just came out and did this long Twitter thread that was all about how he couldn't burp, but he fixed it and his life has changed.

So how did he fix it?

I don't remember, but it's there.

I bet it's what I'm about to describe then. So if you're in the subreddit, subreddit called R. Noberk, there are 30,000 people in there. Close to 30,000 people. And the. Lately, the more I go around drinking, and this came up two weeks ago, and I'm like, drinking at a bar in New York. I'll bring up Sarah usually drinks wine because the carbonation really upsets her, or she'll drink, you know, twisted teas or some kind of, like, no carbonated beverage, because the carbonation, after two or three, you're like, damn. I feel like I have to burp, but I can't. And it's, like, really bloating and uncomfortable. So here's something that everyone is starting to find out. Who experiences this. There is a way to solve this. You get Botox in your neck. Very little. Like, not.

That's. That's what Andrew Wilkinson did. I pulled up the tweet as you were talking.

So he got Botox in his neck.

He didn't say neck, but he said Botox.

I believe it's in your neck. This is not medical advice. I don't want to pretend to come off as a doctor. I'm not. I think that's the solution, based on what I've read and based on what I've researched for my girlfriends. But it's like you have this feeling your entire life of the equivalent of chugging a beer and a seltzer and then having to hold it in afterwards. Nobody wants that. And it is a growing thing. There's somewhat of a hereditary thing. I know her mom can't. We met some people over the Fourth of July, we brought this up. They're like, I haven't been able to too. I thought it was just me. I thought I was this crazy person. But, like, my mom can't either. And so I think it's. I think it's a little bit hereditary, and I think it's a bigger thing than most people realize. And when I say Botox, like, I don't know, maybe I have somewhat of a stigma of this, but, like, it's not like, get rid of your wrinkles. It's like you look physically no different afterwards. But I got. Again, I don't want to pretend like I'm giving medical advice here. I think it has something to do with your lymph nodes or something that allows you to contract them and effectively get air out of your stomach. I think, I think that it would be such a killer and easy idea to start a content website called Burp Again or whatever you want and make so much content about the subject that I don't like. It would not be hard to rank to the top of Google for why can't I burp how to Burp Again, like, bloating after carbonated beverage, things like that. And then creating lead gen for local areas where you can refer patients out to Botox doctors, which I think, you know, they do a handful of things, plastic surgery and all of that, other types of stuff. And so, like, you're selling a very high ticket thing. Like, you'll probably get paid very handsomely for these leads. And I think it would crush. I don't think it would be a $10 million a year business. I think that if you do it right and put it on autopilot, you can probably get this thing up to doing a couple hundred thousand dollars per year in mostly profit. Again, this is something that, like, if I had no companies today, I would do this tomorrow. But unfortunately, it's just like, not worth the time. So if somebody's listening to this and they're like, damn, I like that concept. Shoot me a Twitter dm, Connor Gross, and I'll pay for the money to set it up. You have to do all the work and I'll kind of coach you through it a little bit. But I love the idea so much.

I love this idea. So I did a little research while you were talking. First of all, Burpagain.com is open, so you could buy that before. Before this podcast goes live. Second of all, I pulled up the Google keyword planner. I looked up Botox can't Burp. I can't burp. The competition on all of them is low. There are 200,000 average monthly searches for Botox alone only in the US and the competition is low. So top of page bid is five bucks, but it's still low competition. 22% year over year change. So completely sold on this. More generally speaking, I'm completely sold on lead generation sites with programmatic SEO and basically automated AI generated content, plus paid Google Ads, like kind of like a three tier strategy. So we're trying this, I'll tell you off the podcast what the industry is, but we are trying this in an industry right now. And I've done a ton of research on Google keywords and there's over well over 100, maybe 300 different industries that could go just as well, if not better than the industry we chose. And we haven't even launched, but we're just putting out AI generated content that fits certain long tail keywords. And then we have three different services that we offer in 1,000 different US cities. So we've programmatically generated 3,000 landing pages and we're upping that to 5,000 here soon.

That's just crazy.

Service in city state. Service in city state with, with like a lead capture form on everyone. And we've only indexed like 236 of these 5,000 pages so far. And every single day it's like more.

And more and more.

We're ranking in the top 10 for terms. We're getting clicks, we're getting leads, all of this.

You're getting leads?

Yes, like actual leads, Purely organic. Now before I did any of this, I tested it with paid Google Ads and I was like, okay, I like what I. This is really good. Let's invest some money into SEO and it's really working. And so we're actually thinking seriously about launching like a programmatic SEO agency to where we could do this for others. Right. It's like, give me the industry, we'll just kind of deliver it, tie a bow on it, deliver you a package. You run the whole business, we'll give you some pointers, but you're going to pay us three to five, six, seven grand to just get everything set up for you.

I love it. I think the thing that was helpful here is I think you have to create a lot of content around this business model because I think, you know, affiliate marketers and people who are like deeper in the trenches on the Internet know about this all day. It's not something that is widely talked about right now. They do, at least in the communities that you and I run in. So I think proving that this can be an effective business model is super important. One thing that I missed the mark on. Sorry, let me actually, before I say what I missed the mark on, I think the biggest thing for this, whether it is a service or a product, because I think people do a lot of the affiliate product stuff right now. It has to be high ticket. It makes no sense. It's high ticket.

And I remember it was over or highly recurring. I mean really, it's the same thing, right?

Sure, yeah, yeah. High ltv. Let's call it that lifetime value. And I think one thing that I missed the mark on over Covid is I was like, ah, I just sold my company. I want to get into some kind of affiliate site. And I spent a day or two looking up content keywords. And I think both my biggest strength and biggest weakness is I have a stupid bias to action where like it's great. In most day to day when starting new things, it tends to be a hindrance because I'm like, I don't want to spend the time researching and figuring out if this is the right thing. Let me just buy the domain, start the website, hire a writer, build out a keyword plan and just go after it. And I did this. It's in the dentistry space. So I started. I think it was. I don't think I own the domain anymore. I think it's called like Superior Smile or something like that. And I was like doing Legion or affiliate sales for water picks, for retainers, for like all of that type of stuff. Very, very low ticket items. It wasn't worth the time, wasn't worth the energy. I shut it down like months later. So total waste of time. But where I think I missed the mark is I used to own a tiny house blog and the tiny house blog never made that much money. I think we made 1,000 or $2,000 in profit every single month. But like nothing, nothing crazy but like, you know, we rock. We ranked for. I bet if I even look it up now we ranked for like best appliances for tiny house, best dishwasher for tiny house, best furnace for tiny house. And what I should have done a better job at is, you know, we had all this traffic. We were doing original content too. Like I literally hired a writer to scrape Facebook groups and like do like, essentially, like, I don't know what they're called, like profile pieces on different people who own tiny houses. We should have done way more lead gen for somebody who wants a tiny house built. You're selling a 20, $30,000 thing, if not arguably more. And like people would pay several hundred dollars for that. And I should have done that. It just looks like it was the lowest priority on my to do, hence why I never got around to it.

We're buying tiny houses right now for RV parks and you almost can't find them for under 70 grand.

They go up to one off in the prices. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean there's always.

A trade off though. There's a trade off between the volume and the ticket price. Right. So 100%, you've got to find that happy medium.

Yeah. What I like about the service, one, like, I think services are better. Services are for sure better because especially with like. And also as I said my idea earlier, like big disclaimer, big asterisk on all of this. I don't know if that's legal. I don't know if you can legally sell leads in the medical space. I think there are laws around legally selling leads to a legal space, like to attorneys and stuff.

There is for legal. I don't know about healthcare.

I have no idea either. It feels like if it is for legal, maybe it should be for healthcare, but that's a whole other thing. But point being, I like the business model a lot.

I think you nailed it with a high ticket and we are doing that in ours. Like I was looking up kitchen remodeling. No one's bidding on kitchen remodeling and that's like a 30, $40,000 thing. But the other side of the equation that is easy to ignore is you want a buyer of these leads that has a nationwide brand or else you're going to be juggling like hundreds of relationships with these blue collar business owners that are super flaky, you know, such a good point. So if you can find this Venn diagram overlap of like high ticket, high volume, high search volume, low competition and nationwide brands where you can talk to one person and he's like, I've got 362 locations in all these cities. We'll buy everything you send us. That is the gold mine. And I think they do exist, but it's hard to find. And the other asterisk here is what is Google's AI going to do to this?

Yeah, 100%. That's also why I think there's maybe a bigger push to get into YouTube. Like at the end of the day you need some level of discoverability. All I'll say at least while we're speaking here today, in July 17th, 2024. Like I am not super worried about that off the bat. Like you Google stuff right now and they show you their AI prompts and like, I think Google's doing a big disservice to themselves right now in my personal opinion, because their AI suggested stuff is so bad that. And I don't know if you agree with this, but like it's quite literally trained me automatically skip over it and go to what I'm used to, what I'm familiar with now. Don't get me wrong, over the next 10 years, younger generations, maybe it gets better. Maybe they start looking at it first and they're like, oh no, it's better. And then we get made fun of for being the old people who don't doesn't read the AI prompt because it was bad when we first saw it. Like, totally valid. But I think there's enough of a cash grab window in the short term. And I think that there's, there's always going to be people who need to find people and have like discoverability via Google via something.

Yeah. And I think no matter what Google does with AI, I think the localization is important because like I was looking up one of these search terms in Clarksville, Tennessee and let's just say it was, it was fence repair, Clarksville, Tennessee and there were none, right? And this isn't true, but it was some service in Clarksville, Tennessee and there were zero locations. Whereas you would think Clarksville, there's like 100,000 people, you would think there would be three. Right? And so if I'm Google's AI and I want to show you the best answer and someone's searching fence repair, Clarksville, Tennessee, even that like programmatic website, they're going to show you because what else are they going to show you? Whereas if you're competing on a worldwide or a nationwide level, they might like all those little gimmicks and hacks, they might not ever get shown in the new AI, right? They might show you the most relevant thing and only one instead of pages of ten. Another thing that I like about this programmatic idea is I compare it to like roll ups, like private equity roll ups. I love roll ups because there's so many industries to roll up. And so it's like there's not a lot of competition in a lot of these. Like I heard a podcast about a guy that rolled up music schools only in Denver and sold it for $40 million, right? Like, who's thinking of rolling up music schools? They're like, let's do self storage. Let's roll up. Dentists, let's roll. Like all the obvious stuff, but there's still thousands of industries that will be rolled up and some of them might take two decades just because there's so many and people don't think of it. And so I think of this opportunity that same way where, yeah, the growth hackers and the gray hat guys and the black hat wizard and all those guys have heard about this and they've been doing this for years, but there's still so many random niches and opportunities that they haven't even thought of yet.

Yeah. And also, like, that's just the nature of it, right? Like, there are more popping up every single day. If you started a lead gen for people to sign up for their first hyrox race, right? Like, new industry, brand new thing. Like, people want that. And so, like, if you have a great topical authority for how to get fit and like, do it in an evergreen niche, you'll always have more opportunities, I think, afterwards. And that's also why people always stress the email list stuff and being able to own your audience. Like, there are certainly benefits and advantages towards that as well. I was just mentioning the roll up part in general, not to derail the conversation, but one thing that I think is pretty cool is I was having conversations with this one guy down in South Florida last Christmas and he is starting a franchise where all he does is he buys chiropractor shops. I think in terms of business models and changing, everyone who owns and buys software is very familiar with the reoccurring revenue model and how that can increase multiples and how that's such a good business model. He's buying chiropractor shops and all he's doing is he's changing the pricing model from if it's. I don't know what the numbers are. So I'm gonna get this wrong. Let's say it's $120 to visit a chiropractor and you go once a month. He's gonna charge people $200 per month on a recurring revenue and you get unlimited cracks. Let's be honest. You know, certain things, this works really better well with others. It doesn't. AMC launches their MoviePass. Like, do you want to go to the movie theaters more than two times a month to make it worth it? Probably not, but on the contrary too. Like, I know people who buy car washes and they sell an unlimited car wash plan because you're paying $15 for your normal car wash. But what if you paid 25. And every time you drove by, you can get it done. Well, guess what? The cost of water and soap is negligible. And the amount of times that you're actually going to use it versus it being nice in theory is low. And so I like the idea, too, of taking those businesses that are usually a one off and they're. There's something you do on a reoccurring basis, but, like, not crazy often and saying, do it unlimited numbers of times, but you're also going to be paying a monthly subscription.

That's genius. Like, and he's. Of course he's doing that because it's already proven out. Like, it just works, right? It works in Destin, Florida. It's gonna work in Bellevue, Washington. You could do it with, like, teeth whitening, too. Like unlimited. Yeah. I mean, do you.

Yeah. I don't know why there's such a dumb thought on mine. I was like, do you need to get it done more than once? But, yeah, I drink enough coffee that I can imagine getting it done more than once would be helpful. What about haircuts? You just got the haircut. You come in with a fresh cut. Would you pay something?

I wouldn't because I'm so cheap, dude. I go, like three months between haircuts just because I get busy and I don't. I don't really care what my hair looks like. I'm married. What I got to worry about.

That's a fair point. I also.

But that is. I do like that idea, though.

I think it would work in New York. I also think it would work well because the type of person that wants a lot of haircuts throughout the month has shorter hair. And so it's not like it would take super long, especially if you're going frequent enough where it's like, hey, not a whole hell of a lot has happened in the last week, but, like, I just want to get, like, lined up before Friday night out or something like that.

Yeah. I'm wondering, like, how you could go into, like, a barber shop and have them test just so you could, like, be a passive observer and see if it works. Then once it works, it's like, all right, I'm gonna buy a thousand barbershops.

Yeah, I bet it would work. Yeah, 100%.

There's gotta be one out there that does that. I would have to think.

I bet there is. Reach out to them, see it. See if life's better or worse. They're like, yeah, this one guy comes in every single day. He's so annoying. All he wants to do is talk. You know, there's probably. You gotta put some rules around it.

Your car didn't process this month, bro. Sorry.

Yeah, for real.

Well, I know you've got a hard stop, but thank you for joining Connor. Where can we find you?

Yeah, if you want to check me out. If you want to launch the Botox idea, hit me up Twitter. Gro. I wrote a newsletter that is this but words, it's biz bizbrainstorms.com so feel free to check that out as well. And yeah, thanks for having me on the show, Chris.

Yeah. And if you guys like Connor, which I'm sure you will, let me know in the comments. And I want to have him on regularly so we can just riff on ideas. Alright? What'd you think? How'd you like Connor? Reach out to him if you want to start that Botox business, Let me know in the comments if I should have him back on again and we'll do this again. Anyway, please subscribe, like share with your friends and we'll see you next time.