“Health is a HUGE opportunity” - 3 Business Ideas To Start In 2025

The marketer in me loves everything you're saying right now because the two things you just said, those were actually like, you know, $20 million ad hooks.

Justin, I'm pumped you're here. You're here because for— well, for two reasons. The first reason is that you have started like 6 or 7 companies that have collectively done something like $500 million in revenue in the last 7 years, which is huge. And they're all in the health and wellness space. You're also here because you're one of my most reasonable friends when it comes to health and wellness, because you are like, you're into fringe stuff, which is, I think, cool. But the problem with people who are in fringe stuff is they can't relate that to like a normal person, you know what I mean? And they'll be like, you know, this like fringe thing that I'm into, this is only like a 1% needle mover as opposed to like a 50% needle mover. So you're very self-aware, you're very thoughtful, and you've built a lot of big businesses in this space. And you're a blogger and you have this amazing blog post called The Great American Poisoning that Sean and I are like obsessed with. And so I thought you could come on and kind of talk a little bit about the blog post, but also business ideas that you're into and opportunities related to this space.

I'm super stoked to be here. I mean, I, as I've written in that post, I literally think that the great Ameri— what I call the great American poisoning, basically the fact that Americans are sick at record levels and are getting sicker, like our children are sick, everyone is overweight and obese, and these problems are getting worse, not better. Is both the biggest problem in the US and also because of that, like a massive opportunity for people that want to start companies or build value in this space.

Sean, what emotion did you feel when you read this blog post?

Dude, you could ask Diego. I went on like a 48-hour bender. First, here's what we did.

Was that rooted in fear?

No, no. It was like outrage first.

Yeah.

And then curiosity and then skepticism. So here's the series of events. Justin writes this post called The Great American Poisoning. I read it.

I'm lit on fire.

Justin, this was my— I did an end of year recap for myself over the weekend. It was the number one blog. It was my favorite blog post of the year was this thing you did. So you read that. And then I told my team, I said, hey, let's break this down point by point because you made a lot of really interesting points. If people haven't read it, we should pull it up on YouTube. But it's like, you have this photo of this guy. I remember you go, this guy was considered so overweight that he was like a member of the circus. And it's like, if you go to a nearby Costco today, you'll find, you know, hundreds of people that are more overweight than this guy. But that was considered like circus freak fat before. And you talked about how doctors would go their whole career, a pediatrician would go their whole career and never see a kid with, you know, fatty liver disease or these things like that. And you're like, now it's more and more common. And it's just a very compelling case around health. So you combine 3 very interesting things. One, you have a very strong factually based view of health. You are self-actualized around health. You're one of the sort of fittest, most healthy guys that both Sam and I know and look up to. We— I've messaged you before being like, hey, water filters, tell me, what do you like? What brand do you like? Right? Because I trust that you actually walk the walk on it. And then third is you're an entrepreneur. So you've started two brands in the kind of like keto space, each doing, you know, tens of millions a year in revenue. You know, get distribution in 10,000+ retail stores. You started a non-alcoholic— more than that. Yeah, non-alcoholic beverage brand because you're like, great, drinking is like one of the most unhealthy things we do. How do we have the social drink that doesn't sacrifice on health? And what I liked was you had no CPG experience before that. You had no D2C experience before starting these. You went in and you're kind of like, it seems like you have this great interest and knowledge and, you know, self-hobby around health and wellness, but then you've also done it as an entrepreneur. So that's a great intersection for us on the pod because we're both interested in health and like living a good life, but also how do we profit from said good life? And you've actually done it. So I'm excited because not only have you yourself had, you know, 3 or 4 big hits in the health and wellness space, but you then brainstormed and sent us a doc of like 5 or 6 new opportunities that you think other people could go do in this space.

Yeah, I mean, you know, I literally think that this space, like solving the Great American Poisoning, there's just almost immeasurable opportunity for people and entrepreneurs that want to solve this problem. Like, uh, like I can read some stats off, but it's just staggering the amount of chronic disease and the burden that that's putting on the country. And so as an entrepreneur, like if you see a big problem like that, you just want to sprint towards that. And, you know, not only to say like when you solve some of the problems that are involved in fixing the chronic disease crisis, you're also like helping people, you know, your people are living longer, they're living healthier. It's a very rewarding spot. Space to work in as opposed to maybe like day trading NFTs or something like that.

And your blog post is basically summarized. You said the answer to why— so you give all these stats as to how messed up we are, but you said the answer to all of this is simple. Our food system is poisoning us and the institutions meant to keep us safe, which are regulators, healthcare system, doctors, and researchers, are not incentivized to keep us healthy, which is like the cause of all the problems that you're discussing.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, we, we basically, we had, you know, call it 100 years ago. Our chronic disease burden was like 95% lower than it is right now. There were certain acute issues, like infectious disease was much more of a real thing. There were, there were all of these things that we built our medical system on, and then life expectancy went up as we got better at solving, you know, women dying in childbirth, infectious disease, polio, these sorts of things. Now the, the biggest burden that we see from a health standpoint is chronic conditions. So like cancer, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, things like this. That have grown 700% in the last, you know, 90 years. And so I think that we are running the code, if you want to call it that, of an old healthcare system that existed to solve a problem where you took a default healthy individual, they got sick, and the job of the medical system was to bring them back to health. And now we actually have the opposite, which is the average American is unhealthy. And like, people have not internalized what that means, which is, you know, you walk around almost anywhere in the US and the average person is going to be sick. The average person is going to get, cancer, heart disease, you know, any number of chronic conditions at some point in their life. And our medical system is not built to service a population where the average person is sick. And so because of that, we need new institutions and companies, and it, it creates a ton of opportunity for entrepreneurs that want to try and address the Great American Poisoning by creating products and services, uh, that help people, you know, stay or move back to a baseline default healthy space.

We should get to the ideas because they're great. But here's like another, like, one-liner that kind of summarizes this, which is everyone should update their thinking. The default outcome of living in the US today is that you will get one or more chronic conditions and die of cancer or heart disease. Everything to avoid that is worth considering.

I feel like I'm such a depressing person these days. I talk about stuff. It's just like, well, yeah.

Justin, Debbie Downer Mares over here. All right, so let's do it. So what are the ideas? Where do you see the opportunity? You sniffed out the opportunity in the bone broth, you know, ketone space. You sniffed out the opportunity in non-alcoholic wines. Each of those is doing, you know, very, very well. What opportunities do you see today? Where, what should, what ideas do you have?

Yeah, so I see, I see a ton. Like backing up, I basically think that, and I wrote about this in my, in my long essay manifesto, but I basically think that That's what we got to call blogs from now on, by the way. That's way better.

It's a little Unabomber-esque, but I'll take it. You know, like in Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise writes his manifesto to kick off the movie. That's this. You— this is your, your Jerry Maguire manifesto.

Exactly. Yeah. This thing was so much work.

All right, my friends. So a lot of you guys who listen to the show, you listen because you want to start a company, but you're not sure what idea to choose, or you may not even have an idea and you like our podcast, My First Million, because we've done a lot of the work for you on researching all these business ideas. Well, my friends, we've made life a lot easier for you because HubSpot, they just put together an entire list of all the resources that you can use to find a market opportunity to validate for your next business idea. So if you're looking for a market size calculator or tools to identify market trends or a huge list of ideas to get started, so if you're interested, there's a link below, click it, and you could have access to the whole thing. It's completely free. Now, back to the show.

So yeah, so to back up, like my view on what has changed in the last, call it 80 years, is that we went and humans mostly existed in an environment that was not poisoning people to one that is basically poisoning them. Like your food, water, you know, lights, air, like all these sorts of things are filled with plastics, chemicals, toxins, ultra-processed, whatever that is making the default person sick. And so one of the things that I think is really, is a really compelling opportunity on that is you could build a massive company in my view that helps people actually look at their environment, their home and or their office and say, okay, you're spending, you know, 80% of your time in these like 3 spaces. It might literally be like your bedroom, your kitchen, and your office. How do we make it so that these spaces that you're spending time in are maximally healthy and health-promoting. And I, I have a friend actually who just started a company in the home health testing space that's doing super well. They're testing like water, air, EMFs, light, stuff like that.

What's it called?

Uh, it's called Lightwork. It's doLightwork.com. So they're doing really well, but I think that there is this whole world of home services. Like, home services are a $40 billion you know, uh, a year in spend where you can think like HVAC, lights, plumbing, you know, water, electricity, all these sorts of things where none of these people are looking at how do we actually make your environment healthy? None of like the people making your furniture are thinking about all of like the flame retardant chemicals that are giving like babies cancer, you know, then as they spray it on your couch or your sofa or whatever, they're not thinking about that. And so I think there's a huge opportunity to build a company or a series of companies that looks at what is going on in your built environment, in your home and your furniture and all this and says, how do we make this health-promoting? Like, how do we encourage health and try and make this, you know, this sort of service, one that makes the person healthier.

So it's like a, an annual checkup for your house.

Yeah, exactly. I think like that's the first, that's like the input, which is do an annual checkup for your house. And out the back end of that, there's so many long-term services where you know, someone services your water filtration, make sure that your shower water is good, make sure like, you know, your tap water is RO and has mineralization and all these sorts of things.

What do you do at your house? I know you do a bunch of stuff. I don't remember everything you do. I know you do a bunch, but what do you do in your home that's worth it that would be included in your home annual checkup?

Yeah. So I think a couple things are very worth it. One, like water filtration is a huge one. I basically set up a whole house filtration system there that we had like these plumbers install. Actually, they installed it. There was like this $8,000 system. They installed it. Next time they came around to fix it, they like screwed on a $20 part incorrectly. And I like walked into my kitchen the next, next morning and I stepped on my floorboards and like water came up from around them and I was like, fuck. So there's a lot of—

now you got a mold issue.

Yeah, exactly. So we had to handle that, which was quite annoying. But we have like every water that is in, that is coming in and out of our house gets filtered. We also recently switched to, got all of our bulbs, we switched to incandescent actually. Like I think that there is a very compelling and pretty early line of research that shows the impact of blue light emitting lights, which is basically most light bulbs, on circadian rhythm, sleep. They even impact, like if you eat under blue light versus eating under non-blue light, it also seems to impact like the amount of weight that you'll gain. Uh, they use this in agriculture where they use different types of lighting when they're trying to get, you know, chickens to gain more weight or trying to—

what's an incandescent bulb? Is that a normal bulb?

Yeah, think of like the Edison bulb that it's actually like burning something as opposed to, uh, an LED bulb, which is what's in most houses today. There's also, there's a pretty cool thing that you can do. So LEDs also, one of the reasons that I think I felt much better since switching them out of my house, if you have an LED light in your house and you take your iPhone and you film it on slo-mo, you can see the LED bulb flickering like thousands of times per second. And the reason that LED lights are supposedly more, more efficient than incandescent bulbs is because they're turning on and off, uh, all the time. And so they're actually like on and using less electricity, uh, because they're, you know, they're not on the entire time. So they do this sub-perceptually, which, you know, can cause people to like feel just icky. Sometimes you walk into a room with bad lighting and you're like, What's going on in my system? I don't like this.

The marketer in me loves everything you're saying right now because like the two things you just said in kind of a throwaway thing, those were actually like, you know, $20 million ad hooks. When you're talking about, do you know how they make chickens fat? They put them under these blue lights and actually they gain extra weight. Yeah, maybe that's why you're fat, right? Like, maybe have you ever considered that you're just, you're being poisoned by the industry? So you have The man is out to get you. The people love that. You have, maybe the problem is not what I'm putting in my mouth, it's the light that's affecting. And so you, it's like, oh, can I improve? Can I buy this thing rather than like kind of change from within as like maybe that's 80, 90% of the problem, but like, and no one talks about it except for us in this ad right now.

It's a secret that you know.

Exactly.

It's a, it's a, it's a secret. They don't want you to know about the LED thing. Like watch this. Magic trick of an ad where you take the phone on slow-mo and you go, it's actually flickering. Do you know how that messes with your sleep, with your whatever? I love all of this from a marketing— I know you're a good ethical standup guy, but when I hear this stuff, I think, what could I use to get this across? How could I— if I believe that this is good for people, how can I maximally, you know, get that in the hands of people?

Totally. I mean, and this is why I think this is such a big opportunity because you have the home services thing. Like the healthy checkup for your home. But once you understand that the impact that some of these things have on your health, you basically— for many of these people, they're just like, yeah, blank check, like fix my air quality, fix my water quality, fix my lighting, fix like the EMFs in my house, you know, make sure I don't have mold. Like all of these things, there's a tremendous amount of spend that people want to put into making sure that their home environment is healthy.

Dude, I had a— Sam, have you ever had a pest control guy come to your house? There might not be a better salesman in the world than the pest control guy. Because he walks, he's like, hey, you want, you want me to just do a quick look around your house? Just free. I'll just take a quick look, see if I see anything of concern. Like, of course. And he walks around the house. Hey, I'd love to show you a couple things. And then he takes me around the house and he says, you see this? And there's like a tiny screen that's moved open. He's like, that's, that's, you know, that's rats. And I'm like, what? Rats? He's like, yeah, they're under your floorboards. I'm like, ew, under my floorboard? And he shows me all these little things that he's like, yeah, there's my— and Look, we just live out in like, uh, you know, a hilly area. There's mice everywhere. And he's like, would you like me to just come around once a month and spray and fix some of these things for you?

As if it's a favor.

Please, sir, be my dad. Yeah, exactly. He's like, great. And now I'm paying $270 a month for this guy to come and do nothing to my house. I have no idea what he's doing. A random guy comes and sprays. But that idea of like, let me diagnose the problem so I can sell you the solution is generally a good business model. And of course, you know, like Again, he's not wrong. Like, there actually was, you know, issues. It's just I would not— I would not have been aware of the problem. So I'm a big fan of this kind of like audit method of sales. Let me do a free audit for you to kind of tell you where you might have some problems. And then if you'd like me to fix them, I'm happy to do so.

Yeah. Are there any other things? So, water filter, light bulbs, any other like big needle-moving things?

I think that specifically for your bedroom and places where you're spending like multiple hours, It's kind of early, but I think that the EMF thing is going to be much more of a thing that people care about. And it sounds very tinfoil hatty, and let me explain like why I think this might be important.

This is why I like your opinion, by the way. You're great at this. You're like, this is what the freaks think, and this is like how it relates to a normal person, and like where's the truth somewhere, you know what I mean?

Yeah, exactly. So basically like 100 years ago, we had a certain type of radiation that was, I believe, called ionizing radiation. It's that or non-ionizing. I don't know this stuff well enough yet. But basically it was like, think of like what, you know, you get shot into at a dentist or something like that. Nuclear isotopes, things like that. Things that are definitely bad. And then there was this longer spectrum of like microwaves and then things that we would put like cell phones and computers into. And for many, many years, we basically were like, okay, microwaves, everything else is fine. Now we think, okay, microwaves are bad. They certainly cause some harm. It's like, causes thermal effects in the body. Let's also not expose people to microwaves at a high amount. But this other spectrum of like cell phones and the like are also definitely fine. And then you kind of like get to today, which is most of the FTC safety ratings and levels that have come up or that are used to regulate cell phones, Wi-Fi, things like this. Um, they basically were tested in an environment on cell phones from like the early 2000s where they were assuming that people would not be exposed to these things for more than like 20 to 30 minutes a day. Like the guy who came up with these rules, they interviewed him, uh, I don't know, it was like 5 or 6 years ago. And he was like, yeah, all of the assumptions that we had around, uh, around these just assumed that you'd like take a phone call and you'd put it down. We never thought that you'd be like walking around with this thing in your pocket. And there are a fair number of, of, um, signed like articles that I think are concerning enough where people will like change the electromagnetic, um, fields that mice are exposed to and it'll raise or lower their blood sugar at a predictive rate. Seems to have like potential impact on cancer. There's, there's enough there that I'm like, probably bad. It's also, I don't think as bad as everyone is like, oh my God, this is killing everyone and causing every cancer known to man. But I do think if you can avoid sleeping next to a Wi-Fi router or next to something that's like emitting a huge amount of EMFs for 8 to 9 hours a night, that's probably well worth doing.

By the way, one thing I think we should say, you're not one of these guys that's like optimized everything. Like I've seen you say multiple times, you're like, you know, just get these core 4 or 5 things right. And you're like, you know, you need to sleep well, don't eat too much processed foods, especially seed oils, you know, exercise, get some sunlight. Like you're very much a basics kind of guy when it comes to like, what's the, what should I be focused on? Which makes me relate and trust you because I think the people that are like, well, you need to get, You know, 9 micrograms of sunlight in your eye within 10 seconds of waking up. And it's like all these, like, all these fringe, like the thousand fringe things you could do to like maybe move the needle when you haven't done the core foundational big things right. It seems like you're more of the get the core right first, but am I giving you too much credit here? Where do you stand? Because you're currently saying things like Thomas Edison light bulbs and like the microwave is going to kill you or something. Where do you stand on this?

Yeah, yeah. So I actually think, so one, completely agree. I think if you get the basics right, that is like 80 to 90% of it. That said, I also think if you have relatively easy interventions, like move a Wi-Fi router outside of your bedroom and, you know, swap the bulbs in the rooms that you're spending 20 hours a day in, like those are pretty easy interventions that are like one-time, relatively low cost to no cost, and could have a big impact on your health. Like, I'm very supportive of those things. I'm definitely not the like butthole sunning solves your entire health issues type of guy. There's a lot of those guys.

Like, it'd be cool if it did.

Yeah, it'd be amazing.

Doesn't hurt to try though, right? Wouldn't you say?

Yeah.

I actually do think this is one of the problems with the health influencer space more broadly is it's just not sexy to be like avoid ultra-processed foods, get sunlight in the morning, lift 4 days a week, and, you know, make sure you're getting adequate sleep. And so these people get— they get like attention from going further out on the, the crazy like claim curve, right?

Well, you can't sell that, right? You can't sell that advice. You can't even just create content. You can't become an influencer because you'd say everything you need to say in 14 seconds. And what are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to post the next day? What are you going to post the next day?

You got to try to do this for years.

And so you have to work backwards from all the people that are trying to sell me something, have to sell me something that is complex. And all the people that are creating content to try to influence me, um, that are professional content people, they have to have something that's interesting, novel, and like evergreen to— they have to have more and more stuff to talk about. So nobody's incentive is to tell you the simple few things that you should focus on and get right, because they'd be done. You wouldn't sell me anything and you'd be done talking.

I was trying to find it, but I'm on Brian Johnson's newsletter and his subject line for his last newsletter was Wednesday. It says, 'Your boners are killing you.' That was the subject line. And it was how the lack of getting nighttime erections is somehow correlated with longevity. And it was like, you're saying it's not sexy to sell? Just like, well, this boner thing got me. You're right.

Can we do a quick sidebar on Bryan? So I like Bryan a lot as a guy. Really nice guy.

Incredible.

I actually really like what he's doing in general. But man, I kind of miss the old Bryan Johnson where it seemed like he was a missionary nerd trying to do this for science. And now he's like, he's like dressed up like kind of modern Zuck where he's got like the chain and the oversized t-shirt and he looks cool and he's selling products and he's got like cool YouTube content. He's got great subject lines for his emails and he's got a great social media strategy. And I get why all that's good, but it does make me trust less in a weird way because he kind of, what he was doing before was so different. This kind of self-funded science experiment on himself with a noble goal and noble mission. And I don't know, I kind of feel like he's detracting from that. I think he's— I don't know. Am I the only one who feels that way? Sam, what do you think?

I have a lot of trust in him still. I think that— I think that he's done a good job of like— he sells an olive oil that's called snake oil. And I think any time someone makes fun of themselves, my trust in them goes up. I don't think I have the same concerns as you. I think that I have to acknowledge that he's just a weirdo and that's just how he lives his life. And that's cool.

Justin, what do you think?

I think he's doing an incredible service to humanity, like how aggressively he's publishing everything. I think that he is— where I would say we differ is, well, I mean, one, he's trying to build a, like, longevity cult, like new religion, which he openly says. Uh, I'm not trying to do that. And the second thing is he, he's very much a believer in this, like, the algorithm where like if you live by the algorithm and do everything it tells you, like you'll live a longer and healthier life, which I think is fair and good. And I'm all for that. I'm much more interested in like, why are people uniquely getting sick in, in today's, you know, environment and what in our environment is poisoning everyone? I think Bryan Johnson is amazing. And like, I think it's awesome that someone is willing to try so many risk-on gene therapies, crazy peptides, like all the shit that he's doing and talk about it publicly. But I unfortunately, like, I will be very interested to see what happens to him over the next 20 years. But I think 20 years of trying very like out on the risk curve therapies, you know, it's quite, quite possible something like doesn't go so well.

Yeah, maybe I just have a preference for like the autistic biohacker rather than like the, you know, content creator influencer with a D2C brand underneath it. I think I've just seen a lot of that. And the first thing he was doing felt very original. Yeah, let me ask you, you had this great phrase that I think we should bring up, which is, or maybe it's you or it was Callie, I don't remember. Maybe it was your co-founder, but you had this thing where you said if you had a fish tank and then all the fish inside suddenly started getting sick, you wouldn't drug the fish, you'd clean the tank, right? You would assume that there's something that's causing the fish to get sick. And for some reason, we have this instinct to just drug the fish. The fish is fish is sick. Why are all the fish getting sick? I don't know, just drug all the fish. Rather than maybe the tank is dirty, maybe there's something in the tank that's causing them to get sick, maybe it's what we're feeding them, it's their environment. And I love that metaphor of cleaning the tank.

Yeah, no, you capture it perfectly. And the only thing I would say is that I don't actually think we have an instinct to drug the fish. I think that we have a $4.3 trillion industry that's job it is to propagandize people to think the only way to fix the fish's health problem is drugging them. Like, that, that to me is the insane thing that we're, you know, the same situ— situation we find ourselves in is everyone is getting sicker, you know, overweight, everything.

I think I asked ChatGPT recently, I think it was something like 60% of people have taken pharmaceuticals in the last 12 months, or like had a prescription, something crazy like that.

It's crazy.

So let's do the— so the first one you had was kind of the cleaning the tank, right? Checkup for the house, find, find ways that you can make your home environment healthier for you and less interfering with your, with your health. The second one you have, a modern butcher shop. So this is about feeding the fish. Uh, what is, what, what is the modern butcher shop opportunity you see?

By the way, Sean, do you remember I told you actually last two episodes, I said, I think my two predictions for, or two of my predictions was people were gonna have more plants in their homes cuz it's kind of nasty. And also I thought, I was like, for, there's something about the meat at Whole Foods that I actually think is crap nowadays.

Totally.

Yeah.

I'm not saying you're right or a genius, but I'm not saying it either.

I, you know, I think I've hung out with Justin before, so I'm sure I've stole, I stole that. Yeah.

I mean, so it's at a very high level. This is one of the things I'm most excited about. There's actually one coming in Austin in January, which I'm super stoked for. Um, but it's, it's the first one that I've seen that goes as far as I would like. And, and basically let me like set the table through an analogy. I think that like in the '80s, coffee was basically like Folgers. It was like burnt. There was no differentiation on sourcing. It wasn't very good. Tipo, there was no coffee culture. And Starbucks came along, and that was like big second wave culture, kind of coffee. And now there's like craft, you know, Cometeer and like small, like cool roasters and coffee shops in every major city that you go to. I basically think that meat today is where coffee was in the '80s. Like you go to the grocery store and you're buying meat, you're buying like steak. You're not, like no one is differentiating on how is this dry-aged, what is the cut, what is the genetics of the animal, you know, how was it raised, was it regenerative, was it not, was it fed, you know, soy, was it massaged until it was killed, and like did it drink IPAs until its last day? Like all these sorts of things are actual differentiators in buying meat and buying steak, and people are aware of them, but the market has not caught up yet. And if you, have you ever bought from Snake River Farms or like heard of this company?

Yeah, I've bought from Snake River. What, what's their story? I just kind of had an instinct when I saw it. I was like, almost because it was the only branded meat that was there. It's like all the other meat, the, the branding was like 80%, 20%, right? Like they had the fat percentage and then there was one with like a brand name on it and it sounded like a place and I thought, uh, maybe this is the higher quality. Are they legit? What do they do?

Yeah, they're super legit. So they, they are one of the few companies in the U.S. that have an American like Wagyu. And so they have a Wagyu line. They imported it, I believe, from Japan at some point in the '70s or '80s. And they've been like breeding this Wagyu line. If you buy Whole Foods' best ribeye, you're probably going to cost you like $20 a pound or something like this.

Or more.

If you buy like the best ribeye from, um, you know, from Snake River, it's going to be like $60 to $70 per pound. And so the, the kind of like skew in pricing and the amount that people are willing to pay for really, really high quality meat is massive. And I just think it hasn't made its way into retailers, hasn't made its way into butchers. Um, and so I think there's this massive opportunity to build like what I'm calling like the blue bottle of the modern butcher shop that caters to people that really care about sourcing flavor, cut, dry age, you know, all of these things. That you're not going to be able to get at Whole Foods.

So this— there's actually like, seems like there's two opportunities. One is to create the, like, another Snake River Farms, right? A brand that is, you know, elevated in some, some way that would go sell through grocery stores. And so just the way we've had, you know, you know, you have Oatly selling oat milk, you got, you have all these brands that come in, new brands that come into existing categories and start selling things that are niche in some way, alternatives in some way, or premium in some way. What you're saying is a premium meat brand. There's like that, that's one idea, which already sounds like a big idea. And I could imagine, I could totally imagine somebody who takes a, like, um, a content approach to this. So let's say you were doing this. If you go on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and you're telling your story about the unique things you're doing with your, the animals there and why it's premium. And maybe it's how you're raising them. Maybe it's how you're feeding them. Maybe it's, maybe it's like a version where you're genetically selecting in some way, the sort of premium or you're breeding in some way that more premium, that seems like one opportunity. And then the other one you had is the butcher shop, which is like you said, like Blue Bottle Coffee and Blue Bottle sold for what, like $500 or $700 million or $700 or $800.

Yeah. $700 or $800 million.

And like, I don't know if anyone, like how popular is Blue Bottle nationwide? Because I had never heard of it till I moved to San Francisco. This is like 10 plus years ago.

I think it's like a big city thing. It's like SF only.

It seemed like a rich guy pet project. Like all the VCs had invested in Blue Bottle because they liked having meetings at Blue Bottle and Blue Bottle was cooler than Starbucks. It wasn't like it was elevated above that. And it just seemed like a passion project. And then I see that it sells for $700 or $800 million and wow, that thing really worked. So I'm a— this is like, to me, this is a 10 out of 10 idea. This is an amazing idea.

I agree. I mean, I think it's a super exciting one. I also think that the reason, the reason I would personally, if I were to start this, uh, you know, start with like a butcher shop or something like that, is that with a butcher shop, you can actually have a, a pretty wide range of pricing. You can tell the story, you can try, like, do small samplings, you can talk about the aging and stuff like that. If you took a $60 steak in the Whole Foods and just plopped it on the shelf next to, like, a $20 one or a $15 one, and there's no storyability there, that thing just, like, won't sell, unfortunately.

Are, are quality meats, I mean, cows, I guess, being grown and you just have to source them, or do you have to go and do this yourself?

Uh, no. So, so there are small farmers that are growing really, really high quality meats. They're selling at farmers markets. They're just hard to buy from. Like, it's hard to aggregate enough supply that Whole Foods is like, yep, put it in the 500 stores or whatever. Or, you know, it can fill up a meat case in Austin. And so this really only works, um, where if you're a, if you're a butcher, you can buy probably an entire, an entire herd or an entire amount of, uh, farmers or ranchers' cattle. And sell it through your store over the course of a couple months, that is worth your investment from a relationship and like amount that you're going to make on that standpoint. For Whole Foods, it's like, yeah, we're never going to work with a small, interesting operator that might just have 50 or 100 head of cattle that they're selling.

And can you freeze and store like beef and it still be great months later?

Yeah, you can. I mean, the better thing though is that you can like dry age it. And this is the other thing. That if you're taking this like hyper-premium approach, you can actually just hang meat in these meat lockers and stuff like that and actually cures, gets like a richer flavor and the like the more you age it. The reason that they don't obviously is like the more that you age it, the less amount of like cash that you're cycling through because you're not selling it as quickly. And so it doesn't work for the retail model, but if you're doing a really, really high-end thing like a butcher shop, it could actually work.

How big is this business, you think? Snake River Farms?

I would imagine it's in the like $200 to $300 million in revenue range. Wow. I think it's probably massive.

Are they raising— but they're raising their own beef though too. I mean, they have like photos of cowboys, so they like—

yeah, yeah. I mean, they're, they're vertically integrated. They've been doing this for a long period of time as far as I understand. But I think that there's enough operators like that that don't have the Snake River Farms branding, that aren't shipping on dry ice all over the country, but that could really like, like sell into a butcher shop in Austin, Nashville, San Francisco, LA, New York that, that just does really well. Like I'm frankly shocked that the only butcher shop that I know that is doing this is start— is in Austin and you know, it's opening in like a month.

And is he trying to just make one or he's trying to make it like a, like a nationwide type of thing?

Uh, I think there's like bigger ambitions, but yeah, starting with just one, like let's make it work, figure out the economics, figure out this business.

That's an amazing idea.

It's, it's, it is amazing. It's so expensive though. And a lot of this is centered around beef only. Um, cause like I've always wanted to get, uh, like healthier chicken. Cause I, I just don't love eating lots of beef.

So previous, like again, like 80 years ago, the food system had diversity. There were multiple types of birds, chickens, things like that. Today, 99.5%, I believe, of every chicken eaten in the US is one genetic breed, which is the Cornish Cross. Which is bred for how quickly it puts on weight and the types of grains that it can basically eat. And so it's not bred for deliciousness, it's not bred for protein content, it's not just bred for like any of the stuff that you or I care about, it's just how quickly can it pack on mass and then I can like sell it, um, you know, and it gets eaten. I think the average life of these birds, uh, on average they, they're like born to harvest is something like 6 weeks. And so— What? Yeah.

Wait, so it comes out of the egg and 6 weeks later it's big enough to eat?

And 6 weeks later it's harvested and sold. Yes, exactly. And so this is why I think this is such an interesting opportunity is many people are like, I don't like chicken. I don't like, I don't like, you know, whatever. And they just haven't had chickens that are actually like delicious. Uh, and it's, it's funny. You can read old ads. Like there was this one, um, this luxury rail line in the '20s and '30s that made a big deal about how they had, they'd like cornered the market on this one chicken genetics and they served it only in their first class cars. And all these people were like, wow, this is the best chicken I've ever had in my life.

Like, there's stories like that where it's like, what is the Wagyu or Kobe version of chicken? I've never even heard of one.

Yeah, exactly. No one knows. I mean, there's no one that is raising these for flavor.

Dude, that's insane. By the way, absolute sick burn to call someone a Cornish Cross. That's going to be my new thing. Anytime I see somebody that's just, you're just a 99, you're just like 99% of the others. You're just trying to pack on, just pack on mass. You're a quick flip of a chicken. That's, you're just a Cornish Cross.

There's this famous ad. There's a guy named Joseph Sugarman who, um, kind of pioneered direct marketing, direct response copywriting in the '80s. And he, at the time, a quartz movement watch was already popular. Like watch connoisseurs knew about that, but it wasn't like impressive. Like it was just like a normal, like table stakes thing for any watch worth more than $50. But anyway, he was famous for creating these ads for this line of watches. And he popularized the idea of quartz movement watch as if it was like some like epic thing. Like, and then all the watch connoisseurs like, yeah, dude, they all, we all have this. But that's sort of like, um, what you're describing a little bit with these chickens is like, you can actually like come up, you can, and if you, you can invent interesting, cool stories that are also true and factual, but like, you know, I'll take a lot of like the health nuts. Like they're always like, yeah, this is standard. We don't give our chickens this or that. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I know. But like, most people don't know that. And so we're going to tell this amazing story about that.

Exactly. Yeah. And I think like the mental model is, you know, you're having a dinner party and it's like pulling out a nice bottle of wine, but people aren't drinking anymore. And so you're like, okay, this is this like crazy genetic, really nice steak cut. And you'll have the best steak you've ever had in your life. Like, I think that is the underserved market that, that you could build a real brand around.

What's your food budget every month and where are you buying? Are you buying like all of your meat from this Snake River Farms?

Uh, no, not all of it. Um, I mean, their steaks are like super fatty and marbled and everything. Like you wouldn't want to actually eat that every day, but I, I basically buy my meat and most of my food from, uh, local farmers around the Austin area.

What does that mean? Like you personally have relationships or you go to a farmer's market?

No. So yeah, go to a farmer's market. There's also like a food truck here where it's sort of this like refrigerated trailer where they act, they, it's a combination. It's owned by 3 or 4 local farms and they just stock it up. And so I just go every week and that's where I buy like all of my normal staples.

Are you just like not eating apples in December or whatever? Like you can't, like, I guess if there's seasons, particularly in Austin when it's mostly desert, like where does that come from?

Whole Foods then is where I'll get like the remainder of like the produce and stuff that's not seasonal.

Got it. So you do do like some normal stuff and then you also like, you know, go to farmers markets, which is like not extreme, but like you're putting a lot of effort into it. That's pretty cool.

All right, let's do the next idea. So annual home checkup, I'm giving that a B. This blue bottle for, for beef, this blue bottle, the Modern Day Butcher Shop. I'm giving that an A+.

Is that because you want that to exist or you want to invest or you think it's a good business?

I just see it, dude. I want it to. I would be a customer of it. I know that. I know where the demand is. I know a lot of people listening to this be like, I'm not trying to buy a $60 steak. That's fine. There's a lot of people who are trying to buy stuff like that. I know a lot of people that are trying to do that. And I just know that when you go into a category where there is no existing brand, it is all commodity. Simply creating a brand in a commodity space is like a winning business formula. And the coffee analogy you gave, right? Like, I don't know what a Folgers costs per cup of coffee, but I think it's in like the cents. So you— the idea of going to Starbucks and paying $4 for a coffee that you can make at home for $0.15 or $0.10 or whatever, you know, sounded outrageous. But of course people did it because they do it for the experience. They do it for a perception of quality. So I just see the path of that one. And if somebody has the right founder fit and, you know, it's you need kind of like a one-of-one entrepreneur. But that is a, to me, that's a billion-dollar opportunity, uh, to do that. Whether you do it that way or you sell into retail. And like you said, you know, you do need to tell the story of why this thing costs more. And that's why you'd have to tell the story on social media and sell it through retail. So you'd have to be great at content on TikTok and Instagram and then sell into, into retail stores that way. But to me, that is like a, that's a 12 out of 10 idea. But you have another one on here. Calibrate for fertility. What is this?

Yeah, well, quick, if anyone does the butcher shop thing, I want to invest. I think it's such an exciting, interesting idea. Um, but so calibrate for fertility. You all, I don't know how aware you are, but basically everyone is having fertility issues right now. It's getting worse. Um, you know, IVF, or what's called ART, assisted reproductive technologies, are growing like 7 to 8% a year. And it's accelerating. IVF is the best-in-class option right now, and it costs like $20,000 to $30,000. It injects a bunch of hormones. It's super invasive. It's super hard, you know, on the, on the female. And it's, it's just a brutal, brutal thing. And so I think there is this big opportunity to almost have like a lifestyle set of interventions that are geared towards helping people increase their fertility in the key window when they're trying to actually have kids. And so you could think about it like a lifestyle or like a monthly subscription for some 3 to 6 month period where you get a combination of peptides, supplements. Uh, people do like an environmental review, make sure that you're not wearing polyester underwear while you're trying to have a kid, or, you know, any number of things that actually seem to have a really, really big impact on how likely you are to conceive during that window. And pretty much just say, hey, before going the $20,000 to $30,000 very expensive, very invasive, very hard IVF route. Do this like, you know, several hundred dollars a month sort of lifestyle-based fertility approach. And we're going to try and help you conceive naturally without having to go through IVF.

I know men can do stuff to increase their sperm count with their sperm count being down. That's like a huge issue. Can women do the same thing?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, women, women can improve their fertility for sure. You know, from people even talk about this all the time, like stress is a big factor. But they're not— they're not talking about at the hormonal level. Like, it seems like progesterone helps with increasing the odds of conception. There's a bunch of interventions that I think are just almost criminally underutilized.

Justin, have you ever heard us talk about one chart businesses? Have you ever heard this thing we say on this pod? Yeah, this to me is one. So look at this chart. So this is search interest for IVF clinic near me and just look at it since 2018. Look at the like relative search volume It's up, you know, to from 0 to 75 on this chart, all the way to 100 on a 100 scale of IVF clinic near me, which is pretty wild because that's not a long time. That's something you would expect to see like on a 30-year time horizon, not a, not like a 6-year time horizon. And what you're saying is there's stuff you can, because IVF is obviously very hard on, you know, it's hard mentally, physically, emotionally, financially. Hey, what if there was a, you know, an intervention step before that? You mentioned Calibrate. I've never heard of this company. What does Calibrate do?

Yeah, that's a crazy stat that you have on them as well. Say that.

Yeah. So, so Calibrate was a company. They got acquired somewhat recently, but they basically started out by being— they paired GLP-1s, i.e., Ozempic, with lifestyle interventions. And so their whole thing was like, Ozempic, people are meant to be on it for the rest of their lives. What Calibrate did is said, we're going to prescribe you Ozempic, We're also going to introduce coaching, accountability, lifestyle interventions, like this whole suite of things where the goal is to get you off of Ozempic at the end of a 6 or 12-month period.

Like a Noom meets, or kind of, I mean, Weight Watchers is trying to do this.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so they—

Dude, those companies always scale fast. Noom did something similar pre-Ozempic, and they were an advertiser with my old company, The Hustle. Like within a year of launching, they were spending hundreds of thousands with us. I don't know how these guys grow so, so big.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of demand for this. And what Calibrate figured out is how to actually get it covered by some— to some degree by insurers. And insurers were okay with it because they're like, great, we're not going to have to pay $20,000 a year for Ozempic indefinitely. We can actually get people off of this, this drug after a 6 or 12 month period. And so in the first 2 years, they got to like over $100 million in revenue and just scaled insanely quickly.

It does look like Calibrate kind of went under, went under though, or something.

I don't know.

I see— I'm looking— I was looking for their funding stuff, but it looks like they, they've got restructured private equity, but basically for $20 million, they got 75% of the company now. So I think it definitely ran into some trouble.

Yeah, but that means they could be bad operators, but the demand still existed. Yeah.

Yeah, that, that would be my contention basically, is that they were doing this and they launched, I think 2021, something like that. And I basically think that insurers went from— they were like early on the Ozempic plus lifestyle thing. And then there's been this massive record amount of lobbying spent to just keep people on Ozempic basically forever, which I think probably did not do them any favors.

What percentage of people needing IVF— you probably don't know this, but of like the average age of the first-time mother has gone up, I think it's nearly 30 at this point. I think it's 29 or something like that. In the '70s, it was 21. So it's gone up a lot. What percentage is it just because of people waiting longer to have families versus like American food system being poisoned?

It's a good question. I, I don't know, honestly. But what I do know is from reading stats, it seems like, uh, most of the decline in birth rate, it's about 70% of it comes from people that previously would have had 3 to 4 kids now having 1 or 2. And so it's not like people are deciding not to have kids, they're just having fewer. And I do think that the biological fertility issues are a huge, huge amount of what is driving down the average number of kids that, you know, a family or woman has these days.

Dude, it's pretty crazy how many of my friends, my male friends, tell me that they're like— like in Austin, we used to go to the sauna all the time, and I would have so many friends that like, I'm not going in the sauna this week. We're trying to get pregnant. My balls aren't working. And so I'm trying to like— like, I can't cook them right now. You know what I mean? Like, there are so many people that I knew, you and I, just in our friends and they're like, I can't do this, I can't do that. I need to go do this because we're struggling and it's my fault. It's pretty wild. Sean, have you had a bunch of friends that have complained of similar stuff? They're like, my stuff ain't working.

You lost me at have you had a bunch of friends?

So no, I think it is this like under the radar thing very few people are talking about. But almost everyone I know that is trying to have kids right now has some amount of fertility challenges, uh, and even if that's 6 to 12 months and then they get pregnant, even still, you know, if you do that across like 2 to 3 kids, you're basically going from— you're now having 1 to 2 kids instead of like 3 to 4 if every time it takes you 6 to 12 more months to get pregnant.

So you've mentioned 3 kind of health-related startup ideas. You've started, I think, for kind of successful that I know of, health, health-related companies. Can you describe this approach? Because I'm the kind of guy that bounces around from industry to industry, model to model. I'm like, I'm like a variety seeker, and I don't think that's good. Like, just when I learn about a space, I get intrigued by something I'm a beginner in, and I go in and I stop the compounding of that. So I don't think that's too smart. Can you describe your approach to entrepreneurship versus somebody like me who's just bouncing around and trying 100 different, trying to solve 100 different problems in 100 different spaces with 100 different business models?

Totally, yeah. I think for me at least, what has been very rewarding is basically choosing one problem, which for me is the chronic disease crisis, that I want to spend the rest of my career on. Like, I think that there's a massive amount of compounding, like relationship compounding, even personal brand compounding. Like people think of me as like, into health, which pays some dividends. That's probably going to be even more so over the next decade. You understand the space, you understand the problems, you understand the players and relationships. Like, I think that if you decide this is the problem that I am the most interested in the world, that I deeply care about, that I read about for fun, and just orient your career around trying to start things or be involved in things that make that problem better or solve that problem, like you get so many shots on goal, even if they may look different. Like I started Kettle and Fire thinking like the American food system is poison and there needs to be a bone broth company.

What did you read or consume that made you buy into that? And then how long were you into it before you're like, this is my thing?

Yeah. So I was going to CrossFit in San Francisco in 2015 and a bunch of CrossFitters were like, you should do bone broth.

I'm a terrible cook.

I'm like almost never cook for myself. And so I basically was like, great, I'm going to go buy some at the store. No one was selling some. And so after that, I was like, seems like there's an interesting opportunity here. And did I think it would grow to like be a 9-figure annual business? Definitely not. But it was a big enough opportunity that decided to take the swing.

But did you get into health and wellness because you're like, that seems like a cool opportunity, or were you like, I'm obsessed with this topic and this is like a really good way to address it?

Uh, yeah, I was, I was just obsessed with the topic basically. Like I'd been reading about paleo and reading about, um, you know, all these sorts of things. Since I was basically in college. Like, I was the weird dude in college who my senior year I went paleo. And so I like wasn't drinking beer, wasn't eating pizza or french fries. All my friends were like, "The hell's wrong with you? Like, what's going on?" And so I just got very into this idea, this like secret in a sense of like, why is everyone getting sick at record levels and what could be kind of underpinning that? And so it was this deep interest. And as I got deeper and deeper understanding and appreciation of the problem, I just really understood, like, this is literally, I think, the biggest problem in the country. And I can spend the rest of my career trying to solve or take stabs at various instances of this problem, whether that's starting a brand or trying to fix like the incentives through TruMed. You know, I basically was like, I think I'm just going to try and solve or work on fixing this problem for the rest of my career.

So let's go back to that Kettle and Fire example. So you, you're doing CrossFit. Trying to live healthier. CrossFitters are telling you you should do bone broth. You're like, cool, where do I get some of that? And you go, you look, there's not like an easy brand that you could just pull off the shelf and buy it. So you think somebody should do that. Now, at that time, you've got no experience doing that. You've never built a D2C product. You never built like an actual, you know, consumer brand. Can you just describe like the, the 3 or 4 bullets that happened that first year to like make it happen? That, like, because I think, you know, all these ideas are cool, but you got to be the type of person that can make shit happen. You made shit happen at that stage. Can you just describe what, what you made happen for Kettle and Fire?

Yeah, totally. So we basically, we first tested a landing page, put up a landing page with no product, started buying ads to see like who would click on it, what would they pay.

You had the brand name?

At that time we called it Bone Broths Co., which was a horrible idea. And since we branded it Kettle and Fire.

You just made it yourself? You just mocked up an ugly landing page?

Yeah, mockup, ugly landing page on Unbounce, paid someone on Fiverr $10 to make a terrible logo and basically started selling a box at $29.99.

And when you say started selling, what, Facebook ads? How'd you get the traffic?

Yeah, we did Facebook ads and Facebook and AdWords and then some Bing at the time because they were like, there was an arb there. It's much cheaper.

Dude, Bing, Bing clicks back then, they were so cheap and they converted way higher.

I know, I know.

I was always like, I don't know who these people are, but they're in the—

What was that first few weeks or maybe month like that gave you the— were you looking for conviction? Or you already had conviction? What happened in that first month for you?

Yeah, I was, I was looking for conviction. And so basically we'd put in, uh, $500, we built this landing page and I think sold like a little over $2,000 worth of product inside of about a month. And so I ran the numbers and I was basically like, okay, we can build a business. And I think just given existing traffic, we can turn this into at least like a $200,000 to $300,000 a year kind of business. And based on like what I thought the margins would back into, I was like, that would, should be about $100,000, $150,000 a year in profit, which seemed like a worthwhile thing to take on.

And then what, uh, okay, so you, you, do you do that? And where did it get much bigger than that? What happened to make it much bigger?

So we validated the idea. Uh, the next thing is we do, we had to figure out how to make it. And so we emailed and called over 500 different manufacturing partners to just like, please someone help us figure out how to make this product. And eventually what ended up working is my brother, who was 19 at the time, who I co-founded the business with. He emailed Mark Cuban as like, I'm a 19-year-old entrepreneur, like, please help. And Mark Cuban introduced us to a manufacturing partner who we ended up working with and still work with today to make our first, like, version of the bone broth product.

And so what did you— what did he— your brother's like, hey, Mark, we're entrepreneurs, but we don't know how to make a product. Do you know any bone broth manufacturers? And he said, yes, here's one.

Yeah, he was like, talk to my food person. And then his food person introduced us to our co-packers. Like, yeah, you should talk to this, this group over here.

And just to clarify that, those first $2,000 worth of orders, did you just go refund them because you didn't have a product yet?

I emailed all of them and I said, hey, we're not going to have a product for like 6 to 9 months. I can either refund you in full right now or 50% off and we'll like eventually ship it. And people that didn't respond, I would just refund them. Yeah.

Okay, great. So Mark Cuban gets you a food person. So that's the second thing that now, now you know how to— now you can get the product made.

Yeah. And so, and then basically what I realized is the product is 2-year shelf stable. I put literally every dollar of my life savings at that point. I was 25 into doing the first run of our product. They had $30,000 minimum runs. It was like $120K kind of run budget. So I was like, either this is going to work great or I'm going to eat bone broth for 2 years. Either way, I'll like feel pretty good. And so we bought the first product and year 1, we basically did to $2.8 million in sales. And after about 6 months of being in business, one of the buyers at Whole Foods saw an influencer talking about our product, reached out and was like, hey, I want to bring you guys into Whole Foods. And we basically, we, we did extraordinarily well in Whole Foods and got national rotation the following year. And that just kind of like started our, our journey.

I think I was with you 8 or 10 months after you started it in San Francisco. We went bowling. I don't know if you remember that. And yeah, you were telling me about this and I was like, Oh, well, I mean, it seems like you got a really good career. Why are you throwing it away at this? Like, I just remember thinking of like, let, uh, like, why does he want to ruin everything?

Yeah, starting a boat-roth company in SF at the height of like the tech boom was definitely not a consensus opinion.

My sister, when she moved to San Francisco, she had, uh, she was working in a corporate career. She worked for Deloitte, I think. Uh, so she was like a management consultant. She had gotten her MBA. She had gotten an undergrad in electrical engineering, got an MBA from a good business school, was a management consultant. And then she, um, she's like, she's like, I'm sick of this life. I want to, I need a business that I can own and not have to go to a job every day. And she was so tired of like, the consulting hours were so bad that she would come home and her, like, her kids would be asleep and she would just pick them up from the crib just to hold them for a few minutes. Cause like, she hadn't been there when they, to like even play with them before, before bed. And like after 4 nights of that. She's like, never, no, I'm not doing this. And never had started a business before, decides to start a, um, an in-home daycare. So she kicks me out of the apartment I'm living in and says, I'm going to use that apartment, which my, my parents owned, uh, apartment there. Like, she's like, kick you out. I'm going to use that to start this business. And I'm going to— she needed 6 kids. So 6 kids to come to this like in-home daycare. And my dad was like, you have an electrical engineering degree. You have a job that pays you whatever, $150K a year. You're a management consultant and you're going to change diapers. And she just felt so bad, you know, quote unquote, throwing it away. And then, you know, fast forward. Now she's got like 3 or 4 schools in San Francisco and she's been able to like scale this business up. She works just like a few hours a week and has like this amazing business. And, a lot of the— I say that because a lot of people will hit that crucible moment where it feels like you're throwing away this known and socially accepted thing. To do this kind of fringe, weird thing from scratch on your own with no safety net. And I'm not saying that it always works out, but every time something works, it almost always has that story at the beginning of like, you, you're doing what? And that's totally normal, even though it feels abnormal in the moment. It feels bad in the moment.

Totally. And I— Sam, I'd actually love your thoughts. So my experience, frankly, was almost every single person that I knew who was starting a business or trying to start a business, like between 22 and 25, has made it in some way, shape, or form. Like, it's insane.

Yeah.

I think so. Justin and I both started roommate matching companies. We were both, we were both 20. And so between the ages of like 20 and 25, we were like in the same industry. And so all of our SF friends, uh, you know, are, we're similar age. And, um, dude, it is crazy how many, uh, I actually just tweeted about this today. I was like, I grew up in SF from age like 20 to 30. It's crazy how many of our six are successful just because they're around, you know what I mean? Yeah, totally.

Naval has a great phrase where he says, yes, you hear the stats about startups. Oh, 90% of businesses, you know, new businesses fail. And he goes, yeah, startups fail, but founders don't. And I love that phrase. He said, oh, basically if you just fast forward 10 years, any of the founders that stayed in the game, like the success rate goes from your first business, success rate might be 10%, but the 10-year saga of you trying a bunch of shots on goal and getting smarter every year, set, like the odds are now, like if you just look at our cohort of friends, right, Sam, we were in a mastermind together back in, what was that, 2013, something like that. Like our cohort of friends, which is probably like, you know, 30 to 50 founders that we used to hang out with and know regularly, the hit rate's like 80 or 90% success rate, you know, for the people that actually stuck with it. I got a couple friends that packed up their bags and moved to, you know, Connecticut and just said, you know, I'm not doing this anymore. Um, not you, Sam, sorry. This is like, literally, I'm just thinking of like a couple of friends that did that. They were just like, hey, like the San— they're burnt out from San Francisco. Startup culture. Those people, you know, they didn't fully make it, but all the people that stayed in the game made it.

We could like wrap it up with one quick story, which is, uh, I remember Gagan Bhiani started this thing called Udemy and it was like courses. What? This is like what Tai Lopez does. And I remember, um, both Justin and I were like, I guess we should get in on this. Like, this seems like a really good way to like make $100 or $300 a month, which would be like life-changing. And so we both did that stuff. And I think that, you know, I could say for Justin, for sure, people look up to you. And I mean, I look up to you and I admire you. It's crazy how, like, if you look at like 8 or 10 years ago, which wasn't that long ago, you were doing many things that, like, you know, people like will poo-poo, like maybe course creation or like buying a car and renting it on Turo or whatever. And it's like, man, the people you admire start way scrappier than you think. I know I for sure did.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know that anyone admires me that's taken my keyboard shortcuts for Mac users Udemy course, but, uh, definitely I was hustling back in the day.

Um, have you ever read, uh, Travis Kalanick, the guy who started Uber, his, uh, his old blog? He had this amazing blog that he used to call like Awesomeness Bro.

It was called like something silly like that, right?

It was heavily broed out. Um, but he had this blog post. It was just like attending CES on the cheap or was it South by Southwest on the cheap? And it was basically like. His playbook for how to have a badass time at a conference when you have no money. And he's like, all right, here's what you're going to do. You're going to get to the airport, but never, never take the taxis. Here's what you can do instead. Here's what you're going to do for, for staying at someone's house. You know, here's how you're going to skip the event, but still get in to the afterparty because that's where the magic happens when you get there. Here's what you're going to say. And he had this like really scrappy approach to how to just like, you know, wedding crash a major conference on a budget.

And he was 31 years old, by the way. He was 31 when he wrote that post. It's not like he was a college kid.

And he also used to invite people to just stay at his house in San Francisco. It's part of the magic of a city like San Francisco is like, he used to say, if you're— and the reverse was, if you're coming to San Francisco and you got no money, and but you're a founder, he called his house the Jam Pad. And he would have like people constantly just coming and crashing on his couch. And he would host people over late into the night and everyone just jamming on different ideas. And he used that to kind of build his momentum, his network, his energy.

It is pretty wild.

Yeah. So cool.

Can we finish with this Zuck story? Zuck is auctioning off his gold chain for you, for your charity. What is this?

Well, I saw you tweet that, uh, Justin. I was like, is that real? Yeah.

Did you just— did you—

and he totally downplayed it. You said Zuck's auctioning my chain and no one, like, it looked like no one replied to that. Yeah.

I had a bad Twitter day that day.

Uh, but yeah, people were bidding for it. How much did it end up going for? It's his gold chain.

It went for like almost $41 grand. But, oh wow. Who won?

Do you know?

Uh, some anonymous person. I'm not sure, but we basically, probably a crypto person to be honest. Um, but yeah, so a couple of years ago, 3 years ago, I started something called Inflection Grants, which is effectively just giving small, like $2,000 to $3,000 grants to people under the age of 24 that are high potential. Uh, you know, it's inflectiongrants.com if anyone wants to check it out. But basically someone made an offer to me when I was in my 20s, uh, when I was like graduating college, where he was like, hey, you should keep running with your startup. If it doesn't work, I'll just write you a check and you can use that to cover your living expenses until you find a job or whatever.

Who did that and why?

It was a mentor that I had built a relationship with in Pittsburgh where I was going to school. And I think he just knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, also saw that I didn't come from money, and I think knew at this very key time that that offer would make a big difference in how, in my decision-making. And he was right. And so I started Inflection Grants 3 years ago. Since then, um, you know, we've given out like 50 grants and Long Journey, who one of the GPs is Ariel Zuckerberg, has gotten behind it in a big way. And, uh, so this year, uh, Ariel convinced Mark to auction off one of his already worn gold chains. And then we had to make sure that it was cleaned, no DNA residue, anything like this, but and sold, you know, did you really, did you actually have to like, oh, 100% for sure.

Did you get to, did you get to talk to him at all?

Uh, no, no, but yeah, so you gave it away and we auctioned it off for $41 grand, which goes to charity, which is great.

So that's 20, 20 people are going to get these $2,000 grants.

Exactly.

You gave us this document before we started, and I think we only touched like a third of it. There's so many more cool things that you have to come back and talk about, like A lot of people don't know this, but Sean, did you know that Justin was like a co-author on the book Traction with the DuckDuckGo founder? Like, there's like, there's like, there's like 5 or 10 other things that you have really amazing stories behind and are really insightful on. And so, uh, thanks for coming on and doing this. Um, I'm like literally sitting here taking notes on like incandescent bulbs and, uh, like farmers markets and shit like that. And, uh, you're going to be getting a lot of, uh, follow-up texts on me where it's just like, Justin, Tell me what to do.

Tell people where to, where to follow, where to get more.

Uh, yeah, so I'm Substack, Justin Mares, subs, you know,.substack.com. I write a monthly newsletter on health and business stuff. And then also on Twitter @JWMares.

And go read The Great American Poisoning. We didn't do it justice in this, in this podcast, but go read that blog post. It is amazing. We'll put the link in the show notes to that specific blog post.

All right. That's it. That's the pod. Thank you, Justin.