My First Million: #177 - How a City Tour is Making Millions, Selling Manhood & the Barstool for Tech

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.

If you're building one of these, please reach out to me.

I want to invest in all of these.

I want to invest in like 20 of these companies.

So we're going to talk about what you guys can expect in today's episode, but before

we do, so My First Million, we actually just went from 80th in our category on the iTunes

Store, which is a big deal to us, to like number 14.

And one of the reasons why we did it was because you folks who are listening have clicked the

subscribe button.

So if you're using iTunes or using an Apple product, can you please do me a favor?

I want you to go and click subscribe.

So go to our My First Million page and click that subscribe button.

And then we have this email address, MFM, so My First Million, MFM, at TheHussell.co.

Send a screenshot of you subscribed and we're going to do a call out of you on the podcast.

So say like your name and then show me that you subscribed, send it to MFM, a screenshot

and we're going to give a call out.

And actually we're going to give a call out at the end of this episode for all the people

that did that previously.

And now let's hear what we're going to talk about in this episode.

Go ahead, Sean.

Yeah.

We got a bunch of topics.

I'm excited about.

I'm excited about creating Barstool Sports for the tech industry.

We talked about internal company podcasting platforms like Spoken.

We went on a crazy detour for CrimeWalks, Manhood as a Service, Rent a Chicken.

We had a bunch of good topics in this week's, in today's episode.

This was probably, if you like ideas, I would say you're going to love this episode.

Sometimes we're a little bit light on ideas.

We were super heavy on ideas today.

So I think you guys will love it.

Great.

I'll see you in the episode.

So we just were talking for a few minutes about the podcast updates and what we're doing

to make it grow.

But what I was about to tell you, Sean, is I have this doc that I'm going to send to

you.

And so, you know, have you seen how, I don't know if you've seen this or not, but the podcast

goes in the email, I think every day now.

Oh, I have not seen that yet.

And I'm the one writing it.

And so I have a, we set this up so it's going to, you're going to see the clicks in this

document that I sent you every day.

But anyway, it's going well today.

Did you see that graph I sent you?

I tweeted it out.

I was like, this is what I'm talking about.

There's a basically, you sent a graph of the iTunes rankings for us business, for the business

category, I would get, I guess, pretty big category.

And maybe we usually hovered between 80 and 100.

Like we were number 80, number 100, I guess, like that was kind of like our norm.

And then Sam takes over growth and like, boom, step change, we're up to, we're now ranked

number 20 for the last, I don't know, a week or two.

You could just see when you started working on it, it's like a direct thing, which reminds

me of like a very, a lesson I always teach everybody on our team, because there's lots

of marketing things you'll do where you're like, did it work?

And it's like, I don't know, we got to look into it.

Oh, it wasn't trackable.

It's like, no, no, no, just show me the revenue graph, show me the user graph.

Like if I can't notice something happened on this day, or, hey, we started growing around

this time, then it didn't work enough, right?

Like, because, because usually when you're in a small project, you need step changes.

You don't need 1%.

You need 10%, 30%, 50% type of changes to work.

And basically where we are now is, I mean, you and I could are both very capable of

doing this.

You just kind of look at the, it takes about two weeks.

It took about, took me about two weeks to talk to people and to look at the numbers.

And it's like, oh, okay, I now know that if I only do this, I'm going to be mostly there.

Right.

And what I've learned now is it's getting people to click the subscribe button on iTunes.

If I get people to do that, mostly everything will, will be fine.

Okay, but that's going to sound overly simplistic.

It's like, yeah, all I got to do is get checkmate and then I win a game of chess.

Like, well, yeah, but how do you get people to click the subscribe button is kind of the

question.

No, I mean, it is, it is not overly simplistic.

It is simple.

It is get people to click that button.

Now the not simple part is how I'm going to get people to click the button, but the way

to grow is simple.

I just get people to click that button and we've got loads of ways.

For one, I'm just asking people.

So we, um, we asked people to leave a review, uh, the other day.

And when I asked people to leave the review that day, we had 600 reviews.

Do you know how many reviews we have now?

I don't know.

There was at least a few hundred that came through.

Yeah.

1400.

Okay.

So we added 800 reviews just off of a quick one minute ask, Hey, if you like the podcast,

go review it.

Uh, we really appreciate it.

That's kind of all you offered really.

It wasn't quick.

I like baked and I baked them, but yeah, right.

It was sincere.

Uh, yes.

What I'm saying is it wasn't like rocket science.

So you, uh, you know, I guess like one of the reasons I want to share how we grow this

podcast is because the way we grow this podcast is kind of going to be, hold on, mosquito

on my desk.

Wow.

Too slow.

Uh, okay.

So one of the ways that we're going to grow this podcast or one of the reasons we talk

about this is because the things you're doing now is stuff that people can learn to grow

whatever their thing is.

And so I would say so far, two observations.

Number one, intensity, uh, when Sam does something, he really like throws himself in

in a hot, you know, a more intense way than the average person, the average person thinks

they're doing it.

And then we watch Sam's level of like aggression and intensity towards something.

You're like, Oh, okay, that's what a level 12 is.

Like now I know what, now I know what the sort of theoretical max is.

Okay.

That's one lesson.

Uh, I get to see, I guess other people don't get to see on a daily basis, but whatever.

Second thing is start with the stupid simple stuff.

Okay.

We want subscribers.

Well, have we just asked people to subscribe?

All right.

Like, have we treated saying go subscribe?

Have we set it on the podcast?

Hey, make sure you subscribe to this thing.

Go push this button.

And um, that takes zero effort, but actually yielded like gain because it was just low

hanging fruit.

And I, I know that a lot of smart people would have talked themselves out of that because

they would be afraid to ask, uh, anybody for anything.

They're just afraid of getting rejected or afraid of coming across as a, you know, salesperson

or beggar or whatever.

So they're just afraid to ask.

And secondly, they would have over complicated things.

They would have said, well, I got to go do this sophisticated strategy.

And it's like, wait, well, have you tried the dumb strategy first?

Yes.

Uh, I completely agree.

Uh, and like, that's why I always make a joke that when I meet really smart people, like

we, we interviewed, um, biology the other day and I, I don't know when that's going

to come out in relation to this, when this pubcast is coming out, but soon.

And he was like one of the most high IQ people I've ever spoke to.

I think he might have been the highest IQ person I've ever talked to.

And it was very obvious.

And when I was talking to him, I actually was wondering, I'm like, you know, for the longest

time, I actually thought that the lower your IQ, like you want your IQ to be just above

average, but not really high because the really smart people I meet other than him, they typically

talk themselves out of anything.

And, and so anyway, I actually think that being just slightly above average is optimal.

But the sweet spot.

I didn't get to ask him that, but I would want, I would love to know his opinion of

that, of like, because like when you meet him and he must know that he's like a kind

of a genius.

Right.

Because, you know, he's going to be humble about it, he's not going to say, yeah, clearly

I'm smarter than everybody, but he is clearly smarter than everyone.

So I know where you're going with this top one.

And I think I've got a, I've got a strong opinion on it.

You want to do your bar stool for tech?

Yes.

You talked about this many times.

Okay.

Yeah.

So, so maybe we'll keep it short, but.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, you, I know what you said, but we have listeners.

They probably don't.

Okay.

Well, to me as a super interesting company, not just, I'm entered, you know, I'm a fan,

I consumed some of the content, but I'm more interested in the business behind it.

So they basically went into sports media, which was, you know, I'm a fan, I'm a big fan of

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.