We're back. It's my first million. I'm Sean and I'm joined by Sam on this episode We talk about a bunch of different topics we debrief our Tai Lopez experience We have a bunch of ideas around trade associations licensing popular brands and using them in funky ways Sam got a speeding ticket and has an idea around police radar detectors And then we just have a couple of stories and frameworks around coming up with new ideas such as the little trick I use with MLMs So it's a good episode being Sam and hope you guys enjoy I feel like I could rule the world and know I could be what I want to Live we are live before we get the ideas. We got a recap, right?
Yeah, I think we should debrief So on we recorded it on Thursday went live on Friday. I got a ton of messages. We had Tai Lopez on so listen to that last episode What did you think Sean? I think I actually felt like my my my outlook was similar to I think how most what most people messaged me Afterwards or at least I felt that way which was I thought it was a semi interesting episode I thought I got interesting later.
I thought the beginning he was kind of on a logging into his thing He wasn't really saying new stuff necessarily, but I thought it got interesting I think he's a total character and I'm fascinated by him Like I sent you this tweet he put out yesterday, which is like he took a selfie in the mirror and he's like he looks like the You know, he looks like someone from the incredible. He's like super super jacked Which I couldn't tell when we were doing our recording I couldn't get that I didn't get that feeling at all I did a little bit you could see he looked fit Yeah, he looked fit but like this picture is crazy But it was just I don't like just how hilarious of a character he is and how over like over the top it larger than life in many ways So anyways, I thought it was interesting. I thought he you know was pretty open I thought yeah, he does this thing where he kind of like redirects conversations towards what he wants Which is fair like most kind of successful persuasive people I've seen have this talent he uses that talent a lot But I thought he was fairly open. I thought he was down to answer any questions He didn't we've had people come on and I'm like I can't talk about that and you know Well, he didn't have any of that in his in his in his talk And then the other thing was the people who hated him before still hated him people who loved him before so loved him And then the people on the fence I think lean towards he's a smart dude.
He's interesting I like him I like him more now than I did before that's how I wrote it I think that you in particular I told you this when I was texting you you did a really good job of pressing him I didn't really press him so hard. I I think that Someone once wrote this review on the podcast that we congratulate ourselves a lot So I'm always try to be aware when I do it But I would say you did a very good job of pressing him I think that I would have we probably both would have been even better if it were in person It was a little bit hard to Interrupt him when he was speaking with for sure because there's one a few times where we both wanted to say stuff And we accidentally had a mutine or something like that And so I wish we could have done it in person, but it was cool I got I got dozens and dozens and dozens of like messages from people who are I was shocked or listeners and I thought I was like oh wow this is cool. This was good Did you get a lot of messages? I did yeah, I got text messages that were like oh my god My bullshit radar is going is beeping on like crazy You know for little things like you wouldn't share his age and it's like it's one thing that I shared certain numbers but like when you don't share your age and like just reinforces this belief that way are you kind of shady?
Which I just found funny I don't understand why he wasn't sharing it but whatever and then other people were like like some people did these really insightful Recaps where they were like they wrote blog posts or they tweeted a few of them But one thing that was cool was people were very like reflective. Oh, okay I felt this way about it like you know Where do I stand and what does this mean about me and like what parts can I give him credit for what parts? Do I feel you know he was kind of overhyping and I just thought people had like an introspective Some people had like a very introspective response to it which I thought was kind of I don't know interest I want to expect it. We never really had that.
I never felt that with any other episode I felt pride because I think that like in the world that we live in right now with the election coming up and everything We live in a very polarizing environment and I'm really proud of the audience that in the brand that we're building in the community and the listeners and ourselves because We are all pretty reasonable about listening to different perspectives and different ideas and not being too harsh and understanding that there's two sides every story And I felt really proud about that where there were some people who I'm really good friends with like Andrew was like Yeah, I'm still I friend Andrew was very vocal where he was like yeah, I just agree with you guys entirely. That's cool. Wonderful That's okay to have friend that disagree but in general even people who disagree were like I disagree I understand their opinion though, and I think that made me very prideful. I felt wonderful Yeah, I'm talking about that and the other thing I actually don't think we did a great job pressing I mean the reason why is I didn't do a ton of research like a lot of people who really don't like this guy It's because they've looked into a whole bunch of things and read all the reddit forums I've watched the YouTube tear downs and like they know more info That's not I really wasn't interested in tearing the guy down or like doing investigative journalism that really wasn't what was interesting to me I sort of just assumed going in this guy's a pretty talented marketer He took advantage early on the YouTube platform and he did what a lot of people do He sold you know kind of a dream and he probably you know his content was probably good not completely original But who cares he curated good content gave it to people if you actually applied that in your life It would have helped you if you didn't it wouldn't help you probably was kind of aggressive on certain pricing tactics or like You know certain things may have crossed the line on certain areas I don't really know I don't personally that was less interesting to me just like during the convo I was like, you know people get all up in arms.
Did you rent the Lambo? Did you? Yeah, that was bullshit who cares who cares? I personally just don't care about that and so I think some people who care about that felt like did you let them off the hook?
You guys didn't look into enough, but it's I didn't care about that. That's not what was interesting to me I would have somebody on here who's a total internet scammer or somebody who's a hacker somebody who had to Bitcoin exchange That doesn't mean I think they did a good thing But I'd be fascinated to talk to that person and understand who are you why do you do this? What's cool about this? Are there two sides to the story?
What's your point of view? You know like I'm just am more of an interested person unless I'm not trying to be the cops And I think some people wanted us to be the you know the cops in sort of waterboard him And that's I wouldn't have done that anyway. It's not really what I'm interested in Yeah, I didn't really care about the whole leasing the cars thing that didn't matter to me one I will say though one thing that's fun about that So whenever I hear someone interesting I always type in their name into Google follow by the word house One way that you can figure out if someone's legit is by their real estate holdings And if they're a big deal typically their home purchases come up on Google Which is fun and I'm you know that grant cargo and I was a grant card don't I don't know how I feel about him But he has his private jet and I noticed that the seats have his name embroidered into the seats and I'm like oh shit That's like a legit I'm like holy moly that whatever he's doing. He's got some cash somehow So that's like a funny Grant on here.
He used to use our product a ton so I've been around a talk to a bunch of times Let's do it. I would either have his number I definitely have his email So I think we can get him on my friend room. Remete. So we also have to get on he was like dude He his name is embroidered on his seats.
He's like oh that's a legit piano That was funny and then last thing was Thai kept saying silicone Valley Huge pet peeve but that's okay, whatever that's important But what he was hoping he kept doing and our friends from silicone Valley kept doing this where they were like I would say silicone Valley sucks for this reason and then I still get my friends were like you internet marketers suck for this Reason and I'm like you guys are all like kind of the same we're all this I mean it's like the same shit It's like hi definitely was quirky like a little aspergery a lot of our friends are kind of aspergery Like they all like say the same like their strategies the same thing to charge a lot of money for quality products and whole companies forever And do this and it's all the same they're all the same they all agree a lot of the same stuff Yeah, I don't think I don't think they're exactly the same but I think a Similar that they think the second thing is they're both hypocritical about each other right so like for example When reddit got started the founders said you know We went on we created 30 different accounts and we would be commenting on all the different posts to make it look like there was activity Right that was their fake it's all they make a strategy Airbnb sort of famously got exposed for early on they would scrape Craigslist Pull the listings automatically without the permission of the homeowner posted on Airbnb as an Airbnb listing and then email under a fake named Jenny It's different people being like hey, I would love to rent your place But do you guys use Airbnb like I prefer Airbnb it's much safer over there and that's how they grew awareness sort of a black hat technique There was no Jenny they did this without permission and like these are like some of the Airbnb is one of the best brands in Silicon Valley It's like kind of a awesome company that people look up to and like you know, it's admirable and maybe Tai Lopez you know, maybe he has his own versions of either fake and it's only makes it or you know charging in some kind of like You know the place of this way or whatever I don't know there's I have tons of examples on both sides where both sides have a ton of dirty laundry internet marketers do and so does So the valley companies sort of hypocritical to be like really virtuous Which I think was his point was like there's a lot of virtue signaling in good old Silicon Valley But yeah, whatever enough about Tai Lopez. I feel like you know, you're gonna feel about it I feel like we did a decent job of it. I was interested in it And I don't hate the guy or think he's like, you know, yeah, we're staying ever invented like something I would totally hang out with him. I would absolutely hang out with him Did he text you by the way?
If you are your number, yeah, I was like, that's kind of cool. You're texting Thai He's like some guy that like he said seven out of ten young men in America. No, he was and I believe that Yeah, you know, I think he's a character What's it hate about this guy? But if you hate him, whatever you have your reasons to hate him if you love him you have your reasons love I don't really carry either way on that my personal opinion is I think he's talented I think he's a character and I think he's an over the top character and I find that fascinating I think he has some tells or he over-hypes and he quotes Buffett and he quotes He's a quote machine that kind of give himself credibility like I'm doing this thing Well, here's a quote from Socrates that tells you why I'm doing this thing and like there's a talent in that But it also reveals a little bit of like well, can your actions and can your logic just stand for itself?
You know, there's that's usually a masking technique that people use to do that but like whatever. I don't know I'm cool with him. I think he's interesting dude. Well, we've milked it for all it's worth so good on us You want to talk about ideas?
Yeah, let's do it. I'll bring one up first Okay, so Ryan Beagleman our mutual friend tells me about this all the time And I have an interest in it a little bit. What do you know about trade associations anything? Just that they exist and that they sort of have this like very beautiful business model where they're charging everybody for kind of like Pretty simple amount of value.
Yeah, it's like good straightforward value And I didn't know too much about them, but they're kind of interesting trade associations are kind of a business where it's like everyone knows what they are Or as heard of one, but you don't actually think about how they like came to be and nor do you think about like creating a new one? But I think you can and the reason I'm thinking of one in particular is it's called the society or human resource management And I discovered it because the CEO is like a friend with Trump or something So somehow this came up like on the news that the CEO of the society is what Trump for this and I was like just googled it I was like oh, that's interesting So it has 350,000 members of this human resource management company and makes $150 million here in subscription revenue And it's beautiful another one is there's one for all types of different engineers. So like I don't even know the type of engineers could there be like bridge building or whatever the Mechanical civil yeah, yeah, like you know, whatever it is There's a bunch like that There are so many trade associations and I actually there's this one trade So there's one email list that I used to use to post my job in when I needed an office management It was called the org org. I'm here the org or or this is for office managers, right?
Yeah, this young woman started it I think she was like really young and it was just like an email list That's all it was but it was like super effective and it when I hear the org org I'm like, oh, this is like some silly email list. It's not that big video and then I see this business Uh, the society for human resource management. I'm like, oh my god, this thing can actually probably be huge if you so anyway Kind of a cool business model. What do you think?
You said the word beautiful earlier. So I call these beautiful businesses a beautiful business when I say it means It's just so elegantly designed to just be a cash cow and a beautiful business is one like this where the product is incredibly simple The lock-in is huge because you're gonna join the big trade association. You're not gonna join some small up and cover So it has this amazing defensibility just in the network effect They charge, you know, annual recurring subscriptions and people are gonna keep their fees They're gonna say stay a member of the association on average and it's like zero work zero innovation zero everything And I just think it's like beautiful business and this sort of the effort and difficulty To reward ratio is beautiful. So I think you said it absolutely right.
Yeah, and for anyone interested in this business model Maybe we'll do a deep dive later on but they um Trends we did one on like peer groups and those are not beautiful Those are a lot harder than they look but if they work they're beautiful But a lot of trade groups are nonprofits So you can research any type of trade group and if you google like For like the name of the trade association then revenue or name of this trade association and then what's the nonprofit filing number? Uh like 513c Yeah, if I give you google that word that phrase or if you google the trade association file by annual report They all reveal all their revenue expenses to be like, oh wow, so this group charges 300 000 people a thousand dollars a year And they charge the company it's like it like gives you the total playbook and how to do it So pretty cool So I saw this and I thought that was interesting what else could this work for and Frankly, it probably worked on the same thing. You're probably just doing another HR one. All right today's episode is brought to you by tempo tempo dot fit is the website I actually use this I've used this for a few months now And it's this machine that has a touch screen in this 3d sensor and what it does is they give you weights like 115 pounds and weights And it's for strength training.
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I use it if you look me up on Twitter You'll see I'm always filming videos where I'm talking about company Say I'm trying to crush their employees on the leaderboard because I actually love this thing and I use it all the time So check it out. Yeah, or you could do this I like the same member that sort of two by two matrix I talked about where it's like old problem new problem old solution new solution So what I would do here is let's say this is a beautiful old solution. There's an existing solution that's proven that works I would just look for basically new problem. Basically what's a new market?
What's a new industry or a trade that didn't exist You know five seven years ago, maybe it's uber drivers. Maybe it's Airbnb hosts. Oh, that's a great idea Maybe it's crypto miners. Maybe it's I don't know like whatever you those would be the best fits but Instacart workers gig this the gig economy in general, right?
Like maybe it's the gig economy trade association and you know, okay cool There's hundreds of thousands of people. I'm gonna apply this old business model That's beautiful to this new market segment where nobody has taken the poll position as the trade industry or the trade association leader in that group That's a great idea. How many uber drivers do you think they are? I have no idea over a million?
I think there's a lot. There's a lot. There's over a million I'm trying to find that for us, but yeah, I think there's over a million Wow. Yeah, that's a cool idea the gig working thing is a yeah, that's neat.
That's cool Historically like a RP is like one of the greatest trade or it's not a trade or but like membership groups of all time and then It's pretty cool. I guess it's kind of like a union and it's pretty interesting and you know, you can also do this with other groups that like let's say Traditionally don't have this so I would try to find one of the common characteristics of this is it you need to have like let's say a million plus people in the profession, right? Maybe that's the commonality. Maybe it's that they all are looking for certain resources I don't actually know what value these guys have do you know, like what's the if I joined the society for human resource management or whatever?
I know with arp there's like discounts, but for for the HR one, what is the core benefit I get? Yeah, I like that much joined Let me give you like the their their What they say is education certification networking as well as lobbying congress on issues regarding labor management That's what they say now. They also really they where they make a lot of money is conferences So a lot of like trade show so like I mean in the sense if I would totally send our HR person at this I'm like hey, there's like this thing it's for grand. It's a two-day event You want to go and learn best practices on how to like what's like for right now be like hey like remote works a thing How do you like fire people remotely and get your equipment back?
Like maybe that's just like a maybe that's just like a conference topic. I'm like yeah sure it sounds good if this if our HR person wanted to go I would say yeah, no problem and so It's mostly education and they monetize that education with Conferences, right? I think it's a good to do for us to go say go figure out. Okay.
What is the core is there a common core benefit that the trade association provide? Maybe it's education certification I know is one like personal trainers have to do this with if to keep their certifications up to date And it's just giant like it's actually a scam where you have to just have to keep paying $120 a year or whatever Just keep your certification like valid and your certification Nobody cares if you have that certification if you're there training or anyways They you know take one look at your body and then they work with you like that's it And so there's certain things that I think are providing less value than others But like again if you can find some new niche like Instagram influencers or like whatever online creators twitch creators, whatever right? Like why is there not an association if you could find one core benefit? I actually think okay, so here's a riff off this that I'm gonna sound kind of stupid because I don't really know much about this But I know enough to know that it's interesting.
Let's take a let's take a professional like vlogger or streamer, right? So there are you know every given month there's millions of video game streamers millions of youtube creators that are creating now Obviously, they're not all successful. They're not all full-time. They're not all all making money There's like a power law right where the top x make it I think for example on Shopify But you know there's I think a hundred thousand sellers that do over a million dollars a year There's sort of a similar ratio when it comes to streamers or vloggers on youtube And they don't have health insurance for example And what happens is most of them don't care about it.
They don't use it. They're younger so they you know Tell 2526 or whatever they're covered on their parents thing or they just like whatever risk it is winning it, right? And so there's these things that churches do called health care co-op. Have you ever heard about this?
Go on. Yeah, health care share programs I believe and it's basically a you can get health care not for a traditional health provider But you can create a co-op within your community within your church Where you basically pool money and ensure each other and sure the other members of the church This has become quite popular I started looking into this market because I think it's one of those like secretly really big markets A huge number of people now are participating in these health care share programs that are done by the church and churches have this loophole where I think Otherwise need to have insurance but this qualified you can do it to the church You don't have to do it through traditional providers And so they sort of get this workaround So I wonder this is like crazy idea But I wonder can somebody find a problem like that for online creators right instagram youtube twitch whatever And solve one of their core needs such as health care and can you can you solve it in one of these like ways? Like could you you know create a because you take an existing church and expand the model to where it works for them? Or could you create a new type of insurance carrier that will that will live OTT on top of existing providers But focus on this this customer segment specifically.
I think anywhere there's a new job I just want to apply old services to new professions because they're usually pretty immature What I'd be curious about is how do like nomadic remote workers what do they do for health insurance? And that's one of these new things we uh Does every company have this or for an october? I don't know if it's just us or if it's every company but we're doing we have enrollment for health care soon and uh now that I'm out of state I don't know I can't figure out what to do and so this is a problem I'm facing and I'm curious as to how people who live in bally like one of One of the women who works at a company used to do or how uh people who travel all the time I mean, I don't know what they do for health care. I'm very curious about that.
Yeah, I don't know either again I said at the beginning I'm gonna look like an idiot because I don't know enough about it But I know enough to know this is an interesting problem area to go look at um anytime lifestyles change work patterns change new jobs emerge Opportunity has simultaneously emerged and so that I think all these are sort of really really interesting ones to look at I've also seen a bunch of things fail in this space like I had a friend who was trying to provide the back office for uber drivers He's like hey, they need to pay taxes and they need health insurance and they need these things And you know company failed and he was like yeah, it was just really hard to convince uber drivers that they needed this like I know They need it they didn't know they needed it. I don't know if that was just his excuse or if that was like legit the actual Core fault of the problem because fundamentally I believe in that idea and so I reached out to find out why it failed and that's we told All right, I'll give you one more quick hitter. Okay, so you know how so this guy named Tony you know who Tony Fadel is Yeah, the critter. I say same.
Yeah. Yeah, so what this guy did Was he helped Steve Jobs build the iPhone and or maybe the iPod I forget and or both and he looked at I guess what they did was They looked at kind of like things that we kind of used on a regular basis that many people had and had bad user experience So they made it sexy and cool and he did that with a thermostat that is something that most every single American Has and they actually are a little wonky or they're not actually neat and he like created this thing It's like oh, that's an overage market and so oftentimes I think of products that are like that and I think I found one It's not actually a big enough market, but it might be and here's what it is. Um radar detectors for cars I am traveling now. I'm driving all over the place and I got a speeding ticket and I was pissed off because I was going 70 Or I was going to below the limit and I just crossed I was at midnight in the middle of Kansas And I just crossed this thing where said construction zone and the speed limit reduced and the guy just got me and I was still pissed off First of all, it's midnight and like no one's around except for cows second of all you I was what 68 a 70 And you just like that's kind of a bullshit.
So I defined I went and got a radar detector They are so hard to use and set up and I started doing research and some of these companies the top one is called unit in It's a publicly traded just like $200 million in sales selling this radar detector for $500 and I had to watch a 30-minute video on youtube On how to set this up. It was so challenging and I still don't exactly know what it all means But do you know roughly how many of these are sold or like do you don't roughly with the market sizes for this? Yeah, so the some of the bigger guys are unit in and I think it's pronounced s-court Escort owns a couple brands and uh exact at gm was formerly the CEO It does like two or three hundred million in sales unit in is a Japanese company It's uh uni like university and then den den unit in does like 150 million in sales quite profitable So it's not like huge huge But hundreds of millions in revenue but probably globally billions in revenue And I've shocked at how horrible of a product this is for the $500 and I bought it Yeah, that seems awful. Um and I love this I love this niche right because who the fuck thinks about this on a daily basis Um, but but clearly you know, this is a product that's been around for decades and uh serves with a very clear pain point And I could totally see how these would be outdated.
I'll give you an example of another one. That's like this Pools so I have a swimming pool now in my place and you know You always the guy comes every week and like changes the like chemical balance or whatever to make sure the chlorine is good And uh he has to measure it using this thing So some guy some founder who listens to the podcast have reached out to be in my mastermind or something like that And I saw what his product was and it was a I know who that's my friend. Oh, that's it's this hurting Chemical detector, right? Basically, it's a little booey that floats around in your pool and will constantly just make sure that your pools and balance and you can look On your app and you can see you know whether it's good or bad and your if your pools and a good say or not It's like take this kind of old problem And it's not even like rocket ship, you know type of technology that you got to build to make a better solution, right?
Nest is not that amazing. It's like well designed for sure, but it's not a thermostat. It's okay It's okay. Yeah, and um, you know, it's got a screen and that's the core innovation you can control it from your phone Great.
There's how many other sort of household products could use a little modern modern touch-ups Yeah, and I think about that all the time because I thought the next thing I'm like, oh my god That's one of those things where you're like, well, yeah, it seems obvious now And you really take this with routers, right? So they modernize the router and you know how to decently Decent exit. I don't know how well it went for them. They raised a lot of money, but they got adoption And that's another example of one of these yeah routers are up there I just I like thinking about that like what are household products that we all use and we've forgotten about and I Grew up at the radar detector and we would always try to floor it up for 20 hours and we would have one and I thought it was funny I'm like that's kind of funny to like build a company just to detect just to help you kind of break the law Which I think is awesome, but man, I'm using this freaking radar detector I'm like oh well, there's and there's actually like a cult following like there's a lot of people like me who are gadget nerds and Who are obsessed over this and it's a pretty cool thing.
There's another company that's similar to this that is far more famous Do you know weather tech? No, have you heard of weather tech? No, you've never heard of weather tech. Okay It's like they've almost I would say they have done it.
They built like you know how yeti made cooler sexy Listen you're gonna flip a little you know what they made sexy with floor mats for a car Okay, floor mats for a car In the south they're popular because it's like is it the design or is it just that it's like super high quality or what do people love these? I think it's both uh, it's incredibly high quality. It's very expensive So it's like I bought it for my car. I paid $600 and for some reason that made me like it Uh, but it is high quality and it feels like they branded it like an outdoorsman thing $400 million in sales $100 million in profit and how old is this company?
Is this like a 20 year old company? Yes, okay Yeah, this is cool. Okay. I like it.
This is so like outside of my hobbies my likes my business knowledge I'm like I would be the worst person ever started weather tech company Maybe but you have a nice car. Don't you care about having a clean car? I mean, that's like kind of all it is No, you've never been in my car. My car looks like shit all the time I bought it.
I buy a nice car and then my car looks like a closet. It's just awful. Uh, all right Here's another really half-baked idea. I've been thinking a lot about licensing brands My friend Xavier actually needs Tyler Pess.
No, that's Tyler Pess. Uh, my friend Xavier Got me thinking about this. So he was buying a company And I'm gonna have him on because he's really great and he's Fun. Yeah, exactly.
Our good buddy Ceva and Xavier worked together on this And one of the businesses that they're buying or you know taking a stake in has a licensing component to it I don't know how much I can talk about it, but it's basically they are there's maybe I can explain it I don't know. Okay, I'll explain it and then if he tells me we can't talk about it. We gotta know So there's a company that has that sells caricatures So like I can go and for your birthday I can get a picture of you drawn and have it have it sent to you And what they did was they licensed certain styles and we're gonna go try to get exclusive licenses across several very distinct visual styles And the business is really great. And so That had to think about licensing.
The very first episode of the podcast was with one of my best friends, Sully And what he did was his company tiny code they made mobile games, but they were licensed big brands So they made the family guy game They made the Harry Potter game and it was pretty that was the differentiator They were just like every other mobile gaming company But licensing popular brands was their hack to get better distribution and buy in from customers And so I started to think where should people be licensing popular brands that they are not currently licensed in today And so I don't know really wild idea But here's sort of mixing two different worlds together and seeing if there's something in it Enterprise education so corporate training and corporate education is like probably the most sort of boring and stiff It's like a worst content that gets paid for And so you know that seems kind of weird to me like why shouldn't this be better? Companies are willing to pay for it. It could be you know, it could be interesting But the content shops behind it are awful And so the idea here would be to license popular brands and use those characters and use those Those those styles to do corporate educational corporate training one of the two So can you hone in on this a little bit further? So you would be the one licensing the you would pay money for someone else's ip Yes For example, right?
In the tech community, there's this cartoon that's really popular called Rick and Morty and Rick and Morty is a great brand for the people who know it, but it's not such a big brand that it'd be impossible to strike a deal with them And so I would go to the creators of Rick and Morty and I would say hey I'm gonna do a whole safety training and let's say compliance training Series for big companies, but I want to do it using Rick and Morty characters to explain the concepts And so I would on one hand I would say I'll pay you x for you know The royalties or the licensing fee and then I would take that and then I would go to companies like, you know, the company I work at now or I go to Facebook or whoever and I'd say hey You have this compliance training that you need all your leaders to go do But it's so dry that they hate doing it They don't do it or they turn it on and they walk away from the computer while the video plays And we make entertaining training videos using characters that everybody knows and loves and That's what you should buy from us instead of buying from the guys you currently buy from And that's how I would try to build this business I would totally stand out from the existing, you know corporate training and corporate education companies by doing that That's interesting and um, I actually learned I didn't know anything about licensing And I do want to explain what sully did with his company because you guys are the licensees or licensors Yeah, we are uh, what would it be? I think we'd be the licensees I don't know. You are licensing. You are paying the money You are not the recipient of the money.
No, no, no, the IP holder, right? So in their case they go to they went to the owners of family guy and they said hey family guy huge brand love it You guys crush it with tv you crush it with merch, but you're not doing any mobile games And they're like, oh, yeah, we thought about it, you know, we think it could be great And they're like, yeah, but you don't want to get into the business building mobile games You don't know anything about that, but hey, we look at this let me open this door look those 80 engineers Those guys know how to build mobile games. We've been doing it for five or seven years We have some of the most popular mobile games. Here's what we'll do if you license us the brand for a family guy We will create a mobile game that uses family characters And i'll pay you a three million dollars a year licensing fee for this plus, you know an extra You know dollar for every ten dollars we make on the game And you know, that's a hypothetical deal structure and so I I just read about this Which is why I like talking about this.
There's a company called i'd read about it through it on a sub stack email newsletter that i'm on Uh, have you heard of mga? Of course we have an mga entertainment Mga is that the guy who makes those dolls? Okay, you have heard of it. Okay, so i love that guy.
What's his name? I guess a baller Isaac larian that's the founder's name. Yeah, or is yeah, Isaac larian. I believe that's his name So the world's largest privately owned toy company is mga entertainment and Isaac larian owns it born to a jewish family in iran He immigrated here and so originally what he did was they they became a licensee for power rangers meaning right some guy another jewish Uh, or israeli america or this guy's not Israeli but jew another israeli american immigrant created power rangers This guy went to him and goes let me make poise with the power ranger Let me make power ranger toys and i'll give you a large cut of the money and he did that for a long time And then he goes cool, but I don't want to pay these guys with the money anymore I want to be the the ip guy and so he invented brats.
Do you remember brats? Yeah brats dolls for those who don't know is like barbie is like epic barbies It was like black barbies cool barbies street barbies like it was barbies with like a little bit of an edge And rather than sort of clean cut image is that a good? Is that a good? Yeah, I guess I'm not I'm not a target emo, but and now they're new thing apparently which is quite popular It's l.o.l.
surprise again. We're not gonna talk about this. I know my pieces are obsessed with l.o.l. dolls Dude l.o.l.
dolls are anybody with kids knows that you have to buy l.o.l. dolls So this article that i was reading if you have a daughter between the ages of four and ten You probably know exactly what i'm talking about if you don't meet l.o.l. surprise And the company does five billion dollars in sales They're privately owned and it's growing like a weed and it started as licensing Power Rangers and then they made their own thing pretty amazing is it is amazing even just the l.o.l. dolls Like we could do a whole episode just on the fucking genius of these l.o.l.
dolls It's like a little surprise what you get inside sort of like a buying a deck of pokemon or a pack of pokemon cards You don't know which characters you're gonna get inside and so you know it has the gotcha mechanics where you want to keep going back and buying another one And this guy is a very and it's awesome his story is great We should do a whole thing on that gotcha thing. Okay, so let's talk about these the surprises Have you ever heard of this thing? I actually don't know what it's called. I bet you've heard it though You'll be able to tell me it's a candle and you burn the candle and at the bottom of the candle is a surprise and one out of A certain number of the candles have a diamond ring in there with a hundred thousand dollars No, I haven't heard this but I love this idea.
This is the type of idea that I these are that you know I said weather tech would be like the opposite of the type of company I would start the candle where one out of every hundred thousand has a diamond ring inside That is the exact type of company I would start is it called just a diamond candles.com that might be just what it's called But they like the I think it's okay So there's a thousand dollar ring at the bottom of a handful of them who knows that they're even actually there It's the willing golden ticket. Yeah, and I just google it There's like tons of surprise. There's like a jackpot jackpot candles and they do the same for bath bombs You know what a bath bomb is and I guess there's something It's so I love that so there's that what's another surprise one like a really won't go company like a really won't go product So mobile games use this a ton that's where I have learned about gotcha mechanics It's like if you want to go look this up look up gotcha g a c h a I think it's how you spell it It's like the sort of the game mechanics in a lot of the Chinese games Japanese games And so I think it's literally started I think with I'm gonna sound kind of dumb I don't think I know this exactly but I believe it was these like actual sort of like candy machines That you would put a quarter in and you would turn it and then you would get something and it's you know It gets you hooked to the sort of variable random rewards Where you're constantly hunting and searching it's like in games they do this loot boxes They create these digital boxes You buy you know you you play the game you earn coins you use the coins to buy the loot box inside the loot box You've got the new thing or you didn't get it and then you want to open up more loot boxes It's just fun to open them up And so these are so addictive that some countries outlaw games that use these mechanics I don't know where it was I think it was in China India somewhere they banned games that were using loot boxes Because it was it's so addictive. It's so effective And there's yeah for shopping there's a bunch of other ones There's a lot of them are scams this business attracts a lot of scammers Logan Paul or one of the Paul brothers like had a link to one of them They say this company would sponsor all the youtubers And it was called mystery box and you purchase it and maybe you get I don't know whatever kids like supreme clothing or something And I think they got big but they're definitely full of shit Yeah, but I like this idea of the sort of the dream right like I buy lottery tickets Because I think it's fun to play the lottery.
I love scratch-offs. I think scratch-offs are amazing They're just like pure entertainment for me and I think that there's other spaces where you could potentially apply these mechanics that's non-traditional The candle is a beautiful example of that So that's uh, so we've discovered two different frameworks Which is like household items that are born and boring and forgotten and you can just make up this on a little I just ugly like uh, and that you could like maybe like pre mechanics. We did trade associations for new new trades Um, we did the household items the everyday gadgets That are ugly and hard to set up and hard to use and don't connect to your iPhone That's like a kind of a core core mechanic and this one is the gotcha mechanics or or licensing either one either one to work here Yeah, oh we did talk about licensing, but got the gotcha thing is interesting. I like candles Another one that's not the same, but it doesn't love candles.
Have you heard of a hometown candles or something like that? Yeah, that's that's a funny one You know the guy who so for those of you don't know this guy his name is Ricky van Ricky van Neen I think his wife is Do you remember what's the white girl from get out? Yeah, you know I was looking at the black guy not the white girl. I don't know who's you allison williams allison williams You know allison williams she's like in a bunch of sitcoms her dad is brian williams ricky van I think his name is vene or neen.
He worked at facebook now. Okay, he started Okay, so i'm telling this back story because it's interesting. It's like everyone's connected I mean first of all he was like a dork who started a college humor and he started vimeo And he married this alison williams woman so badass and cool Then he got a job at facebook he works at facebook as some executive But as a side project he started this thing called like home state candles where they make candles that smell like your home state So washington is probably at pine trees california is probably ocean florida You know so he knew this was gonna go viral because he was a contact guy and he knew that state themed thing sell best And so he created like candles that smell like your home state and probably i bet you that's a really big business to be honest Yeah, my friend john started something called birth date candles So he's the creator of gravity blanket He's the creator of the moon pod and then his third kind of like invention that kind of worked is birthday candle so like sandwich birthday 2015 so there's a candle for june 15th. It says june 15th birthday can birth date candle And it has a specific smell and aura and story around june 15th And so you would buy this for somebody else you'd buy a candle essentially that's like their specific birth date candle and uh Any sort of gravity blankets too.
Yeah I mean, that's like one of the biggest things ever like one of the most viral eat that's like one of the viral things Yeah, that's like a like the blanket where you wear in the front what's that's like Yeah, it's definitely like a notable notable product. It did super well on kickstarter or whatever Um, he came on the podcast as a whole interview with him and on that he talks about the birthday candle as like one of his things Um, and it does really well candles in general are huge huge business like i looked at this business because One of my kind of secret tricks in business is to try to go find what mlm sell and then sell them without the mlm Um, so there's huge mlms around candles because people love to buy candles and buy them recurringly because literally the product like burns to the ground And so you need to keep replenishing it and so there's there's huge candles at mlms But then there's also huge non mlm candle companies. Just one that looks great. I think it's called volipso or something like that Lipsa, I don't know we have a bunch of in our house and it's just like a candle that comes in like this amazing looking You know packaging um that is essentially like art around the house and uh, yeah So I think these are I think candles in general are good and if you match popular product with let's say Um popular tribe like home state.
I think that's a really interesting way to think about little niche products Dude, that is a great idea. Like I love all these frameworks and ways to get ideas Looking at what are the most popular mlms? Also all mlms have to publish their annual reports Because of the law because they you know they're basically recruiting sellers And so they have to tell sellers how much they sell how much each seller to your cells all that stuff So you can go learn a ton. I've looked at probably 30 mlms, you know, annual reports in the last year Because of what's the most interesting one and why are they all in Utah?
They're all in Utah because it's sort of like Silicon Valley where the talent pool of people who know how to build these is all there But but yeah, there's a whole bunch of interesting ones and they've ranged from like kind of legit to like pretty fucking scammy Um, and you know, there's like keto product ones. There's candles. There's skincare. You know like health and wellness is the biggest one The absolute biggest one.
I'm not sure why I think there's sort of a you can't prove the you can't prove that the thing works It doesn't work when it comes to those things like kind of like hippie-dippy wellness products Um, and that's also what an mlm mom seller tends to like I guess but there's interesting ones There's like a wine club that's an mlm. There's lulu roe or whatever. That's a clothing wine. This is shit time.
I'm a lams dude They're crazy Well, that's a good framework. I like that um and I want to give a shout out apparently Sean told me that the founder of only fans Listener listens every episode. So what's up to that guy owner? I don't even know his name.
Yeah Founder owner whatever it is like the man in charge. So what's up to him if he ever wants to come on time to come on All right, so that's good. Um cool. All right sam where you headed to next where's the next travel destination for you?
Either DC because I want to be there for the election. I think it'd be fun or Asheville, North Carolina, which one where should I go? I don't know I think Asheville is gonna be more interesting I think so. I'm just a little nervous heads too lonely like too small right you should go to Durham I went to college there.
This very it's a very interesting place. Is it great? Great. Yeah, it's kind of great I like I think you over like that town.
Um, they totally like invested in it and there's all kinds of cool stuff Like there's there's two universities where there's Duke that's interim. There's North Carolina That's not far away at Chapel Hill, and then there's what they call research triangle park which anytime There's like these hubs. So that's a hub for biotech companies Um anytime there's these hubs the town gets built out with restaurants and cool shit everywhere because there's a bunch of like well-paid people Um, but also it just has like its own little vibe. It's his own little milli Silicon Valley or Hollywood, but it's like for researchers of biotech And so there's just like a different different vibe just like Utah will have it for MLMs All right, I'm going to turn them then cool.
Um, also I was just curious. Um, How's the like we're now in month six of this quarantine? Um, are you going crazy or what's happening? Uh, yeah, a little bit.
I feel horrible. Do you? I would say I feel horrible. I feel pretty good, but um I tend to feel good in general.
I'm not really easily. I don't know. I'm definitely Impacted like emotionally and mentally. I am like you got any good.
I feel stories I feel like I'm in fight or flight mode and when I what I've noticed is like I've said this before but a lot of people who live in a lot of people who are in elite cities Or be like, oh the salt is all rednecks and it's like in reality all cities are the same all suburbs are the same at all countries the same And so when I'm in like rural California and people are in the gas station not wearing masks I find myself in fight or flight mode and I've definitely gotten into yelling matches with these people And it's stupid because it's not gonna solve anything like no one's I'm not gonna change my opinion and they're not gonna change their opinion But I have found myself in fight or flight mode and like getting into getting into it with people Who aren't wearing masks in the gas stations I mean, I use all countries at the same that can't be right. Like I'm like way different No, not countries like USA and in India like rural areas I like like rural northern rural California is fairly similar as rural burr rural Alabama like It's not like a north or south thing. It's like a rural suburb city. So what are you doing to keep yourself from going crazy?
Um exercising is the only thing that I can do. Um, I mean, I don't have a home anymore. I'm just traveling. I guess that That's all I'm doing.
What are you doing? I mean, I feel like I just work and exercise. I don't do anything else Yeah, I pretty much do those two things and play with my daughter and try to help take care of her But um, I got this trainer who is a personal trainer for fitness. He comes to the house every day and we work out in the backyard It's awesome.
Um, but he's also like kind of like a mindset coach. Uh, like coach and so he's great because he I I usually in relationships, I'm the one who kind of is bringing different mindset things positivity Different frameworks different lenses to kind of see life through that's what I usually bring to all my relationships And he does that to me. He's like even higher level of understanding and drinks more of that kulei than I do And so he's given me these little these little tactics these little things that help so i'll give you an example Um, he was telling me the story yesterday. He goes, uh, he goes, yeah, I went to the He's like, he's like, I normally I wake up great.
Uh, feeling great, but I woke up feeling super anxious today I was like, oh shit, what why what happened? He goes, um, he goes, you know, I know I had to drive over here and he's like, I actually have had an expired license for two years So he was like, I'm always anxious that I'm gonna get pulled over and he's like the only thing that makes me more anxious about that Is having to go to the DMV like fuck the DMV is like the worst right everyone kind of universally agrees that DMV is the worst And so he's like so I just avoided it And so he's like so I woke up today. I'm recognizing I'm feeling anxious about it And he's like, I got a playbook for anxiety, right? Like, okay feeling anxious.
Therefore I do xyz And he's like, I don't have to like I don't get lost in the feeling like I have a recipe for every feeling And so he was like, all right, so I'm gonna address this head on and I'm gonna turn my anxiety to joy. Okay, how I do that And so he's telling me the story. He's like, I went to the DMV I was like before I was like on my way there He's like, I was like, am I the only one who feels this way about the DMV? So he goes to Yelp and he saw that the DMV locally had like a 2.3 star review or whatever, right?
Like, you know, DMV is hated by most and so he he sets it in his mind. He goes, okay, it's rated 2.3 stars I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna have a five star experience here. He goes, okay, how do I have a five star experience?
He goes, I'm gonna be a five star customer at the DMV. He's like, I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna be laughing. I'm gonna be patient I'm gonna be flirting with the staff there and he's like, I'm gonna find the most hospitable person here, right?
Five star comes from hospitality. I'm gonna find hospitality at the DMV. He's like, he's like, I went in I started talking to him at this lady, Wendy at the front and she's this, you know, she's this big black lady who I could tell she was ready to have a good time and he's like, I started flirting with her a little bit so I'm talking to her and she was like, you know what, like come this way real quick and she kind of shuffled over the front of the line. He goes through, he doesn't, you know, he has expired license.
They're laughing at him for having a two years, you know, expired license and he was telling him how anxious he was about coming to the DMV and they're like, look, no problem. He didn't even have to take his test. They just give him a new license. Like, you normally have to sit on an appointment, but like, here, sign the seat, boom, you're done.
Get out of here. And he walked out and he was like, holy shit, he's like, if I can make the DMV five star experience for me, then like, you know, whatever, what can rock me if I can own the DMV like this? And so he told me this little story and you know, the thing I took for a bit was like, I have all these things that I let piss me off or make my mad throughout the day. Like, I'm normally very good, but then I'll dip on these like stressful situations or like a task that I think is going to be a pain in the ass.
That's actually what gets me the most. It's not usually stress. It's usually like tasks that are pain in the ass. And he took the most pain in the ass task going to the DMV and he turned it into a story and he turned it into a good time.
And so that became my challenge. That's this little mini game I'm playing in my head that nobody knows I'm playing, which is I'm looking out for these pain in the ass, burden type of moments. And I'm going to try to DMV it like he did. So that's that's what that's been keeping me entertained lately.
That is a great that's a great story. Thank you. I love it. When he told me that story, I was like, this is a great fucking story.
I'm just hearing it in my backyard alone. I got to tell people about this. And so I didn't know how I was going to tell people, but it turns out it came out on the podcast. That is a great one.
And to wrap this up, you have a trainer who you see every day. For days a week. Yeah. Who and what is that?
Should I get that? That's amazing. What is this cost? He's amazing.
Yeah, he's great. In fact, it costs he's like a kind of like an alien like most trainers are like most kind of people who are paid by the hour. They're very time conscious, like show up on time and then they, you know, hour on the dot they leave because they got to get to the next client. They're like zipping from place to place and you know, they're very time conscious.
That always doesn't work for me because you know, you hate us about me. I'm late often, right? And he's the exact opposite. He is like, not worried about time ever.
And I asked him about this. I'm like, dude, you were hanging out like an hour after the workout. We're just chatting. We're just shooting the shit about stuff.
He'll be asking me about business, whatever. And I'm like, don't you feel like you never you never seem like you're in a hurry. He goes, oh, he's like, I pride myself on being a hacker of time. I said, what do you mean?
He goes, everybody is so stressed all the time. And the reason one of the roots of most people's stress is they feel like they don't have enough time. Like when they feel like they didn't get enough done in a day, that just means they didn't feel like they had enough time to get stuff done. Or if they're stressed about their relationship and they're stressed about having kids, it's like, because they feel like they're running out of time and they're, you know, their clock is ticking or whatever, right?
People have this like a lot of stress is based on time. It goes, I felt that way in my life and I decided to change that. So now I focus on timing. Any time I find myself worried about time, I think it's my self the opposite.
What is this great? What is the great timing in my life right now? What if I just felt like it was perfect timing going for me? I was like, what do you mean?
He's like, so like, for example, you know, whenever I'm in a situation, like, you know, you ask me to drive out here to your house to train you, most people don't do that. Most people come to my gym. But instead of worrying about how much time that was going to take, I thought about, hmm, what, how was this perfect timing for me? He's like, and then I drove into your neighborhood.
He goes, I love this neighborhood. I decided I'm going to live in this neighborhood. Like, I fell in love with this neighborhood when I came here. That's how timing works for me.
I met you. Normally, I would have never worked with you because you were trying to become your house. But I thought, maybe there's some timing that brought this guy to my life. What does he get to teach me?
What's he going to show me that I wouldn't otherwise have had? What is this great opportunity? And so he's really focused on, let's say, timing. And so he's like this personal trainer who also has like all these life philosophies and he just operates with such good energy and such a good vibe that like, by the end of the hour or hour and a half that I work with him, like, I'm buzzing, dude.
It's like, this is, it's like a drug. It's like being around him is like a drug because he's always in such a great, great state of mind. Well, I, I want to do this. Can I give you one more example or were we too far over?
Yeah. Okay. So here's an example of how he changed my life. It's a metaphor that I'm using now all the time.
So I don't know about you, but like, no matter how successful I get, whenever I start a new project, I get stressed again. And I get stressed ultimately because I'm afraid it's going to fail, right? Like, if I knew it was going to succeed, I wouldn't be fucking stressed. I'd be excited.
I'd be excited. I'm going to win. I already know I have the winning lottery ticket. But the reality is like with any new project, I'm trying to get more ambitious and then that brings in the possibility of failure.
And, and what he taught me was he's, when we were talking about fitness, it was sort of the same thing. I've many, many times tried to get fit and struggled with either diet or working out consistently or whatever. And he's like, you know, what gets you off track? Well, what we found was the same root cause.
It's the same fear of failure. What if I can't stick to the program? What if the diet's too hard to maintain? And then I'll find evidence of that as I go, right?
When it's like, it's really hard. I'll be like, fuck, it's happening again. I'm, you know, I might fail. I might fall off track.
And so he was like, look, not only are we going to get the results you want, not only are we going to win, but we're going to get there with enjoyment. We're not going to stress about it. And so he's, I was like, all right, well, how do you do that? He's like, let's say today you're at a four in your fitness level.
He's like, and you could be at a four in anything like personal finances, whatever. So let's say you're a four in fitness. You want to get to your 10, right? Let's get real clear about the 10.
Cool. Here's what your 10 is. And I described it in detail. And maybe I'll quickly describe how I want my body to be in my life to be as a 10.
He's like, all right, that's a 10. You're out of four. Now he goes, we're not just gonna do what most people do. Most people when they're out of four, they think about the 10 they want.
And then they just feel shitty that they're not at the 10. And they try to use that as fuel as motivation. I'm like, fuck, I hate where I'm at. I want to get to where I want to be.
And they just continue hating the four and wishing they had the 10 because that's cool. You might get there, but you'll feel shitty the whole time. And that's not a win. So here's what we're gonna do.
We're gonna love the four. Okay, you're at a four right now. Fantastic. And all we're gonna focus on is not the 10.
We're gonna focus on five. Five comes next. And we're gonna get really excited every time we sense that we're going from four to five. And it's just five is still not nowhere near what our 10 is gonna be.
But we're gonna really get excited about every time we see that signs of that five coming. And so he just kind of broke it down into much smaller chunks. And the last thing he said was, if I told you again that the 10 was inevitable, you were absolutely gonna get there. He's like, imagine you go outside your house and there's a corner store.
And at that corner store is the ice cream you want. Right. He goes, you know, when you walk in your corner store, you're not worried. Am I gonna get there?
You don't fear failure. You know, you're gonna get there. You also know you're not there yet. Right.
So you know, you're far away today. Cool with that. No problem. You know, you need to do some work to get there.
You need to walk to get to the corner store. No problem. I don't mind doing the work because you're absolutely certain that you're gonna get to the corner store. There's no doubt in your mind that you're gonna fail and fail to walk there.
He goes, that's how we're gonna think about success for our body. It's just this corner store that we're inevitably gonna get to. We just gotta take a bunch of steps and we're gonna go step by step all the way there. But there's no fear failure because it is as we are as certain that we're gonna get to our destination as we're certain that we can now like, we just left our house.
Of course, we still got a way to go. But we're gonna enjoy the walk there. And that metaphor, I don't know why, but that just clicked for me. And I just got really, really fucking certain that it's gonna happen.
And now I'm enjoying the process on the way there. So I don't know that maybe it was too long with speed. Maybe we should edit this out. But that has changed my life.
Well, well, I think that this trainer is your soulmate. You might be you guys are like, you guys are like the same person. I think. Yeah, I think you got to marry that your trainer.
I, you know, actually when I saw him and I was like, wait, you used to train my wife and he's a good look at dude. And I was like, and he's smooth too. So I was like, Oh, this is like, oh, this is like, you know, I'm like, you know, you know, I'm like, if I knew that you are who you are, I would have never let my wife train with you dude. Like you're Mr.
Steel your girl. And I was like, but now my wife should be worried that I'm just gonna fall in love with you because we are the same brain. What's the price? Procession.
I think he charges me 85 bucks a session or something like that. And it's off. If I need a trainer. What's that?
I think I need to get a trainer. Yeah, you should work out with this guy, but you got to be back in kind of the area. Well, this is a good episode. Appreciate everyone listening.
Leave a review. We read all of them. And maybe we'll be back next week with some more trainer stories from Sean. Hurry.
All right. See ya.