We found 7 business ideas that will blow up in 2026

0:00 All right, Sam, I got a question for you. Have you ever dated anyone who's a little A little crazy. Could be exciting crazy, could be bad crazy. There is a difference between good crazy and bad crazy. Yeah, there's a there's a a thin line. So I have five to seven ideas for you that I want you to help me figure out are the good crazy or bad crazy. I feel like I could Well

0:18 To be what I want to I put my law in it like a day's all on a roll list. Please. Yeah. Okay. So obviously we're superstars via content. And so I just had my my my quote editorial meeting where we uh talk about like cool stuff we wanna talk about on Instagram or whatever. And

0:37 Previously I told them how I'm reading a book about Ted Bundy'cause I'm a sicko and I like reading like stories of like crime and stuff. And he brings me a series of tweets On things that I've learned from Ted Bundy. And I was like, Are you kidding me? I'm not tweeting out uh things that I've learned about business from Ted Buddy.

0:58 This is the nonsense that you know superstar creators still have to deal with. We're just like you know, we'll we're just like the average Joe. Not as easy as it looks. Oh my God. It was ridiculous. I was like, Are you kidd Are you kidding me? It's like Ted Bundy didn't leave any fingerprints for the first fourteen murders. Therefore, you should learn how to pay attention to the details and plan ahead. I'm like it. A story of an obsession.

1:30 Um, all right, what do you got? You have something for me? All right, Sam, I got a question for you. Have you ever Dated anyone who's a little bit more. A little crazy. It could be exciting crazy, it could be bad crazy. There is a difference between good crazy and bad crazy. Yeah, there's a there's a a thin line. And uh you know, arguably they would say that about me.

1:48 That I was the crazy one, but yes, I you were the crazy one. Uh but yeah, I've I've dated some people that are off the rocker. Okay. So Today I got ideas for you that I wanna know are they good crazy? Or bad crazy. These are start up ideas that

2:03 Exist that some that people are doing. And in business it's this weird thing because If your idea is too normal, too understandable, too. Expected you actually have no shot.

2:16 Yeah. So if you say a an idea and everybody in the room nods, if one hundred percent of the room p the room nods and says that's a good idea Right away. You're about to waste three years of your life. You need some people to think this is the worst idea. This is the craest. Who would do that? Who would Who would just let strangers Sleep on their couch. Who would let strangers into their car? You're just gonna let some random guy drive you to your destination? All the great ideas sound a little crazy.

2:40 Up front. And so you just have to differentiate the fine line between good crazy and bad crazy. So I have I think five to seven ideas for you that I want you to help me figure out are they good crazy or bad crazy. We have a little bit of a rule on this podcast. So we try to default to optimism and being happy about the people we talk about. And so for anyone moving forward who we insult for this segment. We are actually complimenting you because as you've just said, the worse idea, the better the company it might be. That's like my apology that I'm gonna say right now and I'm not gonna say a sorry thing. That's a compliment. And if you say it's a crazy idea, also a compliment. Very advanced. All right. First idea I want to do is call Chat.

3:20 I I don't know if you saw this, but Going viral right now. Chinese startup. That has it's a dog caller that uses AI to translate your pets Barks. Dude, the i it's a it's a white family with a golden retriever with a white picket fence. Why on earth would you think this is a Chinese company?

3:37 Has like Chinese vibes, the whole promo video. You know what I mean? Like Well, I lived in China and they used to have this phrase, uh N N Q R and they're like Yeah, we have KF C here, but it's N QR. I said, what's NQR mean? Not quite right. Yeah. And it's like it's KFC, but it's not gonna taste exactly like KFC you're used to. Same, same, but different. Same same, but different. And so uh this promo this launch video was was a little NQR of like, I don't think this was made in San Francisco.

4:02 On place. Hungry. With ninety-five percent accuracy, they claim, they can tell you what your pet wants. Awesome. Okay. Good crazy.

4:19 Bad crazy. More like amazing stupid. Yeah. Uh good crazy or bad crazy, I would say It's pretty.

4:30 It's pretty interesting. That's actually great. This is great. Good crazy. Okay, you're into it. You're a dog guy, so I knew you I knew there's a part of you. That would be like, oh my God, that's ridiculous. But if it worked, I'd like two. You know what I mean? Like it's kind of in that category. Now the problem is. It's like all pet products that we've talked about on this podcast. What's the what's the My First Million rule about pet products? Who knows? Who knows? And it but by the way.

4:54 Best aspect of a pet business. Yeah. Is the who knows that factor. Is their gut health better? Yeah. Is it making them calmer and happier? Who knows? So pet supplements work this way and for this

5:06 The ninety five percent accuracy everybody in the comments is like How are you verifying what is that checked against? Nobody knows what they want. So what are you claiming? A lot of dog I mean, I was I had a great dog for fifteen years and I could tell what each bark meant. Like if I heard him like and I was in the other room, I'd be like, All right, someone's at the front door based off of that. Or now he's got to go to the bathroom, or now he just wants me to come and give him attention. Like I could like hear, I could tell what each meant. A hundred percent. There's like the the the uh just w there's water versus food. Very clear to me. Yeah. Uh there's hey, I got a poop.

5:36 And it's your problem unless you do something about this right now. There's there's different different parts. So I I think I put it in bad crazy just because I think dog owners know their their dogs bark. Um, it's it's not that hard to figure out. All right. The next one. Also, we're gonna stay in China for this one.

5:53 It's called Super Brain. Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsey business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes. The team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the unsexy ideas. So not the super high tech ones, but the simple Relatable. interesting, profitable uh ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys.

6:24 Back to the show. What you're gonna see is a person holding up what looks like almost like a baseball card. Or like a Tamagotchi of some sorts. But It's grandma.

6:35 Or grandpa. So basically it's a way to memorialize and Stay connected to loved ones who passed away. You upload their Video and audio recordings. and their personality, and then you can chat with them in your hand any time you miss them. That's messed up, man.

6:52 That that'd break my heart. Okay, so you're you're out on this one. Uh uh yes, I won it, but I If it's for a grandparent who I knew was gonna die, I mean it just it would make me cry all the time. But I think it's awesome.

7:05 You I've not yet picked a side on any idea so far. Well, let me just say something really quick. They call it superbrain. I've noticed so I live in uh Manhattan and my office is in this uh a Chinese area, and I've noticed like Can you read this? Uh, I cannot. What does it say?

7:25 Okay. It's a it's a electronic store that just says like Airmark USA Incorporated. And then like down the street from that, it's like American Cowboy Inc. And they sell like iPhone chargers. And then like a block away from that, it's like, you know, like USA number one. Yeah. I love that. I love when the when these immigrants come over here and they're not exactly sure like the what the best way to phrase things and they're like, What's the most American thing we can think of? Like I that's my favorite thing on earth. I love those stores. I always patronize them, I love'em. The Thai food near me. Yes. Yes. Or like you restaurant Thai food near me so it shows up at the top of your Google Maps or Google search for results. Triple A locksmith. I'm in.

8:07 Yeah, so I love that. And so that's so funny they called this superbrain, because that could just be anything. When I heard super brain, I thought something else. But yeah, that's pretty amazing. It it breaks my heart, but that's amazing. I would say uh good crazy. Yeah, have you seen the uh you don't you're not watching the NBA play? I've watched I'm watching the Knicks, partially'cause I like seeing the celebrities uh on sitting like who's sitting on the floor, but also Jalen Brunson is pretty cool. So Sam the version of Triple A locksmith that you'll appreciate. So these two women Uh, were going viral because every time they would show the coach of the Spurs.

8:41 behind the coach of the Spurs was two Ladies with big boobs. Who endowed women. Thanks so. Um They were there for one game and people were like, Oh wow, like yeah hey, I'd love to get more coach reaction shots and then they were there again the next time and they were like, What's going on here? Turns out

8:56 These are two girls two OnlyFans creators. who had the genius marketing idea of splurging for strategic tickets where they knew the TV camera will show them literally only from the between the neck and the belly button. And they're perfectly positioned right behind the coach. So every time they show the coach, they show these girls And they're Instagram and their OnlyFans is popping off right now. And I was like, wow, this is the modern day Triple A locksmith. How do you how do you show up first in the yellow pages as you call yourself AA locksmith? This is that. And I was like, honestly, women, I uh you know, I ladies, I respect the hustle. This is a incredible marketing move. I do appreciate it.

9:31 Brilliant. How we started with uh Super Brain and then went to Triple A Locksmith and you weave that in. If you talk to me for long enough, that is where I end up. Ten minutes or ten hours. The conversation will land there. All right. Ready for the next one? Yeah. Um, this is kind of up your alley. You're a health and fitness and I would say early adopter. Arguable influencer.

9:56 Have you seen the trend of hyperbic chambers at home? Yes. So hyperbic chambers are interesting. That looks ridiculous. That looks like a uh It looks like we're like you know, you would Be put to death. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

10:14 Hyperbaric chambers are interesting. So f the reason I've known about'em is I'm a huge running nerd and in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and well and and even till t to this day, a lot of the US Olympic runners would go and move to flag staff. For three or four or five months at a time, because they would want to be at altitude. And then people were like, What would happen if we let these guys sleep in a chamber that had less I guess less air or thinner air, I don't know the right terminology. And you would build uh You would just be more efficient with oxygen and thus a better endurance athlete. And now a lot of people think that this for the average human is pretty cool. Is that the story? Yeah. So th there's people are now trying to build like we've seen uh saunas become something that used to be

10:53 at a gym or at a external location now. There's at Hob sauna brands that do hundreds of millions in revenue. We saw the same thing with the cold plunge. I think the the plunge guys, you know, they sent us a a home cold plunge tub. And you know, those uh I I forgot what they were doing, but you know, they were doing a hundred million just direct to consumer No retail presence of people buying cold tubs for the home. And

11:14 The prediction or the idea here is just like it happened for saunas and cold tubs and red light. It's gonna happen for hyperbaric chambers next. So there's a couple of companies trying to do these at home. hyperbaric chambers. What I liked about this one was the look was very different than the normal hyperbaric chamber and it's visually distinct. And I think the visual just like how cold plunges and saunas became something that you would share on Instagram'cause it's like this

11:37 Weird like wellness flex or like discipline flex. I think hyperbaric chambers could have that same potential. What what do you think? Good crazy or bad crazy? Okay. Saying good, but it's awesome. Do you know what I think it it it what it should be is have you ever traveled with your children and in a hotel room you have to like share a room and so there's these like dark tents. Like a black out tent. A black out tent. They're pretty awesome. So like Uh, you travel and you like can build like a crib and it's completely dark, so you could still like have the light on in your bedroom uh if your kid has to sleep in your room.

12:08 My opinion is if I was eight sleep or a sleep company. It needs to be uh a sleep company. Just needs to make like um You know how like little girls have like these beds that have like the Like the princess The princess canopy. Yeah. It you need like a like a a king canopy where it's like, you know, you go in and you sleep it with less air and you come out. That's that's what it should be. I don't know if physics allows it to be like that. It's like pressurized air, right?

12:37 Like actually I think one of the challenges with this is it's technically a medical device. So HBOT, which is I guess the hyperbaric whatever therapy. Is a medical device. You can't make claims without clearance or safety risk, pressurized oxygen in an enclosed space. It's harder to make it sexy like a cold plunge, which is basically a tub of water. So I think that's the uh the potential downside of this one, but Could be something there. Also, don't you just need your head in it?

13:00 Like natural whole body. Could you just do like an astronaut helmet? That'd be amazing. All right, next one. Number four. The blue collar meets Nerd.

13:11 Combination. That you didn't expect. It's kinda like what's a food you didn't expect, not the Cronut. It's like uh the Doritos Locos taco. Well, what else? It's like what is the unexpected food combination that sounds gross, but is actually great. This is that. It's learning to be an H VAC technician by playing a game on the Oculus Quest that Meta made. I don't know if you've seen this.

13:35 So they uh they've created Can't they created these quest games. That are like data center operations engineer and you're like playing like a flight simulator but they're actually using it to train and hire people because they badly need more technicians for these jobs. Okay. And I think this is pretty interesting. What it what what say you about this? Look at this guy like

13:55 Tell me you wouldn't play this game. I don't play video games really, but I do love like War sim. No, I like like war sims, and oddly enough, there's like a trucking sim, a trucking simulator. That I find oddly relaxing. But I do like simulator.

14:12 But I don't want to play with a I don't want to Do you be an H VAC person? No. Okay. Look at this. I feel like I actually need this. It's not even a want. I think I think I might actually need this. You know what I used to do is um I used to love buying old motorcycles and like taking them apart and like cleaning all the parts and putting them together. Uh that was like a huge hobby I had. I love doing that in college. I would definitely play a game where I w had

14:35 Could do that, but I wouldn't want to do H fac. So I think this is a this is How tight is the bond when you meet another person who loves motorcycles or taking them apart. It's sort of like when I see another mixed race couple, I just You get a nod. Yeah.

14:50 It's a knob. Yeah, straight to third base in that relationship. It's like we know. Like the intentional walk and then you get to go all the way around the faces, actually. Um before I had kids, whenever I saw a mixed race couple with a With a stroller. I had to stop myself because the first like eight times I was like I was like staring into the the stroller so hard and I'm like, sorry. I'm just trying to see like what your combination is gonna look like.

15:16 Just so I know what we're gonna look what my kids will look like. I just want to see where you fall. And there was there's whole Instagram handles dedicated to that, like different combinations. Don't you think they need a better term for it than mixed race couple? I feel like you deserve a much cooler phrase for that. I call my kids super babies. I'm like, No, they're super babies. They're they have a uh diverse gene pool. Yeah, you need like I don't know, like what's the thing called when you do fro? And it's like the black and white swirl. Yeah, you need that. All right. Apps on Mediquest are teaching blue collar trade skills. Like HVAC repair, welding, plumbing, electrical through hands on VR simulation. You put on a headset, you practice diagnosing a br broken A C unit and assembling an E V battery pack, risk free, repeatable, and gamified.

16:01 There's multiple players doing this, like interplay learning in Austin, Texas. They're the leader. They have hundreds of hours of HVAC solar plumbing and electrical training. Uh, they they can actually get you s like certified as a technician or an associate. Just using Quest. Skill Very does this for welding and painting simulations. There's a massive shortage, five hundred thousand unfilled Asian plumbing jobs in the US alone. And training is slow, expensive, and dangerous to do on real equipment. I am a believer in this, Sampar.

16:28 Good crazy. My buddy who owns an H Vat company, they have this thing called Hoffman University where they put New recruits in for Months or weeks at a time. And so I'm I'm a little bit f familiar with what he was just telling me and I went and saw the facility where they have like the it they call it a university. It's just like a you know, two month training program or whatever it is.

16:47 It's pretty cool. And um there's a huge need for this. I didn't I didn't fully understand it until I saw his play. So yeah, that's pretty cool. I just don't want to play it as a game. Right, right. But if you wanted the job. Or you want to hire people. This is br brilliant. Um Number five.

17:02 End point arena. You're gonna need to I'm gonna put the glasses down and do the sort of nerdy Highbrow. It's combining two things that I only

17:13 Partially understand. Prediction markets. And biotech. Clinical trials. So I don't know if you've seen this.

17:21 But these guys made a prediction market for clinical trials. So I I don't know if you're familiar, but basically On the stock market, there's lots of dr uh drug companies, pharmaceutical companies that Their trading is highly dependent on the outcomes of upcoming, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three clinical trials. And there's a huge m there's I mean, my cousin I used to work at a hedge fund and the whole idea was like if we can

17:43 Have a higher estimation of the probability of success of that. Trial. We know where the stock's gonna move once that's confirmed. And so there's a huge incentive to understand the science and understand this the actual true probability versus what the stock market is predicting. And so Endpoint Arena created a polymarket, essentially, just for

18:03 Betting on You know, right now. Lutium one seven seven Rosodem Terataxyl, pterodactyl, the metatastic prote prostate cancer. So that that's obviously what I'm pretty well versed in. And right now it's thirty three percent yes, sixty seven percent no.

18:19 And you can see how much is being bet on it. And you can actually Either. hedge positions by betting here in addition to the stock. You can use these You know, prediction markets, which are typically higher accuracy than uh

18:33 Than you know, individual experts. Um because you get the wisdom of the crowds. Uh that have skin in the game. Um so it's very interesting to me. Uh what do you what do you think of this? What do you what do you have to make of this? Super fascinating. How'd you find this? A guy tweeted this out.

18:47 Interesting name. I think I love it. But you know why it's called endpoint arena is go to the top left of the website and tell me what you see, Sean. In Point Arena season five. That what you're looking at? Yes. It says season five, which leads me to believe Are they trying to make it like a series?

19:05 Like is the endpoint arena like this is the show? And the show is like will this drug get approved or not? Yeah, I have no idea. This is amazing. So that's kind of fascinating, right? Okay, here, let me just read you this article. One day in early May, a web based platform, Cal Sheet, tied two contracts to a upcoming psilocybin drug. They could wager on uh

19:26 when on when the company would submit the drug application for blah blah blah and the FDA would approve it or not. These are event contracts, which is kind of the basis of all uh prediction markets. They're trying to speed up science. Endpoint arena CEO Michael Fisher, who's a PhD, studied economics, computer science at Stanford. Became curious about the promise of production markets. And he created an app uh around this. He said, I became very interested in the concept of experimentation, encouraging other people to think about and place bets on.

19:53 What they think is gonna happen if they do certain experiments. He argues that clinical trial focused prediction markets can democratize Keyword. That's a word for us. Yeah. Democratize the trial process and give participants motivation to become experts. And improve experimentation, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so the why here is a little bit of a turnoff.

20:12 I don't think I I think he said a lot of words, but he really was just saying we want to gamble. I think that's I don't find that interesting. I wouldn't want to align this per prediction markets. And Ch is this you and me if we take opposite ends of the bet? Are we betting against each other or are we buying stakes? We uh so the way it works is there's a price for a yes contract.

20:32 And every time somebody says yes on the yes contract, the price of yes will go up unless there's corresponding pressure on the no side. So it's basically there's no m there's no bookie. There's no middleman who sets the price. The market sets the price, the yeses versus the no's. It's not directly like a stock market where I'm buying their shares necessarily. But I can buy I can put money in it, yes, and the more I do it, it'll skew the price up to incentivise people to take the other side of the action, potentially.

20:58 Let me just read you what he said. He made the bold claim that prediction markets could eventually provide scientific benefit. Here's a hypothetical example. A known GLP one drug is being studied in a new indication. If somebody already taking therapy for the therapy for diabetes or obesity experience improvements related to the new condition being a value of the trial,

21:15 They could use the first hand information to Inform a prediction on the market. In theory. Patterns that emerge through those predictions could provide early signals about a drug's potential. And additional indications before the trial is released.

21:27 So For example, one could do a more focused targeted trial with fewer people. It's a way to speed up science and create a market where one is incentivized to move quickly and use fewer resources to get towards an outcome. I don't know if I fully understand it b or by that. I don't know if I fully understand it or or buy it. I don't understand it, therefore I I'm gonna say that stupid. And I guess therefore I know I don't buy it. Um this is I can't decide. I think it's very interesting, but I would say bad crazy.

21:57 Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content? That someone is usually and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.

22:25 Number six. The Cleveland Schwitz. Great name. This is a Interesting company.

22:35 So check this out. It's a bathhouse. Plus a steakhouse. In Cleveland. This is actually the reboot of the office. All right, so a ninety eight year old Jewish bathhouse in Cleveland that combines Russian style steam, cold plunge, and massages.

22:50 With giant T bone stakes and cocktails. You sweat, you plunge, you eat steak. It's a full social experience. Parts bar. Part stakehouse part private members club. Isn't this amazing?

23:01 It's blowing up right now. Barstool called it the hottest reservation in the country this winter. A hundred sixty five dollars a person covers your drinks. Your steam s yeah, your cold plunge and a full meal. Their phones are ringing off the hook with reservations at all hours. It's attracting millennials and Gen Z who are discovering it through social media. They recently opened Ladies Days and Co ed Days after being male only for decades. A group you know, for example, a group of six friends could book a Saturday at the Schwitz. They alternate between the steam and cold for a couple hours, get massages, then sit down for steaks and cocktails. It's the new going out. It replaces the bar, restaurant, spa, or nightclub.

23:35 For an outing. I'm in. That's awesome. Not even crazy. This is just downright Spectacular. Have you heard of this company called Othership?

23:44 I'm an investor in other ship. I love other ship. So I went to my first other ship Obsession. So basically the best way to describe it what it is to somebody who doesn't know. So the one liner that I would describe it is it's Soul Cycle for sauna. And so in Manhattan where I live, it's all like young it's like a combination of hippy dippy, but also like yuppie tech people. It's quite fun. And you go for an hour long or maybe forty five uh minute long session. And there's coal plunges and then there's a huge sauna where you're in you're like basically, you know, naked with like fifty people in the sauna, and then there's like a leader who's doing breath work and

24:21 And is like moving the towel to get like the eucalyptus flavoring in your face and it calms you down in a weird way. I'm t I'm not doing it justice, but it's actually quite awesome. And there's loud music going on. Again, I'm not doing it justice, but for some reason you do get in this little strange trance where it is uh it's hot in there. You s you have a certain smell, you hear noises, you feel the wind going against you. It's quite cool. And they even have like single nights where you can like go and like Um you everyone there who's single. And uh

24:50 It's Pretty awesome. I'm actually I thought it was amazing. I went one time And then my wife and I are like we'll go on like our date night. And you can go at like nine PM. That's amazing. Yeah. I've uh I'm so jealous. I haven't gone. The they opened up New York. I think they opened up one more location somewhere. Uh they got a bunch in the works. I really want one to be out here in the Bay Area. I'm not going to be able to do it.

25:10 It's a g great business. Um And I I think the hard part is his He didn't try to make like the Subway sandwiches of like locations where it's just like this very simple box. No, this is high end. This is like high end everything. And it's like he he wanted to make what I think he successfully made, which is the most epic kind of sauna breath work experience that's probably ever been made as like a place you can go.

25:35 And so I I saw uh Dana White, the president of the UFC, did one he went to one. He didn't know anything about it. He went to one he's like Standing out he's like, I don't know what like This is the most amazing place I've ever been to. He's like, if you're in New York, you need to go to this place. This place is incredible. And he grave this like he went live on Instagram'cause he was just so hype from what he's like, that was amazing.

25:54 And um so I I'm pretty jealous. I really wanna to go to go check it out. Uh I'm a big believer in breathwork. I've been using the other ship. Yeah, you've been talking about breath work for like six years now. Yeah, I think they're kind of deprioritizing the app, but even better than the app is like People don't n don't really use or know about this phrase, but State is gonna become a very important word over the next uh ten years.

26:14 Managing your state, being in a great state, it can you know, state of mind, but really it's just how you feel. How you experience the things you experience. So if you are in a bad mood, you can go to a good thing and have a bad time. If you're in a great mood, you can like I've told the DMV story before, you can go to the DMV and have a great time. And I think most people are pretty poor about managing or controlling their state. And the easiest way to manage and control state is not to think your way there.

26:38 But to use the body. The body can drag the mind. And so going into hot, cold Breath. And music. And you cause and s certain odors like you know, eucalyptus. You can literally change your state and I think that's gonna become very addict to people. I think people are gonna love

26:53 what they're getting out of that. And this is very similar to why Soul Cycle and Barry's boot camp work. It's not because it's the best workout. In fact, you could argue in many ways, CrossFit Barry's. Soul Cycle are not ideal workouts. They're not great for strength training. You're not getting the people's form is all over the place. But

27:09 You go, you're in a dark room with a bunch of other people. It's a communal experience. The music is pumping. There's the leader who makes it so you don't have to think You feel a sweat, you're doing hot yoga, you know, you get the temperature thing, you change states. And I think that's what people go Truly for not the fitness layer. It's kinda becoming a recurring joke that every come everything comes back to like when we were fourteen, fifteen years old reading books on pickup artists and how to meet girls. And one of the first things that they try to teach you is you have to go into like a session to meet a girl. Like if you go to a bar and you're like, I wanna meet a girlfriend or whatever, you have to change your state and you have to be in a positive state. And then what they try to teach you is when you meet someone, how to bring them into your state.

27:46 And so that's pretty funny that you predict that state's the new word. G the word generative is out, state is in. It's gonna be in. I think it's gonna be in. So I've I think this is awesome. I'm I think we love it. Uh wish it wasn't in Cleveland though, but I I do like the That's a horrible name. Cleveland Schlitz. Schwitz Schwitz. Schwitz? Yeah. It just sounds like there's a lot of bacteria there.

28:06 Like when I think of that word, I think of like the steam is coming from like a sewer. That's the Oakland Schnitz. Yeah. All right, number seven.

28:19 The Fun Day Press. Have you seen this? No. All right. So imagine a newspaper like the Sunday press, but it's the Funday Press. It's a newspaper that has none of the news. That just makes you depressed and only the fun games and comics. So this is made by um

28:36 A guy that we we met who is like a pretty prolific board game designer. It's that guy right there on the left. And uh he's made a bunch of like I I think he made is it Cards Against Humanity. He made like one of the big games. Uh like that's Like one of the best sellers in the world. Guy's a very creative guy. I went and I did a call with him and behind him, like his backdrop was not like a library of books.

28:56 It was a library of only board games, like thousands of different board games that you've never heard of. And this guy's like a game designer and so He created this actual physical newspaper that gets delivered to you. That's got like crosswords and Sudoku's and like just the fun parts. And none of the depressing heady stuff that comes in normal news. What what say you? Amazing.

29:16 Uh I'm so into this. I think this is awesome. Do you remember Highlights magazine? No. What is that? Is that like the city Like cool stuff in the city, is that what that is? No. So if you Google Highlights Mag I assume this is for kids, right? No, this is for adults. Oh, this is not I it looked like a Like it was telling you like cool like uh Lego kits for adults and like you know, like

29:37 What what do what do we call it? Cadulting? Caduling is the trend. It's like a multi billion dollar industry of like giving adults Things that feel like their childhood that will help de stress them. I think that's a horrible word'cause That just makes me want to punch myself if I say I'm a cadet. It's like when people say in like you're the name police today. It's like when people say like they're adulting because they scheduled their first doctor's appointment.

29:58 My reply to that is what you've heard before. It's like yeah, it's like dude You're twenty two, okay. If this was nineteen forty six, you'd have eight confirmed kills in the South Pacific. Like, don't tell me that you're adulting by scheduling a doctor's appointment, okay? Be a man and just call and get a doctor's appointment. I don't need Scott Galloway of you. Tight. I like that. I just think it's ridiculous. I think that cadt is stupid. That said.

30:21 The Funday Press. You literally do this, by the way. They collect mini foods out of LOL dolls and you do buy elaborate Lego sets that you do like for nights on end. I'm not gonna hashtag it though, but I will talk about it on a podcast in front of millions of people. So it's different. This is pretty interesting. Um, yeah, so Highlights magazine was I thought this was for kids. So but Highlights Magazine is like what I grew up like reading as a kid. So I thought this was gonna be comparable. But uh this is pretty interesting. Does it sell? Do do people buy it? Yeah, I think it's kinda new, but uh okay, here's the here's what it says. It's an early stage indie project. There's a competitor called the Sunday Club that runs the exact same model. All games, no news.

30:59 Also the New York Times games only. Product. So no news from the New York Times? is has a million paying subscribers at five dollars a month, sixty million in ARR. So this is basically the physical printed out.

31:11 version of of that idea. Yeah, I think it's pretty awesome. Let me show you something kind of interesting. I've been really interested in physical newsletters. And this is sort of tangential to it, but I read this article in the Wall Street Journal, how there's this crossing it the headline is The crossing guard making fourteen thousand dollars a month mailing out her musings from her job. And so it's this woman named Christine and she has a monthly physical newsletter.

31:35 Where she just writes about like things that she's experiencing as a crossing guard and it's just sh entertainment. It's just silly, it's cool. And she post she like I forget how she shared this out, but I don't think she had a very big audience and now she has tens of thousands of dollars a month worth of people paying money to get this physical newsletter. And I I think I said this Two years ago actually.

31:55 That I think that like Uh these I wouldn't call it a magazine, but I would literally call it a physical newsletter. The jankier the better. Like if it looks like it's uh on printed paper that's stapled together in a manila folder. I think that you can make some really cool products that way. And I think that people are gonna continue to be drawn to quirky things like this, and the Fun Day press is one of those that fits that category. Right. Well, I appreciate you playing my game.

32:20 Crazy uh crazy good or crazy bad. Do you want me to um tell you something that's uh similar to this that you can um I'll give you two more ideas that are actually quite similar to this last one that you can kinda uh you can judge. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. Uh they make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase.

32:50 I'm just all in on Mercury. Why uh I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. uh one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So

33:06 If you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to Mercury.com/slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a FinTech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. Alright. So I bought this thing called

33:26 I guess it's I don't know. what they the noun that they would describe it, but it's a dumb phone. But go to dumb dot co. Bookmarked. All right. Dumb dot co. Hello from the flip side. Okay, so check this out.

33:37 It's a flip phone. So I have this flip phone. It's just a It's just a T CL phone. It's twenty five dollars and then twenty dollars a month. After that. And what they've done is they've created an app that I have on my phone. And it's basically, I believe this phone is its own phone, but reality is that it's more like a forwarding phone.

33:58 So if you call my phone, I can turn my phone in my I can turn my iPhone in dumb mode or smart mode. If it's in dumb mode, that basically means I can't receive calls and all the calls are gonna go to here and all the text are gonna go to here. And replying. to a text message on here is a huge pain in the ass because it's like the Nokia, you know, where you have to like To get to the letter C, you gotta click it three times. Three times, yeah, yeah. And so it's pretty cool. But here's why I think this is particularly interesting. And so they have this when you order it, they have this documentation.

34:26 They give you a pamphlet on like how to set it up. And the branding is quite good. So like if you go to their website Click where it says I think month free of phone. And so There's not any articles written about this company and so they actually have a customer service number. I just called the customer service this morning and I was like, What's the story of this company? Tell me everything. And I could tell I I was talking to the CTO.

34:50 I could tell it was like a three or four person company because I could hear people in the background and I was literally calling his phone'cause I could like FaceTime him. I I could tell. Basically the background is it's a guy who previously had a company. He's uh sold it. He's self funding this company. They have four full time employees, according to the person I called this morning. And uh it started because he hosted like a friends challenge where it was one month without a phone. And they found that one month without a phone wasn't particularly uh feasible. And so he's an entrepreneur and so he created this app that helped you turn a twenty five dollar T C L phone which is what this is, into a forwarding device where you can sort of like replace your iPhone at least for parts of the day. And it's quite interesting. And their branding is really cool. If you go to the website, everything is like very like old schooly and and

35:37 But but fun. And there's like Polaroid pictures. And I have a feeling that this is gonna take off. I don't know if this company is gonna work, but I think it potentially could The reason I think that is if you go to uh there's a subreddit called Dumb Phones that I've been a subscriber to For a while now.

35:51 And it's been taking off. I think it has two hundred thousand subscribers on it. And I've been noticing that it's definitely been growing. It's definitely been growing a lot. And it's quite fascinating. And I looked up a a bunch of different reviews for a variety of phones and I settled on this one and I went and looked. And CNN recently did the best ad campaign ever for this company. So basically they took one of their presenters. And they had him do a brain scam where they measured his short term memory. So they had him read something and they were able to I don't know how the science works, but they were able to look at like how focused were you when you were reading something, how much did you remember and a few other tests.

36:26 Then they gave him this phone, this brands, how I found it. Uh they gave him this phone for two weeks and then they had him redo the test. And his capacity to focus and his capacity to remember went up significantly. And I saw that and I was like, That's the greatest ad I've ever seen. This is perfect.

36:43 Plus you do these one month challenges. where you buy the phone and it's only twenty dollars and it's twenty dollars or twenty five dollars a month after that to subscribe and get their service. I think it's really cool. I think this could take off. And the company I believe is only four months old. Have you been using it? I just got it this morning. I just got it this morning. I just got it this morning and I'm so I'm gonna test it out. I can give like an update, but I think it's really promising. And I noticed that when I walked out into my office and showed it to my team, I was like, Check this out. Everyone was like clamoring. They're like, What is that? Let me see that. And I think it's really fascinating.

37:13 I mean the the problem is The problem is so real. Total agreement on the problem. And then the question is, which of these solutions is gonna be the one? Like you've told me about brick before, how you brick your phone. You've told me about the dumb phone and Yeah, there's other people uh you know, George Mack has two phones, one's a smartphone, one's a dumb phone. Like, you know, people have these like different systems. I'm really curious what the right solution is gonna be.

37:35 But the problem is is Gargantuan, because everybody's got the phone and everybody everybody who has a phone is addicted to the phone. I really don't know anybody who's not addicted to their phone. So you know in my life, I don't know. Of all the people I know, it seems like there's a ninety five to ninety eight percent

37:51 Addiction rate? And The question is, what's gonna be the nicotine patch for that? What's gonna be the the AA for that? How are people gonna get off this addiction. Uh Is there gonna be a solution that that some percentage of people gravitate towards?

38:05 My opinion is that this to the all the big companies out there. This appears to be a very niche silly thing. My prediction is that in ten years this will not be. I do not think Apple came out with this. If Apple came out with a version of this I think they could sell a billion of these things. Well, you know that they're Like if you Google Apple Flipphone, like there's

38:24 They they're working on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh I don't think it's rumors. I think they've announced it, but there's for sure rumors. Uh iPhone fold is what it's gonna be called. Now I don't know if it's like another screen. I don't know what it is, but they're calling it like a flip phone. So I guess like there's all these And it's not important w exactly what it is, but there's all these breadcrumbs out there that I'm seeing that's pointing to like this is actually gonna be a mega trend and not just a niche thing. And I can give you another really cool example.

38:50 Have you heard of this lady named Cat GPT? No. Okay, look her up. That's her Instagram handle. Okay. So this lady started getting popular on Instagram. I think she has four or six hundred thousand followers. Incredible name. Yeah, it's cool. And she started doing educational videos on AI. And one day, um, in two thousand twenty three, she came up with this idea to create a physical phone, like a landline. And she like made a post about it and like no one wanted it. So she kinda put it on the back burner.

39:19 And then last year she was like, You know what? AI is actually like can make this process a lot better. Let me see if I can use ChatGPT to make this product a little bit better. And she used um the product Chat GPT to help make this a physical landline. It's not really a physical landline, but it looks like a rotary phone, like the ones that like your grandparents maybe you had or like these like old school physical phones. And she used ChatGPT to like help get it approved by uh the FCCs'cause you had to like do some approval process and to help like design it, whatever. And she put a video out about it. And it went.

39:48 quite viral. It's a it's a physical phone like the old school phones, like you could either have it on the wall, the rotary one, or just a normal c normal corded phone. But it's a Bluetooth device to your actual phone. Uh so smart. And her branding is beautiful. And what then in two thousand and twenty five, she launched this to her audience and she was like, you know, I tried this in twenty three and no one really wanted it. But I have a bigger audience. Screw it, let's do it. And she sold eight hundred thousand dollars worth of this this product in five months.

40:17 Now in two thousand twenty six she's tracking or she uh the says the goal and is and it's early in the year, but tracking towards Uh five million dollars a year in revenue. And if you go to her website, to me, what's quite clear is that she can have all types of SKUs and I think she said this. I think she wants to launch this thing called uh Cat Labs. So basically she can create all types of phones, but if I was her I would basically look at everything in my phone that does something, or even my Alexa that does something. How do I create a product that undoes it?

40:47 Now this sounds crazy, but you could have like a handheld GPS. Or you could have like an old school, more old school alarm clock. Yeah. That doesn't do anything else but just goes off and on and maybe you could use your voice to like turn it on and off.

41:01 Or um you could have like a like a a jail for your phone and you could become in a c a company that's all about phone addiction issues. And you could have a ver a variety of SKUs in the same way Ridge Wallets started with wallets and now they also sell giving away free game here. I love it. She should do the phone jail is a great idea. It's cool, right? And it I used to have a phone jail. It was just like kitchen aid No, no, but you gotta like make it look like a I had one that was just like a a timed Tupperware container.

41:27 Um but I think that Y she does a beautiful job with branding and everything's pretty cute and cool and And it's like it's the clear like, you know, David versus Goliath, with Goliath being addiction and David being like But don't you just wanna like focus and make your brain feel good and be less lonely. And I think that's such a great marketing story. And she's doing a really good job with it.

41:48 This is a great find. I love this. That is really cool. And I like the sort of anti just be the anti of the main thing. It's not like you're trying to convince everybody. It's just that one percent of people are gonna feel Overstimulated. By the thing?

42:02 And if you can provide the alternate. And you can do marketing via TikTok with really visual Buzzy products that are people gonna get people talking in the comments, which is exactly what this does. Like her top TikTok just says, I brought back landlines. And she's holding one of the physical phones. And there's gonna people who like it, who hate it, it doesn't matter, but it's gonna get a reaction.

42:21 That's how you can grow, you know, grow these types of businesses. And then you if you just up level it and say, Well, am I really just f selling a landline? Or am I selling A return to the physical. Yeah. Right. A return to the real And it's like, Oh, I like that. There's a lot of people who want to return to the real. What does what does that entail? Oh, there's other products that might make a lot of sense in that case. Yeah, it's sort of like what um what's that funny bottled water company. Murder, liquid death. Uh like it's sort of like that where it's like

42:47 With these phones and like this thing that I have here. The moat is not the technology right now. The moat is not the product. The moat is the brand. And I think that with if you took someone who was in advertising and you said just focus on ads and focus on um building a brand that's really, really cool. That is the mo. Did you see um

43:07 Zach, whatever I forgot. Zach Yadigari, the guy the guy who did the Cali I apps at the teenager. I know what his new thing is. Did he announce it? Yeah, it's on he did like a YouTube video. It's gonna l let's talk about it. So let's give the context. So he came on here when he was, I don't know, seventeen years old or something. He was in high school. He like came on the podcast in between class periods. Like skipped a skipped skip class to come be on our podcast and he was doing A calorie tracking app. Uh not an entirely new idea, but he did a he made a simple app with his friends and

43:35 They really leverage TikTok to grow the the app. And he talked exactly about what he was doing. He was at a few million and N AR at the time. And they grew it to something like twenty or thirty million in ARR and they sold the business and he's Now he's like a college student who, you know, sold a sold a business for I don't know.

43:52 Bunch of money. Somewhere between the uh let's call it. fifty to one hundred million bucks. Last time he was on, he came on after he sold it and he was talking about what he wants to do next. He said I want to do something in with hardware, something physical, partly because it's just a fun challenge, partly because Seeing you know, where can I go where there's less competition for when it's getting easier and easier to create content, easier and easier to create

44:11 Apps. How do I do something that's a little bit different? And so he just Came out with a YouTube video announcing his new thing. Uh which do you want to describe it? I didn't watch the video. I had just known that I knew what space it was gonna be in and roughly the product. Well I didn't see the video. It's an alarm clock, and it's basically an alarm clock that you it's like a physical brick. So you put it

44:34 Somewhere else. So you're Your phone alarm won't stop beeping until you tap your phone to the brick. So it's kind of like a way to get up out of bed and stop doom scrolling. And his idea is like Wait, I don't understand. How does that help you stop Doom Scrolling? Because you have to get out of bed and go touch your phone to this thing that you put presumably in the kitchen or somewhere else. Somewhere where you're you need to be up and active, not just sitting in bed on your phone. You know, most people

44:57 They wake up with an alarm clock, they look at their phone, they see a bunch of now notifications. Got it, got it, got it. They snooze the alarm and they stay in bed looking at their notifications, social media, whatever for twenty, thirty minutes. And that's how they start their day. Got it. So the idea would be your alarm clock goes up and that beeping's not gonna stop until you're up out of bed and you touch the thing. Awesome. His new his new thing's called flow. Is the name of the the company. Oh, cool. Wow. Okay, he released this yesterday. So FlowAlark dot com.

45:22 Oh, this is awesome. Great video too. I thought that my prediction was good, but then seeing like a young Guy who's way more in the know and like in the in the pulse of young people. Uh because he likes that. That's like the real validation.

45:36 Yeah. So are you on board with some of this stuff? Am I on board with it? What do you mean? Oh the dumb phone and I don't trust myself, meaning um I love to buy a gadget.

45:47 But there's a graveyard of gadgets I don't use in my office and I'm Learning like hey, look. I got a really be committed to actually like commit to the bit if I'm gonna do it. Like I gotta really want to use the thing and

45:59 change my lifestyle to do it. So don't don't just buy all these things for no reason. So I'm gonna kinda wait and see if you tell me like yeah, dude, I use it all the time. This is if Four weeks from now. You're like this is my new normal, then I'll buy it. The brick has stuck with me. That is um it's at my front door and depending on which activity I'm gonna go out and do. So if I'm going out with my family

46:17 That continues to have maps, text messages, calls, and Uber. I think that's it. And then if I'm gonna go work out, it literally just has my work out app. That's it. And Spotify. That's it. See, I just deleted social media off my phone and kinda did the same thing. There's not really much else to do on my phone once you take that off. What am I gonna do? It's too easy to go to twitter.com. Oh, I didn't even think of that. I wouldn't I wouldn't even think to do that. It's such a bad experience, dude. They're just constantly trying to get you to download the app. They they nuke it for you.

46:43 Like you can't see a reply. You can't like But then I end up just spending so much time on Claude asking it questions. So I just had to like nu nuke everything. I had like Just like I don't know. I just like it's just the habit of like I have I'm in the elevator. Reach in my pocket, pull it out, do something. And like that like

47:03 action has to like go away entirely. In order for it to go away, I just can't have anything working. Yeah, that's fair. Alright, is that it? That's it. Alright, that's the part. I feel like I can rule the world and no way

47:17 Be what I want to I'm put my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Cause if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing QA sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

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