My First Million: Tech All-Star Game, Milk Road Pro and Big Box Strategies

We're like, yeah, we're just gonna do the same thing, but a little bit cheaper and we're calling it a echelon

It's pretty wild that they pulled this off. I saw them originally at CES

I was like, oh cool a peloton booth and it was echelon. It was it was the same thing. It was the exact same thing

What's going on

Yeah, you know lots of things going on. Where do you want to start you drive? What do you got?

All right, I got a couple quick like random ideas for you. Okay, so I'll call this the big box strategy

Okay, here's my big box strategy. So I saw recently that Kevin Hart was like, hey our new thing is live in Walmart

And I was like new thing. What is it? This looks pretty much like athletic greens and sure enough it kind of is

It's just athletic greens

plus Kevin Hart

Going into Walmart like lower price point basically how much is it athletic green is like 80 bucks a month

Yeah, let's let it use is expensive. Let me see greens

Let's see his thing Vita hustle is his is the name of oh my god

And literally it's like a picture of him drinking his greens and electrolytes on the cover or whatever

So anyways, I saw going into Walmart and I had had this realization the other day when I was walking around a Costco

I was walking around Costco and Costco is amazing Costco if you have a Costco deal

If you talk to anyone who has a Costco deal, they're like Costco drives

Insane volume it will make us as a company

It also might break us as a company because they cut like pretty ruthless deals

And if you ever like lose Costco or they like

They don't go through with their purchase order like you might be screwed

um

But the Costco can drive a ton of volume and I was walking around and I basically saw in Costco if you go look

every

electronic like piece of equipment that's there

is is like a

It's not a Chinese knockoff. It's like an American knockoff of an American product

Yeah, it's like there's this mattress nine sleep. It's like what this is this is just like it's dude

I have a $300 Costco mattress in one of my rooms at my house and whenever guests say that they go

Where'd you get this mattress? They ask about it all the time. I'm like my good 280 bucks at Costco

So it's amazingly they have a lot of these like, um

You know blenders, uh, you know like fitness trackers things like that

It's they have like they need kind of like they needed a certain price point. So there's a strategy, which is basically you take the

Highly desirable thing that's kind of an up too high price point like athletic greens or another one or a ring

Um, I don't know if you've ever looked into buying an oral ring, but it tracks your sleep

It's whatever it's cool ring that tracks your sleep and it's like it's like 700 dollars or something like that for this ring

Um, maybe they've changed the pricing now, but like I think when I bought it it was 700 dollars

Um, or okay. It looks like it's like 500 dollars the same

So, uh

About 500 bucks for like the the kind of like the generation three ring. They

They've sold like a billion dollars of ura ring. So there's definitely demand for this product

Like oh, the cumulative sales is is that high?

But you go to Costco, there's no ura ring and there's no replacement for ura ring

I think you could create a company that just says I'm going to make a ura ring like thing for Costco

And that's the entire business plan

Is just to do that one thing and if you do that one thing you'd be more successful than 99 percent of e-commerce stores

You got to think smarter and not work. Well, no not like try to work so hard

So like similarly I would go and I would hunt down

What are the products that are not yet in walmart or casco places that drive insane volume?

Target's another one. Um

That there is proven kind of like high end new york la lulu lemon

Drink a little lemon peloton type of customer that

That that buys a product like that and you just bring it down market and like just make it a little worse

Like there are gun and like, you know, they've done this with a bunch of them

Um and go figure out which one is not there like for example the mattress thing

It's actually not there yet. There is no eight-sleep mattress there. There is no ura ring there yet

At least last time I walked around. Um, and I think that's a just a simple strategy for e-commerce. Have you heard of echelon?

echelon no

You should look up echelon. So echelon is a fitness company. They started. Oh, it's peloton. It looks exactly like peloton

I don't know when exactly they started, but they it's it's an american company. I think too

So if you go to echelon fitness, I think they maybe have changed their branding

But before it was the same red as peloton

And it was a peloton but cheaper

And they now they have

Yes, and they do uh, the guy who started I read this interview with him

So basically they have the the mirror the fitness mirror that was really popular called mirror

They have a smart rower which a few companies said and they did the peloton bike now

They have a smart treadmill and they just did the same thing but cheaper and at first it was all the same branding

But instead of peloton it said echelon

They're on track to do 200 million dollars a year in revenue this year. I think it's a bootstrapped company like I think they just said like

Whatever you do

So it says uh peloton rival echelon fit uh fitness eyes

One billion dollar valuation. So maybe they oh they they recently, uh raised some money, uh, but they

We're like, yeah, we're just gonna do the same thing but a little bit cheaper and we're calling it an echelon

It's pretty wild that they pulled this off. I saw them originally at ces

I was like, oh cool a peloton booth and it was echelon

It was it was the same thing. It was the exact same thing. It was pretty funny and they do

They have a ride with pitbull. So like pitbull the rapper is like the guy

That they chose they're in walmart cosco target things like that. Whereas

You know lululemon's company mere and peloton was like fucking walmart people not a chance

Like we want skinny people to get skinnier. You know, like it was that was their whole schtick

And they would be like peloton, but the seat is wider. Yeah other sorts of people

Yeah, that's what they that's what their motto is other sorts of people

Uh, and anyway, yeah

We are your type. Yeah, we're gonna make you look like the before picture instead of the way before picture

Uh, and so anyway pretty cool that they've done exactly what you're talking about this kevin hart thing

It's kind of stupid. It's kind of cheap though, right?

If if I'm if I'm kevin hart, I don't know if I would be doing this

It's a hundred million dollars gonna be stupid because that's what he's gonna make off this thing

I have a meaty topic about your old company the milk road and how

I think that you guys have just made a huge mistake

I'm gonna bring that up in a minute and I want to get your opinion on it

But before I do I want to talk about something that's not business related at all

But it kind of is and I'm gonna get to it

Uh, I've been working on like different body stuff like I love like experimenting with body and this is like a little

Vein of me to bring this up, but I posted these pictures in our doc

and they're about

two months apart

And basically what I've been experimenting with body wise is like getting super lean and like somewhat skinny and then like gaining weight again

But without getting fat, you know, they call it like a like a dirty bulk

That's when you eat like a ton of food and you but you get muscle and you get fat

I've been experimenting with that

But look at the difference of the two pictures that I shared and if this is on youtube

We'll put it on the screen. I guess it seems a little weird, but I guess we'll do it

Dude, we're making this the thumbnail if you're going to bring this up. We're getting the clicks

So uh, welcome all of our thumbnail viewers who clicked because you saw a before and after of sam

Well, it's not the the pictures aren't that shocking, but

Here's what I've been testing

Just a difference of two to three hundred calories a day

For two months. So you go down to like 1900 to 2000 or 1900 or 2100 ish

That's my window when i'm getting skinny up to like 23 2400

That's the difference 300 calories a day 200 calories a day. That's the difference. That's like a twinkie or uh, like a pack of m&m's

That's that's not a lot slices of cheese or something. Yeah, it's not a significant amount in my case

It's mostly protein. So it's a little bit more protein

Is that crazy how big of a difference that can make?

It is crazy. Um, I saw you post that on ig

And I was I was I had a great joke or something

I remember I had a great joke and then I was like, you know

I'm not gonna make this joke. This is this is me getting wiser

I said, I'm not gonna make this joke because

Some people get real sensitive about their body and they don't they don't want jokes

Uh, like even a funny joke won't won't come across well. So I said, let me just let me just hit the like button and move on

carry on here

But I do have a question just say it just say it come on

I don't even remember it now. It was something about like, you know, what you know, when a person's like super fit

Then you have to like pull them down when someone's like fat. You have to like bring them up

So I was I was gonna make funny in some way, but you know, I don't remember what it was at this point

um

I have a question for you. There are the thing that stood out was you were basically saying this is a 200 calorie difference

And I was like, that's kind of stunning. It's stunning. And by the way, that's not precise. So I I uh,

I typically waste up. I've been traveling for the last six weeks. So I don't waste up

But I track everything so a lot of it's eyeballing. So I could be give or take what do you what are you tracking everything in

My fitness pal

So I use my body tutor and I meet with them weekly and we go over like the plan and they give me like the plan to use

And then I have a trainer called central athlete and they tell me what workouts to do

And so I just track everything and they review it all

Right. And so you um, what's a typical day of eating for you right now?

So right now I prefer getting a lot of protein early in the day. So I'll do

Roughly a hundred grams of protein first thing. Are you fasting?

Are you just doing the like 30?

You know 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes like which because I've heard both schools have thought intermittent fasting people like

I don't fast and then tim ferris in the four-hour body was like no no no protein right away right when you wake up

I don't fast because it uh

I'm hungry in the morning. So I don't fast. So I get up

Around 9 30. I'll have a cup of yogurt. So that's like 15 grams of protein

I think

And then I'll maybe eat like a banana and then I'll go and get a really hard workout in and then afterwards

I'll do I use a scent or momentous

Protein and I do four scoops with just water and I drink that and then I won't eat till dinner

And then course a lot right? It's supposed to be like one per thing

That's like the one or one or two and so each scoops like 20 grams of 25 25

Yeah, so you just get 100 grams right there in that can the body even absorb that much protein powder at once

That's what I always wonder so I don't know

I think that the preferred method is to get that protein from food and chicken

But I just like doing it

So I just like drinking it one and I feel really full and then at dinnertime I eat chicken and vegetables and usually like a dessert

Well, wait, so there's no lunch

That's my lunch is like the the protein. I just feel so you eat a banana a thing of yogurt

You drink a shitload of protein powder

And then you later for dinner like we're talking like 6 p.m. Now something like that, right? Yeah. Yeah, I'll eat like 1300 calorie meal

You have a huge dinner of chicken and veggies and chicken or fish and veggies

And the veggies will be something green and also like a potato

And then I'll usually do like a like a piece of candy or ice cream or something like a very small serving of that

Like uh, last night had

chocolate covered almonds like

250 calories worth

And that adds up to roughly 20 20 or 2300 23 to 24. Yeah

That's crazy. I mean that crazy like that's so different is what I should say because obviously it works

So maybe I'm crazy for not doing that. Um

But here's the thing like so little food

It's not that much food sometimes if I have a really hard workout

I'll do a banana and a bagel, but I'll just do a plain bagel like 350 calories of carbs right before I go work out

Um, I'm not like I don't know if this is the right thing to do

I think I think probably the right thing to do is to get like proper food

But I just don't I'm looking at this photo. It looks like the right thing to do to me, right? Like what else?

What are we measuring here?

I yeah, I don't know like that's how you measure your health and that is working right now

So here's the thing though that I've learned and this is like changed my confidence in life and in business and everything

Learning how to manipulate your body

Because like that's what everyone wants to do is either get skinnier gain weight

Like everyone like wants to do something with their body once you learn. Yeah, how many people are happy just like yeah

Yeah, like everyone wants to improve their body in some way what I want

Yes, but the thing is is like what I've learned so I've been going hard at this

I think like it was two years ago. I texted you and I go I go I'm going to become an instagram fitness influencer

It was a joke, but not entirely a joke, but I was like I want to figure this out

And so I just went and learned how it worked and once I figured out that it's like a mathematical equation

life became so much better and I just

It was just like you do this you do this you do this and you do it for three six twelve months or whatever

You likely are going to see results and then what it did was it gave me so much confidence that it's I realized

Wow, this is just like business business is actually the same thing you do this you do this you do this

And the likelihood of getting some type of result is high. Hopefully you'll get your desired result

But you're going to be better than when you started

But then it's like that became the truth for me

It was as if I had bad eyesight and I put on glasses like that became the truth with so many other things

You do this you do this you do this and you trust the process

You hire a coach or you develop your own plan you follow the plan and you have to do it for

Three six twelve months whatever and it's really fun to start seeing results and then once particularly with the body

I think emotions would be next but with the body

It's like oh wow I can manipulate that and then also with money we do it with money

I can manipulate money by doing x y and z then it becomes like I can do anything

And so right like once I've conquered the body part it feels awesome. It feels so good

Um, that's exactly

That's so on point. Um, and by the way the opposite is true

when you

Want something and you don't figure out how to bend reality to make it happen

A little seed of doubt gets planted in the brain

That's now there that says

And you're like man, I I could do anything I put my mind to and there's a part of your head that says really

Or is it like that diet?

Or is it like sleeping earlier? Is it like, you know making money?

Whatever the thing that you wanted to do that you didn't

You didn't actualize you didn't manifest into reality by by doing it. I'll tell you a little story

This is this very much relates to a conversation I had yesterday with my trainer. So

talking to my trainer

And I said, uh, I wrote a number on the on the mirror. I just went in there. I wrote 53

He said 53. What like what are we doing 53 of something 53 push-ups? What is this?

I got 53 days left. He goes, what do you mean? I got oh, I had this realization

I'm eight weeks away from having the body I want

That's 56. It's 56 days. Where did you start and where did you you at your peak? You were like 280?

No, no, no, no, I I'm basically the same weight. I was at the start

You look way different traded muscle and fat a little bit

But you know a lot of it 20 and I'm currently like 229 through to 30

So it's like I actually went up and weighed a little bit

But the composition changed a bit. Sorry. You just looked horrible when you started

Now you look awesome. So well, that's a great compliment actually

No, you can see you can see your biceps. You look you look significantly different from when we first started

So so I told I said I'm I'm am I I'm eight weeks away from everything I want

He's like, oh, that's that's great. I said

So I'm just I'm keeping track right now

I'll just I'll just keep changing this number every day that I eat exactly the way I want this number goes down

And if I don't we go back to the beginning and we start

I don't know if we go all the way back or if I'm just gonna like add three every time I'm

If I if I slip but I haven't slipped yet. So I haven't had to think about it. All right, so

Anyways, we're talking and we have this philosophy. So we have this philosophy where

We um, we both are very into mindset

And what's cool is what happened what I had experienced previously in my life was

I'm really into mindset things. I'm basically like, you know, in San Francisco, there's that angry Jesus guy

Who walks around with a megaphone? Yeah being like jesus lives. He's alive. He's alive

Like this guy just walks around so much like in the heart of like where all the startups are

There's one guy that just walks around like that. He's famous. Everybody knows him

I was kind of that with mindset stuff. I'd be like life is what you respond. It's not how you react

There is no meaning except the meaning you're giving it

Your mood is your choice like you know, I was just like walking around like and nobody really cared and in fact

most people were generally somewhat annoyed with my uh, my ongoing

Uh, conviction in like the mind the power of the mind and how important is to master the mind your wife's like

Yeah, I get it Sean. If you think you can or think you can't you're probably right. I get it. Just eat your fucking noodles

Yeah, I think you can take out the trash like I told you to you know, like that's kind of where she lands

And I'm like, but isn't the trash already taken out when we really think about it? Yeah

that annoying guy

And so and so then um, I'm sorry. I made my I meet my trainer

He's like like he's got his megaphone. I got my megaphone and they touched we were both into the same things

I'm like, you know, he's like, I read that book. I'm like in the morning. Do you sit down and think about these things?

He's like, I know you're like more annoying than like two improv kids or two vegans take it out

Exactly. We're two improv vegans. I get out exactly right. Yes, and yes, and you're just constantly like trying to one up each other

We're just like

Yeah

We each other talk

So so normally that's the thing and we and to hype ourselves up. We're like, dude

It's so nice to talk to another black belt

It's like, you know, there's a lot of white belts want to run around here and you try to help them out

But they don't even really want to learn the technique. It's so nice to talk to another black belt. Listen, you know, what's nice about it

I don't even have to say the thing actually

I'll say two words three words about the subject enough said you actually already know you've read the thing

You've actually practiced that

We already agree. There's no defensiveness. And so we just implement and I'm like, what's your workout that day?

Just back patting

Yeah, just like today we're working on our triceps. Yeah

So so while we're having this conversation, he's been he's been telling me this thing. He's like

He's like, bro. I like he's like, I like big weights and thin books

And I was like, what he's like, I like big weights of thin books

And so we'll we'll crack each other up about that

He likes to lift weights and he's like, I like thin books meaning I like to just understand the premise

Of the book and move on and I appreciate books that are thin

I said and so we've always talked about simple simplicity

How do you simplify a concept so that you understand it so that others can understand things?

This is something I always try to do

And we've talked about like what's simpler than a book a thin book what's simpler than a thin book, you know

A blog post what's simpler than a blog post a tweet. What's simpler than a tweet a little catchphrase?

What's simpler than a catchphrase?

A gesture and so we had been playing with this idea of you're doing too much just do less

We were like

There this phrase that I've been saying on the pod and and off the body the the season I'm in right now is a season of

intensity is the strategy

so

Uh for me that applies very easily with the with the body a diet thing. It's like I don't need a new strategy

I don't need a different workout program. I don't need a new coach. I don't need a new

Diet. I don't need a new anything. I don't need to go get a new app to track it

All I simply need to do is execute the very simple plan

with much higher intensity

And so I just had this little thing where I just

Just this just if you're on youtube you see this

I'm just turning the knob up the dial and just turn the dial and now

What I'm working on sometimes. He'll just he'll just go hold on

He'll just turn up the dial that just I know what that means. I know exactly what I need to do

I need to multiply the intensity. I'm bringing to the current situation

I'm doing the same thing whether it's on food or whatever just this is all I need to do everything

I want is on the other side of this little gesture. All right, cool. It looks like you're rubbing a nipple

Your neighbors are just like why is this guy doing like a nipple rubbing?

He's like be careful with that one and I said well, I only hear there's two possible good interpretations of this and so

So the reason I'm coming full circle to the thing you said which is what I told him I said look

I wanted he's like, you know, you got to know your why I said I know my why my why is because

I know that if I could do this

Now there is an unstoppable feeling that comes from knowing that you put your mind to something and you did it

I said, I don't really care. I'm already married. I got two kids. I don't need to walk on a beach and like be attractive

That's not a thing for me. What I do care about is

I can't have there be an area of my life that I wanted something in and not have

That reality to my will like I can't not have done that right and so once I have done that

It's just yet another yet another area of my life that I was able to do that

Just dial up the intensity and get the result and that creates the unstoppable confidence

It furthers the confidence to the point of being unstoppable because this is the only area of my life

Haven't yet done that and so

I highly recommend for anybody the area where you have struggled

That's the that's the place to put the emphasis. That's the place to try to overcome

Not even for the thing but because you want to be the type person who could do that thing

That's at least what's worked for me so far

And why I have a lot more momentum than I had in the past because in the past I was like

I really care if I have abs like I'm not sure that that matters to me. No, you definitely care

But it feels good. I read the stupid article on vice and it was like

Gyms are built for skinny people and I can't go to the gym because I'm fat and people stare at me

And I thought and this is for anyone listening who's fat right now or out of shape

Go to the gym

You want to know why when I have never been to a gym and seen a fat person and I and thought that person's gross

I've only thought

Dude, that's sick. They're they're getting after it. They're trying in fact

I get inspiration when I see someone overweight because I'm like they am the first steps the hardest

They're actually in a harder spot than I am

So if you're listening to this

Fucking go get fit. It feels so good to like achieve a goal and to make progress. It feels awesome

And so I've learned a lot over these past two years like get my stuff together and it feels amazing

I've I've enjoyed this tremendously. So I wanted to bring that up really quick and what's cool is like once you like

Basically, if you're like out of shape and fat

You only need to do like like for example, if Sean you were like, I just want to get strong

I'll be like, well, just do this this and this it's really simple

Like do five reps five sets of this this and this it's it's quite simple and then eat this much food

and then once you get like down to that like

80th or 90th percentile of fitness, then it's like, all right, we're gonna do really small adjustments

And you're gonna see like bigger changes. So it's really fun to like see like, all right

I just need to like get to this point and that's easy and I'm gonna soon do a general plan that works for everyone

And then as you get fitter

It's like, oh, you're just gonna dial this a little bit dial this a little bit and that's really cool to like see

Those little small changes 300 calories a day

What that what does that mean or eating a bagel instead of a banana for your before your workout

Does that change anything? So like these little small things

It's been really fun to like see how that works

And I think maybe just because I get older and my body doesn't respond the same

So it's like these things actually matter

But if you're listening to this, that's what you have to look forward to if you're out of shape

If you're already in shape, it's really fun to test those small dials

I have one topic Sean. So yeah, let's go last week or this week maybe milk road your old company

So Sean started a company called milk road. It was an email newsletter

That was a daily news newsletter for crypto enthusiasts. It was awesome. Still is awesome

You guys you sold it and so it's not you or I don't actually know what your involvement is

But you launched this thing called milk road pro

I believe so the launch for it was cool. It happened

I actually don't see the date, but I'm looking at like the newsletter when you launched it

And it's like $300 a year or $20 a month

Or sorry, 10. No, it was $10 a month $10 a month in 150 a year. Whatever and what you get is you get

Market insights and deep dives from milk roads research team weekly recaps and everything happening in the space

quarterly funding breakdowns

Cool awesome

First before I give my criticism. I think it's sick that you guys tried this second. Do you know if it's working?

um, I know a little bit so I wasn't involved in

the launch of this or the

um, the details like what it is the price all that stuff

So I wasn't really involved in that. I knew they were going to do it

um, and I was like cool cool idea to try let's do it and um

That's all I know about that part. I don't know the results of it just so far

So if I've been in the situation so I had the hustle

I launched a $300 a year thing the biggest mistake I made

Or a big mistake I made was instead of charging $300 a year

I should have made something that I could have charged $30,000 a year. Yeah, you dropped a zero

You know, you dropped a zero over here. You want to come get that? Yeah, I dropped I dropped two of them

two zeros

And the difference between those two price points

Is it it's a ton but I actually don't think that the work

Is as big as a difference in price points or at least the at least the effort that goes into that

And can I give you a few examples of what I would have done instead if I was the milk road?

The first thing I and by the way, I'm in the back seat here. I don't know anything

They probably I'm sure maybe they thought about this and there's reasons why and there's probably some strategy

So this is totally a guy who doesn't know anything about the strategy

The first thing I would have done or these are all different ideas of what could have worked

I would have researched the first thing. Tell me what you think about this not a crypto job board

That's that stinks been there done that I would have done a crypto job

A crypto salary benchmarking meaning as any user that signs up

I would have asked them where they work what their job title is and how much money they made

And then I would have took like what the benchmarks is

What the benchmark is for different salaries and I would have packaged that and try to see if I can sell that

To hr departments at crypto companies, which I don't know if they're actually hiring a lot right now

So I'd have to do more research, but I think I would have done something like that

There's a few companies that have done this. There's salary.com and then there's pay scale

I think pay scale does something like two or three hundred million dollars a year in subscription revenue when they sell into this

What what's your what's your gut instinct on that one?

And you're saying instead of milk roper or you're saying this is a part of it

What is the idea here instead of these are these are things that would have done instead of

What what was that? I think that's a cool idea

Um, I think you know the crypto the number of crypto companies that are mature enough to care about salary things

I think is a little

Early for that. I feel like something like that's kind of working a few years

Not not when I was a good time to start then now, right? Yeah fair enough

Um, and then so when I'm thinking about these new ideas

I would think most of my ideas for what you guys should have launched are data related

The reason I like data is a I actually think that's within the core competency of a company creating newsletters

I think creating a software platform would have been a horrible idea because that's not within your core core competency

I also would have looked at what data can I get from my users?

And what are they clicking on in order to like track different data?

And if possible, I would have tried to make something that my advertisers would also want to buy

But that's actually quite hard and that that last one

I don't think I could have done the second thing I would have looked at is sentiment analysis

Again, totally. I'm a total outsider here. So but I wonder if big banks or big buyers of

Crypto stuff if they would care

What does the little guy think like the retail investor and what I would have done is and I think there's a few

I think there's it's called sentiment

They do like four or five billion dollars a year in revenue and what they do is they look at behavior analytics of like

Different crypto markets and how it works. I think there's augment. Oh, there's a few more that like look at this

But I would have like seen because the thing with crypto is it seems like a lot of stuff happens in discord

And if anything happens at discord, a gray hair guy is not going to be able to figure that out, right?

Yes, true. And so I'm wondering think definitely could could milk road have figured out

What the little guy is talking about before it kind of pops and gets sentiment analysis packaged in a more professional way than discord

What do you think about that?

I think that's a good idea. I think there's

So we've been doing this thing called the fear and greed index from the beginning which I love

Which is basically a it's a meter that just shows what's the market's mood

It isn't kind of like based on the like from the stock market. This has been the case for a long time, which is

You know, the market is very moody. It gets extremely fearful

It gets extremely greedy and you kind of want to be buying when it's fearful

And you want to be selling when it's greedy if you wanted to time it or at least does not buy when the market is feeling

extremely greedy

But like it's good to know where where the sentiment stands because you could sort of it price is very very linked to that

And at the beginning we didn't have any first-party data

So we used an existing fear and greed index that we just skinned it and designed it to fit our brand

But I'm pretty sure right now we have probably the biggest ability of anybody to poll for that

Exactly. I was I admit a coin base or others could do it, but they're not they're not doing it

But in terms of media like we're one of the biggest

I think we are the biggest newsletter for crypto. So I think and we get a lot of feedback like if we say hey

Tell us x they'll like we'll get tons of responses for every email

And so I think that we could have basically built our own fear and greed index or built that out like maybe per coin

Or per project for nft like what is the sentiment around this?

What are the whales saying? So like just create a cohort of whales

And their sentiment that take that data and package it up for any of the financial like institutional money

That's in this space. Um, so I do think that that

That has a possibility and that is a 30 000 product not a not a

$10 month product and then what I would have done is like looked at that analysis and the data

And then also had my researchers and writers give context around this and to explain their sources and why

They think it means what it means and I think the research they do in this pro thing is actually good

And the problem is when it's gonna be super low priced. I think that it's really hard to go that extra mile

On any one topic

And because you know the the the reader may not even be that sophisticated or have that much skin in the game

And then the writer has to share in out lots of content for a wider base

But if you know

Hey, this is a narrow group of people that really care a lot about these specific things

You could go be the best in the world at delivering that type of intel and you host conferences and a handful of other things around that

And that is a 30 000 a year product. I think now

Packaging all of that is challenging and pulling it off is challenging

But I don't think it's like

Significantly more challenging than the work that they already have to do. It's just packaged differently

And the last two things that was the sales work is different. So in this the sales work is easy

You put a link in the newsletter today and you say hey, you want to hear read this section go check out pro

Sales work is easy content work is is about the same

Um, but the the value obviously of the sale is what matters. So the other case you have to basically

Go and meet with

the head of research at some

Some firm some blockchain investing firm or some traditional, uh, you know hedge fund or whatever

And you have to basically do an enterprise sale to get them on board

Correct. The difference is and this is an advantage is that milk road is small and your burn is small

So you only a couple deals two sales. Yeah

Could make a meaningful difference and you just start you start small and you start slow

And I think that I could pull off

You're not a VC funded company that has to grow and support, you know a million dollar a month team

the last two things

Something that has always interest to me is organizational charts, which sounds boring

but with crypto

Well, the this is combined with two ideas, but with crypto you don't always know who's behind stuff because

you

Like a lot of it's just like someone's face. That's a nft or something like that and you're not exactly sure who's behind it

Uh, what I would do is I would have done org charts that explains. Here's who's behind each thing

Here's the team. Here's their contact information and here's the story behind it as well as our prediction of like is this like

Interesting or not interesting should you trust it because if you're if a bank or or or a buyer or a funder of some of these companies

Wants to know like what's the real deal behind them?

It's really challenging to get a surface level or even a more than surface level view on it without doing lots of your own research

So if you have data that can actually pinpoint

Uh, this is actually legitimate. It's worth diving deeper into and here's some more analysis on that or this one just is nonsense run

Like something like that and your customer being

Either a someone who wants to sell into those companies or someone who wants to fund invest or purchase

Something from them. It kind of gives you a little bit more

Quantitative and qualitative information on are they worth the time? Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Um

That one's I like that one. I like that one less than the other one. So I think these are all

Good ideas. I like the theme of these data driven

Uh, court like basically once you require this corpus of data, it just simply becomes more valuable over time

It has to be updated and refreshed, but it's not like

new

It's not new content in the same way. It's building a stack of content

I was talking to or I was reading this post about zoom info. Do you know what zoom info is?

Yeah, it's basically just like here's everyone's email address. Is that the like dummy version of it?

Yeah, they're publicly traded though. They do like a billion dollars in revenue. I don't know what their market cap is

They're big, but it's what do they provide beyond that? It's basically like it's for salespeople, right? Like hey salesperson

Here's how you do your prospecting. I think the high level view is basically

We have mapped out every employee at every company in america and we know like what they do

We know their contact information and we know a little bit of background about the company

Um, right and the way that they started it was the two founders

They said we spent 75 of our time

Just calling the front desk of all these companies to confirm that their phone number was correct

And that was how it started then we went and got a bunch of different data sources

And we combined them to make it a little bit more readable

So you could have more data on different companies and then finally they created a

I don't know what you call it like a viral loop whatever

It's called where people could access some of the data, but they had to submit their own data

And so in order to get a discounted price and that kind of created this loop

We're now they have so much information on different companies how they work if you google like a company and then revenue

You might find zoom info that will show up

But it will say like their contact information where their office is and things like that

And so they started just by the two guys just phone calling

And so these company data businesses can be cool because you can brute force your way to get like a nice little mvp

So anyway, that's my my spiel on milk road. I I think that

I don't know the background of what the owners are doing. So I could be totally off. That's what I would have done instead though

So here's a um tool. That's pretty cool. That's uh related. Have you ever heard of particle calm?

No, I'm gonna go to it now though. So particle just without the e so it's p a r t i c l dot com

Unlock the power of driven product development

Uh, yeah, what it should say is see how much any e commerce store does in sales because that's what it does

Right, that's like the layman's term like again zoom info is like hey, you want to sell shit?

Uh, we'll tell you who to reach out to and here's their email address, right?

Like they have to sort of mask it can make it sound a little fancier than it is

But it's very functional very useful and similarly particle is pretty cool. So what they did is

um for pretty much uh all the major e commerce stores

um

They what they did is they they have a way to go to any like kind of Shopify store and estimate with

Fairly high confidence and it's not perfect, but it's directionally correct

um

What that store does in sales within that what each what which skew they uh

They sell like uh, you know, what's the top selling sell top selling products bottom selling products that sort of thing

And so you could do really great competitive research and market research to try to figure out

Where are their gaps at the market? Oh, okay?

This company is doing really well, but there's not a lot of competitors that also sell that product

There may be an opportunity to go in there or hey, um, you know

We're doing really well with these three products, but our competitor

They have this other product line that we don't have that's doing really well

And so it's a cool thing that they've built. Um using basically like

Seems like crawlers and scrapers to go onto an e commerce store and sort of estimate the um

The volume of uh of sales for product is not perfect

It's like, you know, because I I looked at it for like our brand and a couple other brands of people

I know and so, you know the sale the exact sales number like if it says 50 million they might do

Actually 70 million or 60 million right? It's not directionally. It's directional. It's like it's not 500 that they do probably

Um, but and it's not five. It's more like 50. It's more like 50 and uh, but the product level stuff seems to be more accurate. Um

Where you know, again relatively like product a is more popular than product b by by double, right? No, okay interesting

What does that what can we learn from that? How do we and they sell this thing for like, I don't know 20 grand a year?

To your point because if I'm a retailer and I can be smarter about my inventory purchases

um

I'll make back the 20 grand and you know one or two purchases just by just by

By having this an intel if I didn't have it earlier

So it kind of makes sense how these companies are able to charge so much for is this company big particle

Yeah, I think they're pretty big. Um, I don't know too much. You know, you can't search them on the platform, unfortunately, but uh

It seems like they're seems like they're doing pretty well. Who's the owner of milk road now?

What are their names again?

Mike kindle and Mike kindle and Mike

I bravo launching a certain product clip. They don't listen to podcast. They don't listen to any podcast

Um, and so like in fact, when we first met him, I was like, yes, I think it's podcast blah blah

And then uh, he's like wasn't really that interested in the podcast

And I was like do you listen to our pod any pod you listen to podcasts?

He's like, no, why would I you didn't really understand? Why would I do that? Like, um

Hey, who's just like I just feel like I should just work instead of listen to other people talk about work. Okay. Oh

well

to she

Absolutely, right. That is what a successful person would say

If you guys are listening, that's what I would have done. This is what I learned from launching my product

I mean, we were trends were successful

But I realized we could have had two zeros at the end of our revenue probably if we would have done the things differently

Yeah, good feedback. I like it. Um, what else you got?

Um, okay. Well, that was amazing. Let's just first start with that. Great idea. Next. Um

You know with a guy with great ideas, you're getting those bad packing uh reps. Nice

Yeah, yeah

Can't stop won't stop never quit. No days off

I mean, I'm gonna let it slide that you said bad packing. That's what I'm gonna do because I'm gonna I'm a nice guy

So with ideas like this

I think I should be in the tech all star game

What's the tech all star game you asked? It's something I wish existed. So I tweeted this out

and um

I think that I laid out my case for why the tech industry needs its version of the nba all star game

So

Tech is getting pretty big. In fact, somebody pointed this somebody who's not in the tech industry pointed this out to me

They go

Yes, weird

I feel like tech is the new shit everyone in hollywood's like talking about he's like, you know

Like the facebook movie was dope. He's like and then they came out with silica valley hbo

And they have like, you know, they have the we the we work movie. They got the there are no movies

They got the uber story. They got the like it's making its way more into pop culture

And what happens when something gets into movies is

Those heroes become heroes. So the the the the protagonist in these in these things becomes like a new

Arc type that people want to follow and so he was pointing this out

He's like, I think tech is just crossed over into this thing where the cool tech people are now popular ever

You see this with elon musk mark zuckerberg. They're like

How their household names now jeff bezos whereas, you know, I couldn't have told you who the ceo of ibm was growing up

Like I had no idea but it's that that's changed now

You still can't name the ceo of ibm

Couldn't tell you what ibm stands for. Yeah, I used to not be able to name who the ceo of ibm was

I still I still can't but I at least want to know I definitely used to not be able to

so

I think somebody should create this. I think somebody should create

um

A weekend event that's produced like a like the nba all-star weekend

And get the best talent in the tech industry to compete. So here's how I think you're gonna have like a like a like a like the

Layup contest or like the base the base hit derby

No, no, no, no, it's gonna be a hackathon real simple. So it's a hackathon. That's the main that's the main attraction

That's the that's the game is a hackathon and what we'll do is each

So you get you only get invited if you're like a legit

Awesome tech company. So you go from like the top like okay facebook you get to send a team or maybe a couple teams

And but so does I don't know figma you guys have made it congratulations

You get to participate in the thing and so the ceo of each company gets to recruit

one engineer

One designer and one marketer for their squad

They get to come and they're gonna compete in the weekend hackathon

They got to build something awesome and they have to pitch it at the end and you get to kind of see these people actually

Like watch them cook a little bit like let me see you actually do work

Like are you creative? Are you interesting? Can you build something cool?

Um, can you sell can you pitch? I want to see see that in action

I think it would be a phenomenal recruiting event for companies

I think it would be just a great like kind of brand builder

I think it'd be fun for these people because I don't know most tech ceo's jobs are actually like

Just dealing with problems and not even the fun types. It's not even like product problems

It's like people problems and lawsuit problems and and shit like that

So I think it'd be a nice diversion for people who got into this because they like to build shit

And that this is how they actually started their company

And I think that you the way that elon and zucker sort of competing now

I think it's going to open the door to more direct competition friendly competition. I agree amongst tech people

And then I think you do the fun

Gimmick games, right? You have the whatever the the speed typing contest or you have who can do x while they're drunk

Whatever you come up with like some random ass games for other people to try to try as well

You broadcast the whole thing

And I think that like you could kind of if you had the right kind like if I'm

I was trying to think who has the incentive to do this

So none of the companies have the incentive to do this

Only somebody just like stupid like me has the incentive to do this where I'm like, yeah

This is what I'm going to spend my time on for the year and like I don't need money

So I can just like do this and like I think the whole thing

It would be profitable because you could get sponsors for the whole thing and I think either me or somebody like

Eric tornberg I thought would be great at this because he's got a lot of great connections and he

He comes from the sports world

So he like appreciates that part of it and sees that it's missing here

I also think that vc funds like sort of like and recent horror wins or whoever

Could use this as an excuse to create like a festival or a fair that's different than a traditional boring conference

So no one is going to do this, but I think this would be a fun idea. I wish this existed. What's your reaction?

Do you remember the silicon valley sports league?

No, what is that? It was awesome. It was like a rec sports league and um

We did soccer one season another season. It was flag football

And it was awesome. It was basically different companies would pay 10 grand per season

And you could have 10 players play and it was like a really fun way to like hang out and

You know get to know your team and like play sports

And it would at the time I was at apartment less

So it was like apartment less versus I forget whatever a company was like nearby and you like it was awesome

It was really yeah

It was really fun and the guys who started it used the profits to bootstrap their company

And it was sick and they said they made millions of dollars from it. You've not heard of that

No, but I'm on their website right now. I don't know if you've been there in a while. No, look at this banner image

This might be the worst banner image I've ever seen

it's too

evil looking tech guys

Pretending to play football against each other the guy's holding the football

Not like how you would hold a football when you run first of all tiny hands and can't hold a football

And the other guy looks like an absolute hyena

That's actually coming to take your data and sell it and not like play sports at all. This is

Whoever the artist who did this hates the tech industry

They like lost their their two-bedroom loft in san francisco

Because they raised the rent so that like some tech bro could live there and now he's on the street doing art like this

You just have to make it boxing though. You got to get you got to get to the you got to get to the boxing

I mean the youtubers are doing it now, but people aren't going to do the boxing thing like even

Like best case scenario is this ilan zucker work thing. It's also not even going to happen

It's not going to happen. They have too much to lose and it's too hard to be good at boxing

You've seen this with the youtuber thing

Jake paul actually like dropped out of life and has been like trains boxing for years

to look okay

And like imagine a tech

Interesting tech person is like in their 40s or 50s typically

Or they're like the scraughtiest 25 year old that like like spent their whole life building the thing and not working out like

I just don't think it's going to look okay. I think it's going to look really bad and sad. Wouldn't you watch it?

Why don't you just do this?

What's holding you back? I mean, it seems fun. Yeah, it seems fun

But I think it's a you know

It's a fun idea that

If I knew that I could get the right people involved maybe but you need the a you need the a players to do this

I'm not interested in apartment lists head of growth versus

You know feet finders, you know

Customer success guy like you know that we're not doing that. It needs to be

Zuck in his team

You let in his team and then like you know like it needs to be like top people doing this like they Airbnb founder like

That's who people who want to tune in because you don't get to meet these people. You definitely don't get to see them work

You only see them giving rehearsed

interviews about how they started something 10 years ago or like

Why they're not ruining the world right now like that's the only thing that's the only context

We see these people in you don't really get to see them in a context that makes them likable favorable and like you know an admirable

Are you on a roll right now? Should we just let you rattle these off?

I had three like alliterations. They're pretty pretty much so well feet

I thought the feet feet finder was the gem too

I'll just let you know that was on my list as an idea

But I haven't researched it somebody just told me feet finder crushes it and I go

What is feet finder and they go I think it's only finder for feet

I said

Bookmark that we'll look more at that later. Is that really a thing feet finder? Oh my god. You're right

It is the safest place the safest largest easiest website to view buy and sell feet content

Great. Yeah. Oh my god, dude. This is wild page. You're right. They do kill it. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's some home page

They get four million. Uh, yeah, we'll save us for another time. Oh my god. That is a home page

Uh, don't go to feet finder.com if you're with your family

All right, let me give you another quick one

so

related to

my only fans and now feet finder

curiosity, okay, so

Ben sent me a

Link to something called only page comm

And page as in like the girl's name page

And I thought this is kind of interesting

So I go to it and it's basically only fans

So there's some model named page and she's like hey subscribe to me and you get my content

You get all the same things as only fans, but she's hosting on her website. It's that golfer the what I don't know

What's her full name?

I don't know. Is she a famous athlete? I had no idea

I think she started as like a mediocre athlete a mediocre golfy

But she's a golfer but she's really good looking and so now she's in the news and stuff all the time for just being like this

Hot athlete her name is page s. I forget her last name, but something like that

I mean the variety of content here you scroll down

It's golf instruction and it says warming up and she's just bending over on a putting green

It says the mental game and she's talking about that and then there's just bra tutorial

I don't know how many guys are subscribing to watch a bra tutorial for that, you know that the bra techniques, but you know, this is uh

She knows what she's doing. Let me put it this way. I sent you her wikipedia. It's page

spara neck. Uh, so I guess she was a

Former professional golf player. She was a division one golfer and then she just got famous for being pretty good at golf

And then people were like

You're very attractive and she was like, I guess I should

I should lean into that one

She's talking to her mentor. She's like, I'm I'm pretty good at golf

But I'm amazing at boobs like I should go with this and they're like, you know

You should you should focus on your strengths and and so anyways

What I thought was interesting about this is this is basically a direct consumer version of of only fans

It's what Shopify did so like you before Shopify

It's like you could list your your products on somebody else's marketplace like amazon walmart, whatever

Um, so that's like one alternative. You could be an amazon seller

You put your product on amazon amazon is the storefront people go to amazon. They find your product

That's how only fans works people go to go to your only fans

It's hosted on only fans only fans is the tech platform where

You make your purchases through this is interesting somebody must have created for there must be some company behind this

Or she built us herself which is

A shop like a Shopify version of only fans

She has her own branded domain her own store and she's handling her own customer relationship with customers

So when they like for example, when you sign up to somebody's only fans, you don't get their email address

Um, if they turned you could never mark it back to them that way

But with this theoretically she could and so I thought it was kind of interesting

I wondered like Shopify turned out to be a very big deal in the like kind of like commerce landscape

Clearly only fans the niche is doing, you know billions of dollars a year

As a product like I don't know. I don't know what you would call a category

Um, can somebody create the Shopify for that? That's kind of interesting to me

Um, so I don't know. I don't know the company's not seen this the company behind

Uh her page. It's called you screen. So you screen dot tv the letter you and then screen

Dot tv and it's the all-in-one membership platform for creators delight your diehard fans with exclusive exclusive video content

In a vibrant community across your own mobile app and website and on their home page

They list like some youtuber with two million subscribers. They left a they list a yoga company kids kids art

Is that what it is? There's kids art. There's yoga

There's like some german guy. There's like a pregnancy blog

And now she's gone on here. Yeah

She's like they're big she's definitely their biggest selling

Yeah, so she's so it's a company that's doing it and it looks like she just found like a course creator company and was like

Or a membership platform. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's like, yeah, we're gonna do that

We're gonna go ahead and just only pay

$300 a month

Their thing says 150 million earned by creators each year

That's pretty interesting. That's uh, that's not like a small number. They say they have 9 million end users

So like members on the other side of the the content. Yeah, and so I never heard of this. Have you ever heard of this?

No, I've never heard of it

And it looks like they're killing it because they just made maybe some

policy changes that would not allow like kajabi or something to like

uh appeal to that type of creator

But it's smart. So if you click their leadership team, they have a big team

It's a it must be a big company. They have got a huge team. It looks like they have

A 50 to 150 employees

So it must be working and if you look them up, you can't find any funding information about them

The company might be killing it and we just don't want to make a chrome extension

That's just called the honesty filter and it just changes the website homepage to like say what it actually does

like, uh, you know

It should just say monetize your body

Yeah with less fees than only fans. Yeah

And like, you know the the zoom info get people's email address and spam them

These are like what these companies actually do. But if you go like if I go to zoom info, what does it say?

So the guy who started it his name's pj. It looks like he on his linkedin

He says they're north of 20 million in an arr. They're bootstrapped

And it's based out of washington dc

This is a legit company and before that he had a web hosting

site, uh, anyway, this guy

This thing is bootstrapped. Is that what you said? Yeah, that's what his linkedin says. Yeah, they're probably doing they probably take like

I want to say five to 10 of this. So maybe

Something like 10 to 15 million

A year in uh in revenue for them

Yeah, and he says that he's killing it. It says in his linkedin. It's over 20 million in arr

It says fast growing and profitable bootstrapped SaaS business revolutionizing the way that video-based entrepreneurs make men get off

That's what it says

So

Yeah, pj. I thought you got to turn the chrome extension off. Hold on. I got you there

So kudos to pj. My chrome extension is called true dat and you can find it in the chrome store

That's his side hustle. Uh, good job pj at unscreen. I don't see page on their home screen

I don't know why I wouldn't see that she's like has four million followers on instagram

You got a guy on here with in the front page with 1.8 on on youtube

We got to put page on there, but that's what she's using. So her name's page

Sarah nick or something like that. Well, maybe with your new, uh body

I don't know. Maybe you screen ice cream. We all scream for sam's screen, you know what i'm saying

Yeah, and uh page. What's up? Uh, that's a joke my wife who's listening. That's a joke

But I do see that page is recently divorced according to her wikipedia

Uh, no, I'm just joking. She's like a nine. I'm a four. That won't ever work out unless

We could figure out a way. Um

Yeah on screen or you screen whatever it is. Good job. Kudos to you guys

They're taking that business of people who don't want to uh deal with these people

I don't know why more people don't do this. I guess you have to have a really big, uh, I mean you need a big audience page

is four million

Uh instagram followers, but does only fans even drive audience? Do they drive a significant amount?

No, they don't they intentionally don't drive discovery. So it's kind of like Shopify anyways

You promote yourself

There your storefront, but the thing is it'd be like if every Shopify store

Was on it was called Shopify.com slash

store name

And if you couldn't collect your you know, the the

emails or phone numbers of your customers

So you couldn't like, you know, set sell more products to them or whatever. It's all done through their through their platform

Yeah, and you screen advertisers that they have like a community platform

I don't think I want to be part of that community

But just the paywall part might be worth it. So if you're a creator, I'd be like, yeah, I'll accept their money

but I don't want to like

You know, I don't want to like talk to them on a regular basis. That'd be weird. Um

Yeah, that's a good find

Where do we go from here?

I think that's it. I think we wrap it up

All right. Well, that's the episode by the way, uh, really quick

Oh, that's the pod. That's the pod. I know I wanted to tell you something really quick. Um,

I just got a text while we were recording from Jason Yanowitz at blockwork. So he goes

Today I got asked to leave the bank because I was laughing so hard at the at Sean's Taco Bell story

They were like, sir, could you please leave your call outside because I had headphones in it was laughing so large

So so loud. Uh, I said, yeah, yeah, no, you need to listen to this podcast and they were like, sir

What are you talking about?

The Taco Bell story

Just take it off his airpods and play it out loud for the entire bank

It's like, well, you got to hear the story that Sean tells about make an eye contact with a guy who's farting at a Taco Bell

Uh, and can I please deposit $500? Uh, no, apparently that was a hit. A lot of people like that Taco Bell story. Congratulations

You should do more. Thank you. Do more uncomfortable things

I um, I went and replied to a bunch of the comments on youtube. Um, if it comes from the the

Channel name, that's me. Um

So I went reply to a bunch of them because I had said like we were we read and reply to every comment

I know people got mad at you

We read all the comments now there's a lot like it there's 700 comments per episode which

Is a lot to reply to I did it for one and I was like, okay

I can't go do that for the next one

So I think it's gonna be kind of like I reply to I read all of them and reply to I don't know 100 each time

Uh, because it's it's now getting I read all of them

I read all of them and a lot of them they got mad at us for uh being

They called us all a bunch of cucks for liking zuck. They said you're zuck's cucks

Yeah, cuck army. What's up?

We have tattoos on the inside of our wrist

Dude, isn't it crazy that whatever whatever whatever zuck's working out

That zuck is now on the liberal side of this stuff. Somehow we're like, you know left of center because we like zuckerberg

That's so funny that he's fallen like on that side of this argument

Uh, but yeah, they got I don't get it. They got mad at us. But anyway, that's the pod. We'll read all the comments. That's the pod

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.