00:00
And I'm really obsessed
00:02
with these types of opportunities,
00:06
because
00:07
it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now.
00:11
Idiate creates water bread for dogs. I can see it now.
00:19
Great headline. Former, formerly respected individual.
00:23
Greg Eisenberg.
00:24
Yeah. Just curses himself with third one.
00:39
Alright. We're live, Sean. What do we got? What's
00:42
up?
00:43
Greg is here, friend of the house. What are the original what are the original friends of the house? I used you said something on an earlier pod that has always stuck with me. You were talking about
00:53
I think names. You had a you had your iPhone out, and you're on the notes app. And you go, I just got
00:59
banger names for for businesses that don't have a business yet with them. And you were just spitting off names, and one of the formats was,
01:07
anything with the word Bueno at the end. And I can't tell you how many times I've used this when somebody's asking me about a name. And they're like, yeah, we do.
01:17
We do medical imaging scans. I'm like, Scaneno.
01:20
And they're like, what? And they never pick it, but
01:23
goddamn if it doesn't break the ice.
01:25
Greg. Welcome. And do you still have that notes that note with all those names? I've got all the names. I've also got, I don't know, a hundred and fifty startup ideas in a note file. But before I started, I I gotta get something off my chest. I gotta be real at the Alright. What do we got? Producer Ari.
01:42
You stole my producer.
01:43
And we we don't know about this. She filled me in. Yes.
01:48
So
01:49
All of a sudden, you guys send me a text and you go, what do you think about Ari as a producer? I see you work with him with her.
01:56
And I go, she's amazing. She's the best.
02:00
You know, she
02:01
there's nothing wrong nothing wrong about her. And then all of a sudden, I'm getting a text from Ari being like, dude, thank you so much. Thank you so much. I just got the craziest job at my first billion.
02:16
If I ever call you for a reference check,
02:18
just know. It's mister steal your girl coming coming at you right there.
02:23
I thought she worked on it in the past. I thought I thought that was Yeah. That's what it that's what I thought too. I thought there was an end date. It's okay. Is it?
02:32
It happened.
02:33
It happened. Is it okay?
02:38
Well,
02:40
sorry. It'd make you. Okay.
02:44
Moving on from that one.
02:47
Greg, you, people should know what you do. You have late checkout, which is badass. You get one of the best websites,
02:53
of any, like, I don't know, company. You make really amazing landing pages.
02:57
So you have late checkout, which is combination,
03:00
studio,
03:01
agency. How do you describe it? Holding company,
03:04
building businesses that have audiences and communities out of them. And you are kind of becoming this, like, Greg, the community guy. I feel like that was, like, a phase of your life. Is that still the phase we're in? Are we are we is this a making fetch thing? Or is, did it stick? Did the Greg the community guy happen? Or what what's going on with I think so, man. I think so.
03:24
I feel like if other people are calling you that, it's it's a thing. If you start calling yourself the community guy,
03:31
and you're just, you know, so, yeah, it's it's definitely working. I feel like that's a mistake I've made many times. Trying to call myself the guy even actually, today, I was thinking about I was thinking about Gary V. I was thinking about one of my favorite YouTubers Cody Ko. And I was like,
03:45
why am I not Sean P? Well, what what is Puri doing for me? I I gotta drop the rest of the last name. I just need to be Sean P, and I really wrote a note to myself. I said, "Go all in on Sean P." No. That's stupid.
03:58
No. Great. We're workshopping itself.
04:01
You've got a weird enough first name. S h a a n. I think you're good. You're good. The only reason why Sam is saying that Yeah. Jealous? He'd he'd that he's Well, no. You know Sam. He's he wants to be Sam P. He wants to be Sam P, come on. No, man. I'm happy. I I I I've got a two syllable first and name. I'm good. I don't need a nickname. When it's that short, you're good.
04:26
Dude, great. Late checkout dot studio, I hate your website. You are doing it's such a designer website. I can't click anything. I gotta, like, scroll around a map in order to find what you do. What's going on, man? Yeah. I think listen. There's two ways to create a website. One is to be conversion
04:42
conversion
04:43
centric. Right? Like, convert as many people as possible.
04:47
The other way is
04:49
you're building a brand.
04:51
And this is unlike
04:54
any other website on the internet, I think. So we you'd be surprised how many million dollar deals we've been able to close because people like our website.
05:02
You've done something that,
05:05
I think a lot of people were trying to do, but you've done it well. So we've let's talk about this kind of personal holdco.
05:11
You because you went the venture path. When I met you, you were raising money from all the big name VCs. You were building a social network. Like, we were We were both playing that, like it's not even a lottery ticket game. The analogy I gave is somebody handed us a bottle or we picked up a bottle and started running around trying to catch lightning.
05:29
And,
05:30
and that was our, like, stated game plan. It was like,
05:33
yes. I shall create the next hit social network now on demand.
05:37
Which is not how any of them got really built in the first place.
05:40
So you played the VC game. You have backed off of it. Give us your kind of two second philosophy on how your mindset changed going from Silicon Valley venture path to what you do now. There was a group of us now in our thirties who watched the social network, that movie,
05:56
and
05:58
we all thought that we could become Mark Zuckerberg, if we're being honest with ourselves.
06:03
I mean, I was I would've been happy with a winkle voss too, but, like, yeah, I wanted to be sucked. Yes. We saw that movie. It jazzed us up. There was a whole generation of us who moved to Silicon Valley.
06:13
To go and raise a bunch of money to build social apps. And, you know, we tried
06:22
We tried. And the the truth is it's it's, you know, I remember meeting one of the world's,
06:27
best investors, and he he once told me that
06:30
A third of our deals fail, a third of our deals, we get our money back, and a third of our deals, we make
06:36
one x to Google times.
06:39
So that got me thinking that what he's basically saying is that the best founders in the world is he's only backing the best founders
06:47
Two thirds of them, basically,
06:49
the founders and their teams don't see any money from acquisitions.
06:54
That means a third of companies are basically seeing any profit.
06:58
It's just so difficult to win in that game. And
07:03
Yeah. So that's why I've been focusing more on profitable cash flowing businesses.
07:09
Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
07:13
See most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. Hub off. Grow better.
07:25
Are you making more money now doing the cash flow thing versus when you sold your company?
07:30
Abs yes. Absolutely. Do you like your life better? Yeah. And do you do you have a goal? Like,
07:36
like, cash flow goal? You're like, okay. My goal is to get a ten million in cash flow or whatever, like, is that how you were thinking about? Is that the game that you're currently playing?
07:45
No. The game I'm playing is I'm playing for style points, baby.
07:54
What is that even mean? Is there anything else to say?
07:57
That explains everything. Next question, please. What is what's the style point?
08:01
We were talking about when Sam was working at HubSpot, he was like, I'm an artist, baby. I agree.
08:08
I think that's what Greg's talking about when he talks about style points.
08:12
The other part of style points is, like, the lifestyle. So in Silicon Valley. This idea of a lifestyle lifestyle business is like a,
08:20
it's a backhanded compliment. So it's a it's a way for people in Silicon Valley to patch you on the head. And be like, that's cute. That's a cute business.
08:27
Like, good for you. Good. That's, you know, that's swell.
08:31
But, like,
08:32
to me, I'm like, that's crazy. Like, the point the point of these business is to give myself and my team awesome lifestyles. Like, else are you what are you trying to do if not that? I didn't I don't even understand.
08:42
And so I feel like one of the kind of arbitrages right now is in especially if you're from the tech industry is the whole tech industry is so brainwashed that it's all about creating multi billion dollar companies that, a lot of people who
08:56
would actually be super happy if they created a lifestyle business that gave them two and a half million dollars a year of cash flow.
09:03
Won't ever go that path because it's seen as kind of this, like, lesser lesser thing to do it. We all have friends who do that. You know, I I tease or we we tease them on air, Andrew Wilkinsonston, for doing for doing that. But you know what was funny is you guys see, Shamath from all in. He, so Shamath, for the listener, I I I owed him I would assume he's a billionaire. If he's not a billionaire, many, many hundreds of millions, very, very, very wealthy.
09:27
The other day, he announced that he was starting a paid newsletter. And I think it was a hundred dollars a year.
09:34
And what's funny is
09:36
There's two things that I found to be true is I've talked to someone who says they don't wanna be public and then they get on Twitter or they get on YouTube or something they chase that do that dopamine and they go, oh, this is nice. I'm gonna I'm gonna do this again. And they love the even though, like, you know, the people who are, like, oh, I can't do it. I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna be a whole get in public eye and they love it. The second thing I've noticed is even people who have big companies that are maybe venture backed companies, and there's a very likely outcome where they're wildly wealthy.
10:04
Even making fifty thousand, a hundred thousand dollars a month, that can be addicting. I wonder what what Shamaz plays with that, but he has a he has a paid newsletter now. Well, even worse
10:13
is like,
10:14
yeah, and we're we're gonna have it be paid. And so that's really cool because the revenue from that,
10:20
it makes this whole thing sustainable. Like, we can we can use it to hire more researchers and do better research.
10:26
I was like, hey, why don't you take the point one percent interest on your savings account that you have in with with J. B. Morgan right now and use that to pay for seven researchers. It's fine, actually. Like, it's crazy to me that,
10:39
like, you know, people say, like, what's the point of fucking money if you don't say fuck you? Like, what's the point of being a billionaire?
10:44
If you're gonna
10:46
do a paid newsletter. I mean, what is what is happening right now? The point is is it's addicting. And so my point being is where a lot of people who, like, wouldn't make fun of lifestyle businesses. Once I mean, I and I was that person. I was like, I wanna go big. And then I started tasting, like, a monthly monthly income that's good. I'm like, Oh, this is awesome. I I was texting Andrew Wilkins and make a fun of him too because he was doing a paid Twitter
11:08
subscriber thing
11:10
And I was like, dog, you have a foundation.
11:13
You're talking here signing the giving pledge.
11:16
Like, what do you care about this, like, ten k a month?
11:20
You know, subscriber revenue that you now have to go tap dance for to, like, perform and give them their value.
11:27
But it hits for him. Like, there's something to it, that for for that that's, like, giving him that value.
11:33
I was I I couldn't believe it to the point where I told him. I was like, The only explanation for this that makes any sense to me is you're using the Twitter paid features so that Elon is, like, See, this guy's doing it and he puts you he starts retweeting you, because you're promoting his thing that he's trying to make work, and then you end up becoming friends with Elon Musk. I said, that's the only reasonable explanation for this when he denied it. He didn't. I I actually get Andrew doing his
11:59
his premium x thing a little bit more because, like, he's having interaction with his fans, but the Chama thing around, like, putting up gated
12:09
Content makes absolutely no sense. Did you have right. Did you have any other ideas or, niche businesses you wanted to get off your chest? Let's just rapid fire. Alright. Give us give us one. This one's,
12:21
it's a happy idea. So it's a crazy one but a happy one. It's
12:25
Listen to me now, athletic greens
12:28
for dogs.
12:31
Okay. Okay. Keep going. Go on.
12:34
AG one, athletic Greens came out of nowhere, started sponsoring all these podcasts, youtubers,
12:41
and I don't know if they're What do you think their revenue is, Sam?
12:46
Six hundred million, five hundred million. I think they kill it. But I'll do the homie move and say a hundred million. Yeah. Okay. More than a hundred million. They're they're really, really crushing it using that model. Now
12:58
dogs are similar to humans in the sense that they drink water, they drink tap water,
13:03
And the question is, what if dogs drank something that was better from them, better for them than plain old water?
13:10
Okay?
13:11
So,
13:13
here's the playbook.
13:15
You find the Andrew Huberman for dogs,
13:18
You sponsor every top dog creator in animals levered podcast.
13:22
You give packets to
13:25
to restaurants,
13:26
and and bulls that say this brand
13:29
or their dogs,
13:30
and then you profit.
13:31
The name, we call it
13:33
the name we call it Goodwater,
13:36
In our slogan,
13:38
we do good dogs, dessert, good water.
13:42
Now we have to figure out
13:44
what we can put in the water so that it actually
13:48
is better than water itself.
13:52
But
13:53
This is a good example of
13:56
how do you create a category of one?
13:58
How do you build something
14:00
where you're building something where no one else is playing.
14:04
And I'm really obsessed with
14:06
these types of opportunities.
14:09
Because
14:12
it's easy to get press. Like, you can see the headlines now.
14:16
Idiot creates water brand for dogs. I could see it now.
14:25
Great headline. Former, formerly respected
14:27
individual Greg Eisenberg.
14:29
Yeah. Disgraces himself with good one.
14:33
Oh,
14:36
Co-founder Shaan P says...
14:38
It's really better than water, I swear.
14:42
Is Gatorade for dogs the next great thing? Yeah. Like,
14:49
This is some stupid shit, Greg. We're getting good water, bad idea. This it sounds like something misfits or what's that called? What's that what's that company called that? Yeah. MSCHF. I gotta tell you when Craig Clemens came on the pod one time many years ago, and he was like, guys, we're like, what ideas you got? He's like, VR for dogs. And this is the guy who's made, like, ten hit products. So you he's not, like, some one hit wonder. He's got ten he's had ten great ideas.
15:13
And on our pot, he comes on and says VR for dogs and both of me and you were, like, didn't know him that well to be, like, sort of roast him like we just did, Greg, but we were, like,
15:22
tell us more. But, you know, we were not in on But then I swear every time I leave that, because he was like, look, he's like, I would pay anything if my dog could be entertained when they're alone, like, or just, you know, I just don't want them to be bored. And now I swear every time I leave the house, and my dog's in there just gonna stare at a wall. And I'm like, I bet your ass, I'd strap on some a a pair a pair of a, you know, oculus for dog goggles if if it actually kept my dog entertained. So I think he was right on I've right in his spirit.
15:51
Great. I wanna talk to you about some of these ideas because
15:55
you the first one you talk about Ryan Holiday, who's been on the pod. He's my buddy. I'm a huge fan of
16:00
And
16:02
you seem like you're in a spicy mood? Really? I'm always in a spicy mood.
16:06
I just wanna put that out there.
16:08
For the right the record is set. For the record. The record is set. Okay.
16:13
Yeah. Let's talk about the first idea. So
16:15
Ride holiday,
16:17
incredible, incredible guy. Like, he's built such a huge brand around stoicism.
16:22
Stowicism
16:24
was basically the dead unless, you know, you were studying philosophy at Columbia.
16:31
These people like Seneca, Aristotle,
16:34
maybe you'd see quotes here and there, but it was basically debt. And what he did is he introduced stoicism,
16:40
the great name, by the way, daily stoic,
16:43
to millions of gen z and
16:46
millennials.
16:48
So I think that there's an opportunity to do
16:51
exactly what ride holiday did,
16:54
but in the fable space.
16:57
So
16:58
do you remember ASAP ASOP Fables? No. What is that?
17:02
Okay. So ASAP,
17:06
is just one of the one of the most well known
17:09
storytellers,
17:11
of all time, of humanity. He of humanity, he did, like, the tortoise and the hare.
17:17
Or the the wolf in sheep's clothing. So it's basically these little stories
17:23
that use animals
17:25
to
17:26
to
17:27
tell,
17:28
you know, the moral of the story.
17:31
And
17:33
It's got a lot of great stuff in there just like, Seneca had a lot of great stuff in there. So,
17:39
I think that if you know, got the handle of the Daily Fabler,
17:44
and you started telling these incredible stories and quotes from it,
17:50
you can build an audience really quickly through that.
17:54
And similar to how Ryan Holiday,
17:58
you know, Ryan Holiday for those who don't know monetize via courses, but he also monetize via his book, but he also my favorite part of how he monetizes is he literally sells
18:07
It's a coin. He calls it a medallion.
18:10
So he's got this medallion called Memento Mori. Hey, I have one. Okay. Why did you get one? Because he gave it to me, and I thought it was awesome.
18:19
But I I do think it's cool. I I carried it around with me for years. I thought it was cool. I I forget what is moment it means, like, you're gonna die or, like, live the day or something like that? Yeah. It basically means
18:30
like, seize the day. Right? Like, you're gonna die and if you know you're gonna die and you're and you're facing mortality, then It's Greek for Yolo. Yeah. It's Greek for yolo.
18:40
Momento Mori is Greek for yolo, so
18:43
that's a and people pay thirty dollars for this, and I'm sure that he's making millions of dollars,
18:49
selling coins
18:52
to his audiences via Twitter, TikTok,
18:55
and instagram and YouTube.
18:57
But it's the same model, but for Fables.
19:00
He told us this on the pod and it blew my mind. He came on and he was like, yeah.
19:06
I sell this coin. It's like, you know, cost me
19:09
whatever. I don't know what it was, but, like, you know, let's call it a dollar. Just be generous. I assume this coin cost a dollar. He partnered with this mint in the US. They mint the coin.
19:18
He sends in. He's like, yeah. You know, I've sold shirts before. He I think he worked at American apparel.
19:23
He was like, they had a marketing American apparel. He's like, you know, apparel sucks, merch sucks, shirts, t shirts suck because there's so many sizes and colors and whatever. He's like, There's one SKU. It's one coin. There's no return. I sell it in a two pack.
19:36
I sell it in a two pack. It's ships in an envelope because it's the lightest white thing. So, like, shipping is easy, making it as easy, selling it as easy because it's a it's a, you know, it's a single SKU product. He's like, it was the low headache way to have a merch store for stoicism. And I was like, this guy's genius. I I remember I don't know if he told us or doing some math when I was thinking about I'm pretty sure he's made over twenty million dollars just selling this coin. I think on the pod, he said he's sold tens of thousands of coins.
20:06
Yeah. Then if you do the math, it's like whatever. I think that, you know, twenty five twenty dollars a coin or something like that. Yeah. I mean, he told us, and and and he's killing it.
20:14
But what did you say here? You said, it's harder to be Seneca than it is South Hill Bloom. It's harder to be Aristotle than Alex or Mosie.
20:22
Yeah. So
20:23
There's a bunch of tailwinds with this business.
20:26
So first of all,
20:28
creating content is way more difficult than
20:32
curating content and distilling content. And I want people to
20:36
to know that because there's a ton of businesses
20:39
that you can create where don't need to come up with any original ideas. You can just curate
20:43
amazing ideas that other people will have. Hey, you're talking to two of the guys that did the the hustle did that. Milk did that. Exactly. It's way easier to get your own podcast producer than to steal your podcast producer. You know what I'm saying?
20:58
Oh, also my newsletter, the five three Tuesday. It's the highest rated newsletter I've ever made. It's high open rate. Get the most feedback on it. And it's also the easiest thing because I'm just curating five of the most interesting tweets versus trying to create my own original blog post every Tuesday. So, yeah. So, yeah, it is easier to be style bloom than Cettica. And it is easier to be Alex or Mozy than
21:21
Aristotle because they could just take other people's concepts and curate it. So this this daily fable idea
21:29
has that tailwind with it, and it's got a few more tailwinds to it. One is that another one is that,
21:37
gen z basically doesn't believe in god.
21:40
Almost fifty percent
21:43
of gen z
21:44
is either unaffiliated
21:46
with any religion or does not believe in god,
21:49
but they seek out
21:53
It's just human nature to seek out,
21:56
some greater meeting and purpose in life. So that's why they're filling their time with daily stoic and could fill their time with, you know, something like the daily fable. And this is what I call, like, the unbundling of religion.
22:09
What is this, pink, pink thing?
22:12
Pink. So,
22:15
Pink's,
22:16
someone I work with
22:18
partner of mine, Jordan, he, you know, he's rolling around Austin,
22:22
and
22:23
he sees this pink
22:25
truck outside a house. And outside this pink truck is
22:30
these men, you know, with mustaches
22:33
and mullets,
22:35
with these pink shirts tucked in. You know, he's thinking of himself, is this a porno shoot?
22:43
Like, what is the what is going on over here?
22:46
And then he sees this logo paints, paints window cleaning.
22:50
And he he finds out that it's a,
22:54
it's a new,
22:55
window cleaning service
22:58
based at Austin.
23:00
And it's actually a franchise business.
23:03
And if you go to their website, links windows dot com,
23:09
they they basically, you know, they've got this boring business window washing, and they they they jazzed it up. And they they even have, like, a merch store where they've
23:19
apparently sold thousands and thousands of hats. Oh my god.
23:24
I was at dinner the other night, and barshop is wearing this hat. And I look at it and I go,
23:29
I think I even said I go, what's this, just something cool is this? I I know you're doing something cool. What is this? Because he's partial for these guys that, like, he knows the indie bands. He knows the cool restaurant to eat at. He knows cool shit.
23:42
And,
23:44
and so he's like because I'm like, why why else would he be wearing a window washing hat?
23:49
This makes no sense. And he's like, it's this brand called Pinks to really cool. I'm like, they're cool window washing.
23:55
How do you even know, like, compared to what? Like,
23:58
I could tell you one window washing brand. Little and the coolest one. And he's like, yeah. I'm like, so you bought the hat? He's like, I bought the hat.
24:05
The style points, baby. And that was the that was the end of that story. And I went back home. And I ordered a pink hat because like, if it's cool, then I will be the follower and and try to do it too. So this is a part of a bigger trend, which is
24:18
that I think
24:20
This is kinda like the,
24:21
dollar shave club bifurcation
24:24
of boring businesses.
24:27
So I think a lot of people
24:30
younger people are gonna be buying some of these businesses,
24:33
you know, boomers are retiring, you know, the story there. But I think what they're gonna do is they're gonna make it feel like a an indie band. You know, you remember the dollar shave club
24:43
video. Right? It was funny.
24:46
Yeah. It it it it took something
24:48
boring,
24:49
razors, shaving, Gillette,
24:52
and
24:53
made it,
24:54
like, super cool and fun, and and that's what Pinks is doing. That's actually super smart because that actually kicked off, like, a huge wave of DDC brands. Like, Sam always jokes. What Sam, what's your joke about DDC brands? How do you how do you know a DDC brand when you see Well, because they, like, it's always lower case. It's the same,
25:12
it's the same font. It's, they always use millennial pink. Yeah. Exactly.
25:18
And so you and so it kicked the dollar shave club kicked off this wave of DDC brands from
25:24
Casper away luggage and then, you know, like, just one after another. And, you know, there's hundreds of them at this point,
25:31
which was basically, like, take boring category,
25:34
do best in class like kinda branding around it, put put a shit ton of money into vice versa or or creative effort into the branding, and then sell that kinda commodity product
25:43
online.
25:44
And what you're saying is people are now gonna do that for these these,
25:48
sweaty start up businesses. So instead of doing the boring like, if you go look at self storage or Uhaul, like, these are some of the worst looking brands
25:57
you'll ever see. And maybe instead of the soft the the lower case,
26:01
you know, block letter font with a soft pal you know, the the that that millennial pink,
26:06
maybe it's this, like, vintage retro
26:09
indie band,
26:10
look that's gonna become the, like, the go to thing for window washing, trash haul removal,
26:17
you know, HVAC, all this stuff. That is that what you're saying? Cause I think that's actually kinda brilliant. Yeah. I'm gonna call my shot here and say that
26:24
Pink's is the beginning
26:26
of this whole new generation. Over the next five to ten years, you're gonna see Pink's for x,
26:32
You're gonna see pinks for,
26:35
lawn care pest control, car wash, catering, pet grooming,
26:41
snow removal,
26:42
and I think it'll
26:45
it doesn't necessarily need to be like nostalgia
26:49
bus design, but it could also be just It's just in different interesting and unexpected.
26:54
So the guy, it looks like the brand behind Pinks is called ResiBrands. It looks like they own three or four things. They own one called Garage Up, which is, like, making your garage look cool and clean. Then there's Pink's, then there's that one painter.
27:08
And then if you Google it, you could find the guy who owns it is this guy named Steven Montgomery, and he's young. He's young with, like, sleeve tattoos. He looks
27:17
Maybe thirty. He looks like a kid.
27:19
It's pretty fascinating.
27:21
This is a really interesting find. Do you know what their revenue is for ResiBrands? Is it is it going well? Yeah. So first of all, he is young. I think he graduated college, like,
27:30
five or six years ago.
27:33
ResiBrands started recently, and
27:36
within the last couple years, and their painting brand that one painter is the fastest growing painting company in the United States.
27:43
So
27:44
this is a model that's starting to work. And if I'm like a
27:49
PE
27:50
fund, like, this is what I'm doing. I'm basically
27:53
acquiring boring businesses.
27:56
I'm hiring an agency like Late Checkout
27:59
And
27:59
I'm
28:01
I'm building brands
28:02
not
28:03
boring businesses.
28:05
He's like, I'm joining Hampton. Yep. Then I hardly check out, find some talent on Shepard. Exactly.
28:12
Bada bing bada boom, I'm there. We, I became I was I was, I used to be close with Brian, the guy who started, 1-800-GOT-JUNK
28:21
And he was telling me all about franchises and 1-800-GOT-JUNK. Was it something? He started with just one trunk,
28:28
or one, one truck
28:30
and grew it. And I think now he owns one hundred percent of it. It does, like, two or three hundred million dollars in revenue, really valuable business. But he was telling me that they took off when they did franchises
28:40
franchises. That's when they really start kicking ass. But dealing and working with franchise owners, he said or I don't know if he said it or his CEO, Cameron. He was like, it's very, very, very hard.
28:51
And I think it's sort of like the agency business where you're like, oh, look so simple. You just do this. You do that. But doing it every single day, I think it's a huge challenge. It's almost like working in the restaurant industry. You know, your server won't show up because they're hungover or you gotta deal with fights every once in a while. I think it's I think it has a similar,
29:08
a similar type of headache. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's probably hard to manage, and and, yeah, I wanna be clear on this. Pink's is actually
29:14
now It started out as one location in Austin, and now they're
29:18
you could franchise your own Pink's. Like, if you wanna bring one to New York or wherever,
29:23
so they basically charge
29:26
two percent marketing fee, a seven percent royalty fee, and a franchise fee of at least forty nine thousand dollars. I think it's forty nine thousand to a hundred thousand.
29:35
And they actually share some of their revenue numbers. So for their
29:39
one of their Austin locations,
29:41
they've got seven employees. They're doing seven hundred and forty two thousand in revenue, and they're making
29:46
thirty six percent profit on that to two hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars.
29:50
So it's a pretty good business.
29:54
And,
29:55
yeah, you're right that it's a pain to manage
29:58
some of those employees.
30:00
But,
30:01
there's something here. Although, I gotta say the disclaimer.
30:05
We we don't know if this is a great business, is not advice, and also,
30:09
you know, franchise,
30:12
like, headquarters tend to share the numbers of, like, the best performing thing, not, like, you know, the average or the median.
30:19
Because we talked about a business that has a franchise that was like, oh, this is a cool idea. I think this thing, you know, just looking at the traffic, it looked like it might have, you know, I here's a guest at moment, which I was making. And then their franchise calendar got booked out, like, the meetings got booked out for, like, four months after the pod came out. So,
30:36
definitely,
30:37
can't say
30:38
I I personally don't endorse this. Maybe Greg, is, but I personally do not. This is not my first million sponsored.
30:44
Okay. So what I was gonna say on Pinks is
30:47
I went I didn't know anything about franchises until,
30:51
like, any internet entrepreneur.
30:53
I didn't know anything about franchises until going down the Pink's rabbit hole.
30:58
And
30:59
I I didn't realize that franchises for sure are regulated
31:02
by
31:03
a franchise board. So that That's also just an interesting thing to know about if you want to
31:10
do a franchise, you have to go to these portals. You have to apply
31:13
There's only certain,
31:16
information that they can disclose.
31:18
So I found that quite interesting.
31:20
And then the other thing, just interesting thing,
31:23
that got me thinking about pinks and franchises
31:26
is I started thinking about, like, what is franchise
31:29
model? What does that look like for
31:33
the internet?
31:34
So what is a franchise? A franchise is basically
31:37
a set of
31:39
it's a business model, in a box, in a brand, in a box, and support in a box, or an entrepreneur.
31:47
How can we bring that or is there an opportunity to bring that to the internet?
31:52
I had the same thought when you were talking earlier about your agency, about how scaling sees as hard. And maybe, I don't know why, but franchising was on my mind. And I was like, I wonder why, like, if I was, like, if I'm me, And I have a big audience. I have a large ability to create a brand at Jent Git customers.
32:10
The painful part is the operation When most people do is they partner with somebody, they run the operations, but they're gonna run into the scaling headaches and bottlenecks along the way. And I was like, what if I franchised it? Meaning,
32:21
I could you could spin up you could become one of my operators or a partner in the business. I'm gonna hand you customers.
32:27
Automatically. You don't have to know how to do internet marketing. You don't have to build your own brand. You just have to fulfill the demand that I generate.
32:34
And we kind of like, let's just say it was, I don't know, design or web development or something. I don't know. I don't know what what category makes sense.
32:42
But, like, you could just have a three person team
32:45
that's gonna bang out high quality work and do as much work as you're able to generate.
32:50
But, like, we don't have to create a hundred person agency headquarters
32:54
that's going to, like, have managers and managers and ensure the quality of work and then have to, like, increase prices because if we have all these layers of management, like, maybe there's another way.
33:05
Maybe there's a way to do it. I I don't know if that fully makes sense, but it was a thought that came to mind earlier when you were talking about scaling. Yeah. Maybe
33:11
Maybe what we're saying is the next generation of creator led agencies actually look more like franchises.
33:17
Than they do what they are now. Right. Because no normally a franchise, the reason you franchise is because you can't geographically
33:24
expand. So, like, why does Chipotle why did Chipotle initially franchised out was because this concept works. We can physically only launch so many locations ourselves with the capital we have and the, like, time we have We can't be in Alabama right now, but there should be some trouble is in Alabama, so they find a franchisee there. With the internet, you don't have the geography problem. So that's why I think most
33:45
Internet companies never franchised. However, I do think that for things that are like service,
33:50
like, you know, a service is rendered. I think that's kind of similar in that you run into servicing bottoms. So where I disagree with you on
34:00
the geography thing is I think it's It's not that we don't have a geography problem on
34:05
on the internet. It's just that geography is defined differently.
34:08
Geography is defined
34:10
in the real world, like, you know, at the corner of twenty fifth and fifth Avenue
34:16
versus on the internet, like,
34:19
You have an audience. You have people coming into your store every day. It's just a different definition of geography.
34:26
So I think that if someone could figure out
34:29
and this is for the audience, if someone could figure out and us, honestly,
34:33
if we can figure out how we could take the benefits of,
34:39
a franchise model and figure out how we can,
34:43
You know, the reason okay. If you go to Chipotle in New York City, you go to Chipotle in San Francisco, the burrito tastes the same. The problem with the creator like going back to creative led agencies is
34:53
the the the
34:54
the type of product is very different as those businesses are scaling. Unless
35:02
the operators are, you know, have been doing this for many years. So I think there's something here.
35:07
There's another version of this that is kind of on the internet.
35:11
Are you guys familiar with EOS?
35:13
No. Okay. So,
35:15
EOS is basically
35:17
a operating system for an entrepreneur. So, basically,
35:20
We've all felt it. You're a CEO, you're running your business,
35:23
and you're making it up as you go. So it's not not just like, what's that analogy? Like, oh, we're building the plane as we're flying it. It's like, no. We're literally, like, trying to figure out what is a like, what what shape will fly while we're flying it. And so,
35:36
you're making up how to run your company But you don't need to. There are best practices for how to run a company that will apply to, like, you know, eighty, ninety percent of businesses.
35:44
And so what EOS did was guy wrote this book. I don't know the full backstory, but this guy wrote a book called traction. And in traction, he's talking about how to run a, like, how he runs his business. It's like, oh, we come up with our annual plan, and we use the scorecard. Here's the scorecard template. You can go download that for free. And, like, it's basically this, like, here's a a blueprint, a model for how to run your company. I've never used it. I used it. I know a lot of people use it, and it's like you have rocks. And, like, each person is responsible for three rocks. And it's like this whole, like, strategic thing. Okay. Ours is some somewhat similar to it, which is like a goal setting system.
36:18
So US is actually like kind of a monstrous business from what I understand.
36:22
And the way they work is kind of through this franchise model. So what they do is they have these implementers.
36:28
So EOS basically takes the lead
36:30
And then they're like, cool. You're interested in implementing EOS, and it's it's really expensive. It's like, like, Sam, when you did it, what'd you do for Hampton or for Hussle? For the hustle, I just read the book, and then I just implemented it. And I showed people how to do it. I couldn't afford to do the normal thing, but I it's many tens of thousands of dollars for, like, a two day worth of money. Twenty five or fifty k or like that. So it's a quite expensive,
36:50
for most people to, like, swallow that.
36:53
Or it's just like, I don't know. You have to have a lot of conviction that that's gonna really help you in order to pay this. But these There are a bunch of people out there that are just simply EOS implementers.
37:01
They're not a they're not like they're not part of the company, but they are basically, like, these kind of freelance people that will do this. I don't know the exact structure, so I'm talking a little little, you know, off the off the top here. So so I might get some things wronger. From what I understand, you have traction, which is the book that generates
37:18
a lot of leads, people who are interested in implementing this. They go to the website. They say, great. I wanna do this to book a call. Then they either you sort of, like, you know, buy the system or buy the system with the implementation fee or whatever. And then they're paying a person who's, like, kinda their coach to help them implement this system and then whatever. And I actually know a bunch of people that have done this. I'm not you what I've noticed is it's kind of more beginning entrepreneurs. It's Like, the best operators I know typically
37:43
weren't the ones who were telling me they used EOS, but that's just an observation. I don't I don't know if that's
37:48
if that's fair or not.
37:50
Yeah. But it is quite heavy. It's like a lot. It's like a full on system. It's like a full revamp of how you what meetings do you run every week and how you do them and all this stuff. Had this craving to do a lightweight version of EOS because I have a system that works for me. I've used it for like fifteen years. I've like fine tuned it along the way and I'm like, And every time I meet a entrepreneur and they have some bottleneck they're hitting, I'm like, okay. Well, let's trace down to the root cause of this. Like,
38:13
what what's getting you into this pickle? And then usually, it's that there's something in their process
38:18
that's causing them to run into this issue. And if you fix the process, you'll fix the issue.
38:23
And I don't know if it's a perfect process, but, like, it's lightweight, which I think is more for someone like me. Like, I'm not gonna go
38:29
hire
38:30
EOS and pay these guys, you know, thirty thousand dollars and spend six months revamping my company probably. Like, I don't really want to do that. But if there was a lightweight version, I would do it. And I think the the only thing that stops me from implementing that is I don't wanna have a giant consulting company that I'm running to do that. Whereas if there was this franchise model and people could basically
38:50
come train, like, come to my workshop seminar and do, like, a four week certification process to learn exactly how to do it, and then they could go do it on their own and make their own money doing it. That would be fun. I would I would do something like that. I think that's how EOS works.
39:04
Yeah. And and I wouldn't be super surprised if that thing makes, like, thirty million dollars a year and, like, fifteen million dollars a year in profit.
39:10
I the people who are into it they're obsessed with it. Greg, what's this, what's this, what's called playing field?
39:17
I don't know how you found that. That's fascinating because I go to the website and you can't even sign up.
39:22
So Nathan Barry from ConvertKit told me about this one.
39:28
Basically,
39:29
it's Tom Brady's manager
39:32
He's got this newsletter. It's the most expensive newsletter in the world.
39:36
You had my attention, and now you have my interest.
39:39
So,
39:40
his company is called playing field, and his newsletter is called The Brief.
39:45
It's invitation only.
39:47
I think there's a a maximum of about a thousand subscribers.
39:51
In order to get on the list, you actually have to be an NFL owner,
39:55
or you have to be just like a really bad ass top player
40:00
And
40:01
this is like a part of a bigger trend,
40:03
which I think is like luxury newsletters.
40:06
So
40:07
or or even a bigger macro ten, which is,
40:10
you know, there's all these,
40:12
mega ultra luxury
40:16
rich experiences popping up for the top one percent, be it, like, so house or private Disney tours or Aman, that hotel that charges, like, five k a month. Five k five k a night. K a night. Five k a night.
40:28
And you're seeing that in the market, like, reflected, like, Irmez has a bigger market cap than Nike, you know. So,
40:35
I think the same thing is happening with newsletters, and I think there's an opportunity
40:39
to
40:41
basically
40:42
do,
40:44
do what everyone is trying not to do. And everyone is trying to do is build a newsletter
40:48
to get to the hustle
40:50
level or to get to a milk road level.
40:53
But what if you tried to do the complete opposite? What if you
40:57
created a newsletter
40:59
for the top one percent
41:01
that was
41:02
very, very
41:04
niche focus,
41:06
and
41:08
you just treated it like
41:10
a night club. My favorite My favorite quote is, Andy War Hall. I think he said studio fifty four is a dictatorship
41:18
at the door, but a democracy on the dance floor.
41:22
And I think there's
41:24
a way to bring that studio fifty four mentality to building
41:29
luxury newsletters in a bunch of different spaces.
41:32
How much do you think they charge for this?
41:36
I mean, we gotta buy an NFL team to find out.
41:40
So how much does it how much does the Jets cost?
41:43
Dude, this this idea?
41:45
Style points. I mean, wow.
41:49
This is incredible. What a what a hilarious and incredible idea that actually makes sense when you think about it. There was a guy.
41:57
It was a big article in some,
42:01
something like, you know, Forbes or whatever. And it was about this guy. And he's got this like, you know, that Rya was, like, the dating app for, like, hot celebrities or whatever. This guy created, like, the the the the riot
42:14
of, like, experiences or something. Oh, I saw this. Is the guy your partner with Justin Timberlink?
42:19
Myriad, I guess, as Yeah. Yeah.
42:22
This guy's specialty
42:24
is
42:25
getting, like, super VIP experiences
42:28
that, like, one of a kind experiences that you can't,
42:32
you can't, like, you you can't buy or you can't find anywhere else. Yeah. Basically, Andrew will Andrew Wilkinson told me about it. If I remember correctly,
42:39
Andrew Wilkinson either went to the Grammys or the Oscars. One of those, like, things. He sent me this picture of him in a tuxedo,
42:46
on the red carpet. And I was like, what the hell? And he goes, yeah. I was part of this community or this service called. I I forget what it was called, but the guy started with just Chimmerlink or something like that went through YC, and it's about getting experiences that you can't normally get, but you can buy your way into if you know the right people. Right. Right. Okay. I'm gonna read you some of the quotes from this,
43:04
this thing. So here here's what it says. It goes,
43:07
you know, somebody will call them and they'll say,
43:10
Like, he could basically get you treated, like, you were an American diplomat, and, like, you needed to be, like, handled.
43:15
Like, he could do that for you. And so he's like, oh,
43:20
You know, you need this epic party in Mexico with private chefs. Just you just tell me what you need. You don't have to worry about the rest. It's gonna happen. And so what he'll do is
43:29
he'll create, like, okay. You know, just go into the Beyonce concert. You're gonna get to go to the dressing room and you're gonna get to hang out afterwards, or she's gonna call your kid on stage and just get to sing with them. Like, something that these, like, one of one style,
43:42
style experiences. So here's what it says. Mirror only accepts ultra high net worth. People defined as people worth over thirty million.
43:49
This he says, this isn't the one percent. It's the point o o three percent.
43:54
You must be willing to spend an average of one million a year on lifestyle alone.
43:59
So,
44:00
just on these experiences, you're willing to spend a million bucks in order to get in.
44:05
Let me see if it has He's focusing on the needs of the top ten thousand people in the world, and we're gonna do for them what nobody else can do.
44:13
And so he's like, like, almost like a fixer, like, in, you know,
44:17
the wolf fiction.
44:19
He's, like, he's, like, the wolf. He's, like, the one you call in when you need
44:22
You just need that special something. Yeah. So that's that's for,
44:26
like, physical experiences.
44:28
But I think what you're starting to see also is this trend around
44:32
apps and software
44:34
newsletters,
44:35
as a status symbol. What's another example of that? Rya was a great example of that.
44:41
But I think Superhumans is another good example. So superhuman
44:46
is that email software that a lot of VCs use And it's kinda it's like thirty bucks a month or something. It's kinda it's kind of a flex that you you can say sent from super
44:57
sent from superhuman.
44:58
It's like Gmail is probably better than superhuman. Let's be real.
45:05
But having sent from superhuman
45:08
adds this, like, layer of, oh, I take my,
45:12
I take my
45:14
job really seriously. Like, I'm a part of the one percent So I think there's
45:18
an opportunity for people
45:20
to
45:21
not only create playing field for x
45:25
but also
45:26
superhuman for X and other software for X. Well, like,
45:30
the easiest one of this on the internet is NFTs. Right? NFTs were exactly this. So,
45:37
like, just to your point of her mess having a higher market cap than Nike, Well,
45:42
when, you know, when NFTs were were out there, basically,
45:45
luxury art. I forgot somebody said this thing, you know,
45:49
art is just money you could hang on your wall.
45:52
I was like, oh, that's great.
45:54
Well, you know, NFTs were basically money you could hang on your profile.
45:58
And, that's why, you know,
46:00
people would spend a hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ape or a punk because it meant something. And
46:06
When these were happening,
46:08
my buddy, Vashal, he told me he's like, oh, yeah. These are vevlin goods. And I was like, what's a vevlin good? I never never heard of that. Do you guys know what this is? No. What's that word? I don't even know what that word means. Yeah. So, basically, available good is something where
46:20
the demand increases as the price increases.
46:24
So
46:25
most goods, if they follow the the traditional supply demand curve, which is that
46:30
as a price decreases, the demand will increase for that item. A Evelyn Good works the exact opposite way as the price decreases, the demand also decreases. This is why NFT projects can get huge overnight because if the price runs up, it puts that
46:43
product in more demand. But if the price starts to crash, that NFT value is crashing with the price. The demand crashes with the with the price. And so Once you understand that there's a set of luxury goods like this, then,
46:57
it explains
46:58
a whole class like, you know, the first time I heard about a birkin bag, I was like, oh, so it's got like an elevator inside. What's the deal? Why is this so expensive? Why do people care? It's like, well, they care because you can't buy it? I'm like, well, you can't buy it. Why don't what do you mean? Why don't they sell they should sell more of these. And they're like, no. No. No. You you have to be you have to earn the right to buy the birken bag.
47:17
And it's like, I had a cousin who flew to Paris,
47:20
to, like, go to the store
47:22
to try to buy a birkin bag. And I'm, like, this you made a vacation out of this. And she's, like, yeah. Like, I'm I've been working my way up. I had to buy all these other luxury bags
47:31
just to be invited
47:33
to possibly buy a bird. Holy shit, dude. These bags are
47:36
I'm looking at a used one on some website. It's a quarter of a million, and then there's other used ones for thirty thousand. So it's like the cheap end is thirty thousand dollars for these tags. I think it's like fifty k if you just buy it from the story ish. Holy shit.
47:48
And, you know, and so the it's a it's a status symbol because even amongst luxury buyers,
47:54
You can't buy, like, you could buy all you can have all the money you want. You could walk into Louis Vuitton. You could buy everything. You know what you can't buy? A birkin. Why? Because a birkin is even elevated above that. And I'm like, wow, there's
48:05
no end to the status game that gets played, when it comes to this stuff. And it makes you think, like, you know, remember when the iPhone came out, And that guy made, like, the app that cost a thousand dollars.
48:16
And it was called the I'm rich app or something like that. It was just it was like a red light or something would turn on, and it that means you bought the I'm rich at for a thousand dollars. It did nothing else besides that. And it got so popular Apple then started to take it. It took off the store because it was like, this is not what we want. But the fact that that worked tells you something about the psychology of people. That they would they would do that to signal, you know, their status. Man, this is amazing. I I've heard that word, but I've never actually seen these bags. This is wild to me.
48:47
This is this is this is insane.
48:50
Wow. Alright. What do we wanna do now? We gotta wrap up in a minute. Yeah. Give us one more one more, Greg. Stripe Atlas for trademarks.
48:57
So
48:59
we recently filed a trademark.
49:02
We bought the domain boring marketing dot com,
49:06
and
49:07
it's dope. And the business started scaling, and we're like, oh, shit. We needed a trademark,
49:13
here.
49:14
And I don't know if you guys have filed for trademarks, but the process is insane. It's the pain in the
49:20
butt. Painting the butt, it's actually quite expensive. And you even have to finish your work on going on these, like, Craig's listy looking,
49:30
sites, and it's pretty brutal.
49:32
Well, let let's explain it. What happens? You typically, what you do is you hire a lawyer. So that's, you know, already start off with the wrong foot. Then they're like, great. Can't just file this. Kinda do a search first. You want this light search for three hundred bucks. So you want the comprehensive search, which might actually find the thing for eight hundred dollars. You're like, I guess I'll do the search,
49:50
because they're like, because if you don't do the I'm like, what if I don't do the search? Like, well, we could file it. And, you know, that'll cost you money. But then you don't know if you get it or not. I'm like, cool. For, like, how long? Like, not like a year. Maybe a year and a half. Like, but then I I have to operate my company. Right? Like, so what happens if I don't get it? Like, oh, you might need to change your company's name.
50:09
I'm like, alright. I guess I'll do the search. Then they pay then you hire them for search, and then they're like, great. Now we could file, hey, which class do you wanna file in? And you're like, you're on US PTO, the the craigslist looking site you're talking about, and you're trying to figure out what the hell's going on. And finally, you file it, and then nothing happens.
50:25
And then nothing ever happens, basically, Like, a year later, you'll get a letter you gotta approve.
50:29
And then you're, like, was that even necessary?
50:32
And then you're, like, this is this is just a crazy process overall. Exactly. So
50:37
and then and then
50:39
so it's it's it's very similar to
50:43
what happened with striped Atlas. So for those of those of people who don't know what striped Atlas is, it's five hundred bucks, and you can basically,
50:53
you know, form a legal entity issue stock to founders filing an eighty three of the election, which is super painful in the United States, They basically took something that was really painful, inexpensive, and made it easy and cheap.
51:05
And the smartest thing about that for Stripe which is obviously a payments company, is once you've set up all those things,
51:12
when you they basically send you a Stripe link and
51:16
Stripe makes money when you sell stuff. So you're all ready to go, and it basically onboards you to Stripe,
51:21
which is brilliant.
51:23
There's the same opportunity to do that for,
51:28
trademarks.
51:29
So, like, the name I would use if I was doing this would be mister trademark.
51:34
The slogan would be something like putting you out of your misery.
51:38
And
51:40
I think that,
51:42
either something like this gets bought
51:44
by
51:45
a stripe. So I think there's an opportunity there, but I actually think that
51:49
you probably would would try to hold out for something like that and allow yourself to onboard to other different services, and I think you could expand this beyond this trademarks to patents as well.
52:01
I have some thoughts on patents and trademarks. Like, I don't know if patents and trademarks are just astrology for entrepreneurs.
52:09
But, you know, because I I've I've actually I've had a I've, you know, a bit at companies where we've had patents. For example,
52:17
stumble upon,
52:19
which was basically this,
52:21
they acquired my company, and I was on the management team there. And I find out Like, one of the reasons I sold the business was because I was like, these guys have the patent
52:31
on, like,
52:32
recommendation engine.
52:34
Like
52:35
Which is mostly nonsense. Right? Dude, it was like they were like, we have the patent on this. This alone is worth you know, five hundred a billion dollars. Cause basically, they have the patent on, if you upload something or downvote something,
52:48
and there's a recommendation engine at the core of it,
52:51
That is their pet. A k a TikTok. I I
52:55
I think that's worked that's worked a couple times though on the internet. I believe Reed Hoffman and Mark, Marcus, pink, Mark, or Marcus Pink is the guy who started Zinga. I think they had some
53:06
what what? I mean, is it wrong? What's his name? No. We're gonna go with that. Yeah. Markus Picus isn't Marcus Lucas.
53:13
Whatever. I think this would be such an outrage statement.
53:16
I don't know. He's he's not racist guy.
53:19
Didn't they own didn't they own the patent that I believe if if memory serves for example, I believe they owned a patent
53:26
on the algorithm for social media And I think they sold it to Facebook or maybe even they gave it for to Facebook in exchange for shares. Did you guys not read that story? No. I don't know that story, but when we bought the BMO brand back, we got these patents with it, and they had a patent for the
53:44
for the whiteboard feature, meaning, like, you could go on someone's profile page. I don't know if you remember this, like, you could go on someone's profile page and doodle like, just draw on a, like, a Microsoft paint looking whiteboard there. We had the patent for that. And I was like, cool.
53:57
But Facebook has that fee at the time, Facebook had something called the wall that was the thing. Like, they had these to have that feature too, and they used to be able to and myspace had graffiti. And, like, it was the same feature.
54:06
And they were like, yeah. These don't mean anything. And I was like, nothing. Like, is it patent? Like, ironclad? They're like, yeah, just like not on the internet. And,
54:15
that's been my experience with I don't know if that's actually true or not, but It seems like trademarks kind of mean something because if you don't own your trademark and somebody does, they can basically tell you your you you can't keep operating under that name, which is painful. And when you sell a company, they like for you to have everything buttoned up. Like, yes, I'm incorporated. I paid my taxes. I have my trademarks.
54:35
I'm free and cleared to be bought.
54:38
But I don't think patents do anything on the internet, what I understand. Well, okay. So in two thousand Yeah. So,
54:45
Pincus and Read Hoffman, they own this patent called the six degrees patent. Facebook, I believe, bought it from them for seven hundred thousand dollars.
54:53
But, yeah,
54:54
there's an article called, who owns Facebook's most important patent. So apparently, it was a thing. Cool. Greg,
55:01
so you're gonna come on next time. Are you gonna have good water dot com? Or no. You're a good you're a dot I o type of guy. Well, Sean's wired. That's fire. Yeah. Well, I hear
55:11
what your agency now. It's, it's There's two wars happening right now, and that was a hate crime. You committed. He called him a dot io guy. All all I know is that just get I'm wearing glasses
55:22
and,
55:23
you know, if
55:25
that oh, here we go. It's, sam p dot I o just joined the chat.
55:33
What what's your, where do where do people connect? It's, it's, is it public school or let Lay checkout dot studio. Late checkout dot studio. I see, I know you're not a dot com type of guy. You have checkout dot substack dot com. Right? I like your newsletter. Where else? What else do you wanna pimp? You you're you're always tweeting cool shit.
55:51
You always tweet stuff with the first line being like the future of blank is blank.
55:56
Which I dig. Greg back in the day wrote a series of blog posts called, like, tiny little life hacks or something. What's the name of that post, Greg? I it was like ten years ago. Little life hacks guaranteed to improve your life. But this is before, like, dred boy. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You were ahead of your time.
56:12
Now today, these are, you know, you see these all the time. But back then,
56:16
These were great. And I actually implemented many of these little ones that you you you did like a three part series. It was so good that people called you back for an encore and a second encore on top of that. So go read that series. If you wanna love Greg, like, if people read that, they'll fall in love with you. I guarantee Well, is your your first one is dress formal when you go on flights. Do you do that? It it worked back in the day. It actually worked.
56:39
You know, this is this is years ago. Yeah. What else what else on that list?
56:44
When you're out with people breaking bread, put your phone on airplane mode. Yeah. That's a good one.
56:50
Poor people's drinks before yours. People appreciate So Siava, my buddy, Siava, he did that to me this weekend. And,
56:56
I I was I was wooed. He he wooed me.
57:00
And
57:01
I saw a picture of you and save it today and looks like you guys are dating. So, like, that obviously works. I'm leaning into his arms.
57:08
It definitely worked.
57:10
Scheduled thirty meetings, not one hour meetings. You get through just as much. Yeah. I I I totally believe that. But here's the thing. Here's the thing. This was all obvious now. So
57:19
I'm good at saying that, like, I looked like an idiot back then.
57:24
Like, all these ideas might sound like stupid ideas right now. Good water,
57:29
Stripe Atlas thing. I'm just joking. I think good water, you could definitely make that work. Yeah. I'm I'm the I'm the guy who looks stupid in the moment, but looks good in five years.
57:39
A cursed life.
57:41
Well, one number three is to send postcards to friends. So I'll I'll be on the lookout for a postcard.
57:47
Yeah. You had one that was like,
57:49
go to this little website, and they have a bunch of unique gifts. And it's like, just show up not on a gift giving occasion, but when you go meet someone, just bring one of these for them. Like,
57:59
you know, people obviously remember it. These are sound just like, you know, how to win friends and influence people, but it's real. And, like, especially in Silicon Valley, like,
58:07
the social, like, IQ was, like,
58:10
so low. But if you did any of these things, like, you know, you know, if somebody's listening to this in Texas, they're like, hey, you pour the other person's water you show up with a gift. But, like,
58:19
you know I mean, I almost sold my last company because I met someone. I gave them a tiny Buddha
58:25
and they remembered me.
58:27
Like, they made it offer to buy my business. So it it does work. It's one of those things where you're, like, Of course, I should do this, but you don't actually do it. And then you read it. And I'm like, alright, fine. I'll start I'll start sending gifts. That's a perfect way to explain it. All of these are things that you're like, yeah, I know I know those. Those aren't new. And then if you just said, okay. Cool. Let's look at this question differently. How many of these do you do regularly?
58:47
And now all of a sudden, instead of knowing ten out of ten, you do one out of ten regularly. Like, that gap is why I like that blog post. Greg, dude. We appreciate you coming on.
58:57
You're, you're full of ideas. I you were supposed to be solo with Sean. Sorry. I crashed your party today, but things changed. But, I appreciate you doing and come in with us. This is a blast. I was smiling all the time. Good. That's a win. Alright. Appreciate it. That's the pod.
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