My First Million: My 6-Step Process To Find +$1,000,000 Business Ideas

And when you see a big company like 1-800 Flowers or Heineken,

so a company that has millions of customers,

when they say one or two lines like that,

that gets me really interested.

Yeah.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like the days off on the road.

Let's try.

All right, we're live.

Sean is not here, so I'm going to do a question and answer

session.

I tweeted out that I'm going to be doing this.

And we have a bunch of questions.

Jonathan is going to be reading the first ones.

What are they?

Which word do you want to start?

All right, this one is from Jimbo Slice.

He goes, would love to learn how to develop ideas for businesses

to start and how to test said ideas.

So basically, because of this podcast,

I have to research cool companies.

But what a lot of people don't know

is I've been doing research on companies

before I worked on this podcast, before I started this podcast.

And this is how I created The Hustle.

We ended up selling The Hustle for $10 billion.

And this is how I created Hampton, which

is going to be a huge company, I think.

And I've done a bunch of other little projects

based off of this research model.

I'll do a quick plug.

Basically, if you go to ideationbootcamp.co,

everyone kept asking me about this process.

So I made it into a course.

You can go and buy it if you want.

I'll just kind of give you a little preview now.

I've got this way of researching where

I look for five or six different things.

And it's almost like the way that I compare it to a song.

So there's a song called, like a Guns N' Roses song,

like Welcome to Paradise.

Is that what it's called?

Sweet Child of Mine.

That's what I'm thinking.

Sweet Child of Mine.

Sweet Child of Mine has this amazing guitar solo in that song.

And the band said that someone asked them how they write songs.

They were like, well, sometimes, like, which Sweet Child of Mine,

I heard this amazing guitar riff that Slash was tinkering with.

And I wrote lyrics around it.

And then we created the bridge and the hook and whatever.

Other times, I've got this really cool one-liner, this lyric.

We're going to turn it into the song.

I do the same thing with business.

And so those little hooks that I look for are,

the first thing is demand.

So I'm constantly seeking out what problems people have.

The second thing is I'm constantly

looking at how many people share that particular problem.

And I'm going to give examples of all this.

The third thing I look at is, who are the leaders in that space?

So what's succeeding and why?

The fourth thing I look at is, of the leaders and the people

in the space, what shortcomings do they have?

Next, I look at which business models are most effective.

And then finally, I look at what problems are being solved.

And I'm going to give you an example of this.

And so I have all these tools that I use.

And so here's an example.

So there's this company called 1-800-FLOWERS.

And it's a phone service where you call and you order flowers.

And I was just probably buying Valentine Day flowers

on their website one time.

And I noticed that their traffic, I

use this tool called SimilarWeb.

I use that all the time.

It's a plug-in.

It's free.

They have a paid version.

The free version is totally fine.

They have this plug-in where it tells you

a guesstimate of what the traffic is from a website.

And 1-800-FLOWERS, as predicted,

it had pretty great traffic.

It was like 5 million people a month coming to their website.

And then in February, it peaked to be really, really big.

That's easy to guess because it was Valentine's Day.

But basically, that told me that, wow, a lot of people

are using 1-800-FLOWERS on a regular basis.

And it peaks in February.

And it also had a big jump in whenever

Mother's Day is, May or June.

And so I was like, all right, that's interesting.

I kind of knew that.

Let me read a little bit more about this.

And so I use another tool called annoreports.com.

And I love reading annoreports because it teaches me

about the company.

So an annoreport, if a company is public,

they have to release this quarterly report

where they talk about their earnings and all these interesting

things about the company.

And a lot of time, they appear boring,

but I'm reading them to find insight.

And I found this one insight that said,

we are noticing that the succulent plant,

it's a very particular plant, we are noticing

that amongst our millennial consumers,

it's the fastest growing trend.

I also did this with Heineken, the company Heineken.

In their annoreport, they said, Heineken zero,

so which is like a non-alcohol version.

It's our fastest growing segment.

It's still really small, but it's fast growing.

And when you see a big company like 1-800-FLOWERS

so a company that has millions of customers,

when they say one or two lines like that,

that gets me really interested.

When they say something's fast growing,

I'm like, oh, I'm intrigued.

And so I'll read these reports just for looking

for one or two lines, let's say that.

Or I'll use, I'll go to like every website I go to,

if it's like really weird looking

and it grabs my attention, I go to a similar web

and I just look at what their traffic is

because I'm looking for these one little tidbits

that catch my attention.

And in this case, for the 1-800-FLOWERS,

they said succulents were growing.

And so I'll look at what they say

and then I try to find shortcomings.

So with 1-800-FLOWERS, they said that their shortcomings

are that most of their revenue comes from holidays.

And so they're trying to get revenue and business

between the holidays to make their business more steady.

They also said that, I believe this was a few years ago,

they said that most of their profit comes

from not the flowers, but from vases.

So that has the biggest margins.

And they also said that they're trying to think of ways

to get people to buy more accessories,

like vases, chocolates and things like that.

And then, so that kind of like gave me this idea of like,

okay, 1-800-FLOWERS is a big business

because the revenue is huge and it gets tons of traffic.

I know that.

So that's like proving me that there's demand

and a big audience.

I know that they're succeeding at least to some point

because they're a publicly traded company

and they're very profitable.

I know their shortcomings or the problems

that they're trying to solve for

are that they can't get people to buy stuff

on a regular basis and they want people to buy more vases.

So what other problems do consumers have

that aren't being solved and where's 1-800-FLOWERS failing?

Well, in my head, I was like, well, if you could figure out

a way to get people to buy regularly with different vases,

how can I do that?

And so I wrote this report for Trends, trends.co,

and then someone eventually launched a company

where they created the succulent plant

that you like smack on the wall

and it has this hydrophonic system

where it watered itself.

And then there was another company that launched

and they created the coolest, it was a succulent plant

and some of them launched these companies

based off that report I wrote.

Another company created this business

where they had these amazing pots and vases

where they had artists on there.

So like Frida Kahlo was on one

or they would create really funny pots and plants.

Some of the pots were state themed.

So like an organ plant had like an organ flag on the vase,

like things like that.

And that was their way of solving it.

And a bunch of these companies, a few of them,

went on to raise millions and millions of dollars.

I think there's Bloomscape and I forget the other one.

But it basically came from this like research methodology

of finding demand, finding the audience,

looking at the leaders, the shortcomings.

And it's this like cycle that I use.

And I try to find like one hook or one line

for each of those things that get me interested.

So I use similar web a ton to do that.

So I look at where someone's getting a lot of traffic

or how much traffic's getting.

There's just another amazing thing called Companies House.

It's a, so basically if you're based in the UK

and you're a company that does at least 10 million in revenue,

you have to file your financials.

And so if I find a cool company that uses the word LTD,

I guess that means like limited company.

If I find a company that does something like,

that has that on their website,

I immediately go to Companies House.

So for example, I found this amazing website

that basically was reviewing VPN.

So you know what a VPN is?

It's like a thing that hides like where you are

when you're using the web.

And they had like 12 million visitors to their site.

And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

And the company was called like something company name LTD.

So I go, all right, I'm gonna go straight to Companies House

and see what the revenue is.

The revenue was like 18 million

and their profit was like 16 million.

And so that told me that, A, there's demand

for people who want to get reviews for VPN.

That shocks me.

I didn't realize that market was that big.

B, it shows me that that business model of affiliate,

so they made money through affiliate.

So they would write a review on a,

they would write a review on a VPN.

If someone bought it, they got a little cutback.

That business model, super fascinating.

So in my head, I'm like, oh wow,

what other tech products have this big affiliate fees

and can I create content for them?

That business model was really fascinating.

And see, I learned that they were the leader in the space.

And so like that just like opened up my mind

to like a different business model and a different niche.

And I didn't do anything with that.

But I thought to myself,

man, I wonder if I could do this for payroll software.

I wonder how many people are having payroll software problems.

I bet you I can get a big affiliate for you with that.

I bet you I could rank on search for that.

And then I never ended up doing it

because I wasn't passionate about it.

But anyway, I go through all these different examples

and of like these different tools

that I used to research on adiation bootcamp.

It's adiationbootcamp.co.

But that's like a very scattered example of how I do that.

All right, this one is from Mike Teravella.

He asks about the evolution of your health journey

while being an entrepreneur.

He goes, I've been lifting to get back in shape

and just curious of lessons or future roadblocks

to watch out for.

So this is around fitness and health.

So let me give you guys some background.

So I was an exceptional high school athlete.

I was one of the best in the state of Missouri

where I'm from at the 200 meter and 400 meter dash.

And then I went to a division one school

where I was a scholarship athlete for two years.

And then I quit and I got into business.

And between the ages of 20 to about 28, I was fat.

I was pretty lumpy and I was pretty disgusting.

Now is a good time to put my before picture.

So if you're on listening to this on audio,

you can go ahead and see,

you can go to our YouTube and see those pictures.

But I got pretty fat and I got disgusting.

And then about three or four years ago,

I said, this is it, I'm gonna get my act together

and I'm gonna become a fitness model.

That's what I said, it was a joke.

I'm not actually that, but it was a joke and I did it.

I got pretty fit.

And so I basically created this rule.

General Mathis, he's this general in America.

He's got this great line that says,

figure out your flat ass rules and stick to them.

And the reason being, and I saw this from Ryan Holiday,

who's an inspiration to me.

He said, the person who decides every day,

what choices they have to make for each decision,

that person will be exhausted and burnt out.

And so about when I was 29, 28 years old,

I made the decision that I will never, ever, ever

miss a workout.

And so at first I basically created programming for myself,

which means I created my own schedule,

my own lifts and like how much I should lift.

I did that on my own for a little while.

And then I hired a trainer, his name is Jesse O'Brien

and I'm a central athlete.

I think I've got a centralathlete.com, you can see him.

I'm not affiliated, I'm just a fan.

And he created all my training for me

and I meet with him monthly and I do the workouts remotely.

But basically I don't miss a single workout.

And I have, I work out five days a week.

And so that's five days times 52.

I think that's 260 workouts.

In the last two years, three years,

I've probably have missed five to 10 a year.

And that's usually only because of sickness

or like if someone dies and I have to take a flight

to a funeral, but basically 95% of the time I don't miss.

And so I believe big, big, big time into consistency.

So I don't miss.

The second thing that I do, and by the way,

that I'm fairly extreme about it.

So for example, I drive a ton.

So like when I go and I take tons of road trips,

when I take a road trip and I can't get my workout

in the morning before I leave,

I pull over on the side of the road and I tell Jesse,

today's a travel day.

I'm gonna be driving and I bring bands with me

and I pull over on a truck stop.

I got lots of pictures and videos of me

setting my wife saying, I'm at this particular truck stop.

I'm doing push-ups, burpees, sprints, things like that.

I'll pull over on the side of the road for an hour

and do it.

I do not miss workouts.

The second thing that I do is I set very specific goals.

So each quarter I have a new goal.

So those goals have included like I wanted to bench press

330 pounds and I wanted to squat 430 pounds.

And I'll take a quarter, sometimes two quarters

to get there.

The next time I've had a goal of doing a combine

and I wanted to score average for an NFL receiver,

which I think was like a four, five, 40, a 34 inch vertical,

a 10, four broad jump,

and then bench pressing during 25 pounds times,

16 times I think, whatever it was,

I pick goals every quarter and I stick to them

because I need to have a goal.

I don't always hit my goal.

Sometimes I, most of the time I do,

but I always have a goal that I'm trying to do.

For me right now, and I imagine for the rest of my life,

it's going to all be centered around weightlifting

because A, I want to live to like I'm 130

and there seems to be a strong correlation

between living long and having muscle,

like because I can just not break my hip when I fall

because my bones will be stronger

and I can get up when I get hurt.

And also B, because I want to look good naked, I'm vain.

So that's why I do it.

So I lift a ton of weights

and I have a coach that tells me what to do

and I basically don't question them.

I also use my body tutor, no affiliation with them

other than I've become friends with them

and that helps me with my dieting.

So I spend roughly $300 a month on training

and I think $250 a month on my body tutor.

It's basically a nutritionist and they call me once a week

and they keep me on track.

And then finally, I write down everything I eat

and I write down every workout.

So I use an app where I track all of my workouts

because I want to know what I did the previous week

so I can improve and then I track everything I eat

because it's really easy for me to overeat

and so tracking it helps me.

This person asked what future roadblocks will be.

Everyone, I don't have a kid yet, but we are pregnant.

Everyone says that that will be a roadblock.

I'm in a very fortunate situation

where I've been able to hire some help

like a night nurse and things like that.

I have a feeling that it won't be a roadblock

but it will be more challenging

but it's not going to prevent me.

Did I answer that question?

Yeah, for sure.

All right, this one is from John Murphy at Ecom CEO.

He asks, when to embrace shiny object syndrome

and when and how to keep it under control?

This is a great question

and this is something that I think holds back 90% of people

from really big success.

So I constantly ask myself,

what can I do this week, this month, this year?

What can I accomplish in a certain time period

that will make every other task not important?

And so there's this idea of procrastination.

Paul Graham wrote this great article.

If you Google Paul Graham procrastination,

he talks about there's actually good procrastination,

there's bad procrastination.

The bad type is you just don't start working

but the good type is that it's like the idea

of this crazy scientist who's a genius

and he forgets to shower

or he forgets to wear two matching socks.

And the idea being is you can actually ignore most things

as long as you're getting the big things right.

And so I ask myself all the time,

what is that one thing that I want to accomplish?

Most people, they try to jump from thing to thing to thing

because something's not working

or because they feel pressured into doing something.

I actually think that you should do one thing

for an extended period of time.

The reason being is because every time I say yes to something,

I'm ultimately saying no to something else.

And that means I'm saying,

if I'm saying yes to a new project,

I'm saying no to either things like family time

or I'm saying no to focusing on the thing that matters

or I'm saying no to having like,

I'm basically giving worry or worry time

and I'm giving space in my brain

for something that isn't essential.

And so saying no is really important.

It's very uncomfortable, but I think it's necessary.

I think most people do multiple things at one time

because they are guilted into it

because what they see online.

And I try to remind myself

that I don't care about another person's opinion

more than I care about my own opinion.

And also most people don't know what they're doing.

And so I'm not gonna put too much judgment on their opinion

because they don't have any idea what they're doing.

I also try to remind myself that strong men,

they don't like give into fear.

And I think a lot of people have shiny object syndrome

because they're fearful

that their main thing's not going to work.

I try not to give into fear.

Of course, I'm human, I do every once in a while,

but I try my hardest not to do it.

And so I think that when you're starting a business,

because this is a business podcast, we'll talk about that,

I have to ask myself,

well, I wish that I have stuck with this in 10 years.

Well, I look back and say,

I wish I would have done this one thing.

And if the answer is consistently yes,

then I'm gonna stick to that one thing.

That said, it's definitely an art to figure out

what to say no to and when to bail on what's working.

But I've met a lot of successful people

and I have noticed that the people that have huge

outside, outsized results

and have massive, massive wealth,

it typically comes from one thing.

And then once they get incredibly successful,

it appears as though they have a lot of things going on.

But those lot of things are like 5% of the 100%

when it comes to net worth creation.

And so I have to remind myself on a regular basis

that big results typically come from one thing.

And the people who appear to be doing a lot of things,

they actually kind of are doing one thing.

One of my good friends, Andrew Wilkinson,

he owns a private equity company,

or he owns a thing called Tiny where they buy businesses.

And so he owns technically like 40 businesses,

but his one thing is buying companies or investing.

And so you have to remind myself,

I have to remind myself that's his one thing

and he's doing that well

and that's what makes everything else work.

Additionally, he also had one agency, MetaLab,

for I think 12 years,

and then he started investing into other companies.

And so you have to make your one thing work,

otherwise the rest of the stuff doesn't really work out.

And so I think more people should focus,

even though it's quite challenging

and it doesn't appear as fun,

I think it's better results.

Okay, this one is from Gabe Finema at Gabe underscore Finn

on Twitter, he asks, how to be interesting?

As a podcaster, you're essentially

a professional entertainer.

What are the key skills you've learned over the years

that allow you to be entertaining to listen to

and talk to?

This question is, I think particularly interesting

for young men, single men,

because when I was a single guy,

when I was 14, 15 and 16,

well, basically until I was not single,

all I cared about was meeting girls.

And when I learned, and I wasn't very good at it,

arguably was never great at it, but I improved.

The best thing for meeting a partner

was to be an interesting person.

I imagine this works for women as well,

but I only know a man's perspective.

It works awesome for men, is to be interesting.

I made a few points about how to be interesting,

at least what I think how to be interesting,

because I figured this out, I wasn't good at this.

The first thing is that you have to find something

that interests you and you have to turn it into a passion,

even if it's not popular.

The reason being is people like people

who are passionate about stuff

and who are really great at explaining

why they're passionate about things,

and they don't need to be popular things.

So for a long time, I was really interested in denim.

That's like a hobby of mine, I love jeans,

because jeans are part of American history,

and I would buy like $500 or $1,000 jeans

just to store them and keep them

and only wear them occasionally

because they're historical and important to me.

I was really, really, really fascinated in that.

And I noticed that when I would meet a girl,

and I would say something like,

hey, I'm going to this swap meet,

they have really cool denim,

just having something to do and being passionate about it,

she was more attracted to me because of it.

And then my male friends as well were like,

oh, this sounds interesting,

you just got me interested in this topic,

I'll go with you and you can explain it to me,

and thus people were attracted to me.

This works for business, for meeting someone, whatever.

Right now it's fitness, I'm super fascinated in fitness,

and having a goal and having something I care about,

I've noticed people are drawn to me.

The second one is when I consume a ton of information.

So I listen to podcasts, I watch a lot of TV,

like documentaries, I read a lot of books,

and I read Wikipedia every night, I love Wikipedia.

And when I'm consuming information,

I consume it from the perspective of I try to find a hook.

So I'll hear like, or I'll read something on Wikipedia,

and I try to find a fascinating hook,

and I think in my brain, how can I retell this

that can capture people's attention?

And whenever I consume information, that's what I do.

So for example, I just watched the documentary

on Arnold Schwarzenegger,

and he has this great line where he calls the shmi,

which basically means bullshit.

So like when he was talking about being the spokesperson

for supplement brands or whatever,

or whining and dining people, he goes, I got the shmi,

I know how to like grab people's attention,

I'm just bullshit with them, I got the gift to gap.

And he told the story of the shmi,

and I remember hearing that line, I go, that's brilliant,

the shmi, I'm gonna talk about that all the time,

I love the shmi, and that was that one little line

I took from that documentary,

and I'm gonna retell that story all the time,

I'm gonna talk all about the shmi,

and so whenever I consume information,

I'm just, or a comedy show or anything,

I just look for like lines or hooks of a story

that I'm gonna retell to people constantly,

I'm gonna steal it basically.

That's it, I consume information as if I have

to write a book report at another time.

The third thing is I ask people all the time,

and I ask them this in a very non-judgmental way,

and a lot of people aren't used to being asked this,

but I basically ask them all the time,

whenever they, I'll ask them about what they do for work

or where they're from or whatever,

and they'll say something, and they'll say an opinion,

and I always ask them, why do you think that?

And I always try to ask that because it gets people

to open up, and when I ask them all about themselves,

there's this great book called How to Win Friends

and Influence People, and Dale Carnegie wrote it

in the 1920s, and he says, this tells a story

about this kind of nobody, young guy,

talking to this big shot executive,

and the nobody guy, the young guy,

he asked the big shot executive all about himself,

and the executive spends 95% of the conversation

talking all about himself, the young guy spends

5% of the conversation, at the end of the conversation,

the executive goes, wow, you're a great conversationalist,

and the truth is that that's because people love

to talk about themselves, and so oftentimes,

when I'm with new people, I'll ask them questions like,

why do you think that, or why do you do that,

or questions like that, these open-ended questions,

and that gives them an opportunity to talk about themselves,

and thus, they think that I am more interesting

because ultimately, they find themselves

probably more interesting than anyone else.

Another thing is I have tried really hard

to learn how to tell stories.

My partner in this podcast, Sean Purry,

he's one of the best storytellers I've seen.

I've tried to learn from him, and I've tried to tell stories,

and I'll retell the same stories to different groups

of people as if I'm a comedian,

and I like to see what hits and what doesn't,

and sometimes I'll alter the story

while keeping the truth in there,

but I'll alter the story in the way I tell it

in order to capture their attention.

The last two things are I am constantly trying

to improve myself, which is great

because to be interesting, you just make yourself better,

so I'm constantly trying to improve myself,

and I explain to people what I'm trying to do.

So for example, if I'm trying to get fit,

if I'm trying to read a certain amount of books,

if I'm trying to build a business,

I'm always trying to improve myself,

and I talk about that with people,

not in an obnoxious way, but I let them know,

and they find that interesting I've found most of the time,

and then finally, I say my opinion,

and I usually research opinions that I have,

so for example, it could be like political stuff,

it could be health stuff, it could be in business,

I try to come up with the well-thought-out opinions,

and I'm very not afraid to say that opinion,

and even if it rubs people the wrong way,

I have found that when you explain your opinion,

and you stand firm on it,

people find you interesting,

because most people are vanilla,

and they don't have strong opinions,

and so that said, I'm still open-minded,

I think there's a phrase, what's that phrase?

It's a strong beliefs loosely held,

and so I can be swayed for sure,

but I have strong opinions,

and I try to let people know about them,

and then when I don't have an opinion,

or I haven't researched a topic,

I try my hardest to say,

I've not thought about that, or I don't know,

and so that's how I think you'd be interesting.

When we have different podcast guests come on,

even if they're not in my world at all,

because I've consumed so much information,

I'm pretty good at relating to them,

and that just comes down to,

I just read a ton of Wikipedia,

and when they talk, I'll reference things in that field,

even if I don't know a ton about them,

and then I'll ask them why they think that,

because I read on Wikipedia that this, this, and this,

is that true for you?

Is that one of the reasons why you think X, Y, and Z?

And they'll say no, actually, or yes, actually,

and that's a great way to get them to talk more about it,

and it gets me involved in the conversation.

All right, so I back-channeled a few questions.

This one is from your buddy, Neville Madora,

at Neville Madora on Twitter,

and he wanted to hear a bit about your loyalty to your dog,

Sid, he had a quote to share that I thought was pretty great.

He goes, I remember Sam Dividley saying,

I hate when people give away their pets.

When you sign up for a dog, you sign up for life.

So Neville wants to hear a bit about your relationship to Sid,

and just if you could elaborate on that quote a bit.

Yeah, so basically I have this dog named Sid.

I got him when I was 20 or 22 or something.

He's 14 years old now,

and I do crazy stuff with this dog.

Like, for example, I live half the year, sometimes in New York,

and sometimes I'll fly, sometimes I'll drive,

but if I fly, I hire a driver for him.

So I basically hire someone to drive him from Austin

all the way up to New York.

And I don't travel because of him overseas, typically.

And so the reason being is I mentioned having rules.

Another rule in my book is responsibility and loyalty.

So there's a few people in my life,

my wife, my dog, my business partner, Joe,

Sean's one of these folks, Jordan, the CEO of Hampton.

I firmly believe that you never, ever, ever speak badly

about them behind their back.

You don't lie.

You don't disrespect them publicly.

You don't question them publicly,

and I try my hardest not to do that even a little bit.

The reason being is I'm a firm belief in loyalty,

and so I basically have zero loyalty to most people,

and then there's like eight people in my life

who I can write them down and cite them.

I will do anything for them,

and I expect them to do that for me.

The second reason is responsibility.

So when I have a meeting on my calendar,

I try my hardest never, ever, ever to be late.

I try very hard to be early.

I don't miss things.

If I say I'm gonna do something, I do it.

I'm a big, firm believer, and you do what you say,

and following through.

And so another rule is when you have a responsibility,

you stick with it no matter what.

When I got my dog, I said I'm gonna raise him right,

and I'm gonna respect this bond that we have,

and so I'm crazy about that.

So that's a rule that I just don't break,

is loyalty and rules.

Love it.

All right, this one is from Garrett's.

His handle's at GGSII,

and he goes finding someone to build a company with

or finding your first hire.

So basically he's just asking how you hire people.

So I'm not a religious person,

but there's this thing from the Bible.

I went to Catholic school in my whole life.

There's this line from the Bible

where Jesus is trying to get disciples,

and he tells one of his disciples, Peter and Paul,

he goes, I think they're fishermen,

and he goes, come join me,

and you are going to be fishers of men.

And I love that line.

That's an example, by the way, of being interesting.

You just find interesting lines,

and you retell them.

That's a beautiful line,

and the way that I'm able to hire good CEOs

and hire great people,

I mean, if you look at the hustle,

I don't know how many people we had

when we sold the company, maybe 40.

So we probably have hired 60 or 70 people.

A lot of them are really successful now.

Like we hired them when they were like 23,

and a lot of them, maybe like 15 or 20 of them,

have went on to start successful companies,

help grow other successful companies,

have a name for themselves.

And the reason they did that is,

I want it to be a collector of people.

Fishers of men, that's a weird line.

I call it collector of people.

So I worked really hard at collecting people.

And so when I find someone that's interesting to me,

I try to make a mental note of who they are

and how I can use them.

And the line that I tell them,

and this is a line that I believe,

which is like, hey, do you wanna hang out?

Like, let's say I meet someone,

I'll follow up with them or I cold email someone,

and I'll say, hey, look,

the best case scenario here is that somehow

we work together and we create magic.

The worst case scenario is that you have a new friend

in the industry and we'll just help one another.

But our world is small and I have a feeling

that it's gonna be nice that we're gonna be

on the same team in some capacity,

whether just as friends or literally at the same company.

So take this phone call.

And that's what I believe.

And so for years, so like for example,

for years I would host events

or create excuses to meet people.

So for example, I had this thing called the anti-MBA.

It was my book club.

I started it in San Francisco in 2012.

And basically the way it worked is

I would pick one book per month,

we would read a quarter of the book each month,

and then we would meet up and talk about the book,

and I would bring experts on that book's topic

to come in and lead the conversation.

So it was kind of like an MBA,

but it was free and I organized it,

hence the anti-MBA.

A bunch of my great, great, great friends,

Sean and Perry, we came in each other's orbit

via this book club.

Sieva, who Kaczynski has got a really successful

PE firm now, he was one of my first members.

I posted ads on Craigslist for this book club.

That's how it got popular, by the way.

I posted an ad on meetup.com and on Craigslist.

And I would host this book club like one,

I think I did it for two years straight every week.

And that is how I developed a network.

And then from there, I hosted a conference

called HustleCon, and the whole idea was,

I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next

after selling my previous company,

but I'm gonna host this event called HustleCon.

And in doing so, I imagine I'm gonna meet

a handful of people who will inspire me

or partner with me in order to create my next thing.

And so I'm constantly, I do it less now.

Now I jokingly have this rule called no new friends,

because I have a pretty good network now.

But basically, I just collected people.

And any time I saw someone who was intriguing,

I did a really good job of getting to know them.

And then just filing my way in this bank,

or I would check in with them once in a while

and get to know them and remind them

who I was occasionally.

And then when I had an opportunity,

like I'm starting a new company,

I would think, oh, I talked to this one person

this one time, I left a good impression on them,

I hope I could just holler at them.

And so I do a really good job of collecting people

and doing outreach.

Yeah, I mean, that's kinda like how it works.

It's a lot easier now that when you're popular

and you have a podcast, it's way easier to do that.

But when I was younger and didn't have a network,

I hosted book clubs, conferences, meetups,

and I was basically wanting to be the center of attention,

not necessarily center of attention,

but the center of a social circle.

And I was the connector,

and that's how I would collect people.

And when I see people on LinkedIn or Twitter,

and they write something cool, I DM them.

And all I say was like, solve this post, this was awesome.

And that's all I'll say.

And then when I reach out to them again,

if I ever have a reason to,

it kinda feels like they know me a little bit at least.

And so I'm a collector of people.

Okay, this question is from Grant Wilkinson at Grant F. Wilkinson.

If you're open to sharing about the behind the scenes

of running a great community,

there's some good stuff there.

So I think Grant's referring to

your community building over at Hampton.

So I've got this new company, it's about a year old,

it's joinhampton.com, it's the URL, it's called Hampton.

Basically what it is is, it's for CEOs

who have at least a million in revenue,

and you apply, and then we interview, and you get in,

we put you in a group of eight founders

who have similar size and types of businesses,

you meet monthly, and then we host all these events,

retreats, and then we have a digital community

where you can hang out and talk to all the other members,

of which we have hundreds of them, soon thousands.

I got pretty great at making community

because of the events that I hosted.

I kind of understood what motivated people,

and then I created Trends when we ran The Hustle,

which was like a digital community as well.

And there's a few interesting things about community

to make them great.

The first is you have to create FOMO.

So a little bit of fear of missing out.

And once they're in your community,

they feel excited that they're finally in.

And so we create FOMO, not even on purpose,

we interview everyone and we turn down most people.

So that helps.

So there needs to be a barrier to entry

for building a good community, I think.

There also has to be a way to create intimacy.

And so there's lots of tactical ways that you could do that

where you have multiple communities within a community

and you can only join one channel and not the other channels.

And the reason you do that is because I think

that around like 250, 500 people,

things get a little bit wonky

in terms of not being able to know everyone.

And so you need to do a good job of making things intimate.

Another way you do that is to keep it small.

Another way that you do that is you set norms

and standards behind introductions.

And so at Hampton, we do a really good job of saying,

look, at Hampton, we want you to brag about who you are

because with most of the times when you run a company,

it's not cool when you're talking to people that say,

like, oh, I run this company, we do this much in revenue,

this much in profit, this many employees,

it's not that cool, it's all tacky.

In this community, we set lots of like strange norms

of which one of them is, it's okay to brag.

And it's cool to brag because now I can learn

if you actually know what you're talking about

and I can ask you advice,

I can actually learn about your business

so I can apply some of it.

And so it's fun to learn that stuff.

And so we set different norms

and we do a really good job

of making people introduce themselves.

A lot of times, particularly in trends,

one of the first communities that I built,

I would seed it by having 10, 20, 30 people

who I knew were impressive.

And I just said, you don't have to pay anything,

but you're enjoying this community.

Also, on this date, I need you to post this comment

or this post.

And so it looks like this particular person

was contributing, in reality, I wrote it for them.

This is a thing that I stole from Reddit.

When Reddit.com first launched,

the founder Steve Huffman created like 30 different

user names and he just posted lots of different fake comments

and it looked like a lot of stuff was happening.

Creating community is hard.

I think it's one of those things that everyone wants,

but few people know how to do.

It's really challenging.

I think it's more art than science though.

This question is, I'm gonna totally butcher this name,

but Sarong Birad at Sarong Birad on Twitter.

He asks, how's it going with Viral Cuts?

Share some tips for someone looking to start

a productized service from scratch.

So Viral Cuts is a company that I'm part of.

I don't have anything to do with the day to day.

But basically, if you want footage,

like if you have a podcast like this,

or if you have a bunch of video footage,

they chop it up and they post it on your social for you.

So you get like clips.

The founder, his name's Hunter,

he used to have an agency and he was like,

it's cool, agencies are great,

but when your agency is really broad

and you will do lots of services

for lots of different clients,

and it's hard to focus on something,

it's hard to operationalize something,

your margins kind of get crushed a little bit

and it's just a lot more challenging.

And so his whole thing was,

we're just gonna do clips

and then eventually now they're doing more stuff

under a different company like they're doing.

They're helping people write books

or write Twitter threads, I mean,

they're helping people do a bunch of different stuff.

They're helping people grow their YouTube,

but those are all different companies.

But Viral Cuts, he was like,

I'm just gonna productize this one service.

And so he did a really good job of hiring like 20 people

and he taught them how to make the clips

and then he like created a very strict process

on how to get the footage from people,

how to chop it up, how to deliver them.

And it was like very, very, very, very operationalized

from day one and it's going great.

I don't remember exactly what we're allowed to say

about how big it is,

but it got to seven figures in revenue in like 60 days,

most of which came because at first I tweeted it

and then Cody Sanchez, another partner involved,

she started sharing and so now it's like,

well into the seven figures.

It's going great.

You have to deal with a lot of headaches

because it's a people business,

but and we're not sure how churn will be,

but it's going really well so far.

The hardest part about these businesses

is operationalizing the service,

so making it so it's like a conveyor belt.

So your workers know exactly what to do

and have very strict deadlines.

And then the second hardest part is getting customers.

Viral Cuts solved that problem by talking to me and Cody

and we just tweeted it out

and within a very short amount of time,

I had seven figures in revenue,

so it's going really well.

All right, so that was my rapid fire Q and A.

This is what happens when Sean's not here.

We do a little rapid fire Q and A.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.

If you are listening on iTunes, Spotify, whatever,

if you go to our YouTube,

you'll see some of the links to some of these examples

and some of these topics that we talked about.

And if you liked this,

let me know in the comments.

Talk soon.

Yeah.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.