7 People Making $5M-$10M From Weird Hobbies

0:00 I'm not saying like I'm above this. No one's above this. This is cool. These guys just sold seven million dollars in multi-tools in like a week. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to I put my law in it like no day song On the roadless travel never looking For a creator business to work.

0:20 The creator needs to be loved. What makes a creator lovable? Like what attributes do they have? Where you see it and you're like that person has it and people will buy because of them. Finding creators that have like real love from their communities is the

0:37 Is the whole thing. Right,'cause those are the most durable audiences that will kind of go It makes them not cancelable. It they peep people feel like they are their buddies, their friends. So I think like what makes them loved is you feel like you're watching a version of yourself doing it. You know, when you're w if you're a woodworker and you watch Jonathan Katz Moses

0:58 You're like Oh, this guy's just like me and he's Teaching me. I'm learning. And it's like a buddy who's walking me into My favorite hobby, my favorite niche. So they have to be relatable.

1:10 I think so. Relatable is a good way to put it. I think It you know, obvious often feels like your big sister or your big brother too, where you're like, Okay, they're teaching me, you know, like you like motorcycles, right? Like they're a pain in the ass to like maintain, to deal with, to find the right routes, to find the right routes on road, to find the right routes off road. But I got three or four guys that I can call and say, Hey I'm going to the Pacific Northwest. Where do I go? What do I need to pack? Like what am I missing? Like walk me through that trip you took.

1:38 And they give me the tools that I need to kinda get where I wanna go. And I feel like those creators are the most interesting that can build durable businesses. And now you're a partner at Slow, is that right? Yeah, I'm a venture partner so I've been here for about a year and before that I was at the churning group. Man, Chernon, I've hung out with those guys a a bit. They um I saw your I I saw your podcast with Kevin, which was great. Yeah, we've had Kevin on. Uh I'm friends with Doug DeMoro. Doug, I found that. I found that. That was you?

2:06 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Your guys' insight. Uh back in like uh fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, which it seems so obvious now, it was like we're gonna c take creators and we're gonna make them into billion dollar companies. And like obviously we know Mr. Beast does that now. But what a lot of people don't realize is that Chern was early on this, for one, and number two

2:26 They've had so many successes that are niche communities. So for example, there's the uh What's the meat guy? Meat eater. That's Steve Vernella. Yeah, meat eater. And then there was like probably eight or nine or ten more. We had Kevin on from uh Uh epic gardening. Uh and so like you've built these like really big businesses. And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

2:47 the creator middle class because there's like there's like these the Mr. Beasts of the world, but there's so many people out there that are making ten, twenty, fifty million dollars a year and they have like eight hundred or four hundred thousand followers in a very niche community like meat smoking or something like that. Right. One of my favorite creators is Doug DeMoro. Doug DeMar does these car reviews, he turned it into uh cars and bids, which I I have no idea how big they are, but I I think it's uh a quite a large business. I'll tell you, since since Doug started, he sold about four hundred and fifty million dollars worth of vehicles. And then he takes a take rate off that. Oh my God. So this guy, Doug, does these like Reviews where he will review an SUV or like a two million dollar

3:32 Ferrari. Anything that's an enthusiast car. Yes. And what's interesting about Doug. Yeah. I don't know how he did it, but I have a feeling it was just him, probably actually not even with an iPhone when he first started. Literally like a camcorder, like a traditional one. And

3:47 He looks Schluppy. Like He has like a dirty T shirt. that that usually often two T shirts. Two T shirts that fit poorly together. So like his undershirt is popping out from his and he's usually wearing cargo shorts without a belt. So it like it's they're like falling down and he wears high white socks and like

4:07 He's just kind of a I don't know how I don't know like what word what category it is, but like someone He's like a car nerd. He's a car nerd. Yeah, but even amongst carnards, many of them are more like uh they dress affluent because they wanna fit in. He does not care about that at all. And he gives these amazing reviews and so one that's the relatable thing, but then you have these on this other on the other end, you have like the Emma Chamberlain where young women I think aspire to be her because she uh is cool and and has character and all that stuff.

4:37 Is there something in there about a creator of like wanting to be aspirational versus The quirky. I think it depends on the audience, right? Like Doug's audience. Loves him because he has

4:50 the best information. About every car. Like it like his videos that are ten minutes, eight minutes, twelve minutes long top to front. Everything you want to know about that car? Which is generally like a couple of things, like what do I wanna drive, what do I think is cool, and sometimes it's purchase decision, right? So Doug gives you everything you need to kind of learn about that rig, and he's like totally unassuming and fun. I'm not as familiar with Emma. I know she's like very loved.

5:18 Um But yeah, aspirational. Um You want to be here when you grow up. You think she's cool, you love her access, you like her take on things.

5:26 Um I think for the enthusiast categories, I think those pop the hardest, w which is to say Doug is driving a Two sided marketplace. That's has real scale. Um and can scale.

5:40 without having to put goo in the bottles or get distribution from stores or launch a physical location. He is like building like a venture scale business. And a lot of people who come to cars and bids now. Didn't even know who Doug was. It's built.

5:54 the scale where they're just like, Oh, this is like This is a great place to transact. I don't even I didn't even get here through the top of funnel from Dove. All right, so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode on this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew it to something like seventeen or eighteen million dollars in revenue. I started it.

6:20 With like Three hundred dollars. My current company, Hampton, does over ten million in revenue. Started it with actually no money, maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that. Nothing. And so you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan, but what you do need is systems that actually work. And so my old company, The Hustle, they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars. These are models that if you do it correctly, it can make money this week. You can get it right now. You can scan the QR code or click the link in the description now back to the show.

6:57 So can I ask you about some of these uh middle class creators? Cause this is pretty interesting. You mentioned one of them and I looked him up. This guy's insane. Who's Jonathan Katz Moses? Jonathan Cad Moses. So Jonatz Moses is a woodworker. He started a website called KM Tools. It's tips and tricks on the right tool for the right job, essentially. And then he was like, Oh, well, here's this tool you can use. to work with this buzz cell. And here's this tool you can use to work with that. And then

7:25 sold, sold out, sold out, and then kept developing his own tools. Let me tell you what I see when I go to his YouTube page because it's pretty incredible. So it just looks like a Uh just guy. He's just doing woodwork and stuff. But what's crazy is he only has I mean, and this is like big, but this is like

7:42 you know, pretty girl next door, like attainable. He only has six hundred thousand subscribers. That's right. Which I think almost anyone dedicates four years. To j virtually any niche and they spend twenty hours a week on it, I think they can get to six hundred thousand subscribers. So he only has six hundred thousand subscribers. And each of and he only is outputting like one Video a month.

8:02 Like not even a lot of not even a lot of videos. And they and they look great. They look like really highly produced videos. They're not like uh They're they're they're they're they're polished. But his his quantity is not through the roof. And the views aren't even through the roof. No. Well the c the cool thing about it is it's

8:19 It's first of all, it's evergreen content. So like What he did. Like how often he publish is important to kinda continue to to provide content for the community and build his audience and get to scale. And I think like taking investment. He will be able to do more of that. He raised money? Yeah, it's slow. We invested two million.

8:39 Into to Jonathan's business. And how big is it now? The the investment is very recent. Um, he's doing around six million in revenue now. From like strictly from his Tool site. And he's grown.

8:53 substantially year over year. And w when you and made the investment, what was your upside? Like what did you what do you expect in five years? How big of a business will this be? Yeah, I mean we play a little longer than five years'cause we're early stage. So you know, I I think whatever, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean we we'd love to see Jonathan get to a hundred, two hundred million dollars in revenue in the next ten years. That's crazy. Yeah. Is he gonna enjoy his life while he's doing that?'Cause it looks like he had a pretty good life before taking your money.

9:22 He he loves he wants to build a massive business. I mean, we're not reaching out to creators and saying, Hey, you look like you have a really nice lifestyle business making ten million bucks a year. Do you want to go to a hundred? Like We're he reached out to us. You know, he's like, I wanna build a business of scale. You know, he He needs more inventory, he needs more product designers. He sells out all the time.

9:44 So he he wants to get to scale. Like he lo he loves what he's doing. This is a great one. And Uh what's when you when you're when you're doing research, like if you're this guy Jonathan or or someone listening and you have like a Like woodworking is a niche, huge niche, but niche nonetheless. Is is there like um math between how you decide how big it can get.

10:05 Or do you just look at like comparables? Are you like, well, there's just one woodworking ecom store that already does this much revenue. I think it can be that big. That's a good question. I mean, I think it's a little bit of both w where we say Team and theme. Right. So it's like Can we invest in is Jonathan backable? Does he have the hunger? Is he a founder or is he just a content creator?

10:26 And then does he have the hunger to build something big? So it's early stage. We're bett on Jonathan, right? Now we can't bet on Jonathan if he wants to build it's funny. He he made he said a funny quote. He goes, I you know, they have no control. I could build ballet shoes if I wanted. Now, we have to look at the category that he's in and make sure we feel like it can be It can get to scale. So yeah, we do a little once we get deeper down and figure out that this guy's great, he's gonna figure something out. He's gonna take a lot of different shots on goal until he does, which we've seen with lots of great creators who they're like, Okay, I tried this business and I tried that business and it didn't work and they're gonna keep going. Jonathan feels like the kind of guy who's gonna keep going no matter what. And then yeah, we've looked we've looked at woodworking, like

11:04 Are there other businesses in his in his uh genre that are making tools that are at fifty, hundred, two hundred million dollars in revenue. And we look at that and we compare them and we say, Hey, listen, this is a This is good signal. Can I actually walk through that? Because I I am curious because like if I have a passion or if I'm a listener and I have a passion for something and I'm like, does this have legs or Maybe it doesn't quite have legs, but if I just change it a little bit, like the trajectory might be a lot different.

11:29 uh but still within the passion of what I want to make content wise. Yeah. So like all right, so if you're doing wo woodworking, where would I start to research to give me faith that this can be a fifty million dollar year company? Right. Okay. So that that's a really good question. So the The really interesting thing about backing creators that are in passion categories is they have real expertise in the area that they're in. Which is to say

11:54 Because Jonathan's creating content in word working. He knows all the other woodworkers. He knows all the tool companies. He knows everybody in that area and we kind of trust them to understand their own white space. So These

12:09 Creators that we're backing. And the creators that like I think have the best opportunity are the ones that are deep so deep in a niche. That they've been working in for five, ten years, they're like, Oh They identify.

12:24 the white space. It's not for us. Like we're we're here to say Hey, you're we're w we want to match capital. with creators and who are founders who want to build something scaled and we rely on them. You know, Doug De Miro, right? Back to Doug, like Doug's been in the car game, both on the editorial side.

12:41 And creating content, meeting all the manufacturers. He knows When he you know, there's four or five other auction platforms that are available to people who are buying cars. Doug's like This is the one we need to build and this is why.

12:55 But when you're when when you're trying to justify that, surely you're you're thinking like, Okay, I feel like with some degree of certainty, the best case scenario is It's gonna be a billion dollar company in ten years, something like that. And so what I what I'm curious about though is let's say that like Let's say that I'm interested in architecture. But also like art history. Let's say that I'm like uh you know a twenty eight year old person, I hate my job.

13:20 I'm sort of interested in art history and architecture. But I wanna build something sustainable and like potentially one like the the route that I pick when with my content. I would imagine there's some type of equation where it's like I guess it would be the size of the audience multiplied by The gross profit per item sold.

13:39 multiplied by the n quantity that They will buy. Do you guys have anything like that? I think it's a little bit more creative than Math.

13:48 Uh which is to say We can't be experts in ever every niche category and say, Hey, this is how h this is how this is gonna pan out. I mean you have a sense of like hey These are these are I mean, like look, Kevin Kevin's in the seed business. Like seeds don't seem like they're very you know, like you they're very Inexpensive, but at scale they can it's a massive business.

14:09 I think we look for categories where they're they're high spend. Um where people are passionate about them. And that the founder really understands the category and is telling us where they think the white space is more than us saying, Oh Here's a math here's math to solve that problem. Yeah.

14:27 That's funny. I mean I My last company was The Hustle and like Jesse or Chernen came to me and they're like, Oh, maybe you can be one of these like I don't even think they had like a word for it, but they w they they were recruiting me to become Uh it was very uh light recruitment, but it was like a f let's see if there's a fit of maybe we could invest in you and you be one of these creator led businesses. And I was like I didn't even have faith that it could become that. Like I I didn't know. You know what I mean? I definitely didn't believe it. What Yeah, it's it's Chernobyl was really interesting because You know, we at Chernen it was it was different at kind of a growth stage because you at post investment you can spend so much time mo so much more time with the businesses that you can early stage. You know, there's a willingness to roll up your sleeves and like help.

15:09 help build it out. Like there's a lot of work we put into those companies post investment at churn in that earlier stage we kind of are betting on the founder to figure it out. I think every man who's above like thirty five years old has a dream to do with this next creator is doing. Which is owning a ranch and selling meat. What is uh what is five Marys?

15:29 Well, five Marys is rad, so It's it was started by a woman named Mary Hefferdon. Um, and her her husband, Brian, as well. But Mary's like Mary's the big driver of it and and Brian would agree with that as well. She started as a restaurant tour in the bay. And

15:45 Couldn't find like Um sourced meats. In the way that she really wanted, at scale that she wanted for her for her restaurants. So she started looking at ranches and she ended up buying a ranch. She's like super entrepreneurial, get up and go, badass. She

16:00 Found this ranch kind of in the Mount Shasta area, this area called Fort Jones, which is near the like California, Oregon border. And she bought a ranch and started raising her own cattle there. She now has Six hundred acres. Six hundred ket of cattle.

16:14 She's got a butchery. She does shipping. She has a You know, like a FDA approved slaughterhouse? And she's built A very large scale business.

16:24 From four hundred. Four hundred thousand followers on our Instagram channel. And what was her original content? Like the what what got the first ten thousand followers? It was all her moving to this ranch and building out this ranch life. So she tells stories about herself, her family, she's got four daughters that are all rad, that are all cowgirls. Obviously they didn't start that way when they were when they were little, but they're now kind of like sixteen, fourteen, fifteen, thirteen, like in that area.

16:50 They're all ropers. They like Compete. Um, so they're always going around. But it's like ranch life. Caring about the food, caring about the people who you work with. Building out business. Also just a very strong female entrepreneur vibe. She like Taught courses.

17:06 to other women who are building businesses. Actually the Ballerina Farms woman took her course. And then launch Ballerina Farms, which is scale now. That's another th uh it's similar. Yeah, it Ballerina Farms has a lot has a little bit more controversy around it, but the woman's name who I forget right now. lives in Utah, her husband and her bought a ranch and it's like

17:28 very well uh shot. It's very beautiful and uh it's a little bit more composed than Mary's content. Mary's content is a little bit more like if you look at Mary's content right now, you're like literally watching her build a house. Her and her husband and her kids are going out and like grabbing rocks and putting from the land and putting them on the hearth and she's building them out. She's feeding cows. So was she successful before she bought the ranch? No, she had like three or four restaurants in San Francisco. Yeah, she was like She's been she's a h I mean, as you know with restaurants, they're not like They can be doing great, but they're not they're not like you can't it's hard to retire off'em until you get to real scale.

18:05 So She was a proprietor. I think of her as a proprietor. That's the c category I would put her in. She had restaurants, she was serving great food, she had a good life, but it wasn't what she wanted. So she went out. to the farm instead of uh she she saw an opportunity to like build a ranch that had ethically sourced meats and raise cattle and

18:23 Tell the story while she was doing it. It's like so deeply authentic. It's it's basically like um I think I saw um Uh, I forget the director's name, Guy something, um Guy Ritchie. Guy Ritchie. And he was telling this story that always stuck with me. I think I heard it when I was uh a little bit younger, and um it always stuck with me, but it was basically like When I try to live my life

18:44 He's like, I am a director. And I want my life to be a movie and I'm the director of my own movie. I'm the director of my own life. And I hear like what she's doing or I see what Mary's doing. And to me, it's like social media makes it so much easier and attainable to say, I'm gonna do something epic. And I'm gonna bring people along the way, and that is why it's going to be so epic, because they're going to support me.

19:07 And this is so awesome. So how big of a company does she have? And she's and it's just selling beef? She well, she does a lot of things. So she sells subscription box boxes of beef. She also sells These she does she's done these courses, like I mentioned. She sells uh whiskey and cookbooks. Um, she actually doubled down recently on a tallow product line. So she all you know, because she processes her own meat and has she has like tons of tallow and has been making it

19:35 You know, sparingly. This lady's awesome. They do camps. They do a cowboy camp where you could like go and see. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a small part of her business, but it's definitely like she brings she brings people on. It's it's a heavy lift. She does it it like it's seasonally, but she brings people in and kind of teaches them with the idea that people can learn what it's like to live a ranch life and and come out there kind of in a dude ranchy kind of way, but she'll make you roll up your sleeves and do stuff for sure. How how big is this business? It's Five Marys Ranch. I mean, so as far as like all of these businesses that I'm talking about, like as an investor, I talk to all these folks. And I can't like some of them, if it's publicly disclosed, I will I'd be happy to to share that. But the way I would frame this business is that it is like It has the ability to to achieve venture scale. And I I would say the threshold of venture scale is probably a hundred million in revenue, right?

20:20 They can do it. Yeah. Uh awesome. Also the the the coolest thing about Mary is like you know the meat The meat business is great and I think she will always do it and it it's but this tallow line that she launched

20:34 is something that can scale even more. Like I I don't know how much you've seen about what's g going on with beef tallow, uh and people using it for their skin. And care. It's very popular and She does it right there on her farm. She makes she makes it. She they built the place to process it and they and they do it right there on the farm. And that's another line of business. And That brings me to another topic with all these guys is they have opportunity to take lots of shots on goal. It's like okay I built out this meat business. How much scale can it get to? Can I exit it? Do I wanna exit it? And you get to a certain place there. And then you say, Okay, well what else can I offer my audience that

21:10 It's totally organic to who I am. They will totally buy because they it's something that they want. And maybe that thing. becomes the thing that is venture scale, or maybe she tries something else that becomes venture scale. But the beautiful thing about all these creators and this kind of creator middle class that we're talking about is like, It's not just one business that they can start. But two things. I'm gonna push back on two things that I want you to prove me wrong.

21:32 Number one, focus. Uh like nine out of ten times l uh one of the reasons Nine out of ten times a lack of focus is what kills a company. Like it's sure it's more often than not, it's better to do one thing incredibly well than to do a bunch of things because it's just hard to pull off a bunch of things. Great. The second thing is operations.

21:52 It's very challenging. Particularly for a ranch. I I mean Uh, just like a software company is pretty easy. You're just behind a screen and there's no capex for a ranch. That's really hard. Who is operating her business and how on earth do you find all these wonderful operators and also balance creating content because I do this podcast two times a week. And then I also have a company and it's quite challenging, and that's probably a lot easier than running a ranch.

22:17 Great. Running a ranch is very hard. And she will tell you and you can watch and you can see. So I agree with that. So when I think of Focus I think of My answer to your focus is prioritization. Which is to say.

22:30 She's gotten the ranch to a place. And now She decides if she wants to double down on another line of business. And then she needs to make sure that she has operators in place.

22:41 That can that she has enough time to try and build out. that next line of business and or bring in another person or two to operate and help launch that next line of business. So she's got a ranch, then she's got to make sure she has enough time, energy, either with the people who are supporting her ranch. Or somebody to help her with the tallow line. So it's about prioritization and then building it out. I agree with you. But you look at somebody like Can I

23:06 Like if you look at somebody like Jocko Willink. Yeah. Are you familiar with Jocko? Uh I uh what I know about him is he was um a former seal. Uh badass, looks like a seal, looks like a G. I Joe, and has a podcast, but I I don't know much about his products. Yeah. So that so that that's another example of like how you get to scale where you're trying shots on goal.

23:28 And uh thinking about prioritization. So Jocko, like you said, he's got a massive podcast. You're agree, he looks like a G. I Joe, and you're right that he that he is uh an ex seal. And he's also very like taking pictures of his watch at four AM when he's starting his workout and he's a big jujitsu guy. He's also a very intentional father and talks about how to raise your kid, you know, kind of uh you know, not glued to screens and and and you know, with in with intentionality, things like that. So Jako like speaks to a lot of people and he has a great Of course.

23:58 called Echelong, which he teaches to Fortune five hundred. CEOs and people and and the the the general public can can kind of apply and be part of those as well. And he did pretty well with that business and he continues to do well with that business. Echelon is like a so he dropped I'm looking at the website. It's corporate. So I imagine like If I had a guess, it's six figures and he comes and talks and then like three of his team will drop in and help you with some leadership issues in within your business.

24:25 That's right. That's right. I think it's at more scale than that, but yes. I mean he does he he does big conferences with like multiple like Fortune five hundred CEOs and he's very well respected in that in that world. Cool. Um in the leadership in the leadership. He talks a lot in his podcast and in books about How to be a great leader and how to like you know, manage up and manage down and he he's he's pretty prolific in that in that sense. And then he launched a Tactical apparel brand.

24:51 Starting with boots and moving into clothes. Which are like um You know, you're American made. kind of work out slash Military guy clothes. Which I would have to imagine that would be one of the harder businesses actually to run. That's a very hard business. 'Cause returns and yeah, returns and sizes and that would be hard.

25:10 Yeah. Supply chain and yeah. It's it's hard. Right. And so He took those shots on goal, right? He saw a place where he thought it he could move his audience. Really interesting. Then he launched Jocko Fuel.

25:22 What's that protein? Like It's like a um pre workout, post workout, during workout. Energy drink kind of Grouping of drinks. That probably crushes it. crushes. He probably makes a hundred million dollars a year in revenue off of that.

25:35 Crushes. You know, and then and then Chris Pratt joined in'cause you know, Chris Pratt is very military friendly and likes Jocko and like all that kind of stuff and That thing is like, you know, it's in Walmart. It's in GNCs. It's like, you know, and Walmart really likes to support those like military founders and like, you know, it's a gr it's a product that people like and people really trust him because he has you know, like a like like they would a Huberman because that you know, he's he's he's such a specimen and he talks about working out and training and people really do that. So These are all places that he totally has permission to be in. And so you can say, Okay, well the focus is why one of them is not working better, or you like try something, you launch it, it does fine.

26:13 But what do you do with the fine thing? Like as someone running his clothing company. Yeah, I mean that's I think that's what you do with the fine thing is you say, Okay, this thing is like doing fine. Let's get s let's make sure somebody's running it. And I'm sure somebody's running it. He he he's a prolific content creator. So I'm sure he has partners and operators that are running these things, you know. Um, being a leadership guy and being in the military, I'm sure his network is vast when it comes to like getting great operators and knowing how to work with them and communicate with them. I mean, he's a proper entrepreneur. You know what's funny is I um I guess I am a creator, which I I don't have anything wrong with that with that title, but I didn't seek out to become that. I previously started a business.

26:49 And I was mildly okay at running a company. I'm pretty good at hiring, but I was mildly okay at doing the work myself. And I would say I'm mildly okay at being a creator. But Finding operators. is still hard.

27:03 for me and like working with them as a partner is quite challenging. How do you find a partner? If like let's say that you're listening to this, and let's say that you have 20 or 30,000 followers, and you're like, something is here. But I don't know when to get help. And

27:19 W how do you decide when and how? Yeah, I mean I think Entrepreneurs. have to be able to that that that is kind of one of the telltale signs if they are if they're a founder that they know how to hire and that they can attract people to hire, which is to say If you're a creator who like does

27:38 General comedy. And or just general entertainment and you decide, okay, I wanna start coffee or I wanna start goo in a bottle. I think attracting a operator is gonna be very hard because they're gonna say, Okay, well, is this person really gonna put the time into it? Are they really behind it? Is our audience really gonna believe it? Like is their audience really gonna move when they say move?

28:00 And You have to have a real value proposition for an operator to want to come on board and work with you. So I think if you have sound principles in what you want to build and why, you can find a good operator. Like part of that is the test of at least what we invest in. We invest in a creator.

28:18 that is a founder that can attract talent to run their businesses. So where do you go to find them? I mean, first you gotta decide what your special sauces and where you need support. And I I've heard you talk about many times. Like where are places that you need support. And you need to be very clear about that. And you need to You need to like Make sure that you're attracting talent that's gonna like cover the hundred and eighty degrees. Also, you don't have to

28:42 You can kind of um date before you marry, which is to say Work on some projects with them. you know, work on like say, Hey, I wanna build this out. I wanna try this out. um make sure you're you're putting enough capital into it so you have money to pay an operator and that you have a plan for it. So I think it's really important to We we look for we look for folks that you need that that can attract that kind of talent.

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29:43 Back to the pod. Can I ask you about like maybe one or you tell me one or two more of these interesting folks,'cause I love hearing about this. But then also after that, I'm gonna ask you about if you're starting from scratch, like which niches or uh categories do you like Well, I love okay, so there there's there's a couple of creators that are really interesting in the auto care space. There's this great uh guy named Larry. He has a company called Ammo N Y C. And

30:08 Larry. Does detailing. of like celebrity cars. Wow, Larry has two point three million subscribers on YouTube. And all he's doing is cleaning cars and making videos about it. He details cars. Sorry. Yeah. That was that was the K Van version of that. I'm looking at his videos. And first of all, there's like a four million dollar acid Martin that he cleans. But then there's also gonna be like a car that's been in a barn for four years. And that's gonna take like

30:36 Oh a week. Right. Yeah, yeah. So he yeah, so Larry has a robust business cleaning Celebrity cars. that either are going to auction

30:47 Or They just have a m badass collection and they're gonna be taking it to you know, a car show or they're gonna be, you know, going on going on a a a a trip that's with all the like hot hot shit car owners. And he really gets in there and like really understands the cars and

31:04 Has built products. With his own mixtures. and built his own brushes and towels and everything. All V to C. And

31:18 He uses the top of funnel. Which is the car content. of detailing these cars, which is like kind of car porn for people. And Any carn enthusiast who has like a proper collection knows Larry.

31:32 And uses his products. Dude, I would watch these videos like on silent. Like this would be like just played the background of my living room on Apple TV for like You know, eight hours while I'm just hanging out at day. Just L Larry's awesome. Check out this other guy, Detail Geek. So this is the other side of of Larry. Oh my God, this guy has almost four million subscribers. So what's he what's he do? Like more low end stuff? He just like he is somewhere

31:57 And I wanna say like the Dakotas or The Midwest? Somewhere where they drive lots of pickup trucks that get dirty. That's right. It looks like the cars have been for like four weeks on a hunting trip in the mud where he's like getting out. Shotgun shells, and he does these 20 minute long videos that get insane views, and he too launched his own products.

32:20 Called detail geek. Really, really interesting guy. I've tried to talk to him many times. I talked to him once. Um, he's very happy with his lifestyle business. He does not want Two

32:34 engage with people who invest in these things and help scale these things. He's like I like my family. I like my life. And I make good money. And

32:44 Bob's your uncle. Um And he do he doesn't need it. And l You know, Larry Larry's a little bit more in the sexy world. Uh but this but but the detail geek does not care. This guy's awesome. What's your what's your Uh you probably can't say it's a stupid question for me to even ask, but this company definitely does more than ten million in revenue, I would think.

33:03 Here's what I'll say. All of these middle class creators I think. have the ability to be veil uh venture style businesses with the right with the right founder and the right hires. So

33:15 Which is to say. Direct to consumer businesses. who kind of somebody came up with an idea like Casper or Or s or glasses that you can buy over the internet or shoes that are different. Like they they were kind of built in a brand boardroom. And somebody said, Okay, well I have a new product.

33:32 Right, that I think the audience wants. And then I'm gonna go build a brand and then I'm gonna go build an audience and I'm gonna go spend a money a bunch of money to to build consumers. These kind of middle class brands have gotten to a place where they're like I already have the audience. I know product market fit. I'm ready to I'm ready to go.

33:50 And then it's the right fuel to the fire determines whether they're gonna get to venture scale or not. When they're starting, is it just oftentimes them with an iPhone? and them editing it either on their phone or on the computer and how How big have you seen them get it with just doing it in that sort of Scrappy hustler way.

34:11 Great. That's a great camp. So Mary Back to Mary. She just shoots everything on her iPhone. Like that's it. You know, she's she's on Instagram, she shoots everything on her iPhone, it goes on her reels, like you know, it's just her making the content.

34:26 So that's one that's one version of it. So if the question is from your audience Can I get started without a big setup? The answer is yes. You know, like Yes, and obviously depends on the genre you're in. And the stories that you're telling, you know, Mary's telling a story about her life. She's relatable. Like you you want to know where your meat comes from, it's Mary.

34:45 It comes from there. It's not. Highly produced, beautiful. You know, it's just Mary doing her thing and Mary's rat and her kids are rat and her husband's rat. And you can tell that right away. Larry started With a small setup and now he's got

34:58 A four bay or a three bay. Garage. in his spot in Connecticut. That's all lit. And he's got a guy who shoots it with him. And he still does it all himself. But it's just two guys. Two guys but two with

35:12 Almost three million subscribers, basically. Yeah, I mean he's got more people that work in the business, but yeah, it's like two or three guys. But it's like a beautiful studio slash detail spot. It's all well lit. He's very intentional about the look and feel, and that makes sense for like these high end cars, right? Like it's like For high end cars and people who are like very wealthy, who have, you know, multi million dollar car collections who are watching this kind of video, like You wanna like

35:37 You don't want to just shoot it on an iPhone. You want it to look Beautiful,'cause Larry cares about what one side of the car looks like before and one side of the car looks like after. And you gotta You gotta really show that. So you need equipment and you need light and it you can't just shoot it, you know, in the front you know, in the in the front driveway. There's one more really funny story that I think you you would you would like. There's this guy named Tonester. Oh I like who's telling you.

36:01 It Tony I don't really know I I I don't want to butcher his last name, but he better be some Italian guy w with the name of Tonester. So he was working at Sherman Williams. Mm making like you know, like it's like an entry level job making blends for paints. Oh, tone, like paint tone. I thought it was like Tony from the garage with like slick back hair. It's like a little bit it's like a little bit of that. He's not like a slick old guy like that. He's like he's a he's an interesting cat and he's done a great job. So He starts making TikToks.

36:28 While he's working at Sherman Williams. While he's blending paint. Just kind of like talking about paint blends and just kind of posting TikToks casually. And he starts to blow up, and then he gets fired. From Sherman Williams because he's using their office for TikTok. Oh, they blew that one. Which is like

36:45 So He launched his own Paint brand. Oh my god. Tonster paints. And it's like running a clown card into a bank other than he's not a clown. He's

36:57 Really smart. And he's done a really great job. And he if you look at his TikTok You know, he's got North of a million followers and he's has like a No, dude, on TikTok he's got two point three, and on YouTube he's got a million. And I'm almost positive That all the videos

37:11 It's literally just a camera on a paint can and he sticks the drills in there and he mixes it. That's all it is. That's right. And so that's where it's kind of like back to your story where You can just start. And then If you hit the right audience you can you can you can really build it out. But I think the the ones that are

37:30 And we'll see how he does. He's doing great now and he's a smart business guy and he's figuring it out and Is that a venture scale business? Like, is he gonna have his own Sherman Williams? Is it gonna get to a hundred million dollars in here? He could. It depends on execution at that point. I think that The ones that I look at and the things that we wanna invest in at slow. have a better shot to get to venture scale businesses are the ones that have been

37:56 Building audience trust for years. that are known for that specific niche and they have a really strong community. And they are creators that are entrepreneurs. How long are they? Typically creating content before they launch a product.

38:10 They could they could do it on their first one, or they could do it after four or five years. You know, Jonathan Katz Moses, the woodworker, you know, he he launched a product very soon after and and kind of his story was about launching the product, a lot of it. But he He did a lot of videos about Woodworking and tips and trips and people were following him around for a while. So I don't think I think it just depends on your niche.

38:32 in your audience. Like I think like you really have to be A trusted voice of authority in your niche. You know, like you have to People really trust Jocco. You know, pe people really trust Atia, people really trust Huberman, people really trust Mary.

38:48 But I'll push back a little bit on that because Because okay, so Jocko was uh a veteran, so like he knows about being tough. Which is like a kind of his thing. Peter Atia uh is a doctor, so he knows about health. But Like

39:02 This guy worked at Sherman Sher Sherwin Williams. I agree. That's why it's like it's not like you need a PhD. You know, I think like There not to discredit them, but like I bet you I could spend one year learning how to clean cars. And I and I can like make at least interesting enough content and then maybe after a little while longer, like formulate a product. You know what I mean? It's not like I need to I don't need to spend eight years of schooling to do this. Totally make totally make I agree with your point exactly, which is to say

39:29 Tones is a will see. Because he hasn't spent like for me somebody who has spent years and years and is a trusted so back to your architecture architecture idea or your art your your artist idea. Like somebody who has built five or six years of trust and authenticity with this an audience and scaled it. They have more permission.

39:50 To launch. Paint. And then you think that uh you you feel better about their understanding of both the industry and product market fit, feedback from their audience, what their lane is, what they can sell. Like you feel better about investing in somebody who's been in it for a long time versus somebody who is like, okay, for a couple of years they've been creating content. So Tone Snar is like a big we'll see. I think he's great and he's smart and he's gonna do something, but

40:15 Somebody like Larry. Yeah, I think you could start a detailed channel and like For Grow it. Um

40:23 But Larry's been doing this for 10 years. And When it comes to getting distribution in other you know, like getting to scale like the chemical guys did, which, you know, they took an eight hundred million dollar check. And they were they had shops, they had locations, they scaled into all the different auto specialty shops and Home Depot and everywhere. Like that comes from years and years being involved in the industry and really understanding the white space and really understanding your audience that people who kind of just get started, like, you know, Mary's been at it for six, seven years. um and built that trust. So I think the ones that build the trust and understand the community like They really have an opportunity to scale in a way that somebody who's just getting started is like a let's see.

41:03 So um you can use a little bit of me as an example, but just the just the audience. Anyone who's uh listening and has a passion, but like I I've sorta thought like oh it might be interesting to do YouTube or Instagram a little bit more. It might be interesting to Get into this creator space. What's the lessons that I should learn from these people on the repeatable process? Like what's the best practices that I should uh take away? Like I know that this is part art where it's just like if you have an if factor, it just kinda

41:34 Can work. But surely there's some type of work out plan where if I lift this amount of weight and eat this my amount of food, then I'm gonna be at I'm gonna be at least in the ninetieth percentile might do it for two years versus everyone else. So like what are the what's like the the lift weights and eat and eat lots of protein uh kind of checklist version of this? Yeah. That's a good question. I mean I a couple of things that come to mind. Um And I'll and I'll

41:59 We can decide together if it's a complete answer or not. I think for you personally and for or or or to take you as an example, like I think you double down on the stuff that's really interesting to you and stuff that you want to talk about and bring people and you can build an audience around your journey, right? So You you're doing a lot of that now? which is like business building, you're interested in entrepreneurs, you're interested in like what's going on in the business world and then that that'll drive into you can decide if that's gonna work in the a bottom of the funnel. Where you can

42:29 go beyond being a creator every day. So For example, like You like motorcycles. You are sober. Uh you have a family and you are interested in like intentionally raising your kids and being a husband.

42:42 I would think through the things that are your passion hobbies and that bring you the most joy, and I would double down on creating for those things. With keeping in mind. It doesn't have to be day one, but pretty soon that you have to be thinking about Creating content, building an audience. Establishing yourself as a voice of authority.

43:01 In something that there is a bottom of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel meaning a product that I could eventually sell. Yes. Kevin sells raised farm beds and seeds. Doug sells cars. Jonathan, the woodworker sells tools, the detailer sells chemicals.

43:16 The Tonester Guy sells paint, Mary sells meat. You know. On and on and on. Do you think it's safe to say that any content niche can come up with a product or service that can sell? Or should you think first of like what could I sell and then Let me think of which content falls within that category of something I'd be willing to dedicate ten years to to creating that content around. Yeah.

43:38 That's a good question. I mean I think you don't want to Uh you know, like it's really hard to sell products if you're just funny. Right. Dude, those those people like I was telling you about my my Mormon buddies They like the LA New York crowd might laugh at them like oh these like they might like, you know, be highbrow and laugh at these people.

43:55 The funny New York. like or LA actor, comedian crew who I know who makes content. They're they're broke. They don't sell anything. That's right.

44:05 I think you can build a big audience that doesn't transact and you should be careful about that. And I think if you're in a niche passion category that you like learn and love, you will eventually figure out what the white space is and you can build a product or a service that works there. Um and I can give you more examples of people who are doing that, but I think if you're building content, you have to be keeping in mind what's the bottom of the funnel. Like what am I moving what am I gonna move people to? But I think you start by building a voice of authority in a in in in an area. Like you can't even if you have a large scale audience In

44:38 Um you know, in an in an area doesn't mean that you can move product. Like you have to learn how to do it. Like the the people that we've been talking about today, like have learned how to move product and learn how to build product and learn supply chain and hiring. and you know, subscription and blogs and how to keep their audience from churning and how to, you know, keep things in stock. Like You're an entrepreneur, you gotta you gotta know how to you gotta know how to build a business. And that is to say also like There are

45:05 Two kinds of business I mean, there's lots of kinds of businesses, but two, there's like lifestyle businesses where it's like, Hey, I can make a million dollars a year doing this, or I can make half a million dollars a year doing this, and or I can make two million dollars a year doing this, and that that's just fine with me. The problem with that is is From variant deals and AdSense and like selling like merch and a couple of little things here and there. The problem is is once you stop Like your revenue goes away. You're you're just a freelancer. Y yeah, exactly. You you've built something that you can't exit. And for some people that's okay. I'm like it that's not like a

45:36 what's better or what's worse. But like if you're gonna spend five years building your audience, build them into something that you can like transact into and you can add value to them by cool new tools or like great ethically sourced meat or like cool color tones for your bedroom or You know. Uh anything. Um

45:55 That kind of like adds value to your audience. Is there a medium or a platform that matters? So you've we've talked about TikTok, Instagram, and um YouTube. Those are all video. One thing that I've predicted I I wrote this or did we did a podcast on this where I'm like there hasn't been like a billion dollar Twitter creator. But I think there will be and there might be actually some now. I said this like three or four years ago. Do you think that it has to be video and audio or video? Uh and we know podcasting works too. So video and audio. I think video and audio are the are are the examples that I've seen where people have been able to build kind of like

46:28 lifestyle plus slash venture scale businesses. I think the uh audio is a great way to connect with your audience, like consistently and you can really like own the relationship and um And build like a cadence of trust with them. It's a very intimate platform where if you love something you listen to it weekly.

46:48 I think uh video video is the same way and building an ecosystem around the video the video first platforms is for me it w it has more signal. All right, instead of a commercial break, I'm gonna tell you a quick little story. So a few years ago, I got really into crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, I was all about it. And I wanted to be at the center of the action. I didn't want just want to buy the coins. I actually wanted to be, you know, on the edge. I wanted to be a part of the community that was actually building this thing. And look, I'm not a genius. I don't know how to Build a uh blockchain. Uh but I did realize that I could create a newsletter that would keep people up to date on what was going on in the world of crypto.

47:22 That's what I had uh wanted. I wanted to know what's new, what's interesting, what should I pay attention to. And I had friends that had sold their newsletter companies, like Sam had built The Hustle, Austin had built Morning Brew, and they had sold their newsletters for tens of millions of dollars. So I thought, How hard could it be? I launched a newsletter called The Milk Road. It was a daily crypto newsletter and it grew like wildfire. We grew it from zero to over quarter million subscribers in a year. Partly because the content was good, but partly because

47:47 People were crazy about crypto. And that was a good time to be doing this. But The reality is that we wouldn't have been able to do that and build that business that we ended up selling a year later for millions of dollars. had we not had Beehive. Beehive was the reason we could do it in a year because If we didn't have that, we would have had to build all sorts of custom stuff or pay expensive consultants to do things or use five different tools and try to stitch them together.

48:09 Beehive just did it all for us. It was it is the best way to start and grow a newsletter. And email news is this little secret of the business world because they're free to send, they're free to grow. And you could build this incredible relationship between you and the readers. So check it out. Beehive is actually offering 30% off your first three months if you use the code MFM30. So go to Beehive.com and then use the code MFM30 to get the deal today. There's a link in the description. I was gonna ask you um what niches you think like someone should exploit. You said that was you you gave me the energy of that was hard to answer, but I'm gonna so I'm gonna like tease you up. Push me. Yeah, I'm I'm definitely gonna push you, but we're gonna ease and push me. Listen. Yeah, yeah. So

48:46 I'm sure that you have a list. of like craters that have one to five thousand people. And you see them and you're like oh They're they got something here. And and and who is on that list.

48:59 Is there anyone? Like that or a category like that. I am um I'm gonna preface this by saying like a lot of the companies that we talked about here are very dude focused. And so I I I wanna like also say that there's there's lots of categories that I'm st I'm still I'm learning and getting better at. And uh but one is everyday carry. I think is a really interesting category. Everyday carry being handguns or does that include like mace and knives and everything?

49:26 I think like knives. I mean obviously we've seen what's going on with Ridge Wallet, but like a creator that owns that Um like what you keep what you keep in your in your In your pocket every day. So yeah, nine. Uh wallet.

49:40 uh watch, keychain, pens, writing tables. There's there's some creators out there that do it. There's a really cool scaled company that sells knives called Blade HQ. It's also a uh a a company that's in Uh, that's in Utah. And they started creating content because they couldn't advertise because they were selling what is considered by the internet weapons. Um And um I think The The every the everyday carry.

50:08 creator. There are some of them that are really kind of popping up. They haven't Some of them haven't reached the scale. You know what I uh I completely agree with that and if I was listening to this, so I think that there can be a hodinky. So Honinke was a watch blog that eventually I was on the board of Hodinki. We we invested in it journal. And I don't know it did the outcome wasn't as expected, but it that doesn't but I don't think that meant the business itself was bad. I I don't know anything about the company, but if I had to guess, maybe it was like they just grew too fast or something like that. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there should be a hodinky for

50:40 fountain pens or a hodinky for fancy pens. I agree. That I mean, I think those are the kind of things when we see those we're like whoa. You know? Like Chess creators.

50:50 Really interesting. People who play chess. Passionate. You know, um, that's interesting. Yeah, fountain pen, any of the everyday carry stuff is great. I also think two A creators, like second amendment right creators who are teaching um who kind of do product reviews on different guns and different vinyl and different holsters and things like that. have a massive audience. I'm obviously we've seen what happened with Black Rifle Coffee. Yeah. Um, but um the ones who are actually teaching

51:15 about tactics and safety and different weapons and scopes and and vinyl to to c kind of carry it. Like those have massive audiences and have and some of them have built scale businesses. And I think that that that those are that's an interesting category as well. There's a guy named um I actually This is like the first time I've ever said this word out loud. It's just one of those words that I I read it and I know it, but I'm afraid it so I don't know if it's Hick Cock or Hick OK forty five. I thought maybe that meant like he's in Oklahoma and he's like a redneck and he was born in nineteen forty five. And he's this old man That You would only understand this if you live in the south or you live in the Midwest, like I am from

51:54 And we all had grandfathers like this. They like wore like Overalls. Or regular jeans and like a flannel shirt, and they're pretty nice and stoic and you like to being around them. Well that's what this guy is. Exactly.

52:08 Passion is like every type of gun on earth. And so he'll do like a machine gun and he'll say, like, Oh, this is a cute little machine gun. Let's see what it's about. Or he'll be like A like a revolutionary and I don't know anything about guns, but I just like watching it. But it'll be like a revolutionary war cannon or like uh the type of gun in the civil war where they like uh you know put the thing down and then they load the black s I I don't know anything about this shit. Or like a silencer on a gun. You're like what's that sound like? And this guy have you ever seen this guy? He's got

52:38 Eight million subscribers on YouTube. No. I haven't seen it. Oh my God. It's like T Rex Arms. He's the Bob Ross of guns is what he is. That's the best way to put it. That's awesome. Yeah, there's and there's some newer cats on the scene. Like check out this T Rex Arms. It was started by a couple of brothers. One one of them's name was Lu Lucas Botkin. And he's actually since broken off from T Rex arms, but it's like tactical second amendment content creators, massive firearms accessory business.

53:08 You know, does some advertising, but there's a lot of restrictions on that. Sells their own tactical gear, has a total cult like loyalty. And they're running a really scale business. Now crazy thing is is is Lucas is is part of Brothers and Lucas and the brothers have split and Lucas is now starting his own thing. So I'm actually interested to see what Lucas builds on his own. And if if if T Rex continues to grow, but that's a that's a properly scaled business. All right. So everyday carry, what else? I mentioned chess.

53:37 I think that's interesting. People are really passionate about that. We've seen some really cool scale businesses come out of chess. What's a chess business that's scaled? Chess dot com. I mean, that's a multi billion dollar company. That's right.

53:51 That's right. Um Jiu Jitsu? Yeah, we we know that. That's a really great category. Have you seen Brazilian jujitsu fanatics? Yeah, I lived in Texas, man. I feel like if you you you like

54:03 Everyone's Did that shit. Yeah, look look up the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Fanat Fanatics website. This is a two sided marketplace started by a Jiu Jitsu champion and a guy who Kind of did commute like uh continuing education. Oh. Of course I know who this guy is. This is uh the famous coach, right?

54:21 Right. But what he done it's a two sided marketplace. So Jujitsu instructors can upload their videos. And then people can sort through like I wanna do learn how to do a you know, rear naked choke or I wanna learn how to sprawl better or whatever.

54:37 They can pick coaches that they like. the site can help kind of ID coaches that you might be interested in. It's total web one point oh. This is great. And I can't say how much they're doing, but it's a it's a good business. What about you being the creator? No, man, this is like the hardest thing I do. Man, talking talking like seeing myself on the internet is like my least favorite thing. I'm very excited to talk to you. I think that's what you want to talk about is great. But man, I will never watch this because I just cannot watch myself. I cannot be a little bit of a no one watches themselves. Like I I've never seen MFM in my life.

55:08 And it's one of these things where you s you you have to have tough skin. But uh like the the Mormon family that I mentioned. Um, they have a whole subreddit dedicated to mocking them. And I met them and these people They were the it was the most loving family. They took us in. I felt like I barely knew them and I was their cousins. They were like the most loving family and people mocked them like crazy. And then on our pod, someone will be like You know, you will you look fatter or skinnier than I thought, or you look older or younger. And like we get mocked constantly. Yeah, no, I think it's a very hard thing to do. It's like

55:42 Putting it out there and and b and building their audience around things that they're really passionate about talking about and um And yeah, I love the idea of getting involved in a creator led business. But and right right now I really love the the thesis that we have at Slow kind of like building out Uh supporting them and matching capital to creators who are entrepreneurs who are really wanting to build build things at scale. Let's say someone said all right, you gotta quit slow right now. And you have to go and join um

56:07 We'll give you like a draft like you get three. You get three picks of creators that you're like I wanna Oh actual creators I wanna join that company and I want like a little stake in it. Um Are there three that you think are going to the moon? You know, we we have this thing that's called Sarah's list. Sarah's is was my wife because she joined Uh we like plan where she could join Airbnb at a time where she could still have a very comfy gig like a forty hour you're not totally grinding and you get a lot of salary, but your stock it's still a ten X. You know, if there was a

56:38 If there was a a a billy list. Uh for you and traders that you like, what would the top three or four be? Oh my god. I love what Kevin and

56:52 Doug are doing. at epic gardening and Cars and bids. Like those are both Humans That I like.

56:59 and would like to work with which which is kind of like my most important Wh which if you asked me if I uh hypothetically would go and work with a creator. Like I would need to like love them as a human and love the category. And those are both categories I can really get behind. I just sold my car on cars and beds. Oh you did? What car? Uh two thousand twenty AMG E sixty three station wagon. Nice. Were you happy with the price?

57:23 Yeah, I got what I wanted. I hit my reserve. Oh good. Yeah. I think that's awesome. I only own old cars, so now that Doug is selling old cars as well, I can sell my Scout. If I if I'm if I'm ready to move on it, but I I uh That's great.

57:36 Yeah, yeah. It's it's a good it can be a really good buy buying experience for everybody. Okay, um you should follow Sarah McAllister. Sarah McAllister has a company called Go Clean Go. Right now Sarah is just like the queen of clean. And people have been following her since like the pandemic and she's been building

57:55 She's got a couple million subscribers on Instagram, I think two point four And I think she's got a real shot to build a a really awesome business. So I think she's really cool. But does she own housework.com? That's the w that's what it is. I don't remember exactly what it is, but yeah.

58:10 So She has people that love her. They dress up for her as Halloween. And um she is a badass and she is really cool. So I really like that business. Does she sell anything yet? Or is it just it looks like she doesn't even have like her own product. So there is still like it looks like it's She's still a predominantly a media company.

58:29 She mostly uh makes revenue through Yeah, affiliate links and brand deals and stuff like that at the moment. Oh, this thing's that's a good one. I think she's great. The Queen of Clean. That's a good one. I I don't know if that's what anybody calls her, but I I just me I just said that.

58:43 Dude, if this lady comes out with a lo a laundry detergent Like that's gonna be the greatest thing ever. Forget it. Yeah. I really like her.

58:52 Um I also really like this. Creator name Gohar Khan. So when he was like Thirteen, fourteen. Or maybe even younger, he started making like Minecraft YouTube videos.

59:04 Right. And he built this massive audience. And then he kind of like put it down. Focused on school. Got into MIT. And

59:12 When he was in MIT it was during Covid, so he started making videos about going at going to an Ivy, right? Like going to MIT. You know, I think he has y you you tell me, I don't have it in front of me. What does he have six million YouTube subscribers? Yeah, more. Oh my god. I'm looking at his numbers.

59:30 Uh how so is he in his teens still? So he launched this No. He's post college And he's launched this thing called Next Admit, which helps students write College entrix exams. Just teaches them how to use chat GPT.

59:44 No, it teaches them like Teaches them how to not. Right. So he has people that like read through them who have also been in the IVs, he reads through them and he basically like, you know, at I don't know. Eighty bucks a pop or something. He helps you kind of like do that. But he's also kinda gives you a lot of information about how to think about the big story you're gonna tell.

1:00:02 when you want to get into college about the thing you did in high school. And now he's starting like SAT prep courses. And he just knows his audience and he knows that young First generation kid who wants to get into that Ivy. Not not bums like you and I were in high school. And

1:00:20 He really has an opportunity to build a really scaled Uh service business. that really understands what kids are thinking and kids want when they're trying to get into Ivy's and they're trying to get into technology. So I like him a lot. Those are too good. He's really interesting.

1:00:36 You want and I'll and I'll wrap up by reciprocating. I'll give you my two. Okay, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. Do you have YouTube? And I had a think while you were talking. So the first one I mentioned, this guy's got a harder path to build a business business because clothes are harder. But it's called the Iron Snail. All right. So the Iron Snail, I started following this guy a while ago. His background is that he went to film school.

1:01:00 And Sean and I talked about this on a previous podcast that the creators nowadays, the younger folks When y you know, when I was Well, still, but even when I was younger and YouTube was just getting started, it was all about being authentic, which meant like kind of scrappy and just thrown together. Now they're way more well produced. And so this guy tells you both the history of clothing, like why why Jamaicans are obsessed with Clark shoes.

1:01:25 Apparently there's some like some history behind that. Oh yeah. But but then he'll also do like here's the highest quality, lowest priced clothing ranked. He'll say, Why are the Jap why do Japanese make s the best genes on earth? Right. And so he'll like br break down and do these Really interesting topic. The the reason why he he's gonna win It's because you can be a woman. This is mostly men's clothes. You could be a woman, you cannot give a shit about clothing, you cannot give a shit about history, but you watch his videos because they're so well produced and because he's so funny, he's hilarious.

1:01:59 that you're engaged and you're bought in. And he is currently in the process of launching his own clothing line. And so he's like doc he's documenting it. Clothing is like the hardest thing ever. So it's gonna be a hard business but and the second one It's project. Air. So look at Project Air. It's this young guy named James, who's in the UK.

1:02:20 And it originally started out with him building model airplanes. So what started as just like a model plane turn into like an R C plane, which then turned into I'm gonna build the world's fastest R C jet. Or I'm gonna build the world's largest R C jet, or I'm gonna set the land speed record for an R C car. Oh, yeah. He's even done things like I'm gonna send a like a SpaceX. I'm gonna send a rocket up and I'm gonna have it land right back down, uh, just like SpaceX does, except I'm gonna do it like in my garage. So it's like became like hacker engineering stuff to where the stuff that he does is actually incredibly

1:03:00 Challenging math problems. Like he's a proper engineer. He's got one video where he built an RC battleship and he was like, I'm gonna have them fight and sink each other. Uh and I see this guy and I see it. Selling R Cits. It's very similar to um Mark. Uh what's the Mark Robert, Crunch Labs. Yeah. It's very similar where it's educational stuff. And if I had to guess a large percentage of fathers like me who want my children to like I think it's cool, but like I don't wanna build an R C plane and take it somewhere I'm gonna look like a pedophile going and doing this shit. I'm gonna be weird. But if I get my kid into it

1:03:38 I guess I'll you know like have fun do this shit. You know what I mean? Like I don't want to go like buy an RC car and take it to a school. How old's your little one again? We got a ways to go. But you're just gonna bring'em along in the in the print. Yeah, I'm be like, dude, my kid's just a prop, basically, so I can go to a school yard with a with a really fast R C car. Awesome. And so and so I think there's a bottom of the funnel for that to like build uh like model kits. I will check him out. Yeah, Roberts. Done it, right? Like that's I mean, that business has exploded. Those guys have done a great job building out those That subscription kits. And there's this entire there's this one guy His name's Remy. I think R E M I. This will be my last one. Type in Remy.

1:04:21 R C plane. So check this out. This is so strange. So it's R A M I R C has a million followers. Tell me. What the first video that you see. Can you can you tell me what that says? Remy R C plane, world's biggest R C

1:04:36 Twenty my million views. On this one building An Airbus. This guy is building A frickin' airbus.

1:04:44 So he's building remote control airplanes that are that are the size of a of a Olympic size pool. Like these shi it's basically a fucking plane, is what he's building. And There's a really weird part about the story. So they never truly call this out, I think. Maybe they do uh occasionally. Okay. But you're gonna see'em on like an air uh like an airstrip.

1:05:04 And you're gonna see him take take off from a house. And you're like, does this guy is Remy? Just a rich guy with a h with a where d what is going on? It's Tyler Perry's house. So Tyler Perry His hobby

1:05:17 Is he loves R C planes. And so she is this guy's patron. And so this guy, Remy I don't know if he lives there or if he just spends some time there, but Tyler Perry He just puts him in a pram and takes him to the park? I don't know what he does, but Tyler Perry has this massive hanger at his house. Except I bet you he has a hanger with real planes, to be honest. He's so wealthy, but he also has one dedicated to RC planes. And you'll see it's so funny. Tyler makes cameos, like you'll see him like Basically I I know that Tyler's paying for it because Tyler is always the one flying the plane. And so these guys, Remy will like build the jets and just hand it to this like guy who they barely

1:05:56 talk about or mention and it's Tyler find the jet. Because they like don't want to wreck you know, it probably costs a hundred grand for this jet. And uh this guy it's it's such a oh, I guess they do call it out. So flying planes with Tyler Perry. But that's like basically it. Like they barely talk about it. The fact that it's just This like I think it's from Dubai. So cool. And so this guy has a million followers, and I think that's like another interesting thing. So th those are my picks.

1:06:23 Yeah, that's good. This isn't a pick that that uh Like my Anyway, you should check this one out. Have you seen Hacksmith? What's Hack Smith?

1:06:32 Dude, these guys just dropped. Something call the Smith Blade? Oh these guys are gonna kill it. Dude. Seven.

1:06:39 They just did seven million dollars on Kickstarter. In like a week. Thirteen well it says thirteen days to go. I think I think they dropped it. This time last week, that's what I wanna say. Seven million dollars.

1:06:52 And it's just a box cutter? It's a m no, it's a multi tour. A multi-school's like a Swiss Army knife, right? It's got like five di different kinds of knives on it and like, you know, a a Swiss Army knife is gonna have your toothpick and your tweezers and a couple of different kinds of knives that have different edges and blades on it. And this one is built with the kind of intention of

1:07:11 Everything that you wouldn't like these guys also sell lightsabers. Like you gotta check out their their YouTube page. Oh my God. And they have fifteen million subscribers. Yeah, they s they sell like lightsabers and and and uh All kinds of like it's like a flashlight? A lightsaber? Have you seen Star Wars? I w I know what it is, but I don't know how to make it. So you haven't seen Star Wars. You just know about Star Wars. You haven't seen Star Wars? No, I was like playing sports and stuff and going out to

1:07:41 I also played sports. And I know it and I know what Star Wars is. I know what it is, but I don't know how is it a flame? It's a little it's a mini lightsaber, bro. Check it out. I mean it they call them sabers like what comes out of the metal part, a piece of plastic? Light. But that's just a flashlight, no? These are b yeah, they're badass flashlights, you could call it that.

1:08:02 But they're you know, they're hundred and fifty dollar Canadian or they're three hundred and fifty dollars or they're five hundred dollars. They're like Dude, I just bought a five hundred dollar laser pointer the other day because apparently if I can shine it on a piece of paper, it's gonna light it on fire. So I'm not saying like I'm above this. No, no, no, no, no one's above this. This is cool. I'm I'm into it. I'll tell you no, no one's above it. These guys just sold seven million dollars in multi tools in like a week.

1:08:28 So I really wives are still willing to have sex with us by the end of this episode. Billy, man, you're uh You're cool. I'm really thankful that uh you came on and and and hopeful hopefully we'll stay friends. But uh you're the man. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me on. I love what you're doing. And uh you know Happy hunting. Thank you. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world a no way

1:08:52 To be what I want to I'll put my all in it like a day's off. On the road, less travel, never looking back. My friends, if you like MFM, then you're gonna like the following podcast. It's called Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion dollar moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist, and with billion dollar moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders, and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated. long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like my first million Check out billion dollar moves. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Again.

1:09:41 Billion dollar moves.

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