#221 - How to Make Millions With a Modern Day Infomercial

I think if you're starting a media company and if I started it again, if you didn't go subscription first, you're an idiot and you're a fool.

I feel like I could rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel, never looking back. All right, we're live. So did you see I got Ariel Hawane to agree to come on?

I know. Good job. How'd you do that?

A friend, a good buddy of mine is like best friends with him and I just begged him.

Your, your outreach. I had never seen you try so hard. Normally you're pretty cool about things. I don't think you really care with too many people, but I could tell you wanted this one.

I did. I— so basically for the people listening, there's this guy named Ariel Hawani. He's got a million followers on Twitter, so he's not like that niche, but basically he's like the god of MMA journalism. And the reason why he's interesting is because he just quit ESPN, where he was probably making close to $1 million a year as a host, and he created a Substack, his own podcast, and he's kind of building like a little media, media empire. Yep. And so we'll have him on and talk about that.

Yeah. And, you know, the thing that's interesting about him was he's been in it for a while. So like you have this phrase, I think you've said like niches get riches basically, which is like, yeah, A lot of people are afraid to go into a niche market and is it niche or niche by the way? I have no idea.

Both can work.

Okay, good. So, you know, a lot of people are afraid, oh, is this too niche? And I think you have the opposite reaction, which is too niche, fantastic. At least that's my understanding. You tell me if that's right or wrong.

They tried, but it's still, you know, dominant where it's just gaming.

Yeah. And that niche has just, they're in it. It just is no longer really a niche. Or you have like an Amazon, only books. And then you dominate that, and then CDs, and then this, and then this, and then this. So yeah, I think starting small is always the way to go, or is often the way to go.

Yeah, I think in Ariel's case, what he did was, um, I know he's a fan of the— I kind of want to ask him this— he's a fan of the NBA, like he's a big basketball fan, but he didn't go for journalism, basketball journalism, which would have been a more obvious safe choice. Instead, he went for MMA, which was like this fringe, really niche sport that, you know, it was kind of like, you know, John McCain in New York is calling it human cockfighting. It's like not allowed in certain places. Yeah. So it wasn't really like a very safe choice, but he was the only dude doing it. It felt like it was like, you know, you can go back, you know, 15 years basically, and you see clips of him talking to people backstage and just budget production value. But he was like the guy covering this regularly. And because of that, he's got like deep relationships, deep respect amongst the fans. To the point where even though Dana White, who's the president of UFC, hates him and has banned him from like UFC events, um, he's still the number one journalist. So imagine, you know, like this guy that Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, just hates and bans from the game, still being the number one, you know, journalist for the athletes. That's kind of unusual. And so he's an interesting dude with a cool story.

Yeah, I'm excited to have him. I actually think that I think that it's gonna, it'll be a hit with our listeners. Even the people who aren't into UFC, I think it's gonna be a hit, but I am a fanboy, so we'll see.

Yeah, that's all good.

Can I tell you about a business that is built on trust that I'm obsessed with at the moment?

Okay, go for it.

All right. Have you heard of examine.com?

No. What is examine.com?

You've never heard that? Okay. Can you go to your computer now?

You have?

Okay.

I'm at it. Let me go there.

All right.

So tell you what I see. Yeah. Okay. I go to examine.com and I thought it was going to be about books or something. No, it says nutrition information you can trust. And then it's just like a giant kind of like Google search bar. It's like, like, for example, oh, this is perfect. Actually, my trainer was telling me about ashwagandha. I see ashwagandha here.

I've been taking that for 8 days now.

Great. So it's a supplement. And so I go here and I guess the idea would be, hey, there's going to be a lot of— if you Google this, you're going to find a lot of information. But we are a trusted source. We do the research, we put the pros and cons here, we make it easy to understand. Is that the idea?

I think a lot. I think, I think probably, I mean, I'm just looking at up to date and I think it has 15, you know, SimilarWeb shows about 15 million visits a month. So that's pretty impressive. I would guess, okay, I'm going to go high. I know I'm going to go low. It's always fun to be blown away. So I'm going to say 50 million a year.

I'm blown away, I'm blown away, just as I hoped with my low estimate. Because isn't it shitty when you're trying to— yes, when you're trying to blow someone's mind and then they estimate over it, you're like, well, okay, not that much, but it's still cool. It's like, ah, goddamn it. Like, you know, that should just be a rule amongst friends. If I ask you to ballpark something, you know, let me, let me blow you away.

And the company that owns this does the same thing for finance tax and accounting, I believe. And that whole company is publicly traded. It does like $5 billion in sales a year. Crazy business model. And I'll tell you why this is interesting to me. This is interesting to me because I love content businesses. I love them. There's a huge problem with content businesses, which is they suck at making money if you're going to make money in the most traditional way of banner ads or some type of BuzzFeed-style native ads. I fucking hate that. This model I love. I think that you could use this model for a bunch of different categories, including skincare, including beauty. I think that would be the next, the, the easiest one according to Saul. Um, what do you think about this business? It's pretty neat, right?

Genius. Yeah. Uh, so UpToDate makes total sense. Uh, yeah, like, I am— I'm surprised I haven't heard of it. I am not surprised something like this exists and works. It just makes all the sense in the world. Examine.com also Very, very cool. And I think sort of like if UpToDate is kind of like a B2B, Examine is kind of like a B2C where it's like, you know, the average person who's just curious like you, I'm curious about panic attacks or I'm curious about ashwagandha or I'm curious about, you know, whatever, L-carnitine. And, you know, I hear about it, I hear some buzz, but I'm trying to be like smart and safe about things. Where do I go that's not just trying to sell me shit and not just trying to like print page views as like a content farm?. And so I think that trust is, you know, like sort of like one of the only things that matters in a like world of abundance. And that's where we are, we're in a world of abundance. And so trust is like one of the key, key things.

And examine.com, their rule is they don't recommend any brand. So you can't find any brand on their site. If they say take magnesium oxalate, I was like, Sol, just tell me like which brand so I can just buy on Amazon. He goes, no, We can't tell you that. You got to go and figure that out because the day we start doing that is the day we start like incentivizing the wrong shit. So it's pretty amazing business model. You know who else does this is Consumer Reviews. So Consumer Reviews, you probably don't use anymore. A lot of people who are younger or my age and younger don't use it anymore. So Consumer Reviews, it's Wirecutter, but they charge a subscription. That company, it's actually a nonprofit. So you can actually look up their revenues, their revenues. Uh, they charge a subscription revenue, right? What did I say? Consumer Review? Consumer Report. Yeah, Consumer Report. It was around, it was, uh, around before Wirecutter. I prefer Wirecutter now, but Consumer Report is pretty amazing. They charge subscription revenue. They still do like $120 million in subscription revenue, and they're telling you like the best TV, the best microphone, the best computer, and they crush it.

Crazy, right?

Subscription revenue, that's insane. $245 million overall, uh, overall revenue in 2020. Insane.

Clip it. Uh, all right. Yeah, that's a good one. I like that a lot. You've talked about this, like, Consumer Reports for other things, right? So you've talked about it for SaaS tools. Um, and then some people have tried that. G2 and others, uh, have tried that. What do you think about that? What's your latest thinking on that? Because you've been thinking about that idea for a while.

I think it's an amazing idea and someone could still do it. G2 has raised another round of funding, uh, at like a multi-billion dollar valuation. I think, I think it still could be done. There's a company called J2 Global. Have you heard of J2 Global? No. All right, look up the stock of J2 Global right now for me. I, I, I'm act like I'm setting you up. I actually haven't looked at it in a while. Uh, is it good?

Okay, so J2 Global, uh, all right, it's trading at $130 a share. The market cap is $6.3 billion. And, uh, yeah, you know, like sort of year to date, it's almost, uh, double.

So J2 Global, what they do is they own a handful of publications, including IGN, CN, Mashable, PCMag, um, Offers.com, and one or two more. But basically they make the bulk of the revenue, I believe, from suggesting which software to buy in PC Magazine, and that's how they make most of their revenue. And it's a publicly traded company, and you look it all up. So I think this model can still crush it. I think PC Magazine is pretty much garbage. G2 is okay, um, right? But anyway, I think it's a really big business that so many people are sleeping on.

And, uh, you know, what else could you do this sort of trust, trust model for? So I have a, I have one idea, but I'm curious what else comes to mind for you.

Skincare and beauty. That's what I, I think it could be done on skincare and beauty.

I, I would imagine you could do the same for physical therapy. So the reason physical therapy is interesting, so basically I've had an injured Achilles for about a year now and I've been researching like crazy. And if you search Achilles tendonitis, there's loads of different stuff and I've been reading so many studies. And what my conclusion now is this, there's only one way to fix your Achilles tendonitis and that is to do Rest. Um, well, no, no, no, it's rest, but it's to do 6 sets of 15 Achilles, like, eccentric drop-downs. So what that means is you stand on a curb or a step and you slowly let yourself fall, and then you, uh, kind of step up and then slowly— and if you do that, and I read study after study, it's almost like been unanimous that if you do this for 3 months every single day, your Achilles tendonitis will get better. And I had to dig so deep for that. And I think that something like this could exist for physical therapy and injuries and things like that.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of agree with you right now. My mom has this, like, she had vertigo, but then it kind of went away, but she still feels symptoms. And the doctor's like, you don't have vertigo. She's like, no, no, I get that. But what do I have? I have something. This is not right. And they're like, bloodwork looks fine. And then she has to call back and be like, hey, I know the bloodwork looks fine, but I'm not right. Yeah. What do I do? They're like, go to— let's do an MRI. Same thing. And then it's like, finally, okay, do these, like, do this physical therapy. So she literally walks around the house. With a piece of paper in front of her that has like a letter on it. So her eye has to focus on it and she moves it to the right while she's walking and then moves it to the left while she's walking. Oh my gosh, dude, is this the exercise? Like, maybe it is. If it is, fantastic. But where— how do we know that this is it and that there's not like a much faster, better way? Because previously when she had vertigo, that was like vertigo proper. She went to 3 doctors. Nobody knew what to do. The 4th doctor was like, oh, lay down. And he like shook her head like vigorously. And it's like this known cure. And basically it like loosens up the crystal in the inner ear or whatever. And she was like fixed in 10 minutes and she's like, wow, like if I just hadn't come to see you, how many more months or years would I have just had vertigo? Like, that's a pretty scary thought.

Yeah, I think that could work. Or here's another thing. Do you know, you know anything about chiropractery?

I know, I know what most people know, which is like skeptical, skeptical hippo eyes, as our boy Brendan Schaub says.

And I didn't know that. I thought— sorry to chiropractors or chiropractors fans out there, but basically chiropractor, it was invented by a guy, I forget his name, but he was like a snake oil salesman. He was full of shit and he thought that like, I'm going to— someone's going to correct me because I'm kind of getting it wrong. But basically, like, there's like evil spirits or something in you.

And if you—

if you adjust the spine, it releases it. Now, some chiropractors like can help very little, like, but 90%, like 90% of what chiropractors, what we think they do, you you can't adjust your spine and like your headaches stop. Like, that's just not how your body works. But it's nonsense, right? Also, the acceptance rate of chiropractor school is 100%. So like, it's like a Google AdSense certification. It's not like, you know what I mean? I know I'm going to get flack for this. And yes, there are some chiropractors out there. A lot of it, though, is nonsense. And I think an examine.com can exist for all types of parts of the body. So anyway, that's my idea on exam.com. I thought it was interesting. I'm a bit obsessed with it. I'm currently on a vitamin regimen and I discovered it on there. I thought it was cool. You wanna do another one?

Yeah. Okay. So let me give you another trust as a service. So this is just like a, I'm calling this my $2 blue collar side hustle right now, which is here's a side hustle that will make you some bucks. It's not gonna be a huge business, probably. It's not even maybe gonna be around 5 years from now, but I think right now it's a thing you could do. So, um, are you big on— did you order a lot of food? Because I'm a DoorDasher, right?

Like, I am, I do, but not, but not like you. You do like every meal.

Well, I, I got a chef now, but even with the chef, there's still, you know, 2 to 2 meals a week where I'm like, uh, let me just fire up the DoorDash and see what happens.

Dude, it's so expensive, it hurts me.

I love it. And I'm going to show you an example of something similar to this. Have you heard of— I think it's pronounced LEED, L-E-E-D.

LEED certified, the like green buildings thing.

Yeah. So I was looking this up. So it's a nonprofit, so you could easily see their sales. So that— wow. They do. I think this is— I'm almost positive it's run by a company called the US— it's not a company, but a nonprofit. US Green Building Council. And I think they— is that it? Do you know?

No, but, uh, yeah, I believe you.

And they do $31 million a year in sales. And basically, I have no idea what the— I have no idea why buildings are incentivized to do that, but I imagine the business model is such where you pay LEED— LEED, I guess, is what it is, what it's called. And oh, here, Dan says he's a former accredited professional for LEED. So that's—

that's basically— Dan, unmute. Dan, on a scale of 1 to chiropractor, where is LEED certification?

It's nowhere near chiropractor.

It's legit. And, uh, you are a LEED accredited professional. What the heck does that mean? Did you pay for the— first, did you pay for this accreditation?

My company, my former company did, yeah.

Okay, so somebody paid for you to get certified and then you charged other companies to go give them the stamp of approval, is that right?

Yeah. So as a professional, you get like 1 point towards the point total you need to become a LEED building. And then there's like a silver, gold, platinum scale.

And it's shit like, you know, you use the right kind of light bulbs, you use the right kind of insulation, that sort of thing when you're building your building, right? Or renovating. Yep.

Stuff like that. Um, air quality, indoor air quality, which is really bad normally. Low use water, things like that.

No smoking. And why does it build?

You sound like a LEED professional right now, bro. I feel like I'm getting LEED certified as we speak.

Why does a building care about getting LEED certified?

Look good, feel good. That's a good question. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of just wanting to be green.

But there's no incentivize— incentivization. Oh, dude. Like there's— but the government does— does the government like give you anything or is it simply just for branding and awareness?

I don't know.

It's been 15 years since I took the exam, so I'm a little out of pace on it, but I'm not sure if there's a big incentive for it.

Dad, how old are you?

I'm 35.

You did this when you were 20? You were a 20-year-old LEED certified?

Might be around a little bit. I think I was 22 when I took it.

Okay.

Um, more importantly, I got a LEED certification. Go to my Twitter profile real quick. Just see what you see there.

Dude, fuck that. I think you are the worst. That is so lame.

So you'd be verified?

So lame.

Are you kidding me?

Sean got verified. He's got a blue check mark. I think that is the lamest, dude. You are not one— you're not a man of the people anymore. You're so out of touch for getting that.

I used to shit on. I don't need that. I don't need that. You know what does that mean anyways? Who cares about that anyways? You know, I actually prefer not to have. And now that I have it, all that bullshit is out the window. I am so glad I verified.

Why did you get it?

So glad I got the blue checkmark. Well, I got it for like actual legit reasons. Like first I was just, I wanted it for my ego for many years, but I was, you know, okay, whatever, didn't happen, who cares? But then people started actually impersonating me and scamming my followers. So there were all these accounts that get created every month and they would go DM my followers like, hey, yeah, what's up? And people like, oh, hey, thanks for the DM. Like, no problem. You know, I saw you follow me. You know, what are you doing with your portfolio lately? And they would scam them into either sending them crypto or buying random crypto shitcoins, or they were getting them to like buy stocks or like send them, like send them money to go like invest in their like they pretended they were my fund. And so people were actually like, you know, it used to just hurt my feelings that I wasn't verified, but then it was actually like hurting other people. And so I was like, dude, what the fuck? So I was bitching about it.

Yeah, and I get that, guys. I get that. But that's the only reason I'll accept. I think every other reason is bullshit. I think they're stupid.

What's that? It's a little jealousy I'm smelling. I don't know. Like, I think you kind of want the blue checkmark too. I think the people on Twitter need to help you out.

I think I'm, I think I'm barely famous enough to get it, but I will not get it. I'm not. You have Crypto Bros value.

Tell me right now, you push a button and you could just have it or not have it. No, nothing else. Just push this little key on your keyboard. You tell me you wouldn't push that button.

I give you my word, I will not push that button. Wow. But, but if I, if I end up having scams like you, then yes. But I've not had that. I've not had that problem.

Yeah, it became like a legit problem anyways. So, okay, lead certification. So yeah, basically I think I think LEED is another good one. Like, I would love if somebody just took on LEED and just called it like, you know, Green Home. Oh, you're Green Home Triple Star? Wow. Doesn't that sound good already?

Yes.

And like, again, you could turn the knob. However, like, you can go super legit if you really like find ways that you could kind of score buildings. Or you could like be somewhere in the middle and, you know, don't scam, but like, dude, I would do that. Service is a great business.

I actually think that the health department's scorecard is bullshit. So I had a hot dog stand. I mean, duh. I talk about that.

Oh, really? Have you told that story? Yeah.

Yeah. You know, I don't drink either. And when they did my health certificate, like, I just bullshitted through it, like, hardcore. And like, I mean, my shit was clean, but like they had all these boxes we had to check and it was bullshit. But in the day that we were doing it, I actually was wearing flip-flops and they gave me a 95 instead of 100.

And so like, I think it's kind of not gross toes out while you're making hot dogs.

Yeah, nobody wants outside in 100 degrees selling meat that's been sitting there for like, you know what I mean? Like forever. Like it's fucking disgusting anyway.

It is super disgusting. I worked with my first thing was a sushi restaurant. And we had a commissary. We worked out of a commissary kitchen, which is like a, it's a central kitchen where like caterers and bakers, it's like a kitchen without a storefront. So in there was all the food truck guys. And so you, so in that I saw the hierarchy of like degeneracy. It's like caterers. Like I said, like bakers, bakers are good people. Bakers are nice women who care about their product and they do a great job and they're very hygienic. And then caterers are like, kind of like they're like bakers. They're legit. But, you know, the need, the demands on a caterer are so high. It's always high urgency. They're preparing for a 200-person party or whatever. So, you know, they're kind of get shit done. They'll cut through the red tape. But, you know, you respect their decisions. Then there's the fucking food truck guys. The food truck guys, they think this is a bar. They're just drunk while they're prepping their tacos. They're pretty disgusting. And then you have the hot dog guy at the end. This guy straight up. Okay, so there's like a sink. And if you don't know what a 3-compartment sink is, you haven't paid your blue-collar dues. But basically a 3-compartment sink is like kind of where you do the dishes in a commercial kitchen. And like the 3-compartment sink is just literally, it's full of like the dirtiest dishes and just a chemical bomb you put in there to like clean them. And the fucking hot dog guy in our commissary kitchen would just go and he'd just fill up the sink with the hot dogs that he's going to be selling like 3 hours later. He'd just be throwing the hot dogs around there, washing them. Dry, you know, put them in the other sink to dry off. And it's like, this guy, there was zero. And I literally, I don't think I've had a hot dog since, uh, because I saw how the sausage was made and I, you know, never want to see it again. So that's my public service announcement. Don't eat.

Yuck. I agree. I was clean. I mean, I kept myself clean, but I can see why most don't. You can get— you don't have to. You can just get away with it.

It's not even counting what's the meat. I'm like, forget the meat. Let's say the meat was pure. The way it's handled, disgusting.

So I think you could build a new version of a health department score, actually. I actually think that's legitimate.

Dude, how many other areas— could we just do this like, okay, I'm bullshit about Twitter right now. Could you just do this where it's like you have a content score? Like, you know, just like how, you know, either like how, like, you know, safe and kind of like non-offensive your content is. Like maybe it's something that's like, you know, it's around your cancellation score.

You know what we should do?

You know, it's interestingness or your fan score, like how much your fans care about you. We just bullshit like your engagement score., but we make it really visible. It's like Sam, he may not have the most followers, but his followers love him. It's like we make your Q score. Yeah. You know what Q is? It's like a popularity ranking. Uh, we just make some, we, it's, oh, you haven't heard this Q score. It's like a thing for celebrities. Yeah. It's a thing for like Hollywood celebrities. Like what's your, what's your popularity kind of like, it's not an approval rating. It's like your popularity rating. How, how well do people know you? And like, you know, Obama has a high Q score.. And yeah, I feel like you can do that on social media with Klout, but just like bullshit the whole thing.

Early.

You were just too early.

Amazing idea. Way too early. Amazing idea. If it were around now, it would be the best. I actually thought it was—

Somebody restart Klout and just DM us.

I thought it was, it was a great branding. And people still, to me, make jokes about Klout. Like, they'll be like, oh, I gotta increase that Klout score. And I know what they're talking about. I had a Klout score, and basically what happened, I mean, my Klout score wasn't that great. I had like 5,000 friends on Facebook though, and so I qualified. And so McDonald's—

Just the fact that you're justifying it shows how good of a— hook this is.

How much I would use it all the time. McDonald's would send me a $5 gift card once a month. Right?

Yeah. Like, amazing.

It was, it was so cool. I loved clout. So I think that could exist. And I think that could, that could kick ass. I think this is like, yeah, I think there's a lot of—

by the way, I don't even think you really need to do that much differently, right? Like, there's, I'm sure there's like 20% of things you would tweak, maybe in the execution, like, you know, maybe you don't have to raise that much money. I think the timing is the biggest tweak that you needed to make. Maybe you change the way it's calculated or the way you promote it or the business model, whatever. I don't think you need to change that much. I just think that the time, the time is now. And like, as Donald Trump basically created this thing called fake news, I think fake news is very underrated how like big of a wave that actually was created and how much distrust there is around, around brands and entities now. And so people are kind of like the atomic unit of a brand at this point. And so yeah, I think that, uh, that Cloud should be remade.

How about the fact that— so HubSpot has a hub. So this one woman who works with me just got Scrum certified and we paid $5,000. It was $5,000 or $4,000. And I'm like, so Scrum, I don't even know what it is. I guess it's just like a, um, a project management, uh, yeah, it's how you manage like engineering sprints.

Yeah.

And we paid $5,000 and I was like, who the heck like is the Scrum like decision maker? And then I realized HubSpot—

Scrum Master, by the way.

Is it really? Oh my God, that sounds much more like legit than it probably really is. HubSpot has HubSpot certification courses, and if you look on people's LinkedIn, they, they brag about passing HubSpot certification courses. We got to talk. I got to talk to us. I'll be like, how did you— I'm like, look, like, you guys are amazing and wonderful and legit, but like, you weren't always amazing, wonderful, and legit. You were just starting out and you somehow convinced people to trust you and take this seriously, right? How on earth did you do that? Because that's amazing.

So they paid HubSpot. So HubSpot is the collector of the $5,000 dues for the Scrum training?

No, sorry. There's a different organization that does Scrum, but HubSpot— you've never seen people brag about their HubSpot certification. So like if you Google HubSpot certification, they've got like these classes.

I just block people if they tried to brag to me about that. So that's an immediate block.

So there's like inbound sales, HubSpot marketing software, inbound marketing. And if you Google people, if you Google like that, and LinkedIn, there's so many people that put that on their LinkedIn, like certified in, uh, uh, whatever. Like there's so many people that cite, uh, HubSpot as their thing. And so like, and so they put it like, you know how like one time if you look up Tyra Banks on LinkedIn, she probably still does this. She puts that she graduates from Harvard. Okay. She went to a Harvard Executive Learning Day. And people put like, yeah, it's like a 2-day— look at, look at, if you look up Tyra Banks, okay, okay.

So she did a 9-week, uh, uh, program for executives called the, the Owner President Management Extension Program. Yeah, dude, Harvard makes it unbelievable. I'm gonna break this down actually next podcast. Harvard's kind of whole business model around online programs, Harvard Business Review, uh, the, the media company. I'm gonna break that whole thing down because it's crazy.

I'll do it with you. I've studied the Business Review a bunch. All right. Can I tell you about another idea or a person actually? Yeah. All right. There's this guy named Matt— how do you pronounce his last name?

From Flipa— Mickiewicz or whatever.

Ah, man, I don't want to butcher this guy. Mick— sorry, Matt. I like you. I just don't know how to say your last name.

Mickiewicz. Kind of like Mickey and then with a wicz at the end. Mickiewicz.

All right. Mickiewicz. I've known about this guy for a long time, but I want to tell you everything that he's done Because I bet you, you know all of his work, but you maybe didn't know he was the one behind it. So in 1998, when he lived in Australia, he started this company while he was in high school called SitePoint. SitePoint basically is a publisher of books, courses, and articles for, uh, developers. And so you can like learn HTML, CSS, Java, Ruby, all that. They, they've never raised any funding and they have like 50 employees. I imagine if I had a bet, they probably make $5 to $10, maybe $5 to $15 million a year. That's my guess. Well, how do you spell it?

Mitzkovich.

Mitzkovich. Mitzkovich. His name is Matt Mitzkovich. Have you heard of SitePoint? SitePoint.com?

No.

Is it still around? All right. It's still around. And so like, I've heard his story. He was like, basically, I started this like as a forum and then a blog and people would come to my forum and blog and I was taking like $10,000 advertising checks when I was like 17 in high school. So I dropped out of high school and went all in on this. Then when he went all in on it, his forum on SitePoint, people were buying and selling businesses on it. And so he spun out one of the forums into its own business called Flippa. You've heard of Flippa, right? Yes. So I believe they—

prolific. Yeah, really prolific. You haven't even got the two of his hits.

Go ahead. It's just a way to buy, uh, buy domains in crypto. So like, I have a domain that ends— instead of .com, it ends in .eth, which is .eth, right? So it's a, it's a domain name service, like, uh, it's a domain, uh, domain— I think it's a registrar. So it's a domain registrar for making crypto domains. And the reason it's called Unstoppable Domains is because when you own that namespace, nobody— it's on the blockchain, nobody can sort of take it away from you. Nobody can switch the rules on you. It is sort of there forever.

So this guy, Matt Mitzkovich, has done all of that.

That's crazy to me. So, and this guy—

let me just tell you. So I DM'd him. I go, you joined Unstoppable, super interesting move. I said, what makes you bullish on it? Here's what he said. I'm just going to read it out loud. May or may not mean anything. He goes, there's a trillion-dollar asset class, which is basically domains. That people are navigating use the equivalent of an IP address. If Web3 and crypto is here to stay, then building the identity, like basically the address for consumers, is one of the most important companies of the decade. He's like, in the normal web, you have ICANN. You know what ICANN is?

Yeah, so it's like a committee, which is kind of bullshit to me.

But it's the committee that decides shit about the internet. What domains can be, you know, can you have a. .photo or .biz domain. Like, ICANN kind of decides those types of things. He goes, it's one of the oldest monopolies on the internet. It's begging to be disrupted. Crypto gives us a way to disrupt that because it's creating like a new, a new ground where they don't have jurisdiction. They don't have rule of law over there.

That's one of the few crypto examples or blockchain examples where I wholeheartedly agree. And I think that's actually incredibly useful and totally right. I don't know who's going to host the domain or like how that works. But I agree with that, like, idea, because if, if you're doing something, I can, or whoever, uh, can, can pull it, right?

Um, yeah, anyway, so, uh, so then he was just telling me a little more about it, but I was like, yeah, that's, that's great, that's cool. And I bought an unstoppable domain.

This guy's amazing. So, um, and get this, he's 37. He's only 37 years old. Amazing. This is a Have you— you've heard of him? People don't really—

yeah, people don't really know about this guy, like, or they don't really talk about this guy. But he's— it's a pretty prolific career. And he's kind of like independent and definitely like a— I don't know, he's an independent thinker. I could tell, right? Because 99designs is actually a pretty like very novel mechanism. It's like, oh, what if we created kind of like a design auction, right?

It's the best. It's the best.

Like we used it for our podcast thumbnail or our cover photo. Yes, we did. Done through 99designs.

And check this out, when we did it, HubSpot, um, like had all these designers work on this stuff and they made like some pretty good logos. And then, but we still went with, uh, this guy in the Philippines who made this logo and it was even, it was better than all of them. The, the, the trends.co website I had designed on there because like, you know, like when you work with the designer, you don't wanna be rude to your own designer and be like, no, this sucks. Can you just do exactly what I told you to do, please? But you can do that with a freelancer a little bit more than a full-timer. So I'm, I'm a fan of 99designs.

And by the way, it looks like there's this guy Mark, uh, who is his co-founder because it says co-founder of 99designs, Flippa, and SitePoint. So it's like, that's pretty cool. I like when people create this kind of like duo. It's like, yeah, let's just build a bunch of companies together. I find that to be like pretty inspiring, uh, and it tells you something about how somebody is to work with if somebody wants to keep going back in and, uh, and work with you again.

And I've talked to this guy. I actually invited him to HustleCon 2 or 3 different times and he committed and then some scheduling stuff happened and we weren't able to make him— make it happen. But I've talked to him on the phone. He's very very humble. So, uh, I'm a big fan of this guy.

Yeah, me too. Um, okay, so he's kind of like our little, you know, internet founder of the week. I don't know, we need a name for that. Uh, we have the Billy of the Week, we got the Blue Collar Side Hustle. We need something for just founders who are badass, who have done like— yeah, serial, serial entrepreneurs.

Yeah, this guy's great. Um, all right, you want to— you want to do one or two more?

Uh, yeah, let's do some other ones. Okay, so, um, do you know this company Guthrie Ranker? I bet you know about it. And I bet most people don't.

I can tell you all about them.

Tell me all about them. So last night, so I've been on this binge. I got to say, I've been on this binge. I'm rereading the book that really got me into being like kind of like a startup founder.

Can I guess? Can I guess?

Guess it.

Think and Grow Rich.

No, but that is a good guess, especially based on what we're talking about. I actually haven't read that book. So I'm going to— I want to read it now after reading about Guthrie Ranker. But I'm rereading The 4-Hour Workweek. So your bud, Tim Ferriss, wrote this book. I got it right when I was starting my first company. So I started my company before this. But once I started reading it, I was like, oh wow, there's people that are like me that are out there who think this way. And this guy's got like systems about this. I'm just, I just started figuring this stuff out. This guy's like been doing this for a decade. Great. And I got what you call the 4-Hour Fever, which is what happens right after you read the book. Uh, it's my own term because I've given this book to maybe 50 people since, and they all get the 4-Hour Fever right after I infect them with the book. And, um, it's already a long time ago.

We already lived the 4-Hour Workweek life.

So now we live it. And so I went back and I'm rereading it, right? I'm like, okay, I'd rather, yeah, I want to reread the classics. And so I went back and I'm rereading it and I just want to see, uh, you know, What of it do I still believe in? What of it do I disagree with? What's changed? Anyway, it's pretty interesting. I'm taking a ton of notes and I texted you this while I was reading it. I go, let's write a bestselling book, 10 million copies sold, the next 4-Hour Workweek. And then you're like, okay, easy. And I was like, all right, perfect. Because I'm serious about that. I'm like obsessed with this. So I've just been writing content. I've been writing and I've been reading all weekend long. Like I've just been binging. Like I'm up till 4 in the morning every night. Doing this. And I'm like pretty convinced that we could put out like an amazing, amazing book. So anyways, that's like, you know, just calling my shot. Gonna do that.

Don't be surprised. We're gonna use— well, I want to be involved. Let me—

let's— yeah, that's what I'm saying. I invited— I wanted to do it. I'm like, I'm doing this either way. But I was like, what would be the best? I go, what if the best writer I know partnered with me on this? And we traded off chapters. So like I can say something, I'll write a chapter. And what I want you to do is basically I want you to read it. And then you write what you would write right after you read that. So it's like, uh, you know, like, actually, I totally agree with Sean with this one. I have my own story of how I did that, or disagree. I do it totally differently. And I just think that if we play off of each other a little bit, it can become a very interesting book because there's not many books that are out there that are like that. That may all change, but that's what's in my head.

I also think that we should do— there's one book that had a pretty fundamental change in my outlook, and it's called Founders at Work. And it was by Jessica Livingston, the woman who started, uh, uh, Y Combinator with, uh, Paul Graham, they're husband and wife. And basically it was just interviews, but for some reason it was really special and it was just interviews transcribed. I think we could do just interviews and write our analysis and reply to the interviews.

And we, I read that book on a plane. I still remember it because there's a chapter in there about Hotmail. And I just remember reading that book and being like, this is awesome. This is what it is. This is what it's like to start a company or be around people that start companies. This is fucking awesome. And, you know, by the way, I hope this podcast ends up being that for some number of people in the world.

Well, that could be our first book if you want, because that's like a pretty easy and actually amazing and could be fun.

I don't even care on the details. I just know 10 million copies sold, bestseller. For some people, this is their version of 4-Hour Workweek. What 4-Hour Workweek was for me, I want this to be that for like a whole million people out there. I think that would just be amazing.

So let's talk about Gunthrie Raker. Can I tell you what I know and you could tell me if it's true or not?

Yeah, explain them. I, I did a deep dive on them last night, so, uh, all right, let me fill in gaps.

All right, so they are a marketing and IP owner. So they own like a— it's a business that markets other stuff. They mostly don't develop their own products, but they buy products or they license them. Um, it's started by a guy named Stephen Gunthrie. Is that his name?

There's a guy, one of them's last name is Gunthy, Guthy, Guthy, not Gunthy. And the other guy's last name is Ranker.

So that's— and they, and they started, I think, as early as the early '80s. They are in marketing and they basically bought infomercials. And one of their first big hits was they bought the rights to the book Think and Grow Rich, and they created infomercials and direct response copywriting ads that they put in magazines, and they sold shitloads of this book, like millions. And then they just rinse and repeat. And then they eventually bought Proactiv. They own Proactiv, they own Proactiv, and they own a bunch more. They probably do north of a billion in sales. And they do the same type of model.

There's a guy— I'm trying to think of what, what's it called. It's called, uh, Mind something. I'm trying to look it up, but basically there's a guy— it's not MindBody, but it's similar to that word. I can't remember what it was.

Mindvalley.

Mindvalley. Yes, you knew exactly what I was talking about.

There's a guy like the Philippines or Thailand, or I don't know where they're based.

Yeah, there's some— I don't want to be disrespectful, but there's some weird stuff going on with this company. I don't know what the truth is. But basically, if you look up this company Mindvalley, mindvalley.com, he does this now. And basically this company, what they do, they probably do $50 million a year in sales. And what they do is they buy programs from people. So they have one called Lifebook, one called Omvana. I think that's a yoga thing. And then they have Evercoach, which is— I actually don't know what some of these services are, but they have a bunch of these. And what they do is they find people who have like a yoga course or some type of program on— so they have programs on sleep, they've got programs on yoga, on meditation, health, wellness, and hippie dippy shit.

You know, it's like a combination of like very legit to like, you know, like tantric astrology or whatever, you know, like it could be anything.

And they're experts on long-form copywriting, which is basically an infomercial, and they're really good at buying traffic. And they make tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, all bootstrapped. And so if you want to look at the internet version of this, there's also Agora, which is a $1.5 billion. And another version of this is, uh, we had a guy named Craig— is Craig Clements. We had a guy named Craig Clements. His business is called Golden Hippo. They own, I think, 8 or 9 brands. And I think, if I remember correctly, didn't he say they do like mid-9 figures in revenue?

Yeah, I think, I think Golden Hippo, our buddy Craig, company. I think it's on par with Goethe-Renker, um, in terms of like sort of like success. I, I think Goethe-Renker does, does over a billion in sales, so you know, it's, it's the next level. But Golden Hippo is that from the internet, for the, for the internet instead of, instead of TV infomercials. They basically just do it with like long-form blogs and then long-form embedded videos. So if you ever like go down the rabbit hole, like I've tried to do it, I've tried to figure out like look at some of his brands.

They hide their brands, they hide them really very hard to find.

But when you do find one, you're like, oh, okay, And then it's hard to find where they're advertising. It's like, okay, so they buy a display ad through Taboola on some random article and it's for a toe cream, toe fungus removal. And then you click that and then you watch a 40-minute video that autoplays with no pause or skip button. And then by the end of that, you're like, goddamn, like, you know, if you ended up making it there, you're almost certainly going to buy this token. Then you subscribe to the SMSs and then you get like text messages from this legit doctor who, you know, is the face of the brand. It's kind of like the, the, the, the, like Rodan and Fields is another one which spun out of Gunther Räcker. It's basically like two— they created Proactiv. So I think it's two dermatologists that created the formula for Proactiv, and then they left to create Rodan and Fields, which is a multi-level marketing company that does this, that created their own— they created new formulations, and this one they owned 100%. I think that's a multi-billion dollar company as well.

And if you're on your computer listening to this, one of Golden Hippo's brands is called, uh, Gundry MD. I think Dr. Steven Gundry, uh, a lot of people— he's kind of famous. I think he's not famous in my world, but I think he's famous in like kind of mainstream world actually. Gundrymd.com is their website. Go to that website and look at this website, and it— they make it look like it's a small, like almost mom-and-pop thing.

First thing, Peak Mobility Plus. It's all about you. Mobility.

You love mobility. And they even sell dog food. It's like, it's a pretty wild business. And I think this is their most popular brand. This brand, if you told me it does $100 million in sales, I actually wouldn't be surprised. But if you didn't know better, you go to it, you would have no idea.

Right. And this is all about like gut health, plant-based, you know, plant-based eating, stuff like that. And so like, you know, I get their text messages all the time, like, don't, you know, don't get leaky gut syndrome, like buy this thing. And, uh, and so, you know, it's very fascinating. And the reason I like bringing these up, or like what you brought up, I think all the companies you brought up today are cool because if you work in our, our, like, most of our friends who are like successful internet entrepreneurs, tech people, Silicon Valley executives at big tech companies, they will have never heard of any of this. In fact, I did a breakdown of one of Golden Hippo's flows and I sent it to all the execs at Twitch. I go, hey, I went down the rabbit hole of this.

Like, they laughed at you. They laughed at you.

They were just like, huh, fascinating. And they went back to doing like, you know, spending millions of dollars on Facebook ads that just said download Twitch. And it's like, okay, like, you know, like, is there any creativity we could do here? Like to try to like, like I just showed you one of the most creative things and like nobody really cared. Nobody asked any follow-up questions. Some people were just like, huh, cool.

Send it to me.

This was a good one, I think.

Yeah, I think it was a good one. This is definitely sort of like unusual slash potentially gray hat trust and untrust, untrustworthy businesses. You know, I think it's gonna be entertaining.

Yeah, that's true. Like, okay, let's say, uh, let's say I was starting a company. Uh, and I think, I think I know what your answer would be, but let's see if I was starting a company and, um, let's say I either didn't have an idea. I just said, I'm going to start a company, or I said, it's going to be in this space, but I don't know exactly what, or I said an idea that you're like, I don't even get that, or that sounds kind of dumb or fuzzy to me. Would you just invest then or would you want to wait? Because you know, I would let you in at any point. So you're like, you could—

Well, I would ask one question. Are you going all in and this is going to be your only focus?

Yeah.

If the answer is yes, I would be like—

And I wouldn't raise money.

I wouldn't even ask the valuation. I would just say, okay.

So that's what I think the answer is. And that's kind of the, so the person asked a good question. I did a Twitter kind of like, I don't know, like AMA where I was like, you know, just shoot me questions. My wife took the kids out to Target. I got an hour. I want some immediate rush of Twitter love. Let's just do some Q&A. And the person said, you're raising money for a company. Who's the first person you call? And I said, all right. I said like, here's my first 5 phone calls.

And I basically name them, name them.

Uh, I don't really remember what I said.

So I'll tell you, Suli, Suli Ali, I totally agree with that. He's an amazing operator, very good investor. Scott Belsky, amazing investor, good signal to everyone. Uh, the third was, uh, Justin Kahlbeck, I think I had on there, who's a— I don't know him well, but he's an amazing investor.

And then I had, uh, Balaji, I think I had on there. They put Balaji on.

Okay, obvious reasons. Yeah, pretty cool.

And then I had one more person. Who else is on there? I don't know, I can't find the tweet.

I forget who that fifth person was as well, but I, I'm not offended that I didn't make that list. I'm offended that people think that I'm risk-averse. And, and I had a friend text me, he goes, do people think you're risk-averse?

And I was like, oh, I think they do, but I think the first person I had was Michael Birch, the person who backed me with my previous company. So that, yeah, that would be my first. So here's my like In reality, I'm answering these questions fast. In reality, I would actually not, like two people who I would not actually go to first would not be Scott Belsky or Bology, right? Because two reasons, I don't actually know them that well. They're not like my homies. They're like, you know, like Bology, I consider like, yeah, we're kind of friends, but we've never like, we've never hung out. Yeah, we're cordial. Scott Belsky, same sort of thing. Like even more distance actually. And so like, you know, respect, but you know, I can't say this is like my homie. And so in reality, my first 5 calls would be to you, Sully, Michael Birch, Ramon, a bunch of my true friends who I'm like, hey, I'm doing something. Like family. Basically like family. Exactly. And so that's like the true answer for Twitter. I kind of like, I didn't want to put only people that people would not recognize their names. So I put a couple of people that they would know in there. And there's also kind of aspirational, like who would I want to be in my company? I think Scott Belsky is an amazing product person. So I think that's just like an amazing person to have on there. I think biology—

and he's like the greatest. I mean, he's one of the best angel investors, right?

I know, but you said I don't care about that.

I care about— oh, that I told other people that you're risk-averse.

I think that's crazy.

I think I put the smiley face. That means it's a joke. The smiley face means it's a joke.

Oh my God, you think that I'm re— and, and just, I'm gonna wrap it up with talking about Scott Belsky. Scott Belsky, his grandpa started Kaplan. Kaplan.

Oh really? No way. I did not know that.

Yeah. His, his grandpa started Kaplan, sold that for like $80 or $100 million in like, I think the '80s or '90s. So it's like, you know, that's like the equivalent of like $300. Then when he was 24, he invested $15,000 into Pinterest when it was worth $3 million and $15,000 into Uber when it was worth $3 million. He did this while he was running his company called Behance, which was mostly bootstrapped until like 6 months before they sold it. They raised a Series A, but prior to that it was bootstrapped. And when he sold it, he owned I think 75% of it. He sold it for like $150 million, um, and then so he made probably $100 million from the sale, probably $100 million on Uber and $100 million on Pinterest, or give or take 50%. And now he's next in line to become CEO at Adobe. Gangster, which is like the 40th largest company in the world.

Yeah, total gangster and good dude. Just fun, fun hang, which is, you know, means a lot to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Financially successful. Whenever I met with him, I met with him a while ago and like, he's like really good looking. He dresses really nice and he's like fucking dreamy. He's like so optimistic and so happy. And whenever he like talked, I was just like, dude, whatever you say.

He looks like the guy from Maroon 5, Adam Levine. Exactly. Looks like that guy. He's very good looking.

And he's nice as hell. He's really nice.

Yeah. Okay. We should, we should wrap it up before we just totally, you know, totally— Gay for Belsky. I was trying to think of something that would like be appropriate to say, but mine only went to dirty words.

So I'm gay for Belsky. I'm hardcore gay for him.

I like him a lot. All right. We're out of here. Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.