Idea
Competitor-spy service: a six-figure 'done-for-you' intel contract
Sam pitches a high-end competitor-intelligence service that tracks your five nearest competitors using SimilarWeb, Facebook Ad Library, Ahrefs, etc., and delivers a monthly readout of what's working, what's not, and a hypothesis of why. He thinks you could charge a six-figure annual contract for it.
“And I think that that 100% could be a service. That you pay $100 grand a year for and you get, and you, and they'll tell you the 5 nearest competitors and every month you meet with their team and you say, all right, your competitors, they're doing this, they're doing that, they're doing this. Here's what's working. Here's what's not working. Here's our hypothesis as to what all this means. And I think actually you could charge a 6-figure annual contract for all of it.”
Steal thisProductize competitor intel into a monthly readout and charge a six-figure annual contract for done-for-you spying.
Framework
Research like writing a song: steal patterns, then deconstruct
Sam's research method: treat finding businesses like songwriting by spotting patterns and stealing interesting riffs, then running anything that catches his eye through SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, Wikipedia, annual reports and app-store reviews to fully deconstruct how it works. His logic mirrors the 4-minute mile: things get easier to do once you know they're possible.
“it's my theory that the The reason why no one broke the 4-minute mile, and then in the '60s, I think it was, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile and 5 other people did it that year, is it's a lot easier to accomplish things when you know what's possible. So my logic is whenever I see anything that catches my eye, I put it in SimilarWeb, I put it in Ahrefs, which is a software for search analytics. I look at the reviews on iTunes and I try to figure out how the business works because then I want to know what's possible.”
Steal thisRun every interesting business through SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, Wikipedia, annual reports and app-store reviews to reverse-engineer how it actually works.
Framework
SEO without backlinks: out-content the top result on every question
Shaan relays an operator who grew content sites to a million monthly uniques in two months, ten times over, ignoring backlinks and schema. He finds the questions people search via Ahrefs, then publishes deeper content than the top result, often on topics other sites avoid.
“he just looks at what questions people search for using a tool like Ahrefs or whatever. And so he goes and finds what questions are people searching for, looks at the search result, and if somebody's like, you know, the 20 best tips for closing a sales meeting, he'll do the 30 best tips and he'll put in a YouTube video and he'll like add all this value in.”
Steal thisFind searched questions in Ahrefs and publish content that out-does the current top result; skip backlinks and schema.
Idea
The blogging-to-course playbook for a 21-year-old today
Sam's concrete remake-my-first-million plan: learn one new thing each week and blog it daily, use Ahrefs to find what people search for, rank for those terms to pull 2,000-3,000 daily visitors, build a 5,000-person email list, then sell them a course.
“Well, if you're 21 today, start blogging. And when I say start blogging, I would say learn one new interesting thing each week and then just blog about what you learned. Do that every single day, every week for a year. Try to get 2,000 to 3,000 people a day coming to your site through search. The way you find out what to write about is you go to ahrefs.com and you buy a subscription, and that will teach you what to write because it'll tell you what people are searching for. Try to rank for those words, build up an email list of 5,000 people, and then create a course and sell it to them.”
Steal thisUse Ahrefs to find what people search for, blog daily to rank for those terms, build a 5,000-person email list, then sell them a course.