6 Million Dollar Business Ideas To Start Before 2024 | ft. Greg Isenberg

And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now.

Idiot creates water brand for dogs.

I can see it now.

Great headline.

Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg.

Yeah.

Disgraces himself with good water.

Um, all right, we're live. Sean, what do we got?

What's up? Uh, Greg is here, friend of the house, one of the original, one of the original friends of the house. I used— you said something on an earlier pod that has always stuck with me. You were talking about, I think, names. You had a— you had your iPhone out and you were on the Notes app and you go, I just got Banger names for businesses that don't have a business yet with them. And you were just spitting off names. And one of the formats was, um, anything with the word bueno at the end. And I can't tell you how many times I've used this when somebody's asking me about a name and they're like, yeah, we do, um, we do medical imaging scans. I'm like, Scan Bueno. And they're like, what? And they never pick it, but goddamn if it doesn't break the ice. Uh, Greg, welcome. And do you still have that notes? That note with all those names.

I've got all the names. I've also got, I don't know, 150 startup ideas in a notes file. But before I started, I gotta get something off my chest. I gotta be real with you.

All right, what do we got?

Producer Ari, you stole my producer. Did we?

We don't know about this.

Yeah.

Fill me in.

Yes. So all of a sudden you guys send me a text and you go, what do you think about Ari? Producer, I see you work with him, with her. And I go, she's amazing. She's the best. You know, there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong about her. And then all of a sudden I'm getting a text from Ari being like, dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I've just got the craziest job at My First Million.

If I ever call you for a reference check, just know it's Mr. Steal Your Girl coming at you right there.

I thought she worked on it in the past. I thought, I thought that was what it—

that's what I thought too.

I thought there was an end date.

It's okay.

Is it?

It happened. It happened.

Is it okay?

It's not okay.

Well, uh, sorry and thank you.

Okay, moving on from that one. Um, Greg, you, uh, people should know what you do. You have Late Checkout, which is badass. You have one of the best websites, um, of any, like, I don't know, company. You make really amazing landing pages. So you have Late Checkout, which is combination studio, agency. How do you describe it?

Holding company, building businesses that have audiences and communities a part of them.

And you are kind of becoming this like Greg the community guy. I feel like that was like a phase of your life. Is that still the phase we're in? Are we, are we, is this making Fetch a thing or is, did it stick? Did the Greg the community guy happen or what, what's going on with that?

I think so, man. I think so. I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's, it's a thing. If you start calling yourself the community guy and you're just, you know, so yeah, it's, it's definitely working.

I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times trying to call myself the guy. Even actually today I was thinking about, I was thinking about Gary Vee. I was thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers, Cody Ko. And I was like, why am I not Sean P? What, what, what is Puri doing for me? I, I gotta drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean P. And I really wrote a note to myself. I said, go all in on Sean P.

No, that's stupid.

No, we're workshopping it still.

You've got a weird enough first name. S-H-A-A-N. I think you're good. You're good.

The only reason why Sam is saying that—

jealous?

He, that he's— well, no, you know Sam. He's, he wants to be Sam P. No, he wants to be Sam P. Come on.

No, man.

I'm happy. I, I, I've got a two-syllable first and last name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname when you're— when it's that short, you're good.

Um, Sean Bueno, dude.

Great. Latecheckout.studio. I hate your website.

You are doing this.

It's such a designer website. I can't click anything. I gotta like scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man?

Yeah, I think, listen, there's two ways to create a website. One is to be conversion, conversion-centric, right? Like, convert as many people as possible. Uh, the other way is you're building a brand, and this is unlike any other website on the internet, I think. So we— you'd be surprised how many million-dollar deals we've been able to close because people like our website.

You've done something that, um, I think a lot of people were trying to do, but you've done it well. So we've— let's talk about this kind of personal holdco Uh, you, 'cause you went the venture path. When I met you, you were raising money from all the big name VCs. You were building a social network. Like we were, we were both playing that, like, it's not even a lottery ticket game. The analogy I give is somebody handed us a bottle or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning. And, um, and that was our like stated game plan. It was like, ah, yes, I shall create the next hit social network now on demand. Which is not how any of them got really built in the first place. So you played the VC game, you have backed off of it. Give us your kind of 2-second philosophy on how your mindset changed going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now.

There was a group of us now in our 30s who watched The Social Network, that movie, and we all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg, if we're being honest with ourselves.

I mean, I would have been happy with a Winklevoss too, but like, yeah, I wanted to be Zuck. Yes.

We saw that movie. It jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley to go and raise a bunch of money to build social apps. And, you know, we tried. We tried. And the truth is, it's, you know, I remember meeting one of the world's best investors and he once told me that A third of our deals fail, a third of our deals we get our money back, and a third of our deals we make 1x to Google times. So that got me thinking that what he's basically saying is that the best founders in the world, because he's only backing the best founders, two-thirds of them, basically the founders and their teams don't see any money from acquisitions. That means a third of companies are basically seeing any profit. It's just so difficult to win in that game. And yeah, so that's why I've been focusing more on profitable cash flowing businesses.

Our software is the worst.

Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM.

Our software is the best.

HubSpot. Grow Better.

Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company?

Yes, absolutely.

Yeah.

Do you like your life better?

Yeah.

And do you, do you have a goal like, like cash flow goal? You're like, okay, my goal is to get to $10 million in cash flow or whatever. Like, is that how you were thinking about it? Is that the game that you're currently playing?

No, the game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points, baby. What does that even mean? Is there anything else to say? No, that explains everything. Next question, baby.

What is, what's a style point?

We were talking about when Sam was working at HubSpot, he was like, I'm an artist, baby. I gotta create. I think that's what Greg's talking about when he talks about style points. Uh, the other part of style points is like the lifestyle. So in Silicon Valley, this idea of a lifestyle, lifestyle business is like a, um, It's a backhanded compliment. So it's, it's a way for people in Silicon Valley to pat you on the head and be like, that's cute. That's a cute business. Um, like, good for you.

Good.

That's, you know, that's swell. Um, but like, to me, I'm like, that's crazy. Like, the point, the point of these businesses is to give myself and my team awesome lifestyles. Like, what else are you, what are you trying to do if not that? I didn't, I don't even understand. And so I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now is in, especially if you're from the tech industry is the whole tech industry is so brainwashed that it's all about creating multi-billion dollar companies that, um, a lot of people who would actually be super happy if they created a lifestyle business that gave them $2.5 million a year of cash flow, um, won't ever go that path because it's seen as kind of this like lesser, lesser thing to do.

And we all have friends who do that. You know, I, I tease, or we, we tease them on air, Andrew Wilkinson for doing, for doing that. But you know what was funny is you guys see Chamath from All In. He— so Chamath, for the listener, I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, many, many hundreds of millions. Very, very, very wealthy. The other day he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter and I think it was $100 a year. And what's funny is there's two things that I've found to be true is I've talked to someone who says they don't want to be public and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something and they taste that dopamine and they go, ooh, this is nice. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this again. And they love the, even though like, you know, the people who are like, oh, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be a public guy. They get in the public eye and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is even people who have big companies that are maybe venture-backed companies, and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy, even making $50,000, $100,000 a month. That can be addicting. I wonder what, what Chamath's play is with that, but he has a, he has a paid newsletter now.

Well, even worse, he's like, uh, yeah, and we're going to have it be paid. And so that's really cool because the revenue from that, um, it makes this whole thing sustainable. Like we can, we can use to hire more researchers and do better research. I was like, hey, why don't you take the 0.1% interest on your savings account that you have in with, with JP Morgan right now and use that to pay for 7 researchers. It's fine, actually. Like, it's crazy to me that, like, you know, people say like, what's the point of fucking money if you don't say fuck you? Like, what's the point of being a billionaire if you're going to do a paid newsletter? What is— what is happening right now?

The point is, is it's addicting. And so my point being is where a lot of people who like would make fun of lifestyle businesses once— I mean, and I was that person. I was like, I want to go big. And then I started tasting like a monthly monthly income, that's good. I'm like, oh, this is awesome.

I was texting Andrew Wilkinson making fun of him too, because he was doing a paid Twitter subscriber thing. And I was like, dog, you have a foundation. You're talking here, signing the Giving Pledge. Um, like, what do you care about this, like, $10K a month? Um, you know, subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to, like, perform and give them their value. But it hits for him. Like, there's something to it, uh, that for, for that, that's like giving him that value. Uh, I was, I, I couldn't believe it to the point where I told him, I was like, the only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is you're using the Twitter paid features so that Elon is like, see, this guy's doing it. And he puts you, he starts retweeting you, uh, because you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work. And then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk. I said, that's the only reasonable explanation for this.

And he denied it. He didn't.

I, I actually get Andrew doing his, his Premium X thing a little bit more because like he's having interaction with his fans. But the Chamath thing around like putting up gated content makes absolutely no sense.

Did you have— Greg, did you have any other ideas or niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest?

Let's just rapid fire.

All right, give us, give us one.

This one's a happy idea. So it's a crazy one, but a happy one. It's, listen to me now, Athletic Greens for dogs.

Okay. Okay.

Keep going.

Go on.

AG1, Athletic Greens came out of nowhere, started sponsoring all these podcasts, YouTubers. And I don't know if they're— what do you think their revenue is? Sam Parr?

600 million, 500 million. I think they kill it, but I'll do the homie move and say 100 million.

Yeah. Okay. More than 100 million. They're, they're really, really crushing it using that model. Now dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water, they drink tap water. And the question is, what if dogs drank something that was better for them, better for them than plain old water? Okay, so, uh, here's the playbook. You find the Andrew Huberman for dogs. You sponsor every top dog creator and animal lover podcast. You give packets to, to restaurants and, and bowls that say this brand for their dogs, and then you profit. The name we call it— the name we call it Goodwater. And our slogan, we do good dogs deserve good water. Now, we have to figure out what we can put in the water so that it actually is better than water itself. But this is a good example of how do you create a category of one? How do you build something where you're building something where no one else is playing? And I'm really obsessed with these types of opportunities because it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now.

Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I can see it now.

Yeah.

Great headline.

Formerly respected individual Greg Eisenberg. Yeah. Disgraces himself with good water.

Yeah, co-founder Sean P says it's really better than water, I swear.

Is Gatorade for dogs the next great thing?

Yeah, like, this is some stupid shit, Greg.

We're getting good water, boring, bad idea. This sounds like something, uh, Misfits, or what's that called? What's that, what's that company called? That Mischief.

I gotta tell you, when Craig Clements came on the pod one time many years ago and he was like Guys, we're like, what ideas you got? He's like, VR for dogs. And this is the guy who's made like 10 hit products. So he's not like some one-hit wonder. He's got 10. He's had 10 great ideas. And on our pod, he comes on and says VR for dogs. And both of me and you were like, we didn't know him that well to be like, roast him like we just did Greg. But we were like, tell us more. But you know, we were not in on it. But then I swear every time I leave the house, because he was like, look, he's like, I would pay anything if my dog could be entertained when they're alone, like, or just You know, I just don't want them to be bored. And now I swear every time I leave the house and my dog's sitting there just gonna stare at a wall and I'm like, bet your ass I'd strap on some, a pair of, a pair of, uh, you know, Oculus for dog goggles if, if it actually kept my dog entertained. So I think he was right on, right in, in spirit.

Greg, I wanna talk to you about some of these ideas because you, the first one you talk about Ryan Holiday, who's been on the pod, he's my buddy. I'm a huge fan of. And you seem like you're in a spicy mood.

First of all, I'm always in a spicy mood. I just want to put that out there. For the record.

The record is set.

For the record. The record is set. Okay. Yeah, let's talk about the first idea. So Ryan Holiday, incredible, incredible guy. Like he's built such a huge brand around stoicism. Stoicism was basically dead. Unless, you know, you were studying philosophy at Columbia. These people like Seneca, Aristotle, maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was basically dead. And what he did is he introduced Stoicism— the great name, by the way, Daily Stoic— to millions of Gen Z and millennials. So I think that there's an opportunity to do exactly what Ryan Holiday did but in the fable space. So do you remember Aesop? Aesop's Fables?

No, what is that?

Okay, so Aesop is just one of the most well-known storytellers of all time of humanity. He did like the Tortoise and the Hare, or the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. So it's basically these little stories that use animals to, to tell, you know, the moral of the story. And it's got a lot of great stuff in there, just like Seneca had a lot of great stuff in there. So I think that if you, you know, got the handle of the Daily Fabler and you started telling these incredible stories and quotes from it, You can build an audience really quickly through that. And similar to how Ryan Holiday, you know, Ryan Holiday, for those who don't know, monetized via courses, but he also monetized via his book. But he also— my favorite part of how he monetizes is he literally sells— it's a coin, he calls it a medallion. So he's got this medallion called Memento Mori.

Hey, I have one.

Okay. Why did you get one?

Because he gave it to me and I thought it was awesome. But I do think it's cool. I carried it around with me for years. I thought it was cool. I forget what is momenta. It means like you're going to die or like live the day or something like that.

Yeah. It basically means like seize the day, right? Like you're going to die. And if you know you're going to die and you're facing mortality, then—

It's Greek for YOLO.

Yeah. It's Greek for YOLO. Memento mori is Greek for YOLO. So that's a— and people pay $30 for this, and I'm sure that he's making millions of dollars selling coins to his audiences via Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram and YouTube. It's the same model, but for fables.

He told us this on the pod and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, yeah, I sell this coin. It's like, you know, cost me whatever. I don't know what it was, but let's call it a dollar. Just be generous. Assume this coin costs a dollar. He partnered with this mint in the US. They mint the coin. He sends it and he's like, yeah, I've sold shirts before. I think he worked at American Apparel. He was like the head of marketing at American Apparel. He's like, apparel sucks. Merch sucks. Shirts, t-shirts suck because there's so many sizes and colors and whatever. He's like, there's one SKU. It's one coin.

There's no return.

I sell it in a 2-pack. I sell it in a 2-pack. It ships in an envelope because it's the lightest weight thing. So like, shipping is easy, making it is easy, selling it is easy because it's a, it's a, uh, you know, it's a single SKU product. He's like, it was the low headache way to have a merch store for Stoicism. And I was like, this guy's genius. And I, I remember, I don't know if he told us or I was doing some math when I was thinking about it, I'm pretty sure he's made over $20 million just selling this coin.

I think on the pod he said he sold tens of thousands of coins.

Yeah. And then if you do the math, it's like, whatever, I think that, you know, $25, $20 a coin or something like that.

Yeah. I mean, he told us and he's killing it. But what did you say here? You said it's harder to be Seneca than it is Sahil Bloom. It's harder to be Aristotle than Alex Hormozi.

Yeah. So there's a bunch of tailwinds with this business. So first of all, Creating content is way more difficult than curating content and distilling content. And I want people to, to know that because there's a ton of businesses that you can create where you don't need to come up with any original ideas. You can just curate amazing ideas that other people have.

Hey, you're talking to two of the guys that did that.

The Hustle did that. Milk Road did that.

Exactly. It's way easier to get your own podcast producer than to steal your podcast producer. You know what I'm saying?

Also, my newsletter, the 5 Tweet Tweet Tuesday. It's the highest rated newsletter I've ever made. It's high open rate, get the most feedback on it, and it's also the easiest thing because I'm just curating 5 of the most interesting tweets versus trying to create my own original blog post every Tuesday.

So yeah, so yeah, it is easier to be Sahil Bloom than Seneca, and it is easier to be Alex Hormozi than, uh, Aristotle, because they could just take other people's concepts and curate it. So this This daily fable idea has that tailwind with it. And it's got a few more tailwinds to it. One is that another one is that Gen Z basically doesn't believe in God. Almost 50% of Gen Z is either unaffiliated with any religion or does not believe in God. But they seek out It's just human nature to seek out some greater meaning and purpose in life. So that's why they're filling their time with Daily Stoic and could fill their time with, you know, something like the Daily Fable. And this is what I call like the unbundling of religion.

What is this Pinks thing?

Pinks. So Pinks, someone I work with, partner of mine, Jordan, he, you know, he's rolling around Austin, and he sees this pink truck outside a house. And outside this pink truck is these men, you know, with mustaches and mullets, with these pink shirts tucked in. You know, he's thinking to himself, is this a porno shoot? Like, what is that? What is going on over here? And then he sees this logo, Pink's, Pink's Window Cleaning. And he finds out that it's a new window cleaning service based in Austin. And it's actually a franchise business. And if you go to their website, pinkswindows.com, they basically, you know, they've got this boring business window washing, and they, they, they jazzed it up. And they, they even have like a merch store where they've apparently sold thousands and thousands of hats.

Oh my God, John, look, I was at dinner the other night and Barshop is wearing this hat, and I look at it, I go— I think I even said, I go, what's this? Uh, just something cool. What is this? I know you're doing something cool. What is this? Because he's part of these guys that like, you know, the indie bands He knows the cool restaurant to eat at. He knows cool shit. And, and so he's like, because I'm like, why, why else would he be wearing a window washing hat? This makes no sense. And he's like, it's this brand called Pinks. They're really cool. I'm like, they're cool? Window washing? How do you even know? Like, compared to what? Like, I couldn't tell you one window washing brand, let alone the coolest one. And he's like, yeah. I'm like, so you bought the hat? He's like, I bought the hat. Style points, baby. And that was the, that was the end of that story. And I went back home and I ordered a Pink's hat because I was like, if it's cool, then I will be the follower and, and try to do it too.

So this is a part of a bigger trend, which is that I think this is kind of like the Dollar Shave Club-ification of boring businesses. So I think a lot of people, younger people, are going to be buying some of these businesses. You know, boomers are retiring, you know the story there. But I think what they're going to do is they're going to make it feel like an indie band. You know, you remember the Dollar Shave Club video, right? It was funny. Yeah, it took something boring—razors, shaving, Gillette—and made it like super cool and fun. And, and that's what Pinks is doing.

That's actually super smart because that actually kicked off like a huge wave of DTC brands. Like Sam always jokes with Sam, what's your joke about DTC brands? How do you, how do you know a DTC brand when you see one?

Well, because they like, uh, it's always lowercase. It's the same, uh, it's the same font. It's, uh, they always use millennial pink.

Yeah, exactly. And so you, so it kicked off, Dollar Shave Club kicked off this wave of DTC brands from Casper, Away Luggage, and then, you know, like just one after another. And, you know, there's hundreds of them at this point, which is basically like take boring category, do best-in-class, like kind of branding around it, but put a shit ton of money into like sort of our creative effort into the branding and then sell that kind of commodity product online. And what you're saying is people are now going to do that for these, these sweaty startup businesses. So instead of doing the boring stuff, like if you go look at self-storage or U-Haul, like These are some of the worst looking brands you'll ever see. And maybe instead of the soft, the lowercase, you know, block letter font with the soft palette, you know, the, the, that, that millennial pink, maybe it's this like vintage retro indie band, uh, look that's gonna become the like the go-to thing for window washing, trash haul removal, um, you know, HVAC, all this stuff. That is— that what you're saying? Because I think that's actually kind of brilliant.

Yeah, I'm going to call my shot here and say that Pinks is the beginning of this whole new generation. Over the next 5 to 10 years, you're going to see Pinks for X, you're going to see Pinks for lawn care, pest control, car wash, catering, pet grooming, snow removal. And I think it'll— it doesn't necessarily need to be like nostalgia plus design, but it could also be just— it's just different, interesting, and unexpected. So the guy—

it looks like the brand behind Pink's is called Resi Brands. It looks like they own 3 or 4 things. They own one called Garage Up, which is like making your garage look cool and clean. Then there's Pink's, then there's That One Painter. And then if you Google it, you can find the guy who owns it is this guy named Stephen Montgomery, and he's young. He's young with like sleeve tattoos. He looks maybe 30. He looks like a kid. It's pretty fascinating. This is a really interesting find. Do you know what their revenue is for Resi Brands? Is it— is it going well?

Yeah. So first of all, he is young. I think he graduated college like 5 or 6 years ago. Resi Brands started recently and within the last couple of years and their painting brand, That One Painter, is the fastest growing painting company in the United States. So this is a model that's starting to work. And if I'm like a PE fund, like this is what I'm doing. I'm basically acquiring boring businesses. I'm hiring an agency like Late Checkout and I'm building brands, not boring businesses.

He's like, I'm joining Hampton, then I hire Late Checkout, find some talent on Shepard. Exactly. Bada bing, bada boom, I'm there.

I was, I was, I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and he was telling me all about franchises. And so 1-800-GOT-JUNK was its own thing. He started with just one trunk or one, one truck and grew it. And I think now he owns 100% of it. It does like $200 or $300 million in revenue, really valuable business. But he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises. Franchises, that's when they really start kicking ass. But dealing and working with franchise owners, he said, or I don't know if he said it or CEO Cameron, he was like, it's very, very, very hard. And I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, oh, it looks so simple. You just do this, you do that. But doing it every single day, I think, is a huge challenge. It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover or you got to deal with fights every once in a while. I think it's— I think it has a similar, a similar type of headache.

Yeah. I mean, it's probably hard to manage and And yeah, I want to be clear on this. Pink's is actually now— it started as one location in Austin, and now they're— you could franchise your own Pink's, like if you want to bring one to New York or wherever. Uh, so they basically charge, uh, 2% marketing fee, a 7% royalty fee, and a franchise fee of at least $49,000. I think it's $49,000 to $100,000. Uh, and they actually share some of their revenue numbers. So for their one of their Austin locations. They've got 7 employees. They're doing $742,000 in revenue and they're making 36% profit on that. So $268,000. So it's a pretty good business. And yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage some of those employees, but there's something here.

Although I got to say the disclaimer, We don't know if this is a great business. It's not advice. And also, uh, you know, franchise, uh, like headquarters tend to share the numbers of like the best performing thing, not like, you know, the average or the median. Um, because we talked about a business that has a franchise. I was like, oh, this is a cool idea. I think this thing, you know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it might have, you know, here's a guess at how much it was making. And then their franchise calendar got booked out, like the meetings got booked out for like 4 months after the pod came out. So definitely can't say I personally don't endorse this. Maybe Greg is, but I personally do not. It's not my first million sponsored.

Okay, so what I was going to say on Pink's is I went— I didn't know anything about franchises until, like any internet entrepreneur, I didn't know anything about franchises until going down the Pink's rabbit hole. And I didn't realize that franchises for sure are regulated by a franchise board. So that, that's also just an interesting thing to know about. If you want to do a franchise, you have to go to these portals, you have to apply. There's only certain information that they can disclose. So I found that quite interesting. And then the other thing, interesting thing that got me thinking about Pinks and franchises is I started thinking about like, what is franchise model? What does that look like for the internet? So what is a franchise? A franchise is basically a set of— it's a business model in a box and a brand in a box and support in a box for an entrepreneur. How can we bring that, or is there an opportunity to bring that to the internet.

I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency, about how scaling agencies is hard. And maybe, I don't know why, but franchising was on my mind and I was like, I wonder why, like if I was a, like if I'm me and I have a big audience, I have a large ability to create a brand and gen— get customers. The painful part is the operations. What most people do is they partner with somebody, they run the operations, but they're gonna run into the scaling headaches and bottlenecks along the way. And I was like, what if I franchised it? Meaning I could, you could spin up, you could become one of my operators or a partner in the business. I'm gonna hand you customers like automatically. You don't have to know how to do internet marketing. You don't have to build your own brand. You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate. And we kind of like, let's just say it was, I don't know, design or web development or something. I don't know. I don't know what category makes sense. But like, you could just have a 3-person team that's going to bang out high-quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate. But like, we don't have to create a 100-person agency headquarters that's going to like have managers of managers and ensure the quality of work and then have to like increase prices because of, you know, these layers of management. Like, maybe there's another way. Maybe there's a way to do it. I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe what we're saying is the next generation of creator-led agencies actually look more like franchises than they do what they are now.

Right. Because normally a franchise, the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically expand. So like, why does Chipotle— why did Chipotle initially franchise out? Because this concept works. We can physically only launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the time we have. We can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some Chipotle in Alabama. So they find a franchisee there. With the internet, you don't have the geography problem. So that's why I think most internet companies never franchise. However, I do think that for things that are like service, like, um, you know, a service is rendered, I think that's kind of similar in that you run into servicing bottlenecks.

So where I disagree with you on the geography thing is I think it's It's not that we don't have a geography problem on, on the internet. It's just that geography is defined differently. Geography is defined in the real world, like, you know, at the corner of 25th and 5th Avenue versus on the internet. Like, you have an audience, you have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography. So I think that if someone could figure out and this is for the audience, if someone could figure out, and us honestly, if we can figure out how we could take the benefits of a franchise model and figure out how we can, you know, the reason, okay, if you go to a Chipotle in New York City or you go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same. The problem with the creator-led, going back to creator-led agencies is the, The type of product is very different as those businesses are scaling, unless the operators are, you know, have been doing this for many years. So I think there's something here.

There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet. Are you guys familiar with EOS? No. Okay. So EOS is basically an operating system for an entrepreneur. So basically We've all felt it. You're a CEO, you're running your business, and you're making it up as you go. So it's not, not just like, what's that analogy? Like, oh, we're building the plane as we're flying it. It's like, no, we're literally like trying to figure out what is a, like, what, what shape will fly while we're flying it. And so, um, you're making up how to run your company, but you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company that will apply to like, you know, 80, 90% of businesses. And so what EOS did was this guy wrote this book. I don't know the full backstory, but the guy wrote a book called Traction. In InterAction, he's talking about how to run a, like how he runs his business. It's like, oh, we come up with our annual plan and we use this scorecard. Here's the scorecard template. You can go download that for free. And like, it's basically this, like, here's a blueprint, a model for how to run your company. I've never used it. I used it.

I know a lot of people use it and it's like you have rocks and like each person's responsible for 3 rocks and it's like this whole like strategic thing. Okay.

Ours is somewhat similar to it, which is like a goal setting system. Um, so EOS is actually like kind of a monstrous business from what I understand. And the way they work is kind of through this franchise model. So what they do is they have these implementers. So EOS basically takes the lead and then they're like, cool, you're interested in implementing EOS. And it's, it's really expensive. It's like, like Sam, when you did it, what'd you do for Hampton or for Hustle?

For the Hustle, I just read the book and then I just implemented it and I showed people how to do it. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but I, it's many tens of thousands of dollars for like a 2-day workshop.

I think the implementer's like $25K or $50K or something something like that. So yeah, it's quite expensive, uh, for most people to like swallow that. Um, or it's just like, I don't know, you have to have a lot of conviction that that's going to really help you in order to pay this. But these, there are a bunch of people out there that are just simply EOS implementers. They're not, they're not like, they're not part of the company, but they are basically like these kind of freelance people that will do this. I don't know the exact structure, so I'm talking a little, little, uh, you know, off the, off the top here. So, so I might get some things wrong here. From what I understand, you have Traction, which is the book that generates a lot of leads of people who are interested in implementing this. They go to the website, they say, great, I wanna do this, they book a call, and then they either, you sort of like, you know, buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever. And then they're paying a person who's like kind of their coach to help them implement this system and then whatever. And I actually know a bunch of people that have done this. I'm not you, what I've noticed is it's kind of more beginning entrepreneurs. It's, like the best operators I know typically weren't the ones who were telling me they used EOS, but that's just an observation. I don't, I don't know if that's, if that's fair or not. But it is quite heavy. It's like a lot. It's like a full-on system. It's like a full revamp of how you, what meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff. I've had this craving to do a lightweight version of EOS because I have a system that works for me. I've used it for like 15 years. I've like fine-tuned it along the way and I'm like, And every time I meet an entrepreneur and they have some bottleneck they're hitting, I'm like, okay, well, let's trace down to the root cause of this. Like, what's getting you into this pickle? And usually it's that there's something in their process that's causing them to run into this issue. And if you fix the process, you'll fix the issue. Um, and I don't know if it's a perfect process, but like, it's lightweight, which I think is more for someone like me. Like, I'm not gonna go hire EOS and pay these guys, you know, $30,000 and spend 6 months revamping my company, probably. Like, I don't really want to do that. But if there was a lightweight version, I would do it. And I think the, the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't want to have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that. Whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically come train, like come to my workshop seminar and do like a 4-week certification process to learn exactly how to do it, and then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it. That would be fun. I would, I would do something like that. I think that's how EOS works.

Yeah. And I wouldn't be surprised if that thing makes like $30 million a year and like $15 million a year in profit. The people who are into it, they're obsessed with it. Greg, what's this? What's this? This— what's called Playing Field? I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating because I go to the website and you can't even sign up.

So Nathan Barry from ConvertKit told me about this one. Basically, It's Tom Brady's manager. Uh, he's got this newsletter. It's the most expensive newsletter in the world.

You had my attention and now you have my interest.

So, uh, his company is called Playing Field and his newsletter is called The Brief. Um, it's invitation only. I think there's a maximum of about 1,000 subscribers. In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner. Or you have to be just like a really badass top player. Um, and this is like a part of a bigger trend, uh, which I think is like luxury newsletters. So, or, or even a bigger macro trend, which is, you know, there's all these, uh, mega ultra luxury, uh, rich experiences popping up for the top 1%, be it like Soho House or private Disney tours or Aman, that hotel that charges like $5K a month. 5K a night. Okay, a night. 5K a night. And you're seeing that in the market, like, reflect that. Like, Hermès has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know. So, uh, I think the same thing is happening with newsletters, and I think there's an opportunity to, uh, basically do, uh, do what everyone is trying not to do. What everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter to get to the hustle level or to get to Milk Road level. But what if you tried to do the complete opposite? What if you created a newsletter for the top 1% that was very, very niche-focused and you just treated it like a nightclub? My favorite, my favorite quote is Andy Warhol. I think he said, Studio 54 is a dictatorship at the door, but a democracy on the dance floor. And I think there's a way to bring that Studio 54 mentality to building luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces.

How much do you think they charge for this?

I mean, we got to buy an NFL team to find out. So how much does— how much do the Jets cost?

Dude, this, this idea, style points. I mean, wow. This is incredible. What a, what a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes sense when you think about it. There was a guy, it was a big article in some, uh, something like, you know, Forbes or whatever. And it was about this guy and he's got this, like, you know that Raya was like the dating app for like hot celebrities or whatever. This guy created like the, the Raya of like experiences or something. Oh, I saw this.

Is the guy who partnered with Justin Timberlake? Myria, I guess. Yeah.

This guy's specialty is getting like super VIP experiences that like one of a kind experiences that you can't, um, you can't like you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else. Yeah.

Basically Andrew Wilk— Andrew Wilkinson told me about it if I remember correctly. Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars, one of those like things. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo, uh, on the red carpet. And I was like, what the hell? And he goes, yeah, I was part of this community or this service called, I forget what it was called, but the guy started with Justin Timberlake or something like that, went through YC. And it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know the right people. Right, right.

Okay. I'm going to read you some of the quotes from this, uh, this thing. So here's what it says. It goes. Um, you know, somebody will call him and they'll say, um, like he could basically get you treated like you were an American diplomat and like you needed to be like handled. Uh, like he could do that for you. And so he's like, oh, um, you know, you need this epic party in Mexico with private chefs. Just, you just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest. It's going to happen. And so what he'll do is he'll create like, okay, um, you're not just going to the Beyoncé concert. You're going to get to go into the dressing room and you're going to get to hang out afterwards, or she's going to call your kid on stage and get to sing with them. Like something that is like one-of-one style, um, style experiences. So here's what it says. Mirror only accepts ultra-high net worth, uh, people defined as people worth over $30 million. This, he says, this isn't the 1%, it's the 0.003%. Um, you must be willing to spend an average of $1 million a year on lifestyle alone. So, um, just on these experiences, you're willing to spend a million bucks in order to get in. Um, let me see if it has— he's focusing on the needs of the top 10,000 people in the world, and we're going to do for them what nobody else can do. And so he's like, he's like almost like a fixer, like in, uh, you know, uh, The Wolf. He's like, he's like the wolf. He's like the one you call in when you need, you just need that special something.

Yeah. So that's, that's for like physical experiences. Um, but I think what you're starting to see also is this trend around apps and software newsletters as a status symbol.

What's another example of that?

Raya was a great example of that, but I think Superhuman's another good example. So Superhuman is that email software that a lot of VCs use, and it's kind of, it's like $30 a month or something. It's kind of a flex that you can say sent from Superhuman. 'Sent from Superhuman.' It's like, Gmail is probably better than Superhuman, let's be real. Um, but having 'Sent from Superhuman' adds this like layer of, 'Oh, I take my, um, I take my job really seriously. Like, I'm a part of the 1%.' So I think there's an opportunity for people to not only create Playing Fields for X, but also Superhuman for X and other software for X.

Well, like, um, the easiest one of this on the internet is NFTs, right? NFTs were exactly this. So, um, like, just to your point of Hermès having a higher market cap than Nike, well, when, you know, when NFTs were, were out there, basically luxury art— I forgot, somebody said this thing, uh, You know, art is just money you could hang on your wall. I was like, oh, that's great. Uh, well, you know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile. And, um, that's why, you know, people would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk because it meant something. And when these were happening, uh, my buddy Vishal, he told me, he's like, oh yeah, these are Veblen goods. Uh, and I was like, what's a Veblen good? I've never heard of that. You guys know what this is?

No, what's that word? I don't even know what that word means.

Yeah. So basically a Veblen good is something where the demand increases as the price increases. So, uh, most goods, if they follow the traditional supply demand curve, which is that as a price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A Veblen good works the exact opposite way. As the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight because if the price runs up, it puts that product in more demand. But if the price starts to crash, that NFT value is crashing with the price. The demand crashes with the, with the price. And so once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this, then, um, it explains a whole class. Like, you know, the first time I heard about a Birkin bag, I was like, oh, so it's got like an elevator inside? What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care? It's like, well, they care cuz you can't buy it. I'm like, well, you can't buy it? Why don't, what do you mean? Why don't they sell it? They should sell more of these. And they're like, no, no, no, you, you have to be— you have to earn the right to buy the Birkin bag. And it's like, I had a cousin who flew to Paris to like go to the store to try to buy a Birkin bag. And I'm like, this— you made a vacation out of this? And she's like, yeah, like, I'm— I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags just to be invited to possibly buy a Birkin.

Holy shit, dude. These bags are— I'm looking at a used one on some website. It's a quarter of a million. And then there's other used ones for $30,000. So it's like the cheap end is $30,000 for these bags.

I think it's like $50K if you just buy it from the store-ish. Holy shit. And you know, and so it's a, it's a status symbol because even amongst luxury buyers, you can't buy, like you could buy all, you can have all the money you want. You can walk into Louis Vuitton, you could buy everything. You know what you can't buy? A Birkin. Why? Because a Birkin is even elevated above that. And I'm like, wow, there's, No end to the status game that gets played, um, when it comes to this stuff. And it makes you think like, you know, remember when the iPhone came out and that guy made like the app that cost $1,000 and it was called the I'm Rich app or something like that. It was just, it was like a red light or something would turn on and it, that means you bought the I'm Rich app for $1,000. It did nothing else besides that. And it got so popular. Apple then started to take it, took it off the store. Because it was like, this is not what we want. But the fact that that worked tells you something about the psychology of people, that they would, they would do that to signal, you know, their status.

Man, this is amazing. I, I've heard that word, but I've never actually seen these bags. This is wild to me. Um, this isn't— this isn't— this is insane. Wow. All right, what do we want to do now? We got to wrap up in a minute.

Yeah, give us one more, one more, Greg.

Stripe Atlas for trademarks. So we recently filed a trademark. We bought the domain boringmarketing.com and it's dope. And the business started scaling and we're like, oh shit, we need a trademark here. And I don't know if you guys have filed for trademarks, but the process is insane.

It's a pain in the butt.

It's a pain in the butt. It's actually quite expensive. And you even have to finish your work on going on these like Craigslist-y looking, uh, sites and it's pretty brutal.

Well, let, let's explain it. What happens, you typically what you do is you hire a lawyer, so that's, you know, already start off on the wrong foot. Then they're like, great, can't just file this, gotta do a search first. You want the light search for $300 or you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for $800? You're like, I guess I'll do the search. Uh, 'cause they're like, 'cause if you don't do the, I'm like, what if I don't do the search? Like, Well, we could file it and you know, that'll cost you money, but then you don't know if you get it or not. I'm like, cool, for like how long? They're like, ah, like a year, maybe a year and a half. I'm like, but then I, I have to operate my company, right? Like, so what happens if I don't get it? They're like, oh, you might need to change your company's name. Like, all right, I guess I'll do the search. Then they pay, then you hire 'em for the search and then they're like, great, now we can file. Hey, which class do you wanna file in? And you're like, you're on USPTO, the, the Craigslist looking site you're talking about. Exactly. And you're trying to figure out, What the hell's going on? And finally you file it and then nothing happens. And then nothing ever happens basically. Like a year later you'll get a letter, you got approved. And then you're like, was that even necessary? And then you're like, this is, this is just a crazy process overall.

Exactly. So, and then, and then, so it's, it's, it's very similar to, uh, what happened with Stripe Atlas. So for those of, those are people that don't know what Stripe Atlas is, it's $500 and you can basically, you know, form a legal entity, issue stock to founders, filing an 83 election, which is super painful in the United States. They basically took something that was really painful and expensive and made it easy and cheap. And the smartest thing about that for Stripe, which is obviously a payments company, is once you've set up all those things, once you— they basically send you a Stripe link and Stripe makes money when you sell stuff. So you're all ready to go and it basically onboards you to Stripe, which is brilliant. There is the same opportunity to do that for, um, trademarks. So like the name I would use if I was doing this would be Mr. Trademark. The slogan would be something like putting you out of your misery. And I think that either something like this gets bought by a Stripe. So I think there's an opportunity there. But I actually think that you probably would try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services. And I think you can expand this beyond just trademarks to patents as well. I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. Like, I don't know if patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs. But, you know, because I've actually, I've had a, I've, you know, I've been at companies where we've had patents, for example, StumbleUpon, which was basically this, they acquired my company and I was on the management team there. And I find out, like, one of the reasons I sold the business was because I was like, these guys have the patent on like recommendation engine. Like, which is mostly nonsense, right? Dude, it was like, they were like, we have the patent on this. This alone is worth, you know, $500 billion, because basically they had the patent on if you upvote something or downvote something and there's a recommendation engine at the core of it, that is their patent, AKA TikTok. I, I think that's worked.

That's worked a couple times though on the internet. Uh, I believe Reid Hoffman and Mark Marcus Pinkus, Mark, or Marcus Pinkus, the guy who started Zynga. I think they had some— what, what, what, I get his name wrong?

What's his name? No, we're going to go with that.

Yeah, Marcus Pinkus is Marcus Pinkus.

Whatever, Pinkus would be such an outrageous name.

I don't know, he's, he's an outrageous guy. Uh, didn't he own— didn't they own the patent that— I believe, if memory serves correct, I believe they owned a patent on the algorithm for social media And I think they sold it to Facebook or maybe even they gave it to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story?

No, I don't know that story, but when we bought the Bebo brand back, we got these patents with it and they had a patent for the, uh, for the whiteboard feature, meaning like you could go on someone's profile page. I don't know if you remember this, like you could go on someone's profile page and doodle, like just draw on a, like a Microsoft Paint looking whiteboard there. We had the patent for that. And I was like, cool. But Facebook has that feature. At the time, Facebook had something called the Wall that was the same thing. Like they had, they used to have that feature too. And you used to be able to graff— and MySpace had graffiti and like it was the same feature. And they were like, yeah, these don't mean anything. And I was like, nothing? Like, is it patent, like ironclad? They're like, yeah, just like not on the internet. And, uh, that's been my experience with them. I don't know if that's actually true or not, but it seems like trademarks kind of mean something because if you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you you're, you, you can't keep operating under that name, which is painful. And when you sell a company, they like for you to have everything buttoned up. Like, yes, I'm incorporated. I paid my taxes. I have my trademarks. I'm free and clear to be bought. Um, but I don't think patents do anything on the internet. What I understand. Well, okay.

So in 2000, uh, yeah. So, uh, Pincus and Reed Hoffman, they own this patent called the Six Degrees patent. Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for $700,000. But yeah, there's an article called Who Owns Facebook's Most Important Patent? So apparently it was a thing. Cool. Greg, so you're going to come on next time. Are you going to have Goodwater.com or no? You're a good—

you're a.io type of guy. Well, shots fired.

Shots fired. Yeah. Well, you're— what's your agency now?

It's— it's— there's two wars happening right now.

And that was a hate crime you just committed. You called him a.io guy.

All I know is that that just because I'm wearing glasses and, you know, if that— oh, here we go. It's, uh, sampp.io just joined the chat.

What, what's your, uh, where do, where do people connect? It's, uh, it's, uh, is it public school or latecheckout.studio? Latecheckout.studio. I see. I know you're not a.com type of guy. You have latecheckout.substack.com, right? Uh, I like your newsletter. Where else, uh, what else do you want to pimp? You, you're, you're always tweeting cool shit. Uh, you always tweet stuff with the first line being like, the future of blank is blank. Uh, which I dig.

Greg, back in the day, wrote a series of blog posts called like Tiny Little Life Hacks or something. What's the name of that post, Greg? I, it was like 10 years ago.

Little Life Hacks Guaranteed to Improve Your Life. But this is before like ThreadBoy. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You were ahead of your time. Uh, now today these are, you know, you see these all the time, but back then These were great. And I actually implemented many of these little ones that you, you, you did like a 3-part series. It was so good that people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So go read that series if you wanna love Greg. Like if people read that, they'll fall in love with you. I guarantee it.

Well, is that, that's why I'm saying your first one is dress formal when you go on flights.

Do you do that? It, it worked back in the day. It actually worked. You know, this is, this is years ago. Yeah. What else? What else on that list?

Yeah. Read off a couple others.

When you're out with people breaking bread, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah, that's a good one. Pour people's drinks before yours. People appreciate that. So Cieva, my bud Cieva, he did that to me this weekend and I was, I was wooed. He wooed me.

And I saw a picture of you and Cieva today and looks like you guys are dating. So yeah, I'm obviously—

I'm leaning into his arms. It definitely worked. Scheduled 30 meetings, not 1-hour meetings. You get through just as much. Yeah, I totally believe that. But here's the thing.

Here's the thing. This is all obvious now. So I'm good at saying like, I looked like an idiot back then. Like, all these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now. Goodwater, Stripe Atlas thing. I'm just joking.

I think Goodwater, you could definitely make that work.

Yeah, I'm the, I'm the guy who looked stupid in the moment but looks good in 5 years.

A cursed life. Yeah. Well, number 3 is to send postcards to friends. So I'll be on the lookout for a postcard.

Yeah, you had one that was like, um, go to this little website and they have a bunch of unique gifts and it's like, just show up not on a gift-giving occasion, but when you go meet someone, just bring one of these for them. Like, yeah, uh, you know, people obviously remember it. These are sound just like, you know, How to Win Friends and Influence People, but it's real. And like, especially in Silicon Valley, like the social, like IQ was like so low that if you did any of these things, like, you know, you know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, yeah, you pour the other person's water first or you show up with a gift.

But like, you know, I mean, I almost sold my last company because I met someone. I gave them a tiny Buddha and they remembered me. Like they made an offer to buy my business. So it does work.

It's one of those things where you're like, of course I should do this, but you don't actually do it. And then you read it and I'm like, all right, fine. I'll start, I'll start sending GIFs.

That's a perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, yeah, I know, I know those, those aren't new. And then if you just said, okay, cool, let's look at this question differently. How many of these do you do regularly? And now all of a sudden, instead of knowing 10 out of 10, you do 1 out of 10 regularly. Like that gap is why I like that blog post.

Greg, dude, we appreciate you coming on. You're, you're full of ideas. You were supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry I crashed your party today, but things change. But I appreciate you doing this and coming with us. This is a blast.

I was smiling the whole time.

Good. That's a win. All right. Appreciate it. That's the pod.