SPEAKER_01
I think you could build a easily 100,000 plus person list doing this product. And then there is a clear premium offering on the back end. But the core of it is quiz funnel up top daily newsletter and get there and get to 100,000.
I'm on a throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick.
SPEAKER_00
They'll actually have some legs because I know this will have legs.
SPEAKER_02
All right everyone, we're going to talk about some good stuff in this episode. But before you get to it, can you do me a favor, go to Spotify and click the follow button. The reason why is lately we've been getting way more listeners on Spotify.
And I think it's because we're going up the charts, but I want to be sure of that. And in order to go up the charts, I need you to click follow. So it's going to be like a big experiment.
I'm going to reveal the results next time, but go to Spotify, go to my first million and click that blue button that says follow. Click it for me. Please, I'll reveal the results soon.
I think that's means we're going to go up in the chart. All right, first segment, we're going to talk about horoscope specifically. There's a couple of companies that we talk about horoscopes.
com, astrology.com, sanctuary world.co that make literally tens of millions of dollars a year talking about the horoscope business.
It's pretty wild because something like 50% of women in America are interested in that topic, which I had no idea. We also talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer. I know that sounds weird.
You may not even know that name, Michael Buffer. He's the guy who says, let's get ready to rumble. We talk about those two folks and how they make something like $400 million.
I mean, actually break down why they make that money and how you can replicate that. And then finally, we talk about two little side stories about side products that Sean and I have. We actually launched like dozens of products that we've known.
SPEAKER_01
These are our embarrassing side projects that we haven't talked about before that we reveal while we're talking about the horoscope thing.
SPEAKER_02
They range from starting a crystal business, which is just weird. You've been saying that. And also to a fan page that I made for Pippos.
It's kind of odd. And then finally, I talk about a story about meeting Tim Ferriss and actually happened when I was kind of high on drugs one time. You'll hear about it.
Get to it. It's in the episode. Like us on Spotify.
See you at the end of the episode. All right, what's going on? We're just talking about losing weight. Sean, yeah, you look good.
How long have you been doing meat only?
SPEAKER_01
Meat only is only four days in, but I had heard about this. Joe Rogan talked about the carnivore diet and then sounded fucking ridiculous at the time that you started sending me nude selfies and you were like, I was like, damn, Sam's pretty stacked. Yeah, dude, I'm just only eating meat.
I'm like, what? Yeah, I'm only eating meat. I was like, oh, the second person has mentioned it. And then my trainer was like, he's like getting shredded for kind of his season or whatever.
And he's like, I was like, so what adjustments do you make? He goes, I just go to kind of a pretty much a meat only diet, protein only grass fed ground beef, grass fed, grass fed beef, some fish. That's pretty much it. A little bit of turkey.
And so I was like, well, I don't know if this is going to kill me later, but I'll do it for two months. And let's see if there's any noticeable change. So we'll see.
SPEAKER_02
And yeah, I was just saying, you look great. You look, you lost how many? I mean, I don't know, like pounds isn't the best way to measure it, but you probably have lost the equivalent of like 30 pounds of fat, maybe 20 pounds of fat.
SPEAKER_01
I don't know. That'd be a lot. My weight is the same or higher than it was when I started working out.
But my, I do the Dexascan, which we talked about, which is that business where you go, you lay down and it's like a, it just shows you kind of like where the fat muscle and bone is in your body. Sort of like an MRI, I don't know. Looks like an MRI machine, but it's not an MRI.
And according to that thing, I've lost, you know, like, I don't forget, like I do it every three months. And so the last three months I went down three or 4% body fat. Now I'm going down another 4, 5% body fat this time.
So yeah, hopefully we'll lose like 10% of my body fat.
SPEAKER_02
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com. So the first idea I want to discuss is going to start with a fitness story. That's my segue.
But before we get into that, you're going to do, and so for the listeners, we're going to do mini episodes. I think you're going to try the first one, right? I don't remember what it's going to be, but you wanted to do a rant on something. We don't even need to say what it was, but we're going to try a mini episode.
I wonder if it's going to work. It's going to be probably five to 10 minutes long, maybe. We'll see.
Yeah. We're going to talk about a horoscope idea, which sounds silly, but it's actually going to be pretty awesome. Then we're going to talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer, which is actually going to be pretty awesome.
And then finally, we're going to talk about something that I've asked Sean to prepare, and it's about how he manages this team of interns to get a lot done. I want to get right into it. So I want to tell you this story about this guy named Ross Clark.
Never heard of Ross. You've never heard of Ross Clark, probably. That's okay.
So he kind of looks like me, just a white hair blonde corn fed looking dude from, I believe, South Carolina. He was a triathlete, and he used to do SoulCycle, and he would go to SoulCycle, and he loved seeing these women walk out of SoulCycle with a glow. They had a bunch of, they were very confident when they left, and he thought to himself, how do I make people feel like that? I want to make people feel confident.
I want to make these women feel great about themselves. I want them to have a better life. And so he thinks, what can I do? What can I do to make that happen? And then it hits them.
And it's kind of a weird thing that hit them, but he goes, the best way that I could do this is I want to create a store or a brand that sells crystals and zodiac necklaces and t-shirts and customized birth charts and geodes and smudge sticks. These things that make women feel great. Kind of weird, right? Yes.
And so that's what we're going to talk about the first idea. And he says he's going to launch this brand that creates all these, I consider them kind of weird, kind of woo-woo. And he goes, I'm going to create a brand that sells all this stuff.
But first I'm going to start with horoscopes. And that's the story of sanctuaryworld.co. So I guess it's, I think they just caught sanctuary, the URL of sanctuaryworld.co. And the reason we're going to talk about it is they just raised a seed round of $5 million. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_02
So they raised $5 million. And it's caused a little bit of controversy because horoscopes are, well, they're bullshit. They're bullshit in the sense that there's not a lot of facts behind them.
They're not real. But a lot of people buy into them thinking that they are legitimate. In fact, something like 40% of women check their horoscope on a regular basis and they will make decisions based off their horoscope.
And the reason why I want to bring it up is because, A, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01
So by the way, what is this link to the SoulCycle thing? That sounds like, who's this guy Ross? Ross Parker, is that his name?
SPEAKER_02
That's a story, bro.
SPEAKER_01
Sounds like bullshit to me, Ross Parker. It sounds like he was like, oh, women believe this shit. People, men believe this shit.
I'm going to sell this shit to them. I was standing outside a SoulCycle. I saw them glowing and happy and somehow I connected the dots between feeling good after exercising to selling crystals and horoscopes.
That doesn't make any sense to me.
SPEAKER_02
It's a bullshit story. But what he's doing is he's totally well.
SPEAKER_01
I'll give you that.
SPEAKER_02
He's connecting SoulCycle. He also, in the article that I read, he mentions headspace. He's just name dropping.
Right. This is going to be the- He's trying to associate. At one point he called it the Uber for Zodiac signs.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, basically he's saying, if I say three or four legitimate company names alongside mine, I too will get the halo effect of being bucketed in with those guys. All right. I'm like meditation.
I'm like religion. I'm like fitness.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. So that's what he did. I mean, calm.
com calls themselves the Nike of spiritual fitness. So hey, look, I'm going to hate the game. Right. Or I'm not going to hate the player. So let me explain to you why this is interesting.
So Josh, a guy that I like, you like, he tweeted, this is bullshit. Whoever funds this idea is a crook. And I actually don't entirely agree with him.
I understand where he's coming from though. Now I want to give you some background about this app, the industry and where the opportunities are. So the way this app works is you download that read his tweet.
SPEAKER_01
He goes, this is Josh Wolf on Twitter. He's a well-known VC. He says, seriously, shame on anyone for funding or encouraging this bullshit.
No doubt there is demand, but this isn't peddling entertainment. It's encouraging slippery slope, snake oil, flap a doodle. We ought to desire informed, educated, rational and not naive, gullible superstitious society.
And then he'd screenshot it. All the investors who participated in the round. I'm here for that shots fired, although I disagree with what he said.
SPEAKER_02
Go on. Yes. And so the way this app works, I downloaded it. It's actually beautifully designed and it sucked me in hardcore and you sign up, you see like a spinning wheel.
SPEAKER_01
You are golden dude. I see the glow. So I should have known.
SPEAKER_02
It got me. And you sign up, you say what, you know, you click your, I'm a Gemini. I don't know what the other 12 signs are, but you select your birthday and it says, today's your daily reading for your horoscope.
It tells you like a, it's like got these like text messaging vibes. So it feels like it's texting me this one or two sentence description of what I should expect. And then it says, by the way, we want to tell you more in a few hours.
Can you please turn notifications on so we can tell you more in a few hours about what's going to happen to you. And they use this language that speaks exactly to me. And then they say, also we have a little bit more that we can tell you if you sign up here.
And then the way the app works is you can have this premium subscription where you get more info about you, or you can stay for free where you get daily updates. Or now this is where it gets interesting. You could pay a little bit more money and you could talk to a live, what do they call themselves? A reader.
A mystic. Yeah. A reader. You could talk to a reader and she'll tell you all about you.
So basically we've talked about Ms. Cleo and how she made like a billion dollars. You get to talk to a Ms.
Cleo on the phone or via text and they're going to tell you all about what you can expect for the coming year, the coming day, yada, yada, yada. Now that in itself is not entirely interesting. I mean, it is pretty interesting, but what's really interesting is how big this is.
So as two 30-something year old men, we probably don't know too much about this, but it's way bigger than I ever thought. And the reason why I started diving deep into this is I started reading articles about the horoscope industry in a lot of like typical liberal, high educated blogs that were written by women. And I would have thought, oh, these women are going to shit on it.
They're going to say this is a scam. And you know what? All the articles were very positive. Even in TechCrunch, it was this woman named Sarah Perez wrote about it and she goes, yeah, horoscopes aren't really harmful.
It's just fun, meaningless entertainment. Whereas this guy, Josh, completely shit on it. And the reason why these women perhaps weren't, were okay with it is something like 50% of women check the horoscope on a monthly basis, 37% so they check daily.
SPEAKER_01
I always get into these awkward situations. My sister-in-law is a big believer in like the zodiac thing. So a situation will be happening between her kids or we'll be talking and she's like, oh, such a tourist.
You're such a tourist. Or like, well, that's because they're Gemini and Gemini are this way. I'm always like, I don't know how to respond to this because I'm like.
SPEAKER_02
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So join Steph Taylor as she answers all your business marketing questions that deep dives into the nitty gritty of online marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and marketing for strategy for business owners. A few recent episodes include some of the biggest mistakes you can make with your launch. Another one is why growing your audience feels so hard in 2022.
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You can look it up wherever you get your podcasts.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, but like that's totally fake. But yeah, yeah, that's super fake and true. Yeah. Okay, good. Go on. Like I don't know what to say in response to that. Like I can't validate it or agree because I don't agree.
But I don't want to shit on it because who cares. I don't care if she believes.
SPEAKER_02
I always say to them, I say, look, if I was, if I came on one second later at 1201, you're telling me that I'm going to react differently about this or that just because of that one nanosecond. Or I always say, well, what if I'm born and I'll show you where the hemisphere is different and the seasons are different and the moon's different, but it's on the same day.
SPEAKER_01
By the way, in India, they have this, they have in India is like this times 10. So if you think Ms. Cleo is big and Ms.
Cleo was big, Ms. Cleo, I think generated over a billion dollars in sales. If you watch TV in the 90s, you know who Ms.
Cleo is. If you don't, you don't. But in India, they have this still on TV all the time.
There's these gurus, these mystics. And in every village, even like the poorest villages, in fact, especially in the poorest villages, because I think that's where superstition and religion is stronger than anywhere else. When your kid is born, you take your kid to a kind of like your local Stargazer mystic guy.
And he's basically, he writes this giant thing on an actual, like on a scroll. He gives you a scroll and the scroll basically says, don't let him eat yellow lentils. It's just like all this like hyperspe- like he shall not be married in the months of May, June or August.
And so people literally, I know that are like, you know, educated doctors, lawyers, bankers, they'll be like engaged. I'm like, oh, when's the wedding? This summer? They're like, no, we can't do summer. I was like, why? Because my parents had this reading done when I was two months old and it told them that I shall not be married in these months of the year.
And so this is not just like an American thing. It's a worldwide thing under many, many different names. This is worldwide superstitions.
SPEAKER_02
It's wild. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about the industry and some other people succeeding in the space. But I think I couldn't find too much on these folks' revenue numbers because they're relatively new.
So the way that the company started was this young guy, or is that, I mean, he's 39. He's Ross Clark or whoever I said his name was, he went through Lorne Michaels, the guy who runs SNL. He went through, apparently he has a digital incubator, I guess, NBC or someone sponsors.
It's weird. It's weird. And he went through it and now he recently raised $5 million, including, I guess he raised money from NBC and Lorne Michaels somehow has a stake.
He raised money from Advanced Capital, which Advanced owns loads and loads of magazines. He raised money from Graycroft, which is a media investor. So he's raised money from all these media people.
So this is like a traditional media company and traditional media people like this type of stuff. And the reason why they like this is Horsescope business has been a large business for years and years and years. I mean, I've already just told you the numbers.
This is not niche. I mean, we're talking like a third of Americans are into this shit. So astrology.
com. Have you heard of astrology.com? Of course you have.
Of course you haven't. So they do low eight figures in revenue. And the way that they make money is they do a lot of programmatic advertising.
So they do low cost advertising, like the bottom of the bulletin upgrade, they get you to come into their website and they make a little bit of money off advertising. They have ads on their website. So it's an ad arbitrage play.
And then they also sell subscriptions. So you do like a click this button and you're going to get a little bit of an extra reading. They make tens of millions, low tens of millions doing that.
And it's been like that for like 30 years. This is astrology.com and horoscope.
com, horoscope.com is another competitor. They do about 20 or they get about 20 million people coming to their website a month.
So it's quite large. These guys have been around since like 1995, 1999 ish. So they've been around forever, just making 10 million plus in revenue and kind of a pretty fascinating business.
SPEAKER_01
My opinion is I 15 million visitors a month to their website, which is a lot.
SPEAKER_02
That's a lot. And I bet you a lot of that is director search, which is really good.
SPEAKER_01
So which way do you want to go with this? So I think we can do a couple of things. One is there's the controversy. You know, Vinod Kostla, Josh Wolf, they came out saying, oh, how, how evil for funding this and for doing this.
So there's a agree or disagree there.
SPEAKER_02
Well, we could actually address that right away, which is there. I totally disagree in their bullshit. They're wrong.
Exactly. Like let's like say, like, why would you ever invest in the nicotine business or an alcohol business?
SPEAKER_01
Like dude, dude, there's a place for all types of bullshit or a burger chain or Netflix. Or whatever. Right? Like you can, you can believe that there are sort of negative consequences for society and humanity for Facebook as well.
Right? I think in this case, their, their sort of view is retainted. And here's the, here's the easy example. If somebody was doing a religion app, they would be, they would never say anything about this, but because the religion is the stars instead of the gods.
Now it's snake oil. Now it's bullshit. Now it's, you know, peddling, you know, fake science.
What is religion? It's the difference of religion. Right? Like it is a belief in something that is supernatural, that is invisible, that cannot be proved by science. It is blind faith in something.
And that faith gives people comfort, entertainment, community, you know, like many like positive benefits. And so if you're going to say this about horoscopes, you better also say it about religion. Otherwise I view you sort of as a hypocrite there.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. We're on the same page there. And also like, dude, I like many people, they have a shitty life.
They go to work, they get home at 5 p.m. and they just want to fucking veg out. If a little horoscope gives them a little bit of hope, who cares? You know, we, I need all the help I can get.
And I'm sure a lot of people do too. So I don't care. So I will say it's bullshit, just like I think a lot of religion is.
Sorry if you're religious, but I respect that if you like it. But I think it's bullshit too, but it's okay.
SPEAKER_01
Me too. Okay. So then the second piece is that I'll just say on that is fucking annoying the virtue signaling by VCs. Really like this, the grandstanding that people do is so annoying to me.
And I recently, we'll talk about this more in a month, weird teaser, I know, but we'll go, I'm going to go in depth about a topic in a month, about a fight I had on Twitter, a good old Twitter ruckus. But one of the things that came out of it was the just absolute hypocritical nature of people and virtue signaling. This is almost more annoying to me than like cancel culture is virtue, virtue signaling culture where people take any chance they get to say how they're greater than others.
Because they sort of just try to take the moral high ground at any cost. And I find it to be so annoying and such a weak move of people to do that. So if you're an investor to go and say, I'm a good guy, I would never fund something like this, that is such an annoying move to me personally.
What do you think of that?
SPEAKER_02
So I completely agree with you. I mean, like, I think that we have to remember that like, there's some mom, like my mother in Missouri, who's having a hard day, she just needs to get off somehow. Like that sounded weird, but you know what I mean? She needs to like find her a little bit of happiness somewhere.
I don't care if she wants a soap opera or reads about horoscopes. Who cares? Not everything needs to save the world. It just needs to be a little bit of fun and entertainment.
SPEAKER_01
And not everyone needs to agree with you. Okay. So it's no problem. You don't have to fund it.
But to like call out and demonize the people that do fund it, let them do what they want. Like I find it weird that the people who are trying to be so like righteous, they lose the one like kind of like one of the more fundamental things, which is open mindedness, that maybe other people have different beliefs than you and will act in different ways in accordance of their beliefs and that they should not be judged or demonized for it. So anyways, I think that's kind of annoying.
SPEAKER_02
But okay. So the people who like this, let's talk about the opportunities and why this works. You want to talk about that?
SPEAKER_01
Yes. I have a couple.
SPEAKER_02
Okay. I'll go first. The first is Myers-Briggs and other personality tests.
You can do this exact same thing with that.
SPEAKER_01
By the way, the reason we frame this as the most interesting subject to anybody is themselves exactly. And so that's the umbrella. We're not talking about selling pseudoscience.
Yeah. That's actually like a technique. Why does this work is because the most interesting topic to me is me and the most interesting topic to you is you.
And so because of that, if you accept that that is true, which by the way it is, once you understand that that is true, it opens up a set of business possibilities that you can go through and work through and figure out. So okay, go on.
SPEAKER_02
So the reason why I went to this app, why it was so interesting, I bet so for most apps, the free to paid conversion ratio is probably 1% maybe. You think that's about right?
SPEAKER_01
I can get to like 3%, 4%.
SPEAKER_02
Okay. With this app, I bet you it's as high as 10%. If they told me 10, I wouldn't be surprised.
Right. I'd be impressed but not surprised. I would be impressed and not surprised exactly.
And at 10% free to paid conversion rate is stupid. That is so good. The reason why it's good is you could spend a lot of money to advertise.
Now the churn might be high, but that's a situation we could address after we're already big and popular. So the reason why they're, let's just assume that that is true. Let's say it's 6%.
The reason why it's 6% is that it's so personal. And the reason this business works is that it is personal. So what you need to do is go out and find personal stuff.
So that's the reason why Myers, any type of personality test, because I can say, oh, so you've just told me these 10 things about you. That means that you're probably disorganized. Let me tell you all about being disorganized and what that means.
Personality tests are great. It's actually the same in a way, the same thing as a horoscope. And what you can do is you could do it, you could really just do a daily email if you wanted to.
SPEAKER_01
So it's not really simple. By the way, all those people who are like horoscopes, like, yeah, that's for dumb Trump voters to believe in. And then they'll also be putting on their Twitter bio, like I'm an ENTJ, right? They'll go put their like fucking personality quiz results into their bio.
And I know there's slightly more science that, you know, that says that that's a real thing. But I don't know. This is all, yeah, exactly.
This is all hand wavy shit as far as I'm concerned.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. And guess what? I'm in favor of it all. Right.
SPEAKER_00
I take these tests. Enjoy them.
SPEAKER_02
So I think that you can do a daily email for this. I also think that paid content, paid subscriptions for these types of things works really well. And what this app is doing that I particularly love that I think could work for so many different things is you get a top of funnel thing where you give these tests and then you do a come and talk to a person and you would charge $50 per person or per hour or whatever it is.
And as a middle person, you take a cut. I think that is brilliant. I love this business.
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I was talking to, there was a company we talked about on here. It's called, I feel like it's called Intro. Was it called Intro? It was basically like you can book a call with like Justin Bieber's stylist or like,
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
I think it was called Intro. I can't recall.
SPEAKER_02
No, it was called something else. But maybe you're right. So anyways, it's right.
SPEAKER_01
Founders legit, sold his last company starts this thing. He's like, Oh, it's great because I'm remodeling my kitchen. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do a 30 minute call with the person who remodels kitchens on HTV.
And so they got all these stars on and it's all good. Guess what vertical is the number one vertical for them? Astrology readings. They found all these Instagrammers and you can go on Instagram.
You could find all these people who have like cult Instagram followings. They have like 50,000, 150,000 followers and they just post a daily sort of like, you know, reading and people will pay to book time to get a personal reading from them. It's taking off.
Now, he doesn't publicize that. If you go to the website, it still looks like it's about style, home renovations and other
SPEAKER_02
things. And that is a fitness nutrition makeup, nutrition makeup, all these things that, you know, smart
SPEAKER_01
people will nod their head and say, that sounds good. That sounds healthy. Then it's like, what do people really want? Where's the highest demand? It was in the, tell me about me through a reading, either a psychic reading, astrology reading, whatever it is.
Okay. I want to go back to something you said very quickly, but I think it's super legit. And this is, we need a sound effect for whenever me and you have such total conviction.
It's like in, if you watch like, I don't know, America's Got Talent or something like that or the X Factor, the golden button, the golden buzzer where they're just like, we don't need to vote. I'm going to push this button right now and you're, you automatically advance. So I'm pushing the golden button right now for anybody who wants to take this idea of creating this funnel.
So to do this, you need to know nothing about code, but you do need to be kind of like internet savvy and kind of clever. Here's what you do.
SPEAKER_02
You, and you should probably go and read like Ryan Hoover's book, Hooked.
SPEAKER_01
Near I Outs. Yeah. Ryan Hoover's like the editor.
SPEAKER_02
Whatever. Sorry, near or go and read Influence by Robert Chowdini.
SPEAKER_01
Right. Exactly. So somebody who, who gets into this stuff and is non-judgmental, like they're not going to do this forever, but here's the experiment.
The experiment is you create a quiz that's the top of the funnel that basically says, find out your personality, find out your X, find out your Myers Briggs, find out whatever it is, your horoscope, whatever. And you create a quiz at the top and then to get your results, you put in your email, we email you the results and then we send you a daily newsletter that's personalized to you, right, because you are a, because you were born on this day of this year, I'm going to give you your daily horoscope. I'm going to give you your daily reading.
And so that's the whole product right now. I think if we do this, I will put money in, I bet Sam would put some money in too. You put a little money behind the paid acquisition here and, and there's inherent virality because people will share their, their quiz results.
They will share their readings, especially when it says like, see if you're compatible with your brother, your girlfriend, your mother, whoever, right, you'll get somebody to share the quiz with somebody else. So I think you could build a easily a hundred thousand plus person list doing this product. And then there is a clear like premium offering on the back end, but the, the core of it is quiz funnel up top daily newsletter and get there and get to a hundred thousand.
I would, I'm going to throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick. They'll actually get, have some legs because I know this would have legs.
SPEAKER_02
And I don't know how big a legs are, but I do, I would say with a high degree of certainty, if you work on this full time for three years, you have a $5 million a year in revenue.
SPEAKER_01
Or even simple, right? Like a lot of people who, who I, when I surveyed my audience, one of the biggest things was, dude, I'd love to just have a side hustle that I could do a few hours a day that would bring in a few thousand dollars a month. This will do that. So if you want to do this DM me email me email email us, find a way to contact us because I want somebody legit to actually try this.
Let me tell you about some experiments I've done in this area. I don't even know if you know about these things. So I don't know when it was not too long ago, within the last couple of years, I was quite bored.
I had sold my company and I basically said, you know, last episode you asked, like, do you want to build something that lasts for like 30, 40 years, like a long lasting company? I'm like, yeah, sometimes I dream about that. And then sometimes I dream about what's something I could do this weekend that would be fun. And like, I could throw away next weekend if I wanted to, like a low commitment fling of a business, a fun scheme, right? A hookup.
And so I wanted, I wanted a business hookup and one night stand and I created three, I had three ideas that I thought would work. The first was a IQ test. I always wanted to know my IQ.
I don't know my IQ. I'd like to think I'm smart. I think I'm above average smart.
Guess what? Everybody thinks they're above average smart. And so I thought, why isn't there like an easier way to do an IQ test? If there was an ad on Facebook that was like a puzzle and it's like solve this puzzle and this is like the start of an IQ test. I would go through that.
I would take the IQ test for 20 minutes and then I would want to get my results. I'd give you my email and I might even pay for like the full results of this thing. So I thought that was kind of interesting doing IQ test and kind of like recreating Mensa as a sort of like online funnel.
Again, no physical product needed, no shipping, no logistics, no supply chain, but a pure play sort of digital info product. Second one, have you read the book, the five love languages or five languages of love?
SPEAKER_01
Okay. You're married. So at some point you were given this book and been like, Hey asshole, read this.
And so that's one that that's a pretty successful franchise. So if you go look at my Facebook page right now, my Facebook profile, you'll see, oh, why is Sean the admin of a page called the love doctor? Well, let me tell you why. Because I wanted to take the five love languages test, put it online, send people through that flow where they answer a bunch of questions and then say, would you like to know what your love language is? Put your email in and then I'll send you your results.
And then I say, well, wait, we need to see who you're compatible with. Do your love languages match? And do they know yours? Send this to your partner. And boom.
And then by the way, like here by the ebook, by the PDF, that will tell you what to do given your love language. Because there's only like five. So I can just make five PDFs and sell them.
So these are these little business experiment flinks. And I have one last one that I did because as you can tell, these types of businesses appeal to me. I like simple lightweight stuff that people that has a lot of demand that Silicon Valley likes to poo poo and say that they're better than that.
I find this as an opportunity. So the last one is crystals. You said something about.
SPEAKER_02
Oh my gosh. Yes, I did. So this guy, what he wants to do is see what's the sell crystals.
I don't like, I don't, and I don't say, oh my gosh. And like, I think it's wrong to say sell because I think it's like anything that like, you know, Tony Robbins is he bullshit? Yeah. But I read it sometimes.
It makes you go a little bit helpful bullshit. So who cares? But I think crystals are nonsense.
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly. So is a placebo a bad thing? Right? If this thing has no measurable effects, but I believe it to have a positive effect and it helps me feel better than has it not achieved its purpose of helping me feel better. Right? So, so I looked at these three ideas and I had to pick one because I didn't have too much time, right? I had a weekend hookup to go to.
So I said, should I do the IQ one? Should I do this love doctor one, the five languages love test? Or should I do this crystal thing? As I looked at the crystal thing, I saw I saw a bunch of interesting things, which is that there's a lot of female kind of like influencers. So Adele carries a rose quartz crystal with her and uses it before every before she goes on stage for every performance. Gwyneth Paltrow from, you know, with Goop.
She's all about, you know, these all about crystals, you know, just go through the list of who's who. So the Kardashians after Kim Kardashian got mugged or robbed and she was feeling like very unsafe. She like she credits crystals to being one of the things that helped her center herself, calm herself and feel better about herself and be able to go back into the world and feel safe again.
So I found that, wow, a lot of these sort of like female celebrities and idols have pictures and quotes with these. I thought, oh, that'd be pretty useful to help sell this thing. And then I found that I could source crystals very easily, right? The crystals are not that expensive.
And so I created a e-commerce store for crystals and I tried it for a couple of weekends and I spent, you know, five, 10 grand of booting this thing up and I broke even and I even made a little bit of profit. And in the end, I sort of like got bored of the, you know, I got bored of the hookup and I was ready to move on with my life. But I kind of validated that this idea could kind of work.
And there was, it wasn't like gangbusters, like, look, if this started printing money, I wouldn't have given it up. No, but it could have been. It could have been.
SPEAKER_02
I mean, you know, I did it for a few weekends.
SPEAKER_01
Right. Like, which is most things, you have to stay at it for a bit to actually get it to work.
SPEAKER_02
That's brilliant. I like hearing these stories. And as I was thinking, I made fun of crystals, but I actually had something similar.
So there's this guy named Ryan Holiday.
SPEAKER_01
You know Ryan Holiday, the author of trust me, I'm lying. Is that it?
SPEAKER_01
He's got a few books. He's got the enemy, I think is one of his, right?
SPEAKER_02
I have some of them up here and he's got many books and his famous thing is stoicism. So he talks a lot about stoicism, which basically just means how to be, how to deal with adversity, how to be a tough guy. Obviously, horoscopes mostly women.
This is probably mostly men. And I read one of his books. I thought it was nice.
It made me feel better about myself. And I went to daily stoic.com and I bought a $30 coin that says some message.
Greet thing on there. That's I don't even know what it says, but it translates into like you live and then you're going to die. So like live well or something like that.
It's just, and I would carry it.
SPEAKER_01
I always, I do who gets the, the tattoo of an Asian Asian character on his arm. It doesn't know what it means.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah. I don't, but it doesn't matter what it means. It means something to you.
Yeah, like it's a kind of like stoic on there. They're supposed to be tough and I would carry it around me and I paid 30 bucks for it. I think it costs a dollar for him to make.
I think you make it a few million dollars. So that shit works. I dig it.
And by the way, my, my one night stand recently about a couple of years ago as well, our friend Ramon was killing it on dog stuff. I'm like, Oh my gosh, that, that looks so fun. And so he would create all these Facebook pages about dedicated to a specific dog breed.
And I go, well, that's just fun. I just want to tinker. I'm going to try it.
I created this one page called bully boo. So the word bully and then space to word boo, B O O. I just made that word up.
Bully is a like a bully breeds. They're like pit bulls, whatever you have to, you have to. And I just went and got viral videos from Reddit and I posted it on bully boo.
Dude, I got like 10,000 followers on Facebook, like in a matter of like five days. Yeah. So that's it.
SPEAKER_01
So anyway, by the way, I also have a pet one. I heard this guy was making a bunch of money when he, by printing your pets photo on socks as a gift. And I was like, great, weekend hookup, tried it, spun up the whole thing.
I had a guy, I mean, my friend, Eric, who has this cool sock company called tribe. He was like, I'll print the socks for you. Here's a link.
Here's what, here's, here's an easy way to set it up. Tried it. My results weren't great, but same sort of thing where I was like, I really enjoy these mini experiments.
And here's the thing, like when I share these, I think part of it is interesting of just hearing these little like random things. Most people listen to this. I don't think do that.
I think it's like somewhat unique in that we have done many of these, right? Like, I didn't even know you did this bully boo thing. You didn't know I've done these three things. There's actually like 10 more that I've done that you've done that we talked about.
SPEAKER_02
So a lot of which are so embarrassing.
SPEAKER_01
These are the ones we're talking about. Imagine the ones we don't talk about. So, so I think the, one of the like meta takeaways is like just experiment more and be willing to spin something up quickly and then throw it away when you're done with it.
And like don't try to like marry everything. You know, it's okay to date. It's okay to have a hookup or a flinger or a one night stand with a business.
And I think that it's a lot of our skill is built. So in doing that, I used to tell kind of one of my interns who was working with me on the crystal thing. He's like, dude, I don't know if this crystal thing is going to work, but I'm amazed that in 48 hours we went from you were just bullshitting about the idea to our first sale.
And that's just kind of amazing. He called it a flash brand. He's like, I love that we just created this whole brand.
It looks real. It's got a name. We like named it after my sister's kid.
You know, like we created a logo. We got this like this Shopify store spun up. And in doing so, we learned all these like mechanics of like, how do you like, how do you get better at writing copy? How do you get ready to naming things? How do you get better at making a logo? How do you use these tools like Shopify and in Klaviyo and all these different tools that you need the piping to sell stuff? And I think that there's a lot of, even if you think the ideas we're talking about are dumb, it's not dumb to like use these as an excuse to go learn about Facebook ads or to learn about building a Facebook page quickly, because that might come in handy again, three days later or three years later when you're trying to do the next thing.
SPEAKER_02
And of course, that's not really what you're the most important thing you're learning. What you're learning is the confidence to just go through the motion and get shit done in the same way that like it's a lot easier to get skinny when you know how to bench press properly or you feel comfortable squatting and you're like, Oh yeah, just do this, this, this and I eat less and boom, I'm confident I can, I just follow the, I just go.
SPEAKER_01
Can I tell you a mini story on this real quick and then we'll move on. So I invested in that company Maven, which is started by our mutual friend, Gaggenbejani. He started Udemy and now he's got it, which is a $3 billion edtech company and I was got a new edtech company for teaching online and I invested in the company and in order to get in, it was such a competitive deal in order to get in.
And I was like, look, you guys have a good audience, like you have a big Twitter following, you got to do a course. If you agree to do a course, be one of the teachers, so be a user, then I'll let you in the round and I was like, done, because I wanted to invest. And so then he's been hitting me up like, dude, do the, where's your course? Come on, man, make your course.
And so I was like, all right, shit. And so then I was overthinking it and the lesson here is not, it's really has nothing to do with my course. Or I guess I'll tell the end of the story and then I'll tell you how I almost fucked up.
And the other story is yesterday I took about 20 minutes. I wrote a three tweet, tweet storm about how writing has helped me. And I said, you know, in school, I was a shitty writer.
And in school, they want you to write long essays, like they have like a minimum word count you have to hit literally. And you know, you study Shakespeare and you think that's what good writing is or you read the Odyssey. But then, you know, in the real world, it's the exact opposite.
You know, you're paid to be concise, not have a lot of words, right? You're not trying to write like really epic, complex things. You need to be simple and crisp and communicate well. And I said, I've gotten good at that.
So I sucked at school writing, but I've gotten pretty good at real world writing through trial and error and studying some of the best people yourself included our friend Neville. I bought his course. I took that whole thing.
I've got better at copywriting. But I said, in general, there's this whole like, like how much value can be unlocked if you're good at writing emails, tweets, blog posts, company memos, investor letters, like all those things can generate a lot of value. It's made me millions of dollars.
I think it can do that for other people too, if you get better at writing. So anyways, I tweeted that out and I said, I want to package, you know, I've probably studied this stuff for like a thousand hours in my life. I wanted to steal it down into something you can learn in 10 days.
If you're interested in that, it costs 400 bucks. Here's a link put into a shitty Google form where you put in your name and email and you tell me why you want to take this course. So I tweeted it out.
Guess how many responses I got? 300. So I got a thousand responses already of people who are who gave me all their info said, I'd like to sign up to be in the first batch. I thought so the way that may even works is they encourage you to do this to test demand to see if you have a hundred people.
If you get a hundred people, they say, all right, there's enough demand. You should go like kind of figure out why they want to do this and then then launch your actual course. A thousand blew me away off of, you know, one tweet basically, let alone email list or anything else.
So I thought, oh, that's interesting. Wow. Like let's say that this is a thousand people. The course costs $400.
Not all of them will convert, but like 200 maybe. But this was, he said about 30 to 40% of people will end up converting. But that's if once you qualify the list a little bit.
But even this was just one tweet. So let's assume I also email it out or I tweet again about it. I think I could probably triple the size of the interest list because this was just whoever was on Twitter in that moment that saw it.
So I could probably triple the size of this list and then let's say 30% of them convert, 25% of them convert. Okay. So let's say the net net is $120,000. I could easily make six figures.
I think a hundred thousand on the low end, 400,000, 500,000 on the high end of this course. Okay. So that's sweet. But what's the lesson here? The lesson here is actually that I didn't, I was not going to send this tweet.
I was telling like, I was like, all right, you know, you need to like test your test of demand for this course. And I was like, great. So here's my plan.
I'm going to, first I'm going to like work on the content of the course. I'm going to like make sure it's good. And then actually I want to like show people I'm good at this.
So I'm going to do like 10 example. I'm going to do 10 emails showing me like taking something that was kind of bad writing and turning it, making it better. So that'll like get people interested.
Then I'll do it. I'll mention it on the podcast and then I'll do this other thing. And he's like, dude, you don't need to do all that.
Like, trust me, just say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this. You know, here's why I think it would be good for you if you're interested, sign up. And I was like, yeah, fuck you're right.
I'm doing that thing. And that thing is what most people do, which is you're afraid to fail. So you overthink what you need to do to make it successful and a brain you're listening to this, you're about to go do your own startup.
Don't make this mistake that I was about to make that I've made many times in the past that most people make every time they go do a new venture is that they are afraid to fail. Or they overestimate what they need to do to get started. I need to incorporate.
I need to come up with a good name. I need to buy the domain. I need to like build it to make sure I want to have a high quality product.
I don't want to go out with a bad product and disappoint people. Or I need to like create a whole website before I do this thing. Nope. Shitty tweet, shitty Google form, thousand responses. Right? Like you can get results with a much shittier sort of go to market.
And so, you know, the classic quote here is if you're not embarrassed by your first product, by your first version of your product, you waited too long to launch. And so anyways, the most I relearned was don't overthink it. I almost overthought it.
SPEAKER_02
Do you know what you're going to teach? Are you going to figure that out?
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I have a good idea. Actually, I think this would be cool. So tell me what you think of this.
I haven't told anybody this yet. So I think the way to get good at writing is to write, obviously. Sorry. It's the great and good. Good at anything is to do it.
And so I'm like, all right, but I can't just tell you to go do it. If it was that easy, you would have already done it. So I thought, okay, what about this? What if every day I gave you a prompt? So like, let's say, let's say that we want to get better at writing, writing for the real world, right? So let's let's say it's a cold email, like the way you cold email people to come be speakers at HustleCon.
Great. So I say, we're going to write a cold email to somebody who you want to come speak at your event. I'm not going to tell you how to do it.
First try it. Put 15 minutes on the clock and just try it. Write a shitty version.
So they try it. Then I'm going to give them a kind of a learning. So it's like, do, learn, and then do.
So you do it. Then I tell you how I would do it. And with four examples, like here's one way of doing it.
Here's another way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. And here's the common principles I'm using in all these.
All right. You learned that? Good. Now do it again.
And you submit that one and I'll give feedback on all the submissions that people give and be like, Hey, this is actually awesome or Hey, this is much better than your first attempt. Look, in 30 minutes, you just went from like really shitty to pretty good. And here's how you can go from pretty good to like amazing if you made this one tweak additional.
So I want people to get a daily reps at writing one of those things. So it might be a headline, right? Here's the story. Write the headline.
Okay. Cool. That was a bad headline. Here's what goes into a great headline.
SPEAKER_02
You better launch fast. Someone, a listener is going to go and do this. Of course they don't have 150,000 followers, but yeah, if you want to do this, help me
SPEAKER_01
do it. I think it was just, this should exist. I think this would be a cool way for people to get better by actually doing something and doing it in like a controlled sandbox.
So not just saying open it. I don't know. Go write a bunch of shit.
It's like very specific. Write this. Here's examples of what, what, what good looks like and then good boom, boom.
Now that you know the, now that you've learned the principle, go apply it. So anyways, that's what I'm going to try to teach.
SPEAKER_02
Do you want to talk about Michael Buffer? Yes. What do you, so on our doc. Sean's got Michael Buffer and judge Judy personal monopoly written down there.
I'm very curious what that even means.
SPEAKER_01
So this started with just curiosity. I was watching the Canelo Alvarez boxing match that happened last weekend. Fun match guy, what if I can broke this guy's face? Yeah, literally.
Because I'm focused face in three places and then the guy quit between rounds. So anyways, boxing is this funny thing where like the match itself only lasts for, you know, some number of minutes, but they need to charge you all this money for a pay-per-view. So there's all this like pomp and circumstances, all this parade around it, right? They walk out with music and they're kind of entourage and they're out fit.
And then the next person walks out and then there's the introduction. And in the introductions, always this guy, you've probably seen him. This is white guy who basically is like got a great voice and in boxing, he says, like, you know, ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rumble.
Right. That's like the signature thing. Oh, like he would kind of get wired over the years of following the sport that like, yes, this is the main event.
This is the big one.
SPEAKER_02
And by the way, do you know who that guy's brother is?
SPEAKER_01
Bruce Buffer, right? So Bruce is in the UFC and he says, I'll let you do it.
SPEAKER_02
He goes, it's time. It's time. And by the way, they didn't know that they were brothers until they were like both in their fifties.
Exactly.
SPEAKER_01
There's a crazy story about that. So I was just watching this and I was like, how much does Michael Buffer get paid? Right. I mean, I've been doing research, Michael Buffer salary.
Jess, do you know how much Michael, you might know, it sounds like you know some things.
SPEAKER_02
No, I don't know. But based on 10 million a year.
SPEAKER_01
So Michael Buffer has made $400 million in his career doing what he's doing. He's made most of that off of the fact that he has created a personal monopoly. He is synonymous with a big boxing match and his phrase, let's get ready to rumble is a trademarked phrase.
Now how is it a trade? He's trademarked it and he licenses it out to video games, to, you know, like movies and shows and stuff like that. And actually, if you go watch like the back catalog of UFC fights, they cut out Bruce Buffer's it's time part because they don't want to pay him the royalty on it's time.
SPEAKER_02
How well, first of all, I knew he was wealthy because he looks like he's got a lot of work done on his face. So like he's got that like Wayne Newton look where like Sigmund Freud where I'm like, oh, that's that Las Vegas rich look. And second, how on earth is the boxing federation or whatever it's called, allow him to own it along with Bruce Buffer.
SPEAKER_01
So the way the tap in it. So the way it happened was Michael Buffer is the is the the announcer guy, right? And at first he's not making much and boxing is kind of nascent and he's he grew with the sport, right? So Tyson got popular and Holyfield and all these big names, you know, you just keep seeing this one guy for like 30 years. So he ended up building his own brand, you know, along the way.
So nowadays he gets paid about or sorry, I don't know exactly what Michael Buffer gets paid per event. But he got to the point where it's let's say 1984. And he's saying, let's get ready to rumble.
And Bruce Buffer, who doesn't know that they are siblings, he is half they're half sibling. So he's watching. What is it? He's watching the event or something like that.
And he sees it. This guy's last name is buffer. And he goes, oh, that's cool.
I've never met another buffer. He doesn't think they're brothers. He just thinks this guy's last name is also buffer.
That's cool. I've never met another buffer. He goes on the yellow pages and he looks and there's no other buffers.
So he's like, dude, this is crazy. This guy's last name is buffer. And he's driving with his dad or something like that.
And he asks his dad. He's like, yeah, this guy's, oh no, he finds out. So he looks into Michael Buffer.
He finds out he was he grew up in a town like, I don't know, half a mile away from Bruce. He's like, dude, dad, how crazy is this? You know, the guy on the boxing thing, Michael Buffer, last name buffer. And he grew up, you know, half a mile, half a mile away from us.
And the dad while driving just goes, yeah, I think that's your brother. He's like, what? He's like, yeah, you know, you didn't know this, but before you and your mom, you know, they've been married 50 years before you and your mom got together. You know, I had another, I had a son.
I don't know if it's him, but maybe that's your brother. And so they go and they find out that they are actually half brothers. They share a dad.
So Bruce then goes to Michael and he says, Michael, you're doing great, but you have no like business manager. I'll be your manager. And he's like, okay, what does that mean? He goes, dude, you need to trademark this phrase.
This is your catchphrase. So he applies for the trademark, he gets it. And then he basically says, takes that trademark and he starts to license it out, merchandise, you know, hats, shirts, video games, everything.
So he starts building this guy's brand. And then later Michael gets Bruce into the announcing game and Bruce becomes the announcer for the UFC. So a different sport.
And Bruce is making like on any given event, if you go watch a UFC event, he's making 50 to 100 grand for that night's work, which is basically before every fight he just announces, you know, in this corner, we have this guy from that point.
SPEAKER_02
That's right now. He makes 100.
SPEAKER_01
He makes 100 grand for big fights and 50 grand ish. And this is like, we got a caveat. This is like, you know, when you Google someone's net worth, like, I don't know if this is actually his number.
It's in a bunch of articles, but maybe they're all referencing the same shitty source. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02
Right. And he does probably three a month. Yeah. So you're looking at about three and a half, $4 million a year.
SPEAKER_01
And it says, you know, his net worth is sort of in the tens of millions, whereas Michael Buffer is in the hundreds of millions. And so this sort of came to this concept of creating a personal monopoly. So how do you build yourself to the point where you are unreplaceable? And this is like Ryan Seacrest with American Idol, right? When American Idol first started, there's two dudes.
SPEAKER_02
And at this point, Ryan Seacrest, actually go ahead.
SPEAKER_01
Well, I was going to say Ryan Seacrest is now, you know, sort of synonymous with American Idol. It's like Chris Harrison with The Bachelor. It's Jeff Probst with Survivor.
And you know, these are, these are hosts that on the surface, it's like, oh, he just comes out here, says a few lines. Anybody could do that.
SPEAKER_02
No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01
The fans grow attached to this person and that becomes part of the brand of the event. And the consistency of seeing those same faces, those same recurring cast members saying those same catchphrases is part of what makes it popular. So Judge Judy.
SPEAKER_02
And at this point, Ryan Seacrest has Ryan Seacrest Productions, which is a production company, which frankly, I've always been wondering like, what does a production company actually mean? Like that's one of those Hollywood terms that I'm sure does. I don't want to get it, but it does something like north of a hundred million in revenue.
SPEAKER_01
Well, he produced the Kardashians show, keeping up with the Kardashians. He was the creator and producer of that show, I think. So it was his idea.
SPEAKER_02
So he'd partly that into something. I don't exactly, like I said, I don't entirely understand how a production company made money.
SPEAKER_01
And there's this fork in the road because at the beginning of American Idol, there was two hosts and one guy after season one was like, oh, this is a hit. I want more money. And at that time he didn't have a personal monopoly yet.
He was replaceable because the show was so new. And so they said, no, thanks, we'll keep Ryan. Ryan, you could just be the lead guy now.
And Ryan Seacrest did it for like 15 years. And then by the end of it was sort of making out about 10, 15 million bucks a season doing it because he waited until he became entrenched in the franchise as like the face. And he became a valuable character like Simon Cowell and the other guys.
So Judge Judy is probably the greatest example of this. So the highest paid person on TV was Judge Judy for a number of years. She was making $47 million a year for, I don't know, 50, I think days of filming.
So she was making about $900,000 a day filming the show for Judge Judy, which is she was a judge before that making $113,000 a year. And so from the commodity, the skill of the job of being a judge to building your personal monopoly as the show is called Judge Judy, she was able to turn $113,000 a year of pricing power into $47 million a year. And then CBS bought the back catalog of Judge Judy for $100 million.
So she's still making royalties without working anymore. So I just find this to be tremendously interesting. It's something that was counterintuitive to me.
Seems to me like all these people are replaceable, but clearly the economics of Hollywood show that they're not. And so I just found this to be very interesting. And I also liked the story of the long lost brothers.
One brother finds the other, becomes his manager, convinces him to trademark it. And that trademark is, you know, that building that personal monopoly of IP is what helped them build a multi-hundred million dollar franchise. So I thought that was amazing.
SPEAKER_02
So let's go down this rabbit hole. I don't think we're going to get to the intern thing, but maybe we will. Let's put it on this rabbit hole because I know a few people that have these personal brands.
Maybe some people think that I have that, but I actually don't have it because I'm not nearly careful enough. But you seem quite careful enough about your brand that you might, you have this, but I know Tim Ferriss. I know Tim Ferriss.
I know Jack Butcher. Jack Butcher is a great friend of mine. He created this huge following off of visualized value, great name.
All he does is he makes one picture that describes a thousand words. So basically you have this complicated topic. He makes one graphic a day and it explains exactly how it works.
You would think that's silly. He's crushed it. He probably makes two to three million dollars a year selling a course on that topic.
The second one, Tim Ferriss. And the reason why I can't do this is because these guys are so protective in particular about their brand. Tim Ferriss, I'm going to tell, I'm going to tell a Tim Ferriss story that I don't want to turn this into clips.
I don't want this to get popular story. So Tim Ferriss years ago came to my office when it was, when he had Justin, I know Tim Ferriss because he would walk his dog. We were neighbors.
We lived down the block from each other. We would walk our dogs together like he would be at the park and I would be at the park. And I wouldn't bring up business.
I wouldn't even act like I was a fan other than I'm saying, Hey, I just listened to this podcast the other day. It was wonderful. Good job.
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, can you tell the first time you all met? How did you, because I think when people meet somebody that they know and admired, they often blow it by totally fangirling over them. What was the story? Do you even remember like, what was the first interaction where it became normal?
SPEAKER_02
Okay. The funny story is I was on the way home from the hospital after getting a kidney stone and I was super high on morphine and I had gotten a kidney stone and my wife Sarah, who was my girlfriend at the time was driving me home. It was eight AM because I got the kidney stone at like five o'clock in the morning.
I was coming home at eight AM. I see Tim walking in front of my house and I was on the passenger seat riding dirty with my seat back because I was all high and shit. And I see him walk by and I go, hold on Sarah backup.
Hey, hey Tim, what are you doing around here, man? And he goes, I lived on the street. I go, that's cool. I'm a big fan.
I just got a kidney stone. You got any tips for that? And I was like, oh, obnoxious. And then I saw him again the next day walking his dog and I go, Tim, I just wanted to apologize.
I was under the influence. But anyway, I know your books, big fan. What's your dog's name? That's it.
And then we were just, we were just talking about dogs. That's all. And then eventually he cold emailed me months later when he goes, Hey, I heard about the hustle.
It seems cool. Do you want to have dinner so we can talk about it? I go to dinner and he goes, wait a minute, you're the guy with the dog. I go, yeah, man, what's going on? He's like, I'm your neighbor.
I didn't ever want to bring up email or business to you because, you know, I didn't want to be tacky. So it was a weird thing that we knew each other. And so one day he, after he invested in my company, comes to the office, he sees me drinking a Coke Zero and he goes, Hey, man, can I have one of those? I go, yeah, dude, you can have as many as you want.
Let me go get you one. I give him one and he chugs it super fast. He goes, did I get one more? I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you.
I throw him two. He chugs them. We get done with this meeting.
There's six of us in the office. I'm in the, we're in a little baby conference room, which is basically a one bedroom, a bedroom in one of the apartments. There's about six of my employees or four of them and then C.
A. Bo was there and he goes, all right, well, that was a good meeting. And he pushes the Coke cans my way.
And I go, what? He goes, you mind throwing those away for me? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll throw them away. And I take them and he just didn't want to be seen walking out with a diet soda can. That's how particular this guy was.
And you know what? I think it's great. I dig it. And whenever we work with Tim, if I write something and there's a miscoma or something, he's on top of it.
And at first I was like, you know, you're really being a pain in the butt. And then I realized, you know what? You're not being a pain in the butt. You are being timpura.
You are being exactly how you should be. You are protecting your brand. You want things in a very particular way.
You're being demanding. And I respect that. And I like that.
And that's when I realized, I don't think I could ever be a personal brand because you have to guard that shit like crazy. You have to be on top of it. Every single time it has to be, it's got to be exactly a very particular way every single time.
And that's how you build a really good brand. You have to be on when you're on. I mean, I'm sure there's a phrase I use.
SPEAKER_01
I don't know if I made this up or somebody told me this. I have no idea. It was a long time ago, 10 years ago.
It's called EPOC. It stands for every point of contact. It said, if you want to make a great brand, you need to be congruent.
So you need to have something you stand for. All right. Most people don't know what they stand for.
They're not clear about it. It's not unique. It's not compelling.
It's not something notable. But once you do that, the second step is at every point of contact, you have to embody that. So you can't be before our body and be out of shape.
You can't be like, for our work week guy, and then you're super inefficient and you're working 80 hours a week. So you have to be congruent at all times. That should be the goal as a brand is to at every point of contact a customer has with you in any place.
They're getting that same thing that you stand for. And so that's an aspirational goal. Of course, you don't do that.
It's not achievable. But it is a mindset to have in order to reinforce the brand many, many times because people will have experiences with you. This is like Disney World.
Disney World has all these things where there's no, I forgot what all those things are. It's like there's no trash cans and there's no, you can't see the mascots ever taking a smoke break with their head off. You can't see Mickey Mouse smoking a cigarette.
It's like, no, we have to be at every point of contact. This place stands for joy and everything's got to be joy. The bathroom's got to be joy.
The food's got to be joy, right? All these different things. That's what great brand owners are strived to do.
SPEAKER_02
And what you and I do, or at least I know I do it, is I test stuff with people. And so in a way, we have a podcast. I would say we're actually, what you see is what you get.
I mean, you and I talk like this regardless if the camera's on or not. But I do know which jokes hit and I'll test them on people. I kind of see like, oh, this story I just told, it caught that guy's attention.
I should tell it a little bit differently though. And with Tim and other people, I've seen them repeat phrases like, I don't pretend to be a doctor and I don't play one on TV. That's just like this phrase that he uses.
And I guess it kind of takes-
SPEAKER_01
It's like, you're so likable.
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah. And these phrases that I've seen these quote famous people. So a guy like Tim, who else do I know that's like, fits this category.
Jack is definitely one of them. Jack Butcher.
SPEAKER_01
I've told the story before on the pod, but Chris Saka did this and it blew me away. I met him in person. For those who don't know, Chris Saka is like one of the best investors ever to a point where he's already retired.
He doesn't- now he only invests in climate change stuff because he's like, I already won the game of like money and success.
SPEAKER_02
It's called post-economic.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he's post-economic as Balaji taught us. So I met him in person and he told this story. And as I was telling the story, he had all these little offhand little moments where he's like, you know, I didn't realize that at the time.
Or like he'd be like, he'd say something, he'd correct himself. And he'd be like, well, I guess that would mean this, but blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_02
Oh, but he used that line on everything.
SPEAKER_01
And then I saw him on CNBC one day and he said the same fucking thing, the exact same fucking way like a comedian does in their sets. Where a comedian, if you go up there and it feels like a comedian has said this joke a million times and they're bored of it, then it's not funny. But a comedian has to sort of like, it's almost like they're realizing or telling this story for the first time.
That's when it really hits. And so I saw him do that and I go, oh, there's levels to this shit. Like, not only do you have to be able to be good at it, this is like comedy.
This is like storytelling. This is like a play, a Broadway show that goes on stage every night and there's a new person in the crowd and they have to do it like it's the, this is a Tuesday night, but no, this is our best performance ever. This is the first time we've ever done it.
This show matters the most. And we repeat our lines. And I thought, oh wow, I've never even thought about that.
But yeah, I guess it makes sense. You could kind of craft these stories that hit and you could tell them over and over. Once you have them, that's in your bank.
And you could, I tell this story, people feel this way about me. And that's cool.
SPEAKER_02
So I'm going to try and bring this back to the brand thing. But before I do, another way that you can see this is when you're pitching stuff. So when you're pitching your company to people, you have to, and I mean, I did this well when I, when both, when I was selling the company, if I was ever trying to raise money, if I'm ever trying to convince, I, you know, I do, when I am on other podcasts and also when I am hiring someone, I've got the same pitch and I look at the inflection of my, all right, I look at their person's eyebrows and I look at their body language to see where I get them to lean in.
And I get it. I see where I get them to fold backwards and you got to find these hooks and you constantly got to throw them out and you got to see what, what, what bait works. And then you just rinse and repeat and you was like, ooh, that line.
Or when I said I wanted to be like Ted Turner, fuck, they didn't know who Ted Turner was. Okay.
SPEAKER_01
What else do I got? Exactly.
SPEAKER_02
Exactly. So to bring it back to Judge Judy, I don't know how I'm going to do that.
SPEAKER_01
Let's just move on. Anyway, cool story about Michael Buffer and Judge Judy. If you didn't know, they made a bunch of money.
And you know, it pays to have a personal monopoly.
SPEAKER_00
That's the podcast.