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I'm joined by Dickie Bush, Co-Founder of Premium Ghostwriting Academy and Nicolas Cole, Co-Founder of Ship 30 for 30. We talk about the best ways to make $10M in 2024 if you were starting from scratch: hyper-niche paid newsletters, AI-powered book publishing, and so much more.
Creators & Guests
What is The Startup Ideas Pod?
This is the startup ideas podcast. Hosted by Greg Isenberg (CEO Late Checkout, ex-advisor of Reddit, TikTok etc).
📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free: https://www.gregisenberg.com/
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Free 5 day course on using the ACP method to turn strangers into customers via internet audiences and communities over here https://www.communityempire.co/
Greg Isenberg [00:00:00]:
If me or you were trying to make $10 million this year, how would you do it?
Dickie Bush [00:00:05]:
Your idea on pet supplements, a pet ag one, I think is the single best business idea in the world right now.
Nicolas Cole [00:00:10]:
I hadn't heard that.
Dickie Bush [00:00:11]:
But that is the single best business.
Nicolas Cole [00:00:13]:
Because I would buy it right now.
Dickie Bush [00:00:14]:
It's beautiful.
Greg Isenberg [00:00:15]:
Like, if you build a news, a paid newsletter that brings in a million dollars, chances are your margins are 90 plus percent. Yeah, we have a paid, you know, we call it a membership that is like, part paid newsletter, part community, and we charge $100 a month for it. Dude, we had 20 sign ups in the last 24 hours.
Nicolas Cole [00:00:32]:
It's wild. I don't see anyone on substac doing this. Like, even the biggest newsletters, the missed opportunity is realizing that the recurring revenue is the beginning, not the end. Something dicky and I have been talking about a lot, too, is that spending money is a skill. And so I think part of that growth is confronting that discomfort where you have to get used to spending five grand a month, then you got to get used to spending ten grand a month, then 20 grand a month. And if you don't allow yourself to confront that, you're never going to feel the feeling of spending more, which allows you to then want to go out and make more, which allows you to get to the next level. Spending money is a skill.
Dickie Bush [00:01:07]:
I think there's a lot of money on how to get rich, but not a lot on how to be rich, like the people who make a lot of money but have a horrible relationship. I think it's the worst case scenario because you just feel this overwhelming guilt all the time that you're making a lot but not spending it. And when you spend more, you still have the same relationship with money that you had when you were making way less. I think people brag about that. It's like the rich person who drives a Honda, but I look at that, I'm like, they just haven't kind of done the work of. You have more security now. Why don't you invest in it?
Nicolas Cole [00:01:35]:
Yeah. It's like having a scarcity mindset while you're surrounded by abundance.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:40]:
Okay, so we're live on the pod.
Nicolas Cole [00:01:42]:
We're live. We're live.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:43]:
Just tell everyone. I'll announce it to the world. There's this apartment I really want.
Nicolas Cole [00:01:47]:
Yep. Goal apartment.
Greg Isenberg [00:01:48]:
A goal apartment. I live in a two bedroom, pretty big apartment, but I want to move into a four bedroom. And for fun, there's this building next to me that has two apartments for sale. One is.
Nicolas Cole [00:02:05]:
They'Re giving it away.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:07]:
They're giving it away. I think it's one of the most expensive apartments in Miami, and the other one is less that I looked at, but still quite a bit. Okay. And I thought it would be fun. Saturday afternoon, went with my wife to go check out the.
Nicolas Cole [00:02:25]:
Uh huh.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:26]:
I checked it out and we didn't say anything to each other because we were speechless. Because we walked out of there and we just envisioned ourselves there.
Nicolas Cole [00:02:35]:
I think everyone envisions themselves there. I used to have this joke with Alyssa. We would go for walks around Beverly Hills in LA, and we'd go on the walk, she'd be like, I could really imagine us living like, oh, yeah. Oh yeah. You and every other person. I approve of this.
Greg Isenberg [00:02:53]:
So in my mind, I've been trying to decide, is this? And I'm curious, your thoughts. Am I buying this apartment or am I considering buying this apartment? Maybe because it is the nicest building and there's some status and ego related to that? Or am I buying this apartment because I'm going to have a family one day and I want to have the best possible environment for them? And so just how do you think about when you're making purchases? Are you doing this out of ego at a status or are you doing it for.
Dickie Bush [00:03:24]:
Well, if you couldn't tell anyone that you bought that apartment, would you still buy it?
Greg Isenberg [00:03:27]:
I mean, yes. Right.
Dickie Bush [00:03:28]:
Then I guess it's less ego.
Nicolas Cole [00:03:30]:
Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:03:30]:
Especially with apartments. You kind of want to be anonymous with what you bought.
Nicolas Cole [00:03:34]:
I think broadcast and be like, this is my address. Look at how sick.
Dickie Bush [00:03:39]:
The last thing I want someone to do is to pull up my. If someone pulls up your house and it's like that person lives there, that kind of looks cool until you realize that people can do that and then you have a family.
Greg Isenberg [00:03:51]:
I live in a really sweet place right now. It's like, do I need. And there's like another unit in my building that I could buy. That's four bedrooms, which is a third of the price or a quarter of the price. At what point is enough enough?
Dickie Bush [00:04:04]:
I think what does not matter is the ticket price on the house. It's purely the monthly cash payment that you're going to outlay.
Greg Isenberg [00:04:11]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:04:13]:
I think a really good qualifier is if you buy it and that monthly payment causes you stress, is it worth it?
Greg Isenberg [00:04:21]:
That's the thing.
Nicolas Cole [00:04:22]:
That's the question. Because if you can do it and you're like, there you go, that's a marginal increase. And it doesn't really stress me out. That much? Because if you go down the rabbit hole of. Do I really need this? Well, does anyone like, aside from basic human needs, do you need to work as hard as you do?
Greg Isenberg [00:04:40]:
So this is a really good segue with what I want to talk about and why I came down to here.
Nicolas Cole [00:04:45]:
We are.
Dickie Bush [00:04:48]:
A nice natural lead in here.
Greg Isenberg [00:04:51]:
Live in Miami, the shipyard. What up? Looking great. The reason I came down is if me or you were trying to make $10 million this year, or just someone was trying to make what we're trying to do, how would you do it? Do you have any ideas? Different trends you'd look at niches like, I want to spend this time basically jamming on how we could make $10 million. And that could be within your business, or it could be just complete other ideas that you have.
Nicolas Cole [00:05:24]:
Yeah. Because that's the question. Building off of what you currently have or starting from cold zero. Nothing.
Greg Isenberg [00:05:30]:
Let's start with nothing.
Dickie Bush [00:05:32]:
Nothing?
Greg Isenberg [00:05:33]:
Yeah. Like completely new business.
Dickie Bush [00:05:35]:
So I filled out a couple on your thing. Your idea on pet supplements. A pet ag one, I think, is the single best business idea in the world right now.
Nicolas Cole [00:05:43]:
I hadn't heard that.
Dickie Bush [00:05:44]:
But that is the single best business.
Nicolas Cole [00:05:45]:
Because I would buy it right now.
Dickie Bush [00:05:47]:
It's beautiful. It takes what ag one has done, which is an extremely high margin product. That is a complex formula that you can't recreate. There's no proof that it works or doesn't work. So you're pretty much selling placebo, you're selling vegetables. Yeah. Once you're on it, you're going to say you feel better to justify the purchase that you made. No one is taking age.
Dickie Bush [00:06:07]:
You want to be like, I don't feel any different. It's like, oh, I spent a bunch of money on this. I feel great. And then they have such high margin that they can just have army of affiliates sending out the fact that they're taking it. So it's a genius marketing funnel.
Nicolas Cole [00:06:20]:
Should we go build this? Because I love this idea.
Dickie Bush [00:06:22]:
If you did this for pets, it's even better because there's even less proof that it works. Like what are you going to ask your pet if it's feeling better from its green supplement? No.
Greg Isenberg [00:06:33]:
What you're talking about is I went on my first million, I pitched this idea from that pod. One of the largest water manufacturers and water companies in the world reached out to me and said, if you can figure out what the formula is, I'll put it in the water and we can copack it together.
Nicolas Cole [00:06:52]:
Sorry, stupid question. What does water have to do with it.
Dickie Bush [00:06:55]:
It'll be water based. So you need, like, the water production facility.
Nicolas Cole [00:06:59]:
I see. Okay. Got it.
Dickie Bush [00:07:00]:
You're basically selling pet water anyway.
Greg Isenberg [00:07:02]:
Also, he's in every whole foods in the world. He's in every publix, every safeway, all these big grocery chains. So if I did it with him, I wouldn't have to do just d to c. I could also be in. I think, you know, I'm definitely considering it, but I think the reason I'm.
Nicolas Cole [00:07:27]:
What's the counterpoint? Why wouldn't you? I just.
Greg Isenberg [00:07:30]:
Digital products are easier to build than physical products.
Nicolas Cole [00:07:33]:
Significant for sure. Easier, but lower upside. Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:07:37]:
I mean, there are a lot of rich people who are going to put that on their credit card, start feeding it to their dog, and never, ever once look at it again.
Greg Isenberg [00:07:47]:
That's right.
Dickie Bush [00:07:47]:
Because the risk of stopping to give. Stopping giving your pet a supplement is higher risk than stopping yourself because you could feel it, but you won't see that your dog feels worse. I don't know. Right when you said that. Because I think already the smartest niche in the world, I think what we could talk about are niches that could build $10 million businesses. Pets certainly one of them, because plants are the new pets and pets are the new kids.
Nicolas Cole [00:08:12]:
Yeah. I was going to say it's not even like the health. It's the emotional. I would seriously do anything. I don't know why I had this thought last night, but I was like, if something happened to my dog and they were like, we have to do a life saving emergency and it's going to cost $100,000 and insurance doesn't cover it, I'm pretty sure I would just rip that immediately and not even think about it. I love my dog more than anything else in the world except for my wife. You know what I mean? And so all a supplement is. Is like the reinforcement of I care about this part of my, you know, I love you.
Greg Isenberg [00:08:47]:
It's saying I love you without saying I love you, dude.
Nicolas Cole [00:08:49]:
And there's the marketing. It's saying I love you every morning.
Greg Isenberg [00:08:52]:
Yeah. Say I love.
Nicolas Cole [00:08:54]:
I've been watching a lot of mad men. I got Don Draper in my subconscious.
Greg Isenberg [00:08:58]:
Say I love you. Say I love you.
Nicolas Cole [00:09:00]:
Give them the gummy. Right? This little vegetable gummy. I love you. Yeah, bro. Whenever you got time for a board meeting next week, I'm ready to go.
Dickie Bush [00:09:10]:
I heard that. Because I think pets, I think another niche that's interesting is just general paid newsletters. In any niche where people are going to pay for a constant stream of information that they can't find elsewhere. Yeah, so not news. There are a lot of newsletters that have done well with just the free and sponsorship, but I think the more niche education that you can provide on a paid basis but still target the same niches like a hyper niche pet paid newsletter of, you have this specific type of dog, and here's the ongoing upkeep of just, you have a pomski. And that requires a completely different way of thinking and managing that dog and everything. Every pomski owner in the world would pay for that because it's so specific.
Nicolas Cole [00:09:57]:
Okay, so cool to validate that idea. Royal Canaan, the dog food company, their whole innovation was, we're not going to compete on price or product packaging and just dog food in general. Literally all they did was just break out and say on this package, this dog food is for border collies, whereas this dog food is for golden retrievers. And there's very little, I mean, they say that there is, but come on, there's very little marginal difference between the two. So if you think about that through the lens of education, most people are like, I'm going to write another finance newsletter or I'm going to write another and they just pick the big broad category. But if you think about it like hyper specific, like, I have a border Collie mix. I would subscribe to a paid newsletter on how to take care of my border Collie because border collies have different health needs than a golden retriever would, for example.
Greg Isenberg [00:10:48]:
And what do you think people would pay for something like that? Is that like a $10 month?
Dickie Bush [00:10:52]:
Ten to 20?
Nicolas Cole [00:10:52]:
Yeah, ten to $20.
Dickie Bush [00:10:53]:
But then the thing is, you have a recurring base of purchasers that are going to buy other things that you sell because they're paying you right now, right?
Greg Isenberg [00:11:00]:
Yeah, that's what people don't talk about enough, is that when I bring up paid newsletters, they're just like, well, just paid newsletters. It's just like, okay, I have 1000 people paying me $10 a month or $20 a month, and I'm like, to start to start. Then you can layer on, that's the.
Dickie Bush [00:11:16]:
First purchase, not the last, versus a lot of other companies that when you sell a one off product, it's the last thing. And it aligns incentives for you to continue to deliver high quality information because you're going to lose that customer and then the ability to sell them more things. I like that little mix and nuance of the newsletter being paid is they're continuing to pay you, which forces you to put out good content. Otherwise, it just all goes and create.
Nicolas Cole [00:11:38]:
Better and better things.
Greg Isenberg [00:11:39]:
Right?
Nicolas Cole [00:11:39]:
Like you're forced to improve.
Greg Isenberg [00:11:41]:
If you want to write a paid newsletter, what framework for new categories do you have? What makes a good category versus a not good category?
Nicolas Cole [00:11:52]:
We wrote up this little checklist. We create so many things. Now, I'm struggling to remember the specifics, but the big one is like a, it has to be a very tangible asset. So a lot of people are like, I'm going to start a paid newsletter. And they think that they can write about whatever, but something happens when they make it paid. That's not really what's happening. A paid newsletter. The way to think about it is it's a book that never ends.
Nicolas Cole [00:12:16]:
So it has to be a topic that you want to repeat infinitely, the reader wants to consume infinitely, and every issue has to feel like a tangible object. So how do you make it tangible? Like our write with AI newsletter, every issue is, here's a framework, but then here's the Chat GPT prompt. So every time I give you a prompt, it feels like I'm giving you a box, like an object. So how do you make every issue a recipe or some sort of designed framework or a prompt or a checklist? It has to feel like a thing.
Greg Isenberg [00:12:50]:
Okay, I have a prompt for you.
Nicolas Cole [00:12:56]:
I have no idea where this is going.
Greg Isenberg [00:12:58]:
Do paid newsletters just become paid AI agents or paid AI characters? When I hear you talk about that, I'm like, okay, what you're saying is, basically, you're right. With AI newsletter, I'm like, okay, so basically I'm going to subscribe to this, and you're going to teach me basically how to become a more prolific writer in real time. And I'm going to basically read your newsletter. And then I'm probably going to open up Chat GPT and then I'm going to read your newsletter. I'm going to open up Chat GPT is the future of education and paid newsletters more something like, there's the Dickey and Cole bot, basically, that you just ping and you're like, hey, today I want to learn about how to write copy, know the pet niche. And then you kind of have this conversation.
Nicolas Cole [00:13:50]:
Yeah, that's what agents are trying to be now. That's like the whole point of that in the store. But I think it's really easy to jump to the conclusion that AI just replaces you. And AI is good at executing instructions, but it's not very good@creating.net. New things.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:08]:
Also, my whole take on is AI good at completing tasks. AI is basically an Intern.
Nicolas Cole [00:14:15]:
Yeah. A very uneducated.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:16]:
It's an uneducated intern that is sloppy.
Dickie Bush [00:14:19]:
So if it's not doing, and you want caffeinated. Right. If it's not doing it, I'll say.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:25]:
That for the camera, it's an uneducated, uncaffeinated intern. AI.
Nicolas Cole [00:14:30]:
And like, love them for that.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:32]:
Love them.
Nicolas Cole [00:14:33]:
Understands that's what you're getting.
Greg Isenberg [00:14:34]:
Totally.
Dickie Bush [00:14:35]:
But they're a genius. That's a thing. If you program them right, they can do everything.
Nicolas Cole [00:14:39]:
Idiots.
Dickie Bush [00:14:40]:
But they're just like, yeah, literally where my brain jumped with as we were talking about the pet niche and if you had a paid newsletter, the real Upside, I think, comes in the back end in how you can create as many different specific paid newsletters based on the same content. So what you just said clicked in my head of Royal Canine is now marketing their pet food to different dog niches. More than likely, the only change they made is on the label with a very small mix of the product.
Nicolas Cole [00:15:14]:
Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:15:15]:
So if you had some kind of baseline newsletter with 500 different paid opt ins that you could easily create with AI. So that's where I think AI plays the biggest role, is you say, I need 500 different versions of this one thing. Here's how to create one version. Now go create 500.
Greg Isenberg [00:15:32]:
Right.
Dickie Bush [00:15:32]:
Because imagine how many paid newsletter opt ins you could have for how to raise your blank pet. Like this kind of dog. If you had 500 specific ones, you'd have 500 more potential opt ins versus just here's how to raise your dog.
Nicolas Cole [00:15:48]:
And that is the modern day agora. Do you know Agora Publishing?
Greg Isenberg [00:15:54]:
I do, but for the.
Nicolas Cole [00:15:55]:
Okay, it's like one of the craziest but least well known companies ever and their whole business model.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:03]:
I know because you've told me about it.
Nicolas Cole [00:16:05]:
Most people don't know. And it's like a billion dollar company and it's just a portfolio of paid newsletters bundled with different education products. They essentially created that model. And where everyone's brain goes is, okay, a bunch of niche newsletters. How lucrative can that be? First of all, you're taking for granted recurring revenue because recurring revenue is extremely valuable and extremely know. And then second is Agora doesn't have like five paid newsletters. They have like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. So what you just described is just the modern day version of that.
Dickie Bush [00:16:39]:
And you could build that with far fewer employees, far fewer writers if you hit AI correctly.
Greg Isenberg [00:16:44]:
Well, the other thing is, so going back to Agora and their model and why it's brilliant is, and going back to how do you make $10 million a year? Like if you build a paid newsletter that brings in a million dollars in revenue, chances are your margins are 90 plus percent. Yeah. And is it crazy that that business is worth ten to twelve times profit? I wouldn't say it's crazy.
Nicolas Cole [00:17:08]:
It's not crazy. You're within a five or ten x if you wanted to sell it. Yeah, but again, why would you sell it? Yeah, we have this conversation all the time. Because it's like a, why would you sell it? Because the cash it's throwing off is amazing and essentially autopiloted. And b, it's not just that asset, it's that now you have all those people that you can sell other products to. So why would you sell that?
Greg Isenberg [00:17:29]:
The only reason you'd sell it is if you can't get a mortgage to buy this apartment.
Dickie Bush [00:17:34]:
Okay, a couple of interesting things on that. Right. The idea that we're going to have paid newsletters as of right now that are year between write with AI fiction writing and then write your way to wealth. We want to build that to a million this year. If someone came and offered us ten x on that, I'd probably sell it at a million for ten.
Nicolas Cole [00:17:55]:
I think that's only because of where.
Dickie Bush [00:17:56]:
We'Re relative to our. But if you were higher up, you wouldn't do that. So it is a function. But an interesting way to think about this, and I've been chatting with him, is like if you look at building a portfolio of cash flow businesses and some of the ones that are more sustainable than the others, like if you have three paid newsletters that all generate three hundred k a year, because that's 5000 people paying you $20 a month, that is so decentralized in terms of how likely that is to go to zero.
Nicolas Cole [00:18:22]:
Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:18:22]:
Your risk, it's extremely sustainable as long as you keep writing it. Because say you hired a writer and the quality took a 10% hit and you stopped giving it any attention, the bleed out on that would still be years and years and years of that cash flow. So if you can match some of your personal recurring expenses, like that $28,000, if you could match your mortgage, that's 30 grand, to a paid newsletter with 1000 people paying you $30 a month, and you had almost pure confidence that that wasn't going anywhere over the next ten years, you'd buy the house, of.
Greg Isenberg [00:18:55]:
Course, I think, right. And that's why everyone should have, I think a paid newsletter or a paid community to you, which is similar, we call it a membership. Paid membership that is like part paid newsletter, part community. And we charge $100 a month for it. And like, dude, we had 20 sign ups in the last 24 hours.
Dickie Bush [00:19:19]:
It's like lifestyle cash flow matching is an interesting topic.
Greg Isenberg [00:19:23]:
$2,000 a month.
Nicolas Cole [00:19:25]:
Okay. To take this a step further because it's wild. I don't see anyone on Substack doing this. Like even the biggest newsletters, the missed opportunity is realizing that the recurring revenue is the beginning, not the end. So what happens is you have all these creators that go, I started a paid newsletter and then they reach success. You have paid newsletters on substac doing hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year, and then they don't sell them anything else. So immediately the whole equation looks different when you go. And 10% of the people who are paying me on a monthly basis also bought the $20 ebook that I put together or also bought the $200 course I put together.
Nicolas Cole [00:20:04]:
And I don't understand why more people don't. And then to take that step further, right then you can take all your paid newsletters and at the end of the year you can bundle them into a book, right? So now there's another product.
Greg Isenberg [00:20:17]:
The way I would do it, and I'm curious your thoughts, is I wouldn't start by adding digital assets to start selling them. I would think about what is the most 0.1% experience I could offer to this group. So for example, with community empire, our paid membership and email, maybe I do something like instead of $99 a month, for $500 a month, you can have a monthly dinner with someone from our team or something for the diehard fans or dinner once a year you have dinner with me.
Nicolas Cole [00:20:53]:
Yeah, as long as I think that experience is also an option. But it's like, what are you solving for and being careful about your time involvement?
Dickie Bush [00:21:03]:
What do you want to commit to?
Nicolas Cole [00:21:04]:
Time? This is what, it's taken both of us a long time to start to internalize this, but time is always the easiest thing to increase something in the short term.
Dickie Bush [00:21:13]:
Totally.
Nicolas Cole [00:21:13]:
Like we know we're like, oh, if we give away our time, we will increase revenue on literally anything this month.
Greg Isenberg [00:21:19]:
That's right.
Nicolas Cole [00:21:19]:
But then we're screwed. Like now we're out of hours, now we can't do anything. So a middle ground solution, something that we do a lot, is an experience bonus would be if you have a paid newsletter, you have 1000 people on it, and then you go once a quarter. I'm going to do a live workshop, but it's paid, so it's like $100, $150. Hop on Zoom. And here's the topic. Here's what we're going to drill into. That's an easy way of increasing the LTV, but also giving an experience.
Nicolas Cole [00:21:47]:
You can take the recording. You can add the recording to your archive. In the paid newsletter, you have an asset that compounds. That's a nice little middle ground versus a lot of people are like, buy my premium, and I'll do an hour of coaching with you a month, and then all of a sudden, you're out of hours and you can't build anything else.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:03]:
It's funny, I see a lot of solopreneurs do that, and so they tweet about, oh, I escaped my job. And then it's like, and I built this, like, you're on Zoom call job. Yeah, I built this new job. Most the exact same, except I'm working twice as hard. I'm still selling my time.
Dickie Bush [00:22:20]:
Solopreneurship is just a high paying job.
Nicolas Cole [00:22:22]:
Which in the beginning is great.
Dickie Bush [00:22:24]:
Awesome.
Nicolas Cole [00:22:24]:
Like, if you're brand new to making ten grand a month, that's what you should do.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:28]:
Totally.
Nicolas Cole [00:22:29]:
But that's not going to get you to 10 million.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:32]:
Yeah, no, yeah, no, I want to talk about 10 million during this. I know I'm with the right people to talk about it with.
Nicolas Cole [00:22:38]:
Well, there's only one way to get the apartment. You got to think bigger. You got to think bigger.
Greg Isenberg [00:22:43]:
Okay. So, paid newsletters, do you have any specific ideas besides anything in pets that if you weren't doing what you're doing now, you'd go after, I think, if.
Nicolas Cole [00:22:55]:
We didn't have anything that we were doing right, but so say Dicky and I sold everything that we had right now, and we were starting completely over. I feel like because of our personal interests, the next thing we would build would be, like, how to think about finance as a guy in your mid twenty s to pre 40. Because I think that specific window of person is, and not to exclude others, but it's just that type of person has such unique challenges and questions and things at that phase of life, I think we both would get.
Dickie Bush [00:23:35]:
I would start a page. Someone actually messaged us in our slack, that my writing has been like, my writing over the last month has been extremely personal to me for the most part. It's like, what am I learning? What am I thinking about? And I want to get back into doing that more. And he asked if I was going to start a paid newsletter to talk about these topics because I don't want to go down that. As much as it's fun to talk on social about that, I think there's like a stigma to talk about dating or finance or you just don't want people quote, tweeting you. When you talk about money on Twitter, it's way better.
Nicolas Cole [00:24:09]:
Usually doesn't end like once that escapes.
Dickie Bush [00:24:12]:
To NPC Twitter, it just becomes so toxic that you have to put some kind of paywall before you talk about a lot of those things.
Greg Isenberg [00:24:19]:
So I don't know, why do you say that?
Nicolas Cole [00:24:22]:
Because people can't understand.
Dickie Bush [00:24:23]:
You can't wrap your head around making millions of dollars. It's going to offend people. The average person, especially on Twitter, gets extremely offended at the idea that people have money. So you have to put up some kind of paywall. Luckily, I don't think anyone listens to this podcast that thinks that way.
Greg Isenberg [00:24:38]:
Because if you're listening to this podcast, you have a bias for action, to do things and to better yourself. Yeah, you're right. I have gotten things that have gone viral on Twitter and then I look to see all these anonymous accounts completely.
Dickie Bush [00:24:53]:
It's not good for you because it disincentivizes you to keep writing about it. Versus if you write a small $50 a month paid newsletter to a hyper specific group that engages with every single thing, then there's no point to write on social about it. You just have this group who's telling their friends, if you can write a paid newsletter where your only marketing is people forwarding it to a friend and saying, hey, you got to sign up for this. That's the sweet spot.
Nicolas Cole [00:25:15]:
Yeah. And it's worth saying this happens at every level. Like, if you're jamming with a small business owner that's doing two hundred k a year, and you walk into the room and you're like, you got to think bigger. This is how you get to 10 million. A lot of them don't want to have that conversation. They're like, I like where I'm at and I don't need. It's like threatening. And then you go to a different room and it's people with $5 million businesses and someone's like, hey, you got to think bigger to get to 50.
Nicolas Cole [00:25:42]:
Not everyone in that room wants to have that conversation. So that friction happens at every level. And so that's part of why it's so difficult to find people to talk about money with because a lot of it comes down to what level are you at and where do you want to go with it?
Greg Isenberg [00:25:59]:
So you'd start with a paid newsletter on that topic, and then where do you think you would take it from there?
Nicolas Cole [00:26:06]:
I think of all the businesses that we've built in the past three years, we've learned that the group coaching model is the fastest to scale, probably most profitable. Probably doing another group coaching program would be low hanging fruit because you can get a group coaching program to 510 million. If you have a good category, you can do that.
Greg Isenberg [00:26:27]:
And group coaching, meaning like, how often do you do it? What does that look like?
Nicolas Cole [00:26:32]:
Well, the way PGA, for example, is structured is it's like a one to many. It's async curriculum. Plus we have team members that specialize in different things to answer questions. So there's real time support. We'll do like a weekly hot seat that's live. So there's an async component, there's a live component, there's a community component. So you have all these different things working to either teach someone, hold them accountable, gamify the journey, whatever it is, and you can do that in a lot more categories than people realize.
Greg Isenberg [00:27:02]:
The other thing I would do if I were you and I was building this is I would build a SaaS product along with it for this audience. Like basically mint.com just recently shut down.
Nicolas Cole [00:27:16]:
Yeah, I saw that. That was really surprising.
Greg Isenberg [00:27:18]:
Very surprising. But it is and it isn't because it is because it was actually a great product that was trying to do.
Dickie Bush [00:27:26]:
Too many things for. It was trying to do something for everyone. Where I think niche personal finance is an interesting idea, we use copilot to manage our stuff.
Greg Isenberg [00:27:33]:
Copilot for x. Right, exactly. Is the idea. So copilot for the people who don't know is basically mint.com. Track your net worth, track your credit cards, track your personal stuff. But yeah, it was everything in the kitchen sink. It got to that point because it was bought by intuit. Not surprisingly.
Greg Isenberg [00:27:53]:
They make quickbooks. Obviously, the Quickbooks people aren't going to make the most beautiful, streamlined products in the world. So copilot came in a couple, two, three years ago, and it's just a simpler mobile first version. And I heard they're killing it. They're probably doing copilot.
Dickie Bush [00:28:13]:
Yeah, it's only like $6 a month, I think.
Greg Isenberg [00:28:16]:
I use it.
Dickie Bush [00:28:17]:
I showed you my workflow for using it.
Nicolas Cole [00:28:18]:
Product is beautiful.
Greg Isenberg [00:28:19]:
Yeah, it started off at, I think, a dollar 99 a month. And then if you three x your prices and you're still growing.
Dickie Bush [00:28:27]:
Definitely.
Greg Isenberg [00:28:27]:
That's a good sign.
Nicolas Cole [00:28:28]:
Yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:28:29]:
So is there an opportunity to build copilot for x for different niches? That's just kind of an interesting process.
Nicolas Cole [00:28:37]:
Yeah, I think that's the way to think about it. Especially with all the new no code tools, AI tools, I think you're going to get a lot of smart, driven individual people just sitting at their laptop being like, I built the copilot for pet owners of border collies. Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:28:53]:
Did you listen to the most recent all in from this past weekend? Do you guys listen all very.
Nicolas Cole [00:28:59]:
I think I listened to like half of it.
Dickie Bush [00:29:01]:
So Friedberg had, David Friedberg worked at Google doing a bunch of stuff. He had this really interesting idea of SaaS being like this moment in time blip in terms of a viable business model between software that you had to download on your computer and then software that can be written by AI, where now the ability for an individual to spin up a more specific version of all the sasses that are trying to do everything for everyone is only going to decrease. Right. So if you have someone in house, if the most productive engineers can become ten times more productive using AI to code and they're able to build these products in house, that model goes away in an interesting, like, that's an interesting thread to pull on is how many SaaS platforms could you actually better tailor for your individual experience that aren't that difficult to build with copilot and other AI coding?
Greg Isenberg [00:29:59]:
So I actually just sent a newsletter this morning speaking to this. The one thing that I speak to about in the newsletter is also the business model changes. So the way SaaS works today is you pay a monthly fee, 699 a month, and you get access to the software. Where I think things are going is it's going to be pay per task.
Nicolas Cole [00:30:19]:
Yeah, the chat should be teased or.
Dickie Bush [00:30:21]:
Back to one time purchase. The base camp guys just launched their slack killer or something like that. And it's just you pay for it once, like old school, buy a CD, put it in your computer.
Greg Isenberg [00:30:32]:
That's basically where.
Nicolas Cole [00:30:33]:
But the reason why I'm so fascinated with this is because of the idea of LTV relative to just recurring revenue. Because I feel like a lot of times people will create products that recur and they think once someone signs up that recurring revenue never goes away. But really there's always some sort of tipping point. So you're like, okay, my average churn, I know Netnet, my LTV on an average customer is $215. So it's interesting to either have some of that data or sort of speculate what that data would be and go, okay, well, if my average LTV is going to end up being around 200, why don't I just remove the recurring option and sell full access for $300 and capture all that LTV up front and force a different purchasing decision.
Greg Isenberg [00:31:19]:
Totally. Or even if you have an idea for copilot for X, you can build the landing page, build the mockups, and be like, post on Twitter, hey, you can pre sell it to fund your development. I think a lot of more people are going to do that.
Dickie Bush [00:31:35]:
So many different rabbit holes you could go down with that. You have fewer engineers working at every company, but more solo engineers building things. Yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:31:43]:
I want to talk quickly, even though it's like off topic, about a conversation I had with someone in Miami the other day. So we went for coffee and he was telling me about a particular person on Twitter that showing these MRR numbers for a particular business. And I happened to know what the MRR was. It a SaaS, it was a services based business. I happened to know the revenue of that. And basically the monthly I get the updates for that particular business. And it was a person that was basically posting on Twitter and saying, hey, I got $10 million of revenue, 10 million in ARR divided by twelve MRR. And he was really upset about it because he's like, I'm out here.
Greg Isenberg [00:32:29]:
I'm trying. I have almost a million dollars AR. It took me eight years and I was like, dude, don't believe what you read. You shouldn't feel bad logging onto Twitter and seeing that, because it's not even truthful.
Nicolas Cole [00:32:44]:
Yeah, most of it isn't.
Greg Isenberg [00:32:45]:
It's not.
Dickie Bush [00:32:46]:
And most numbers are just like, if I see another agency owner put that they have 50 million in business pipeline by taking people who fill out a type form. How can you say. That's like saying, if I took every email subscriber I have and multiplied them. If they bought all my products and said, I have 100,000 email subscribers and they all pay me $100, so I have $10 million in email pipeline.
Nicolas Cole [00:33:13]:
You know what this is like? I worked at an ad agency right out of college, and we used to have this joke where ad agencies are so liberal with how they talk about things. It's like walking into Walgreens and buying toilet paper and being like, Walgreens is a like, that's literally what people are doing on Twitter. They're know, Walgreens is a really, it's like, well, yeah, I mean, their toilet paper is great.
Greg Isenberg [00:33:34]:
Even worse, Walgreens is a partner.
Nicolas Cole [00:33:36]:
Yeah. I've partnered with.
Greg Isenberg [00:33:38]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:33:39]:
Introduce Walgreens North America.
Greg Isenberg [00:33:40]:
Our new partnership with Walgreens.
Nicolas Cole [00:33:43]:
There's a lot of context stuff like people taking lifetime revenue and calling that the revenue of their business. So they'll be like, I've done $5 million over the past five years. And then you'll see them go on podcasts being like, how I built a $5 million business. That's not a $5 million business. That's a $1 million business that's been around for five years.
Greg Isenberg [00:34:03]:
That's right.
Nicolas Cole [00:34:03]:
And all those little nuances. It's just sad, because then all of the people that want to learn are looking at that, and it's literally like you're giving them a broken version of the game to start, and then they walk in with all these unrealistic expectations. That's not how any of these businesses operate.
Greg Isenberg [00:34:23]:
And that's why I wanted to bring it up. It's for the people listening who are embarking on the $10 million journey and might see things on the Internet and people, quote, unquote, sharing in public. So they're taking it as the gospel.
Dickie Bush [00:34:36]:
We should set some standards that there's just a collective group of people who go around policing anyone who doesn't talk in monthly free cash flow that hits your bank account.
Nicolas Cole [00:34:47]:
Yeah, monthly.
Dickie Bush [00:34:48]:
That free cash flow post expenses, is the only number that matters in your business.
Nicolas Cole [00:34:53]:
Period.
Dickie Bush [00:34:53]:
Full stop. And a story. So what is 50 million in business pipeline like? Okay, but we're actually doing three hundred k a month at 40% margin. So it's one hundred and twenty k.
Nicolas Cole [00:35:05]:
A month free cash flow divided by three partners plus expenses, which means I make 20 grand right after tax. Really?
Dickie Bush [00:35:13]:
It should be personal. Monthly after tax, free cash flow. And then you could bubble that up to the business level. Yeah, and every time there should be, like, a chrome extension that every time you see $10 million, it's the Twitter community notes. It's like doing the math on this business. It's more than likely that this business owner takes home $20,000 a month because that normalizes it for everyone. What is the amount that hits your bank account after all expenses at the end of every month?
Nicolas Cole [00:35:40]:
That's so.
Dickie Bush [00:35:41]:
And if you didn't talk in that, you should just get. There should be army reply bots. Be like, this is a monthly free cash flow bot. This number is bullshit. Like, imagine that Twitter would be such a better place.
Greg Isenberg [00:35:51]:
That actually leads me to another idea related to this. We should build that coffeezilla for tech entrepreneurs.
Nicolas Cole [00:35:59]:
Yeah, seriously.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:00]:
Like, huge audience opportunity. People would share that like crazy. And you can monetize that.
Nicolas Cole [00:36:06]:
That's actually a great niche YouTube channel.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:09]:
So for people who don't know. Coffeezilla YouTuber, probably three plus million subscribers. And he exposes scams, and it's just like a guy, he goes after crypto. He's gone after crypto. He's gone.
Dickie Bush [00:36:26]:
He's one like Jake Paul, too, or something with his. Yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:29]:
So you get these well known people, and he's like a journalist about it. Like, he has integrity.
Dickie Bush [00:36:35]:
I bet.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:36]:
Yeah. And he really does a great job. And people share that. Right. Because, well, number one, people like to see other people fail. Let's be real.
Nicolas Cole [00:36:46]:
Well, it's like the business world's know.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:48]:
Totally. That's a better way of describing, like, there was a point. Gawker. Do you remember Gawker?
Nicolas Cole [00:36:54]:
Oh, yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:36:55]:
Tell people what Gawker was for. Most people don't remember.
Nicolas Cole [00:36:58]:
I mean, it was like a news publication, but they would do hit pieces and they would go after people. Ryan Holiday wrote a whole book about the Gawker story going after him.
Dickie Bush [00:37:11]:
I don't know too much about Gawker, to be honest.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:12]:
It was basically like. Yeah, it was like a gossip column for business.
Nicolas Cole [00:37:19]:
Yeah. They shut down after the lawsuit. Right. They shut down because they went bankrupt.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:23]:
Well, Peter Thiel, I think.
Nicolas Cole [00:37:24]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:25]:
Sued them, if anything.
Dickie Bush [00:37:30]:
This whole fiasco that happened with OpenAI and how it was like, the coolest thing to ever happen to anyone who worked in Silicon Valley because they got to talk about it. It was like keeping up with the Kardashians for nerds in San Francisco, like, the most important thing. And all they could, they'd wake up and check the news, be like, what's Sam doing now?
Nicolas Cole [00:37:47]:
Literally, myself included. Yeah. I did that for 48 hours.
Dickie Bush [00:37:51]:
That was interesting thought experiment.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:52]:
I couldn't sleep. I was just thinking about Sam Altman all night. Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:37:56]:
I don't know. That didn't interest me at all. That just seems weird.
Greg Isenberg [00:37:59]:
Cool.
Dickie Bush [00:38:00]:
He's either going to work there or not work there.
Nicolas Cole [00:38:02]:
Yeah. Okay. The other one that gets me is the person who goes, I made all this revenue only working 1 hour a day, and I'm like, nobody does that. Or also the joke of the morning routine thing where it's like, you look at all these entrepreneurs. They're like, I'm awake at 03:00 a.m. I've had a full protein breakfast and red light sauna, and I've run 7 miles by 04:30 a.m. And it's like you're looking at this and you're like, maybe you've done that one time. And just like, the person who takes the pipeline and rounds up, they do it one time and they're like.
Nicolas Cole [00:38:40]:
And in theory, if I did do this every day, that would be my morning routine.
Greg Isenberg [00:38:45]:
And then they make people feel bad because they're not.
Dickie Bush [00:38:47]:
Yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:38:48]:
It's all like, oh, I woke up and I was tired this morning. I was about to tweet this and I didn't, but I had to draft it. I was like, I woke up yesterday and I basically woke up. I flooded myself with coffee. I took a nice, warm shower. I woke up at 07:30 a.m. I woke up at 07:30 a.m. Flooded myself with, like, four coffees.
Greg Isenberg [00:39:10]:
Literally drowned myself in coffee. Took a coffee bath. Yeah. And I took a warm, long shower. Not like a cold bath, just a warm, long shower. Soup. It was warm. I busted it even.
Greg Isenberg [00:39:25]:
Hot. Hot like steam.
Nicolas Cole [00:39:27]:
Can I give you an upgrade? You got to buy these shower steamers. Do you have shower steamers?
Greg Isenberg [00:39:32]:
No. Do I need one of those?
Nicolas Cole [00:39:34]:
Dude, it's like a bath bomb for a shower. Oh, my gosh. It feels like you're in a spa. It's amazing. You just unwrap it. You throw it at the bottom, the water comes down and smells great. Ecommerce lavender. Amazing.
Dickie Bush [00:39:45]:
You keep buying it.
Nicolas Cole [00:39:46]:
Do you know how expensive?
Dickie Bush [00:39:47]:
Super.
Nicolas Cole [00:39:48]:
You get a bag of like twelve of them for like $40 or something. I'm like, add it to your shower routine.
Dickie Bush [00:39:53]:
Yeah, this is something I'm trying to do more, though, because right now.
Greg Isenberg [00:39:56]:
Wait, here's the. Sorry. Okay. What are they called? Steam.
Nicolas Cole [00:40:01]:
Shower steamers.
Dickie Bush [00:40:03]:
For your dog. Actually, though, they need a better bath.
Nicolas Cole [00:40:10]:
Yes.
Dickie Bush [00:40:10]:
It's like a CBD to make them calmer in the bath because dogs get.
Greg Isenberg [00:40:14]:
Stressed out about it.
Dickie Bush [00:40:16]:
Your dog hates the bath unless they have bath CBD box.
Nicolas Cole [00:40:20]:
I would buy this right now.
Dickie Bush [00:40:21]:
And for cats. Right?
Nicolas Cole [00:40:23]:
And for gerbils.
Greg Isenberg [00:40:24]:
Yeah, well, cats hate water, right? So if you want to make it a little more, it's like a dry cleaner. No, but honestly, honestly, that concept. Steam showers for the productive tech entrepreneur. So, like the product, the Andrew Huberman type guy.
Nicolas Cole [00:40:42]:
Oh, I mean, think about, okay, how do they sell tea? You go into the tea aisle and it's just white label green tea, but one of them says calm, and one of them says energy, and one of them says, focus. You're going to buy the one that says the word of the thing that you associate with. So you could easily do that for any category or any niche. Take the tech entrepreneur and do shower steamers for raising your first round and you're stressed out.
Greg Isenberg [00:41:11]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:41:11]:
Right.
Dickie Bush [00:41:12]:
Yeah. Huberman's drink is going to, if he started a drink that was like sparkling water, theonine, caffeine, everything that he recommends you take in the morning. And it was just called like. And it's got nothing else and only marketed it to that specific type of person, it would crush.
Nicolas Cole [00:41:31]:
Call it sunrise and say, only people who wake up before the sun gets up, drink this. Like, done.
Dickie Bush [00:41:37]:
Do this and stare at the sun.
Nicolas Cole [00:41:38]:
Yeah, the dicky bush.
Greg Isenberg [00:41:41]:
I actually think we're seeing the antihuberman effect right now. So that was a bit of my tweet that I was going to write yesterday. I was going to say at the end of my. Here's what I did this morning. Today I felt like the anti Huberman.
Nicolas Cole [00:41:55]:
Yeah. What's the. Oh, in that you don't have a morning.
Dickie Bush [00:41:58]:
You don't is I put this in the notes of the doc is like esoteric health. Twitter is always two years ahead of everyone else. So they're already on that train of anti optimization now, leaning more into intuition and things like that.
Greg Isenberg [00:42:15]:
But I don't know, there's both sides. There's always a trend and there's always an anti trend. And it feels like Huberman has gotten so big that of course you're going to have people be like, I don't want to do a cold plunge. I like my hot shower.
Dickie Bush [00:42:29]:
I am sick of how many more people are in the sauna in cold plunge since it got popular, though.
Nicolas Cole [00:42:33]:
Yeah, it's ruined specific groups of people.
Greg Isenberg [00:42:35]:
Why does that make you mad?
Dickie Bush [00:42:39]:
Well, I like to not talk to anyone. The worst are the people who are in the sauna now just sparking up at goddamn podcast conversation. It's like, oh, let's just start talking to everyone.
Nicolas Cole [00:42:49]:
Drive. The last thing I want to do. Yeah, no, that's why I say I'm.
Dickie Bush [00:42:51]:
Unemployed when anyone asks what I do in the sauna.
Greg Isenberg [00:42:53]:
Well, you shouldn't say you're unemployed, because if you're unemployed, I have nothing to offer you.
Dickie Bush [00:42:59]:
I have no conversation.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:00]:
I got nothing for you, budy.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:01]:
Yeah. I want to sit here in silence.
Dickie Bush [00:43:03]:
Or accountant.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:04]:
That works. Yeah, accountant is better. If I met an unemployed person in the sauna, I'm like, I need an.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:10]:
At a luxury gym.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:11]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:12]:
Who are you?
Dickie Bush [00:43:14]:
Got nothing for you, budy. That's like my go to.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:18]:
You're mysterious. You're wearing Lululemon. I don't get it. Something isn't adding up.
Dickie Bush [00:43:23]:
That's true.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:24]:
Yeah. I hate that.
Dickie Bush [00:43:27]:
But there's a specific type of person that has started to do that that only comes to the gym now to, like, sauna and cold plunge. And they're just getting their optimization routine in not doing anything else.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:37]:
I heard that's called the professional workout.
Dickie Bush [00:43:38]:
Did you hear the executive workout?
Greg Isenberg [00:43:40]:
No.
Dickie Bush [00:43:40]:
Steam room and a wheatgrass shot. Yeah, I used to do that one in New York every once in a while.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:45]:
A wheatgrass shot?
Dickie Bush [00:43:46]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:46]:
Oh, I thought you said a wheatgrass shower.
Dickie Bush [00:43:48]:
No, it was like shot. The executive steam is for your dog.
Nicolas Cole [00:43:51]:
Morning.
Dickie Bush [00:43:51]:
Friday morning on Wall street. That's a thing.
Greg Isenberg [00:43:53]:
Okay. I want to end off with, I've got this notes file of all these ideas. I've got about 100 ideas in there.
Nicolas Cole [00:44:00]:
Amazing.
Dickie Bush [00:44:01]:
Nice.
Greg Isenberg [00:44:01]:
I'm going to give you a couple and you can tell me if you like them or you don't like them. Goodreads. Someone needs to reinvent Goodreads.
Nicolas Cole [00:44:08]:
Yeah, I hate that platform.
Greg Isenberg [00:44:11]:
It's such a great idea. Like a social network around books, essentially, and reviews around books. What's it called? Letterbox was recently acquired by tiny and can see. And Letterbox is for films. I could see like a letterbox level in terms of design for Goodreads. I feel like we're due for it. They were acquired by Amazon, I think, many years ago.
Dickie Bush [00:44:39]:
I think a Goodreads for podcasts or Goodreads for your Twitter feed would be interesting. Right? What if you could integrate your Twitter feed with your liked tweets all went somewhere, and then you could see and talk to or connect with other people who also liked those same tweets or listened to those same podcasts? That could be kind of cool.
Nicolas Cole [00:44:57]:
Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, all this sort of just speaks to the broader trend, which is there's just way too much content. We just can't consume all of it. So you're probably going to see, same with that niching down idea, more and more platforms that are like, here's how to parse just the feed on Twitter versus here's how to parse just the podcasts you listen to on Spotify versus just the videos you watch on YouTube. Just too much.
Greg Isenberg [00:45:22]:
Too much. So what do you think? What do you rate that idea on? Tens? No sevens? I would use it.
Dickie Bush [00:45:30]:
I'd use it more. I don't like goodreads.
Nicolas Cole [00:45:32]:
Yeah. I've never really used Goodreads? I don't know.
Dickie Bush [00:45:35]:
I know people who use it to count the number of books they read. That's it. They add the books that they read to it. But I don't know. I wouldn't be excited to work on it, but I would use it.
Nicolas Cole [00:45:44]:
I feel like a cooler. There you go. That's a good answer. I feel like a cooler feature is isn't in Amazon Kindle and I don't use it, but I just know of it where you can see how many other people have highlighted the same sections. That to me is a lot cooler.
Greg Isenberg [00:46:04]:
But that's how I would start off. Goodreads 2.0 would be probably that.
Dickie Bush [00:46:09]:
I think read wise is probably trending in that direction. Some kind of consolidation of all the highlights.
Nicolas Cole [00:46:13]:
Yeah, true.
Greg Isenberg [00:46:15]:
Cool.
Nicolas Cole [00:46:16]:
Can I give you one of my business ideas?
Greg Isenberg [00:46:17]:
Yeah.
Nicolas Cole [00:46:18]:
All right. So one of mine is, I think that the next Simon and schuster or Penguin random house or whatever is going to be one individual that builds, I mean, one author, but has like a whole team. So an author is being treated like a venture backed startup. And the team and that author train an entire model on how that specific author outlines a certain type of story, how they write it, vocabulary choices, like really, really in depth. And then it allows that author and that style to. You then have the ability to create a book a week or a book a day, and you can just flood an entire subcategory. Imagine James Patterson could actually do this right now. James Patterson's like, I want to write thrillers.
Nicolas Cole [00:47:05]:
He already writes, co writes with other people. He's doing the manual version of it with another author. He does a book a month. Okay, well, if he took the time and built a model, he could write a James Patterson level book a day. And that's going to happen. It's just a question of who goes and builds it, how long does it take? And you have to have enough of a library to train the model on you because the problem you see it with now, like OpenAI, that was the whole issue, is like, you can't go train your model on other people's content without those other people going, hey, what the hell? So the solution is you have to have produced enough volume to train the model on you, and you're the copyright owner. And the problem and why James Patterson can't do this is because his publisher owns all his stuff. So is the publisher going to build it? Is he allowed to build it? But I'm really fascinated by the idea of what does it look like for an author to create a book a day and have it actually be 80, 90% quality of what you would produce on your own.
Greg Isenberg [00:48:10]:
Yeah. I mean, the average author does what a book every three years.
Dickie Bush [00:48:14]:
Two, three years.
Nicolas Cole [00:48:15]:
Yeah, if that. Five years.
Greg Isenberg [00:48:16]:
I think it's interesting.
Nicolas Cole [00:48:18]:
And he was the one who broke that model and went, I want to do. There were a couple of authors before him, but he was really the one that went, I want to do two or three or four books a year. And then now, as far as I know, he's one of the only authors that cranks out consistently a book a month, every month, year after year after year. He's doing the manual version because he's working with other writers.
Greg Isenberg [00:48:39]:
Yeah. My guess is this also translates pretty well to music.
Nicolas Cole [00:48:43]:
Oh, same thing's going to happen.
Greg Isenberg [00:48:45]:
Same thing.
Nicolas Cole [00:48:45]:
Yeah.
Greg Isenberg [00:48:46]:
I like this idea. It's probably like an 8787 for you.
Nicolas Cole [00:48:49]:
You said no sevens. Oh, 8.7. Okay, cool. I'll take it. That's fine. You got any good ones? Iki.
Dickie Bush [00:48:58]:
It's not something I actually do much. It like, brainstorm, random business. Like, I don't have that note. That's how my brain works. See, I wrote something the other day that I love to learn, but I'm not curious at all where I don't go down Internet rabbit holes about random things. And I felt guilty for that for a long time. Like, random ideas and going down and spending, like, 10 hours on YouTube. I don't like to do.
Dickie Bush [00:49:20]:
I don't know.
Nicolas Cole [00:49:20]:
I think one of us needs to have that train. Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:49:23]:
What am I doing right now and what's the next logical step?
Greg Isenberg [00:49:27]:
Yeah.
Dickie Bush [00:49:27]:
I don't know. I felt guilty, but now I'm kind of leaning into it as a superpower.
Nicolas Cole [00:49:31]:
No, it's great in the opposite way.
Dickie Bush [00:49:33]:
Because I just don't care about how the world works. People are like, I'm fascinated by how the world works. I'm like, I just care that it works. I don't really care at all about how.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:42]:
Right, last idea.
Nicolas Cole [00:49:45]:
I love that about you. One of us has to.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:48]:
So I'm looking to buy some art.
Nicolas Cole [00:49:51]:
And I got an artist that you should buy.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:55]:
Okay.
Nicolas Cole [00:49:56]:
He's on the up and up, and I think that you could tick the.
Greg Isenberg [00:49:59]:
Tick the. We'll talk about that.
Nicolas Cole [00:50:02]:
I'll put you onto him.
Greg Isenberg [00:50:03]:
Yeah. There doesn't seem to be a good marketplace for secondhand curated art.
Dickie Bush [00:50:08]:
Isn't that what masterworks or master something?
Nicolas Cole [00:50:10]:
In what way? What do you mean by that?
Greg Isenberg [00:50:12]:
So there's places where I can buy art that other people have owned before. Of course there's artsy, which is like the big platform. Do you guys know artsy? It's basically like the Amazon for art, but they have, like, pieces in the tens of millions or millions of dollars to pieces that are $100. And some of them are, like, new pieces, and some of them are someone else used, so to speak. I think there's probably an opportunity to do a marketplace with curated pieces, meaning it's not as overloaded with, like, here's 1 million pieces, here's maybe a subset, and also the ability to rent pieces.
Nicolas Cole [00:50:51]:
I was actually just thinking that, like, a Airbnb, I want to rent your Picasso for the weekend because I'm throwing a party. It'd be kind of cool. There's a huge level of risk in.
Greg Isenberg [00:51:02]:
That, obviously, but renting pieces seems interesting. It also is like Gen Z and millennials. Our attention span is a lot less. So it's like, yeah, I might enjoy this Picasso for a weekend. I don't know.
Nicolas Cole [00:51:16]:
I hate it now.
Dickie Bush [00:51:18]:
I think about that a lot. With the hedonic adaptation of nice things, like renting a nice car, you can get 90% of the benefit. And then if you rent a really nice car for three days, on the fourth day, you start to pick out things about the car that you don't like. And that's like, when you should give it up, because then when you own it full time, you're like, damn. I went to Germany and rented a Porsche to drive on the autobahn, and it was sick the first two days. And I remember returning it on the third day being like, fucking kind of cramped in here. And I remember I was like, that's a perfect time to get rid of that thing, because the second you have any kind of complaint, I think the same thing goes for apartments. Or, I don't know, apartments might be different, but cars or art or things like that, how can you get 90% of the upside with just the initial access and then not make it into something that owns you in the long term?
Greg Isenberg [00:52:08]:
It's a good point, and maybe this is a narrative I'm putting in my head, but after this conversation, I feel like apartments and homes doesn't fit in that category of, I don't think you get used to a beautiful home. Or do you?
Dickie Bush [00:52:24]:
I don't know.
Nicolas Cole [00:52:25]:
You definitely do. You definitely do.
Greg Isenberg [00:52:27]:
Then why would I buy this apartment?
Nicolas Cole [00:52:29]:
So my argument, though, is because it is the place where you most likely spend the majority of your time. And so it's sort of like your bed. Like, of all the things to max out, you should probably max out the thing that you spend six, seven, 8 hours a night in every night for your whole life. And your home, I think, is very similar, especially now that we all work from home. And why would you not want to optimize that? Whereas a car, it's like. And I think it all comes back to what's the pressure it puts on you relative to the enjoyment or the.
Dickie Bush [00:53:05]:
I think the solution is have someone that prevents you from thinking about the house in a negative way at any time. Which basically, if shit stops working, you actually don't even realize it. Someone is there to repair it. There's like an on call.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:17]:
Right.
Dickie Bush [00:53:18]:
Because otherwise you're just, like bitching about your $30 million house and what sucks about it. And that's just a place you want.
Nicolas Cole [00:53:24]:
To avoid and you don't want to be there, which will happen because your toilet is going to break. That's going to be annoying.
Dickie Bush [00:53:29]:
Fucking house.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:32]:
Yeah, dude, this has been so.
Nicolas Cole [00:53:34]:
That was pretty solid.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:35]:
This is solid. Proud of us.
Nicolas Cole [00:53:37]:
We got some good juice going. I like this.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:39]:
It's all because of the shipyard surviving. So thank you for inviting me here and allowing.
Dickie Bush [00:53:46]:
We should do this more. We should make this a standing thing.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:48]:
Yeah, I would love that.
Nicolas Cole [00:53:49]:
I think the first of many.
Greg Isenberg [00:53:50]:
I would love that. Where could my audience go and find out more about what you get.
Nicolas Cole [00:53:56]:
They'll find us.
Dickie Bush [00:53:57]:
Find us on Twitter. Dicky Bush or Nicholas Cole, 77. Yeah. Startrunningonline.com.
Nicolas Cole [00:54:03]:
They'll find us. Yeah. I have this heuristic that I've kind of been using is with all of the things that we create, if you can't find your way to the thing, that's a little bit of a signal.
Dickie Bush [00:54:17]:
Yeah, but there's also the counterpoint. We create so many things that where should you go?
Nicolas Cole [00:54:21]:
That's true, but, yeah, okay, that's fair. But also just like, just google it.
Greg Isenberg [00:54:26]:
Totally. I had this happen the other day. We're hiring, like, a product designer. And I had posted about it and I had said, go apply on the website. So some guy reached out to me and he was like, hey, I can't find the job. Like the career section on the late checkout website.
Nicolas Cole [00:54:48]:
I hate to break it to you, but that's a signal.
Greg Isenberg [00:54:49]:
That's a signal. And I had to respond. I was like, hey, the best little.
Dickie Bush [00:54:54]:
Hack I found for that is when we're interviewing someone, ask them to send you the calendar. Invite for the time you send them. Just like, see that they can fucking check a box of schedule it at the right time. Add a zoom link, XYZ. It's like the first little micro test of their general competence.
Nicolas Cole [00:55:09]:
Yeah, another one that gets me is like, we'll tweet something and then we'll append it and go, and by the way, if you want to start writing, check out ship 30 with a link to ship 30 dot. And then someone will comment and say, what's ship 30? If you click the link, the entire site will tell you what it is. And it's such a small thing, or, sorry, one more. Because I've been doing all these interviews for a new hire we're making. Another one is you send a cal invite, and then I'll send the person an email and say, great chat with you. Then let's use the zoom link in the description. I can't tell you how many people go sit in the Google Meet link. And that to me, it's such a small thing, but I'm like, that shows me just that small level of detail that you're know.
Greg Isenberg [00:55:53]:
That's the clip I find you in the Google Meet.
Dickie Bush [00:55:57]:
It's just gotta. There's someone waiting in there. Be like, sorry, you failed the first step of this job application. Please don't apply again.
Nicolas Cole [00:56:03]:
No, seriously, there's this. Sorry, real quick, have you seen the bear? I got to say, have you seen the bear?
Greg Isenberg [00:56:11]:
No.
Nicolas Cole [00:56:11]:
Oh, my God. Amazing show. Okay. But there's this scene where they're hiring, like, a matri D and they're doing the interview, and the girl is like, oh, she was great. I think we should hire her. And the guy is like, there's no way we're hiring that person. She's like, why? The interview went so well. And he points to one of the place settings, and he had, like, turned it.
Nicolas Cole [00:56:30]:
So there were three the right way and one was wrong. And he was like, she just sat here the entire time and did a 45 minutes interview and didn't fix that place setting. That would have driven me nuts. No attention to detail. We're not hiring that person. And it's the zoom thing. It's like, or someone emails me, they put an h in my name. I'm like, immediately.
Nicolas Cole [00:56:52]:
I'm like, you don't have attention to detail. It's not that hard.
Greg Isenberg [00:56:56]:
Totally. My name's not Craig. It's Greg.
Dickie Bush [00:56:58]:
Yeah, I saw a new one for you. It's Nicholas Cole. K-O-H-L. Like, Cole's the shopping guys. I've seen a lot of names for you. I've never seen Nicholas Cole like this.
Nicolas Cole [00:57:09]:
So this would be a good time to announce I am part of the Coles empire. The shipyard was actually funded by the Coles empire? Yeah. So attention to detail, everyone.
Greg Isenberg [00:57:21]:
Yeah, that'll get you to 10 million. Thanks, everyone. All right, later. Boom.