00:00
I have just straight fire. We we might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes because I just got too much fire for for one day. Myself.
00:20
Alright. We got a bunch of ideas today. If you like ideas, this is This is gonna be one of the podcasts you like. I promise you I didn't bring in any frameworks or life advice. We just went straight business, cool businesses and ideas. You you probably never heard At the end, we just brainstormed,
00:34
TV show ideas, ideas that could be made into TV shows. So, I think you'll like this episode It's a classic. It's a it's a sandwich on classic brainstorm. Alright. Enjoy.
00:44
Welcome everybody to the show. I hope we have the new intro music by the time this airs, but we may not. I don't know about you, but I've been jamming out to the new intro song,
00:54
pretty excessively.
00:55
And, it's been great.
00:57
It's good. The guy who made it has a wonderful name. Yeah. You say his name? Young Spielberg. That's his name. That's a good name. I've really liked that. You've been young without an o. Y u n g.
01:09
Alright. We have to mention the clip contest. So we're doing this contest. I think people wanna learn about it. I think they go so so if they go to m f m pod dot com, they'll see it. If you go to m f m pod dot com slash clips, you'll for sure see it. M f m pod and you'll see, like, a link Did you see so these kids, it's mostly, like, younger, like, kids that are making videos where basically the contest, by the way, is you chop up these videos. So just go to our YouTube page like, download the videos and chop it up and put it on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. And if you use a certain hashtag MFM clips,
01:39
you're we'll find you and gonna get five grand to some of our favorite clips. Yeah. Based on There's already some amazing things. So I saw a few TikToks that were already past, I think, a hundred thousand views.
01:50
So crazy. So their TikToks are are their TikTok account is blowing up just by taking our content and just chopping it up. And then the guy who did the, like, South park looking cartoon thing. Amazing.
02:02
Amazing. This is a young guy named Corey who's I I filed his account and he's got, like, hundreds of thousands of views on a handful of videos, and he launched the videos. And, like, within a day or two, he had all these views. It's wild. And then the guy who does the cartoon thing, I think he's launching a business and we are his first Right. Right. Because I filed his Twitter account. He had zero. It was like zero zero.
02:24
So that's anyways, five grand, go go take our content, turn it into clips,
02:28
let it go viral,
02:29
and, yeah, everybody wins.
02:32
Alright. I've got a few interesting things. You've got many interesting things. You should go first. I have just straight fire. We we might need to split it up into multiple segments or multiple episodes because I just got too much fire for for one day.
02:46
I know what the first one is, and I think we should start with that. Okay. So
02:50
I wanted to bring this up. There's we had talked about this in the past, but this is a a story about miss Excel.
02:57
So her name, she calls herself miss Excel,
02:59
And I don't know if you've ever seen her. I don't think you're a big TikTok guy, but I am. I had seen this person going viral on TikTok. And basically, it's a woman who
03:09
puts out like
03:10
Microsoft Excel
03:11
tips and tricks, like little hacks. Like, oh,
03:14
you know how your,
03:16
things are always like poorly formatted. Just put pushed, like, you know, command g,
03:21
when you're whole hovering over the column, and look, it auto formats everything perfectly. Or, like, do you know what a v lookup is? You do this, this, this, and boom, you could find anything. So she basically puts out these little clips on TikTok, but it's not just the content. Like, the way she does it, it's like, what works on TikTok. It's like cute cute girls dancing,
03:39
humor, like, these are things that, like, work on TikTok.
03:42
And so she does that. She's like, she'll put a song, like, that's like a trending song on TikTok.
03:49
She'll dress up. She'll be she'll have the screen screen share behind her and she's kind of overlaid on top of it. And then she's showing something funny that's or like something that's happening. She's explaining it quickly and in an entertaining way. So
04:01
she's
04:02
she's here's her story. She's a consultant.
04:06
Kind of a boring job. She was a consultant.
04:09
And she decide and, you know, there's a lot of consultants of bankers that if you watch the music sell, they won't touch a mouse.
04:15
Like, they just use keyboard like a wizard and like they could just do everything just by hitting like shortcuts and macros on their on their keyboard in Excel. There's actually a lot of people that could do this. My friend who who used to work at BCG, basically, they had a mouse with, like, a wired mouse that was clearly cut. The cord was cut, and they, like, It was like in a frame on the wall, and they're like, that's what you're gonna do here. The mouse That's what this needs to look like. You don't use the mouse. Exactly.
04:39
And I don't know how any of this works, but I've definitely seen a bunch of friends who can do this. They it's kind of amazing when they're doing it. So she basically took that idea started turning into interesting clips. So she starts off, and she tells a story where she's like, you know,
04:54
I wanted to, like, try making some content and,
04:57
you know, TikTok, I felt embarrassed because, like, isn't TikTok, like, for kids, and, like, it's just, like, the silly thing to do. I shouldn't. I shouldn't make a TikTok account. I'm a consultant. And then her gut was like, you should do a TikTok. And so she listens to her gut. She makes a TikTok. And pretty quickly, I think, like, within the first week or so, she goes viral with one or two clicks. And she gets over like a hundred thousand views. And she's like, holy shit. This is awesome. And so she does it again. And she does it again. And then she starts in, she's like, buys a little ring light and gets a green screen so that it looks a little bit better. And she does it again. She gets a video that gets a million views, and it's like, Wow. This is amazing. And so she starts branding herself amazing branding, by the way, Miss Excel. Like, she is the one she is the Excel woman. And,
05:38
and so I thought that was great. And so she she starts doing this. And she she's getting popular, but she's not making any money. And,
05:46
She reaches or who who what happened? Morning Brew reaches out, they're gonna do a feature story on her. And they're like, oh, we wanna feature you. And at the same time, a business coach reached out to her. And was like, hey, I saw you have this, like, really great following. I think your your content is super unique.
06:02
You know, And she was like, yeah, it's great. I'm gonna be featured on morning, Bruce. They're like, awesome. Like, what do you have to sell? She's like, oh, I don't sell anything. It's all free content.
06:10
And they're like, if you're gonna get featured, you should have something to sell. And she's like, okay. Challenge accepted. You're right. I'm gonna make a course. And so she decides to make a course,
06:19
She'd never done it before. And I think she had, like, something like two weeks or something to, like, pull this whole thing off, and she rushes to do it. Now let's fast forward to today.
06:29
She
06:30
is making courses,
06:31
and she is making,
06:33
six figures a month off this thing. She's making single digit millions a year. She has a few days of the year where she's made six feet over a hundred thousand dollars on a day in course sales. That's kinda like her Black Friday
06:45
or Black Friday special or whatever where she where she sold her course. And so she's doing millions of dollars a year, and she's working towards million a million dollar That's, like, her goal. I wanna hit a million dollars a month as miss Excel.
06:58
And she is, like, Microsoft loves her there, like, pumping her up.
07:02
You know, she's featured in business insider. She's featured in like buzzfeed. She's featured in a whole bunch of places. Does this great story? She's featured on this podcast right now. And so she is doing amazing. What I love about this is she quits her job as a consultant.
07:15
She now works fifteen hours a week unless she's making a course, like, but just like a normal thing is she's she's doing fifty hours a week. She has one employee, which is an overseas virtual assistant,
07:25
Her cost structure is that overseas virtual assistant, which I'm guessing is making something like six to ten dollars an hour. So, you know, probably paying them, like, five hundred dollars a month ballpark.
07:36
Plus,
07:37
she pays ninety seven dollars for Thinkific,
07:39
which is the course platform,
07:41
and she pays a video editor to, to edit the videos for course. So, like, all in all, her expenses are probably like sub fifteen hundred dollars, maybe sub two thousand dollars at the time. And she's making six figures a month. So she's profiting,
07:57
you know, at least a hundred thousand dollars a month, doing this thing. And, there was a whole bunch of, like, diff little nuggets in there that I liked, but that's the the overall story quick quick reaction to that. Amazing. I don't think it's gonna
08:10
maybe it will last.
08:12
Maybe That was that was my initial instinct. I was like, but taken grab. Awesome run. But, like, you know, who knows if this is here, two years from now?
08:20
And then I changed my mind when I kinda read her read a little bit more about her. Here's what I liked. Okay. So We had talked about Excel way back maybe a year ago when I when we were talking about, I was gonna create a course, and we had done a deep dive of What are the best courses? It's always excel. Microsoft excel is always in the top. If you go to teachables, top courses, Udemy's top courses,
08:40
learning to master Excel is always in the top, like, ten earning courses. And you you know, it's hard to be the one, but it's a topic people will pay for. Anker from teachable.
08:50
He's got a he's a good Twitter follow. He, tweets out some of the biggest earners. He won't explicitly say who they are but he'll say, one earner, we just paid their,
09:00
you know, we they just crossed twenty million in in revenue or in, like, earnings.
09:04
And then he'll also say, like, the top course is this excel thing. So you can kinda like triangulate it. Exactly. And and on you to me, I think I was able to do this as well. I was able to search and sort for the top best selling courses and Excel was in the top as well. That's amazing.
09:19
And, so I think Excel has real demand. Then the question is, who's gonna be the best brand in the Excel space.
09:27
And she's the horse I would pick. So,
09:31
Why do I think that? First is her content is fundamentally better. She took the most.
09:37
She has the best top of funnel. So what's her top of funnel strategy? It's
09:40
highly exciting
09:42
quick hitting snack sized TikTok videos. TikTok itself is like the crack cocaine of content. Right, like ten seconds
09:50
video,
09:51
with music overlaid. That is crack cocaine for content.
09:55
And she's using that for Excel. When all the other Excel creators are like bloggers and shit like that. There's like a stale old thing. Then her brand and her personality, Miss Excel,
10:06
good looking woman who understands how to do content, and,
10:10
And she I know she understands the content. She so she's a little bit when I was researching her,
10:15
she
10:16
is really into some of the shit I'm into. That's really, like, kind of like off the beaten path. So she was like, yeah. She's like, most people when they think of content strategy, like, especially for for for this space, b to b type of content.
10:28
She's like, it's always, like, strategic,
10:31
intellectual,
10:32
trying to figure it out. She goes,
10:34
I spend most of my time
10:37
just getting into a certain state of mind. I just she's like, I just get into a she goes she goes, this is her exact quote. She goes, the way I run my structure for my business is through energetic
10:47
most people don't even know what the fuck that means. She goes, I get my energy to a place where my presence is truly magnetic.
10:53
I get a vision of what's gonna go viral, then I run to my computer and I create that. And sure enough, it goes viral. She goes because most content people people don't understand content is just energy transmission.
11:04
Yeah. I'm having a great time. I'm excited about this topic, and so I'm gonna push that through the phone into you. And sure enough, you're gonna learn something, but you're also gonna smile while you're watching my shit. You're also gonna laugh while you're watching my thing, and nobody else is doing that. And I've read that and I go, She gets it. She gets like one of the most important things about business of life, which is just like maybe you have to manage your own energy, but the second part is she gets the content strategy in a way that I don't think anybody else is gonna really get in this space. Did you send out the things? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. She now has scale. So at first, I was like, oh, okay. But she's just like an individual creator on TikTok and, like, Who knows? Maybe TikTok algorithm changes? No. So here's what she's doing. She basically is like, I'm gonna scale in two ways. First, she's expanding it to the whole Microsoft sweet. So it's not just excel. He's doing PowerPoint and Word and outlook and like everything that like, you know, a billion people on earth have to use professionally.
11:56
And so and Microsoft is helping her. And every time they're releasing a new thing, she's getting first look at it, and she gets to come out right away with the content that's gonna highlight this new function or this new feature that you get to be able to use.
12:07
So
12:08
that expansion gives it more legs than just Excel. The second thing is She now hired a performance marketing agency. And she's like, yeah, get my brand to grow. And she's like, the beautiful thing is I don't sell my course I just put one my most viral thing and I put ad spend behind it, and people love it. Like, they love that content. And so they like it. They comment on it. So Facebook's algorithm promotes it. And so I was like, oh, that's kind of an unstoppable,
12:32
like, flywheel. She's gonna keep creating this, like, juicy,
12:35
like, quick life hack type content.
12:39
Then she's promoting it, that's already inherently viral. Then she's putting a paid ad spend behind it. She's growing her following on Instagram now. Plus TikTok, plus YouTube, plus all these different places.
12:50
And she's like, oh, yeah. Reels came out. So then I just, like, jumped on Reels, and I became, like, one of the most viral reels creators on Instagram.
12:56
And, so I'm like, okay, now she's diversifying the audience, and she's got the courses behind it. And she's going into more more parts of the suite. I like that formula. I was wrong. She's gonna that she she's gonna crush it. Like, she's gonna get to my bold prediction.
13:09
She's gonna get to a hundred million dollars in sales. And that sounds outrageous. I was like to say a hundred million. I think she could I think you could do, I think a hundred million a year or lifetime. A year.
13:19
Yeah. I actually agree with you. I think that's bold. I think likely
13:23
she'll get to, like, twenty five million dollars a year in revenue and could probably actually do that for many years. Right.
13:30
So it's crazy.
13:32
So I loved I loved her thing. I there was also these other little nuggets. So she basically she's working fifteen hours a week then she's like, oh, cool, quit my job. I'm gonna be a digital nomad. Something you kind of did this last year. She's like, every month me and my boyfriend, we just moved to a different state. We just wanna experience it. So they'll just move to a different state in America and just, like, hang out there for the month and then they hop around. And,
13:52
the other thing that she's the other nuggets I like I liked was She does these, like, webinars because she understands there's, like, a top of funnel.
13:59
So top of funnel, if you don't know, is basically, like, how you get new customers to even, like, get in touch with you. Get in get into your courses. It's just going viral on TikTok. Going viral on TikTok or Instagram or or YouTube. Great. Then she has the middle of funnel is where a lot of people fall out, which is, okay, you've touched base with me once. You're not ready to buy something just yet, but how do I actually get you to anticipate in a deeper way, to invest in a deeper way. And for her, she runs these webinars, and she calls them high energy Excel parties.
14:27
And so she she invites me both of these. And what happens is it's, of course, it's like someone
14:32
from BCG and then they go and they're like, oh, this is amazing. Then they're like, Hey, we'd like to buy like fifteen hundred seats for our for your course for our company, you know, like, or, hey, I work for Target corporate training and, yeah, we have twenty five thousand employees that we think would be benefit from this. How do how could you create something custom for us? And it's gonna be like, yeah, here's the same thing, but now I say the word target at the beginning, and I charge you, you know, five million dollars for it. I have a buddy who's doing this, which basically is like,
15:00
his top, he he does top of funnel newsletters,
15:04
then he does these, like, webinars and workshops
15:07
and podcasts that go deeper. And at the bottom is somebody from, you know, Procter and Gamble will reach out and just be like, hey, cool. Like, yeah, we got fifty thousand global employees.
15:17
We would love to have you come speak at our headquarters once a month and, like, you know, we'll pay you, basically, like, a hundred thousand dollar retainer per month. How's that? And he's like, whoa, okay. That's like way easier than, like, trying to Does he teach?
15:30
So he teaches, basically, I don't wanna give away too much because say the numbers then, but he teaches, like, a version of, like, how about the growth growth
15:36
mindset
15:41
Are you familiar with that? So he he's like kind of one of the thought leaders and growth mindset. And so big company, like sports teams, like have them on retainer as well as
15:51
you know, big companies like, whoever, you know,
15:54
Coca Cola or whatever will will pay him and they they're just like, look, we think your stuff is great. And we have fifty thousand employees.
16:01
How do we just like package this up for all those employees? And then like, guess what? We wanna do this every year. And so that turned out to be a very big business for him. He's just trying to figure out, like, what do you charge a company like this? And he'll just name a number. And, you know, sure enough, they'll pay it. And he's like, oh, man, maybe I should have said a higher number. I thought that was a crazy high number, but I guess for them, it's like, they didn't even link. They just like said, yes. So, shit. Did you see, this weekend, the world excel financial modeling championships happened?
16:28
No. But that is amazing. I love that. It went viral.
16:32
Ben, look this up. It's like, look up, like, financial modeling, world championship, Dude, why did I think of that idea? That's such a me idea to think of. It went viral. And there is, like, and you see these guys, it's, like, all, you know, no disrespect. It's all nerds doing it, obviously.
16:47
And
16:48
you see pictures of them, and you see memes, like, this is what peak male performance looks like.
16:53
And Okay. What what do they actually do? What is the competition? So they're all, like, you can it was they didn't, like, Twitch. So, like, you could, like, they, like, were streaming their screens, and they were asked to do certain things. And then they had to, like, in real time, like, make this model.
17:10
And I I don't actually know how they judged it. I didn't pay attention. I just paid attention to the memes. I think Seth Smith tweeted something funny. Like, this is a gift from god. It's like she showed a pic of them on there. It's amazing. It was hilarious.
17:22
And,
17:23
all my Indian friends were sharing it this weekend and, like, making Indian jokes, and it was awesome. It was so funny.
17:30
But who who owns that? Who do you see?
17:39
It's probably like, you know, Deloitte.
17:42
But anyway, so that was amazing. I'm on board with this. That that's awesome. I love mixed mis Excel. When this article on the verge, I think it was went live. I had so many people DMEs and say you guys gotta cover this. So I was gonna do it, and so happy you did.
17:55
Baller, I think that, I've talked to a couple of friends that have course businesses,
17:59
and
18:00
my friend Neville, my best friend Neville, He had a course called copywriting course. It honestly changed my life, and he made this one course,
18:09
like,
18:09
twelve years ago, maybe.
18:11
And it's been paying his bills every single year since then. He and he does other stuff. Like, he I took it as well. He, like, updates it and now he has, like, a membership thing, but this one thing that he filmed years ago, it's like
18:24
it's that's been his career.
18:26
By the way, in terms of transferring energy.
18:29
Neville is exactly like that. If you watch in the course, he does these like like most courses are like here's an hour long session about X. His is like It's almost like a blog post, and it's like one minute where he's teaching one concept,
18:42
and he'll, like, the camera will be on, and then he'll pop out from under the table. He'll be like, yo, and then he'll, like, say the thing. And then the next one, he's got a guitar in his hand. He's like, he's like, if I'm writing an email, and I wanna get a reply. And he's, like, singing a song, and he's, like, He he makes it entertaining, and you can just
18:59
there's something that makes you smile and it keeps you engaged, it keeps you involved with it. And
19:05
you know, people will forget the content, but they won't forget how they felt taking your course. And so they'll still recommend it and refer it and and and be happy with their purchase. Can I I'm I'm gonna tell you about
19:15
one or two really quick things, and I I think we should spend most of the episode on your stuff because it's actually pretty good? This adventure book thing looks amazing.
19:22
One very quick thing, monthly dot com.
19:25
Did you know what that is?
19:27
Yeah. Do you see they? Explain it for me to do this. Because I think it's pretty under the radar. Pretty much the exact same thing as master class, but only for creators.
19:35
It's kinda cool. I just signed up for my first one. Casey Neistat, which one is launching a YouTube and storytelling class.
19:42
Do you see it? Oh, amazing. Yeah. So I signed up for it. So that's like a cool find. So it's Dude, how is he not at the fucking top of the screen right now? I'm he's like, just in the middle of this long list. What are they doing? It's monthly. You know, founders of monthly. I think I've talked to them before. They were they were cool. They were like,
19:58
They were cool and they knew they were cool. That's alright. I was like, Katie, this is awesome. They're like, yeah, it's awesome. I was like, I'd love to invest. I get a lot of people wanna That's right. I I appreciate that. So I just signed up for that. I'm so excited to to do it. Like, I bought it full price and everything. I'm pumped. The second thing,
20:15
Another cool product that I've been fooling around with. Well, we'll do actually three. The the second one is Dscript. Have you seen Dscript?
20:23
Yeah. We've talked about it. So Deepgram just kinda like,
20:27
editing software
20:28
for, like, you you record something audio or video and then it, like, transcribes it automatically. And then if you if you delete a piece of text from the transcription,
20:37
it deletes that part of the video, which is like magic. Amazing. I've been playing with this for my stuff. What do you do with it? Alright. So you film a video. Let's say I film a ten minute video, it uploads the video and automatically transcribes it. And so I edit the video by editing the transcription like a Google Doc.
20:53
And so I could copy and paste and move stuff around, and that edits the video. It's amazing. It's it's it's almost trans transformative because it chain when I think about what I'm gonna film, I think about like, the the narrative. Like, the story is just a long narrative, and it's harder to think in video clips. It's much easier to think and transcribe and and text. It's super cool. And so I actually think this company, they raised money recently at a two hundred million dollar valuation. I actually think this is a company that's gonna be significant larger than it is now. And it well, like, it's gonna be pretty epic. The guy who started it also started the group on. Yeah. It was named Andrew.
21:30
Mason. Mason.
21:32
He's dope. Also, the best part about Andrew Mason that I respect is he he starts groupon.
21:37
Groupon goes on this crazy run where it's like, I I point in time, it was, like, the hottest startup in the world copied by, like, every fucking, you know, every Joe Shmoe was copying groupon
21:47
groupon, like, raises all this money. It ends up going public, then it kind of like,
21:51
you know, then the world turns against groupon. It's like, this is not not a good business. It's not gonna work. People are pulling out. It's it's still, I think, like, a billion dollar company, but, like, you know, it lost its its shine. And he was in Chicago, I think.
22:02
And then he quits or whatever. He gets five. I think he He forgot fired. I think he wrote something really hilarious that he writes something really fun on the way out. He wrote, like, an email. He pulled that up. He goes, today,
22:13
I'm paraphrasing. He's like, today is my last day. I've been fired. You probably know why.
22:18
Like, it it
22:20
Yeah. You know that the video I made making fun of that CEO who botched the, the the layoffs, this was the opposite. This is the CEO who, like, who got it, who gets it.
22:30
And so he, yeah, he wrote this, like, letter I was fired today. Then he takes a year off and he creates an album
22:36
of music like a rap album of him just and he's not good, but it's hilarious. We should pull up one of the one of the the videos of his
22:45
his, like, rap album or whatever. Yeah. And, he releases that. And then he, like, came back with Discrip, and it started off as this, like, walking tour thing Which was amazing by the way. The walking tours were amazing. I bought a lot of them. It was really cool, but, like, not that good of a business because how I mean, I was a super fan, most people, you're never gonna do this. And if you do, you're gonna do one in your life.
23:06
But Yeah. Exactly. Like, that by the way, what a great lesson. The walking tour was like, what people should do and, like, makes them, like, be be more active and, like, learn things in the world. And then Deepgram is like, hey, it's, like, products that make make you make it easier to be lazier. It's like, hey, you know, editing videos hard. Let's make it easier for you. So, Dscript, I've been playing with it. I think it's called Dscript been calling it Discrip, unless it's Discrip. So sorry.
23:29
Awesome. Under the radar. Cool. And then the last thing I'm gonna tell you about, that's kind of interesting. So story worth. So Sean or Ben, go to story worth dot com. This is a crazy fascinating thing. Very simple product. I actually knew the guy, Nick,
23:42
He started it. I shared an office with him, and it would he's still, I believe, the only employee.
23:47
And it's kinda cool. It's very simple. When I logged in or when I used it years ago, all it was is you pay, like, a hundred dollars a year or two hundred dollars a year, and it sends emails to family members that you sign up, and it asks them about certain memories, and it asks them so much over the course of a year that at the end of the year, if a lot of your family members have answered some of your prompts, you now have a book describing their childhood. So it'll be, like, my I sent it to my aunt Debbing, and she was like,
24:14
a question. I I don't remember all the questions, but it was something like, what's the best memory of your father before you were ten? And she was like, you know, on Halloween, we did this thing and And it's like, oh my gosh, I'm learning about my family. And at the end, I printed out this book super fascinating, and it's super fascinating,
24:30
because
24:32
It's a one person business. It's just him. And Right. And it's really simple. It's very easy. And I love that ancestry stuff so much. Like, I'm a big fan of that.
24:42
Anyway, that's how Yeah. That's that's really cool. I,
24:46
I've never used something like this. So isn't it kind of a lot of work for the other person to, like, write an answer? Like, I feel like, people don't like to do stuff like that. Yeah. But if you get when you get one a week and you spend like ten minutes of journaling, yeah, it's work. But I, like, told my aunt, like, hey, this is important to me. And she after a while, she was like, oh, I kinda like doing this. I'm I'm remembering a bunch of stuff.
25:05
It's a lot of work. We had done a version of this or there's a version of this that's like, I think a little easier, which was,
25:13
I don't know if you remember. I when I I had my mom over, she feels like a house. Podcast with her. And I recorded a podcast with her. And the podcast was so much easier because really all they had to commit to was like one time, hey, let's sit down and talk. And
25:25
you get this hour long thing with their voice, and they don't have to, like, people will get pretty intimidated at having to write something. There's this pressure internally to, like,
25:34
do good writing. I think school like traumatizes the shit out of people.
25:38
And,
25:39
this podcast thing
25:41
worked great. I did it. I had an amazing podcast with my mom. I recommend anybody. You don't need to be a podcaster, by the way. Like, this I don't publish this anywhere. But it's just a memory I'll always have and it was a conversation
25:51
that I wouldn't have otherwise had more importantly. Like, I don't even know if I'll ever go back and listen to this, maybe someday.
25:56
On that really horrible day.
25:58
Yeah. Like, you know, when she she passes away, like, I'll I'll be happy to have this. But more importantly, it was like so much of life is,
26:06
so surface level and, like, We're just talking to a, like, we're just talking about me and my life all the time, b, like, if I'm talking to her, it's about, like, what we're doing today or whatever. I realized I've reduced very, very little about like her and her family and her what made her her and, like, her upbringing.
26:22
Because, you know, I don't know. That's just shit in the past. And so
26:25
And even she forgot a lot of these things and in the conversation, it all was coming flooding back to her. So I recommend everybody do that with their parents. Like, just sit them down and record one hour thing and can share, like, the questions I ask or whatever, but it really doesn't matter, to be honest with you. Have you done ancestry or twenty three in me? I've never done it. No.
26:43
They're awesome. So twenty three of me is awesome. Ancessories,
26:47
I think, cooler because I've spent hours on it, like, building up my family tree. Twenty three me, I've thought about getting it for I have it, and I've thought about buying it this Christmas for my family members. The reason I can not I may not do it. Have you heard of the thing called GED
27:00
match?
27:02
No. Was that? Oh, have you heard of the Golden State killer?
27:06
No. Okay. So in the nineteen seventies, there was this guy. I thought that's what they call you. Yeah. That was my nickname in high school, Golden State Killer. In the in the nineteen sixties, seventies, and I think eighties, there was this guy who basically, like, raped, like, fifty women, and then he murdered eventually, like, twenty of like, he was a serial killer. And,
27:25
he got away with it for years. No one knew who it was. And Patton Oswall's wife, Patton Oswald, the comedian, his wife who recently died, right before she died, published her, like, master work, her life's work, And it was about the Golden State killer and how he's never got been caught and it renewed interest. And then the FBI got all into it because all the press and they eventually use this website called GE. It's public.
27:48
It's like, anyone can use it. It's like an open source website, and it analyzes
27:52
all of the,
27:54
information from twenty three and me ancestry and eat, like, all that stuff, all the
27:59
database stuff, and they found they put his DNA, the golden state killer's DNA, which they had into this GED match thing, and they realize that
28:08
the daughter of the killer,
28:10
or, like, they're, like, well, this is so aligned. It must be, like, the daughter or the granddaughter of the killer recently signed up for twenty three and me. And so they stake out this guy's house. They dig through his garbage. They find. They go boom. Got him, and that's how they arrested him. And they arrested him when he was, like, needy and dying.
28:25
And if you Google golden state killer, you'll see, like, these pictures old man, and they got him because he got away with it for so long. But eventually, they brought him to justice. And now
28:34
they've caught many dozens, maybe even hundreds of killers or rapists this way, which is good,
28:41
but
28:42
it's kinda scary. And so you could so I was gonna say, so you're you're worried about this. Why why is this worrying? I'm because it's being used for good at Grandpawn trouble. It's being used for good now,
28:54
but,
28:55
like, you could see, like, do I wanna be in this database? Do I wanna be in this database? And so this is one thing I'm a bit worried about. So you can go GED match, and you could upload your results, and it could tell you all types of stuff about your results. You could see,
29:07
a lot of interesting stuff. And you could like If you can somehow get the DNA from an FBI case, which I believe in some cases you can, you can, like, upload it. And there's, like,
29:17
thousands of, like, these internet detectives
29:20
using this database to solve crimes. It's kinda fascinating. It's kind of interesting. And it's definitely a little scary.
29:27
Wow. Is there, like, a subreddit for these, you know, like, sort of, like, public crime solvers? Yes. There is. And it's very, very interesting. And most of the time, they're wrong. So, like, if you remember, when the Boston,
29:38
like, the Boston,
29:40
marathon bombing, they, like, named, like, these, like, three guys, and they they kinda fucked with these guys' lives. They they didn't end up doing it, but everyone was certain on that subreddit and they're uploading pictures, and they go, this guy works at this place. It wasn't him. They were wrong. No one guessed it that it was the two actual guys, but this is a little bit different because it's DNA, but DNA isn't perfect. So it's like there's a it'll say, like, there's a
30:03
this person is five percent related to this person. So it's like, alright. Let's see what that is. So that could be like a distant cousin until you, like, track way down to that and you build these family trees to figure out. Oh, you know, it's kind of weird that, like, this matches this person and they're they also lived in the same area. And so it's not perfect, but it's like pretty good. So anyway, I thought that's why I may not get twenty three to me.
30:23
Yeah. I'll
30:26
also know people who have gotten it and realize, like, their dad is not their real dad.
30:31
And I think that That happened to a family member of mine. I think that's, you know,
30:35
you know, side effect to be aware of. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. A family member of mine.
30:40
A family member of mine found out that their parent had a
30:44
their parent
30:45
cheated on the spouse and had a,
30:50
a kid.
30:51
And so they logged on and they go, oh, man. I've got a second brother, you know, like a step brother or a half brother.
30:58
And, it changes shit. Yeah. I was gonna say without getting too personal that that,
31:02
that has, like, that went they went public with it, or they just kinda kept that information to themselves. No. No. No. They did not go public with it, but it, like, was very it was I don't know. They haven't talked about it with me too much, but it was it seems like it was, like, somewhat earth shatters. Yeah. There's a there's a thing that I've heard that goes on, which is
31:21
people who
31:23
people who use sperm banks, so like a sperm donor,
31:27
will take the or sorry. People who didn't realize
31:31
that their parent had used a sperm donor or whatever. They will get the sequencing done or whatever, and they'll find out, like, oh my god. I have forty two, like, half brothers or sisters out there. It's like, oh my god. Yeah. This was a person who,
31:45
you know, this is a person who donated a bunch. And then so you actually do do genetically share with all these different people.
31:52
Like, wow, that's really crazy. So there's all kinds of, like, interesting stuff. And I think twenty three and me their business model is to sell your data. Right? Like, I think that is the core business model as they sell it to pharmaceutical companies
32:03
for,
32:04
know, like, the research or whatever. Like, I don't know if it's fucked up or if it's, like, this is for the good of science, but I don't think you really know or opt in. It's not clear that Hey, like, it's not clear. Yeah. It's probably it's definitely the terms, you know, but nobody's reading the terms. And so that's the problem. It's like, It's like a benevolent dictator. It's like it's cool when they're making the trains run on time. It's not cool when they start killing people.
32:27
You know what I mean?
32:28
Yeah. It's like it's good when it's good and then it but it could go bad real easy.
32:33
Yeah.
32:34
Alright. What else we got? Do adventure book.
32:37
Alright. So this is another. So to me, the miss Excel thing was one.
32:42
This other thing, I think, is really interesting. So the adventure book. Let me tell you about this story. Have you heard do you know what this is? This product, the adventure book? I have no idea what it is. Ben, have you ever heard of this thing?
32:57
Okay. Alright. So you guys are also not on TikTok enough. This is like the number one ad on TikTok that I see. I don't know if I'm just in their market or they just run a shit ton of ads, but I've been seeing it for like a year. So, basically, it's a it's kinda it's a book you buy and it's like a high quality big book And what it is is like there's a bunch of imagine like a scratch off like a lottery. So there's a bunch of things you could a bunch of adventures that you could scratch off. So you open the book to a random adventure you scratch it off, and it reveals a thing you're gonna go do. Like, it might be,
33:28
like I don't know. I've I've never bought the book. So, like, you know, bad example, but, like, you know, you're gonna go into a store today and you give out ten compliments to people in the store or you're gonna go streaking around your neighborhood or whatever, like an adventure, a thing you can go do. And,
33:43
so this idea
33:44
and and and they pair with it like a camera. So you you're supposed to take a Polaroid of you doing it. So it becomes a scrapbook. So on one side, it triggers you to go do something that you've never done or that's like, you know, get you out of your comfort zone.
33:58
And then it gives you the ability to capture it and paste you've you've glued the photo in. And it becomes this memory book of all your adventures. Like, cool kind of novel idea. So I hadn't seen this, and I was like, oh, that's that's a cute idea. It's novel idea. What I didn't realize is that this is a hundred million dollar business
34:14
that was
34:15
created in the last, like, two years. So how do I know this?
34:19
You know, like, for the podcast, I don't know if you get these emails, but I definitely do.
34:22
There's a bunch of people that have, like, booking agents. And we get all these emails, which is, like, Hey, Sean. Love my first million.
34:29
Have you thought about having, you know, just Joe Joe on? And you're like,
34:35
you know, it's like, oh, first, they're they're complimenting me so I, like, I open it. And I'm like, it's like, I don't wanna be a member of any club that will have me.
34:43
You know, so it's like, That's how I feel about the guest thing. So normally I write all these off, but this one caught my eye, which was they said, would you like to have Brian Ellis on He is a high school dropout, now owns a hundred million dollar business called the adventure challenge.
34:57
And I was like, it's like that that adventure book thing. And he and so I replied, I go hundred million dollars. No way. That sounds high. And she goes, yeah. Like, it's been incredible. They've grown blah blah blah. And I said, hundred I'm just to clarify, I'm like hundred million cumulative revenue, annual revenue. What are you saying here?
35:15
And, and so she goes, yeah, like,
35:19
They'll do eighty five million in revenue this year, and they have a few big, bigger partnerships, the distribution partnerships that will get them over a hundred. Like, in the next year. And, you know, so the about business is valued over a hundred million dollars,
35:32
but with eighty five million of revenue. And I was like, What the fuck? And so I go and I start researching this.
35:38
And so here's the story.
35:40
So this guy, Brian, he's
35:43
so I couldn't confirm the high school dropout part. I don't know if that was just like some post fact shit, like, like, to make this sound better, but, like, let's assume it's true. So, high school dropout, I think his job was he had some job which was like he was a skyscraper inspector. So he's like, you know, some low man on the totem pole doing a job he didn't love and he's like, alright, I'm just doing this for the money. He wanted to make a business. Like, he just he's like, my whole life, I just always been I always have ideas
36:06
and, and, you know, I wanted to come create a product. It's like, so I'm doing this job, and I had this idea
36:11
to do,
36:13
to do this, like, adventure box. So his original idea was, take a machine, create a box like a machine,
36:19
and, you push a button and it's like, like, prints out a receipt, but the receipt is like the adventure you're gonna go on. So you get like a random adventure that comes cool idea. Right? And, and so that was the original idea. And he's like, oh, just tells a couple people about it. They're like, oh, yeah. That's that's cool. And he's like, great, but he's he's doing his job and he hasn't really, you know, figured out exactly how to do it or whatever.
36:40
And he's like, he's like, okay. But he's he's he everything's, like, on hold until he gets fired from his job. And he, like,
36:48
he he makes a mistake. They think he'd committed fraud his boss is like, no, no, no, this honest mistake, but either way he gets fired. He's like, alright, shit.
36:56
What do I want to do? So he decides, I want to go to acting school. He's like, I'm gonna go to acting school, but I need to pay for life. So he's like, I need to create a side hustle that's gonna make me two thousand dollars a month. That's my goal. He's like, he's like, what about that adventure box challenge thing? And he's like, the idea over the course of a few months had us had, like, evolved. And he's like, alright. What if it was actually like a book that you could scratch off the adventure?
37:19
And so he tells a couple people about it and they're that's actually a cool, really cool idea. You should do it. And so he goes to Hobby Lobby, and he buys some paper, some of the scratch off material,
37:30
and he and he's like, buys a kid goes to a different story, buys a camera, and he's like starts coming up with this idea. And he basically spends six to eight months prototyping this idea, because nobody had really done a, like, kind of like,
37:42
an adventure style scratch off book before. So he's, like, creating an actual physical product.
37:48
And so he's like, he has this idea and he, he just keeps telling people about it. And so he,
37:54
he gets to the point where he's prototyped the idea several times. And there's videos I found online of, like, he's creating a vlog while he's doing. He's like, alright, it's eleven PM, April first.
38:03
I just got this really cool material for the scratch off. I really like this one, but I'm having trouble with the bindings, you know, and he's like, so maybe I'll try this other thing tomorrow. And then, like, he has the next video, you know, a week later. He's like, okay. I figured out the bindings part, and now I need to figure out this other thing. I love seeing the the start, the early stages of these ideas.
38:20
So he creates, like, a Kickstarter. He's like, I'm gonna do a Kickstarter. It's gonna be great. I wanna raise ten thousand dollars for this book.
38:27
And,
38:28
kickstarter goes live. He makes thirteen hundred dollars the first day, and he's like, fuck yeah. I'm the man. He, you know, goes to a coffee shop. He's strutting in. He's like, I made thirteen hundred dollars today. I don't know about you guys. I'll take, you know, your best, give me your finest coffee. And he's like, alright. We're, you know, we're already thirteen percent of the way of the goal. Let's keep going. But day two, four hundred dollars. Day three, zero dollars. And, like, the Kickstarter, like, runs out of steam. He's like, shit. I was kinda just banking on this going viral, and now it's not viral. So
38:59
what now?
39:00
And so he's like, alright.
39:02
Basically, he's gonna throw in the towel. He's like, for for for only seventeen hundred dollars, I can't even get the quality of book made that I want.
39:09
Maybe I'll just quit. So he's like, I need to get a job to pay for life
39:13
You know, like, I'm I'm out of money. And so he's like, he's like, oh, maybe I'll contact my buddy. I don't forgot his name, but Ben, my my buddy, Ben, to
39:21
to get a sales job. He has like this company. I can do sales. So he calls them up. He gets a sales. He's like, I wanna do a sales job. I wanna do it for one year
39:29
And I'm just saving up money so I can go back out there and build a product. And the guy's like, alright. Cool. That's fine. Like, you're upfront about it. Like, I'm down with that. Let's do it. So he gets a sales job there. And while he's there, he's telling people at work this idea. He can't shut up about the idea.
39:41
And,
39:42
and the guy there was, like, you know, have you tried ads? He's like, oh, dude, nobody clicks ads. Like, ads, like, or ads, like, ads are scams, basically. Like, that's his mentality at the time. And the guy's like, no, like, that's how we grow our business, like, you know, you should try. So he puts a little money that he's like, I don't know if it worked or not, but, like, you know, I got this, like, ten x roas,
40:01
and the guy's like, What? Like, no way. And he's like, yeah. Like, people really like the the ad or whatever. And so the guy, he partners with his buddy, the guy who hired him.
40:10
And he so I'm fast forwarding some parts of the story, but basically he ends up leaving that guy partners with him. That guy's like, look, we're gonna grow this thing through ads.
40:17
And
40:18
and they basically
40:20
run a shit ton of TikTok ads, Facebook ads, whatever. And they've grown this thing to now eighty five, if if this is true, eighty five million dollars in sales, They've sold about two million copies of this book. It's like a forty dollar book, which is, like, you know, something seventy, something million dollars in sales if you do the math. And,
40:36
And, yeah, what an adventure. And now they have, like, a couples book. So you're, like, fifty fun adventures to go on with your date. They have a family book. Here's some things to do with your family, a friend's book, and then by yourself book. And,
40:47
yeah, it's kind of amazing. I am into these notebooks. I told you I used one of these best self code. Right? Yeah. But that's different. That that doesn't have like a it doesn't get to go do things in the real world.
40:59
It does. It does. The the one I use I use like a relation. We use like a marriage one. And so I'm into this. This is guys amazing. How old is he? He seems very young. So I don't know how old he is.
41:10
Looks like it might be twenty five thirty
41:12
max. I don't know.
41:14
I think these box things are cool. We talked about one that was doing, like, a hundred million in revenue, and it was,
41:19
Remember it was that, like, catch a catch a criminal box. You remember that? Oh, what was that? The what is that one? That's,
41:27
is it a true crime? Amazing. It was it was a true crime thing. It was thirty dollars a month and they sent you a box and you saw a crime with your friends. It's so good. It was so fun. And this is in that same world. I think it's cool to, like, it feels special to me to order something and to, like, see a physical, get a physical thing, and, I'm into it. I think this is badass. This is so awesome. True Crown one better than this because that's a repeat, that's like a recurring one.
41:53
Where it'll have more repeat purchase than this.
41:56
It's so fun.
41:57
And, I do one. I I buy this thing called Kiwi for my niece, which is like, it sends her, like, kind of like a science fair project, basically. It's like, here's a kit. You're gonna build a, like,
42:07
a little, like, mini tractors, sort of like Legos or whatever, but it's not, like, one specific thing. Oh, sorry. It is one specific thing.
42:14
It's like, here's you'll learn about electricity through this little, like, box every month. And it's not great, but it's good enough. And, like, she loves it. So now if I cancel, I have the guilt of, like, her not getting the toy she wants. And so I'm like, I'm gonna just keep this twenty dollar subscription forever. I I guess.
42:31
I'm on board with this. I think this is awesome. I think who, by the way, whoever's making clips, this should be the clip, that you make. This guy's stories, like, I was enthralled. This is amazing. Wow. Alright. What else what else you wanna do? I have, keep going. Okay. I have a segment. It's not even a full segment. It's just,
42:48
the start of a segment.
42:50
I think this one might be bad, but let's try it.
42:53
I basically
42:54
pretend I'm drunk, and then this will be like, oh, that's pretty good for a drunk guy.
42:58
I have a bunch of half baked TV show ideas. Do do you even drink?
43:02
I'll drink. You know, if if the occasion calls for it, I'll drink, but not regularly. No.
43:07
Okay. But I want to pretend I was drunk when I came up with this list because it's kind of just like a random ass list of weird ideas. So these are half baked
43:15
TV show ideas. Okay?
43:17
This is for the, you know, the producer who listens to the show, the Netflix guy who listens to the show,
43:24
you're welcome in advance. I wanna get your reaction to my concepts. Okay. I'm gonna pitch you three ideas.
43:29
I don't know if you have any any TV show ideas, but I'll put you three.
43:32
Okay. Okay. Good. The first one is called frat you.
43:37
I love I don't know if you've seen,
43:40
the football one that's on oh my god. What's it called? There's like a football one called
43:45
something on Netflix. It's like one of their original shows
43:48
that, basically follows a junior
43:50
college football team around.
43:52
And,
43:55
it's like, here's the coach, here's the players, and it, like, picks six players, and it's like, you kinda get emotionally invested in their
44:01
story. There's a Formula One show that's just like this. It's like, here's these six drivers you get invested in there. Yeah. It's amazing. Their their story. There's a cheerleading version of this that I watched. I think it's called Cheer. I don't know what it's called exactly, but it's like Here's this the the best cheer card. You know that that was like, you know that that was like the most popular show and it's not like something you discovered.
44:19
I'm I'm a pretty, you know, a good curator here. So you so I don't know. A lot of people didn't watch the show because it's, like, why would I watch a chat? Have you heard of this thing called squid games?
44:29
So I signed up for the service called Netflix. It's pretty great.
44:32
Alright. So this same model,
44:35
I think it'd be applied to a whole bunch more topics.
44:37
The one I'm surprised at is why is there not a reality show just inside one of the craziest frats in America?
44:44
Because you know that they would basically go all out, sell out, to make the show entertaining because they want the fame.
44:51
Well, I think it's a faux pas. Have you ever talked to, like, an eighteen year old man? They're whoa. No, dude. Are they interested? That's just like the that's like the eighteen year old who's, like, talking to old people like us. Most eighteen year olds don't interact with people like us and they're, like, very normal and just trying to have a good time in college. They're not, like,
45:09
are frats even are frats popular? You think? I would think they were going down. Dude, like, significantly.
45:13
Super popular because it's a bubble. Like, when you go to a college,
45:17
it's like in such a little bubble, it's not really affected by, like, the way the world is changing.
45:22
You don't have to you're not you're not you're not convincing me. I understand the value, but I I didn't even I just thought that, like, with everything going on that it was like No, dude. I mean, if you go to Arizona State, or you go to, like, you know, wherever, you know, Georgia,
45:34
do you think they give a shit about, like, you know, WOCism and they're disbanding the frats hell, no. They are Have you seen doubling down? Well, there's there's these there's these girls on TikTok that do this challenge. I've or not this challenge, but I forget what it's called. If you're a TikTok guy, you probably know, but,
45:49
Sarah showed it to me. It's these girls who are, like, pledging. I think is that what it's called? Yeah. I I wasn't part of that.
45:55
Where you I don't know what you do. It's like you it's like a tryout, and they always talk about what they're wearing.
46:01
I'm a I'm a an old man and I was a a dork. I wasn't part of a frat, but they, like, talk about the clothes that they're wearing to their their, like, pledge ceremony things like that. And is gone very viral on video. What's so notable about the watches they're wearing?
46:15
I don't know, but it's just funny. It's just hilarious. Because, like, don't you know how, like, in the south and, like, at Old Miss and stuff like that. The the sororities do these, like, I went to a Southern College. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Like, Like, they all, like, it's all, like, the boxer girls. They all, like, exactly alike, and they dress exactly alike. And that's, like, the joke is they, like, show, like, what they're wearing. At Duke, you weren't even allowed to throw a party if you weren't a frat or sorority. They literally were like, you better join this shit or,
46:38
you don't get to have a social life. Dude, it's it's weird. It's so weird to me. That's so weird. Also, whenever I go to one of these friends, I'm is disgusting. I don't wanna live with, like, a bunch of dudes or alcoholics, and there's, like, eighty of them in this crappy house, and there's beer shit, like, now. Take on the wall. How about you and you're, like, getting drunk all the time? Even back then.
46:58
But even back then, I'm like, this is Bill. Oh, again, I don't wanna
47:02
one. I just don't wanna be around a bunch of, like, degenerates all the time. Oh, okay. Well, you're alone in that. I would love to,
47:09
go back and experience college again. I think it was a great time and living in one of these houses was, yes, messy, but fun.
47:15
Anyways, point is you go to a party school, you go to Olmos, you go to Georgia, you go to, you know, Santa Barbara or whatever. And it's frat you, and you basically just follow around with a king alpha frat you go inside the house and you pick the five characters who are the fun, you know, they got, they're gonna have all the elements of a great TV show. They're gonna have relationship drama. They're gonna have infighting. They're gonna have camaraderie with the boys. They're gonna have a hazing and a and a pledge process that's gonna be controversial and get them to do all kinds of outrageous stunts. It's all baked in. The show basically writes itself. You gotta have, like, like, one guy is sexual. Exactly. He comes out and he's another guy who He's afraid they're not gonna accept him, but they accept him. There's the the person who gets canceled for doing something racist or sexist or something like that,
48:01
it's got all the elements. And then you could just hop from school to school, and the schools would be excited. Oh, shit, Pratt, you is
48:08
coming
48:09
We gotta represent because, you know, Georgia looked like they had a good time. So now all of a sudden, clemson is like, oh, you think Georgia was hardcore?
48:16
Look how we party, look how we do our thing. I think this is a no brainer franchise that somebody needs to create, and, you could put me down as executive producer.
48:25
Alright. Next. Back. Basic to Baller. Okay. What is this?
48:30
I recently met somebody. I'm gonna do a separate episode of this, but I recently met somebody who was completely,
48:37
like middle class or a little lower middle class. I didn't have any money.
48:41
All their all their tastes were that of a basic person. Right? They
48:46
they didn't shop at Whole Foods. They shopped at Kroger. Right? They didn't,
48:49
they didn't eat, like, fancy stuff. They ate, you know, like McDonald's and stuff like that. They, they didn't drive a fancy car. They drove, like, a Camry. And, like, okay. So that was their, like, taste buds. So I thought What if you had a show where you just give a really basic person?
49:04
Fuck you money, and they get to go bowl out, and you get to see their reaction because already
49:09
shows where people ball out,
49:11
like, like, you know, whether it's, like, kind of, like, a million dollar listing or it's, like,
49:16
selling sunset or it's like Kardashians. It's like it's nice to see the lifestyles of the rich and famous. People like that. But those people also there's that genre of lifestyles of the rich and famous from people who are already rich and famous and sort of like, you know, snobby and and materialistic. Okay. That already exists. What about some what if you transformed somebody? You gave them the Cinderella treatment. They went from the, you know, the bottom to the top suddenly
49:41
And they're now just discovering all these things for the first time.
49:45
Hilarity and Susan. Okay. That's my second. Let me make a let me put a twist on it. Actually think that you could do this or someone listening could actually do this immediately via a YouTube series. So in two thousand five, there was a documentary called reversal of fortune It was on showtime. It was amazing. And the question was, what would a homeless person do if they were given a hundred thousand dollars? And so they found this homeless guy. They gave him a hundred thousand dollars. And they show him going to like a hotel for the first time and sleeping in a bed for the first time. And he's like, I don't like this. And he sleeps on the floor of the hotel because he's like, it's not comfortable sleeping on this bed. And they give him a hundred thousand dollars, and it ends
50:20
not good. So he spends all of his money on women. He buys, a thirty five thousand dollar truck is, like, thirty five thousand of the hundred grand, and basically blows through all the money. And he does get a job, but he, like, All the money is gone on basically partying
50:36
and, at the end of the movie, he's only got five grand left, and he's sleeping at his sister's house.
50:41
But Okay. I actually think it's not great for him, dude. But sounds like great TV to me.
50:45
It was great TV. I was watching it the whole time. So,
50:48
I think what could be it what what what you should do is just get a hundred thousand dollars and do a YouTube series on this. You I think you can make your money back and add revenue. I
50:57
think I think if you did it with a homeless person, you might get some blowback now, so you know Yeah. Not with a homeless person, but, like, you know, like, what what would happen if, like, you know, a a someone who's in need or doesn't have much is given a given a lot. Yeah. And I think it kinda needs to be temporary, like,
51:12
you know, so, you know, with, like, my ride, you know, exhibit shows up at the door, and then, like, your life just sort of changes overnight,
51:18
or, like, you know, wife swap or whatever, where it's a very short period of it's like a month or something like that. I think you need to let them ball out and then let them return back to reality.
51:28
And and you see that that sort of the yoyo of emotions between them. Okay. So that's my my second one. Okay. Third one. Very easy show.
51:36
I just need to show that's background noise. Are you a background noise kind of guy? Do you just have something on it just feels better to have something on?
51:45
In our when we had a physical office, we had a we had white noise machines throughout the office. And I enjoyed that. But babies to sleep. Oh, yeah.
51:53
It was so you could have, like, hard com like, if you wanted to have a conversation in a conference room and for it not to bleed through the wall, Right.
52:00
And it was for, like newsletter conversations?
52:03
Yes. Or, like, when you have, like, an open office plan, you put it in, like, pods of desks, So then, like, the people eating lunch don't bother you. Now I keep the fan on it. Well, you you're also, like, a music video guy. Right? I remember we were at your house. You were just throwing up, like, on Apple TV, like, a bunch of music videos.
52:17
Have music videos playing, throughout the day. Yeah. Okay. So that's the behavior I'm talking about.
52:22
I think that Netflix does not Does anyone else do that? You don't do that. You don't have music. I don't personally do that, but my wife, she'll always put, like, friends on. I'm like, dude, you're watching friends. And she's like, no, I'm not, like, I'm not watching why do you have it on? I can can I turn it off? No. No. No. I like I like having it on.
52:37
And it's like, yeah. She doesn't like if there's, like, kind of, like, an empty home feeling and also it's this comfort
52:43
safety blanket where it's like I already seen all the episodes. And this is why the office and friends are such valuable catalogs because
52:50
People just put them on, and they can only pay ten percent or twenty percent attention to it, and eighty percent can be on the thing they're trying to do. And they can just glance up and, you know, see certain parts, but then they just don't it's a low maintenance show. And when you go on Netflix today,
53:05
so much of it is high maintenance attention.
53:08
It's like, oh, here's this intense story about this bank heist and that's great when you want, like, a Friday night intense drama.
53:16
But I think they're underserving the background noise. And I also learned this at Twitch because
53:21
when I was at Twitch,
53:22
We looked at some of the data, about the usage data, and somebody was pointing out, like, oh, yeah, like, x percent. I can't say the exact percent, but, like, a significant percent
53:33
of the viewing time is, when it's not the tab that's in the forefront on people's computer.
53:39
And I was like, oh, so we should just, like, throw that out. Right? Like, They're not even watching. They just, like, accidentally left it open. And I was like, why is this such a high percentage? Is do we have some bug that, like, it stays open in the background in some weird way? They're like, no. Is actually the use it might, like, all the developers, like, what are you talking about? The developers who actually, like, use Twitch all the time. They're like, this is how I use Twitch all the time. Like, I'm coding. I just have it on in the back. Just listening to it. Like, you're listening to somebody play video games. Like, if there's one thing weirder than watching somebody play video games, it's listening to somebody play video games. Like, no, I just like it as, like, ongoing background stream. It's kind of my favorite streamer, and I don't really need to pay attention to it, but I'll hop in if something if I hear something cool happening. I was like, holy shit. So there's this
54:16
big genre of background entertainment that I think you if you specifically tried to make in make background entertainment, you could create some really successful franchises.
54:27
So can I can I can I tell you something that validates us? So you know chive chive dot com?
54:32
I think it's just like a news website or something. I don't really know much about it. A little bit. It's like basically bar stool, but a slightly different demographic, but mostly the same.
54:41
And they created this thing called Chive TV. And so what they did was they, would, you know, they're based in Austin. They basically gave a little Amazon fire stick to a bunch of bars in Austin,
54:54
and they said, you could have this stick for free. And on this stick is basically we're gonna put loads and loads of different clips of basically, like, America's funny some videos. Basically guys getting hit the balls and, like, funny bar stuff that you don't actually need any sound to understand or to get, like, pleasure from. And so it was, like, silly stunts, guys jumping off skyscrapers and, like, skydiving and stuff. And they eventually
55:16
spun this off, and they created this business called misfhere. And this was making tens of millions of dollars in revenue pre pandemic, I believe. They raised tens of millions of dollars at, like, a two hundred million dollar valuation, and they would give these these
55:28
these,
55:29
firesticks
55:30
to, like, loads of different people, and then eventually you could just download this app, and they would fulfill the, put content in the pipe and then put ads on it. And that's how they made all their money and they go, look advertisers, you're reaching all of these bars. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's bars is a great one. Right? That's, like, perfect background, background entertainment.
55:47
Alright. So those are my three TV show pitch ideas, half baked ideas.
55:51
Do you have any ideas as there show that you think could exist or would exist or should exist? I know I'm putting you on the spot here.
55:58
No. But let both so One that has caught my eye, YouTube,
56:02
on YouTube, CNBC is doing something that I think is actually amazing. It's called millennial money, stupid name, and the branding's really dumb. But what they do is they convince us.
56:11
No. The the guy, the idea is cool though. My friend Steve was on it the other day. They convince these people, and they say, like, and the titles are, like, here's how we live on a million dollars a year in Silicon Valley. Here's how we live on forty dollars. Here's how we live on a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And I've also seen Kevin leery reacts to them. Have you seen this? That's what they the And that's also awesome.
56:31
I think it's a great series. I think they're missing the mark, though, but even though they're missing the mark, it's still quite good. And so I've always thought that, for
56:40
different stuff. I was like, what you what you should do is get you could do it one of two ways.
56:45
I've always thought what you could do is you could maybe have a podcast or get actors, and they, like, I bet you if I sent out a survey,
56:53
and I've done this before. We did this at the hustle. We sent out a survey, we posted on hacker news, and we got, like,
56:59
three thousand people to tell us how much money they have in their checking account, how much they have in investable assets, how much they spend at each month, and then just, like, a comment box. And they, like, leave comments.
57:08
And if you search, like, the Hussle founder bank account, it'll, like, we we did an article on it, and people would give us all their information. And it was all anonymous, though, and it was and and and it was pretty great. And I always thought it would be interesting to where we can do a podcast where I just ask these people questions, and then I'll hire a voice actor just to read them. Right. Right. Right. Right. I like that. I also really like that survey kind of idea because if people people are very willing to share because they've no no cost them. It's anonymized. It's, you know, it's not being
57:37
publicly shared that it's their their information.
57:39
But people really benefit from
57:42
seeing what the aggregate is doing. So we talked about this with salaries with levels dot FYI, as well as, somebody heard the thing for levels, and then they made it for do do you know about the story? Someone heard our podcast by levels. They made it for doctors. Doctors. And then it got acquired by levels. And so they now work at Oh, it got acquired. They got acquired. They got acquired maybe. It's better way phrase it. Like, those guys now are like, you know, like, doing their thing at levels.
58:06
He's like, dude, thanks for, like, that idea. It led me to, like, a It got me off the path I was on. I built something cool. I got to learn from that, and then I got a sweet opportunity at levels through that.
58:17
So but but there's another one that's going viral right now that's, like, I think a hundred and seventy five thousand tech workers have put their stuff into this spreadsheet.
58:26
Yeah. I've seen that. What's that called? It's literally just a Google. It's like it's broken because it it has too many rows now.
58:32
Like, nobody can, like, use it. They, like, they they're, like, asking for Excel experts to, like, help them, you know, like, format this so that they they don't lose the data, but, like, people can still put their stuff in. I saw that. They're basically doing it because they wanna end,
58:46
like,
58:46
like, maybe if you're a minority or something at Facebook, you're like, I don't know if I'm fucked here. Can everyone please enter their salary anonymously? So I know, like, is this fair, not fair? Yeah. And that's how it got started. And so people were, like, rallying behind and and it went viral. I saw it. That was pretty cool. Yeah.
59:03
Alright. That's all I got for today. I got a couple other ideas about my save them.
59:08
Alright. I think that was a good one.
59:10
Benjamin, what do you, what do you think of this one?
59:15
Give give it a grade. This was an a.
59:19
This was an a minus.
59:24
Okay. Walk me through that. It was an a. It was an a. It was an a because it was good top to bottom. Like, all of it was good.
59:32
And then I decided to add the minus at the end because it was missing,
59:36
like a hose water sam moment. Like, I didn't have anything that I was like
59:41
rolling on the floor laughing or anything like that. So I I docked it to a minus.
59:45
Dude, it's because
59:47
my freaking camera's screwing up. It it knocked me off my flow so much. I can't stand it.
59:54
Apparently,
59:55
so I did so I some people say we're funny, which shocks me. And, like, the other day, Noah was, like, you have to take notes about reading a book. And I'm, like, dude, I just read a book about, like, the navy seals, am I supposed to take notes about how, like, Bin Laden was shot in the head?
01:00:10
And, like, apparently, people wrote in the comments they like when we say dumb stuff like that. And that shocks me.
01:00:17
You know, people say they listen, I'm like, I'm like, really?
01:00:21
So I don't know if you're just doing that thing where it's like fake fake humble, like,
01:00:25
God, shot. I didn't know that guy. Like, because No. I don't like I think it's funny. I think you're funny.
01:00:31
I think you're funny as a group, I would say we're, like, mildly funny, but I wouldn't say funny is an attribute that I would, like, give
01:00:39
this show. I think it's funny.
01:00:42
And I think you're way funnier also. I I even texted you this because you would you would sent me something that was so funny. And I was like, dude, you're funny.
01:00:51
No. You said a left handed compliment. You're like, I don't think a lot of people understand this, but you're pretty funny. Like, I made a joke the other day. Someone posted a picture with them when their arm or it's just like a headshot of them with Apollo Anton ono, the ice skater. And I was like, I don't know who that is. It's always that's Apollo Anton no. I'm like, oh, sorry. I didn't recognize him without a skate song. Yeah. Yeah. There's like a little comment like that. And no one laughed at it. And I was like, guys, that's hilarious. That was funny. That was funny. I I should've given you a laugh because that was that was a good one.
01:01:17
And, yeah, so I think we're funny. You have a your blunt, which is that's funny in itself. Right? You just You just say something
01:01:25
and, you don't hedge, which is, like, makes it even funnier because everybody fucking hedges
01:01:30
nowadays. So you don't hedge or apologize, which is hilarious.
01:01:34
And,
01:01:35
and then you have some good, like, kind of phrases or one liners that hit.
01:01:39
Well, I'll take it. So Ben, a minus, but we'll try to get some hose water stuff. Yeah. But people are still com people tweet at me and call
01:01:46
me water. I love it.
01:01:50
Alright. We're out of here.
00:00 01:02:08