3 startup ideas using data/trends to get you paid featuring Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole

What's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. Dude, when you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't, I don't know.

There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

If you zoom out. What you just said was identifying opportunities where the supply and demand are mismatched. But specifically in the, the Kindle direct.

Publishing market, if you pair all that together and go female oriented, like main character lit RPGs in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.

This is why I love you. Because I would never in my entire life think about something like this. But Now I have 100 ideas that would go deeper.

Let's go. Because the startup I just thought.

All right, should we begin?

Sure, let's do it.

Where do you want to start?

Do you have any ideas for me?

You got ideas?

I have one. But is there somewhere you'd like to start?

No, no. I mean, whenever I talk to you guys, I always leave just like rejuvenated with ideas.

Well, first a question question for you guys. Do you have like a note in your phone that says startup ideas and you just like log it all the time?

I have a note that's called book ideas, but not startup ideas.

Do you have one that says startup ideas?

It's called ideas.

Okay, Just ideas. Yeah, I do not have that. And I see a lot of people almost say like, oh, here's another startup idea. Here's another one. I don't think about that all the time.

Yeah, you know why it's called ideas and not startup ideas? Because when I have an idea for a startup, I need the least amount of time. Like I need the time between coming up with the idea and like writing it down needs to be as quick as possible. So like when I first came up with that note, I was like, I'm not writing startup ideas. It's gonna take like twice as long.

As, you know, minimal number of friction.

The perfect organizational system. Don't actually name things properly. Just throw it all in ideas.

So I say that because I don't necessarily come up with a ton of ideas, but I like hearing other people's and immediately saying if they're good or not. So that's My strength. If you guys have.

You're an Iterator.

Yeah, exactly. I hear something that might not make sense, but this might. So I don't have as many new ideas, but I'm excited to jam on y'. Alls.

Okay, so I've. Okay, so I have a very niche one.

Go.

So I was having this conversation earlier this week with this other writer slash entrepreneur, because his business is. He has a staff of writers and they're in the fiction space. And he was telling me a lot about how Amazon organizes and tags different books and stories into subcategories. And one of the most interesting takeaways from our conversation was he was saying, if you want to create a new category of story, so something that someone hasn't done yet, you should not do the exclusive to Amazon. Because Amazon is. You could publish to anyone or you can do Kindle Unlimited. That's like, specific to their subscription service. And the TLDR of Kindle Unlimited is you get compensated based on people who. The number of page reads, and then they have that total pool of subscription revenue. And then it's like Spotify, but for books. So. So you get these little royalties based on how much people consume your book. And so his insight was he was like, if you're creating something new, you publish it wide. But if you're creating something really niche, you should look at the existing categories in Kindle Unlimited and then basically try and stay in that category. And then you're just playing the better, best game. You're not trying to do something different. And so then we got on the topic of there's a new subgenre that's really been catching fire that's called lit rpg. Have you heard of this?

No.

No.

Okay, so it's rpg, like role playing games, literature, lit rpg. But it's not literature. This. I mean, this is. This stuff is not well written at all. But it's essentially reading a video game. So you would the story, like, you would open it and the person would be like, I woke, I opened my eyes and a button is flashing in front of me. It's a quest giver. He's giving me my first quest and I have to go get a bow and arrow and I take my steps. It's literally like articulating playing a video game, which, if you think about it, is like the male version of romance for females, where it's like, you feel more productive than playing a video game because you're reading a video game. Do you know what I mean? Okay, so lit RPG. Anyway, the takeaway is lit RPGs are catching fire. Okay, New sub genre that's really, really popular now. And this guy that I'm talking to, he's like, what's so interesting about this subcategory on Amazon is that there's way more readers than there are creators. There's a lot more people who want to read lit RPGs than there are people writing it. So I spent an hour and I was just like, going through the bestseller list of lit RPGs, and I'm like, wow, this is a really great example of this niche is starting to grow. The writing quality is pretty low. It's like, very indie. The COVID design is really low. It's very indie. And if you were to go into that subcategory, but with some money or with some funding and be like, we're gonna elevate the writing, we're gonna elevate the stories, we're gonna elevate the book covers, we're gonna elevate the branding. And then you sort of incorporate all the stuff that we know and talk about where, like, you had a LitRPG specific newsletter to create that flywheel, you had a paid newsletter, you had like a digital product. Like, you created that whole value ladder. But it's all centered around this one very, very, very specific sub genre. In Kindle Unlimited. I see a lot of potential in building super niche, like, publishing houses where, like, I was even just thinking, just entertaining the idea for us where, like, what would that take? I would literally take. You could hire a writer, you could pay them because they get to write what they love. You could pay them like five grand, six grand a month, seven grand a month. They write those stories full time. Each cover you invest three, four, five grand into. But your upside, because you potentially could own this sub genre, there are books, just for context, because I have a tool that looks this up. There are lit RPG books right now doing like a quarter million a month.

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This is why I love you. Because I would never in my entire life think about something like this. But Now I have 100 ideas that would go deeper.

Let's go.

Because if you zoom out, what you just said was identifying opportunities where the supply and demand are mismatched. But specifically in the literary world, right. So my head goes, how do you find all of the sub genres where there is more demand than current supply? And so you identified that because you have niche expertise. But almost you mentioned there's a tool of these books doing high amounts of revenue. How do you build something else that goes, okay, here's the search volume and then the number of books in that category where there's a mismatch, that's where you insert the niche publishing house and go, okay, cool, this is underserved. We're going to staff this one and monetize that mismatch until it's. It's like finding arbitrage within the Kindle direct publishing market.

Yeah. So that's exactly where my head went to, which was, how do you build a SaaS tool that does that? Except you don't want to sell that SaaS tool because you want to build the publishing houses yourself. So you build an internal tool.

It's an internal.

So there's a tool called Publisher Rocket and it's made by this guy, this guy owns a website. Talk about an amazing website called. The site's called something self publishing and basically or kindlepublishing.com or something. And all he does is talk about publishing via Kindle on Amazon, super niche, but like really lucrative site. And he built this SaaS tool where you can type in any book, any subcategory, any, anything. And it shows you the search volume, it shows you the average estimated sales of that book. It shows you like keyword competition. So I am obsessed with this tool. Like once a month I'll just open it up and be like, what is this book doing? I just want to see. But the mistake, I think there's two mistakes that people make because people have been doing this where you look at search volume and then you're like, okay, I'm just gonna write a book for this. The mistake that I see is one is the person sees that opportunity and then goes, okay, I'm just gonna go write one book for that keyword or that subcategory, and then I'm gonna do it again in a different subcategory and then do it again and then do it again. And you don't ever have density in one. You're just sort of bouncing around to like the next SEO opportunity. Whereas I see more, more opportunity in going, this subcategory is exploding. LitRPG. I don't want to just write one book in that category. I want to write a hundred books in that category. So you just flood the density of that one subcategory. And then second is when people do this, they're more entrepreneurial than they are like publisher or writerly. So what happens is they identify an opportunity, but then they publish a low quality book with a low quality coverage in that subcategory. So even if it makes a little money, it's like, it just looks like it's all the same thing. Whereas if you spend some time going through these subcategories, you're like, it's really clear, you know, Penguin Random House isn't in this subcategory. So you have an opportunity to go, I'm going to walk in here and essentially look like a major publisher is taking this over. But it doesn't cost that much money. The reason people don't do it is because most writers don't have the money to do that.

Okay, I want to, I want to riff on this idea a little bit. So first of all, lit rpg.

It's sick.

I'd read it. It's. If you could do a Runescape, one where I got to relive, like playing Runescape for hundreds of hours, but I just get to watch one.

Dude, that's what this is.

Well, you know what it is? It's Analog Twitch.

Exactly.

It's Analog Twitch.

Yes.

So here's what I would do. I would partner with the top hundred Twitch streamers and be like, I'm gonna create.

Oh, that's smart.

Because what's gonna happen is people are gonna notice. People are using this tool and they're gonna notice, okay, LITRPG search. Volume's going up. Demand and supply mismatch. There's gonna be the AI rush to create. You know, people are gonna create these books with AI and stuff like that, and it's gonna be like low to medium quality. And it's like, what's gonna separate you from. From them? Well, yes, it could Be like a nice cover and actually doing it well with writing, but having the name and the audience. Yeah, exactly. The name and the audience. And just be like, listen, you know, streamer, I'll give you 50% of the revenue. And what.

So my only thought there is what is the.

Over what we don't like to hear on the Startup ideas podcast show. Yeah.

Where I. So I jump to what is the overlap of people who watch Twitch and also read books?

So this is what's so interesting about this, this subcategory.

Great question.

Okay, did anyone see. This is totally left wing, but you'll see the connection. Did anyone see that Tucker Max went on Tucker Carlson recently?

That's too many Tuckers for me, by the way. Yeah, no, I haven't seen them.

Okay, so Tucker Max, the author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. Really successful author. I skimmed through the interview. It's like, neither one is really my target.

It's okay, it's okay.

But it popped up in my feed and I was like, okay, let's just see what this is all about. But there was one line in there that really stood out to me where Tucker Max is talking about him publishing his books. And he goes, I can't tell you how many people, how many fans have come up to me over the years and said, I've never read a single book. These are guys, like, just guys that want to read about his debauchery. You know, he's like, I've never read a single book cover to cover, except for yours. And I thought that was such an interesting example of. Especially because the majority of readers are female. Like two thirds of all readers are female, not male. But he was a nuts example of writing something that brought a ton of people who weren't reading into that category. And part of me wonders if the same could be true for gaming. And because the majority of gaming viewers are male, you know, and.

Okay, question. And are. Is Gen Z reading books? Are they reading books?

I think so. I've seen some interesting stats, like all over the board where it's like, yes, but a lot of the reading experience has changed. Like, have you heard of Wattpad?

Yeah.

Which is like the fiction. It's also very like romance driven and stuff. But Wattpad is nuts because it's a lot of really young people reading a ton. But it's really low quality writing. But because it's genre specific and it's digital and it's like a different medium.

It was also acquired by a South Korean company, so I imagine a Bunch of the readers are from Asia. Yeah, from Asia. That's a thesis. I don't know.

There's also a big audience there for like manga and comic and you know, things like that.

Like your average.

I'm Gen Z for what's worth. I'm on the edge. Are you officially 28 or 96 is the cutoff boy, so I'm not.

Tell us what the kids are doing.

Yeah, exactly.

See, I think the cutoff is like if you actively have a Snapchat. Do either of you actively use Snapchat? Like I have not used Snapchat in a long time.

If we did, it would be concerning. Right?

That's the thing.

Like you could take us to prison. Right? Right away.

I am right on the edge where I have not opened Snapchat in like seven years. Some of my friends do. It's like a 5050 split. I remember using it a ton in high school. But you are clearly not Gen Z if you don't have one. And if you have one, I think you are like Gen Z slash zoomer or whatever it is.

You know what's another great like data point that proves that. Do you remember this was like a couple months ago, but the Instagram CEO went on some podcast and he was like, yeah, the most used feature on Instagram is not the feed, not the explorer, but it's dm. Because Gen Z and young people are just sending content to each other in their DMs all day. And I had this moment where I was like, I haven't checked my Instagram DMs in four years. Like, what? This is the most used feature. That's the old person, young person test right there.

So my thesis, no data to support this. I don't just prefacing that as most.

Things as most good theses are.

My thesis is most of Gen Z haven't read a book. Have not read a book. And it's a great question and actually not end. But I think that's gonna change. There's now this new trend around like anti tech. Anti tech and books are gonna be this like I'm reading this paper thing. Exactly, you're not gonna believe it.

Counterculture. Yeah, interesting.

I mean the reality is a book is super hard to compete with. You know a video game where a video game Call of Duty is like optimized like literally for.

I don't know if you can undo the brains, man. Yeah, you grew up on an iPad. I hated reading because I played a ton of video games.

I mean, you know this. You are a professional World of Warcraft person. Like these video games hijack your brain and you just get immersed in these worlds. Now you can make the same argument that, well, a book could immerse you in these worlds. Yes, but it's just a lot more work. A lot more people don't go to the gym than go to the gym. That being said, I think that whatever. If 10% of Gen Z reads now, I think in the next five years, 20% reads. And I think it's because it's the shift around anti tech, But I do think that the vast majority of them are just going to be like, I grew up in a Call of Duty world. It's just hard for me to sit down and be in an analog world.

Okay, so couple interesting things to tie together. So one is one of the growing trends in gaming is that more and more women are coming into the category. So it used to be, or at least the perception was like 80, 20, you know, dude, if you heard a.

Girl'S voice in like Call of Duty, oh, you were like in the lobby, you're like, what?

What's going on? Get out of here. I remember, I remember the days, sorry, for 14 on the Internet. Yeah. And. But now it's like 50 50. And so if you pair that with the fact that the majority of book readers and book bingers are female, I think having female oriented lit RPGs could be a fascinating subcategory and differentiator. Because I was scrolling through and every single book cover is like, male enters game world defeats dragon. Okay, where's the female market in that is interesting. And then a third stat, I can't remember what it is directly but. But it's something like Kindle Unlimited subscribers, because you have part of the subscription is you can read any book in Kindle Unlimited like for free. Part of your subscription. Basically they read something like 8 to 12 plus books a month. And so like the romance category, these women that are binging these books, they literally will read one of like Colleen Hoover. She's like one of the bestselling romance novelists. I study everything, I like to know everything about this shit. Um, she's moving like millions of copies and her readers are literally reading one of her books a week, if not every three days. So there is tremendous demand and even the most prolific writers that are just cranking it out, like, what's the fastest you could crank out a book? One a month, maybe one every two weeks. If you're just like, screw everything, just put it out. So if you Pair all that together and go female oriented. Like main character lit RPGs in, in Kindle Unlimited multiplied by 100 books with digital product or some sort of subscription on the back end. I don't know, man.

I can tell you with 100% certainty there's no one doing that. So there's no competition, which is always a good thing.

And I'm and okay, just to entertain the shiny object. There's part of me that's like, what is the real cost to test that idea? Couple grand. Couple grand a month maybe. And then you could put out 12 books like one a month. And you get a year of data. And if you're wrong, you burn. I don't know, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. If you're right, that's like an entire new business. Because when one of those pops, what naturally happens is then all of the readers go, well, I really like that. What are the other books in this subcategory? LTV gets longer and longer, dude. When you see the math on these books, it's mind blowing.

So what is the math on these books? Just because I don't, I don't know.

I mean, there are books as big and these are like indie authors. They're a conservative. Like, my book is doing well. Could go 20, 30, 40, 50 grand a month on Amazon. The books that really explode and pop are 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand a month. It's nuts.

And how long does that last? Is that just like, you know, for four months it's 100 grand or 200 grand or.

I think it depends. But I think on average it probably pops to that for around like three, maybe six months and then it levels off and hits some sort of plateau. But there are series that and, or like even just the author as their whole library. That's like, Yeah, I have 50 or 100 books in my library and my portfolio does 200 grand a month.

How many authors actually look at data first and then decide to write a book based on data?

I think it's not writers that do that. I think it's entrepreneurial people who do that. And then they are just like, and I'm just going to write to fulfill on the demand. But I think the people who are actually talented at writing almost never think about this, which is like the whole game, you know?

Yeah.

This is an interesting experiment in leverage because you have this idea and something we talk about is I think Hormozi's got a great definition of power, the ability to go from idea in your head to thing in the real world. So you have this idea. How many different steps are there between you executing it? If you had all the resources possible, it would be being tested tomorrow.

Yep.

And then it's a nice, okay, why can I do that? What would I need to do that? And how could I set myself up in 5, 10 years to operate that way? Or I can be testing these ideas that come to my head because you just said it. What is actually required? It's a couple grand. It's a writer. It's the tool to do the development or do the research. Theoretically, you should have one person who can hear that idea from you and go, okay, that is being executed on right now.

Yep.

And I think from a portfolio company perspective, that's where you want to get to.

Yeah.

Because right now you go, I'd have to write it. I'd have to do the research. I'd have to. And it's just not worth the upside. The risk reward relative to the other opportunities you have is too high.

Yeah, but if you. Someone else is doing.

Exactly. If you can put yourself with incentivized upside on that person, then there's no reason you can't have those ideas and actually execute them.

I was on the phone with an operator.

Why is that in quotes?

I'll tell you why. Because I was like, yeah, I'm looking to hire an operator for. I have this idea for this business, and it's a great idea, and here's why it's gonna work. And it's like a shoe in. And. And he goes, by the way, just so you know, no operator likes being called an operator. You know, like, we're never call an operator an operator. We're like, why? We're an entrepreneur. We're entrepreneurs. Like, we. We build the business. An operator.

It sounds like a car.

It sounds like he's like, it sounds like I'm operating a crane. Like I'm operating. Yeah, you kind of are, man.

But, you know, I think as someone who I identify more with operation than I do coming up with ideas. Like I talked about in the beginning, I love being called an operator. The opposite would be. You're an ideas guy and you don't do anything.

You know, hey, don't look at us.

Interesting. I think they're a poor operator.

But, yeah, I think that not enough people take their ideas and find it will create basically a mini idea lab where they're like, okay, instead of investing, let's say you have a couple hundred grand of cash.

Like, Erlich Bachmann is the Only example from Silicon Valley of like the ideas guy. He's like operating the household.

Back when I was around founding Aviatro.

Exactly. So you take instead of investing into the S and P, you find an operator and you use data to inform some of these bets. And this is a perfect bet where it's like, okay, if I'm going to invest four grand a month, three grand a month, share the upside, but this thing could potentially pay back 20x and there's IP in it.

Yes. Oh, okay, sorry. So real quick on that. So this entrepreneur I was talking to, he was also like, man, for years I've been basically doing this model. He would like find a niche and then put out volume in that niche and capitalize on it. He was like, recently. What I've learned though is you actually don't really care about making money on the book. And he's like, now we will spend money with advertising to drive more page reads. Because what the film studios care about is how many downloads and page reads it has. So you might make 100 grand on a fiction book that does really well, but who cares? Because I could take that IP and turn it around to Paramount and they'll write me a check for $2 million to turn that into a series. And when he said that, I was like, not only is the cash return 10 or 20x if you get it right, but the long term IP value, dude. And you know what's crazy? And the thing he said to me is he was like, and this requires more time reflecting on, but he was like, you come from the world of copywriting, ghostwriting, content writing. He's like, if you know how to do that and then you apply it to fiction or storytelling, you are ten times more dangerous than the person who came up in the storytelling world, but has no knowledge of hooks or selling or like. And the difference, and this is part of this other book I'm working on called Writer Career Paths. But if you look at the best selling nonfiction authors, James Clear, Mark Manson, whatever, they are a tenth of the best selling fiction writers, the IP value is astronomically different. James Clear goes and makes 30 million off Atomic Habits. John Grisham makes 300 million off of Legal thrillers plus the value of his library and ip. So what is even more interesting is if you think about that bet and you go, I'm going to go into a sub genre. I'm going to elevate the experience, I'm going to flood it with quality volume. You're also not just building cash flow from book Sales or long term IP value, turning it into series. But you also could break that into its own company. And then a publisher goes, whoa, you built a niche library, will acquire your little publishing house for whatever. So you also have exit potential.

Do you know what the multiples are on publishing houses?

I have no idea. But I'm going to guess it's in the ballpark of like 5 or 10x. Because you're buying IP, it's got to be. It's not 2x.

You know, 5 to 10x profit or revenue.

I'm gonna guess it's probably top line because they care more about the long term value.

So it, let's just say it's 7x.

That's a nice round number to use.

Yeah, let's just say, let's say it's 7.28x is the average. Yeah, nice snap. Let's make it difficult.

Okay.

Yeah, let's say it's 7.28x.

Perfect.

Perfect number. You know what makes it 17.28x.

Huh?

Is if you have technology.

Also true.

So if you're like, hey, you know, Penguin, we're this like up and coming publishing house that uses our, our own technology that scrapes.

No, dude, I got even better. Okay, sorry.

Go for it.

Keep going.

Okay.

Because I think the real value is you build a niche library and then you train AI on how to write that specific sub.

We talked about this last, the last episode.

So it's one thing to go. I, you know, I'm dominating lit RPGs. It's another to go. And I built a 300 page prompt where I can create the version of each new book to 80%. And then we only need labor to take it the last 20%. That is not a 5 or 10x acquisition.

And later on, the deals that you have with creators and streamers could also do right that, you know, for the next five years you could license their name for all these books.

Mm. And by the way, total side, maybe people are doing this already. But talk about like a startup idea I would never do, but I think would crush it. I don't understand. Because romance is the biggest literature category. It literally is 10 times bigger than the next biggest category. And I don't understand with the explosion of OnlyFans, why the biggest OnlyFans creators aren't partnering with ghostwriters and writing. I'm dead. I'm dead serious.

This goes back to the overlap of Reading and OnlyFans.

No, no. But this is dead. This is the thing is that the majority of romance Books are women that are literally reading porn at home.

Right.

But only fans is. The majority are women. So you're then still convincing men to read.

That's. That is true.

That is true.

That is true.

Back to the same. The same core issue.

Yeah, there's a core issue.

We have a bigger problem here. It's that most men don't read. Maybe this would bring them into category.

Right? True, true, true. Like, dude, okay, but, like, if you saw, like, the most popular only fans, girl, be like, here's my tell all ebook of this experience that I had on only fan, I have to believe that that would do some numbers more.

Or less than they're making on only fans. Probably less.

But even if it was less, yeah, that's more for them. You know, I just. I don't know.

The rider bias. It's like, I know you got this great business, but a book.

But a book. I know. So I'm so.

Have you thought about writing? Let me talk to you about writing.

I know you got this. This thing over here.

Okay.

You hear?

Let's talk about writing on the Internet.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm just saying. Look, hey, no one said that these were all going to be good startup ideas, right? We just promised startup ideas.

Well, I mean, that's why you need to talk with your friends about startup ideas.

And put it on the Internet.

And put it on the Internet so you get feedback, right? Now, we went down that rabbit hole. We know it's probably not a good idea, but it might be.

Like, you guys seen Elf? Where they bring in Miles Finch, and he, like, sits down and like, all right, we're bringing her in. We gotta pitch her on this book. And she, like, sits down and calls across the table and like, you just. You need a. You need a memoir. You need a.

Just. The rate of revelation could be really high. We need an opening hook. I'm just saying. Anyway, that's the only startup idea I came with today.

Honestly, like, that was pretty damn good. I like it. Yeah. I mean, a lot there.

And what I like the most about these exercises is there's a world where all that could happen and it's simply a skill deficiency as to why it hasn't happened.

Correct.

It's literally. And that is like, the. Both exciting and the frustrating part for me when I hear ideas like that, I'm like, if I was better at this game, I could align the pieces of leverage to pursue that idea if I thought it was good. But I don't have the leverage. I don't have the hiring skill. I don't have the ability to prioritize. So it's. I hear that and just kind of get frustrated that I'm not good enough to do it. I don't know if y' all feel that way.

I also think that, yes, I do feel that way, but I also, I also think that you got me thinking that there's a whole variety of competitive analysis tools that are probably great businesses to build, but the thing is, you don't sell it.

You use it for your own advantage.

For your own advantage. So you have things like Jungle Scout for Amazon. Right. You have things. There's a tool I use called Gummy Search for Reddit. There's all these tools in a bunch of different platforms. First of all, there's a whole, like, here's a prompt for people listening, like, what are competitive analysis tools for platforms that are up and coming that haven't been built yet? And then go build them and then just use it for yourself and train yourself and think about ideas for yourself. Like, for example, there's another one I was using called Etsy Hunt. It just goes on Etsy. It's basically Jungle Scout, which tells you, like, how pay for those. You pay for them. Yeah, people pay a monthly fee, but it's one of those things where the price discrimination is completely wrong. I don't remember exactly what Etsy Hunt charges, but it's probably like less than 50 bucks a month. But if you create a killer, like there's some Etsy sellers who make millions of dollars a year.

Yeah. The real value is knowing how to exploit the data, not necessarily the data itself.

Exactly.

You know, as like a meta question, I'd be curious to get your take on this too. Is I think the thing with startup ideas like this, what we just talked about is a great example. Like, I actually think that what we talked about with the LitRPG stuff is an amazing idea, but I'm sort of aware that I don't know that I want to be the one to do it. And so when you come up with ideas, the mental model for how do you decide what you want to do or even what you want to put your name on, versus you're like, I know that's a great idea, and I know that would crush. But I'd rather hire someone or hire a small team to do it, maybe even put it under their name or a different name, you know, and like, what. What is inside your core portfolio, both from like a time and a perception or brand standpoint? And what is under a tangential portfolio that's more distanced from you?

I think it's a good question to ask. Like, whenever you people like us who are on the Internet and like, write and do podcasting and stuff like that, like, you have to. It's important to have, like a theme. Like, it would be pretty random if I created an OnlyFans competitor, for example.

I thought you were going to say.

Account, you know, or a count.

Both of those would be out of your ballpark.

You'd be like, I don't, you know, I don't. I don't get it, but I hope you're okay, Greg. You know, like, I'd be getting a text saying, like, you good or something.

You good, bro.

Yeah. So, you know, one exercise I do just for myself is like, I have, like, this is my. This is kind of like my mission. This is my M.O. and this is like my lane or my two lanes I want to be in. And here's the portfolio business that support that mission. And I think everyone should have that. You have that with, like, writing and start writing in that, like, that category. But that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast, which is like the comment section of this. Like, maybe we might find someone who's like, yeah, I actually am passionate about litrpg. Like, I'm one of those people.

Yeah, if you want to do that, DM me.

Yeah, DM him. Like, there's probably someone like, screaming at their podcast listener right now and being like, these idiots. Like, you know, why am I soliciting this? There's hundreds of thousands. LitRPG is like the biggest thing ever. And that's where I think having these spinning up these like, small IdeaLab teams make a lot of sense where it's not you, but you're advising and you're accelerating them.

Have you thought about any writing? Almost taking the ideas that are talked about and have someone write up, like threads or long form content, kind of extrapolating. Here's how I would do this thing as a way to repurpose your content.

That's a great idea.

Yeah.

Like, imagine someone doing a mini deep dive on this market and you just have a team that they hear the startup ideas. Because V1 is putting the podcast together, hoping someone just listens to this exact episode that's interested in LitRPG. V2 is writing it up and distributing that specific thing so the ideal person might find it with.

And like, taking the time to do some due diligence and data and be like, we went we took this idea from the podcast, we researched it. Here are the takeaways. Let's curate it, point people back to the podcast, but also show what we found. That's a great idea.

Big SEO thing with that. Because I don't think necessarily, I don't think you have a subscription model of like we're just gonna send you cool startup idea breakdowns because I wouldn't personally pay for that.

It's kind of like trends.

Actually. We actually we added a. So we have like a paid membership. It's $149 a month. And one of the things that people get a lot of value is this monthly we go like, hey, we were on Google trends and we were on Reddit and we found like these trends and here's like a couple business ideas.

That's cool.

And it's a monthly email. And like some people have said like just that email alone is kind of like a shock.

That's a great idea. It's also it that checks a bunch of the boxes that we've learned with paid newsletters. It's infinitely repeata.

Yeah.

It's tied to a financial outcome.

Okay, well let's take that and apply it to our niche. How do we make a trends of writing businesses and where it's like.

And category.

Categories where everything, anything. What is the. What is the niche down version of trends for X industry?

So you just said great point.

Same same thing. It's. If you're a writing based entrepreneur and you're interested in this world, what is the. I want to see what the Google trends are on this. I want to see what Amazon's doing on this. What is all these different publishing platforms on this topic and the 149amonth same thing. You can charge higher because it's like generating a legitimate business idea from.

That's an amazing. We should just go do that. That's a great idea.

You totally should. And you know what the beauty about all this is, is it puts you at the focal point of an industry. So all of a sudden like even with community empire, like I just see people building these types of businesses now and then all of a sudden I can invest in them, we can acquire them.

Trends for X.

It's one of the reasons why I actually like event businesses. So like B2B events is interesting because the host of the event ends up meeting everyone.

Like I have to go in person.

Yeah. No, I just like the idea.

I have to leave my house.

I'm not saying like I'm doing it, but one of the One of the best parts about the event business is the host gets to know everyone in a particular industry. And there's a lot of value in being the gravity in a particular industry. And when you end up creating what you would be doing here, which is really cool, is you have this, you're giving people an unfair advantage, basically. And whenever you give someone an unfair advantage, that's really good.

The more I'm thinking about that. That's a problem with doing a podcast like this, though. We did this last time. It's like I walk out of here and I sat down this morning and made like a priorities list and then I have to just figure out where this shiny object slots in. And again, it's a skill issue in a resource.

But I also think, I mean, we have some pieces. Justin's a great example. Could create a template for this and then go, okay, Justin, help us execute this.

You know, we can do it for you too. Like, you know, that's one of the reasons why I built a bunch of agencies is because, like now my agencies are my idea labs. I have a design agency when I need designs, I have an SEO agency. When I need SEO, I have an ad agency. When I need ads, I have a, you know, community team. When I need community stuff, I literally have everything. And that's also one of the benefits of owning agencies, but keeping not growing agencies for the sake of growing it. Yeah, keeping it like, it's almost like an in house.

You're financing your team and saying, while you're not working on my ideas, yeah, make a little money elsewhere. But if my idea pops up, you're. I'm going to be the one who employs you.

And it's okay even if it breaks even. Because it's like, we talked about that.

A bit with the ghostwriting side.

Yeah. Even if it breaks even. Even your agency breaks even. It's like not the end of the world because you've compiled an amazing team who have this, who are gelling so well together and then no agency works at 100% productivity. Good agencies work at 70% productivity at best. So realistically, if you're at 40 or 50%, you can use that 20, 30, 40, 50% on your own projects and you don't have to pay for it.

More.

Stop.

More.

I can feel the future energy required to execute on these.

We had a nice priority list till you showed up, Chris. Greg.

I'm sorry. It's okay.

I'm just gonna write this as an email, send it to myself in six months and say, re listen to this. Once you've taken care of the priorities.

Yeah. Thanks for. Thanks for jamming.

Oh, these are great.

Yeah. And where could people find you on the Internet?

I don't know. On the Internet?

Yeah.

Search around.

Startwritingonline.com it's typically the best place if you want to start writing online or Twitter on Twitter.

Twitter, LinkedIn.

We'll link it in the. In the. In the show notes. So people just click there and shoot us ideas.

Shoot us dms if you have ideas.

Yeah.

Happy to jam on them once the priority list currently gets worked through. But this is a lot of fun.

This was a lot of fun.

All right, thanks for coming on. Later.

Boom. See, everyone, it's the pod.