A Breakdown of Trendy New Businesses & Boring 9 Figure Businesses | My First Million #202

when we think of entrepreneurship and we think of starting stuff, we think, how can I be innovative? How can I be new? In reality, in order to make a lot of money, it's how do I get locked into this to the point to where like it's going to be a pain in the ass to go anywhere else. Yeah, I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back. All right everyone, we've got a good episode. We're gonna talk about Class Ring. The Class Ring business shockingly brings in close to $1 billion a year for a company that you might have heard of, but we're gonna do a breakdown of them. Um, what, what else is there? We're gonna talk about stretching gyms. I'm a huge fan of paying $100 and going to the Stretch Lab. We're gonna break that business down. What else are we gonna talk about?

We talk about the business of ephemeral tattoos. So tattoos that only last year. This is a trend that I'm watching. And, uh, and we talk about some, some of the pod stuff, how we're looking at YouTube, how, uh, how we're thinking about content right now. And then last but not least, we talk about a couple businesses that are interesting, kind of Google-based businesses. I call them couch cushion businesses 'cause it's like these little things in the cracks that you don't really, once you go look in the couch cushion, you find some money, but you don't really think about these. And some of them are scams, some of them are not. We talk about those at the end.

Yeah, in my opinion, most of them are scams. And we actually do a breakdown of them around the 50th minute of this podcast. So wait till the end and we'll get to it. You'll love it. Talk soon. Did you see, did you listen to the episode that I released today or today's Monday? Uh, it's, uh, did you listen to that?

No. What is it?

So I consumed like 8 or 9, like pretty interesting pieces of content last week or, and I talked about 4 or 5 of them. Did you see this guy named Ben Moolah who I talked about?

No. Who is that?

Okay. So Ben Moolah, I put it in the doc. If you've heard the Monday episode today, this is a little bit of a repeat, but I cannot stop watching this guy. He's this big old fat guy, like 400 pounds fat because he's probably like 6'3" and he's disgusting. He's like, smokes cigarette and he like looks like he smells and he like always hits people like on the back real hard. He's just gregarious and in your face. And on the surface he appears like incredibly dislikable and cocky. And I love him. He turns out to be, he seems pretty quite charming and he's a real estate tycoon down in South Florida. And all he does—

should I Google this guy? Ben Moolah.

Yeah, all the photos of him, like, it just, it's an immediate turn-off. But then you like get into the videos and he's been, he's basically, he's like a successful guy who's now just starting to do YouTube. He's probably in his mid-50s. And so he's not like a YouTuber who, you know, he's, he does it the right way where he's successful and now is doing YouTube. Very fascinating. I can't stop watching this guy. You see what he looks like? Yeah.

So he's, uh, Ben Mala is his name. So he, uh, he looks like, um, what's Joe Rogan's friend's name? Joey Diaz. He looks like Joey Diaz does real estate. Joey Diaz moves to Florida and does real estate.

And he, he wears like gaudy clothes and he's sitting there smoking Marlboros outside of like a Ramada Inn or like a Holiday Inn that he's about to buy for $20 million. But then he gets into like a $500,000 Bentley. And so it's like a really funny juxtaposition, really interesting guy, great advice on real estate and business. Nice. Very fun YouTube. You'll have to start watching this guy. He's brilliant.

I'm going to subscribe.

He's beautiful. And that's actually what we need to do with our podcast. Our podcast, actually, I'm going to— I got to figure out how to do this. We need to become a YouTube channel that happens to have a pod. Do you know what I mean?

Yes, I know what you mean. Uh, explain why you say that though.

So for one, I'm just, I've been a YouTube fan for 5 years. I've been a paying subscriber and it's my life. If it's not on you, like I don't, I only watch YouTube. Including YouTube TV though, which is basically, which is TV, but so that's a little cheating, but the discoverability is so good. And I've been watching Gary Tan's video, you know, Gary Tan. Yeah. Yeah. I, he's wonderful. I don't think his content is any better than us, but I think it's packaged better than us. And there's a lot to learn from that. And I think that whenever I see a video he does, I'm like, oh man, I totally could have done that. He just packaged it in such a wonderful way. And the discovery of discoverability on YouTube is significantly better than podcasts.

For sure. And, um, it's just more fun. It's more fun to watch a YouTube video. And like, I don't know if we have it kind of skewed because we're able to, um, we have YouTube Red or whatever the premium thing's called. So we're able to go in the background and basically make it a podcast whenever we want. I think for a lot of people, they don't pay for that thing. Uh, so that's probably the main difference. But once you pay for that, YouTube is just amazing. It's so good.

Yeah, we need to make that shift. I'm going to work on that this week, actually. And then one last quick update. One thing that I'm trying to do that I've actually done for the last— tell me what you think about this. I've done it for the last 5 or 6 days and I didn't mean to do it at first, but now I don't want to break it. I've walked around 20,000 steps a day for the last about 5, 6 days.

What are you using to track it?

Well, just my iPhone. So I was using the Health app. Then I downloaded like a, uh, uh, what's it called? A Peta. What's the, uh, Anyway, I downloaded an app for it.

Gotcha.

And it's awesome. A pedometer. That's what it is, a pedometer. It's awesome. Have you ever walked? Have you ever tried to do like 10,000 to 15,000 a day?

Bro, walking, that's— walking is the new running. No, uh, I don't know. I've, I've never really liked step counters. I always found them to be like kind of underwhelming. So for example, I was like, you know, like I've got like a Fitbit or whatever the first, whatever the early ones of those were, and I hit 10,000 steps. On what I felt like was a very lazy day. And immediately in my head I was like, oh, this is for like old sedentary people and I can't use this as like a barometer of success for me. But you're really fit and you seem to care that you hit 20,000 steps. Who cares, right? Isn't like an hour of intense exercise really what you want and not 20,000 steps?

Yes and no. So there's pros and cons. So the con is that for walking the amount that I'm walking, it takes forever, like 3 hours. Just 3 hours of straight walking. Uh, some regards, that's a pro because it's fun to be out there and seeing stuff. I'm in a new place exploring, so it's fun. But the pro is also, uh, so basically if you run 10 miles, that will— like, if you run 10 miles really fast, that will take you 60 minutes, right? If you walk 10 miles, that's going to take you 3, 4 hours, but you can actually burn the same amount of calories doing it, which is kind of interesting, right? It takes the same amount of energy to move your body that distance. But when you walk that much, you don't get that hungry. The problem, whenever I run a lot or whenever I work out a lot, I get really hungry and I, and I outeat the calories that I consumed. With walking, I haven't done that. I don't, I don't outeat the calories. Like, I don't get starving. So it's been like a really easy way to slim down. Anyway, I just thought, I thought I'd bring that up. You want to get into it?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Which one do you want to go with first? I know Joss's, right?

Well, actually, you just— on your random life updates, so two things on that. Uh, one, I don't know where this came from, but over the weekend, I guess you were talking about step counting, and I was just remembering there's this little clip I watched on YouTube from The Office about when Dwight gets a standing desk. I don't know if you watch The Office, but have you ever seen this?

Do you—

I don't know if you remember this, probably not, it's pretty obscure.

But a deaf dude, I mean, I'm like a mo— I'm, I'm a normal 30-year-old that I've, I've I could quote every single office.

Right. So, so Dwight gets a standing desk, and like everybody who gets a standing desk, like, it's like awesome for 15 minutes, and then you start doing the thing where like you're on one foot while you're like kind of letting the other foot like chill for a second. You're like stretching out your ankle, and then you're doing the other side, and then you're kind of like squatting a little bit because you're tired of standing. And, um, and they're basically like, oh wow, Dwight, at first he's like shitting on everybody, like, oh, you're sitting, you're, you know, this is, he goes I feel like I'm working in a suicide cult because you guys are all deciding to sit. And so then they turn the tables on him when they know he's getting tired and they're like, Dwight, wow, I can't believe you've made such a great decision. You're for sure going to just do this forever, right? There's no way you go back on this, right? And he's like, of course not. But he's secretly fatiguing really hard from the standing desk. Anyway, so they sort of guilt shame him and he ends up with this little like, like hidden stool in his pants so that he can like stand, uh, he can like sit while he's like pretending to stand. Um, and so that reminds me of the step counting thing, which are these like little phases that everybody goes through and where you're just like, you know what, I need, I need to, I need to hit my 10,000 steps. Like, I feel like everybody has this phase of their life where they like get into that, they buy the device, they do the thing for a bit, then they like get off of it. Most people do at least. But anyways, the reason I say this is over the weekend I was supposed to be working because I got back from this trip and I was supposed to be working, and instead I was just watching a bunch of content. I was watching, um, you know, you know, Aaron Sorkin.

So I was like, yeah, I mean, the famous director.

Yeah, writer, uh, you know, kind of like, I don't know if he's producer, director, or writer, but all three maybe. He, he created West Wing, Newsroom, uh, The Social Network movie, and he's like amazing. He's brilliant. He's known for his dialogue. So I was just kind of like trying to branch out, trying to learn about what is— how do you even write dialogue? What is that? What makes it great? Why is this guy so much better than everybody else? So I was watching a bunch of his videos where he talks about how he does it, and it really made me want to write a TV show. And not to, like, make a TV show or make a career out of it, but I just want to write one episode. And so I decided I'm going to write an episode of The Office and I'm going to release it. So that's my challenge for this next 30 days. In the next 30 days, I'm going to write an episode and it's just gonna be text and it's gonna be, I'm just gonna steal all the characters from The Office and, uh, I'm gonna see what I could do. And I think this is gonna be a lot of fun and I'm gonna release it to, uh, anybody who I guess follows me on Twitter or on my newsletter or something like that.

My prediction is that it will at worst be mildly good. I think you're good. I think you're good at it. I, I think you'll be good at it.

I've never done it, right? So like that's the beginner part of it, but I think I could be. I, I'm also like, I think you could. I think I'm, I'm like cocky about it. I feel like I can do a good job. Did you ever read this guy Ross wrote an episode of Silicon Valley? So this guy, he was an early Facebook employee. He's the creator of Mozilla, the browser, or Firefox or whatever. Or no, his name's Blake, I think. Blake Ross.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he just, like, for fun, wrote an episode of the Silicon Valley HBO show. And it's amazing. If you've never read this, you should definitely Google this and read it. And if you watch the show, when you read it, it's like as good as a normal episode of the show. It's crazy. And so I was very inspired by that. I was like, man, what a, what a polymath, right? Like the guy can create a browser, early Facebook employee, and is just able to like write a screenplay basically on his first try, which was, I thought, incredible.

I think you're, I think at worst it's going to be pretty mildly good. I think at best you could actually have a home run. That's my prediction for how this is going to be. And, uh, so today's July 19th. You now have, now you're on the ball. Well, no, let's do August, the end of August. August, what is there, 28? How many days are in August?

31 days.

All right, you have to August 31st, and then, uh, now you're on the hook.

And in general, I'm thinking about content, like, okay, content strategy, because I'm kind of like, I haven't been posting much on Twitter or anything like that, and I feel like once I started getting really into Twitter, I just noticed all the other kind of like Twitter thread wannabe people like me out there who were just like doing the same thing, and it was really a turn-off. Like, I enjoyed doing it and I enjoyed the results of it.

That's what I told you.

But I hated that everybody else was doing it. It made me feel like such a schmuck. I felt like going to a club and then being like, you need to get a table if you want into this club. It's like, oh, okay, here's my credit card. I guess I'll pay 1,000 times what the bottle costs. I felt like a big chump the first time I did bottle service. And the second time I felt like a chump in life was when I was doing Twitter threads of generic business advice like everybody else. And so now I think I'm going to zig and zag the opposite direction where I'm just gonna go with like, I'm gonna do a few, like what I think are pretty badass pieces of content that are extremely challenging for me. And if they flop, they flop, but I'm gonna like go ham on them. Like I'm gonna, you know, like I'm gonna write a rap song or I'm gonna write a screenplay or I'm gonna like, like try to create something that's like much more, uh, intense and possibly awesome.

I, I think you're right. And I'm gonna take credit because I wrote about this and I talked on this podcast about this about 6 or 7 months ago. I was like, these threads are killing me. I think longer form blog posts are gonna be coming because everyone's like, I want to start a newsletter, I want to get popular on Twitter. I'm like, all right, great, do that. I actually think that there could be a bigger opportunity to create a more in-depth blog post. I have, I had a, I have a feeling that this is kind of what humans are craving at the moment. Or like, this is like, I don't know what people are craving. I mean, I think every type of content will always be—

at least 1/10 as much content, but have it be 10 times as good. And because of that, stand out from the crowd and have more fun. Like, because I'm not like, constantly just doing quick hits. I'm like trying to do great work each time, which I think is harder, but more fun.

Maybe something that I've been thinking about is related to content. Cause I ask myself all the time about how you can, I like repackaging content. There's a few things that I've always been interested in content. So there's this thing with email. So a lot of people think of email as like 2,300 words that you can fit in there or whatever. I forget what the space is. It's a certain megabyte space, but you should actually think of it like I'm just going to make these numbers up. These aren't right. It's 150 megabytes. And it just so happens that 250— 2,500 words is 150 megabytes. But what else can you tell in that story? And there's some interesting technology that I've tinkered with and we've never gotten into at The Hustle, but I think we should. So you can actually host a GIF on your own server, and this might change with Apple's new update, but you can make it so when you send someone an email, you can have like a 30-second GIF on there. And a GIF is basically a video with text. Yep. Um, which is the same thing as Instagram without sound, right? It's the same thing. And what about, what I've always wanted to do was to put that on there and then have a part 1. And then you tell at the end of the part 1, at the end of the 20-second thing, you say, all right, all right, now hit refresh. And you actually hit refresh and part 2 shows up on your—

Oh, interesting.

And I've always wanted to do things like that. Like, I think that's an interesting medium. I think that could like be hacked and be, and you could have a really, really cool storytelling. Yeah, I think so. I would suggest someone try that on email. It is possible, like it's technically possible to do that. And I think that could be really cool. Another thing is I've always asked, if you were using Twitter for a longer form blog post, what would it look like if you had a blog post on Twitter that was something like 500 tweets long?

Right.

I've been thinking about like, what would— like, how do you hack the— how do you hack the rules? Yeah, that's kind of interesting to me.

Anyway, all right, let's, let's get into it. Okay, so that's my content. Uh, I'm putting my stake in the ground. I'm announcing it publicly, so now I'm committed to having to do it.

Do you want to talk about— let's talk about stretching labs or stretching gyms. Can we talk about that?

Yeah, let's do it. Because you were talking about walking, and this is actually what I was going to transition to, which is kind of like the, uh, the slow exercise movement. So I was working out with somebody who's— I think they're 41, and I was like, they're a former bodybuilder, and I was like, so, um, You know, so like, what's it— what's— what are you working on nowadays? You're trying to get like shredded or like build muscle? What's the— he's like, bro, just function. I was like, what? And you've been talking about this mobility training. He's like, I have a personal trainer. He's like, we— he's like, he pointed at the bench press and pointed at the like kind of like the stretching table and was like, I want to spend more time there, not there. Um, and I was like, interesting. And, and by the way, I woke up with like massive shoulder pain today, so I'm all about it right now. But, um, I noticed there's a trend. So I have this This is my segment called Trend Watching. I got two trends today. So Trend Watching, the first one is Stretching Labs. I never really heard of this, but there's gyms that dedicated to stretching. I don't know if you've ever been to one. One is called— well, yeah, one is called Stretch Lab. It's a franchise. I think they have like 1,000 locations in just like 5 years or something crazy like that. So definitely like franchising pretty hardcore nationwide. And then there's another one. I like the name of this one, Stretch Relief, which is kind of like stress relief, and it's based in New York. And it was like a physical place, but then with COVID now they do like online, whatever. But I'm kind of into this. So place you go and you're not— it's not yoga, it's not Pilates, it's like, it's not cycling, it's not spin class, it's not high intensity training. It's another one, stretching. And I just think there's a market for all of these. What do you think about this? You've definitely thought about mobility and stretching a lot.

I am obsessed with stretching. I stretch a ton. I download all types of different apps because I enjoy trying them all, but I stretch on a consistent basis.

You're like trying to do the splits and stuff, right?

Yeah, yeah. Like, I work really hard at it and I, like, study different types of stretching. The only type, or one of the very few types of stretching that's proven to work— I forget exactly what it's called, but basically it's this idea where if you want to stretch your hamstring, like in a split, let's say you're doing the front splits and you want to stretch your hamstring, you actually need to push down for 10 seconds really hard. So you're— you want your hamstring to flex for 10 seconds and then you release. And that allows you to stretch even further. I don't— it does something with the brain. I don't entirely understand how it works, but I've read a lot of studies and it's one of the few proven ways. And so I've been obsessed with that. I've gone to Stretch Lab. It's $100. I've did it in San Francisco and in Austin. And totally, totally fun. Totally worth it. I loved it. I've been trying to go in Brooklyn where I'm staying now. I can't find a place that does this. I'm completely on board with this. I've also tried to buy different stretching machines. Stretching machines have always fascinated me because stretching is one of the few exercises where you don't actually have to put that much effort into it and to get results. Like someone can kind of do it to you. It's not like with running where it's just like I gotta put all the effort, like I can just kind of be numb and someone can do it. And so there's split machines where you can do side splits and you like sit in this thing and you crank this wheel and your legs open up. That's okay. That's, that's fine. But what I've been looking for is front split machines and different types of stretching machines. I have found close to nothing. And so at my, gym in my house, I was thinking about buying a set of winches, like a winch, like it goes on the— on the— on a Jeep to like pull a cord. I was going to put some on each side of my wall and create a stretching machine. It's probably going to look like a sex machine.

Yeah, I think you could just buy something else and just use it for a different purpose.

I guess you could just buy a sex machine or like a reformer. But anyway, I'm totally on board with this. I think stretching is actually a trend that's going to continue to grow. We've talked about it now for a year now. We've talked about ROM. ROMWOD, which is called Range of Motion Workout of the Day, which is an app that's killing it. We've talked about Kelly Star. We've talked about a lot of this. I'm totally on board with stretching.

Yeah, Stretch Tech. So I'm keeping an eye on that trend. I have another trend if you're ready to move on to my second trend.

Really quick, what another thing you could do with stretching. So it's stretching in order to have one of these franchises, you really just need a table, right? Like nice tables with some bands. Another two other things that are really interesting to me in this space The first is chanting and breathing work. So I went to breathwork. I went to this one class where I paid $30 and we just sat there with 30 other people doing breathing. And then eventually you like chant. I don't understand the science behind it, but I know that I felt great. It was fun. It was a good experience.

You get an absolute high. So before, not in a fitness context, but one time I was, when I started the sushi restaurant, I was staying in LA with the sushi chef. His mandate was, all right, if I'm going to start this business with you guys, You're going to each come. I had 3 co-founders. There's 3 of us. He said, you're each going to come. You're going to live with me. You're going to work every day at my restaurant for 3 weeks each and only one at a time. So you don't have each other as your little safety net. And I said, okay. So, you know, one guy went out there, the second guy went out there, then I went out there. And with me, he goes, it was like, you know, kind of a life-altering experience. A very wise guy, like kind of like a Mr. Miyagi sort of character for me. And one of the things he did, he's like, are you religious? And I said, no, I don't believe. He said, He said, "I'm Buddhist." I said, "Okay, cool. Do you know anything about Buddhism?" "No." And he goes, "All right, tomorrow morning, 7:00 AM, meet me in the living room." And I was like, "Oh shit, here we go." And we went there. And so I didn't know anything about Buddhism, and I still know very little about Buddhism, but Buddhists have this chant that they do, or at least his practice or maybe his sect or whatever it was. They have this one chant. It's called Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So it'll be like, "Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo." And you repeat that. For like 1 hour straight, you're chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, just 1 hour straight. And so we start and I'm just trying to be nice and I'm like, okay, I guess I'll just kind of sit here and like, what are these 5 words? Do I need to know what they mean? No, I don't need to know. What do you mean? He was just like, just the sound is therapeutic. And I was like, oh, that's interesting because in Hinduism, Om, it's like Om, is like Om. And you hear that in yoga a lot too. And there's something about the vibration of making this sound all audibly making the sound that by the end of it, you feel different than you did at the beginning. And so by the end of this hour, I had this, like, I don't know what it was, just like a rush of euphoria, basically, from chanting. And he was like, I do that every morning. It's like an audio— I forgot what it's called. Transcendental meditation or something. It's a form of meditation where you're not trying to— it's like a way to quiet the mind by chanting the same thing on loop. And when you quiet the mind, you finally you get a sense of peace that's very hard to achieve otherwise. And after I did that, I was like a big believer in chanting. So I've continued to— I'm not Buddhist, but I've continued to do this chanting thing on and off for like the last 10 years of my life.

Well, and you feel like an idiot doing it. So if I told you to do it without your guy there, you would feel like a fool. And I went and I felt like a fool too. So I went to one of these classes and you do breathwork, which I don't understand the science behind it, but it felt awesome. It felt like I was it felt like a very mild drug.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and part of it is chanting and it felt great. And when I talked, the guy was like, yeah, this is like our MVP. Like I found it on Eventbrite. He's like, we're thinking about scaling this and doing it. It was all startupy guy. And I was like, dude, this is greatest business ever. You just need like a space for like 50 people and nothing else. Yeah. The floor. Yeah. You don't need anything. Like I'm in. If you ever like, so, so anyway, I think that's interesting. I also think ice baths are interesting. I know I've been noticing on Instagram. Loads and loads of ice baths. We talked about this company. What was the ice bath company called?

The Barrel Company. Ice Barrel.

Ice Barrel. So IceBarrel.co or something. It's, I know the guy who started it and they're selling an ice barrel for like $1,200 or $1,300. I'm seeing them everywhere. I think ice baths, particularly places that you can go just to take an ice bath, I think are going to get quite popular. I think an ice bath also has a slightly meditative purpose to it. So the— I would add that, I would add those two things to stretching to look out.

Yeah, same. I just yesterday I sent this TikTok this guy who's like, hey guys, just want to take you through my morning routine. He's like a 60-year-old dude who's just like absolutely chiseled somehow. It's like, okay, I don't know how your body looks like that. A little unnatural, but okay.

Was it Mark Sisson?

No, he wasn't like a famous guy. He was just like a guy. He's like, first things first, I get in the cold plunge. And he's like, I get in and I don't do a lot of like— he's like, I just get in. That's it. And then he's like, and then at 3 minutes I get out, I go in the jacuzzi. He hops over his pool to get to his jacuzzi. He's like, and then We're going to go to the sauna. And all the comments are like, sir, I don't have these amenities at my house. I don't have all these things. And I think that's the opportunity, which is that when people have these things, they sort of swear by them. Like, our friend Ramon swears by it. Tony Robbins always talks about this is how he starts his day. He goes straight into the ice plunge, then goes straight to heat. And so there's definitely some anti-inflammatory and sort of neurological effects of waking the body up like this with something, a drastic physiological change, a stimulus. And you don't need caffeine, you don't need drugs to be able to get your body to respond. But I think there's a problem, which is that they're so inaccessible. So we talked about Ice Barrel, and then somebody reached out, a guy who's in my Club LTV, like the e-commerce group I have for people who have an e-commerce store of $1 million or up. And he said, oh yeah, I have this one brand now, but I'm starting a new brand. And his first brand is pretty successful, I think probably $20, $30 million. His new brand, is going to do ice baths, but it's just a device you put into any tub, like your normal bathtub, and it makes your bathtub water really cold. And I was like, oh, that's way better because I don't want to do like ice.

I don't want to buy ice.

I don't want to buy ice all the time. That's a huge pain in the ass. And this like Ice Barrel thing, like, is a $2,000 barrel.

Yeah. And you can only— you can't use it if you have an apartment.

Right. And so I'm like, well, if I already have a tub and you just let me fill it up with normal water and I put this thing in for 10 minutes and it gets cold, Like, that's awesome actually. Like, now you just built like a $150 device that does this without the headache.

Is it like electronic? Like you plug it in?

Yeah, I don't know how you put electric things in water. Like, I'm a little bit suspicious.

Well, it's like a— it's like the opposite of a heating pad.

Yeah, exactly. And so it cools water. So I'm very excited about this. But if anybody has like either ice or sauna technology, send it to me. So show me— show it to me. I really want to try these. I'm very big on this stuff.

Great. Uh, same. So the second for trendspotting is, uh, tattoos.

Yeah, ephemeral tattoos specifically. So if you go to ephemeral, which is kind of hard to spell, ephemeral.tattoo, check that out. So basically this is a trend I've been noticing. First, there was a company called Inkbox that just made temporary tattoos, kind of like essentially it's a body sticker. And they started doing pretty well. They came out a while ago and they do kind of like $20, $30 million plus in revenue last I had heard, which was a few years ago. And so Inkbox had done pretty well, and this new one, Ephemeral Tattoo, just raised $20 million. It got my attention. I said, what's going on here? So what these guys have is a biodegradable ink that you, um, that can go into even like a normal tattoo gun. So you got to go to a place. So Inkbox is sort of like a sticker you just put on your skin and then it just fades away. This is like actually a legit tattoo, but it's a 1-year commitment instead of a, you know, a 50-year commitment or whatever, like a normal tattoo is. So you go, you actually get it tattooed onto your body and it degrades after 12 to 15 months, it fades away. And so they have like one studio open in like LA, one in like New York, and they raised $20 million to do two things. One is to release like colored tattoos because right now it's just black and white. And the other is like to open more studios because the way it works is you put down, it's like Tesla, you put down a $20 deposit and that lets you basically book a reservation at this thing. And they have like a million dollars worth of like pre-booked reservations at their studios that they just are backlogged on and need to, need to do. And what I thought was interesting about this, I was like, okay, cool, just like some kind of like material innovation on the material science of the ink. But I like that this can go into a normal tattoo because I think what the— I think the best— I think it's sort of stupid to open up their own, uh, you know, tattoo parlors. Maybe you'll do a few of those, but there's 21,000 tattoo parlors in the United States. That's like the same number of like high schools are in the United States. So there's one, one tattoo parlor for high school, essentially.

Is that, is that a real stat?

Yeah, there's estimated 21,000 tattoo parlors and there's about 20, 20, 25.

I think you're wrong, by the way. Them having this studio is awesome. It doesn't matter if it makes money or not.

I guess what I'm saying is I think what they should do is they should sell this to every tattoo parlor as the, hey, you want Diet Coke, right? You want the diet tattoo? You don't, you want the not lifelong tattoo commitment? Hey, we sell this thing, it plugs right into our normal thing and we are, we have the staff, we have the brick and mortar locations. So I think they could roll out to 10,000 locations like this rather than opening up their own store brick after brick. So anyways, I'm pretty excited about this. I think it's kind of a cool idea.

I, uh, I'm gonna sign up. I'll go to it. They have a Brooklyn one. I was about to get some more tattoos. I would totally do that.

Right. You have a few, uh, a few interesting tattoos on your body that you could talk about.

I've got a few bad ones. So I have 1, 2, 3, I've got 4 homemade ones. And the way that you do a you, the way that you do homemade ones is you use a sewing needle and ink and you just make a ton of dots. I did that when I was like 21 and like partying. I was highly intoxicated. I don't entirely regret them, but they look silly.

I saw like, it says like, what do you have on your foot? You have like something on your foot.

I saw like mom or something. No, it says wow or mom. It depends. And then I have feet tattoos that say act now, which are kind of cool. They're kind of cool.

But yeah, like self-administered tattoos. Not every day you see one of those.

Which is actually, uh, quite popular is homemade tattoos. It's called Stick and Poke. When I did it, I didn't think that they were that popular, but I think they actually are quite popular. But anyway, this tattoo business, I'll 100% sign up for that. It looks— sign up for them. It looks pretty sick. They are black and white. So like, they do look basic. Yeah.

Yeah.

They look pretty like, like I would get it. But if you're like a cute girl and you probably don't—

it's not just that they're black and white. It looks like they're not like colored in. So they're just like an outline of a shape, or at least that's what I see on the website. It's like a cat, but like the cat. It's just like the outline of a cat.

Yeah, I'm into this shade, ephemeral tattoo. I, I think you're on board there.

It just opens up the market, right? Like, if there's, if there's like a circle that says, this is, this is a circle that represents a number of people who are willing to get tattoos for life, you say, and now there's an option that you can have a tattoo, but it's only going to last a year and it'll fade away. Okay, that circle just got like 3 times bigger, 4 times bigger. You're just increasing the size of the addressable market for tattoos, which is smart.

So I think that's cool because you get to try something for a year that you could potentially impact the rest of your life. You know, it's always freaked me out, like, and we don't discuss it too much, but, or like as a society, we accept that that's normal. Buying a home, you basically go into it for like 10 minutes and you're willing to spend all of your money, like every dollar that you have and 30 years of your life after like a 15-minute walkthrough. Is that crazy?

Is that nice to give you a 100-page disclosure that you can't understand and then you read some scary stuff in there and then you're just like, I guess, I guess I just live with that termite issue.

I always just thought it was mind-boggling that you can— you, you have to spend 15 minutes for making a decision that, and for most people, it's all their money and also it's for 30-plus years of their life, right, off a, off a 15-minute walkthrough. That's always That's always been crazy to me. So this is— that, that's— well, this is good for tattoos that they get that moment. You want to talk about these, uh, these top 2 things?

I think, yeah. So, so I was thinking about class rings, uh, or I think, um, somebody— Ben shared a tweet with me that was just like a meme. It was like, uh, the, the— if people want to know how we get ideas for this, so me and Ben just send each other shit off Twitter all day, and then some of it, you know, it's just like memes. But, but I started thinking about it. He goes some guy Coleman Oates, he goes, y'all remember when a company would come to your high school and gaslight you into buying a $400 class ring? And there's just like, whatever, like 100 likes on this tweet. And I just thought it was so funny. And I remember that happening. I remember buying a class ring and I lost it. I don't know where it is. It was like a waste of money. It's so ugly. I was never going to wear it, but I bought it because I was like, I guess this is like the moment I'm supposed to commemorate these 4 years and it's now or never basically to buy this ring. So I like kind of got pressured into buying it. And so I started thinking about this class ring business. So let me tell you some things I discovered. All right. So this guy's kind of like my Billy of the Week. I got two very boring business people that I'm going to feature here. So the first guy is called Otto Josten, and Otto Josten is the founder of Josten's, which is the number one class ring maker. And Otto Josten, he invents the class ring basically. So he started this thing in 1897 in Ottawa, right? This is like, you know, over 100 years old. And so he invents this thing and basically says, okay, great, we're going to have these rings that commemorate the occasion. And so he creates a class ring. And so how does this work? So basically high school or college, you go to the school at the end of your senior year, you get upsold into all this stuff. You get upsold into like, you know, shirts, yearbooks. But the class ring is like kind of like one of the more expensive items, $400, $500. $600 for a class ring sometimes. And so I was looking into the history of this company. So basically the company existed for a long time, goes public in like 1965 or whatever, stays public for a while, ends up getting acquired by private equity. So it gets acquired by something called Newell Brands. And this is like an interesting company to look into. They own Rubbermaid, Crock-Pot, Oster, like all these home appliance companies. Then they own Elmer's Glue, Sharpie, Yankee Candles, like all these brands that we know about. They have $10 billion in revenue across their portfolio of brands. And so they had, they bought Jostens and they were like, look, this company makes about $700 million a year, but it's been flat or declining. Like the yearbook and classroom industry is sort of like declining 5% a year. And so it's like, ah, you know, maybe there's room to turn around. So they buy it for $1.5 billion, I think.

Yeah.

And then they try it for a few years, can't do anything with it. They sell it to another company, Platinum Equity. For $1.3 billion. So they take a $200 million loss on it, sell the company. So it's still owned by Platinum Equity and it's just this thing that exists. So it started getting me interested, like, how does this whole business model work? What I couldn't find is what's in it for the schools, because the schools definitely give these people like real estate, uh, on campus or on, on premises to sell this stuff. So I wonder if there's a rev share. I couldn't find that, that detail, but it got me thinking, how would I compete with this if I was going to compete with this? So I thought this would be a fun brainstorm. So, all right. Boring business. How would you compete with this?

So, well, let, let, let's walk through how seniors come into this. You know, I used, did you use Josh, Jossen's in high school?

I think, I think we bought Jossen's.

Yeah. Uh, so basically if I remember correctly, you're a senior and you get a magazine. Do you get a magazine? Like do they hand, do they hand like a pamphlet to all seniors?

So I remember buying it from a table. There was like a table set up with a little like tablecloth and on it was a bunch of rings. I think they did have a brochure of like, here's all the different models you can order. Try them on, and then like you place your order and you pay the thing and then it arrives, you know, months later.

And your school knows who's ordering, I think, because I didn't order one. I was like, I don't— this is nonsense. I don't— I don't like high school this much. Like, I don't want a ring. And my school came to me and they were like, are you having trouble at home? And I was like, no. They're like, do you need money to buy the ring? We'll buy it for you. And I was like, no, that's lovely. I appreciate you guys, but I just think it's stupid. I don't want, I don't want a ring. And then they had a ring ceremony and they just handed me a plain box and it had like, I went to a Catholic school and it had like a, a cross or something in it so that they just—

Is this high school you're talking about?

Yeah. So they like had some type of thing to give me and I was like, I appreciate you guys, but I don't want any of this stuff. But anyway, they, the school knows who orders as well.

Right. And so, so, okay. I was thinking about, okay, I think there's two models to this. There's distribution and then there's product. So on the distribution side, I would definitely try to figure out How do I partner with either the school themselves or a sub-entity in the school? And so, um, uh, did you invest in that company Copper that I sent you?

We passed.

We passed. Okay. So one of the clever things that they do, I won't go into their whole playbook, but they have an awesome playbook on how to— they're— they make it like a debit card essentially for high school students. And, um, they grow really well. And the people who were behind it, they created a different product for high schoolers. And they had a playbook of basically how do you get high schoolers on board for your thing. And one of the things that they do, one of the pieces of the playbook is that they go, they partner with one of the like organizations in the school. So they can't partner with the school itself, too complicated, but they'll go to like the baseball team or like the volleyball team and they'll say, hey, you guys need like $500 for your like uniforms this year. Great. We'll sponsor it. In exchange, you guys help us promote our thing. You guys become an affiliate for every additional student you bring on board. You get more money for your org. And so it ends up being like, you know, a direct ad affiliate deal with, with, with the groups. And they're obviously highly motivated because they need to pay for their stuff. So similarly, I guess what I would do is I would try to, for the distribution side, I would partner with either the school or partner with like, you know, the band or like, you know, some group in the school and say, hey, uh, if you guys help us sell this, you get a rev share with this thing. So that's how I would get my foot in the door. Then the question is, what product? Because I think class rings are incredibly ugly. And I think there's sometimes a good thing about ugly things because they stand out and they seem special or unique or different versus like—

they're not ugly, they just all look alike. Like every class ring since, you know, this, this thing has been invented, I'll be like 1890, like it's the exact same thing.

If you see someone wearing a class ring, it's like, all right, Al Bundy, like you're living in the past here, right?

Like, well, yeah, I'm like, you're a fucking— like, you're a dork, you peaked.

It's a dork move, right? So how do you— so first, if you can make it—

unless you are like one of the early classes of Harvard, or like, all right, I get it, right?

Unless you won like, you know, the NCAA championship, then you can wear your championship ring.

Yes.

And even then, you should probably just keep that on a shelf in the house. But like, I think it's okay. It's not meant to be worn necessarily. So here's the opportunities I see. So my, my best idea that I came up with, and this was like an hour before we started recording this, My best idea is class sneakers. So I think sneakers are like hot real estate. And I don't know if you've ever seen people who make custom sneakers, like either for celebrities or for like brands. They're awesome. They have like a paint gun or like, it's like a tattoo gun basically.

Yeah.

They can like create, it's like a graffiti mural on a pair of Air Force Ones. So that's the first thing I would try to do is class sneakers. I would try to basically say, great, How do I come up with a base model? Maybe it's like Converses or Air Force Ones or something like that. It's plain, plain white shoe. And then, okay, everybody's graduating right now. They're all, let's say, class of '21. So I'm gonna have class of '21 and then I'm just gonna make different color schemes for the different schools. And then if you pay extra, like you can get your name sort of like embroidered on the thing or like whatever your phrase or whatever you want on the back of it. And I would basically sell commemorative class sneakers that can either be worn or they're just put on, you know, put on the wall, put in, put in the, in the house somewhere as a piece of—

which, which shoe, which brand and model?

I think maybe I'm out of touch here, but I like kind of just like, uh, like the old school plain white Air Force Ones. I think those are like— yeah, that's right, one of the best canvases to, to use for something like this. But simple, I don't think it really matters. I think you basically, you need some shoe that in reality, if I was doing this, I probably would like find something that's shaped like that but is not already like $100, right? Because I need to get the shoe for like $12, and then I need to do the custom, you know, the paintwork on it for like another $8, and then I need to sell that shoe for like $180 or $200, something like that. I think that's the model here. And I think you could do this with Instagram ads, Facebook ads, and partnering with school organizations to do like kind of rev shares. Um, and I think it could be cool. I think it's like a status symbol. So that's how I would attack Jostens, right? If they're making $700, $800 million a year on their ugly-ass class rings, I would start with class sneakers as my first idea.

I think that's good. So I'm looking at— I'm looking at it, dude. They sell some ugly-ass shit. I cannot believe this business is in place. And here's the take— here's the takeaway here is that once you get locked into some— to a certain contract. Yeah, I would actually phrase it like it's hard to fuck up. Boring default.

If you're the boring default, it's so good, such a good position to be in.

And a lot of times when I think of like, when we think of entrepreneurship and we think of starting stuff, we think, how can I be innovative? How can I be new? In reality, in order to make a lot of money, it's how do I get locked into this to, to the point to where like it's going to be a pain in the ass to go anywhere else. And that's the takeaway here. I'm looking at Johnson's. They, they started, you said, in, in, in 1897.

Yeah.

Okay. So if you started something 124 years ago and you are still in cahoots with these high schools, this is significantly better than any enterprise SaaS company. This is significantly better than a newsletter. Do this. When I think of this is idiot-proof. Jostens is idiot-proof. I used to say that, uh, real estate has the highest, uh, number of low IQ millionaires. Jostens is the best example of that I've ever seen. I love this company. And I think that when I start stuff, That's, that's what I should think of. Uh, how can I just create something that people buy forever and I have to innovate on the product? Zero. That's exactly what they've done.

The best example of this that we came up with that we had on the podcast was the, uh, the workplace compliance poster that you have to have for like the HR or safety or whatever work— the poster every office has in the break room. Um, that poster you just have to buy every year. It's like $100 or something. And you just have to get it every year, otherwise you're out of— you're like out of compliance, you're like out of code. And, uh, you know, zero employees, just sort of like an auto-renew where I send you this like 1-cent poster for $100 is like such a beautiful, beautiful business. And in fact, I almost want to just come up with like another compliance poster. Actually, this is my next idea here, live on the podcast. What's another like bullshit-ass compliance poster that I could make that I could sell to every company? Like maybe it's like something with like the modern-day woke stuff. Like, it's about like, you know, anti-openness and anti-harassment and like pronouns and like everything. It's just like a reminders of like how to not be canceled. So, so it's basically just like a reminders poster that gets updated every year with the latest cancellation policy. And, uh, you just need to make it seem like a totally boring company, uh, thing. You just sell this to every age. You said send it to them once, and then you like get them on file to like have this in their, you know, Restrooms every year or something like that.

If you work for a company like this, like one, like what you're describing, or Jossen's. So it looks like on Glassdoor, they've got 3,000 employees.

Dude, if you work at Jossen's, what the fuck do you—

what do they do?

You're asleep. You've been able to sleep for 65 straight years. What do you do? Like a bear in hibernation.

What do you— like, why do they even need employees? That's what— like, I'm looking through this, like, what's the point of having a person do this? Like, you could fire most, all your people and just build stuff that automates it. And you simply have salespeople that just try to like sell stuff, but like you don't need anything. I, I'm looking at their Glassdoor. I'm like, what on? They have 1,000 to 5,000 people. I thought it said 3,000 in another place. I don't even know what you do. Like, what, what do you, if you're the CEO of this company, what do you do every day? Are you like, hey, this week we're going to try this? It's like, no, you're just keeping the lights on the whole time. And I'm okay with that. It sounds like I'm criticizing it. I'm not. What the fuck do you even do if you work this company?

Has the little mini putting green in their office, you know, that little putting green of a one-hole putt-putt golf you could put in your office.

Michael Burrus.

Yeah, Michael Burrus. He has one of those in the office. He's probably listening to this right now, looking at the putting green and being like, goddamn it, uh, those guys are wrong about everything, but they're right about the damn putting green. I gotta get rid of this thing. This is what I—

I want to start something like this where you just have to do no work ever. I mean, I just—

I just undercut them, right? So I think you— I think you could advertise on Facebook and Instagram and be like, hey, Seniors, don't get ripped off by Jostens. Same ring, half the price.

Yeah, this amazes me.

I have none of the employees and I'm going to dropship this out of China. So like, hey, don't get ripped off by Jostens. That's better. That's my ad creative. Again, somebody wants to do this, just keep me up. I just want to hear how this plays out. If you end up doing this, just advertise against this. All right.

So this is crazy. I want to talk about the second one, this paint one. This is interesting.

I sent you an Instagram. There's another person who's trying to compete with them and they're just making a classroom that doesn't look tacky. Uh, so that was also like one model, which is like, these rings look cool. It's someone called J.Hannah or something like that. That's her Instagram, j.hannah.

And it looks like they got meaning— meaningful traction.

Yeah, these are kind of clash— these are clash rings. There's only 4. It's like they just stand for like kind of like earth, wind, fire, and ice or something like that. But they're just kind of clash rings with the year, and, uh, they just look better. They look cool when you wear them. So that's another way you can go about this. All right, um Here's— you want to know about— here's another company that you're going to be mind-blown about. Do you know what the Pantone color chart is? The Pantone matching system?

I Googled it and I see things that I recognize, like a color wheel.

Yeah. Okay. So here's the story. Here's the story you need to know. Okay. So there's a guy, Frank, who sent this to me on Twitter. So shout out to Frank. Uh, he's got like an egg profile on Twitter, but he listens to the pod. He just goes, hey, Pantone, this has gotta be a huge business. These guys sell this fricking color book for $500. And so I said, wait, I have one of those color books on my desk. What the f— what's— there's a business behind this? And sure enough. Okay, so here's the backstory. Uh, there's this guy. Okay, so Otto Josten was our first, you know, Billy of the Week. Lawrence Herbert is my second. Uh, Lawrence Herbert, basically they, these guys, they owned a print company. print, a printing company. And they got tired of the fact that like, uh, they had all these inconsistencies in colors, right? So you would try to just describe a color, it's blue color, but like which shade of blue? And they had all these different inks they were trying to keep track of and name or whatever. And they said, screw it, we're gonna create the global standard for colors. So all they did was they took every single shade of color and they put a number on it and they gave this to every like manufacturer, fashion house, architecture firm. Like you're picking the colors for your curtains. What Pantone color you're going to use, uh, you're picking, you know, the color of your fabric for your clothing brand. What color you're going to use? You're, you know, uh, crazy, like Ben Jerry's uses color chart for— they have a quality assurance, uh, group that basically looks at the brownies that are going to go in the brownie fudge bites or whatever. And, um, if the brownie color is between, you know, brown 690 and brown 669, then it's good, it's properly baked. And if it's under or over, it's like too baked or it's underbaked. So they just hold this up and they look at the brownie and they say, does this match this color or not? And so this thing is used ubiquitously. So they created this Pantone color system, the matching system. It's like 2,500 colors. They make over $100 million a year just sending out this little brochure, this little pamphlet, this little booklet with all the colors in it. And everybody buys these things. We have one here because when we need to communicate with our manufacturer for our brand, we have to tell them, hey, use Pantone color 506C or whatever it is, so they know that we want that specific shade of blue.

How did this, uh, product start?

So, so the guy owns the printing company, decides to create the Pantone matching system, and the number one way they got the word out was this marketing stunt. Like, we, we talked about, um, Michelin Star, and we talked about like that, that, that system. So they started coming out with Color of the Year So they just, they would make, they put a ton of money and effort, effort behind color of the year. So 2016, rose quartz. 2015, Marsala. You know, 2012, tangerine tango is the color of the year. 2011, classic honeysuckle color of the year. So they, they, they do this big marketing blitz around what is the color of the year. And in order to come up with it, they have this hush-hush process where they invite 12 like trend spotters to their office and then they each give presentations and kind of like debate around like culture and where the, where society is moving. And then they come out and they're like, honeysuckle is it. And then they immediately blitz the market with that. They send that to all the like fashion houses, ad agencies, and then they start using that in their campaigns. And they start, you'll start getting emails, which is like, oh, buy our thing. It's got the color of the year. This is honeysuckle, the color of the year for this dress. And so brands start using that for their own marketing. And so it started spreading that way. And so they sell these booklets for like, you know, $85 up to $500, these booklets. And then every year they launch like 100 new colors. So you got to get a new booklet with all the new colors in it. It's like the dictionary. And I just thought this was amazing. I didn't know there was even a company behind this and it makes over $100 million a year. All right.

I'm going to blow your mind. All right. We're going to, we're going to build off this. Go to WGSN.com. So WGSN.com. Do you see that? Yeah.

I think you've told me about this once. These are the trend, trend makers, right? They have like a scent of the year or something like that.

No, Qolors. It's Qolors as well. Exactly what you described. They do almost exactly that. Except it's a, it's really like 1 or 2 reports a year, but it's a subscription service and they sell to businesses and they're a public company, so I can look up their revenue. So their revenue last year was 90, uh, €90 million. I think this is a euro. So $100 million.

Yeah.

$100 million. And It's been doing $100 million or it's been doing around that forever. So it's currently on research reports basically, but it's— we could dumb it down.

We had the founder of David's Teas on here and he was talking about how he uses a brand that he used to pay for stuff like this. And I remember asking him like, is it just bullshit or is this like, why are you buying this? Like, I don't know how much this report is, like thousands of dollars for this report. And he was like, oh, totally worth it. Like, that's how we got the new like flavors and fragrances for the new teas every year. I was like, wow, okay, interesting.

So it's called WGSN, wgsn.com. And to dumb it down, Starbucks, who will buy 100,000 uniforms or 100 or fucking 10 million coffee sleeves, they want to know which color for Christmas, what shade of red is going to be interesting enough. Or, um, if we're buying these uniforms. Uh, for this one, this promotion, which color is the right color?

By the way, that Starbucks red thing, my wife, uh, loves Starbucks. She goes to Starbucks anytime she can, and she literally looks forward to the red cup moment where they switch the cups. And like, it's like an emo— it's like an emotional thing almost. It's like, um, it's basically like, oh shit, like, uh, like the season has changed, Christmas time is here, I get these warm fuzzy feelings. And part of that I associate with is the red cups, which I just found to be like crazy that anyone cares.

Well, yeah, it just means that it's wintertime. Um, and so this company called WGSN, companies pay, I think it's $18,000 a year. And they also have someone you could talk to, so you can ask them a question. Uh, it's called the, that's what they call their advisory service. They just like, you, you ask people questions, but then they also, so I believe the way the business works is they, they do two things. They look at loads of different data on which, what's, what type of color is selling well. And I imagine it's just someone else's data. The second thing is they survey people. And so they'll survey like people who they deem as experts and they ask them questions. And then they create this like survey response of like, all right, here's according to all the experts, this color, these colors for this type of niches are going to be the colors that you're going to use in the future. And if you know, if you have a company that's not like growing that much, but it's worth €90 million a year in subscription revenue, I mean, that's like a $300, $400, $500 million a year company or a company that I think makes like $30 million a year in profit. Only off colors. And this is the second one in a few minutes that we've named. Colors are very interesting.

And by the way, these guys, the Pantone guys, they then partner with some other firm to come out with the— so they— Pantone became— has become the universal, like, language of color. How do you describe color to somebody? You describe it the Pantone chart. Uh, and by the way, the reason why— there's like a science, like a bit of a mechanical reason why. So like a normal printer, if you use a printer, I think a normal like just household printer, well, it has this thing called CMYK if you've ever seen that. Like capital CMYK. What does that mean? It's like cyan, magenta, magenta, yellow, and black or something. And basically you can mix those 4 colors and you can make a whole bunch of combinations of colors just using those 4. It's like RGB for TVs. And, um, but Pantone, if you have a Pantone machine, then the Pantone machine basically has like 18 base colors. And so you can mix and you can mix up because it's 18 specific base colors, you can create all these really specific shades. So when you give somebody the color, it's not just so that their eye knows what it is, it's that they can punch it into the machine and create that specific pigment or that specific ink or that specific printed color on top of whatever it is. So there's like, you know, they needed something like that, which is pretty cool. Um, but anyways, these guys partnered with somebody to come out with like the Pantone of taste and the Pantone of smell also, right? How do you describe a fragrance? Well, how do you do this? And so they partnered with some company. They also tried to own that space, which I just think is awesome to be like kind of the global authority.

I agree.

Naming of a color and Somehow a private company owns that, which is insane. It's like owning, you know, the periodic table or something.

And we were talking about, you called it boring. I think this is fun. I think this is actually kind of fun. This, the, I don't know if I would want to do it all the time, but this is like a fun thing because you can kind of shape culture. I mean, we were talking about that red, that Starbucks, like you, you, or like the Coca-Cola red or the fact that, um, do you know that Coca-Cola invented Santa Claus pretty much, or like the way that we the way that we envision Santa Claus, I don't want to go too much off the cuff because I didn't actually research this, but I'm a— I like old stuff, like, and I like American history. And so I've read stories about this, but like the modern-day Santa with like that red suit, fat guy who's got a white beard, that's a— Coca-Cola invented that.

Oh, shit. All right, we need to go deep on that one. We should go back. Okay. All right. So I'm going to call this business— I discovered this business the hard way. So we We were traveling, we left something at the TSA security checkpoint where you're putting all your stuff in the bins or whatever, and we left something in there. And so we get on the plane, my wife's like, oh no, where's that thing? Oh, don't worry, I'm sure we can just sort of call them or file a report.

Are you trying not to say what it is?

What, the item?

Yeah.

Oh, it was, I mean, it's just like a baby stroller bag thing. It's like a $150 item, but not, you know, whatever, nobody cares, it doesn't matter what it is, left an item there. Um, we— so I'm like, okay, let me Google, like, just, hey, item left TSA Las Vegas airport. And, um, and the first thing that comes up is a thing called InstaFile. Get you— file, file your claim to get your thing back. I click it and it's like, oh, just tell us what your item is and we'll get it back to you, don't, don't worry about it. And then you go through the flow and then it tries to charge you $29 at the end. I'm like, okay, whatever. Oh, and as I'm doing this No. So I go through, I file this, I'm starting to file this thing and I start to get my spidey sense starts tingling. I scroll down and I see, you know, InstaFile is not associated with any airport, TSA or anything like that. I'm like, oh, what is this? Pretty interesting business. So, so first I think it's clever, a clever move, right? I call these couch cushion businesses. It's like finding change in the couch cushion. It's like these little cracks in the system where you can just like slip right in and create a business. So of course people are going to be losing, you know, 1 out of 1,000 people are going to lose something in TSA. What are they going to do? They're going to Google it. And these guys are the top ranking result for that, for every airport, I think. And so they just— all they do is— filing a claim is actually free. What they do is they just rank at the top, they get you to pay for it, and then they go file the claim on your behalf. They just forge your report to them, and then they forge you their response.

And it's like a scam in a way. It's not a scam.

It's like a kind of a managed service. It's very misrepresentative. And so you go read the reviews, people are very angry at them. I don't get angry about this sort thing. I actually, I'm like, oh, clever, clever. You've found a way to like, you know, capitalize on this. Um, and you know, there is some value-add service because again, there is like an agent in the middle. I don't know how much—

that's why I'm saying it's my— it's, it's, it's very technically, it's not a scam, it's just misleading.

It depends if they're actually better at— if they actually save you time or money, uh, or like, you know, increase your odds of getting your thing back. If they're really just forwarding your report and then forwarding their email back to you, then there's like zero value-add. But if they are actually like, you know, filing it right, following up for you, calling and getting the answer, then great. You know, that's good.

I can't find anyone online who works at this company.

Yeah, you can't find the owner, you can't find the about page. And that's why I'm like, okay, yeah, you know, probably more towards scam. But anyways, I just thought this is fascinating. And how many different businesses are there like this? There's probably a ton of different businesses like this that are just like these really hyper-specific scenario searches. That, that you can rank number one for. And then when you do, I bet you kind of print money. I bet you this business is, you know, profitable, seven-figure business just off this one, this one thing.

Like mugshots.com or mugshot websites.

What is that, to look up mugshots?

Yeah. You've never tried to look at someone's mugshot? Oh my God. It's littered with scams. So Google like a find mugshot California or like You know, like imagine, like what? Imagine a friend gets arrested and you're trying to find a mugshot. Google whatever you're going to Google.

Uh, all right, so I'm seeing a bunch of ads, 4 ads at the top. All right, let me find mugshots for free. It looks like a search bar. I can search their name and it goes, finds the public records, and I'm guessing it's going to charge me something at some point.

Crazy, right? Yeah, it's pretty wild. So a lot of these mugshots that they get, they're just public. So if you know where someone gets arrested, you can just go not all counties are that way, but you can just go to like, um, uh, San Francisco or so. That would be like Alameda County, uh, mugshots. And you can actually go to the website and they just like, and they just aggregate it, but they have super, super slick onboarding ways to like, uh, get you to give them money.

And the website's super optimized, right? Like this, right next to the search bar it says Norton Security and McAfee Secure.

Why do I—

what does that have to do— that's a virus scanning protocol. What does that have to do with me typing in someone's name to search for them? Like, but it's just like these random-ass trust-building badges this right next to the search bar just to get me to do this for free. Yeah. So it's not actually going to be free.

It's incredibly scammy. And anyway, it's very similar to what you're describing. We can actually do a— I'll actually do a breakdown about this very soon. Maybe next week I'll do a breakdown on this business. Historically, incredibly scammy. Probably you could own— the person who can own one of these businesses and make like $10, $15 million a year in profit. Although you got to like, you know, live this shitty life where like you're just kind of a piece of shit scamming someone. But it's like like, it's crazy fascinating, um, that these mug shop businesses, I think they crush.

Yeah. So do you know who Naveen Jain is?

Yes. So he is like a billionaire guy now, but he, the way that he became a billionaire, he's kind of done a good job of rebranding himself as this like inspirational Tony Robbins guy.

Yeah.

But he owned a bunch of scammy businesses and I believe some of them were Ponzi schemes that he took public.

So it wasn't a Ponzi scheme, I don't think exactly, but basically during the dot-com boom, There was this company called InfoSpace, and he was the CEO of InfoSpace. And I don't know the full story, I should look it up, but I remember reading it because I met his son, this guy Ankur Jain, really interesting guy. And I was sort of like, why is this kid so polished? Why do I feel like when he's talking to me, he's talking on CNBC or something like that? I got this politician vibe from him. And so I was looking him up like, oh, he's the son of this billionaire. They grew up in the same neighborhood as whatever, Bill Gates and other guys. And then somebody had told me, somebody was like, yeah, his dad's kind of controversial. So why is that? And he started InfoSpace, took InfoSpace public, and then before InfoSpace crashed in the dot-com crash, he had sold a bunch of his stock. He ended up doing great. All of his employees lost their kind of like, the company went under, but he ended up doing very well. That's the long and short of it. Now, I don't know if it was like, you know, some kind of like underhanded stuff. I'm not sure. But definitely there's like a long kind of like report that it's pretty hard to Google for it because I think he's like scrubbed it. But you can find it from the old like Seattle Times or something like that. But then he started another company that also had controversy called Intellius. And Intellius is the one you're thinking about. And Intellius, I think it sold like for over $100 million. But what it was is sort of like in the— it was a— so it's a way for people to peruse criminal records and conduct background searches online. But the way, the way it worked, if you look, if you Google like Intellius scam or Intellius shady, you'll see that like it basically looked like one of those like free credit report like kind of services where it's like, oh, just type your name, you'll get your data, your report. And there's like this tiny checkbox that's like, you know, you know, you agree to pay $19.99 for the rest of your life if you do this. And like, and so that's how they were making a bunch of their money was they were just taking, aggregating public records making them a little more searchable. And they had this sort of like hard-to-see subscription that you were paying for at the end of it. Uh, maybe— I don't know exactly. I mean, you must have entered your credit card, so it can't be that hard to see. But there was a bunch of controversy around Intellius, I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rebranded subscription service.

Now he's got like this company Moon Express that's like sending rockets to the moon. And like, and now he's got something called Viome. It's like, imagine a world where illness is optional. And it's like, you know, trying to save the world, save the planet type of guy. And if you hear him talk, he's extremely charismatic, as people who tend to run schemes tend to be. And so he's— I don't know, I don't really have an opinion myself. I just know that there is some controversy around this guy, but I find him to be a pretty fascinating character. I find him very interesting to hear when he talks. Very inspirational type of speaker. And now is doing these kind of like big picture Elon Musk type of things. But got his start doing something much less savory.

We should have someone come on and talk about some of this stuff. I didn't realize that— I knew what Attalius was, but whenever I do these background checks, I like doing background check stuff. It's fun. Have you ever like, like, don't you ever do it to like, see, like, have my parents ever been arrested? Let's find out.

Um, no, I have never do anything like that, but I'm also not like ancestry.com or 23andMe. I think there's a lot of people who are just like, big into like self-exploration, kind of like my past, other people's past, things like that. And, uh, I, I just haven't done that a ton.

Well, so that's me. So I understand a lot of people.

I think it's most people. Like, Answers.com is a huge business.

So I think, um, anyway, I think this— yeah, I, I didn't realize— I, I thought that someone could make $10 or $20 million a year from this, but now that I remember, Intellius, I think, was doing hundreds of millions from this.

Yeah, I ran into some another business like this that was looking for people's addresses. So when we had that, like, I came on the pod, I talked about somebody was stealing from us and we knew who they were, we were going to find them and send the cops to their house and stuff like that. Well, I needed to find somebody's address. And so I started basically, if you have like a couple pieces of information, a name, a phone number, stuff like that, there's these like websites that will come up. They'll say, hey, yeah, we'll give you this. We have a huge database of everyone's address. Just put in their info. And then you get like 3 steps down the funnel. It's like, Oh, to unblur the address, you gotta pay $9.99 a month. It's like, why do I need this monthly? I'm not doing this every month, but okay, sure, I really want this address. And like, they're just like, I bet you'll forget to cancel this. And it's like a standard.

A lot of times with those services, you can do a good enough job of— if you actually cross-reference a ton of them, you can actually find the name unblurred because they'll show you 3, like, pieces. They'll show you like 3 possible options, and like the third one, which is likely it, is is blurred, but then you could like do some weird like triangulation and figure out which one it is. It's kind of interesting. I've done it before as well.

Yeah, this is like sort of the dark parts of the internet. And all they're doing, like you said, is they basically take stuff that's public record or they take guesses and then they, um, they aggregate it and put a fancy kind of search bar and they just do a good job of ranking in Google or paying for Google AdWords. And that's their business model. But, uh, you know, I don't know too much about these. I've never thought about doing a business like this, but when I run into them as a customer, I'm like Hmm, what's underneath this? How the heck does this thing work?

Me too.

Fascinating.

Me too.

And mugshots is a classic.

I'm going to do some interest on a mugshot. I'm going to tell Jake to do, to look up mugshot stuff.

That's a great one.

Um, all right.

I think that's the episode, right?

Yeah. Let's wrap it. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Life.