Asia Grant

Asia Grant's NYC perfume tour: enthusiasm as a business moat

Sam describes a date night on Asia Grant's New York perfume tour: guests fill out a personality Typeform in advance, then she walks them through three stores with three hand-picked scents each and explains why each fits them. A former consultant obsessed with perfume, she turned the quirky passion into a full-time business, and Sam says her enthusiasm is the moat.

“And she took us on a tour where we went to 3 different stores or whatever, and she showed us like all this stuff and she's like, here's why I think you would like this thing. And she like pointed it out and you can or cannot buy it. You don't have to. But look at her Instagram because this lady was amazing. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because I think that enthusiasm can be a moat in a business.”

Steal thisPick a niche you are irrationally enthusiastic about and package it as a guided, personalized in-person experience.

Don't try to be the best, be the only

Shaan argues the goal is to be the only one doing exactly what you do rather than the best at a generic thing. By repeatedly refining away the generic parts of your offer you end up in a market of one, and that is what makes you the best.

“It's a great example of you don't want to be the best. You want to be the only, which is always a hard thing, right? Because somebody is always doing something. But that mentality is how you become the best, because you continue to refine and refine and refine and whittle away the generic parts of what you do. Until it's really the thing that you do well and you do. And really, whether you're the only one, you will be the best one because nobody else is the same as you. And you're sort of in a market of one.”

Steal thisList the generic parts of your offer and cut or replace one each month until nobody else does exactly what you do.

You're not one viral hit away, you're one format away

Shaan says trying to go viral is lottery-ticket thinking. The better approach is to find one repeatable show mechanic for short-form video (the right hook and payoff) and run it over and over, which keeps the upside of virality while staying grounded. For Asia Grant, he suggests stopping ordinary guys on the street for a scent makeover.

“But when I say a format, I think people have this idea that like, oh yeah, I'll go viral. I think go viral is the wrong idea. It's sort of this like false hope, like lottery ticket type of mentality. But when you say I'm one format away, You have all of the upside of the go viral lottery ticket, but you're actually using a more grounded approach, which is, look, if I can just figure out one core, like, show mechanic, right? This, my Instagram Reel is a 1-minute show.”

Steal thisTreat every Reel as a 1-minute show: lock one hook and payoff mechanic, then repeat it until it stops working.

The content is the business; the tours are just content

Shaan's advice for scaling an experiential business: flip the usual model. Instead of making content to sell tours, treat the in-person events as a content farm and build the real business around the online brand. He cites Jack's Dining Room's ultra-premium Reserve trips and Alex Hormozi's in-person workshops as examples.

“The second is the content is the business, not the tours. So the tours are just content. Whereas I think what most people do is they say, I'm gonna make content to try to get people to book the tour 'cause that's where I get the transactional money. And so that's the real business. And I actually think if you want to go bigger, you have to flip that on its head. You have to say the tour is just actors.”

Steal thisRun your in-person product as a content farm, and judge each event by the clips it produces as well as the ticket revenue.

Horoscopes, but better: cold-read the customer, sell a 99%-margin product

Shaan compares Asia Grant's personality-based scent matching to horoscopes and cold reading: people love being told about themselves. Unlike a horoscope reader who sells the reading, she gives the reading away and monetizes the back-end product, perfume, at roughly 99% margins.

“Obviously there's like a market for people who love to be told something like about themselves and that they're part of something, learn more about their favorite subject themselves. But in this case, she's selling a very good backend product on the other end of it, which is like, here's water. with 2 drops of oil and 99% profit margins, which is way better than what the horoscope person sells, which is the horoscope reading.”

Steal thisGive away a personalized diagnosis of the customer, then sell a high-margin product that matches it.

Build a personal monopoly: become the one person known for a thing

Shaan cites David Perell's idea of a personal monopoly: being known for one specific thing, as Perell is for writing. Asia Grant can become NYC's perfume person and then stack layers of defensibility until no one else can enter the category.

“He calls it having a personal monopoly. And a personal monopoly is when you are known for something. You're known. And so he was the writing guy online, and he taught writing courses. He always talked about writing, and he has a podcast called How I Write. And he really wanted to build a personal monopoly. I feel like Asia Grant is building a good example of building a personal monopoly. She is going to be the New York City scent girl or the New York City perfume person, right?”