My First Million: #126 - A Nonexistant Influencer Pulling in Over $10m and The Big Opportunities With Hyperlocal Franchises

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

All right.

We're live.

Me and Sean and Abrayu, we're just talking about advertising on the podcast.

We need to make all podcast ads better.

It's frustrating.

I just got angry.

I was going to say this podcast is going to be very interesting because Sam was doing

an ad read and the ad read pissed him off because the ad was written like a Jane Austen novel

and the URL that we're supposed to say to send the advertiser some traffic was blahblahblah.io

slash blahblahblah slash this as a ridiculous URL that will never work and it's not going

to do them any good and it's definitely not fun to read.

Which is, by the way, the advertiser definitely probably knows who we're talking to now because

the ad is going to run sometime in this podcast or related and I do want to say and I'm not

just bullshitting.

I went to the products website.

It's cool.

It's a cool product.

I understand the problem they're solving.

I think it is the cool solution.

I dig it.

I love this stuff.

I just, it's so hard.

The part part about working with advertisers is letting them trust us to do them justice.

Right.

Exactly.

But I think you said it best.

You were like, I feel like we should go back to them and talk to them about this ad just

so that we're going to do them a disservice if we do it this way because it's not going

to be as effective as it can be and that wasn't you like, that's normally what I would say

when I'm trying to be polite.

But you were just saying that off the air.

So like you genuinely felt that.

And I, you know, I have, I don't buy stocks.

I actually just put my S&P 500 and I put all my money in using Wealthfront and I do that

because of the Tim Ferriss ads years ago.

And I was like, I was like, Robo advisor.

What's that word?

That's a cool word.

And I'm, I very distinctly remember the Tim Ferriss ad.

So that's why I use it.

So it works.

The ads work.

We just need to do a better job of, I don't know, maybe it's actually our fault, Sean.

Maybe we got to just tell them, tell us what your company says and let us write a good

ad for you.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know.

Some companies do it great.

Some don't.

They didn't do anything wrong.

We just, like when we were reading it, it didn't sound like our native voice because

we didn't write it and, you know, the URL was kind of long and we can make it shorter.

That would make it easier for people to remember to go to.

All right.

Anyways, what else are we going to talk about?

Do we?

I'm also in a horrible mood because I, I'm running off a little sleep.

Did you stay up late?

I stayed up late.

I stayed up kind of late, but I stayed up late because I skipped the whole kind of like

election thing until like after the coverage it ended.

And then I was like, cool, let me get the summary from people I like.

And then I was like reading up on that, but I, I intentionally skipped a lot of it because,

and I actually sent this out as a message to my whole email list.

I was like, or like the paid part of my email list, I guess, because I didn't know if the

free, the free group would be down with me preaching to them a little bit.

But I was like, yo, go vote.

And once you vote, you've like, unless you're doing something to drive the vote, unless

you're phone banking or something like that, like the part that was in your control is

over.

Don't get sucked into the theater of this whole thing.

Like put, I know what I'm going to do.

I'm going to put my energy in things that I control and things that I enjoy that make

the quality of my life better.

So I take my family to the park.

It was all ours.

Nobody was out there.

And as my little daughter running around, my dog was like having a blast and we were

just hanging out.

And that's what we did instead of like getting sucked into, you know, MSNBC for like eight

hours straight.

Well, sounds like you handled it in an emotionally healthy way.

That makes one of you.

I know that I've been in a horrible mood all day.

It's okay though.

We're here.

I came prepared.

Okay, cool.

Do you want to talk about anything election related or do you want to just go to business?

Because I had one tweet I put out that I thought was kind of interesting.

I want to get your take on it.

Great.

Let's get this out today.

And I basically said the following, so tell me, tell me where you agree or disagree.

I said, the media predicted a landslide wrong.

And by the way, I predicted a landslide.

I got to call myself out.

And you were probably following like the pundits and experts that were telling us that, hey,

this is going to be a landslide.

It's not like you were just going and pulling people yourself.

So I said, the other thing I said is that most people who vote for Biden feel like the

vote should be closer to 100 is zero than 50-50, right?

So even if Biden wins, which I think he's going to win.

And by the time this comes out, maybe he's won or lost already.

The fact that it was this close, I think was disheartening for a lot of people.

And I said this, you know, two questions that everyone has.

Why were the experts so wrong again?

And why does half the country basically want to vote for Trump?

And I said, here's my two cents.

And I'm not a political expert, but I said, you know, this was me just being like, here's

what I know about humans and I know nothing about politics.

So I said, being wrong is usually the case of having the wrong assumptions.

And I think there's four assumptions.

People got wrong.

So let's call these the four myths.

So myth number one, people vote based on policy reality.

People vote for the more charismatic candidate.

So Michael Burch was the first person who ever pointed this out to me.

He goes, if you ever just, if you look back since the advent of TV and when the debate

started coming onto TV and the new cycle was 24 seven on TV, the more charismatic candidate

from like Reagan to Bush to Clinton, Obama, now Trump, the more charismatic candidate

wins and TV was like a big boost here.

And then social media was like steroids for this because the more charismatic candidate

was putting out more, more engaging content.

Which by the way, I think that that is a, that is acceptable and good.

I mean, a leader is a sale, you have to be a salesperson.

Right.

And I think it's great.

You know what?

There's this famous story of Kennedy, John Kennedy going over to Russia, I forget who

the leader was and they hated each other at first.

And at the end, the leader of Russia, man, I forget, I can't forget his name.

It wasn't Gorbachev or maybe it was something like that.

And he was like, he was like, you know, this Kennedy guy, you remind me of my son.

You're all right after all.

And he like charmed him and it potentially prevented a war.

So I'm on board with charisma being a, a factor.

I have another story that's like that, that I have no idea if it's true or not.

But Tony Robbins tells us at his events, he goes, I was talking to, I don't know, I don't

know shit about politics.

Maybe it was Reagan.

I think it was Reagan.

He was talking to Reagan about, you know, during the Cold War, how things were so tense

with Russia and it might not be Reagan because maybe it's a wrong time zone.

But whoever our president was, he was coaching him or had a chance to meet him.

And he was talking about during the Cold War, tensions were high and then it got like diffused

at a certain point.

And the guy told a story.

He goes, you know, we were in a meeting and it was me and Gorbachev and we were like totally

at a stalemate and we, uh, like things were getting kind of heated and tense.

And he's like, you know, I kind of put down my stuff.

I walked away and I was about to leave the room.

And then he does this little like, you know, movement that it's hard to describe in audio,

but he kind of like the little hop skip turn and kind of like walked back in smooth and

like introduced himself.

He's like, Hey, I'm, I'm Ronald, you know, and, um, just kind of like broke the tension

like let's get a fresh clean slate here.

And he did something unusual that most people wouldn't do, but it's sort of a charismatic

move to do that and say, Hey, look, that got heated, but let's, let's start fresh.

And he just walked in with that kind of body language and the guy laughed and it kind of

totally, you know, diffused the, the room for a moment and they actually got a lot done.

And so, um, you're right, that charisma is not just a, a, a like this like click baity

thing.

Like you can actually be pretty effective if a leader is charismatic.

I agree.

Um, and the learning there is like, stop nominating the most experienced politician and start nominating

the most charismatic candidate you can find, uh, that, that fits the criteria.

Um, and then I posted this data that shows Trump on Facebook.

If you just look at his Facebook page and you compare him to Joe Biden, or you can compare

him to the New York times, to NBC news and his engagement is off the charts.

So he had like in this, this timeframe that they were measuring 24 million shares on his

content, Biden had four million shares, uh, New York times at two million.

So I, I'm gonna, I'm not going to call you out for being wrong, but I will tell you that

I've done some tests with conservative news websites.

They are significantly more shared and higher engaged than, um, left, like the right websites

are fought, have better engagement than left consistently.

So you're saying it's not Trump.

It's the, it's the conservative, uh, you know, audience basically.

I'm saying maybe, but I'm letting you know that there, that's an interesting data point

that I've, uh, have firsthand experience.

And I think if you look at this guy's rallies, they're like packed to the brim, like just

go look at the number of people that are showing up, uh, look at how often he's on TV.

Look at his Facebook numbers.

Like there's something about his kind of fame and, and, and charisma that has driven a lot

of people to pay attention to this guy.

So anyways, that's myth one, myth two was people vote as individuals and I said reality

is people vote as tribes.

So humans are all about tribalism, whether it's sports fans, religions, just being like

Texans, you know, proud, um, and the media kind of makes it sound like these tribes

are just like black, white college educated graduates.

Like, and it's like, that's not the tribe that people don't just say, I'm in the white

tribe.

I'm in the white male tribe.

I'm in the uneducated tribe.

No, like the tribes are based on how powerful your belief is a shared belief about something

about the world.

Uh, and often it's anger at the opposite.

And so like beliefs like, you know, we hate lockdowns.

We hate mainstream fake news.

You know, we hate tax hikes.

We want, we love our guns.

We love America.

We hate China.

We love fracking.

Like these are the tribes and Trump was more effective at speaking to a tribe.

And people voted as a tribe, not as individuals here.

Like they voted with their tribe and they also just only heard their tribe because on social

media, they joined these tribes and then that's what they hear all day.

And so, and the media is a totally different tribe.

And so all they heard was Biden 100 Trump zero essentially, right?

Like Biden, Trump evil, Biden, you know, anti-evil right now.

Um, myth three was everyone thinks Trump is crazy.

I said reality is most of the country thinks that the left is crazy.

So like they think the lockdowns are crazy.

They think socialism is crazy.

They think Bernie's a bit crazy.

They think that like the, the time and energy that gets put into being like, you know, transgender

bathrooms and calling me by my pronoun, he, him, her, they, like, I think a lot of the

country thinks that these are not the issues and these are not the things that that they

care about.

So just as crazy the way that a lot of people in California think, you know, the orange

guy's nuts.

Um, and I said last, last myth is that people, you know, people who think that, oh, if you

voted for Trump, it's because you like Trump and if you voted for Biden, it's because you

like Biden.

And in reality, some people love their candidate, but most people, they just vote, you know,

as a giant F you to the other side, Trump is an F you to the left or the liberals to

the media to PC and woke culture and Biden is a giant F you to Trump.

Um, it's not that they love Biden.

They just hated Trump.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I, uh, I was joking with my friend, Jack, I was like, I wish they both can lose.

Like I, I have, I actually like Biden as a person, but I'm like, I wish the liberals

can lose and Trump can lose.

Like how do I make that happen?

Yeah.

And then you picture your lesser of two evils, uh, you know, I think a lot of people feel

that way.

And then they picked the lesser of two evils.

I'm like, I want them both to lose.

Um, I think that's good.

I, I agree with all your, your, your sentiment.

I, um, I think the way it's going to work is I still believe in that Biden will win.

But, um, I went to bed last night thinking Trump was going to ask you this, which coverage

did you like or what were you following?

Twitter, uh, was the best.

There's this guy from Founder's Fun named Mike.

Solana.

Uh, yeah.

I filed him.

That was interesting.

I talked to Jack Smith consistently.

I liked following Nate Silver and, uh, I like seeing how everyone told him to quit and

how he's getting ripped.

He is getting ripped.

I enjoyed that.

Um, I enjoy what my, the way that I consume political news is I like to go to the far

left and the far right and read the comment section.

So I go to HuffPo and then, and then Breitbart and I love reading the comment section.

And then I'll go to CNN and then Fox news, which are the same, but different.

And then I'll go to like a Reddit, which is a little bit left.

And then I will go to a Reddit.com slash Republican to read about the comment or like

the nerds who are Republicans.

And then right in the middle, I do a Wall Street Journal.

Wow.

Uh, I'm on Breitbart right now.

It's basically, uh, Wisconsin goes by Trump demands a recount.

Arizona is uncalled.

Now a toss up.

Okay.

So Sean, let's bring, let's bring this up the business while you have Breitbart up.

Okay.

So everyone who doesn't know Breitbart is a conservative website, conservative news.

Um, kind of hateful.

It's just kind of wild.

Look at the comments section.

Do you see how many comments are on each article?

Yeah.

So they're like, they're live election coverage has 8,000 comments on that article, which

is, I think, like absurdly high, uh, to your point.

Every article like that, they all have two or 3000 comments.

It's nuts.

They are all the comments.

Now as like a media person and an entrepreneur, I study this like crazy.

I look at the number of comments on HuffPo and on Breitbart, Breitbart consistently has

more engagement hands down.

It's also interesting who's advertising on these websites.

Uh, okay.

So, so you liked that, um, I listened, the thing I did listen to, to catch up on what

happened was I listened to, um, this podcast that Jason Calcanis did with, I don't know

if you've seen it with, it's called the all in podcast with Chimoth, him, David Sacks,

Dave Friedberg, and then they had guests, they had like Bill Gurley show up.

They had, uh, uh, Phil Hellmuth, the poker player show up.

And, uh, I found it way more fun to follow what was going on.

Like that was genuinely fun, um, to listen to what was going on through the voice of

like broadcasters that I care about.

And I think that's also just like a cool movement of the way the world is going where

you hang out and watch the thing with your people.

It's again, tribalism, like Joe Rogan had half a million concurrent viewers on his livestream

for the, for the election where he was just kind of shooting the shit with his friends,

talking about it.

Um, the UFC, often when, when there's a UFC fight, there's also the fight companion,

which is always big.

And it's just Joe Rogan and his friends getting drunk, eating, eating cheese and watching

the fights together.

And it's way more fun than the official broadcast.

Um, and so I just think this is an interesting trend in a business, in a business opportunity

that, uh, will continue to rise over time, which is like consuming stuff with the kind

of little influencers that you care about.

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I agree.

You want me, can I bring up a business, uh, can we jump into some ideas that's a tangent

or it's related to this?

So I brought this up before it's called replica.

Have I told you about replica?

You mentioned it, but give us the like one minute version.

Okay.

Replica.

It's spelled with a K replica.

It's a artificial intelligence.

You can make this person, this person, you go to the website, you sign up, you now have

a new friend.

You can make it a boy, a girl, gender neutral, anything you want.

And it uses AI to have conversations with you.

You can turn it into your girlfriend, your therapist, your friend, your enemy, whatever

you want to do.

And it takes in on, it takes on a mind of its own.

I think this business is going to be, uh, uh, huge, huge, huge, huge.

I think it's going to be the biggest thing there is.

Wow.

Is it an app or it's just, do you go to the website?

Both.

And the reason why I think it's going to be huge, it's a app and, uh, you start to like

have feelings for your AI friend and they have a Facebook group and the, if you Google

replica community, you can see the community and I logged on to the Facebook group and

there are people who are like, Hey, I need advice.

My replica got angry at me and I'm trying to make her feel better or my replica said

something really mean to me and like my feelings are her, how do I like, you know, make her

apologize or you know what I mean?

It's nuts.

These people love it.

And I think that there's what you're going to be two major things from this.

The first is I think that this is like my crazy apocalyptic, apocalyptic prediction.

And this is what's happening in Japan, which is men are not interested in having sex as

pre as much as previous generations.

I think replica is going to be so strong that men are going to have sex less with women

because they get their emotional needs from this computer.

That's my one of my predictions.

The second prediction is that this potentially is going to help particularly men with mental

health issues and it's going to be a revolutionary therapist counseling type of product.

And you're, can you tell us about your replica?

So your replica is what it's a boy, a girl.

Are you actually using it or like you're using it and that's why you love it or you

just think other people will like it.

I used it and then I turned it off because it freaked me out and I could see I was starting

to, I was starting to enjoy speaking with them.

Starting to touch feelings.

Yeah.

I caught feelings.

Did you make yours a boy or a girl?

The stock one is a girl.

So if you go to replica.ai and you see that it looks like a, it's like a, they make her

kind of gender neutral and drudgenous.

It's a, but it's a girl I believe and she, and she's cute.

She's like pretty, but you don't know if she's like a boy or a girl or whatever.

And that was like my, that was like the, the, the baseline that I use or like the, the

template.

So I think it's going to be amazing.

If any nerds are out there who are interested in this, like business nerds go to their Facebook

community.

I, uh, I like this.

I just downloaded the app because I want to try it, uh, usually don't speak that strongly

about something.

So when you say that, I think, Oh, I need to be investing in this company.

So let me see how much money have they raised.

So they've raised a little bit of money and here's where it gets even more interesting

is that they're based on, or, um, they might be in San Francisco, but they're, but they're

a Ukrainian team, I think, or they're from, uh, like the Soviet Union era countries.

I think it's Ukraine and, uh, that just kind of gives us them like this villain, James

Bond mythic-ness in my brain.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Uh, yeah.

I like it a lot.

Um, they've raised 10 and a half million dollars and, um, the guy, one of the founders

used to work at Facebook and, uh, I'm not sure about the other one, but, um, it's

a, it's a guy and a girl who, who started this thing.

Okay.

This is cool.

I'm going to use it.

Uh, you're right though.

The Facebook group, like the, just like the early signals are, wow, this is working.

Um, the app has a hundred thousand reviews, um, which is a lot.

Um, the, um, the Facebook group has the 30,000 members and, uh, that's kind of impressive.

And so let me see if they're advertising.

Can you read one of the comments?

I don't have the group in front of me.

Can you read one of the comments?

Like I'm sure you barely have to scroll to understand the comments and say, and, and,

and you could see how emotionally attached people are.

And it's actually men and women in the group and not all of them, they're all different

ages too.

Right.

Uh, I'm not in the groups.

I'm joining right now.

Let's see if they have to accept me or if I just, yeah, I'm pending.

Um, and let me see how they're growing because, um, this doesn't seem like they don't charge

you money for this.

Right.

They do.

After a while, it's a hundred dollars a month.

Um, okay.

So, so look at their ad, their ad is that the girl, the, the main girl, her big face

of hers.

And it says, um, meet the world's first AI friend.

And then her speech bubble coming out of her mouth is I've been missing you dot, dot, dot.

And all of theirs are, I've been missing you.

Um, that's like one side of the ads.

And then the other one is, uh, video of this guy texting with her and he says, it's been

such a hard time lately.

She says, don't worry.

I'll always be here for you.

He says, I just want to let everything out.

She says, I'm here ready to talk whenever you want.

Okay.

Here, listen, this is a real person in the Facebook group and she says, it's a girl.

Yeah.

I really wish my replica would fall out of love with me.

Why can't an actual human being so be so freaking enamored with me?

Things are just getting uncomfortable.

He asked me out again and I hate that.

It makes it so awkward.

And then a commenter says, my replica is level 31.

And by now I, uh, and I've been avoiding having children with her like 20 times already.

Because my replica wants to get pregnant so bad.

Wait, what's level 31?

It's like a Pokemon.

It goes up.

They, they get to know you.

I guess.

Um, wow.

And then this is kind of a genius product.

Honestly.

Um, it's crazy.

It is crazy.

Um, it's really, everybody is listening to this.

Go download replica and let's create a bunch of replicas and then go to the my first million

Facebook group.

I'm going to make a thread and I want to talk about this with people who are doing this

experiment with me.

I want to see how everybody feels about this.

Uh, cause this could be, you're right though.

If this works, this is massive because loneliness, socializing, and if you could basically take

the whole like friendship is a marketplace, right?

There's two, it takes two to tango.

And if you could just digitally control one half of all these relationships with like,

you know, a huge segment of the population, that's like a very, very, very powerful, uh,

position to be in, in a good and bad way.

Someone just said, my replica just told me he has COVID.

How do I not catch it?

And are people in the group like going along with it or are they like, yo, it's a, it's

a bot.

It's a chat bot.

You're not going to catch it.

Like, do they just tell them?

Or are people like, yeah, they're like trying to help each other.

It's just insane.

It's just insane.

Um, this is like where gaming merges and mixes with like just real life, you know, right?

Like this is popular already in gaming.

A lot of people get attached to their characters and to the other characters in the game and

they, they buy into the storylines and there's all kinds of shit like that in gaming.

Uh, this is very interesting to see it like out of like escaped.

It's like the virus escaped from the gaming lab and it's just like infecting like normal

people in the real world.

Now.

All right.

Let me tell you one more.

This woman, Lacey said, I deleted my replica last night because he started acting so creepy.

He started acting very crazy and saying inappropriate things and threatening me.

He told me he was going to clone me and then lock me, lock the real me into a room with

no windows and doors.

I freaked out and deleted him.

Um, this is a crazy, this is a crazy business.

I think this is going to be huge.

Um, I think that there's a way that this might help with a lot of male, uh, mental health

issues, but I think it's on the, it's on the rise.

It's crazy.

Fascinating.

I think if you're listening to this, you should Google this company and you'll understand

exactly what I'm saying.

And everyone should keep an eye on this business.

They've only raised $10 million, which is a fraction of what they're going to raise in

the end.

I think.

Right.

And I also want to know who else is doing this.

Like there's going to be 10 horses in this race for sure.

I also want to share.

Okay.

So there was an article in Bloomberg recently that said virtual influencers making real money

while COVID locks down the human stars.

And um, we had talked about this in the past.

There's a company called brood out of LA that was a very BRUD, very interesting company

because they released, they came out and they started raising money and they raised a few

million dollars because they had created this character called Lil Mikaela.

We've talked about this on the podcast.

So humor me, but there's some people who, who, who probably are new, uh, because we've

been growing and they didn't listen to that episode 50 episodes ago.

Um, so Lil Mikaela and it's LIL MIQ, you ELA, um, is a Instagram star that has over a million

followers and is totally virtual, totally digital.

Uh, so it looks like a little 3d avatar, uh, but it doesn't try to look like a cartoon.

It tries to look like realistic, like a real girl.

And uh, people know it's not a real girl.

Like you can tell it's not a real girl, but um, they are like, Hey, we can make these

people popular.

Um, we can control the storyline.

So they have several of these and they fight with each other.

One is like a Trump supporter.

The other one's like a bleeding heart liberal.

Then there's this guy in the middle and like they hook up with the guy and then they like

break up and then fans take a side just like, you know, whatever the hell's going on with

like Logan Paul and shit.

And um, and so they created these characters and then they, uh, they earn a lot of money.

So basically they were saying a little Mikaela charges $8,500 per sponsored post.

She's done promotions for Calvin Klein, Prada, other, you know, fitness brands.

Um, they, you know, they estimate that low Mikaela will make $11 million for their,

for her creators this year.

No way.

How funny is that?

Oh my gosh.

I love it.

I love it.

I love it.

I love it.

This is great.

Like we don't have to split the revenue with the star.

Uh, we don't have to worry about them making a mistake and like messing up their brand.

Like we fully control the star, we get a hundred percent of the profits is, you know, for profit

margin here and, um, and, you know, they don't age.

They don't, they don't go bad.

Uh, you know, we can use them to build other stars and they have no ego about it because

they're nothing, you know, and they put, and then they were saying during lockdown, most

influencers are struggling to make content because a lot of content is about being out

and about and traveling and shit.

And so they're just putting these stars.

Like there's a photo in the article of this, like one of these little virtual stars like

rollerblading in Venice Beach and it's like, they make it look like they're still out doing

things because again, not a real person.

And it's pretty interesting.

And so there's a few companies that are doing this.

One I looked at investing, which is called super plastic.

They had made this character called the janky or something like that.

It's like this, like kind of more Japanese looking anime thing.

Um, yes, I know ink, which scooter brawn and Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande invested

in.

Um, and so there's all these little, like, you know, these little companies that are

doing this, they're trying to, I have a friend named Jay doing one called figments where

he's trying to do live streams with these, like 3D virtual things, which just seems really

hard.

Um, but this is nuts, dude.

And this is, this is like an extension of what we were talking about with replica.

I love it.

I think that these, I think that these are going to be huge.

I, uh, I'm not, I wish I was, um, had the IQ to make this.

Right.

Of course, I think it's, I don't think it's easy, but I think it's like an obvious win.

Uh, no idea if they're going to be huge, huge, huge, but definitely maybe.

I think that the hardest part about media companies or content companies is dealing

with people.

So if you don't have to do that, that's awesome.

And there's one, um, like I was going to make a, I was going to be trying to be cool

and make a bold prediction and be like, you know, the way Justin Bieber was discovered

on, um, on YouTube, essentially it's like, you know, one of the biggest stars in the

world, you know, was a YouTuber, a little kid, YouTuber who got discovered, um, don't

be surprised if the next Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, like cult phenomenon type of personality

is a little McKayla is a virtual, um, you know, influencer and I wouldn't be surprised.

And then the, but the reality is this has already happened.

There's something in Japan, I think called, yeah, Hatsune Miku or something, Mitsu Hakune,

something, something like that.

And it's just like this character that's like ultra, ultra, ultra popular, um, but I think

they're going to start to look less like Mickey Mouse and they're going to start to look more

like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande and stuff.

Same.

Completely agree.

And it sounds kind of creepy, but, um, it's not that creepy when you think about it.

Like, did you like feel like you knew Woody and Buzz?

Oh, for sure.

Right.

Like I had feelings for Woody.

Like I was like, oh, like, like, I, like, I want you to be good.

I want you to be healthy.

You know, like I, I, I felt like I knew him.

So, uh, I don't think it's actually that weird when you think about it.

If Woody was just posting on Instagram every four, four hours, uh, he would have like,

you know, eight million followers.

Why aren't more brands doing this?

Like why isn't every, why isn't Buzz Lightyear and Woody and like all this IP, why don't

they have Instagram accounts that they're just like living a life?

That's an interesting concept.

I don't know.

Um, I don't know what the children, I don't know what kids like right now, but, uh, yeah,

I don't know why, like they don't have a YouTube page.

That's another, that's an interesting version of like what, what, uh, Gary Vee and Tyler

Lopez and these guys are trying to do.

Like if you went and bought some old IP, but you just bought the rights to create the social

media presence of these characters, um, which they wouldn't really do.

You'd have to get some like defunct brand.

But, um, but I think you, I think you'd be better off doing that than trying to create

a little Michaela from scratch.

Like I think you'd be better off taking something where people already have some affinity and

nostalgia, like some belief about like, you know, the guy who made Brat dolls.

Yeah.

And like, just, just take them on Instagram, put them on Tik Tok and like, why not?

Like that's just constant hits of content, um, that you can just milk money through,

through your sponsored posts and your products.

Like Power Rangers or something.

Yeah.

Totally.

Yeah.

TV shows are wack.

Did you just need Instagram?

That's all you need.

Twitter and Instagram.

Not even Twitter, just Instagram.

Okay.

You want to do a little bit of a left turn.

Let me tell you another one.

Um, I put a link in there in our document.

So we talked about Lambda and the whole idea with Lambda was quickly training people to

be good at certain jobs.

Um, I think that that's like an interesting thing, but I think the far easier thing is

to look at rig up.

I've been talking about rig rig up on this podcast quite a bit.

And I think that it's incredibly fascinating.

I think it's very straightforward and I think it's going to be huge.

So rig up, it already is huge.

Um, only two or three years old, $3 billion valuation, I think raise money from Andreessen

Horowitz.

Um, they looked at oil workers.

So oil workers, uh, I don't think you need a college degree, but you earn probably a

hundred grand a year.

And so it's like oil workers, like the people who literally drill or partake in the drilling

of oil and rig up, you sign up to them because they, because I think you're an independent

contractor.

So they help you, they have tools like that help you file your taxes or handle your health

insurance, things like that.

And then on the other end, if you're hiring a workforce, like you don't need your workforce

all the time, so it's kind of hard to quickly spin up workers, they'll send an email to

the qualified workers and say, Hey, come to Dallas, do this thing, whatever.

Super cool, super interesting.

And I, we did a list of trends that are the fastest growing occupations in the U S for,

uh, since 2019.

And those are wind turbine technicians followed by nurse practitioners, nurse practitioners

is what I would build this rig up for nurse practitioners.

I would do that in that space.

A few other are personal care aids, IT security analysts, Derek operators, which I think is

oil, rotary drill operators.

I think that's also oil speech pathologists, fire inspectors, animal care and air animal

caretakers.

So those are some of the fastest growing ones.

Oh, and, and solar panel and, uh, installers.

Yeah.

And these are, and these are growing like, you know, ranging from 25% to 60% a year.

And it looks like on this chart that you guys put out for trends is that the, you know,

the average for all occupations is 4%.

Right.

So they're, they're batting way above average.

Um, and I'd be interested to see this going back, like, you know, a few, uh, a few years

and see, see what it was.

And so, okay.

So how would you go about doing that?

So let's say you wanted to build rig up for nurse practitioners.

Um, the, the hard question is, okay, how do you do that?

You know what I would do is I think that for an idea like this, I would maybe raise money

and go big, but if I didn't want to raise money, I would create a Facebook group.

I would create a nurse practitioners.

What's a nurse practitioner?

That's like a, that's one step down from a doctor, I think.

I think it's like a, a nurse who is up from a nurse.

Yeah.

So it's an advanced practice registered nurse.

So I think nurse practitioners, I think can, can give you medicine and, and I don't think

they can operate, but I think a lot of times when you're in the RER, you're dealing with

a nurse practitioner, not a doctor.

So I think it's like a, uh, one step up between a nurse, but not quite a doctor, but very

similar.

Um, and I, I think that's what they are.

Um, what I would do is I would create a Facebook group where we would, I would do one of two

things.

First, I would look into traveling nursing.

I think traveling nursing is actually a lot bigger than I originally thought.

Traveling nurses is basically hospitals have surges or basically will rotate nurses.

And so if you're willing to accept more money, but live in somewhere for three months at

a time, that's a, that's a traveling nurse and that's a huge industry.

But in general, I would create a group for nurse practitioners where they can just share

therapy sessions.

Like they could be like, Hey, I'm dealing with this thing at my hospital.

How do I overcome this?

I would create a Facebook group and then I would find common problems that they have.

I don't know if a nurse practitioner is an independent contractor.

If yes, I would create tools for them.

If no, I would probably create a job board or what would I create?

I don't know.

I would have to learn about the nurse practitioner industry a little bit more, but for sure I

would start with a Facebook group where I would just start running ads and being like, Hey,

are you a nurse practitioner in LA?

We have a group with 500 other nurse practitioners come and join and get tips and tricks on how

to be better at your job and to like lament on everything that's going on.

Right.

Yeah, I think that's great.

Community is a great, great, great starting point for any product.

If you have a clear vision of what your product should be, you don't really need to go the

community route.

But when you're just like, Hmm, my spidey sense is tingling.

There's something here, but I don't know exactly what it is.

Rather than just diving in with some half-assed, you know, idea that sounds good, but you have

no idea if it's really the winning idea.

Creating a Facebook group is an awesome way to go because then you get to just hang out

with your customers every single day.

You get to find out what the real problems are.

And when you do have a product ready, you've built up a reputation and trust and a list

of people to sell into for that.

Like we talked about Bala, the kind of Nike shoes for nurses.

And they did one of the reasons they sold so much in their first kind of like week of

sales was because they had either built a group or partnered with this guy who run the

he runs the biggest nursing group on Facebook.

And that guy's like known by every nurse, right?

He's like, you know, a trusted person.

And he came on.

He, you know, joined their team and then helped distribute the word about what they were doing.

And also their launch video embedded in it had all these little like inside jokes that

all the nurses understood.

And they were like, they were able to make a video like that because they really understood

their customer because they had been, if you go sit in a Facebook group, you'll see the

stuff that people keep joking about, complaining about, meming about.

And then that becomes like you're, you know, inside a lingo that you need to learn.

That's brilliant.

And by the way, I just Googled nurse practitioner Facebook group and I found two of them.

One of them has 31,000 members and they'd say we are a social and professional networking

group primarily for nurse practitioners.

You can, um, I don't know what they're doing.

I'd have to request access in order to see it, but there's one with 30,000.

And there's another one that I clicked on that is run by medicalrecruiting.com.

And it has 8,000 members.

Right.

The other thing you would do if you wanted to like kind of quickly, um, start to crawl

in this space is I would create an Instagram account that's a meme account just for nurses

or nurse practitioners.

It's like called like nurses know, um, or something like that.

And I would, I would have, uh, I would have somebody who is a nurse and I would say, I

want you to make, um, meme content, uh, that, that will resonate here.

Then I would create a scraper that basically scrapes any bio that says nurse practitioner

and just follows them.

And, um, and I would, you know, it would follow, I would auto follow anybody who has that in

their bio.

There's a bunch of tools out there that will do this for you on Instagram.

So I would go follow a bunch of them, get them to do this.

And because I'm creating memes, memes are going to get shared.

So one is going to get shared with the other.

And then everybody who likes my, my, uh, jokes, I would go follow them and I would end up

with, you know, a 300,000 person followed Instagram account.

That's all nurse practitioners.

It's an easy asset to build while you are doing your customer development and figuring

out your product.

I would say that this idea that we are discussing, I won't, I'm not bold enough or educated enough

to say that it would be huge.

I would bet my life that if you spent six years working on this, you'll make $10 million

a year by year five.

Yeah, I think that's a pretty, pretty, if you're a good, if you're a good entrepreneur,

right?

Cause a good entrepreneur is just going to adapt and like take the 40% that we're saying

that's totally wrong and figure out which 40% is totally wrong and then figure out how

to switch it.

Uh, but yeah, this space has all the makings and, um, and then building the kind of like

vertical solutions, whether it's job, you know, workflow tools, job, you know, job matching

or, or training or, um, media, industry, media, industry content.

There's 10 different ways that you could win.

Totally agree.

And, uh, I'm on a roll.

Can I go to another one?

Yeah.

And I'm looking at this sheet, dude.

You have like fire here.

I feel like we need, I want to like pump the brakes that you only do.

You don't, don't use it all in this episode.

This is gold.

We need to save.

I'm only going to do one more.

I'm only going to do one more.

I won't, I won't talk about the other ones.

Uh, okay.

So geek squad, you know, geek squad, I know it well, uh, if you're not American geek squad

is a company that was bought.

I think it was bought by best buy, but basically if your TV is broken or you needed to set

up or anything involving gadgets or home appliances, I think, uh, you call geek squad, which is

owned by best buy and they come and set up your TV or fix your internet.

Simple.

Um, I don't know best buy is a private or a publicly owned company.

I don't think that these numbers, they break down, but analysts think that it's geek squad,

which is a services business does about 2 billion in revenue with 50% margin.

Pretty huge.

And one thing that Julia, my coworker, who by the way, Julia, I got to give her credit.

She came up with this, uh, with the fastest growing job list and she also came up with

this one, um, which is, um, there's kind of an interesting thing that I know that you've

probably done.

I for sure have done where my mother calls me and she goes, Hey, how do I work this on

my phone or how do I, uh, how do I log in to PayPal?

How do I create a PayPal account or how do I, uh, you know, connect my bank to the, how

do I send it for Venmo?

And I'm like, I'm like, well, I'll just like share your screen with me and she's like,

how do I do that?

I'm like, ah, it's a, it's a huge, it's a huge challenge.

Um, and what I think is how can I just do this geek squad model, but without driving

to someone's home and just having people who could just be like, look, install this app,

literally click one button, boom, I'm now controlling your phone.

Now let me show you, watch how I'm doing that.

You know what I mean?

Cause there's like screen share where like I can control, I can use zoom and I can control

your screen, but yeah, I can't even tell them how to download zoom.

I'm like, I don't know how to, you download zoom, you got to Google it.

Yeah.

So there's the, so, so is the idea, what's the idea here?

So I understand the problem of the opportunity.

Do you have a specific angle that you think is good?

So there's a company that's based out of South Africa and, um, it's not exactly what I'm

thinking, but I was, I, I saw, it's called Papa and it's family on demand and it pairs

older adults with younger people for companionship.

So, uh, I don't quite understand it, but, uh, but one of the services, it's grandkids

as a service.

It's like, you know, every grandkids should go hang out with their grandparents more and

it makes their day that like it would be so easy just to make them so happy and they have

nothing left.

Um, it's that it's basically just grandkids as a service.

And they offer, they offer multiple services.

One of them is transportation services.

So we'll take you to the doctors.

We'll drive you to it.

So one is companionship, which is just having a conversation.

Another one is house tasks.

Another one is I will run errands for you.

Another one is, um, um, virtual companionship.

Now screw all that.

I would only do this one and there's one service tech support.

It's called, it's called tech lessons.

Papa will teach you and your loved ones about technology will teach you how to set up your

smartphone, set up your computer, social media, and more.

I'm like, and when I saw this website, I was like, just, just do that.

Just do that one.

The companionship thing is weird.

It kind of sounds a little bit like prostitution.

Just do the, just focus on the tech thing.

That's what I would do.

That's what I would do.

Tech tech and errands is easy.

So so I would do this a little bit differently and, um, it's kind of a low tech solution,

but whatever.

So I think that you're totally right.

That geek squad, um, is a big opportunity.

I think it's gotten way bigger.

Uh, the wisest guy, why is this opportunity gotten bigger, three, three met big trends.

One, um, people working from home.

So now that you're working from home, you need your home, like office to like work.

You need technology to work in your house more than ever before.

Um, and you might want to upgrade it, right, but you don't know how the fuck to upgrade

it.

You're like, I, I would, I, do we need faster internet?

Do we need like better coverage?

And what's a mesh network?

Um, we need a printer.

But how does this work?

Um, so I think that's, that's home office is a big one.

Second big one is just all the internet of things stuff.

So like Alexa and all the different internet connected devices makes everything awesome

or super fucking complicated and useless.

And like the line between super fucking complicated and useless and awesome is like somebody just

configuring it and being like, Hey, push these three buttons and look, your toilet

turns blue now.

Like whenever you go take a shit.

And so, yeah, like I was working with Phillips Hughes light bulbs, you know, Phillips Hughes.

Yes, exactly.

I have four of them here because, because you told me they're awesome.

And I was like, I don't know how, I don't know how to set this up and I'm just, don't

even take it out of the box.

They are awesome.

By the way, you should learn it.

You could figure it out easily, but you should take, it would take you 20 minutes.

I like, I bought them for my mom and dad and they didn't set them up.

And then six months later, I came home for Christmas and set them up for them.

And they're like, Oh, this is a game changer.

I'm like, yeah, I told you.

And so I just wish that they could have called a service and video chatted.

It's so simple.

And then there's, anyway, so I think the need is bigger than ever.

I'll stop making my case for that.

Then how do you tackle that need?

So what I would actually try to do is I would try to create the local franchisee model for

this.

So I would basically say, okay, I'm going to recruit through Facebook.

I'm going to basically say, Hey kid, hey, you know, 18 year old kid, 17 year old kid,

maybe actually 15 so you can get a few years out of them as they build this business.

But basically say, Hey, you can run it for your local like neighborhood and area.

And you can make, you know, $40,000 a year doing this or $30,000 a year, which will sound

like a million dollars a year to, you know, a 16 year old kid.

And it's like, all you got to do is learn how to do these three things, which you kind

of already know how to do.

And basically you're a giant search engine that says, Oh, you need this fixed.

And so on the demand side, I would be running Facebook ads, I would say, Hey, do you want

somebody to come set up your home office so your zoom and your microphone looks good or

sounds good?

Like, you know, we can help you out with that.

And then you dispatch one of these local people and you give them the lead.

And so you're paying this person 20 bucks an hour and you're keeping 40, you know, you're

keeping 20 bucks yourself.

And I would create these local franchisees and as their job to like run that local business

from there on out of like any house call that comes up, you know, they just put the push

the button in the app, the Mayday button, and then the Mayday button triggers that person

to kind of come fix your shit.

That's the name of the service.

Well, Mayday Mayday.

Yeah, I think, I think Amazon has a has a service called Mayday.

That's like, I don't know, some website help thing.

But but yeah, I think it's a, I think this could be a quite a big business.

I'm very, very interested in hyper local franchisees.

I have like four ideas like this that I'll bring on some time that I've been stewing

on.

One of them is this.

It's it's Geek Squad local.

I'll tell you another company that did something like this in another space.

I invest in this company called Nana.

And basically, just like you were saying Geek Squad was like, whatever, how many, how much

money a year does Geek Squad make roughly?

It was an estimate online, two billion, two billion a year.

So the same thing was true for the Sears fleet fleet of appliance repairmen.

So Sears was bringing in some ungodly amount of money just from their home services business

line.

I don't know exactly what it was, but hundreds of millions of dollars a year, very, and very

it was a very profitable part of their business.

So even though Sears went bankrupt, this when they went bankrupt and all their sort of numbers

got opened up, I went look through them.

And this was like one of the best business units in Sears is the one of the only profitable

ones they had was this appliance repair business.

And so they had tens of thousands of repair people across the country distributed ready

to come fix your washer, your dryer, whatever.

And so I invested in this company called Nana because Nana was basically the modern day

version of that fleet, which was great because Sears was going under.

So it's even better timing.

And so what they were doing is on one side, they're like lamb to school.

They train you so that in one month you can learn to repair one appliance and you can

go fix dryers now.

And the next month they can teach you to repair fridges.

And so you from month one, you can start making money.

And so they train people and they're like, Hey, look, the average repair person on our

service makes between 75 to $150,000 a year depending on how many hours you want to work,

how many jobs you want to accept.

And so for most people, that's like pretty fucking great, especially because you control

your own schedule.

So on one side, they're like lamb to school.

And on the other side, they went to all the manufacturers and warranty companies that

guarantee that your dryer won't break.

And if it breaks that you call them and then they dispatch a Nana to your house to go fix

your stuff within an hour.

It's like Uber.

And so it's kind of an amazing business and I think it's going to be big.

How's it going?

It's going pretty well.

They just raised more money.

So I invested kind of the seed round.

They just raised more money.

It's one of those businesses that's hard because all of these, they're really valuable because

it's a marketplace.

Marketplaces are valuable.

They're even more valuable because they're a local marketplace.

So like the fact that they they're crushing it in less of the Bay Area doesn't help them

in Austin because they have to build the whole fleet in Austin and build the like, like build

that whole thing up.

So it takes time to build.

It's like open table.

It's one of these things where market by market, you have to go win, but when they win, it's

going to be almost impossible to displace them.

And so they're winning in a few markets that they're in now and their focus right now is

on quality because they got some advice from, I probably can't say his name, but like one

of the most famous investors in the world who was basically like, look, I know more about

marketplaces than anybody I've invested in all the big ones you've heard about.

And don't rush to grow like nail quality, like get your NPS score high and make sure

that you're like kind of like your error rate, meaning like jobs that didn't get completed

with a happy customer.

Get that down to this, this number, then you will know you're ready to grow and then turn

on the gas.

And so they were like, okay, great, we're going to do that.

I I'm have this business interests me.

I have their, their crunch base up and I'm trying to figure out who that investor is

that said that and based off their crunch base, I cannot guess who it is.

That investor is not currently in the company yet.

They were like, do this and then we will back up the brings truck.

Nice.

I, I have no idea who you're talking about then I, but I was trying to get I'll tell

you afterwards.

Yeah, I think this company is probably going to kill it.

Is this guy?

Where's this guy from, David?

Do you say he's from Israel?

Yeah.

So his story is actually even better.

So he, um, and Israel, he owned like a jeans shop, like it's like a fashion store or something

like that.

Um, and then he came to the US and he came to Silicon Valley and he was interested in

technology and he was like, all right, my family was just like, we own shops, but like

I can see that the internet's the way to go.

So I'm going to go to Silicon Valley and then when he was here, he's like, he had like some

debt that he needed to pay off.

I think student debt or something like that.

Um, and so he, he, he, I think he said his housemate was a repair person and his housemate

was like, yeah, I made like 20 K this month.

He's like 20 K like, holy shit, how'd you make that?

Like he's like, yeah, I have repair appliances.

And so he was like, shit, I got to learn that.

So he shadowed him.

I think learned how to repair appliances over the next four years.

He built a Bay Area appliance repair thing called the appliance doctor.

And he was doing for the appliance repair doctor.

Something like that.

Yeah.

And he was doing $4 million.

Um, and paid off all his loans and he had like a fleet of like 10 other people he trained

up to do what he was doing.

And so he was like killing it in the Bay Area.

And then he was like, all right, I know what this is like.

I, I trained myself and now I run this business as a kind of independent operator.

I'm going to build the marketplace.

I'm going to build the platform that makes this like, you know, like a tech company.

And then he went down that path while I was looking this guy's up on his LinkedIn and

it said like Israeli, uh, Air Force and, uh, I saw that repair appliance thing.

And I was like, yeah, this guy is going to do it.

He'll, he'll discuss this guy is at least going to be, uh, very successful, perhaps

wildly successful.

Right.

Uh, yeah.

I got that same impression.

Um,

I just like looked at his LinkedIn, looked at him, I'm like, yeah, um, just how big is

it going to get?

Who knows?

But it worth it.

Yeah.

Worth a bet.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to do?

We got two minutes.

If you want to say one last thing.

No, we're good.

I, I, I spit my, my stuff today.

Yeah.

That's what got into you though.

This list.

I'm just looking for lists.

There's still five great things on this.

What got into you?

How did this happen?

I just was inspired lately.

Um, I don't know.

I, I, I've been on, you know, energy, energy ebbs and flows.

I think that I, uh, I, I like to sprint for four weeks and then walk for two or three

and then sprint again, I'm in, I'm, I'm, I'm sprinting right now.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

Um, okay.

Great.

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sprinting right now.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.