A few $30k+/month startup ideas from the most manic/genius founder you've never heard of

I’m joined by Cody Schneider, Co-founder of Swell AI, to jam on several business ideas and opportunities: a Cricut subscription service, Chrome extensions that can generate $30k/month, Uber trivia games, and so much more.

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Episode Timestamps

00:00 First business idea: Cricut Subscriptions & Materials
19:30 Second business idea: Paid Chrome extensions
24:40 Cody’s framework for building a profitable business
37:20 Third business idea: AI memo writing for startups
41:50 Fourth business idea: Niche Podcasts
59:25 Fifth business idea: Play Octopus for Uber

Creators & Guests

Host

GREG ISENBERG

I build internet communities and products for them. CEO: @latecheckoutplz, we're behind companies like @youneedarobot @boringmarketer @dispatchdesign etc.

What is The Startup Ideas Podcast?

This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).

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Speaker A [00:00:00]:
The best companies are good. Memo writer. Imagine every Friday, and you called it, like, recap, like all hands recap. And, like, you just interviewed the heads of [e-mail]. And, like, you could do this in, like, riverside or Zoom. And then you take that, create a transcript, have AI list the key insights, and then put that in public within the Slack channel. Like, as a CEO, like, hell yeah, I would pay for that. I want to know what everybody's doing and what's happening, right? If you're telling me that I can sit down on, like, my Saturday morning with my coffee and I can listen to the recap from every order, I think you could easily sell that for five k plus a month.

Speaker B [00:00:40]:
Cody Schneider. Good to see you.

Speaker A [00:00:43]:
What's up, man? How you doing?

Speaker B [00:00:46]:
I feel like everyone has a business crush, and you've been my business crush lately, dude.

Speaker A [00:00:51]:
I don't know how. I'm like a nobody that's just on the come up.

Speaker B [00:00:54]:
So it's because your ideas are, are too good. You've got ideas.

Speaker A [00:01:02]:
I appreciate it. I'm just out here, you know, grabbing at strings, hoping one pulls all the way.

Speaker B [00:01:07]:
So, anyway, no, for real. Like, I think you've been putting out some, some really good ideas out there on the Internet. And I was like, this guy, this guy's one of us. He's an idea junkie. And so I don't. I don't want to talk about. I don't want to talk about the weather. I don't want to talk about politics.

Speaker B [00:01:26]:
I don't want to talk about OpenAI this and Sam Altman that. I don't care. I just want to talk. I just want to extract as many multimillion dollar ideas from you during this session as possible.

Speaker A [00:01:39]:
Let's do it. Where do you want to start? I know I shared a sheet. We can go anywhere, but you shared a sheet.

Speaker B [00:01:45]:
Usually I ask for people to bring three startup ideas. No, of course you're not going to give me three startup ideas. You gave me, like, 25, which were all, all amazing. Someone's going to listen to this episode and do, like, a bunch of your ideas and make many millions of dollars. So I hope so.

Speaker A [00:02:02]:
Man, I wish I had more time. I want to do every one of these and everyone or most of them on that list. We've done, like, betas of, or just like, alpha versions and, like, tested to see if it would work and validated them. And so it's just like, you know, they're sitting in the chamber. It's like the next thing I want to do, but anyway that's the, that's the dream with all of it.

Speaker B [00:02:21]:
So where do you want to start?

Speaker A [00:02:23]:
I want to start. I'm obsessed with cricket. I called it cry cup for forever. I think this will be a good point to kind of because there's three of them, they're all related to this. This has been talked about in public some, but I don't think people understand how big this market is and how like ravenous they are for this type of stuff. So maybe we go from there and we can kind of rattle through those three first.

Speaker B [00:02:48]:
Lets rock.

Speaker A [00:02:49]:
Cool. All right, so the first idea is I want to start with the selling subscription service to unlimited designs for cricket. Cricket, for people that dont know, is a tabletop CNC machine that crafters use. It is huge market share. Its one of these companies thats in the billions that nobody knows about. Basically how they make money is its kind of like a printer company, right? Where it's like they sell this like high ticket item and it's. And then they basically sell materials to these same people over and over again. So the test that I ran was, I was like, you know what, I wonder if I can get AI to basically make all of these graphic designs.

Speaker A [00:03:29]:
Like that are svgs and these are the files that they use on these machines. And so did that, and then I was like, cool, so like let's just go find how many different keyword phrases that are related to like cricket files or SVG files. So you go on like Etsy. There's like millions of these shops that sell these types of things, right? And so anyway we're this kind of evolved into. I was like, okay, we could basically, at scale with AI, make these SVG files based off of target keywords that people are already searching. We know there's an audience that already like buys these or wants these, so now how do we get this in front of them? So if you go on Facebook, you can target people that have an interest in cricket, the website. So we ran ads to them just to a Shopify store and I created a bundle of svgs. It was like, I think 20 different svgs that were all like horse related, right? Like floral horse SVG and like floral horse head SVg.

Speaker A [00:04:23]:
Like all these different, you know, variations of it. We were getting less than $1 downloads of this thing. So like imagine you want to make a list of 10,000 customers, like you just go and basically spend like five grand and suddenly you have an email list to zero to one this, then what you sell to them, and there's already companies that are doing this that are huge. One of them is called Creative Fabrica. They're doing I think around like 30 million a year. They're funded. It's ridiculous. It's some european company that again, nobody has ever heard of.

Speaker A [00:04:50]:
But what they do is they sell an unlimited subscription to the svgs that are on the site. So then it's a recurring revenue. So what you get them in the door with is this free package and then just put them in a drip email nurture. That's basically like one unlimited svgs. You can create this. So why this opportunity exists now, and why it's easier than it was previously, is because you can make all of this different files types at scale with AI, and you couldn't do that previously. So like five years ago, if you wanted to do this, you'd have an offshore team of thousands of graphic designers that would be just yeeting these out into existence and then putting them on your site. Now you can do that same thing with like these tools, like background removing tools, and then just like upscaling, like tools.

Speaker A [00:05:36]:
And then you basically like take that upscaled black and white file, turn it into an SVG. Like that whole thing that I just described, there's APIs that exist for every single one of those. So like, again, when we made that little bundle that was like these 20 different things that what we did is like they generated in discord, we like we had a bot download them, we then had a GitHub repo upscale them. We then hit an API to remove background. We then hit an API to turn it into an SVG. And that package was all created with no human intervention. All we did was just provide the target keywords that we already knew that people were searching for. So basically you could zero to one this marketplace overnight, get your initial customers, and then the long term play with this is you then go and you build like hundreds of thousands of these landing pages on your marketplace and get those to rank organically for SEO, which creates more inbound.

Speaker A [00:06:26]:
You give them like, you know, when they sign up, they get one free bundle download or something, and then you upsell them again into that subscription. And when you think about the size of this market, like this is easily a $10 million a year company. Like, you could do this tomorrow, like, I want to do this so bad. But again, it's just like one of these things that we just don't have time for. So anyways, happy to dive deeper on any of that but yeah, so I.

Speaker B [00:06:47]:
Don'T know if I live under a rock, but I had never heard of cricket.

Speaker A [00:06:52]:
It was on MFM at one point, I think it was like two years ago. And I was just laughing to myself when they mentioned it because, like, so I've been selling in the print on demand space since like 2010. Right. So really early in that made a bunch of money in it, lost even more money in it because I had no idea what I was doing early on and like, how to build brand and actually like, do it well. But yeah, so that, that's like kind of why I know this exists. And I, this probably was like, into, you know, during like the late days of the pandemic that they brought this up on one of the shows. And again, we know that this space exists because there's so many people, like, when you look at Etsy, majority of their sellers are these people that own these machines, right? And so what they're selling on Etsy and like, driving all their revenue for Etsy is literally just like custom tumblr mugs, but they're building this with like, basically like these SVG files and then whatever materials that they're buying and actually using on the printer to like, you know, make these die cuts or, you know, whatever it is that they do that they add to these customized products. So.

Speaker B [00:07:56]:
And if you were going to build an mvp of this, how much money do you think it would require?

Speaker A [00:08:03]:
I think you could get this off the ground for like ten grand. Like 100%. Like ten grand and the five grand in ad spend. Like, you just use like, Shopify already has like a subscription feature and I would just use like, off the shelf tools. Long term, it would like, you'd hit limitations with the amount of collections and like landing pages you could build on Shopify. I say that, but, like, there's also this like, thing you can do with prop Shopify just, we could go into, this is another company that's on the list, so we can come back to this. But Shopify just released this ability to, like, you can basically make these subfolders. And then we figured out how to use cloudflare to like, bulk create collection pages.

Speaker A [00:08:41]:
So traditionally Shopify has an API rate limit. That's not great if you have a ton of skus. So say you have 100,000 skus and you want to make 10 million landing pages for long tail keywords related to the skus on your platform. You just couldn't do this. We basically figured out how to do this with the technology. This cloud fair and what Shopify offers now, technology. But the kicker was that we could have AI write SEO content based off of those keyword phrases. So again, when you're saying like SVG horse bundle, it could write all of the, all the content and that would go on that page.

Speaker A [00:09:14]:
So again, when you look at like these huge marketplaces, like houzz.com as an example, like how do they actually make money? It's because they have millions of landing pages that all rank for all of these keyword phrases. And they're basically just brokering traffic. Like that's actually what the business is when you look at a marketplace. Like how marketplaces actually make money is they broker traffic for transactions and then they make even more money off the ads that they're selling on the platform. Like if you look at the like P and L of an Amazon as an example, like where they actually make revenue is not the marketplace fees, it's on people bidding on these specific items. And the reason for that is like there's only, so there's a floor on how low you can go on product costs, right? And like the margin you can squeeze out of that. But there's no ceiling on ad spend that people can go, right? So it's like they can go up infinitely. And you see this already in Google.

Speaker A [00:10:02]:
Or just like, like for example, if you look at the lawyer space, some CPC's depending, like if you look at like DUI lawyer, uh, Denver, right? Like the CPC on, it's like $110, right? Crazy. Absolutely crazy. But when you look at that, like the value, like if they get, if they close one of those, that's like a 15k deal for that lawyer. So of course it's like that, right? It basically can go up infinitely as high as the market can sustain it, but you can only, you can't decrease the cost. Like the cost has a floor. So anyways, to get back to this, this idea of like how cheaply you could do it, I think that you could probably get this off the ground for like ten grand. And then it's just like you'd have to have like a little bit of technical knowledge to kind of like piece together all this. But again, our MVP was like a human put in like, you know, something into a discord channel downloaded and then just hit these public like API endpoints.

Speaker A [00:10:51]:
Like it's not, I mean, a Python script could do that whole thing, right?

Speaker B [00:10:54]:
So, so your marketplace point, I just want to talk about that for a second because I think it's really, really smart. So the best marketplaces to me are really niche with high intent. So yes, Amazon has a lot of intent, but it's not, which is amazing. Like you're in the buying mood, you want to make a purchase and a lot of people buy on Amazon, but at the end of the day it's pretty horizontal. Whereas this, you know, your idea here, it's like a pretty specific type of person. And just like scanning YouTube right now, it seems like a lot of women moms, 100%. Yeah. So moms seem to be really into it.

Speaker B [00:11:33]:
I was chatting with a buddy today who's building a marketplace for elder care. Like, you know, your parents are getting older, they need someone to come in house, like, yeah, assisted living, like in your house. So he's building a marketplace around that. Super smart because not only are they gonna make money on the transaction of just like bringing you to connect you with this elder care person, but now all of a sudden you can sell them like 500 other things because you know where they are in their life cycle.

Speaker A [00:12:06]:
Yes, exactly. Also they're like typically historically like a high net worth individual because they've accumulated that wealth over their like whole lifespan. Right, right. I want to kind of pull out a piece of this as well. On the marketplace side, I think that right now every marketplace could be disrupted with AI tools, right? So like you have these huge players like Amazon. I think you could carve out these subsets like for every, all these different niches that exist within these large marketplaces. And like historically, like you'd have an engineering team of 1000 people, they would be working on this massive marketplace. And it's like, yo, we just, again, like in our test that we did, so my friend has this shop, she has like 10,000 skus.

Speaker A [00:12:48]:
And so we're like, all right, this, that shopify thing I was talking about, let's just like throw up 100,000 landing pages and see what happens. And we'll do some like auto indexing on the back, just like submitting to Google over and over again. So like overnight increased her organic traffic by 10% and increased organic impressions by like about 20%. So I mean, again, super small tests, it was only like over a six month period validated the idea. But, but I'm just thinking about that for like any subs like custom koozies or like any of these kind of weird niche spaces, you could basically build out these sites now for so cheap of cost. I think that there's this huge opportunity for founders to just go and do these things if they want to create like, a really powerful cash flowing business. And, like, this is actually where I see the opportunity in programmatic SEO. Like, everybody's like, you know, I'm gonna write 100,000 blog posts with AI from, like, it's general knowledge.

Speaker A [00:13:41]:
Like, all right, that's kind of cool. But, like, what if I do, like, 10 million product landing pages on a website, right? And, like, all it's selling is print on demand products. You're at that scale. Like, you're talking about as many, like, pages as an Etsy and then building, like, okay, how do I build links to this to actually get this to rank? It's like, just reach out to, like, mommy bloggers and be like, do you want a free product off this? Like, pick one of these, I'll send it to you. Do a post on your site, and that just costs you $8 to build a link that has a da of 50. That's the economics of the business here from a marketing standpoint.

Speaker B [00:14:20]:
I was going to say mic drop, but I wouldn't want you to drop your mic.

Speaker A [00:14:23]:
You are. That's the ideal one with cricket, the next idea is selling the materials to those people. So again, how cricket is a billion dollar company is. They're actually, they're really. I would look at them as like, just what printer ink is to HP. That's what. Like, you know, all of this materials are to these cricket sellers. So when I'm talking about materials, like, think of like, tinsel, foil and like, you know, it's almost just like these pieces of paper that they lay out on this thing and it cuts it out of it.

Speaker A [00:14:58]:
Right. Um, but there's all these different materials that you could do. So you could use the same idea, but instead of having it be a subscription marketplace, you do that same top of funnel. So it's like, offer some SVG bundle to them. That's basically like that. You can get those downloads. Again, all I did was I ran Facebook ads with a conversion event for, like, to shopify to a Shopify store, right? I'm using the base theme, like, the base theme that Shopify provides for this test. And we were getting like, less than dollar emails, right? Like, the hustle was built off of this exact strategy.

Speaker A [00:15:29]:
Like, they are sold to HubSpot for 40 million, and like, morning Brew was built off of this exact strategy. All I'm talking about is using it in this different space, in this ecom space. But you could do. So you get those emails and then you go and you sell them these materials. All this could be sourced from like, you know, China, you just go and fucking look on like Alibaba, et cetera. Find all of these, find the most high intent or the most repeat purchasers. You could go use like a jungle scout or like any of these tools that help you do like product analytics on these marketplaces, find the most popular materials and then just like have a way cheaper cost. And it's just a margins game at that point.

Speaker A [00:16:07]:
The challenge with that is like it's inventory management, it's a physical thing. But like, again, if they're, if it's a repeat purchase that this person is making, your cost to acquire them is less than a dollar. And, you know, the lifetime of that customer is probably gonna be in the, you know, the thousands number. Because if you look at some of the prices on these, it's like $50 for a roll of this. You know, it's basically like wrapping paper. Like you're selling them wrapping paper and like that is what you're shipping to them. Right? So, like when you think about the value of that customer over time. Okay, so to take a step back, why, why did native deodorant, like, why, how did DDC d two c companies, like actually make money? Um, it's not when it's a transactional purchase, it's when we know that there's going to be repeat purchases that occur is a consumable product, right? So by selling this like Tinsel or whatever it is that you're selling to these cricket enthusiasts, like, you're selling a consumable product.

Speaker A [00:16:58]:
So you know they're going to come back for that and then it's just like run deals on a weekly basis. Because a lot of these people that I just like know personally, like my girlfriend's friends, they're like really into crafting and they have these things, they are like, you know, they'll get an email where it's like 50% off flash deal on, you know, this like cow, you know, design, whatever, tinsel. And for them, like, they'll just buy it. Cause it's kind of an impulse, impulse purchase at like $25, right? And they get a bundle or whatever it ends up being. They may never even touch it. They've got a closet full of it that they don't use, but they almost sit on top of it. Like just like how most, like crafting people, like, do they have, like, it's like quilting? It's the same idea. I I have all these different patterns I might like.

Speaker A [00:17:39]:
I'll come back to them and use them in the future. But I'm always kind of, like, scouting for the next material that I can, I can basically get to add to my library that I can go back to for that crafting project. So.

Speaker B [00:17:50]:
Yeah, and it feels like you're hitting on, like, a macro trend, which is just like, people don't want digital stuff anymore. Like, they want to do things like quilting, they want to do things like crafting, they want to do 100%, like, they want to touch, feel, and it's like a back to basics kind of. So there's just. It feels like there's just, like, a bunch of old things like that people used to do in the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, that now you can be like, oh, wait, let's go build something in that space.

Speaker A [00:18:15]:
100%. I mean, I might. We started, we call it low power hour. We started doing this, like, we try to do it daily. It doesn't happen, but basically it's like, no screens is the idea. So it's like we listened to vinyl and, like, maybe, like, got a typewriter, maybe I'll write on that. And, like, we just kind of hang out, like my girlfriend and I and our dog and just like, you know, kick it, right? And I think that that is, like, you know, again, part of this macro trend that's happening. Like, people are trying to do more of this and be.

Speaker A [00:18:41]:
Have this, like, dedicated time for, like, slowness. Right. Um, so, yeah, I think that there's probably, like, a ton of businesses in that space you could build as well, like, selling those types of products. Um, one I saw recently that was super cool was, uh, it was basically like an led, kind of like a larger screen of whatever the album cover was. So it syncs up to your Spotify and it, like, has that, like, there in your room. So, like, you know when you go to a vinyl listening bar and they, like, put up that, like, the vinyl that's playing currently, it's that same idea, but it kind of, like, creates this, like, aesthetic within your space. I feel like that's, like, kind of a product that's in this category or, you know, it's sort of, like, related that you could, you could spin up and, like, capitalize on this, like, larger trend.

Speaker B [00:19:22]:
I like it. Take a sip, literally, and tell me what's next.

Speaker A [00:19:30]:
I want to talk Chrome extensions. Cause, like, I am obsessed with them. So to start, have you heard of email extractor? Go Google email extractor. Right now, this keyword gets like 250,000 searches a month. And the top of that page, you're going to see this Chrome extension that's literally named email extractor.

Speaker B [00:19:49]:
Yep.

Speaker A [00:19:50]:
And it has 300,000 users and it just has a free tier and then has a paid tier. I think the paid tier is like ten or $15. Right. So let's just do some, you know, envelope math with this. Like you got 300,000 users, say 5% turn into customers. That's kind of like an average that we'll see what. We could even go down to 1%. We'll say 5%.

Speaker A [00:20:07]:
We'll do 1% just to kind of hit it. So 1% of those you got 30. What is that? That's 3000 users paying you $10 a month. Like that's thirty k. I think it's doing way more than that. Like just based off of I own some of these tools. Like I think he's probably doing around 250 to 300,000 a month with this, this thing. And like this is one of like many of tools that you could build and all they do is just like extract data from a larger like place, basically.

Speaker A [00:20:38]:
So like another great example for this is like a Shopify spy tool, right? So like what this does is it's for dropshippers to basically see what other like Shopify stores, their best sellers are. So how this works is Shopify has this like bestseller category that's pre built into the store. Most shops don't turn this off because it's you. The problem with it is like you want people to be able to use that like automated category like that. That's like a very traffic to place. But what this allows for companies to do is basically like, or competitors to do is you can do competitor analysis on these other companies. Again, this, this, the one that I'm referencing. I think it's Shopify Dash spy.com probably I would guess does about 50,000 a month in revenue.

Speaker A [00:21:24]:
And it's you know, a one person team. They just rank for that keyword. So the whole strategy here is like find something related to like data scraping or like some type of like extraction from a web page that they're going on. Because like most of the time when people think chrome extensions, they immediately go to like honey or like any of the, you know, or Grammarly these massive tools. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like what is a job to be done that's like super small, like getting data out of Redfin as an example, right? Because they don't have an API and so buildings a tool that's like that. And then you go and you buy like the exact match domain name for that target keyword. You go, you build like 30 links to it and you'll get it to rank page one.

Speaker A [00:22:08]:
We've like done this already. And then that turns into your top of funnel. They sign up, you have a free tier, then you have some type of usage where it's like bump pricing based off of usage and you put them into an email nurture to get them to convert. And again, like, I have a tool that's in this space that like we, I've owned for eight years. And like, all it does is extract data, like from another site. And like, that is, it's paid my rent, right? So, like, now scale that up. Build 20 of these, build 50 of these. And like, with these tools, it's not like the product scope is huge, so they don't break.

Speaker A [00:22:44]:
Like, the only time it breaks is like if the website changes. And if the website changes, it's not a massive thing. Like, you've already got this code built. It's like if I was a developer and like an engineer and I was trying to figure out, okay, what's my first product? And like, how can I, like, build this portfolio company? This is like, this is where I would spend all of my time. Um, and again, it's like one of these things where like we're, we're building like small. Like I, you know, I think I have three or four of these now, um, that are kind of in this space. Uh, but like, the goal is like, get 50 of these, 100 of these, and if they're all doing, you know, even ten grand a month, like, that's a great little, like, holding company that you just created. And it's not crazy technical.

Speaker A [00:23:22]:
Like, this is not a hard lift. Like he's extra, he's looking for, like, he's basically rejecting emails out of a website and he's like, that is what he's making money off of with the email extractor tool.

Speaker B [00:23:33]:
So the craziest thing about. The craziest thing about the email extractor tool to me is I googled on the actual Chrome store, you can find the address of the person who built it. So I googled the address and what comes up is actually a e bike store, like electronic bike store based in Madrid. And I feel like it's just a bike shop that kind of just stumbled upon this, created a small little app, thousand percent, literally called it email extractor. Like the most basic of names, which, by the way, worked in their advantage, like, just call it what it is.

Speaker A [00:24:16]:
100% for small tools. Call it what it is, be as, like, specific as possible, and, like, what you'll find. And again, it just, like, these are, these are my favorite businesses because, like, there's no customer service. Like, there's no, like, product scope increase. You have, like very, it's. It's very seldom that they break. They just run in the background and like, cash comes in. We get a check every month.

Speaker A [00:24:39]:
We don't have to think about it. Like, it's the, you know, it's the dream. And this is what every, you know, everybody that's built card companies. Like, this is the dream. Like, like, what's, you know, with the current thing I'm building swell AI. Like, it's a platform. Like, there's so much that comes with that. Like, we have to, like, it's just the scope of the business is so more, so much more complex than, yo, this thing.

Speaker A [00:24:59]:
Like, it finds emails on the page that you're currently on and you can download it as a CSV. That is its functionality. And it's probably made this guy a millionaire, this bike shop owner that's in Madrid.

Speaker B [00:25:11]:
Exactly. I love it. And God bless your soul for doing a platform. But it's fun. It's actually fun doing what you're, like, what you're doing is super fun. Super fun. Like, on the fun scale. Like, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A [00:25:23]:
As a founder, it's super fun. And, like, it's also just like every day I wake up and it's a puzzle, right? Cause it's like, we're still super early. We're like a year and a half old. And so it's like trying to figure out, okay, where does this fit in? Like, the mind of people. Like, where is the actual opportunity? Like, we started out in podcasters. Podcasters have zero money. They're the worst people to sell to. There's all these companies that are raising money right now for like podcasting apps, like, all of these tools.

Speaker A [00:25:48]:
And I just am laughing in the background because there's just. I know, I know this industry. There's no way that you're going to build a billion dollar company in this space. Like, full stop. Just, that's not going to happen. So it's like, in particular, like, Jason Calacanis has invested in like three companies that are like exact competitors of us, and we're just laughing because it's like, how many tap bats can you get with this? It's not going to work. So where we see more of an opportunity now is like, okay, can we build the AI, content marketing, engineering. Cause then I can have b.

Speaker A [00:26:18]:
Two b teams sit on top of us, right? And that's a way, like, you know, I. We're starting to get traction with, like, people that do webinars. Cause they have these experts come in and they give these talks for like an hour and they're like, cool. Like, all right, we had, like five people attend it. What do we do with this now? And it's like, all right, we can make this, like, content production workflow for you. But again, it's like these things you would never, like intellectually. An email extractor is. And like, just as a founder, that's like, not a super fun or interesting business.

Speaker A [00:26:48]:
Like, I want to spend most of my mental energy on this more, like, you know, complex thing and then build these other businesses that just are kind of, like on autopilot running in the background that are way less mental energy. Like, sometimes those are the best businesses, right? It's like, there's days I dream about, it's like starting a window washing company. I think I could crush it. I think I could, like, I think I could build, like, a $10 million a year window washing company in, like, probably three years. Just, like, doing, like, only doing, like, local SEO. Like, it's so easy right now to do local SEO. It's the most ridiculous thing. So, you know, all of the, like, locksmith companies are the same companies, right? Oh, I didn't know if you.

Speaker A [00:27:28]:
Yeah, so if you call, if you call, like, for example, I'm in Denver. If you call any of the listings that are locksmith Denver, it's going to be routed to the same, like, company. It's like the same call center. And it's like, they all have different names, but all they're doing is just owning the entire front page of that local service, right? And so then what they do is like, homey shows up at your house. He's like, oh, yeah, it's in your garage. Like, this is $250, right? I locked my dog in our car the other day. This is like, exactly what happened. And I'm over here and I'm sitting, I'm like, so I'm like, who do you work for? And this is like, who I am.

Speaker A [00:28:00]:
I'm like, how does this function? Like, what is this like? And he's like, oh, yeah, I work for this guy, like, this company. And I'm like, okay, well, I called this company. He's like, oh, yeah. It's like, it's all the same, it's all the same company. Like, this one guy owns it, and it's like almost all of them in the US is like the same family. They, like, all know each other. It's like kind of how the patels own mattels. Anyways, I think you could like something that's like a dirt under the fingernails business that's physical.

Speaker A [00:28:24]:
The challenge with all this is like, it's like it's employee management. Like, my brother's in the medical space. And like, this, this is their biggest, like, bane of their existence. It's just, how do I keep employees happy? And, like, how do we get new employees in, especially now when, like, the average time that an employee spends at one of these locations is like 18 to 24 months. So it's, it's, you know, you're, it's. It's just super expensive to do that part of the business, even though it's like this cash printing type of company. So, yeah.

Speaker B [00:28:52]:
Quick ad break. Let me tell you about a business I invested in. It's called boringmarketing.com dot. So a few years ago, I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world. They were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google. And the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition. So for my own businesses, I wanted that. I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker B [00:29:22]:
I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses. I wanted to rank high in Google. That's why I like SEO, and that's why I use boringmarketing.com, and that's why I invested in it. They're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30 day sprint with a 100% money back guarantee. Who does that nowadays? So check it out. Highly recommend boringmarketing.com dot. Yeah, I think it's. I think, you know, the takeaway for me there is just like, choose your poison as an entrepreneur.

Speaker B [00:29:53]:
And, like, there's pros and cons to all, you know, everything. Everything has pros and cons. And that's why I love the holding company model is like, pick and choose the stuff that you're gonna, you know, you like. You know, I think about it, it's like, turns entrepreneurship into an all you can eat buffet. And it's like, do you want some pizza? You want some pasta? You want, maybe you want, like, some oysters? I don't know, but, like, pick. And the thing, you know, with buffets is you don't want to put everything on. You don't want to put oysters with pizza and, you know, steak or something. It's just too much on one plate.

Speaker B [00:30:29]:
You got to go one at a time. You know, that's a strategy to an all you can eat buffet.

Speaker A [00:30:34]:
Thousand percent. I mean, that's like, how I'm approaching this stuff, right? Like, it's different with the small things because it's like, oh, I can have an offshore team create a chrome extension for three grand in like three weeks, right? But if it's like, okay, we're building this platform, this is a big long term bet. And like, for that, it's like I'm, you know, that's where the focus is. As soon as it gets to a sustainable place, then it's like, oh, yeah, I can go back to the salad bar and maybe I'm just going to do like, you know, like all croutons with, like, dressing, right, and we'll call it a salad. But that, like, I. That won't happen until you can, like, you have to create stability with these other companies. And I think that's the thing that I see a lot of, and it depends on your, your goals, right? Like, my bet right now is like, I'm trying to build, like, a bigger company that can service b, two b enterprise, like, clients over the long term. Right? Ten year bet.

Speaker A [00:31:20]:
So that's happening there. And then there's all of these other, like, small things that are occurring, but there's probably a tipping point where it's like, swell gets to a place where it's like, okay, cool, like, it's now this, like, you know, self sustaining. It's growing consistently. We know that how to sell this to enterprise. We know, like, our go to market. And at that point, then it's like, I can kind of back out of this and let the system and process run itself and focus on that next thing. But it's, it's always, you know, this is the challenge with, I think every, every person that likes to start companies is like, you know, just shiny object syndrome. So, like, this to me is almost therapy.

Speaker A [00:31:52]:
Cause I get to put these out there and it's like, please, for the love of God, make these companies and then just tell me that you did so I can, like, you know, entrepreneur ride along and vicariously live for you. Like, that's half of why I love that. Like, the show pivot is so good, by the way. I think it's the best decision that's ever happened. Like, it is the most gangster business move I've seen so far in 2024. Like, I stand behind this because there's so many entrepreneurs, and all they want is like, it's like, it's junk food for, like, people that want to start businesses. You know, it's like hearing business ideas that they could go start. Like, why is that podcast? What is it? It's like side hustle basics or something.

Speaker A [00:32:29]:
Like, why is that one of the top entrepreneurship podcasts in the entire world? It's because, like, all he does is just give you ideas. Like, the 200 million people in the US that want to start a business, but, like, don't. They're the people that are listening to this. It's like, oh, I could do that. Oh, I could do that. And suddenly he has this massive audience that he gets demonetized because of it.

Speaker B [00:32:48]:
So, yeah, dude, in entrepreneurship, you don't often make a decision, and you're like, that was the right decision. And this. I was like, I made the decision right before I went to sleep. I woke up the next day sweating and just ready to get out of bed, and I was like, startup ideas podcast. Yes. That was a good decision.

Speaker A [00:33:14]:
100%. 100%. And I think, again, it hits such an awesome breath of people, right? Like, you could be a funded company, like a founder, and, like, this could be your junk food podcast, right? It's like you're focusing on, like, you know, building an AI tool that does UX design or whatever, but you can sit down and listen to some dude talk about creating a subscription company for, like, you know, cricket files, right? Like that. And to you, it's like, oh, like you. Because half of this, I think for people that like to build is like, it's just the puzzles. Like, I am uninterested with the operations of the business, right? Like, I want to figure out how. Like, I want to figure out all the puzzles. I want to write the documentation.

Speaker A [00:33:53]:
I want to get people operating on that process, and then I never want to think about it or touch it again unless there's, like, an issue that comes up that I have to solve. Right? And that's like, when we were. When I was at Rupa Health, like, that was like, our hiring criteria. Like, are these people's, like, are these people puzzle peoples? Like, in the. In the early state, like, in the early days of the company, it was like, are they puzzle people that can document their thing and, like, are they friendly? Like, if those. If those three things were like, yes, it was a lot. Like, we're like, okay, well, them, like, they're going to help us solve these issues, because when you get to scale as a company, there's a way different type of person that that's that person, and then that's like an operations person. And I think that that is, like, it's something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about is, like, you should.

Speaker A [00:34:35]:
You should focus on the thing that you're really good at. And it's way, way more of a commodity to be a good operations person than it is to be somebody that can, like, take an idea from non existent and, like, bend reality so that this thing now exists. Right? So focus on that thing that you're good at and then get people behind you that are the ops piece. I mean, and there's challenges with that, right? Like, how do you find people that are actually good at ops? I'm not saying that this is, like some, like, turnkey easy thing. It's more just, they're, they're way. They're way more common. Right? Like, just think about how many mbas that are out there that went, you know, worked at Deloitte. Just, like, find one of them and tell them to just, like, don't blow this up.

Speaker A [00:35:10]:
Like, I don't really care. Like, you don't have to be creative. Like, and that's another thing for startup founders, too. Sorry, I'm on a. I'm on a tear right now. So this cut me off at any point. But, like, I saw this happen so many times where they would, like, get to, like, 20 employees and they're like, all right, it's time to hire, like, a Deloitte MBA, right? And I'm like, yo, you're about to just, like, screw everything up. Because first thing they do is they try to turn everything into a system in a process.

Speaker A [00:35:33]:
Like, as soon as they enter in.

Speaker B [00:35:34]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:35:35]:
And they're. They try to create, like, here's. Here's these systems that like, it, like, approval processes and checks and balances and shit. And, like, yo, I'm over here. And, like, day by day, like, you know, I worked on the growth team when we were at root, like, day by day, we would discover things, and by the end of the day, like, we would have a new tactic and strategy that was out in public, right? And so, like, our measurement of success and, like, what we, like internally, like, we built a newsletter internally to, like, basically tell people what was happening. Like, the experiments that were happening over in marketing and growth so that we could get buy in from the organization, right? Cause, like, a lot of the times, it's invisible. It's like, oh, we just found this new way. Like, oh, if we do an event trigger deeper down in the funnel of like, the signup flow and we send that data back to Google rather than this initial form submission, we actually get better quality, like lead quality and a higher conversion rate on the people that our salespeople actually talk to and convince to use the platform.

Speaker A [00:36:28]:
But, like, you know, that's, nobody would ever know that it would exist unless you, like, talk about it. And so this is like this other thing that I learned from when you're, like, working. I worked in a marketing agency. It was like this, like, over communication of like, and also like this, like you're marketing to your client, right? Like when you sell ideas to people, like, you're marketing to them, like, where they are now and where they're going to be in the future. Like, that's actually like what an agency is doing. And you have to do that same thing when you're an employee. And when you do that, you get so much leverage, right? Like, we even, like, sat down and like my, my friend Kobe who's still there, we would just like ten minutes and just like, talk. Here's everything that kind of happened this week.

Speaker A [00:37:09]:
And we do that and we just put it in public in the internal Slack channel. And then, oh, it creates this clarity and visibility. There's all this movement that's happening and then there's this hype that builds around that as well. Like, what's going on in growth? What's going on in growth? Like that type of thing, right? So I think that that same idea can be applied to any part of an organization. Like if you're in CX or you're in, you know, like in the sales.org or any of these other places, you can create almost this, like internal newsletter within your company that's going to help create clarity for everybody else. And this is very important, especially when you get to that kind of like those, those breaking point numbers of companies, right? When you hit 30, 30 employees, things start to get weird because you can't know everybody in the organization. When you hit 100 employees, it's the same deal. And then, you know, it's basically that it's like the law of eight or whatever.

Speaker A [00:37:55]:
So it's like when you have two people, you only have to worry about you and their, like the relationship between you two. When there's three people, like, it's like a factorial where it's like increasing with every node that you add to the system. And so, as you know, you can think about this as you scale up. It's makes sense, right? Like, the best companies are good memo writers.

Speaker B [00:38:11]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:38:11]:
And that's. It's that same idea. But let's. Let's. Let's flip the switch a little bit. Like, what if it's just an internal podcast? Or what if it's a newsletter that end podcast that's like, here's, like, you know, here's the leadership of this or part of the organization. And, I mean, this is actually probably a company larger.

Speaker B [00:38:29]:
I was thinking, like, not a company, like, you know.

Speaker A [00:38:33]:
Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker B [00:38:34]:
You. Every company, Bennett, would benefit from this, like, over communication, understanding what other people are doing. Like, writing key takeaways and lessons learned. But the problem is, everyone is so busy doing their job, and everyone worked to their bones. But if there was a company that came in and imagine every Friday, and.

Speaker A [00:38:57]:
You called it, like, recap, right? Like, all hands recap or something. And, like, you just interviewed the heads of growth at that. Like, and, like, all of their, like, you know, their direct reports. Like, cool. What happened this week? And it was just like, you led the interview to uncover the interesting pieces. Record that. I mean, you could do this in, like, riverside or Zoom.

Speaker B [00:39:15]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:39:15]:
And then you take that and you just create a transcript, have AI list the key insights, put, like, you know, do some, like, light editing, and then put that in public within the slack channel. It's like, cool. Here's our weekly recap. Like, as a CEO, like, hell yeah, I would pay for that. I want to know what everybody's doing and what's happening, right? If you're telling me that I can sit down on, like, my Saturday morning with my coffee or even my Sunday with my coffee, and I can listen to the recap from every, like, every person, like, every within my organization or my sub.org. Like, and it takes me an hour of time to listen through those ten minutes, or even if they're five minute episodes. Like, that would provide so much value to me. I think you could easily sell that for five k plus a month to, like, startups that are getting to that.

Speaker A [00:39:58]:
That weird point.

Speaker B [00:39:59]:
So I think it can even be, like, just voice notes. Like, I would, you know, 100%. Yeah, just send me if it was even a slack bot. That was just super. Yeah, yeah, just a slack bot that, like, DM's me or teams bot, and it's just like, hey, hey, Greg. It's. You know, here's. There's.

Speaker B [00:40:16]:
There has to be a prompt. So would you learn this week? One key story, whatever prompt. So there come, you know, there's a bank of prompts that change. And maybe you can have totally as the CEO, you can. You can kind of play puppeteer, tailor that I want. You know, it was a really tough week this week. So, like, maybe let's do, like, wins for the week. And then.

Speaker A [00:40:37]:
Yeah, yeah. Everyone gets, like, how's the morale of your staff? Right? Like, we're down 10% that, like, week over week or something. How's everybody feeling? And then it's just like, okay, cool. Like, that bubbles up and you, you suddenly get this qualitative feedback. And I think that this is, like, actually where AI is the most effective. It's like taking unstructured data and structuring it. That's when the magic happens, right? Like, I don't care about generative AI from, like, nothing to something. It's way more interesting.

Speaker A [00:41:04]:
Like a headshot pro where it takes a person and it, like, turns them into, like, these, this, this, this output that I'm looking to get created or, like, with what we're doing at swell, where it's like, okay, we take a webinar and we turn it into a blog post that's in, like, your tone, style, and voice of your brand. That's way more interesting than just, like, having AI, right, based off its general knowledge or, like, having AI, you know, fabricate a person into existence, right?

Speaker B [00:41:29]:
So, damn, I knew we were going to come up with, like, a $10 million a year business on the fly, 100%.

Speaker A [00:41:35]:
Do you think you could do that? You should do that. You have the, you have the reach. Like, how hard is it for you to find operators? Like, like, zero to one founders? Like, I get asked this all the time. Like, where do I. Like, I want to find, you know, I need a. I want to do a rev share or a partnership with somebody. Give them 20% of this and, like, have some type of earn out, you know, earn in structure. Like, is that, like, your job? Is that basically what you're doing is just, like, trying to find these people? Like, what is your day to day? That's actually what I'm curious about.

Speaker A [00:42:03]:
It's like, kind of, like, within your holding code. Like, what does that look like?

Speaker B [00:42:07]:
Well, I'll answer both those questions. The first question, finding these operators. First of all, they don't like to be called operators. Like, news flash. It's something that I learned because I would call them operators and be like, bro, stop calling me an operator. Like, I'm a, I'm a CMO or I'm a, you know, I run a startup CEO. Or, you know, I'm a person. I'm not just like playing with levers.

Speaker A [00:42:34]:
That's amazing.

Speaker B [00:42:35]:
So that's number one. How hard is it? And it's so hard to find them. So I'm actually like trying to think. I'm kind of working on some ideas that make it easier to find those people. Similar to how Eric Thornburgh started on deck back.

Speaker A [00:42:53]:
Dude, I'm obsessed with that episode, by the way. I listen to it on a weekly basis. I have some. We could go down that rabbit hole if you want to. I have some ideas in that space I didn't even include on the doc. We already tested some of them, like AI news for specific categories I want.

Speaker B [00:43:07]:
To go to, daily thing I want to. At the end, we'll go through those because I'm just. I need to know. Like, I literally need to know.

Speaker A [00:43:15]:
Totally.

Speaker B [00:43:15]:
But yeah, Torrenburg, you know, right now ondeck is kind of like a cohort based, you know, learn to become a product manager, you know, learn to be a designer. But how it started was in the name on deck. Eric would throw these dinner parties and cocktail parties and brunches where smart people who were working at Google, Facebook, whatever, who are on deck to do their next thing. Like they weren't ready to quit their job, but they were like the smartest people at Google. The smartest people at Facebook, he would just invite them for dinner and.

Speaker A [00:43:45]:
Super interesting.

Speaker B [00:43:46]:
And he just, like, his thesis was, eventually these people are going to start companies. And when they start companies, I want to be involved. And the Alpha is. And so I think there's probably like what we've been talking about internally is in how do we bring together operators and.

Speaker A [00:44:01]:
Yeah, what is that? That's hard in a digital space. Like, that's the one thing I'll say about being in a physical location that has high density of like, talent.

Speaker B [00:44:09]:
Yes.

Speaker A [00:44:10]:
Is that there's that cross. Like, I even miss SF, like for that reason. Right. It's like you go to dinner with some, you know, a friend of a friend and they're doing some random thing that was like applicable and useful to the moment that you were in. And it was just like this. It created this, you know, serendipity. It was like a, you know, it multiplied serendipity opportunities. Like being in a talent dent dense place.

Speaker A [00:44:30]:
And I don't know how to do that. Like in a digital. I think that some, some of what we, you know, you do right where it's like, I build, you know, I do podcasts and I build all these. This media which creates, like, inbound of those types of people that are interesting. Like, it creates more surface area. I. So I'd love to. Your thoughts on this? This is how I think about it and talk about it to people is like, like, when you're a company and you're just starting out and, like, anybody, like, even a personal brand, like, you want to build digital mass on the Internet so that you create more digital gravity so that you get more people in your rotation, which over time leads to more people, like, touching down into your business, and then that creates more digital mass, and that's like a growth flywheel, right? I think this is actually a better way to think about, like, funnels.

Speaker A [00:45:12]:
Funnels, I think, are broken because that's not actually how people, like, make purchasing decisions. They don't start here and then, like, work their way down. That's a very poor visualization. What's actually happening is, like, they're a comet and they're zooming by your business, and if you don't have enough digital mass, they just miss you entirely. But the more mass you have, they get, like, trapped in their orbit. And then they get, like, there's moments when they're closer to the planet and, like, farther away from the planet within that given, like, rotation, but over time, they get closer and closer so that they, like, basically hit, like, they touch down, right? And then every time they touchdown, like, that's a purchasing decision that happens, and that makes more mass for your business because now you have more capital to redeploy into the growth of the company. And so, like, anyways, that's just, like, my. I want to write a book on this and just call it digital gravity because it's, like, how to build, like, companies.

Speaker A [00:46:01]:
Like, how to build early stage companies that, like, nobody knows about because it's this idea, right? It's like, anyway, like, we could talk about this, like, owned media. Like, this is the future, and this is how you do this is, like, owned media. Is this, like, leverage point that any company can do like, that starting out? Like, I. And I've. I've done this personally for brands where it's like, no one knows they exist. And a year later, they're at a conference and they're like, oh, my God, Sarah, I listen to your podcast every week. Like, what you guys are doing is unbelievable. We love the product.

Speaker A [00:46:30]:
And, like, again, like, I mean, this was in a. The one I'm referencing was, like, in the insurance space. Like a very traditional industry that's like handshakes and like good old boy type shit, right? And like, you basically can break through that when you provide some type of media to that audience that they want to consume and that isn't available. And, like, this is actually a business I want to pitch to you right now. So I think that there's a huge opportunity to make podcasts just based off the titles of people, like their job titles. So make podcasts based off of people's job titles. For example, head of heads of growth, historically, they have huge access to capital because their job is just to grow companies as fast as they can, right? So if I made a podcast that every head of growth listened to and like, literally just name it, the head of growth podcast, right? And all we, you do is you interview heads of growth about what they're seeing on the front lines in their business, the challenges they're facing, all of that. And then you take that and you build an email list that to that entire audience, and you send out that podcast on a weekly, like, basis.

Speaker A [00:47:37]:
You have a form at the bottom that's like, you know, want to be on the show, like, you know, click this link to like, you know, basically, like, come to you. So you get this guest inbound. That naturally happens. But the way to monetize is that I think people are doing wrong right now. Like, they're trying to go and sell advertising. I think that's a terrible way to do this. I think you've convinced me that community is actually something that people, like, want and actually a good business model. And you then create a school that's the head of growth school, like that paid community or a whopp or whatever, and you put that in the email newsletter and you promote it within the episode.

Speaker A [00:48:10]:
And when you think about that person, like, okay, I'm ahead of growth and I can run a credit card up to $1,000 without talking to anybody, right? So if you make that community at 199 a month and then again on a weekly basis, you're just like, dropping all the knowledge that you've acquired from all the conversations you've had. Like, here's all the tactical things we're seeing all these other companies doing. Like, you're just interviewing community members on, like, what's working and what's not. You can do it anonymously as well. So there's like, you know, not, there's not like this competitiveness between it, but, like, I think that, you know, there's 16,000 heads of growth in the US with that job title that I can get emails to right now, like, if you got even a thousand of them to be on a list that's paying you 199 a month, right? Like, that's a quarter of a million a month. Like, that's an unbelievable company. That's just one of like 20 different head of growth positions. You could head of XYZ positions you could do this for, scale that up to cmos, scale that out up to these other things.

Speaker A [00:49:06]:
Like, I think that's like, actually the business model for this is like you're using the podcast as the vehicle for community, and it's a perfect channel for it because there's so much trust built into it already, right? If I sit down and I talk to people every week and I put that in front of all these, like, other people and they listen to that, like an hour of me talking with somebody else, like, there's going to be so much trust built into that relationship. So when I tell them, hey, we have this private community that has all of these other people sharing their strategies and tactics, I mean, it's a no brainer, of course I'm going to pay for that. Like, that's just alpha that I just get for that cheap. It's. So anyways, I'm curious your thoughts there and like what you guys are kind of seeing, because I know, like that torrent versus doing something in this world, but we've been.

Speaker B [00:49:47]:
Yeah, I mean, this, that's the future. So that's the future. The only, only word I would change in that whole rant that you did is instead of calling a community, I call it a membership.

Speaker A [00:50:02]:
Cool.

Speaker B [00:50:02]:
So.

Speaker A [00:50:03]:
Yep. Membership program or like a. Yeah, so.

Speaker B [00:50:07]:
What'S the difference between a community and a membership? A community is just other people sharing information. IRL events, maybe digital events, digital program.

Speaker A [00:50:15]:
There's no exclusivity built into that.

Speaker B [00:50:17]:
Membership to me is community. But it could also be like deals, it could be like software, it could be you're just bundling all this value. Think of it as like, here's a group of people and you're bundling a bunch of value where community is just a piece of it. And that's like, what? And it can still live on school or whatever platform that makes sense for whatever community it is. But I think why everyone would do this is because everyone's trying to level up as head of growth. Everyone's trying to level up as CMO. So if you can just jam a bunch of value into a membership, all that you have to do to make sure that this works, this business model works is you just need to make sure that whatever you're charging, people are getting at least five x value.

Speaker A [00:51:07]:
So, for example, I mean, I'm just thinking about, yeah, just doing a deal with HubSpot, right? That membership buy, like your member buying. Is that what it's called? Where you, like, you blind, you find a block. Let's say you buy like a whole cow and you buy it with six people, right? Is that what it is?

Speaker B [00:51:20]:
Yeah.

Speaker A [00:51:21]:
So that same idea, like, you could go to HubSpot and be like, yo, we have a thousand head of growth.

Speaker B [00:51:25]:
Totally. And they would do it.

Speaker A [00:51:27]:
Membership, 100%, right? It's like, cool. 50% discount for a yearly subscript, like a yearly subscription for x amount of seats, and then boom, right there. Like, you just got all the value provided to them from that single deal.

Speaker B [00:51:39]:
I've been testing this model so I could scale it. So I did it myself. A lot of things you asked me what I do day to day. I don't do. Like, I'll build things on my own a lot of the times to just learn a space or just like, get, you know, from 92% clarity to 100% clarity. So, for example, we launched this thing called Community Empire Co. Which is paid membership of people building community based businesses that are cash flowing without investors. Okay.

Speaker B [00:52:08]:
So I built it on school, but also you get like $50,000 off of a bunch of deals. So, like, we did deals with a bunch, but also it comes with a free school. It also comes with all this other stuff, and it comes with events and all these things. And then that's when I realized, oh, my God, if this can work for this job title or this type of person, this can work for other other functions as well. And by the way, just put numbers to that. Like, without even trying. Like, literally without even trying, that paid membership is doing $37,000 a month.

Speaker A [00:52:42]:
That's insane.

Speaker B [00:52:43]:
Insane.

Speaker A [00:52:43]:
That's insane. Have I told you, like, how I grow podcasts for, like, b two b? Or like, has Jordan? I think I've told Jordan, but I don't know if it got bubbled up.

Speaker B [00:52:52]:
No.

Speaker A [00:52:53]:
Okay, so my whole strategy is like, go, like, what's your target, ICP, by the way? Like, I do this for startups before.

Speaker B [00:53:01]:
Tell me this story. And then I want to end with one more idea for folks.

Speaker A [00:53:06]:
I love it. Let's do it. Let's do it. So, um, for early stage companies, like, they've got, like, an inkling of product market fit. They kind of have this target ICP, and they're like, we don't know how to get in front of them or how to market to them. It's like, my whole strategy is just this. It's like, build a podcast specifically for them. The customer conversations you're already having, distribute it to those people.

Speaker A [00:53:26]:
So how do you actually do this? So you go and find, like, all those people's emails on, like, one of these service providing tools like Apollo or Snow or whatever, and you take that whole list and you're like, cool, I've got my total target ICP. And then what I do is like, this is super gray hat, but I, like, grow these podcast newsletters that are. All they're doing is promoting the podcast to these people that have that target, like, ISP. So say it's product managers, right? And, like, you're building a tool that helps product managers build, like, internal tools more effectively. So you then go and you interview product managers about their job, and all product managers want to hear what other product managers are doing. So when you grow this list and, like, what, how we actually grow, this is like, we add like 200 emails a day to this list. And what we'll see is like 50 plus percent open rates and, like three to 5% click through rates on these, these emails. This is a cold email that we're landing in people's inboxes and they're 50% opening and, like over 5% clicking right, or like over 3% clicking.

Speaker A [00:54:28]:
So the subject line is literally like podcast. And then it's like, whatever the most insightful part, like, of the, of the episode was. It's just that, that is the subject line. And then all the email says is like, the newest episode of XYZ Podcast is live. Click this link to like to listen to it. It takes them right to the Apple podcast URL. And then below that, it's like, you know, maybe a two paragraph summary and like five bullet points. And then it's like, at the bottom, it's like to hope you find this educational content, like, valuable link to whoever the founder is that's hosting the show.

Speaker A [00:55:00]:
And then maybe you add, like a call to action, like six months into this. That's at the bottom of, like, whatever the name of the company is. So what? So that's one piece of this. The second piece is then you run Facebook ads to iOS only devices, and you take that same group of people, you do a customer match list, and you put clips of the episodes in front of them with a link to click the Apple podcasting link. Now, when they click that link, it's technically a deep link on iOS devices. So because you're targeting iOS devices, it opens the Apple podcasting app on their phone and drops them right into the podcast episode. They hit play, download. So the other thing you can do with that is you can also run ads that are the same thing as this other deep linking strategy.

Speaker A [00:55:41]:
But it's basically you put like podcast, like literally the word podcast colon in front of the RSS feed. And again, when you're on mobile devices and when you're on Apple devices, it prompts the user to open the Apple podcasting app. And then there's a pop up that says like subscribe, right? It's literally like a subscribe. Like it's dropping them into, like subscribing to the podcast. When they subscribe to the podcast, they immediately download that episode when the new episode gets dropped. But the bigger thing is that built into the iPhone and the Apple podcasting app, the shows you're subscribed to, they give, they do push notifications. So you just created a push notification to that, like target customers, like mobile device, like to their, to their phone. And then the other thing we layer on top of that is then podcast SEO.

Speaker A [00:56:26]:
Like, why am I obsessed with you naming this to the, you know, like business ideas, right? Like it's because if you now go to the Apple podcasting app and you search business ideas, who comes up? And it is your show, Greg. Right. And so we do that same thing, but at a smaller scale. So like call it again, like using this product manager. I call it the product manager, you know, podcast, right? Again, just as literal as you can be with this. And when you combine that all together, like we've taken these, I'm working with my friend who's in the biotech space. Like we've taken their show from nonexistent to like a top 20 life sciences podcast in the US in less than twelve months. They now do like 30,000 downloads a month.

Speaker A [00:57:04]:
And like they, they have a link that's like what, you know, want you want to be on the show? Like, are you a founder, like of a biotech company? Like, we want you on the show. Like apply here. They get VC's inbounding into their form, pitching their portfolio companies to come on this show. Like this is their ICP is getting warm leaded into them from their investor. Like that is what is happening here. The leverage that they just like cultivated within their industry. Like, again, this is an early stage company with 15 employees, they can now go in and negotiate with massive organizations. And they're already doing this with, like, the Roche and genetics of the world because they have this media arm that they use as the leverage point for those relationships.

Speaker A [00:57:51]:
Impossible otherwise. So anyway, yeah, it's like something I'm super hyped about and I feel like it's related to this. Like, you could get these what you're talking about, where it's, like, job title to community. Like, in twelve months, that company could easily be doing, like, I bet you could get it to month in, like, twelve months. Probably just that, using that entire playbook that we just talked about. So.

Speaker B [00:58:13]:
You're my people, man. You're. You get it. You get it. Give me. Give us one last idea.

Speaker A [00:58:18]:
Okay. The one I'm most excited about because I think it's, like, a huge opportunity. And I also just, like, I think it would help the Uber driver, right? That has it is this thing called play octopus. So I don't know if you guys, like, you. Everybody's seen this, but it's like, imagine, like, a tablet that's on the back of, like, a headrest that's in the back of, like, an uber, like, when you're going somewhere. So that tablet, they just do, like, trivia. But, like, if you've ever been in a car, like, especially in XL with one of these, like, the whole car just gets, like, fired up about this. Like, my girlfriend loves this, right? Like, we'll sit there and we're, like, coming home from the bar, like, Thursday beers, right? And we're just ripping through these because it's like, there's a high score and this leaderboard, and it's this whole thing.

Speaker A [00:58:59]:
And then how they make money is they do ads in between the trivia. So I'm like, again, coming home from Thursday beers the other night, naturally, I'm, like, chatting up this, you know, my uber driver, because that's the type of person I am. I am that annoying fuck sometimes. And I'm like, oh, where are you from? Blah blah. He's like, ethiopia, blah blah. And I start asking him about the table. I'm like, how much do you make off the tablet a month? And he's like, oh, it's nothing like $70. I'm like, you only make $70 off of this bangin here? He's like, yes.

Speaker A [00:59:24]:
I'm like, how many rides a month you do? And he throws out some crazy number, and I'm like, that's insane. And then I start asking him, I'm like, okay. Why do you keep it if it's, like, not that promise? Like, well, it's here already, so why would I get rid of it? And so. And also, like, it makes the people that ride with me, like, happier. Like, they become, like, I have, like, better ride, like, vibes because this is here. So for me, it makes my job better. So let's break that down. He's getting paid nothing.

Speaker A [00:59:51]:
There's no churn, and it's a better experience for everybody in the car. Okay, so that company, play octopus, got bought by T Mobile in 2022. If you look up, like, what the revenues are doing, it's right around, like, that eight to $10 million mark. The ads they're running are just display ads. Like, it's nothing. It's nothing. So how I would make this company better now, somebody out there, please do this. Please, for the love of God, do this, is.

Speaker A [01:00:17]:
I would go and I do this exact same thing. I would do the trivia thing, but the ads that I would show would be CPA ads with a. With a QR code that when this person scanned it and gave their contact information, their phone number or their email, there's an affiliate commission that happens to the company. So to whatever this company. Company X that you create, but also to the Uber driver. So that's the incentive for them to switch, to have the switching costs. So instead of $70, like, you can get some of the, like, I'm just thinking, like, CPG brands, like, a lot of the times, like, they'll pay like, $3 for somebody's email, right? Like, if you're like, you know, whatever. Some, like, caution cereal.

Speaker A [01:00:55]:
Like, that is, like, that is not uncommon. Now, if you give, like, 10% of that to this person, or even, like, you know, you do a 50 50 share, you're gonna make so much more money than eight to $10 million a year. And I think that this could be run with, like, a team of, like, five engineers and, like, one salesperson that just is, like, all he does is, like, get in these groups and tries to sell these people. The. The power of this, though, or, like, the natural. Natural. The natural network effect that will happen, is that all of these drivers are all in these, like, groups. And so as soon as, you know, homey from Ethiopia is like, yo, I'm making an extra dollar 500 a month off of this because I implemented it.

Speaker A [01:01:34]:
Like, every one of the. He's going to drop that in this group. And every one of those drive, you make some type of referral program between them all. So I just think that that is like, you know, it's a great product with terrible monetization and I think that there's a better way to monetize that space and make more money both. Like it's all the, all the incentives are aligned there and all. And I think you couldn't do this when you know, play octopus initially came out right. People weren't used to scanning QR codes. That wasn't a part of their daily life.

Speaker A [01:02:02]:
They're now used to that. And so you could basically increase the like the, I don't know what the offers would be. It could be local, it could be national. I'm not sure. Like that's the hardest part of this is probably like creating the, whatever that affiliate network is. But there's, I mean imagine you could just like tap into like CJ or like you know, one of these like affiliate networks and look at the, the CPA offers that are there and then just like throw those up. So yeah, that's the other business that I'm like, it's more of a physical thing and it's a higher lift, but I excited about it.

Speaker B [01:02:29]:
A few, a few thoughts. So firstly the affiliate offers, I'm thinking about the driver. Like they don't even have to be like I buy this thing and I get a cut. Like it could be like athletic greens where athletic greens affiliate offer is like you get a share of it monthly for twelve months I believe.

Speaker A [01:02:46]:
Yep.

Speaker B [01:02:46]:
So, yep. So I think that could be like they would love that. Um, second thing is it could also be like cost per lead, not just CPA. So it could be like, yep, you know, the grocery store pay totally, you know, $2 for, or a dollar or $0.75 for the right to message you about stuff. And it's like scan this QR code to get like something. You give them something for free, like an e book, a PDF. I don't know what you give them, but you give them something and then they can contact you. So I think like yes, I think and then I think your framework around finding good products that have bad monetization is just like a really smart way of thinking about it because there's other.

Speaker A [01:03:28]:
Ideas, I mean totally. And to piggyback off of what you said on like the cost, like the cost per, like you know, cost per lead, et cetera. Like what a lot of them do is they then bundle, like so like basically like imagine like a kroger and like you know, a tire shop and you know, some other type of business. They altogether, they want that same lead. So they'll pay. It's not, you know, $2. They'll pay $6 and they all share that lead and they do some type of initial offer, but that list gets shared to all of them. Right.

Speaker A [01:04:01]:
And there's a way that, like, you could, like, it could be a huge payout, right? Like, where it's like, it could be $10 per lead that you're generating. But in the. Have you scale that up to the entire us? And I think you could get these tablets, like, to them, like, for free too, right? It's like you just put them in here and, like, money starts coming in, like, not $70. Like, on average, the people that drive with this, like, they make a month after six months because there's some type of, like, you know, maybe it's a recurring subscription payout or whatever. So, yeah, I mean, again, I think a huge business is right there. Easily a $10 million a year. I mean, it's already a $10 million business. Just improve it.

Speaker A [01:04:35]:
It's like, make it a $50 million.

Speaker B [01:04:37]:
Here's a really bad. I'm going to give a really bad. We're going to end on a really bad idea based on. Based on a pivot of your idea. A bad idea that makes the world a worse place, but probably can print. So we take your screens in the back of Uber idea, except we turn them into casinos.

Speaker A [01:04:56]:
So like a candy crush. Oh, my God.

Speaker B [01:05:01]:
So betting is becoming, you know, legal and more.

Speaker A [01:05:06]:
I bet you could do it with the betting.

Speaker B [01:05:07]:
Yeah, you do it. The betting.

Speaker A [01:05:08]:
All of.

Speaker B [01:05:09]:
Yeah, you just go and do a partnership with them and you. You buy some games and then you basically. And you also do, like, Greg, that's.

Speaker A [01:05:18]:
A hundred million dollar your company. Cause, like, I'm just thinking about my, my friends, like, coming home from the bars and they're already lit and you got like, oh, here's $100 free and free betting credits. If you scan this QR code, nine times out of ten, they're going to scan that QR code also.

Speaker B [01:05:32]:
You know, you can do, you can do like, prediction market betting. So it's like, imagine it's like election day and it's like, is Biden gonna win in an hour? And there's just a countdown on the screen. You're like, do you want to place a bet for $5? See, you know, people would just. You have a captured audience.

Speaker A [01:05:50]:
100%. 100%.

Speaker B [01:05:51]:
Make the world the worst.

Speaker A [01:05:52]:
Maybe what you do.

Speaker B [01:05:53]:
Worst place.

Speaker A [01:05:54]:
All right, worst place. Again, company will print. Somebody please go do this so that we can ride along with you. But I think if I was going to market with that, like, I would focus on the CPA or so I would do it for the, like, the offers for, like, fanduel, etc. To begin with. And then you could do, like, what you're talking about after that and, like, make it even more cool where it's, like, live with something that's happening. But, like, you could get, I think, initial monetization with. I'm just thinking about it, too.

Speaker A [01:06:20]:
Like, how many people go, like, you. Everybody takes an Uber to, like, sports games, right? Like, that is, like, one of the big ways that people get around like that and, like, music, basically, like, both of those places, like, you know, specifically to sports. Like, that's like a sports betting company's, like, dream is to have a captured audience that's headed to ball arena, you know, to watch the Nuggets play. So anyway, yeah, that's super interesting.

Speaker B [01:06:46]:
Cody Schneider. This was everything I dreamed it would be and more. Thank you for coming. If people want to learn more about swell and just get you more in their feed, which they should, I encourage it. Where can they do it?

Speaker A [01:07:00]:
Yeah, so I'm most active on Twitter and LinkedIn and, yeah, swell AI.com is the company we're currently building. It's an AI content marketing engine for b, two b companies. And, yeah, I mean, you honestly, you just google my name if I don't come up. I'm really bad at my job, so that is probably the easiest way to find me.

Speaker B [01:07:21]:
Hell yeah, man. All right, well, I'll catch you later.

Speaker A [01:07:25]:
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Greg.