Half-Baked TV Show Ideas, Miss Excel Making Millions, The Adventure Challenge, and More

I have just straight fire and we, we might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes cuz I just got too much fire for, for one day myself. All right. We got a bunch of ideas today. If you like ideas, this is, this is gonna be one of the podcasts you like. I don't I promise you I didn't bring in any frameworks or life advice. We just went straight business, cool businesses and ideas you probably never heard of. At the end, we just brainstormed TV show ideas, ideas that could be made into TV shows. So I think you'll like this episode. It's a classic. It's a Sam and Sean classic brainstorm. All right, enjoy. Welcome everybody to the show. I hope we have the new intro music by the time this airs, but we may not. I don't know about you, but I've been jamming out to the new intro song pretty excessively and it's been great. It's good.

It's good. The guy who made it has a wonderful name.

Yeah, his name, Young Spielberg. That's his name.

It's a good name. I really like that. But Young without an O. Y-U-N-G. All right. We have to mention the clip contest. So we're doing this contest. I think if people want to learn about it, I think they go— so if they go to MFMPod.com, they'll see it. If you go to MFMPod.com/clips, you'll for sure see it. MFMPod, and you'll see like a link. Did you see— so these kids, it's mostly like younger, like kids that are making videos where basically the contest, by the way, is you chop up these videos. So just go to our YouTube page and like download the videos and chop it up and put it on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. And if you use a certain hashtag, #MFMClips, you will find you. And we're going to give $5,000 to some of our favorite clips.

Yeah, based on already some amazing things. So I saw a few TikToks that were already past, I think, 100,000 views. It's crazy. So, their TikToks are— Their TikTok account is blowing up just by taking our content and chopping it up. And then the guy who did the South Park-looking cartoon thing, that was amazing.

Amazing. Amazing. It's a young guy named Corey, who's— I followed his account, and he's got hundreds of thousands of views on a handful of videos. And he launched the videos, and within a day or two he had all these views. It's wild. And then the guy who does the cartoon thing, I think he's launching a business and we are his first.

Right. Right.

Because I followed his Twitter account and he had zero. It was like zero, zero. Zero. Yeah.

So that's amazing. Anyways, $5,000. Go take our content, turn it into clips, uh, let it go viral. And, uh, yeah, everybody wins.

Um, all right. I've got a few interesting things. You've got many interesting things. You should go first.

I have just straight fire. Uh, we might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes, 'cause I just got too much fire for one day. Myself.

I know what the first one is and I think we should start with that.

Okay. So I wanted to bring this up. There's, we had talked about this in the past, but this is a, uh, story about Miss Excel. So her name, she calls herself Miss Excel. And I don't know if you've ever seen her. I don't think you're a big TikTok guy, but I am. I had seen this person going viral on TikTok and basically it's a woman who puts out like a Microsoft Excel tips and tricks, like little hacks, like, oh, you know how your, um, things are always like poorly formatted? Just put, push like, you know, Command+G, uh, when you're hovering over the column and look, it auto-formats everything perfectly. Or like, do you know what a VLOOKUP is? You do this, this, and this, and boom, you could find anything. So she basically puts out these little clips on TikTok, but it's not just the content. Like the way she does it, it's like what works on TikTok. It's like, Cute, cute girls dancing, humor. Like these are the things that like work on TikTok. And so she does that. She's like, she'll put a song like that's like a trending song on TikTok. She'll dress up, she'll be, she'll have the screen share behind her and she's kind of overlaid on top of it. And then she's showing something funny that's, or like something that's happening. She's explaining it quickly and in an entertaining way. So she's, here's her story. She's a consultant. Um, kind of a boring job. She was a consultant and she decided, and you know, there's a lot of consultants and bankers that if you watch them use Excel, they won't touch a mouse. Like they just use a keyboard like a wizard and like they could just do everything just by hitting like shortcuts and macros on their, on their keyboard in Excel. There's actually a lot of people that can do this.

My friend who, who used to work at BCG, basically they had a mouse with like a wired mouse that was clearly cut. The cord was cut and they like, It was in a frame on the wall, and they're like, "That's what you're gonna do here." "That's what this needs to look like." "You don't use the mouse." Exactly.

Uh, and I don't know how any of this works, but I've definitely seen a bunch of friends who can do this. It's kind of amazing when they're doing it. So she basically took that idea and started turning it into interesting clips. So she starts off, and she tells a story where she's like, "You know, um, I wanted to, like, try making some content, and, uh, TikTok, I felt embarrassed, 'cause isn't TikTok for kids?" And it's just like, silly thing to do. I shouldn't, I shouldn't make a TikTok account. I'm a consultant. And then her gut was like, you should do a TikTok. And so she listens to her gut. She makes a TikTok and pretty quickly, I think like within the first week or so, she goes viral with 1 or 2 clips and she gets over like 100,000 views. And she's like, holy shit, this is awesome. And so she does it again and she does it again. And then she starts to, she's like buys a little ring light and gets a green screen so that it looks a little bit better. And she does it again. She gets a video that gets a million views and it's like, Wow, this is amazing. And so she starts branding herself. Amazing branding, by the way. Miss Excel. Like, she is the one— she is the Excel woman. And, and so I thought that was great. And so she, she starts doing this and she's getting popular, but she's not making any money. And she reaches— or what happened? Morning Brew reaches out. They're going to do a feature story on her and they're like, oh, we want to feature you. And at the same time, a business coach reached out to her and was like, hey, I saw you have this like really great following. I think your, your content is super unique. You know? And she was like, yeah, it's great. I'm gonna be featured on Morning Brew. They're like, awesome. Like, what do you have to sell? She's like, oh, I don't sell anything. It's all free content. And they're like, if you're gonna get featured, you should have something to sell. And she's like, okay, challenge accepted. You're right. I'm gonna make a course. And so she decides to make a course.

She's never done it before.

And I think she had like something like 2 weeks or something to like pull this whole thing off.

And she rushes to do it.

Now let's fast Fast forward to today, she is making courses and she is making, um, 6 figures a month off this thing. So she's making single-digit millions a year. She has a few days of the year where she's made 6, over $100,000 on a day in course sales. That's kind of like her Black Friday, um, or Black Friday special or whatever, where she, where she sold her course. And so she's doing millions of dollars a year and she's working towards million, a million dollar month. That's like her goal. I wanna hit a million dollars a month. As Miss Excel. And she is like, Microsoft loves her. They're like pumping her up. Um, you know, she's featured in Business Insider, she's featured in like BuzzFeed, she's featured in a whole bunch of places cuz this great story. She's featured on this podcast right now. And so she is doing amazing. What I love about this is she quits her job as a consultant. She now works 15 hours a week unless she's making a course, like, but just like a normal thing is she's, she's doing 15 hours a week. She has one employee, which is an overseas virtual assistant. Her cost structure is that overseas virtual assistant, which I'm guessing is making something like $6 to $10 an hour. So, you know, probably paying them like $500 a month, ballpark. Plus she pays $97 for Thinkific, which is the course platform. And she pays a video editor to, to edit the videos for the course. So like all in all, her expenses are probably like sub $1,500, maybe sub $2,000 at the time. Time. And, um, she's making 6 figures a month. So she's profiting, um, you know, at least $100,000 a month, uh, doing this thing. And, um, there was a whole bunch of like different little nuggets in there that I liked, but that's the, the overall story. Quick, quick reaction to that.

Amazing. I don't think it's gonna, mm, maybe it will last. Maybe.

So that was, that was my initial instinct. I was like, awesome, awesome run. But like, you know, who knows if this is here 2 years from now. And then I changed my mind when I kind of read her, read a little bit more about her. Here's what I liked. Okay. So we had talked about Excel way back, maybe a year ago when I, when we were talking about, I was gonna create a course and we had done a deep dive of what are the best courses.

It's always Excel.

Microsoft Excel is always in the top. If you go to Teachable's top courses, Udemy's top courses, learning to master Excel is always in the top, like 10 earning courses. And I think, you know, it's hard to be the one, but It's a topic people will pay for.

Ankur from Teachable, he's got a, he's a good Twitter follow. He, uh, tweets out some of the biggest earners. He won't explicitly say who they are, but he'll say one earner we just paid their, you know, we, they just crossed $20 million in, in revenue or in like earnings. And then he'll also say like the top course is this Excel thing. So you can kind of like triangulate it.

Exactly. And, and on Udemy, I think I was able to do this as well. I was able to search and sort for the top bestselling courses and Excel was in the top as well.

That's amazing.

And, um, so I think Excel has real demand. Then the question is, who's gonna be the best brand in the Excel space? And she's the horse I would pick. So, um, why do I think that? First is her content is fundamentally better. She took the most, um, she has the best top of funnel. So what's her top of funnel strategy? It's highly exciting, quick-hitting, snack-sized TikTok videos. TikTok itself is like the crack cocaine of content, right? Like 10-second video with music overlaid. That is crack cocaine for content. And she's using that for Excel when all the other Excel creators are like bloggers and shit like that. It's like a stale old thing. Then her brand and her personality, Miss Excel, good-looking woman who understands how to do content. And, and she, I know she understands the content. She, so she's a little bit, when I was researching her, she is really into some of the shit I'm into that's really like kind of like off the beaten path. So she was like, yeah, she's like, most people when they think of content strategy, like especially for, for, for this space, B2B type of content, she's like, it's always like strategic, intellectual, trying to figure it out. She goes, I spend most of my time just getting into a certain state of mind. I just, she's like, I just get into a, she goes, she goes, this is her exact quote. She goes, the way I run my structure for my business is through energetics. Most people don't even know what the fuck that means. She goes, I get my energy to a place where my presence is truly magnetic. I get a vision of what's gonna go viral. Then I run to my computer and I create that. And sure enough, it goes viral. She goes, cuz most content people, people don't understand content is just energy transmission. I'm having a great time. I'm excited about this topic. And so I'm gonna push that through the phone into you. And sure enough, you're gonna learn something, but you're also gonna smile while you're watching my shit. You're also gonna laugh while you're watching my thing. And nobody else is doing that. And I've read that and I go, she gets it. She gets like one of the most important things about business and life, which is just like being able to manage your own energy. But the second part is she gets the content strategy in a way that I don't think anybody else is gonna really get in this, in this space.

Did you see the other thing? The second thing is, oh, go ahead, go ahead.

She now has scale. So at first I was like, oh, okay, but she's just like an individual creator on TikTok and like, who knows, maybe TikTok algorithm changes. No. So here's what she's doing. She basically is like, I'm gonna scale in two ways. First, she's expanding into the whole Microsoft suite. So it's not just Excel, she's doing PowerPoint and Word and Outlook and like everything that like, you know, a billion people on earth have to use professionally. And so, and Microsoft is helping her and every time they're releasing a new thing, she's getting first look at it and she gets to come out right away with the content that's gonna highlight this new function or this new feature that you get to be able to use. So that expansion gives it more legs than just Excel. The second thing is she now hired a performance marketing agency and she's like, yeah, get my brand to grow. And she's like, the beautiful thing is I don't sell my course. I just put one, my most viral thing and I put ad spend behind it and people love it. Like they love that content. And so they like it, they comment on it, So Facebook's algorithm promotes it. And so I was like, oh, that's kind of an unstoppable, like, flywheel. She's gonna keep creating this, like, juicy, like, quick life hack type content. Then she's promoting it, that's already inherently viral. Then she's putting a paid ad spend behind it. She's growing her following on Instagram now, plus TikTok, plus YouTube, plus all these different places. And she's like, oh yeah, Reels came out. So then I just, like, jumped on Reels and I became, like, one of the most viral Reels creators on Instagram. And, um, so I'm like, okay, now she's diversifying the audience and she's got the courses behind it and she's going into more, more parts of the suite. I like that formula.

I was wrong. She's gonna, she's gonna crush it.

I think she's gonna get to, my bold prediction, she's gonna get to $100 million in sales. And that sounds outrageous.

I was about to say $100 million. I think she could, I think you could do, uh, I think $100 million a year or lifetime. A year. Uh, yeah, I actually agree with you. I think that's bold. I think likely she'll get to like $25 million a year in revenue and could probably actually do that for many years.

Right.

Uh, yeah, I'm on board.

So I think it's crazy. Um, so I loved, I loved her thing. I, there was also these other little nuggets. So she basically, she's working 15 hours a week. So then she's like, oh cool, quit my job. I'm gonna be a digital nomad. Something you kind of did this last year. She's like, every month me and my boyfriend, we just move to a different state and we just wanna experience it. So they'll just move to a different state in America and just like, hang out there for the month and then they hop around. And, uh, the other thing that she's, uh, the other nuggets I like, I liked was she does these like webinars because she understands there's like a top of funnel. So top of funnel, if you don't know, is basically like how you get new customers to even like get in touch with you, get in, get into your—

Which in this case is, it's just going viral on TikTok.

Going viral on TikTok or Instagram or, or YouTube. Great. Then she has the middle of funnel, which is where a lot of people fall out, which is, okay, you've touched base with me once. You're not ready to buy something just yet, but how do I actually get you to participate in a deeper way, to invest in a deeper way? And for her, she runs these webinars and she calls them high-energy Excel parties. And so she invites people to these. And what happens is it's, of course, it's like someone from BCG and then they go and they're like, oh, this is amazing. Then they're like, hey, we'd like to buy like 1,500 seats for your course for our company. You know, like, or hey, "I work for Target Corporate Training and yeah, we have 25,000 employees that we think would benefit from this. Could you create something custom for us?" And it's gonna be like, "Yeah, here's the same thing, but now I say the word Target at the beginning and I charge you, you know, $5 million for it." I have a buddy who's doing this, which basically is like his top, he does top-of-funnel newsletters, then he does these like webinars and workshops and podcasts that go deeper. And at the bottom is somebody from, you know, Procter Gamble will reach out and just be like, hey, cool. Like, yeah, we got 50,000 global employees. Uh, we would love to have you come speak at our headquarters once a month. And like, you know, we'll pay you, um, basically like a $100,000 retainer per month. How's that? And he is like, whoa, okay. That's like way easier than like trying to—

what's he teach?

So he teaches basically, I don't wanna give away too much 'cause I can't say the numbers then, but he teaches like a version of, um, Uh, like growth, growth mindset. Are you familiar with that? So he, he's like kind of one of the thought leaders in growth mindset. And so big company, like sports teams, uh, like have him on retainer as well as, you know, big companies like, uh, whoever, you know, Coca-Cola or whatever will, will pay him. And they, they're just like, look, we think your stuff is great and we have 50,000 employees. Uh, how do we just like package this up for all those employees? And then like, guess what? We wanna do this every year. And so that turned out to be a very big business for him. And he's just trying to figure out like, what do you charge a company like this? And he'll just name a number and, uh, you know, sure enough they'll pay it. And he's like, oh man, maybe I should have said a higher number. I thought that was a crazy high number, but I guess for them it was like they didn't even blink. They just like said yes. So shit.

Did you see, uh, this weekend the World Excel Financial Modeling Championships happened?

No, but that is amazing. I love that.

So it went viral. Uh, Ben, look this up. It's like, look up like financial modeling world championship.

Dude, why didn't I think of that idea? That's such a me idea to think of.

It went viral and there is like, and you see these guys, it's like all, you know, no disrespect, it's all nerds doing it obviously. And you see pictures of them and you see memes like, this is what peak male performance looks like.

And, uh, okay, what, what do they actually do? What is the competition?

So they're all like, you can Uh, it was, they did it like Twitch. So like you could like, uh, they like were streaming their screens and they were asked to do certain things and then they had to like in real time, like make this model. And I don't actually know how they judged it. I didn't pay attention. I just paid attention to the memes. I think Steph Smith tweeted something funny. Like this is a gift from God. It like, she showed a picture of them on there. It's amazing. It was hilarious. And, uh, all my Indian friends were sharing it this weekend and like making Indian jokes and it was awesome. It was so funny. But who owns that? Didn't you see?

It's probably like, you know, Deloitte.

But anyway, so that was amazing. I'm on board with this. That's awesome. I love MsExcel. When this article on The Verge, I think it was, went live, I had so many people DM me and say, you guys got to cover this. So I was going to do it. And so happy you did. Baller. I think that I've talked to a couple of friends that have course businesses and my friend Neville, my best friend Neville, he had a course called Copywriting Course. It honestly changed my life. And he made this one course like 12 years ago maybe, and it's been paying his bills every single year since then. And he does other stuff.

I took it as well.

He like updates it and now he has like a membership thing. But this one thing that he filmed years ago It's like, it's, that's been his career.

By the way, in terms of transferring energy, uh, Neville is exactly like that. If you watch in the course, he does these like, like most courses are like, here's an hour-long session about X. His is like, it's almost like a blog post and it's like 1 minute where he's teaching 1 concept and he'll like, the camera will be on and then he'll pop out from under the table. He'll be like, yo. And then he'll like say the thing. And then the next one he's got a guitar in his hand. He's like, He's like, if I'm writing an email and I want to get a reply, and he's like singing a song and he's like, he, he makes it entertaining and you could just, there's something that makes you smile and it keeps you engaged. It keeps you involved with it. And, um, you know, people will forget the content, but they won't forget how they felt taking your course. And so they'll still recommend it and refer it and, and, and be happy with their purchase.

Can I, I'm, I'm gonna tell you about, uh, uh, one or two really quick things and I, I think we should spend most of the episode on your stuff cuz It's actually pretty good. This adventure book thing looks amazing. Uh, one very quick thing, monthly.com. Uh, did you know what that is?

Yeah. You see, they, um, explain it for people who don't know, because I think it's pretty under the radar.

It's pretty much the exact same thing as MasterClass, but only for creators. It's kind of cool. I just signed up for my first one. Casey Neistat, which one is launching a YouTubing and storytelling class. Do you see that?

It's amazing.

Yeah. So I signed up for it. So that's like a cool find. So it's—

how is he not at the fucking top of the screen right now? He's like just in the middle of this long list. What are they doing? It's monthly. Founders Monthly. I think I've talked to them before. They were— they were cool. They were like— they were cool and they knew they were cool. That's right. I was like, hey, this is awesome. They're like, yeah, it's awesome. I was like, I'd love to invest. Like, yeah, a lot of people want to invest.

That's all right. I appreciate that. So I do respect— I just signed up for that. I'm so excited to do it. Like, I bought it full price and everything. I'm pumped. Uh, the second thing, another cool product that I've been fooling around with. Well, we'll do actually three. The, the second one is Descript. Have you seen Descript?

Yeah, we've talked about it. So Descript is kind of like, um, editing software for like, you, you record something, audio or video, and then it like transcribes it automatically. And then if you, if you delete a piece of text from the transcription, it deletes that part of the video, which is like magic.

It's amazing. I've been playing with this for my YouTube stuff.

So what do you do with it?

All right. So you film a video. Let's say I film a 10-minute video. It uploads the video and automatically transcribes it. And so I edit the video by editing the transcription like a Google Doc. And so I could copy and paste and move stuff around and that edits the video. It's amazing. It's, it's, it's almost transformative because it changed. When I think about what I'm gonna film, I think about like the, the narrative, like a story is just a long narrative and it's harder to think in video clips. It's much easier to think in transcript, in, in text. It's super cool. And so I actually think this company— they raised money recently at a $200 million valuation. I actually think this is a company that's going to be significantly larger than it is now. And it— well, like, it's going to be pretty epic. The guy who started it also started Groupon.

Yeah, was him Andrew Mason? Mason. He's dope. Also, the best part about Andrew Mason that I respect is he, he starts Groupon. Groupon goes on this crazy run where it's like, at that point in time, it was like the hottest startup in the world. Copied by like every fucking, you know, every Joe Schmo was copying Groupon. Groupon like raises all this money. It ends up going public. Then it kind of like, you know, then the world turns against Groupon. It's like, this is not, not a good business. It's not gonna work. People are pulling out. It's, it's still, I think like a billion dollar company, but like, you know, it lost its, its shine. And he was in Chicago, I think. And then he quits or whatever.

He gets fired.

He wrote, I think he, he got fired. I think he wrote something really hilarious.

Hilarious.

Didn't he write something really funny on the way out?

He wrote like an email.

He goes, man, pull that up.

He goes, "Today—" I'm paraphrasing. He's like, "Today's my last day. I've been fired. You probably know why." Like, it— Yeah.

You know the video I made making fun of that CEO who botched the layoffs? This was the opposite. This is the CEO who got it, who gets it. And so he— Yeah, he wrote this letter. "I was fired today." Then he takes a year off, and he creates an album, a music album, like a rap album of him just— And he's not good. But it's hilarious. We should pull up one of the, one of the, the videos of his, uh, his like rap album or whatever. Yeah. And, um, he releases that and then he like came back with Descript and it started off as this like walking tour thing, which was amazing, by the way.

The walking tours were amazing. I bought a lot of 'em. It was really cool, but like not that good of a business because how, I mean, I was a super fan, but like most people, you're never gonna do this. And if you do, you're gonna do one in your life. Uh, but yeah, exactly.

Like that, by the way, what a great lesson. The walking tour was like, what people should do and like makes them like be, be more active and like learn things in the world. And then Descript is like, hey, it's like products that make, make you make it easier to be lazier. It's like, hey, you know, editing video is hard. Let's make it easier for you.

So Descript, I've been playing with it. I think it's called Descript. I've been calling it Descript unless it's Descript. So sorry. Awesome. Under the radar. Cool. And then the last thing I'm going to tell you about that's kind of interesting. So Storyworth. So Sean or Ben, go to Storyworth.com. This is a crazy fascinating thing. Very simple product. I actually knew the guy, Nick. He started it. I shared an office with him and it— he's still, I believe, the only employee. And it's kind of cool. It's very simple. When I logged in or when I used it years ago, all it was is you pay like $100 a year or $200 a year and it sends emails to family members that you sign up and it asks them about certain memories and it asks them so much over the course of a year that at the end of the year, if a lot of your family members have answered some of your prompts, you now have a book describing their childhood. So it'll be like my— I sent it to my Aunt Debbie and she was like, it was a question. I don't remember all the questions, but it was something like, what's the best memory of your father before you were 10? And she was like, you know, on Halloween we did this thing. And, and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm learning about my family. And at the end I printed out this book, super fascinating. And it's super fascinating because It's a one-person business. It's just him. And right, and it's really simple. It's very easy. And I love that ancestry stuff so much. Like, I'm a big fan of that.

Anyway, that's all. Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. I, I've never used something like this. So isn't it kind of a lot of work for the other person to like write an answer? Like, I feel like people don't like to do stuff like that.

Yeah, but if you get what you get one a week and you spend like 10 minutes journaling, yeah, it's work. But I like told my aunt, I was like, hey, this is important to me. And she, after a while, she was like, oh, I kind of like doing this. I'm remembering a bunch of stuff.

It's a lot of work. We had done a version of this, or there's a version of this that's like, uh, I think a little easier, which was, um, I don't know if you remember, I had, when I, I had my mom over, uh, she was visiting my house. And you did like a podcast with her. And I recorded a podcast with her. And the podcast was so much easier cuz really all they had to commit to was like one time, hey, let's sit down and talk. And you get this hour-long thing with their voice, and they don't have to— like, people get pretty intimidated having to write something. There's this pressure internally to, like, uh, do good writing. I think school traumatizes the shit out of people. And, um, this podcast thing worked great. I had an amazing podcast with my mom. I recommend anybody— you don't need to be a podcaster, by the way. I don't publish this anywhere. But it's just a memory I'll always have, and it was a conversation that I wouldn't have otherwise had. More importantly, like, I don't even know if I'll ever go back and listen to this. Maybe you'll give it to your daughter on that really horrible day. Yeah. Like, you know, when she passes away, like, I'll be happy I have this. But more importantly, it was like, so much of life is, um, so surface level. And like, we're just talking— hey, like, we're just talking about me and my life all the time. Be like, if I'm talking to her, it's about like what we're doing today or whatever. I realized I knew very, very little about like her and her family and her— what made her her and like her upbringing. Um, because, you know, I don't know, that was just shit in the past. And so, um, and even she forgot a lot of these things, and in the conversation it all was coming flooding back to her. So I recommend everybody do that with their parents. Uh, like just sit them down and record a 1-hour thing, and I can share like the questions I asked or whatever, but it really doesn't matter, to be honest with you.

Have you done Ancestry or 23andMe? I've never done it, no. They're awesome. So 23andMe is awesome. Ancestry's, I think, cooler because I've spent hours on it, like, building up my family tree. 23andMe, I've thought about getting it for— I have it, and I thought about buying it this Christmas for my family members. The reason I'm not— I may not do it— have you heard of this thing called GEDmatch?

No, what's that?

Oh, have you heard of the Golden State Killer? No. Okay, so in the 1970s, there was this guy— that's what they call you. Yeah, that was my nickname in high school, Golden State Killer. In the, in the 1960s, '70s, and I think '80s, there was this guy who basically like raped like 50 women, and then he murdered eventually like 20 of them. Like, he was a serial killer, and he got away with it for years. No one knew who it was. And Patton Oswalt's wife— Patton Oswalt, the comedian— his wife, who recently died, right before she died published her like masterwork, her life's work, and and it was about the Golden State Killer and how he's never been caught, and it renewed interest. And then the FBI got all into it because all the press, and they eventually used this website called GEDmatch. It's public. It's like a— anyone can use it. It's like an open source website and it analyzes all of the information from 23andMe, Ancestry, and like all that stuff, all the database stuff. And they found— they put his DNA, the Golden State Killer's DNA, which they had, into this GEDmatch thing, and they realize that the daughter of the killer— or like, they're like, well, this is so aligned, it must be like the daughter or the granddaughter of the killer— recently signed up for 23andMe. And so they stake out this guy's house, they dig through his garbage, they find— they go, boom, got him! And that's how they arrest him. And they arrested him when he was like 80 and dying. And if you Google Golden State Killer, you'll see like these pictures of this old man. And they got him because he got away with it for so long, but eventually they brought him to justice. And now they've caught many dozens, maybe even hundreds of killers or rapists this way, which is good, but it's kind of scary. And so you could—

so I was going to say, so you're, you're worried about this? Why is this worrying you?

Because it's being used for good.

You don't want to get grandpa in trouble?

It's being used for good now, but like you could see, like, do I want to be in this database? Do I want to be in this database? And so this is one thing I'm a bit worried about. So you can go to GEDmatch and you could upload your results and it could tell you all types of stuff about your results. You could see, uh, a lot of interesting stuff and you could like, if you can somehow get the DNA from an FBI case, which I believe in some cases you can, you can like upload it. And there's like thousands of like these internet detectives using this database to solve crimes. It's kind of fascinating. It's kind of interesting. And it's definitely a little scary.

Wow. Is there like a subreddit for these? Yeah, you know, like sort of like public crime solvers?

Yes, there is. And it's very, very interesting. And most of the time they're wrong. So like, if you remember when the Boston— like the Boston Marathon bombing, they like named like these like 3 guys and they kind of fucked with these guys' lives. They didn't end up doing it, but everyone was certain on that subreddit and they're uploading pictures and they go, this guy works at this place. It wasn't them. They were wrong. No one guessed it, that it was the two actual guys. But this is a little bit different because it's DNA. But DNA isn't perfect. So it's like there's a— it'll say like there's a— this person is 5% related to this person. So it's like, all right, let's see what that is. That could be like a distant cousin. And so you like track your way down to that and you build these family trees to figure out, oh, you know, it's kind of weird that like this matches this person and they're— they also lived in the same area. And so it's not perfect, but it's like pretty good. Anyway, I thought that's why I may not get 23andMe.

Uh, yeah, I also know people who have gotten it and realized, like, their dad is not their real dad. Um, and I think that—

That happened to a family member of mine.

I think that's a, you know, uh, you know, side effect to be aware of. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

A family member of mine— A family member of mine found out that their parent had a— basically their parent cheated on the spouse and had a, a kid. And so they logged on and they go, oh man, I've got a second brother or whatever, you know, like a stepbrother or whatever, half brother. And, uh, it changes shit.

Yeah, I was gonna say, without getting too personal, that, that, uh, that has like— that they went public with it or they just kind of kept that information to themselves?

No, no, no, they did not go public with it, but it like was very— it was— I don't know, they haven't talked about it with me too much, but it was— it seems like it was like somewhat earth-shattering.

Yeah, there's a— there's a thing that I've heard that goes on, which is people who— people who use sperm banks, so like a sperm donor, will take the test— or sorry, people who didn't realize that their parent had used a sperm donor, whatever, they will get the sequencing done or whatever, and they'll find out like, oh my god, I have 42 like half brothers or sisters out there. It's like, oh yeah, this was a person who, you know, this is a person who donated a bunch. And then so yeah, you actually do genetically share with all these different people. Like, wow, that's really crazy. So there's all kinds of like interesting stuff. And I think 23andMe, their business model is to sell your data, right? Like, I think that is the core business model, is they sell it to pharmaceutical companies for, you know, like their research or whatever. Like, I don't know if it's fucked up or if it's like This is for the good of science, but I don't think you really know or opt in. It's not clear that, hey, like, it's not clear.

Yeah, it's probably—

it's definitely the terms, you know, but nobody's reading the terms, and so that's the problem.

It's like, it's like a benevolent dictator. It's like, it's cool when they're making the trains run on time. It's not cool when they start killing people. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, it's good when it's good, but it could go bad really easily.

Yeah. Uh, all right. What else we got? Do Adventure Book. All right. So this is another, so to me, the Miss Excel thing was one. This other thing I think is really interesting. So the Adventure Book, let me tell you about this story. Have you heard, do you know what this is? This product, the Adventure Book?

I have no idea what it is.

Ben, have you ever heard of this thing? Okay. All right. So you guys are also not on TikTok enough. This is like the number one ad on TikTok that I see. I don't know if I'm just in their market or they just run a shit ton of ads, but I've been seeing it for like a year. So basically it's a, it's kind of, it's a book you buy and it's like a high quality big book. And what it is is like there's a bunch of, imagine like a scratch off, like a lottery. So there's a bunch of things you could, a bunch of adventures that you could scratch off. So you open the book to a random adventure, you scratch it off and it reveals a thing you're gonna go do. Like it might be like, I don't know, I've never bought the book, so like, you know, bad example, but like, you know, you're gonna go into a store today and you give out 10 compliments to people in the store, or you're gonna go streaking around your neighborhood or whatever, like an adventure, a thing you can go do. And so this idea, and they pair with it like a camera, so you're supposed to take a Polaroid of you doing it, so it becomes a scrapbook. So on one side, it triggers you to go do something that you've never done or that's like, you know, get you outta your comfort zone. And then it gives you the ability to capture it and paste, you glue the photo in and it becomes this memory book of all your adventures. Like cool kind of novel idea. So I had seen this and I was like, ah, that's a cute idea. That's a novel idea. What I didn't realize is this is a $100 million business that was created in the last like 2 years. So how do I know this? You know, like for the podcast, I don't know if you get these emails, but I definitely do. Um, there's a bunch of people that have like booking agents and we get all these emails, which is like, hey Sean, love My First Million. Um, have you thought about having, you know, Joe, Joe on? And you're like, you know, it's like, oh, first they're, they're complimenting me. So I like open it and I'm like, it's like, I don't wanna be a, a member of any club that will have me, you know? So it's like, that's how I feel about the guest thing. So normally I write all these off, but this one caught my eye, which was, They said, would you like to have Brian Ellis on? He is a high school dropout, now owns $100 million business called The Adventure Challenge. And I was like, it's like that, that adventure book thing. And he, and so I replied, I go, $100 million, no way. That sounds high. And she goes, yeah, like it's been incredible. They've grown, blah, blah, blah. And I said, 100, I just like clarify. I'm like, $100 million cumulative revenue, annual revenue. What are you saying here? And so she goes, yeah, like they'll do $85 million in revenue this year. And they have a few bigger partnerships, the distribution partnerships that will get them over $100, like in the next year. And you know, so the business is valued over $100 million with $85 million in revenue. And I was like, what the fuck? And so I go and I start researching this. And so here's the story. So this guy, Bryant, he's, I, so I couldn't confirm the high school dropout part. I don't know if that was just like some post-fact shit, like, like to make this sound better, but like, let's assume it's true. So, uh, high school dropout. I think his job was, he had some job which was like, he was, uh, a skyscraper inspector. So he was like, you know, some low man on the totem pole doing a job he didn't love. And he's like, all right, I'm just doing this for the money. He wanted to make a business. Like he just, he's like, my whole life I just always been, I always have ideas and, and, um, you know, I wanted to come create a product. He's like, so I'm doing this job and I had this idea to do, um, to do this like adventure box. So his original idea was take a machine, uh, create a box like a machine and, um, you push a button and it's like, like prints out a receipt. The receipt is like the adventure you're gonna go on. So you get like a random adventure that comes out. Cool idea, right? And, um, and so that was the original idea. And he's like, ah, just tells a couple people about it. They're like, oh yeah, that seems, that's cool. And he's like, great, but he's doing his job and he hasn't really, you know, figured out exactly how to do it or whatever. And he's like, he's like, okay, what? He's, he's, he— everything's like on hold until he gets fired from his job. He like, he makes a mistake. They think he committed fraud. His boss is like, no, no, no, this honest mistake. But either way, he gets fired. He's like, all right, shit, what do I want to do? So he decides, I want to go to acting school. So he's like, I'm going to go to acting school, but I need to pay for life. So he's like, I need to create a side hustle. That's gonna make me $2,000 a month. That's my goal. And he is like, he's like, what about that Adventure Box Challenge thing? And he is like, the idea over the course of a few months had, had like evolved. And he is like, all right, what if it was actually like a book that you could scratch off the adventure? Um, and so he tells a couple people about it and they're like, that's actually a cool, really cool idea. You should do it. And so he goes to Hobby Lobby and he buys some paper, some of the scratch-off material, and he, and he's like, buys a, goes to a different store, buys a camera, and he's like, starts coming up with this idea. And he basically spends 6 to 8 months prototyping this idea. 'Cause nobody had really done a like, kind of like, um, an adventure style scratch-off book before. So he is like creating an actual physical product. And so he's like, um, he has this idea and he, um, he just keeps telling people about it. And so he, um, he gets to the point where he's prototyped the idea several times. And there's videos I found online of like, He's creating a vlog while he's doing it. He's like, all right, it's, uh, 11:00 PM, April 1st. Uh, I just caught this really cool material for the scratch-off. I really like this one, but I'm having trouble with the bindings, you know? And he's like, so maybe I'll try this other thing tomorrow. And then like he has the next video, you know, a week later he's like, okay, I figured out the bindings part and now I need to figure out this other thing. I love seeing the, the start, the early stages of these ideas. So he creates a Kickstarter. He's like, I'm gonna do a Kickstarter. It's gonna be great. I wanna raise $10,000 for this book. And, uh, Kickstarter goes live. He makes $1,300 the first day and he's like, fuck yeah, I'm the man. He, you know, goes to a coffee shop. He's strutting in. He's like, I made $1,300 today. I don't know about you guys. I'll take, you know, your best, gimme your finest coffee. And, uh, he's like, all right, we're, you know, we're already 13% of the way to the goal. Let's keep going. But day 2, $400. Day 3, $0. And like the Kickstarter like runs outta steam and he's like, shit, I was kind of just banking on this going viral and now it's not viral. So, Oh, what now? And so he's like, all right, basically he's gonna throw in the towel. He's like, for, for only $1,700, I can't even get the quality of book made that I want. Uh, maybe I'll just quit. So he's like, I need to get a job to pay for life. Um, you know, like I'm, I'm out of money. And so he's like, he's like, oh, maybe I'll contact my buddy. I don't forget his name. Like Ben, my, my buddy Ben to, uh, to get a sales job. He has like this company I can do sales. Uh, so he calls him up, he gets a sales job. He's like, I wanna do a sales job. I wanna do it for 1 year and I'm just saving up money so I can go back out there and build a product. And the guy's like, all right, cool, that's fine. Like you're upfront about it. Like I'm down with that, let's do it. So he gets a sales job there and while he's there, he's telling people at work this idea. He can't shut up about the idea. And the guy there was like, you know, have you tried ads? He's like, oh dude, nobody clicks ads. Like ads, like, are ads, like ads are scams basically. Like that was his mentality at the time. And the guy's like, no, like that's how we grow our business. Like, you know, you should try. So he puts a little money into ads. He's like, ah, I don't know if it worked or not, but like, you know, I got this like 10x ROAS. And the guy's like, what? Like, no way. And he's like, yeah, like people really like the, the ad or whatever. And so the guy, he partners with his buddy, the guy who hired him, and he, so I'm fast forwarding some parts of the story, but basically he ends up leaving. That guy partners with him. That guy's like, look, we're gonna grow this thing through ads. And And they basically run a shit ton of TikTok ads, Facebook ads, whatever. And they've grown this thing to now 85, if this is true, $85 million in sales. They've sold about 2 million copies of this book. It's like a $40 book, which is like, you know, something, 70-something million dollars in sales if you do the math. And, and yeah, what an adventure. And now they have like a couple's book. So you're like 50 fun adventures to go on with your date. They have a, a family book. Here's some things to do with your family, a friend's book, and then a by yourself book. And, Yeah, it's kind of amazing.

I am into these notebooks. I told you I use one of these, Best Self Co, right?

Yeah, but that's different. That doesn't have like a prompt. It doesn't get you to go do things in the real world.

It does, it does. The one I use, I use like a relationship, we use like a marriage one. And so I'm into this. This guy's amazing. How old is he?

Uh, he seems very young, so I don't know how old he is. Um, he looks like he might be 25, 30 max.

I don't know. I think these box things are cool. We talked about one that was doing like $100 million in revenue, and it was, um, remember it was that like catch a, catch a criminal box? You remember that?

Oh, what was that? What is that one? That's, um, is it a true crime? It was amazing.

It was, it was a true crime thing. It was $30 a month, and they send you a box and you solve a crime with your friends. It's so good. It was so fun. And this is in that same world. I think it's cool to like feels special to me to order something and to like see a physical, get a physical thing. And I'm into it. I think this is badass.

I like that True Crime one better than this because that's a repeat, that's like a recurring one where it'll have more repeat purchase than this. And it's so fun. And I do one, I buy this thing called Kiwi for my niece, which is like, it sends her like kind of like a science fair project basically. It's like, here's a kit, you're gonna build a like a little like mini tractor. It's sort of like Legos or whatever, but it's not like one specific thing. Or sorry, it is one specific thing. Um, it's like, here's— you learn about electricity through this little like box every month. And it's not great, but it's good enough. And like, she loves it. So now if I cancel, I have the guilt of like her not getting the toy she wants. And so I'm like, I'm gonna just keep this $20 subscription forever, I guess.

I'm on board with this. I think this is awesome. I think Who, by the way, whoever's making clips, this should be the clip that you make. This guy's story is like— I was enthralled. This is amazing. Wow. All right, what else?

What else you want to do? I have a— keep going. Okay, I have a segment. It's not even a full segment. It's just the start of a segment. I think this one might be bad, but let's try it. I basically pretend I'm drunk, and then this will be like, that's pretty good for a drunk guy. I have a bunch of half-baked TV show ideas.

Do you even drink?

I'll drink, you know, if the occasion calls for it, I'll drink, but not regularly, no. But I want to pretend I was drunk when I came up with this list because it's kind of just like a random-ass list of weird ideas. So these are half-baked TV show ideas, okay? This is for the, you know, the producer who listens to the show, the Netflix guy who listens to the show. You're welcome in advance. I want to get your reaction to my concepts, okay? I'm gonna pitch you 3 ideas and Uh, I don't know if you have any, any TV show ideas, but I'll pitch you 3. Okay. Okay, good. The first one is called Frat U. Um, I love— I don't know if you've seen, um, the football one that's on. Oh my God, what's it called? There's like a football one called, uh, something on Netflix. It's like one of their original shows that, uh, basically follows a, a junior college football team around. And, um, it's like, here's the coach, here's the players, and it like picks 6 players and it's like you kind of get emotionally invested in their story. There's a Formula 1 show that's just like this. It's like, here's these 6 drivers, you get invested in their, yeah, it's amazing. Their, their story. There's a cheerleading version of this that I watched. I think it's called Cheer. I don't know what it's called exactly, but it's like, here's this, the, the best cheer college.

Bro, do you know that that was like, you know that that was like the most popular show and it's not like something you discovered.

I'm, I'm a pretty, you know, uh, good curator here. So you, so I don't know, but a lot of people didn't watch the show cuz it's like, why would I watch a true crime?

Have you heard of this thing called Squid Games?

So I signed up for this service called Netflix. It's pretty great. Uh, all right. So this same model, I think it'll be applied to a whole bunch more topics. The one I'm surprised at is why is there not a reality show just inside one of the craziest frats in America? Because you know that they would, basically go all out, sell out to make the show entertaining because they want the fame.

Well, I think it's a faux pas. Have you ever talked to like an 18-year-old man?

They're woke. No, dude. No, that's—

are they in a frat? Just like the—

that's like the 18-year-old who's like talking to old people like us. Most 18-year-olds don't interact with people like us, and they're like very normal and just trying to have a good time in college. They're not like—

are frats even— are frats popular, you think? I would think they were going down, dude, like significantly.

Super popular because it's a bubble, like when you go to a college, it's like in such a little bubble, it's not really affected by like the way the world is changing.

Uh, you don't have to— you're not, you're not, you're not convincing me. I understand the value, but I, I didn't even— I just thought that like with everything going on that it was like a faux pas.

Nah, dude, I bet if you go to Arizona State or you go to like, you know, wherever, you know, Georgia, do you think they give a shit about like, you know, wokeism and they're disbanding the frats? Hell no. They are— have you seen doubling down?

There's these There's these girls on TikTok that do this challenge— or not this challenge, but I forget what it's called. If you're a TikTok guy, you probably know, but, uh, Sarah showed it to me. It's these girls who are like pledging, I think. Is that what it's called? Yeah, I wasn't part of that, uh, where you— I don't know what you do. It's like you— it's like a tryout, and they always talk about what they're wearing. I'm an— I'm a— I'm an old man, and I was a dork. I wasn't part of a frat. But they like talk about the clothes that they're wearing to their— their like pledge ceremony, things like that. And it's gone very viral on video. Uh, what's so notable about what they're wearing? I don't know, but it's just funny. It's just hilarious because like, don't you know how like in the South and like at Ole Miss and stuff like that, the sororities do these like— yeah, I went to a Southern college.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, like they all like—

it's all like the blonde hair girls, they all look exactly alike and they dress exactly alike. And that's like the joke is they like show like what they're wearing.

At Duke, you weren't even allowed to throw a party if you weren't a frat or sorority. Like they literally were like, you better join this shit or you don't get to have a social life. Dude, it's weird.

It's so weird to me. That's so weird. Also, whenever I go to one of these frats, I'm like, this is disgusting. I don't want to live with like a bunch of dudes who are alcoholics. And there's like 80 of them in this crappy house and there's beer shit taped on the wall.

How about you when you were like getting drunk all the time?

Even back then. But even back then I'm like, this is filthy. I don't want to get drunk by someone.

I want to be by someone in a clean place.

I just don't want to be around a bunch of like degenerates all the time.

Oh, okay. Well, you're alone in that. I would love to. go back and experience college again. I think it was a great time, and living in one of these houses was, yes, messy but fun. Anyways, point is, you go to a party school, you go to Ole Miss, you go to Georgia, you go to, you know, Santa Barbara or whatever, and it's frat U, and you basically just follow around the king alpha frat. You go inside the house and you pick the 5 characters who are the fun— you know, they got— they're gonna have all the elements of a great TV show. They're gonna have relationship drama, They're going to have infighting. They're going to have camaraderie with the boys. They're going to have a hazing and a pledge process that's going to be controversial and get them to do all kinds of outrageous stunts. It's all baked in. The show basically writes it.

You got to have like, like one guy questioning his sexuality. Exactly. Comes out. He's another guy who he's afraid they're not going to accept him, but they accept him.

There's the person who gets canceled for doing something racist or sexist or something like that. It's got all the elements. And then you could just hop from school to school and the schools would be excited. Oh, shit. Frat U is coming. We got to represent because, you know, Georgia looked like they had a good time. So now all of a sudden Clemson is like, oh, you think Georgia was hardcore? Look how we party. Look how we do our thing. I think this is a no-brainer franchise that somebody needs to create. And you could put me down as executive producer. All right.

Next, back. Okay. Basic to Baller.

Basic to Baller. Okay. What is this? I recently met somebody, I'm gonna have to do a separate episode of this, but I recently met somebody who was completely like middle class or a little lower middle class. Like didn't have any money. All their, all their tastes were that of a basic person, right? They, they didn't shop at Whole Foods. They shopped at Kroger, right? They didn't, they didn't eat like fancy stuff. They ate, you know, like McDonald's and stuff like that. They, they didn't drive a fancy car. They drove like a Camry and like, Okay, so that was their, like, taste buds. So I thought, what if you had a show where you just give a really basic person fuck you money and they get to go ball out and you get to see their reaction? Because already shows where people ball out, uh, like, like, you know, whether it's like kind of like, uh, Million Dollar Listing, or it's like, uh, Selling Sunset, or it's like Kardashians, it's like, it's nice to see the lifestyles of the rich and famous. People like that. But those people also, there's that genre of lifestyles of the rich and famous from people who are already rich and famous and sort of like, you know, snobby and, and materialistic. Okay. That already exists. What about some, what if you transformed somebody, you gave 'em the Cinderella treatment, they went from the, you know, the bottom to the top suddenly, and they're now just discovering all these things for the first time. Hilarity ensues. Okay. That's my second place.

Let me make it. Let me put a twist on it. I actually think that you could do this, or someone listening could actually do this immediately via a YouTube series. So in 2005, there was a documentary called Reversal of Fortune. It was on Showtime. It was amazing. And the question was, what would a homeless person do if they were given $100,000? And so they found this homeless guy, they gave him $100,000, and they show him going to like a hotel for the first time and sleeping in a bed for the first time. And he's like, I don't like this. And he sleeps on the floor of the hotel because he's like, it's not comfortable sleeping on this bed. and they give him $100,000 and it ends not good. So he spends all of his money on women. He buys a $35,000 truck and this is like $35,000 of the 100 grand and basically blows through all the money. And he does get a job, but he like, all the money is gone on basically partying. And, uh, at the end of the movie he's only got 5 grand left and he's sleeping at his sister's house.

Uh, but I actually think it's not great for him, but sounds like great TV to me. It was great TV. I was watching it the whole time.

So, uh, I think what could be— what you should do is just get $100,000 and do a YouTube series on this. You— I think you can make your money back in ad revenue. That's how I learned.

I think if you did it with a homeless person, you might get some blowback now.

Uh, so, you know, yeah, not with the homeless person, but like, you know, like what would happen if like, you know, a, a someone who's in need or doesn't have much is given a month, given a lot.

And I think it kind of needs to be temporary. Like, uh, you know, so, you know, with like Pimp My Ride, you know, Xzibit shows up at the door and then like your life just sort of changes overnight. Um, or like, you know, Wife Swap or whatever, where it's a very short period of, it's like a month or something like that. I think you need to let them ball out and then let them return back to reality. Um, and, and you see that, that sort of the yo-yo of emotions between them. Okay. So that's my, my second one. Okay. Third one, very easy show. I just need a show that's background noise. Are you a background noise kind of guy? Do you just have something on cuz it just feels better to have something on?

Uh, in our— when we had a physical office, we had, we had white noise machines throughout the office, and I enjoyed that.

Babies to sleep, or what were you doing?

It was so you could have like hard— like if you want to have a conversation in a conference room and for it not to bleed through the walls, right? Uh, and it was for those difficult newsletter conversations.

Yes.

Or like when you have like an open office plan, you put it in like pods of desks, so then like the people eating lunch don't bother you. Now I keep the fan on.

Well, you're also like a music video guy, right? I remember we were at your house, you were just throwing up like on Apple TV like a bunch of music videos.

I have music videos playing throughout. Yeah, okay, so that's the behavior I'm talking about.

I think that Netflix does not— does anyone else do that?

You don't do that? You don't have music?

I don't do that, but my wife, she'll always put like Friends on. I'm like, dude, you're watching Friends? She's like, no, I'm not. Like, I'm not watching. I'm like, why do you have it on? I can't— can I turn it off? No, no, I like— I I like having it on. It's like, yeah, she doesn't like if there's like kind of like an empty home feeling. And also it's this comfort safety blanket where it's like, I already seen all the episodes. And this is why The Office and Friends are such valuable catalogs, because people just put them on and they can only pay 10% or 20% attention to it, and 80% could be on the thing they're trying to do. And they can just glance up and, you know, see certain parts, but then they just don't— it's a low-maintenance show. And when you go on Netflix today, so much of it is high maintenance attention. Uh, it's like, oh, here's this intense story about this bank heist. And that's great when you want like a Friday night intense drama. Right. But I think they're underserving the background noise. And I also learned this at Twitch because when I was at Twitch, we had looked at some of the data, uh, about the usage data and somebody was pointing out like, oh yeah, like x percent— I can't say the exact percent, but like a significant percent of the viewing time is, um, when it's not the tab that's in the forefront on people's computer. And I was like, oh, so we should just like throw that out, right? Like they're not even watching, they just like accidentally left it open. And I was like, why is this such a high percentage? Do we have some bug that like it stays open in the background in some weird way? They're like, no, this is actually the usage by like all the developers. Like, what are you talking about? The developers who actually like use Twitch all the time, they're like This is how I use Twitch all the time. Like, I'm coding, I just have it on in the back. I'm just listening to it. Like, you're listening to somebody play video games? Like, if there's one thing weirder than watching somebody play video games, it's listening to somebody play video games. Like, no, I just like it as like an ongoing background stream. It's kind of my favorite streamer, and I don't really need to pay attention to it, but I'll hop in if something— if I hear something cool happening. I was like, holy shit. So there's this big genre of background entertainment that I think you— if you specifically tried to make— and make, um, background entertainment, you could create some really successful franchises.

So can I, can I, can I tell you something that validates this? So you know Chive, chive.com?

Um, I think it's just like a news website or something. I don't really know much about it. A little bit.

It's like basically Barstool but a slightly different demographic, but mostly the same. And they created this thing called Chive TV. And so what they did was they, uh, would— and they're based in Austin— they basically gave a little Amazon Fire Stick to a bunch of bars in Austin, and they said, you can have this stick for free. And on this stick is basically— we're going to put loads and loads of different clips of basically like America's Funniest Home Videos, basically guys getting hit in the balls and like funny bar stuff that you don't actually need any sound to understand or to get like pleasure from. And so it was like silly stunts, guys jumping off skyscrapers and like skydiving and stuff. And they eventually spun this off and they created this business called Atmosphere. And this was making tens of millions of dollars in revenue pre-pandemic, I believe. They raised tens of millions of dollars at like a $200 million valuation, and they would give these, these, these Firesticks to like loads of different people. And then eventually you could just download this app and they would fulfill the— put content in the pipe and then put ads on it. And that's how they made all their money. And they go, look, advertisers, you're reaching all of these bars, right? Yeah, yeah.

That's— Bars is a great one, right? That's like perfect background, background entertainment. All right. So those are my 3 TV show pitch ideas. Half-baked ideas. Do you have any ideas? Is there a show that you think could exist or would exist or should exist? I know I'm putting you on the spot here.

No, but love— well, so one that has caught my eye, YouTube— on YouTube, CNBC is doing something that I think is actually amazing. It's called Millennial Money. Stupid name, and the branding is really dumb. But what they do is— no, the idea is cool though. My friend Steve was on it the other day. They convince these people and they say like— and the titles are like Here's how we live on $1 million a year in Silicon Valley. Here's how we live on $40,000. Here's how we live on $150,000.

And I've also seen Kevin O'Leary Reacts to them. Have you seen this? That's what they—

that's how they double down. I think it's a great series. I think they're missing the mark though, but even though they're missing the mark, it's still quite good. And so I've always thought that, uh, for, uh, different stuff, I was like, what you, what you should do is get— you could do it one of two ways. I've always thought what you could do is you could maybe have a podcast or get actors and they like, I bet you if I sent out a survey and I've done this before, we did this at The Hustle, we sent out a survey, we posted on Hacker News and we got like 3,000 people to tell us how much money they have in their checking account, how much they have in investable assets, how much they spend each month, and then just like a comment box and they like leave comments. And if you search like The Hustle founder bank account, It'll like, we, we did an article on it and people would give us all their information and it was all anonymous though. And it was, and, and, and it was pretty great. And I always thought it would be interesting to where we can do a podcast where I just ask these people questions and then I'll hire a voice actor just to read them.

Right, right, right, right. I like that. Uh, I also really like that survey kind of idea cuz if people, people are very willing to share cuz it's, they have no, no cost to them. It's anonymized. It's, you know, it's not being publicly shared that. It's their, their information. But people really benefit from seeing what the aggregate is doing. Uh, so we talked about this with salaries, with levels.fyi, as well as, uh, somebody heard the thing for Levels and then they made it for— do you know about the story? Someone heard our podcast about Levels, they made it for doctors. Doctors. And then it got acquired by Levels. And so they now work at— oh, it got acquired. They got acquired. They got acqui-hired, maybe is a better way to phrase it. Like those guys now are like, you know, like doing their thing at Levels. Um, he's like, dude, thanks for like that idea. It led me to like a, a, it got me off the path I was on. I built something cool. I got to learn from that. And then I got a sweet opportunity at Levels through that. Um, so, but, but there's another one that's going viral right now that's like, I think 175,000 tech workers have put their stuff into this spreadsheet.

Yeah, I've seen that. What's that called? It's literally just a Google Sheet.

Google Sheet. It's like, it's broken cuz it, it has too many rows now. Like nobody can like use it. They like, they're like asking for Excel experts to like help them, you know, like format this so that they don't lose the data, but like people can still put their stuff in.

I saw that they're basically doing it because they want to end like, like maybe if you're a minority or something at Facebook, you're like, I don't know if I'm getting fucked here. Can everyone please enter their salary anonymously so I know like, is this fair or not fair? Yeah. And that's how it got started. And so people were like rallying behind it and it went viral. I saw that. That was pretty cool.

Yeah. All right. That's all I got for today. I got a couple other ideas, but I'm gonna save them. All right.

I think that was a good one.

Benjamin, what do you— what do you think of this one? Give it a grade.

This was an A. This was an A-minus.

Okay. Walk me through that. It was an A.

It was an A because it was good top to bottom. Like, all of it was good. And then I decided to add the minus at the end because it was missing, uh, like a Hosewater Sam moment. Like, it didn't have anything that I was like rolling on the floor laughing or anything like that. So I docked it to a minus. Dude, it's because my freaking camera's screwing up. It knocks me off my flow so much. I can't stand it. Um, apparently, so I did So I, some people say we're funny, which shocks me. And, uh, like the other day Noah was like, you have to take notes about reading a book. And I'm like, dude, I just read a book about like the Navy SEALs. Like, what am I supposed to take notes about? How like bin Laden was shot in the head. And, uh, like apparently people wrote in the comments, they like when we say dumb stuff like that. And that shocks me. Uh, when people say they listen, I'm like, I'm like, really?

So I don't know if you're just doing that thing where it's like fake, fake humble, like, oh gosh, shucks, I didn't know that guy. Like, no, I think it's funny.

Like, I think it's funny that most people— funny. I think you're funny. As a group, I would say we're like mildly funny, but I wouldn't say funny is an attribute that I would like give this show. I think it's funny.

I think you're way funnier also. I even texted you this because you would— you had sent me something that was so funny. And I was like, dude, you're funny.

Hey, no, you said a left-handed compliment. You're like, I don't think a lot of people understand this, but you're pretty funny. Like, I made a joke the other day. Someone posted a picture with them with their arm, or it was just like a headshot of them with Apollo Anton Ohno, the ice skater. And I was like, I don't know who that is. It's almost as— that's Apollo Anton Ohno. I'm like, oh, sorry, I didn't recognize him without his skates on. Yeah, there's like little comments like that, and no one laughed at it. And I was like, guys, that's hilarious.

That was funny. That was funny. I should have given you a laugh because cause that was, that was a good one. Um, and, uh, yeah, so I think we're funny. You have a, uh, you're blunt, which is, that's funny in and of itself, right? You just, you just say something and, uh, you don't hedge, which is like, makes it even funnier cuz everybody fucking hedges nowadays. So you don't hedge or apologize, which is hilarious. And, um, and then you have some good like kind of phrases or one-liners that, that hit.

Well, I'll take it. So Ben, A-minus, but we'll try to get some hose water. Yeah, but people are still— people tweet at me and call me hose water. I love it.

All right, we're out of here.