How To Make $10 MILLION in 2024 | Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole

If me or you were trying to make $10 million this year, how would you do it?

Your idea on pet supplements, a pet ag one, I think is the single best business idea in the world right now.

I hadn't heard that, but that is.

The single best business because I would.

Buy it right now.

It's beautiful.

Like, if you build a news, a paid newsletter that brings in a million dollars, chances are your margins are 90 plus percent. Yeah, we have a paid, you know, we call it a membership that is like part paid newsletter, part community, and we charge $100 a month for it. Dude, we had 20 signups in the last 24 hours.

It's wild. I don't see anyone on substack doing this. Like even the biggest newsletters, the missed opportunity is realizing that the recurring revenue is the beginning, not the end. Something Dickie and I have been talking about a lot too, is that spending money is a skill. And so I think part of that growth is confronting that discomfort where you have to get used to spending five grand a month, then you gotta get used to spending 10 grand a month, then 20 grand a month, you know, and if you don't allow yourself to confront that, you're never going to feel the feeling of spending more, which allows you to then want to go out and make more, which allows you to get to the next level. You know, spending money is a skill.

I think there's a lot of money on how to get rich, but not a lot on how to be rich. Like the people who make a lot of money but have a horrible relationship, I think is the worst case scenario because you just feel this overwhelming guilt all the time that you're making a lot but not spending it. And when you spend more, you still have the same relationship with money that you had when you were making way less. I think people brag about that. It's like the rich person who drives a Honda. But I look at that, I'm like, they just haven't kind of done the work of. You have more security now. Why don't you invest in it?

Yeah, it's like having a scarcity mindset while you're surrounded by abundance.

I okay, so we're live on the pod.

We're live. We're live.

Just tell everyone. I'll announce to the world there's this apartment I really want.

Yep, go apartment.

A Go apartment. I, I live in a two bedroom, pretty big apartment, but I want to move into a four bedroom. And for fun there's this building next to me that has this, that has two apartments for sale. One is.

They're giving it away.

They're giving it away. I think it's one of the most expensive apartments in Miami. And the other one is less that I looked at, but still quite a bit. Okay. And I thought it would be fun, you know, Saturday afternoon, went with my wife to go check out the spot. Uh huh. I checked it out and we like didn't say anything to each other because we were speechless. Because like we walked out of there and we just like envisioned ourselves there.

I think everyone envisions themselves there. The joke. I used to have this joke with, with Alyssa. We would go for walks around Beverly Hills in la and we'd go on the walk. She'd be like, I could really imagine us living here. And I'm like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. You and every other person.

I approve of this.

Yeah.

So in my mind I've been trying to decide is this. And I'm curious your thoughts. Like am I buying, am I buying this apartment or am I considering buying this apartment for like, maybe because it is the nicest building and there's some status and ego related to that. Or am I buying this apartment because I'm going to have a family one day and I want to like have the best possible environment for them. And so just how do you think about when you're making purchases? You know, are you doing this at an ego, at a status, or are you doing it for.

Well, if you couldn't tell anyone that you bought that apartment, would you still buy it?

I mean, yes.

Right. Then I guess it's less ego.

Yeah.

Especially with apartments you kind of want to be anonymous with what you bought.

I think one people broadcast and be like, this is my address. Look at how that's a lot.

Like the last thing I want to. Someone to do is to pull up my. Like if someone pulls up your house, it's like that person lives there. That kind of looks cool until you realize that people can do that. But then you have a family.

Do I need?

Do I, like, I live in a really sweet place right now. It's like, do I need. And there's like another unit in my building that I could buy that's four bedrooms which is a third of the price or a quarter of the price. It's like, at what point is enough, enough?

I think what does not matter is the ticket price on the house. It's purely the monthly cash payment that you're going to outlay.

Yeah, yeah. And if, yeah, I think a really good qualifier is if you buy it and that monthly payment causes you stress.

Yeah.

Is it worth it?

That's the thing.

That's. That's the question. Because if you can do it and you're like, that's a.

There you go.

That's a marginal increase. And it, like, doesn't really stress me out that much. Because if you go down the rabbit hole of, do I really need this? Well, does anyone, like, aside from basic human needs, does anyone really need. Do you need to work as hard as you do? Do you need to, you know.

So this is a really good segue with what I want to talk about and why it came down to here.

We are.

A nice natural lead in here.

Live in Miami, the shipyard. What up? Looking great. The reason I came down is if me or you were trying to make $10 million this year or just someone was trying to make what we're trying to do. How would you do it? Do you have any ideas? Different trends, you'd look at niches. Like, I want to spend this time basically jamming on how we could make $10 million. And that could be within your business, or it could be just complete, you know, other ideas that you have.

Yeah, because that's the question. Building off of what you currently have, or starting from cold zero. Nothing.

Let's start with nothing.

Nothing.

Yeah. A completely new business.

So I filled out a couple on your thing. Your idea on pet supplements. A pet AG1, I think is the single best business idea in the world right now.

I hadn't heard that.

But that is the single best business.

Because I would buy it right now.

It's beautiful. It takes what AG1 has done, which is an extremely high margin product. That is a complex formula that you can't recreate. There's no proof that it works or doesn't work. So you're pretty much selling placebo, you're selling vegetables.

Yeah.

Like, once you're on it, you're going to say you feel better to justify the purchase that you made. No one is taking a. You want to be like, I don't feel any different. It's like, oh, I spent a bunch of money on this. I feel great. And then they have such high margin that they can just have an army of affiliates sending out the fact that they're taking it. So it's a genius marketing funnel.

Should we go build this? Because I love this idea.

If you did this for pets, it's even better because there's even less proof that it works. Like, what are you going to ask? Ask your pet if it's feeling better from its green supplement. No.

So what, so what you're talking about is I went on my first million, I pitched this idea from that pod. One of the largest water manufacturers and water companies in the world reached out to me and said if you can figure out what the formula is, I'll put it in the water and we can like co pack it together.

What? Sorry, stupid question. What does water have to with do do with it.

So it'll be water based.

So you need like the water production.

Facility and stuff like that.

I see.

Okay, got it.

You're basically selling pet water anyway.

Also he has, you know, he's in every Whole Foods in, in the world. He's in, you know, every Publix, every Safeway, all these big grocery chains. So if I did it with him, I wouldn't have to do just D2C. I could also be in store.

Interesting.

Yeah. So, so I think, you know, I, I, I'm definitely considering it, you know, but the, you know, I think the reason I'm, what's the counterpoint?

Why wouldn't you?

I just. Digital products are easier to build than physical products.

Significantly for sure. Easier, but lower upside.

Yeah, I mean this has, there are a lot of rich people who are going to put that on their credit card, start feeding it to their dog and then never ever once look at it again.

That's right.

Because the risk of stopping to give, stopping giving your pet a supplement is higher risk than giving stopping yourself because like you could feel it, but you won't see that your dog feels worse. I don't know. I like right when you said that because I think already the smartest niche in the world. I think what we could talk about are niches that could build $10 million businesses. Pets certainly one of them. Because like plants are the new pets, Pets are the new kids.

Yeah. I was going to say it's not even like the health, it's the emotional. I would seriously do anything. I was, I don't know why I had this thought last night, but I was like if something happened to my dog and they were like we have to do a life saving emergency and it's gonna cost $100,000 and insurance doesn't cover it. I'm pretty sure I would just rip that immediately and not even think about it. I love my dog like more than anything else in the world except for my wife. You know what I mean? And so all a supplement is, is like the reinforcement of I care about this part of my family totally.

You know, I Love you. It's saying I love you without saying I love you, dude.

And there's the marketing. Yeah, it's saying I love you every morning.

Yeah. Say I love.

No, I've been watching a lot of Mad Men. I got Don Draper in my subconscious.

Say I love you. Say I love you.

Give him the gummy. This little vegetable gummy. I love you.

Yeah, bro.

Whenever you. You wanna. If you wanna. You got time for a board meeting next week?

I'm ready to go. Like, I heard that. And just because I think pets. I think another niche that's interesting is just general paid newsletters in any niche where people are going to pay for a constant stream of information that they can't find elsewhere.

Yeah.

So not news I don't like. There are a lot of newsletters that have done well with just the free and sponsorship, but I think the more niche education that you can provide on a paid basis and. But still target the same niches. Like a hyper niche. Peter paid newsletter of. You have this specific type of dog, and here's the ongoing upkeep of just. You have a pomsky. And that requires a completely different way of thinking and managing that dog and everything. Every Pomsky owner in the world would pay for that because it's so specific.

Okay. So cool. Like, to validate that idea, Royal Canaan, the. The dog food company, their whole innovation was, we don't make. We're not gonna compete on, like, price or product packaging and just dog food in general. Literally all they did was just break out and say, on this package, this dog food is for border collies, whereas this dog food is for golden retrievers. And there's very little. I mean, they say that there is, but come on. Like, there's very little marginal difference between the two. So if you think about that through the lens of education, most people are like, I'm gonna write another finance newsletter or I'm gonna write another. And they just pick the big, broad category. But if you think about it, like, hyper specific, like, I have a border collie mix. I would subscribe to a paid newsletter on how to take care of my border collie. Because border collies have different health needs than a golden retriever would, for example.

And what do you think people would pay for something like that? Is that like a $10amount?

10 to 20?

Yeah, 10 to 20 bucks.

But then the thing is, you have a recurring base of purchasers that are going to buy other things that you sell because they're paying you right now.

Right, Right.

Yep.

That's what people don't talk about enough is that when, when I bring up paid newsletters, they're just like, well, just paid newsletters. It's just like, okay, I have a thousand people paying me $10 a month or $20 a month. And I'm like, to start, you can, to start, then you can layer on.

That's the first purchase, not the last. Versus a lot of other companies that when you sell a one off product, it's the last thing. And it aligns incentives for you to continue to deliver high quality information because you're going to lose that customer and then the ability to sell them more things.

Right.

I like that little mix. And n the newsletter being paid is they're continuing to pay you, which forces you to put out good content. Otherwise it just all goes and create.

Better and better things. Like you're forced to improve.

If you want to write a paid newsletter, what framework for new categories do you have? Like, what makes a good category versus, you know, a not good category?

We wrote up this little checklist. We create so many things now. I'm like struggling to remember the specifics. But the big one is like a. It has to be a very tangible asset. So a lot of people are like, I'm gonna start a paid newsletter. And they think that they can write about whatever, but something happens when they make it paid. That's not really what's happening, a paid newsletter. The way to think about it is it's a book that never ends. So it has to be a topic that you want to repeat infinitely, the reader wants to consume infinitely, and every issue has to feel like a tangible object. So how do you make it tangible? Like our Write with AI newsletter. Every issue is here's a framework, but then here's the chatbot prompt. So every time I give you a prompt, it feels like I'm giving you a box. Like an object, you know. So how do you make every issue a recipe or, you know, some sort of like designed framework or a prompt or a checklist? Like, it has to feel like a thing.

Okay, I have a prompt for you. So I have no idea where this is going. Do paid newsletters just become paid AI agents or paid AI characters? Like, when I hear you talk about that, I'm like, okay, what you're saying is basically, you know, you're right. With AI newsletter, I'm like, okay, so basically I'm going to subscribe to this and you're going to teach me basically how to become a more prolific writer in real time. And I'm gonna basically read your newsletter and then I'm probably gonna open up chatgpt and then I'm gonna read your newsletter. I'm gonna open up chatgpt. Is the future of education and paid newsletters. More Something like there's the dickie and. And cole bot. Basically that's that you just like ping and you're like, hey, today I want to learn about how to write copy for, you know, the pet niche. And then you kind of have this conversation.

Yeah, that's like that's what agents are trying to be now. You know, that's like the whole point of that in the store. But I think it's really easy to jump to the conclusion that AI just replaces you. And AI's AI is good at executing instructions, but it's not very good at creating net new things.

Also my whole take on is AI good at like completing tasks. AI is basically an internal.

Yeah. A very uneducated.

It's an uneducated intern that is sloppy.

So if it's not doing. And you want caffeinated.

Right.

It's your fault if it's not doing it.

I'll say that for the camera. It's an uneducated, uncapinated intern AI and.

Like love them for that.

Love them.

Understand that that's what you're getting.

Totally.

But they're a genius. Yeah, that's a thing.

Yeah.

If you program them right, they can do everything.

Idiots.

But they're just like, yeah. Literally what where my brain jumped with as we were talking about like the pet niche. And if you had a paid newsletter, the real upside I think comes in the back end in how you can create as many different specific paid newsletters based on the same content. So what you just said clicked in my head of Royal Canine is now marketing their pet food to different dog niches. The only change they more than likely the only change they made is on the label with a very small mix of the product.

Yeah.

So if you had some kind of baseline newsletter with 500 different paid opt ins that you could easily create with AI. So that, that's where I think AI plays the biggest role is you say I need 500 different versions of this one thing. Here's how to create one version. Now go create 500 mm, right. Because imagine how many paid newsletter opt ins you could have for how to raise your blank pet like this kind of dog. If you had 500 specific ones, you'd have 500 more potential opt ins versus just here's how to raise your dog.

And that's, that is the modern day Agora. Like do you know Agora Publishing?

Say I do, but for the.

Okay, it's like one of the craziest but like least well known companies ever. And their whole business model, they were.

The ones who I only know because you've told me about it.

Most people don't know and they, it's like a billion dollar company and their whole. It's just a portfolio of paid newsletters bundled with different education products. They essentially created that model and where everyone's brain goes is, oh, okay, a bunch of niche newsletters. Like how lucrative can that be? First, first of all, you're taking for granted recurring revenue because recurring revenue is extremely valuable and extremely cushy, you know. And then second is Agora doesn't have like five paid newsletters. They have like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. So what you just described is just the modern day version of that.

And you could build that with far fewer employees, far fewer writers, if you hit AI correctly.

Well, the other thing is, so going, going back to Agora and their model and why it's brilliant is. And going back to how do you make $10 million a year? Like if you build a news, a paid newsletter that brings in a million dollars in revenue, like chances are your margins are 90 plus percent. Yeah. And is it crazy that that business is worth 10 to 12 times profit? I wouldn't say it's crazy.

It's not crazy. You're within a 5 or 10x if you wanted to sell it. Yeah, so, but again like that's what's so. And we have this.

Why would you sell it?

Yeah, we have this conversation all the time because it's like, hey, why would you sell it? Because the cash it's throwing off is amazing and essentially autopiloted. And B, it's not just that asset, it's that now you have all those people that you can sell other products to. So why would you sell that?

The only reason you'd sell it is if you can't get a mortgage to buy the Subaru. Here's the thing though, okay.

A couple interesting things on that, right? The idea that we're going to have paid newsletters as of right now that are 300k a year between write with AI fiction writing and then write your way to wealth. We want to build that to a million this year. If someone came and offered us 10x on that, I'd probably sell it at a million for 10.

Just.

I think that's only because of where.

We'Re at because the. Relative to our. But if you were higher up, you wouldn't do that. So it is a function. But an interesting way to think about this, and I've been chatting with him, is like if you look at building a portfolio of cash flow businesses and some of the ones that are more sustainable than the others, like if you have three paid newsletters that all generate 300k a year because that's, you know, 5,000 people paying you 20 bucks a month. That is so decentralized in terms of how likely that is to go to zero.

Yeah.

Your risk, it's extremely sustainable as long as you keep writing it. Because like say you hired a writer and the quality took a 10 hit and you stopped giving it any attention, the bleed out on that would still be years and years and years of that cash flow. So if you can match some of your personal recurring expenses, like that $28,000, like how if you could match your mortgage, that's 30 grand to a paid newsletter with a thousand people paying you 30 bucks a month. And that was. You had almost pure confidence that that wasn't going anywhere over the next 10 years, you'd buy the house.

Of course. I think.

Right.

And that's why, you know, everyone should have a, I think a paid newsletter or a paid community to you, which is similar. Like we have a, we have a paid, you know, we call it a membership paid membership. That is like part paid newsletter, part community and we charge $100 a month for it. And like do we had 20 signups in the last 24 hours.

It's like lifestyle cash flow matching is an interesting topic.

$2,000 a month.

Okay. But so to take this a step further because it's wild, I don't see anyone on Substack doing this. Like even the biggest newsletters. The missed opportunity is realizing that the recurring revenue is the beginning, not the end. So what happens is you have all these creators that go, I started a paid newsletter. And then they reach success. You have paid newsletters on Substack doing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year and then they don't sell them anything else. So immediately the whole equation looks different when you go. And 10% of the people who are paying me on a monthly basis also bought the $20 ebook that I put together or also bought the $200 course I put together. And I don't understand why more people don't. And then to take that a step further, right. Then you can take all your paid newsletters and at the end of the Year, you can bundle them into a book.

Right.

So now there's another product.

Like the way I would. So the way I would do it, and I'm curious your thoughts is I wouldn't start by adding like digital assets to start selling them. I would think about what is the most like 0.1% experience I could offer to this group. So for example, like with Community Empire, our paid membership and email would, you know, maybe I do something like instead of 99amonth for 500amonth, like you can have, you know, a monthly dinner with someone from our team or like something for the die hard fans. Like what's. Or dinner once a year, you have dinner with me.

Yeah, you know, as long as I think that experience is also an option. But it's like, what are you solving for and being careful about your time involvement?

What do you want? What do you want to commit to time?

This is what. It's taken both of us a long time to start to internalize this. But time is always the easiest thing to increase something in the short term. Like, we know we're like, oh, if we give away our time, we will increase revenue on literally anything this month.

That's right.

But then we're screwed. Like now we're out of hours, now we can't do anything. So a middle ground solution, something that we do a lot is an experience. Bonus would be if you have a paid newsletter, you have a thousand people on it and then you go once a quarter, I'm gonna do a live workshop, but it's paid, so it's like 100 bucks, 150 bucks. Hop on Zoom. And here's the topic, here's what we're drill into. That's an easy way of increasing the ltv, but also giving an experience. You can take the recording, you can add the recording to your archive, the paid newsletter. You have an asset that compounds. Like, that's a nice little middle ground. Versus a lot of people are like, buy my premium and I'll do an hour of coaching with you a month. And then all of a sudden you're out of hours and you can't build anything else.

It's funny, I see like a lot of solopreneurs do that. And so like they tweet about, oh, I escaped my job and then it's like, and I built this like, you're on Zoom job. Yeah, I built this new job. Most the exact same, except I'm working twice as hard, I'm still selling my time.

Solopreneurship is just a High paying job.

Which in the beginning is great.

Awesome.

Like if you, if you're brand new to making ten grand a month, that's what you should do.

Totally.

But that's not going to get you to 10 million.

Yeah, no, yeah, no, I want to talk about 10 million during this. You know, I know I'm with the right people to talk about it with.

Well, there's only one way to get the apartment. You got to think bigger. You got to think bigger.

Okay, so paid paid newsletters. Do you have any specific ideas besides anything in pets that you know, if you weren't doing what you're doing now, you'd go after.

I think if, if we didn't have anything that we were doing right now. But so say Dickie and I sold everything that we had right now and we were starting completely over. I feel like because of our personal interests, the next thing we would build would be like a How to think about finance as a guy in your mid 20s to pre 40. Because I think that specific window of person is. And not to like exclude others, but it's just that type of person has such unique challenges and questions and things at that phase of life. I think we both would get.

I would start a painting. Someone actually messaged us in our slack that my writing has been like. My writing over the last month has been extremely personal to me. For the most part. It's like what am I learning? What am I thinking about? And I want to get back into doing that more. And he asked if I was going to start a paid newsletter to talk about these topics because I don't want to go down that like, as much as it's fun to talk on social about that. I think there's something, there's like a stigma to talk about dating or finance or like to. You just don't want people quote tweeting you when you talk about money on Twitter. It's way better.

Usually doesn't end well.

Like once that escapes to npc Twitter, it just becomes so toxic that you have to put some kind of paywall before you talk about a lot of those things. So I don't know why.

Why do you say that?

Because people can't understand.

Yeah. You can't wrap your head around making millions of dollars. Like it's going to offend people.

Yeah.

The average person, especially on Twitter, gets extremely offended at the idea that people have money.

Yeah.

So you have to put up some kind of paywall. Luckily, I don't think anyone listens to this podcast that knows that way because.

If you're listening to this podcast like you're, you're, you have a bias for action, to do things and to, to better yourself. But yeah, you're right, I have gotten things that have gone viral on Twitter and then I look to see like all these anonymous accounts. Yeah, you like completely.

It's not good for you because it disincentivizes you to keep writing about it. Versus if you write a small $50 a month paid newsletter to a hyper specific group that engages with every single thing, then there's no point to write on social about it. Cause you just have this group who's telling their friends. If you can write a paid newsletter where your only marketing is people forwarding it to a friend and saying, hey, you got to sign up for this, that's the sweet spot.

Yeah. There. And it's worth saying this happens at every level. Like if you're jamming with a small business owner that's doing, you know, 200k a year and you walk into the room and you're like, you got to think bigger. This is how you get to 10 million. A lot of them don't want to have that conversation. They're like, I like where I'm at and I don't need, you know, it's like threatening. And then you go to a different room and it's people with $5 million businesses and someone's like, hey, you got to think bigger to get to 50. Not everyone in that room is, wants to have that conversation. So that, that friction happens at every level, you know, and so that's part of why it's so difficult to find people to talk about money with. Because like a lot of it comes down to what level are you at and where do you want to go with it.

So you'd start with a paid newsletter on that topic. And then where do you think you would take it from there?

I mean, I think of all the businesses that we've built in the past three years, we've learned that the group coaching model is the fastest to scale, probably most profitable, like probably doing another group coaching program would be low hanging fruit because you can get a group coaching program to, to 5, 10 million. Like if you have a good category, you can do that.

And group coaching meaning, like how often do you do it? Like what, what, what does that look like?

Well, the way PGA for example is structured is it's like a one to many. It's async curriculum. Plus we have team members that specialize in different things to answer questions. So there's real time support. We'll do like a weekly hot seat that's live. So there's an async component, there's a live component, there's a community component. So you have all these different things working to either teach someone, hold them accountable, gamify the journey, you know, whatever it is. And you can do that in a lot more categories than people realize.

The other thing I would do if I were you and I was building this is I would build a SaaS product along with it for, for, for this audience. Like basically mint.com just recently shut down.

Yeah, yeah, I saw that. That was really surprising.

Very surprising. But it's. It is and it isn't because it is. Because it was actually a great product.

That was trying to do too many things for. It was trying to do something for everyone. Where I think niche personal finance is an interesting idea. Like we use Copilot to manage our stuff.

Copilot for X, basically.

Right, Exactly.

Is. Is the idea. So Copilot for the people who don't know is basically mint.com track your net worth, track your credit cards, track your personal stuff. But yeah, it was everything in the kitchen sink. It got to that point because it was bought by Intuit, not Surprisingly, they make QuickBooks. Obviously the QuickBooks people aren't going to make the most beautiful, streamlined products in the world. So Copilot came in a couple, two, three years ago and it's just a simpler mobile first version. And I heard they're killing it. They're probably doing Copilot.

Yeah, it's only like six bucks a month, I think.

Yeah, Yeah, I use it.

I showed you my workflow for using it.

The product's beautiful.

Yeah, it started off at I think $1.99 a month. Yeah. And then if you 3x your prices and no. And you're still growing.

Definitely.

That's a good sign.

Yeah.

So is there an opportunity to build Copilot for X for different niches? That's just kind of an interesting problem.

Yeah, I think that's the way to think about it, you know, like, especially with all the new, like no code tools, AI tools, I think you're going to get a lot of smart, driven individual people just sitting at their laptop being like, I built the co pilot for pet owners of border collies.

Yeah. Did you listen to the most recent all in from this past weekend? Do you guys listen All In?

Very, very rarely.

I think I listened to like half of it.

So Friedberg had. David Friedberg worked at Google doing A bunch of stuff. He had this really interesting idea of SaaS being like this moment in time blip in terms of a viable business model between software that you had to download on your computer and then software that can be written by AI. Where now the ability for an individual to spin up a more specific version of all the asses that are trying to do everything for everyone is only going to decrease. Right. So if you have someone in house, if the most productive engineers can become 10 times more productive using AI to code and they're able to build these products in house, that model goes away. In an interesting, like that's an interesting thread to pull on is how many SaaS platforms could you actually better tailor for your individual experience that aren't that difficult to build with Copilot and other AI coding tools?

And so I actually just sent a newsletter this morning speaking to this. The one thing that I speak to about in the newsletter is also the business model changes. So the way SaaS works today is you pay a monthly fee 6 99amonth and you get access to the software. Where I think things are going is it's going to be pay per view task.

Yeah, the ChatGPT more back to one time purchase. The Basecamp guys just launched their Slack. Yeah, Slack Killer or something like that. And it's just you pay for it once like old school, buy a cd, put it in your computer.

That's basically.

But the reason why I'm so fascinated with this is because of the, the idea of LTV relative to just recurring revenue. Because I feel like a lot of times people will create products that recur and they think if once someone signs up that recurring revenue never goes away. But really there's always some sort of tipping point, you know, so you're like, okay, my average churn. I know net net, my LTV on an average customer is $215, you know, so it's interesting to either have some of that data or sort of speculate what that data would be and go, okay, well if my average LTV is going to end up being around 200, why don't I just remove the recurring option and sell full access for 300 bucks and capture all that LTV up front and force a different purchasing decision.

Totally. Or even if you have an idea for Copilot for X, you can build the landing page, build the mock ups and be like, you know, post on Twitter, hey, you can pre sell it, resell it.

Yeah.

Like to fund your, your development. I think a lot more people are.

Going to do that so many different rabbit holes you could go down with that.

Yeah.

You have fewer engineers working at every company, but more solo engineers building things. Yeah.

I want to talk quickly, even though it's like off topic, about a conversation I had with someone in my Miami the other day. So he. We went for coffee and he was telling me about a particular person on Twitter that showing these MRR numbers for a particular business. And I happen to know what the.

MRI was it a SaaS.

It was a services based business. I happen to know the revenue of that. And basically the monthly. I get the updates for that particular business. And it was a person that was basically posting on Twitter and saying, hey, I get, you know, I got $10 million of revenue. 10 million in ARR. 12 MRR. And. And he was like really upset about it because he's like, I'm out here, I'm trying. I haven't know almost a million dollars ar it took me eight years and I was like, dude, don't believe what you read. Like, don't make it. You shouldn't feel bad logging onto Twitter and seeing that because it's not even truthful.

Yeah. Most of it isn't.

It's not.

And most numbers are just like, if I see another agency owner put that they have 50 million in business pipeline by taking people who fill out a type form. Like, how can you say that you had. It's just typeformers. That's like saying if I took every email subscriber I have and multiplied them, if they bought all my products and said I have a hundred thousand email subscribers and they all pay me $100. So I have $10 million in email pipeline.

You know what this is like, I worked at an ad agency right out of college and we used to have this joke where you like, ad agencies are so liberal with how they talk about things. It's like walking into Walgreens and buying toilet paper and being like, Walgreens is a client.

Yeah.

It's like, like that's literally what people are doing on Twitter. They're like, they're like, oh, you know, Walgreens is a client. It's like, really? It's like, well, yeah, I mean their toilet paper is great. Yeah, they're fine.

Even worse, Walgreens is a partner.

Yeah. I've partnered with.

Yeah. Introducing North America, our new partnership.

Yeah. There's a lot of context stuff like people taking lifetime revenue and calling that the revenue of their business. So they'll be like, I've done, you know, know 5 million bucks over the past five years. And then you'll see them go on podcasts being like, how I built a $5,000,000 business. That's not a $5,000,000 Business. That's a $1,000,000 business that's been around for five years.

That's right.

And, like, all those little nuances, it just makes. It's just sad because then you're. All the people that want to learn are looking at that, and. And it's literally like you're. You're giving them a broken version of the game to start, and then they walk in with all these unrealistic expectations. That's not how any of these businesses operate.

And that's why I wanted to bring it up. It's for the people listening who are embarking on the $10 million journey and might see things on the Internet and people, you know, quote, unquote, sharing in public. So they're taking it as the gospel.

We should set some standards, that there's just a collective group of people who go around policing anyone who doesn't talk in. Monthly free cash flow that hits your bank account.

Yeah, okay. That too.

Free cash flow post expenses is the only number that matters in your business.

Period.

Full stop and a story.

Yeah.

So what is 50 million in business pipeline like? Okay, but we're actually doing 300k a month at 40% margin, so it's 120k a month free cash flow divide divided.

By three partners, three, plus expenses, which means I make 20 grand after tax.

Really?

It should be personal. Monthly after tax, free cash flow. And then you could bubble that up to the business level.

Yes.

And every time, there should be like a. Like a chrome extension that. Every time. Like, every time you see $10 million, it's like, it's the Twitter community notes. It's like doing the math on this business. It's more than likely that this business owner takes $20,000 a month, because that normalizes it for everyone. What is the amount that hits your bank account after all expenses at the end of every month?

That's such a.

If you didn't talk in that, you should just get like, yeah, there should be four of your fly bots. Be like, this is the monthly free cash flow bot. This number is bullshit. Like, imagine that Twitter would be such a better place that.

That actually leads me to another idea related to this. We should build that Coffeezilla for tech entrepreneurs.

Yeah, seriously, like, huge audience opportunity.

Like, people would share that like crazy. And you can monetize that.

That's. That's actually a great niche YouTube channel.

So for people who don't know. Coffee Zilla, YouTuber, probably three plus million subscribers. And he exposes scams. Yeah. And it's like a guy, he goes after crypto.

Crypto.

He's gone after crypto.

He's gone like Jake Paul too, or something with his. Yeah.

So you get these like well known people and he's like a journalist about it. Like he has integrity, I bet. Yeah. And he, he really does a great job. So. And people share that. Right. Because, you know. Well, number one, people like to see other people fail. Let's be real.

Well, it's like the business world's tmz, you know.

Totally. That's a better way of describing it. Like there was a point. Gawker. Do you remember Gawker?

Oh, yeah.

Tell. Tell people what Gawker was for. Most people don't remember.

I mean, it was like a news publication, but they would like do hit pieces and they would go after people. Ryan Holiday wrote a whole book about the Gawker story going after.

Right.

I don't know too much about Gawker, to be honest.

It was basically like. Yeah, it was like a gossip column for, for business.

Yeah. They shut down after the lawsuit. Right. They shut down because they went bankrupt.

Well, Peter Thiel, I think.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Sued them.

If anything. The, the old, like this whole fiasco that happened with OpenAI and how it was like the coolest thing to ever happen to anyone who worked in Silicon Valley because they got to talk about it. It was like keeping up with the Kardashians for nerds in San Francisco. It's like the most important thing. And all they could, they'd wake up and like check the news. Be like, what's Sam doing now?

Literally, myself included. Yeah, I did that for 48 hours.

You know, that was interesting thought experiment.

I couldn't sleep. I was just thinking about Sam Altman all night.

Yeah, I didn't like that. I don't know. That didn't interest me. And I was like, that seems weird.

Cool.

Like he's either going to work there or not work there.

Yeah. You know. Okay. The other one that gets me is the person who goes, I made all this revenue only working one hour a day. And I'm like, nobody does that. Like, or, or also the joke of like the morning routine thing where it's like, you look at all these entrepreneurs, they're like, I'm awake at 3am I've had a full protein breakfast and red light sauna and I've run seven miles by 4:30am you know, and it's like, you're looking at this and you're like, maybe you've done that one time, you know, and then. And just like the person who takes the pipeline and like rounds up, they do it one time and they're like. And in theory, if I did do this every day, that would be my morning routine.

And then they make people feel bad because they're not. Yeah, it's all, oh, I woke up and I was tired this morning. Morning. Like I was about to tweet this and I didn't. But I had to like drafted. I was like, I woke up yesterday and I basically woke up. I flooded myself with coffee. I took a nice warm shower. I woke up at 7:30am They. I woke up at 7:30am flooded myself with like four coffees. Literally drowned myself.

Took a coffee bath.

Yeah. And I took a warm long shower. Not like a cold bath, just a warm long shower. Soup. It was warm. I even, I busted it. Even.

Hot, hot, hot.

Like steam.

Can I give you an upgrade? You gotta buy these shower steamers. Do you have shower steamers?

No. Do I need one of those?

Dude, it's like a. It's like a bath bomb for a shower. Oh my gosh. It feels like you're in a spa. It's amazing. You just unwrap it, you throw it at the bottom, the water comes down and smells like lavender. Amazing.

You keep buying it.

Do you know how expensive those are? Get a bag of like 12 of them for like 40 bucks or something. I'm like, add it to your shower routine.

Yeah, this is something I'm trying to do more though, cuz right now.

Wait, wait, here's the. Yeah, sorry. Okay. What are they called?

Steam shower shower steamers for your dog.

Actually though, your dog, you know, they.

Need a better bath.

Yes.

They're.

It's like a CBD to make them calmer in the bath, you know, Cuz you dogs get stressed out about it.

Yeah.

Your dog hates the bat.

Unless they have bat.

CBD bomb.

I would buy this right now.

And for cats, right?

Uhhuh. And for gerbils.

Yeah. Well, cats hate. Hate water, right? So if you want to like make it a little more.

It's like a dry cleaner.

No, but honestly, honestly, that concept. Steam showers for the productive tech entrepreneur. So like the product that the Andrew Huberman type guy.

Oh, I mean, think about. Okay, how do they sell tea? You go into the tea aisle and it's just white label green tea. But one of them Says calm and one of them says energy and one of them says focus.

Right.

You're gonna buy the one that says the word of the thing that you associate with. That's right. So you could easily do that for any category or any niche. Take the tech entrepreneur and do shower steamers for raising your first round. And you're stressed out.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Huberman's drink is gonna. If, if he started a drink that was like sparkling water, theanine, caffeine, everything that he recommend, everything that he recommends you take in the morning. And it was just called like, you know, and it's got nothing else and only marketed it to that specific type of person.

It would crash. Call it sunrise and say only people who wake up before the sun gets up drink this. Like done.

Do this and stare at the sun.

Yeah, the ticky bush.

I actually think we're seeing the anti Huberman effect right now. So that was a bit of my tweet that I was going to write yesterday. I was, I was going to say, I was going to say like at the end of my. Here's what I did this morning. I, I today I felt like the anti Huberman.

Yeah. What's the, what's the O in that? You like, don't have a more.

You don't optimize. This is, I put this in the notes of the doc is like esoteric health. Twitter is always two years ahead of like everyone else. So they're, they're already on that train of like anti optimization now leaning more into like intuition and things like that. But I don't know, you know, there's both sides.

There's always a trend and there's always an anti trend. And it feels like Huberman has gotten so big that of course you're going to have people be like, I don't want to do a cold punch. I like my hot shower.

I am sick of how many more people are in the sauna in Cold Plunge since it got popular though.

Yeah. Like everyone.

Specific groups of people.

Why you like, why does it, why does that make you mad?

Well, I like to not talk to anyone. The worst are the people who are in the sauna now. Just sparking up a podcast conversation. Yeah, it's like, oh, let's just start talking to everyone.

Drive. The last thing I want to do.

No, that's why I say I'm unemployed. Anyone asks what I do in the.

Sauna, well, you shouldn't say you're unemployed, cuz if you're unemployed, I have nothing to offer you.

I Have no conversation. I got nothing for you, buddy.

Yeah, I want to sit here in silence.

Or accountant.

That works. Yeah, accountant is better. If I met an unemployed person. The sauna. I'm like, I need an.

At a luxury gym.

Yeah, I need.

I'm looking for.

Who are you?

Got nothing for you, buddy. That's like my.

My go to, you know, Your mistake. Mysterious. You're wearing Lululemon. You know, I don't get it. Something isn't adding up.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah. I hate. I hate that.

But there's a specific type of person that has started to do that that only comes to the gym now to, like, sauna and cold plunge. And they're just getting their optimization routine in not doing anything else.

I heard that's called a professional workout. Did you hear the.

The executive workout? No Steam room and a wheat crash shot.

Yeah, Yeah.

I used to do that one in New York every once in a while.

A wheatgrass shot.

Yeah.

Oh, I thought you said a wheatgrass shower. Now it was like, shot.

The executive steam is for your dog morning. Friday morning on Wall Street. That's the thing.

Yeah. Okay.

Okay. I want to. I want to end off with. I've got this note, notes, file of all these ideas. I've got about 100 ideas in there.

Amazing.

I'm going to give you a couple and you can tell me if it's you like them or you don't like them. Goodreads. Someone needs to reinvent Goodreads.

Yeah. I hate that platform.

Like, it's. It's such a great idea. Like a social network around books, essentially, and reviews around books. What's it called? Letterbox was recently acquired by Tiny and Andrew Wilkinson. I can see. And Letterbox for films. I can. I could see, like a Letterbox level in terms of design for Goodreads. I feel like we're due for it. They were acquired by Amazon, I think, many years ago.

I think a Goodreads for podcasts or Goodreads for your Twitter feed would be interesting. Right? What if you could integrate your Twitter feed with, like, your liked tweets all went somewhere and then you could see and talk to or connect with other people who also like those same tweets or listen to those same podcasts. That could be kind of cool.

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, all this sort of just speaks to the broader trend, which is there's just way too much content. Like, we just can't consume all of it. So you're probably going to see same with that niching down idea. More and more platforms that are like, here's how to parse just the feed on Twitter versus here's how to parse just the podcast you listen to on Spotify versus just the videos you watch on YouTube. You know, just too much.

Too much. So what do you think? What do you rate that that idea on? Ten sevens. No sevens.

I would use it. I'd use it more. I don't like Goodreads.

Yeah, I never really used Goodreads. I don't know.

I know people who use it to count the number of books they read. That's it. Like they add the books that they read to it. But I don't know. I wouldn't be excited to work on it, but I would use it.

I feel like a cooler.

There you go. That's a good answer.

I feel like a cooler feature isn't in Amazon Kindle and I don't use it, but I just know of it. Where you can see how many other people have highlighted the same sections like that to me is a lot cooler.

But that's how you can start. That's how I would start off. Goodreads 2.0 would be probably that.

I think Read Wise is probably trending in that direction.

Yeah.

Some kind of consolidation of all the highlights.

Yeah, True.

Cool.

Can I, can I give you one of my business ideas?

Yeah.

All right. So one of mine is I think that the next Simon and Schuster or Penguin Random House or whatever is going to be one individual that builds, I mean one author, but has like a whole team. So an author is being treated like a venture backed startup and the team and that author train an entire model on how that specific author outlines a certain type of story, how they write it, vocabulary choices like really, really in depth. And then it allows that author and that style to. You then have the ability to create a book a week or a book a day and you can just flood an entire subcategory. Imagine James Patterson could actually do this. Right now James Patterson's like, I want to write thrillers. He already writes co writes with other people. He's doing the manual version of it with another author. He does a book a month. Okay, well if he took the time and built a model, he could write a James Patterson level book a day. And that's going to happen. It's just a question of who goes and builds it, how long does it take. And you have to have enough of a library to train the model on you. Because the problem you see it with now OpenAI. That was the Whole issue is like, you can't go train your model on other people's content without those other people going, hey, what the hell? So the solution is you have to have produced enough volume to train the model on you, and you're the copyright owner. And the problem and why James Patterson can't do this is because his publisher owns all his stuff. So now there's a conference. So is the publisher going to build it? Is he allowed to build it? You know, but I'm really fascinated by the idea of what does it look like for an author to create a book a day and have it actually be 80, 90% quality of what you would produce on your own?

Yeah. I mean, the average author does what a book every three years. Two. Three years.

Yeah, if that. Five years.

I think it's interesting.

And he was the one who broke that model and went, I want to do. There were a couple authors before him, but he was really the one that went, I want to do two or three or four books a year. And then now, as far as I know, he's one of the only authors that cranks out consistently a book a month every month, year after year after year. He's doing the manual version because he's working with other writers.

Yeah. My guess is this also translates pretty well to music.

Oh, same thing's gonna happen.

Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I like this idea. It's probably like an 8, 7, 8, 7 for you.

You said no sevens. Oh, 8.7. Okay, cool. I'll take it. That's fine. You got any good ones?

Sicky.

It's not something I actually do much. It like brainstorm, random business. Like, I don't have that note.

I was trying to have my brain work.

See, I was right. I wrote something the other day that I love to learn, but I'm not curious at all where I don't go down Internet rabbit holes about random things. And I felt guilty for that for a long time. Like random ideas and going down and spending like 10 hours on YouTube, I don't like to do. I don't know.

I think one of us needs to have that training.

Yeah.

What am I doing right now and what's the next logical step? Yeah, I. I don't know. I felt guilty, but now I'm kind of leaning into it as a superpower.

No, it's great in the opposite way.

Because I just don't care about how the world works. People are like, I'm fascinated by how the world works. I'm like, I just care that it works. I Don't really care at all about how.

Right. Last idea before we.

I love that about you. One of us has to.

So I'm looking to buy some art.

And I got an artist that you should buy.

Okay.

He's on the up and up. And I think. I think that you could take the.

Take the. Yeah, we'll talk about that now.

I'll put you onto him.

Yeah. There doesn't seem to be a good marketplace for second hand curated art.

Isn't that what masterworks or master something?

In what way? What do you mean by that?

So there's places where I can buy art that other people have owned before. Of course there's artsy, which is like the big platform. Do you guys know artsy? It's basically like the Amazon for art, but they have like pieces in the tens of millions or millions of dollars to pieces that are $100 and some of them are like new pieces and some of them are someone else, you know, used, so to speak. I think there's probably an opportunity to do a marketplace with curated pieces, meaning it's not as overloaded with like, here's 1 million pieces, here's maybe a subset. And also the ability to rent pieces.

I was actually just thinking that, like a Airbnb, I want to rent your Picasso for the weekend because I'm throwing a party. It'd be kind of cool. There's a huge level of risk in that, obviously.

But renting pieces seems interesting. It also is like Gen Z and Millennials. Our attention span is a lot less. So it's like, yeah, I might enjoy this Picasso for a weekend, but I don't know, I hate it now.

I think about that a lot with, like, the hedonic adaptation of nice things, like renting a nice car. You can get 90% of the benefit. And then, then you, like, if you rent a really nice car for three days, on the fourth day, you start to pick out things about the car that you don't like. And that's like when you should give it up. Because then that's a great point. When you own it full time, you're like, damn, like, I went to Germany and rented a Porsche to drive on the Autobahn. And it was sick the first two days. And I remember returning it on the third day being like, kind of cramped in here, like. And I remember I was like, that's.

A perfect time to get rid of that thing.

Because the second you have any kind of complaint. I think the same thing goes for, like, apartments or, I don't know. Apartments might be different, but cars or art or things like that. How can you get 90% of the upside with just the initial access and then not make it into something that owns you in the long term?

It's a good point, and maybe this is a narrative I'm putting in my head, but after this conversation, I feel like apartments and homes doesn't fit in that category of, you know, you don't. I don't think you get used to a beautiful home. Like, I feel like. Or do you?

I don't know, like, you.

You definitely do. You definitely do.

So then why would I buy this apartment?

So my argument, though is because it is the place where you most likely spend the majority of your time. And so it's sort of like your bed. Like, of all the things to max out, you should probably max out the thing that you spend six, seven, eight hours a night in every night for your whole life, you know? And your home, I think is very similar. You spend. Especially now that we all work from home. And like, why. Why would you not want to optimize that? Whereas a car. It's like. And I think it all comes back to what's the pressure it puts on you relative to the enjoyment or the.

I think the solution is have someone that prevents you from thinking about the house in a negative way at any time, which is basically, if shit stops working, you actually don't even realize it. Someone is there to repair. There's like an on call.

Right.

Because otherwise you're just like bitching about your $30 million house and what sucks about it. And that's just a place you want to avoid.

You don't want to be there, which will happen because, like, your toilet's going to break. That's going to be annoying house, you know? Yeah.

Dude, this has been so.

That was pretty solid.

This is solid. I'm proud of us.

We got some good juice going. This is. I like this.

It's all. It's all because of the shipyard surviving. Thank you for. For inviting me here and. And allowing this.

We should do this more. We should make this a standing thing.

Yeah.

I love that.

I think the first of many.

I would love that. Where could my audience go and find out more about what you could.

They'll find us.

Find us on Twitter. Dickie Bush or.

Yeah.

Nicholas Cole, 77.

Yeah.

Start running online.com those.

They'll find us. Yeah. I have this heuristic that I've kind of been using is if. With all of the things that we create, if you can't find your way to the thing that's a little bit of a signal.

Like, yeah, but we. There's also the counterpoint. We create so many things that like, worse you to go.

That's true. But yeah, okay, that's. That's fair. But also just like, just Google it, you know?

Totally. I had this. I had this happen the other day. We had. We're hiring like a product designer. And I had posted about it and I had said, go apply on the website. So some guy reached out to me and he was like, hey, like, I can find like the job. The job. Like the career section on the late checkout website.

I hate to break it to you, but that's a signal.

That's a signal. I. And it's like, I had to respond. I was like, hey, like, the best.

Little hack I found for that is when we're interviewing someone, ask them to send you the calendar invite for the time you send them. Just like, see that? They can fucking check a box, schedule it at the right time, add a zoom link xyz. It's like the first little micro test of their general competence.

Yeah. Another one that gets me is like, we'll tweet something and then we'll append it and go. And by the way, if you want to start writing, check out chip30 with a link to ship30.com and then someone will comment and say, what's ship30? If you click the link, the entire site will tell you what it is. You know, and like that. It's such a small thing. Or, sorry, one more. Cause I've been doing all these interviews for a new hire we're making. Another one is you send a CAL invite and then I'll send the person an email and say, great chat with you. Then let's use the zoom link in the description. I can't tell you how many people go sit in the Google Meet link and that to me, it's such a small thing, but I'm like, that shows me just that small level of detail that you're not.

You know, that's the clip.

I find you in the Google Meet. It's just got to. There's someone waiting in there. Be like, sorry, you failed the first step of this job application. Please don't apply again.

No, seriously, there's. There's this. Sorry, real, real quick. Just. There's this. Have you seen the bear? I got to say, have you seen the bear?

No.

Oh, my God. Amazing show. Okay. But there's this scene where they're hiring like a MAITRE D and they're doing the interview and the girl is like, oh, she was great. I think we should hire her. And the guy is like, there's no way we're hiring that person. She's like, why the interview went so well. And he points to one of the place settings and he had like turned it so there were three the right way and one was wrong. And he was like, she just sat here the entire time and did a 45 minute interview and didn't feel fix that place setting. That would have driven me nuts. No attention to detail. We're not hiring that person. And like that. It's the zoo. It's the zoom thing. It's like, you know, or someone emails me, they put a H in my name. I'm like. Immediately I'm like, you don't have attention to detail. It's not that hard.

Totally. My name's not Craig. It's Greg.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I saw a new one for you. Nicholas Kohl. K O H L like Kohl's the shopping.

I was like, I've seen a lot.

Of names for you. I've never seen see Nicholas Cole like this.

So this would be a good time to announce I am part of the Coles empire. That's actually. The shipyard was actually funded by the Coles empire. Yeah. So attention to detail, everyone.

That'll get you to 10 million. Thanks, everyone. Ariel. Later.

Boom.