How Nick Saban’s Side Hustle Might Make Him a Billionaire

0:00 Where were you when you were thinking about this? I have this room in my house where I have The best ideas. It's a cool room because if you need a shower, you're already there. It's just the bathroom. Okay, so I'm in the bathroom. I feel like I can rule the world of no But I want to

0:14 I put my all in it like my day's off. On the roadless travel, never looking back. I got a business I can tell you a little bit about that. It kinda blew my mind. So I was on T B PN by our good buddy John Coogan. I was I went on there and they asked me a question. They go So you're a creator.

0:31 And you've got this kind of like cool business, you know. business underneath your y yourself as a creator. Are you bullish on investing in creators right now? And I go, No, but I'm bullish on creators investing in businesses. And they were like, What do you mean? I said, Well actually like what I'm doing is it's not that somebody invested in me I'm investing. I'm buying pieces of

0:52 of businesses that I think, you know, should exist or that I can accelerate in some way. And that's going really, really well for me. So I think that's gonna be a model that people do. And so I started thinking about this and uh saw an example today that kinda blew my mind. So Do you know who Nick Saban is? I

1:09 I smell what you're stepping in. Great. Yes. I I love where you're going with this. Yes, I do know who he is. You toot my horn. Yeah, beep, beep, my friend. I like Nick Sabin. All right so Nick Saban, who is the uh he was the coach, football coach at Alabama and LSU, and he's like probably the most successful modern day College football. Coach. The guy who made Probably a hundred fifty million dollars as a coach.

1:36 Amazing money. Is that real? A hundred fifty mil as a college football coach. Yeah, but he's he's like in his fifties, so he's been doing it for a long time. But like his last contract was basically a ten year, hundred million dollar contract. He's being he's making he was making ten to twelve million dollars a year, his last contract. Wow. But Nick Saban is actually gonna be a billionaire. And he's gonna be a billionaire because of car dealerships. And I found this pretty fascinating. I I couldn't believe what I was reading. So

2:00 The story's pretty cool. Here's how here's how it goes. So Nick Sabin has partnered up with this guy. I think his name's John. Aggressive? And the the headline of the article was The Man Who Will Make Nick Saban a Billionaire. And it talks about how Sabin, after his c while while he was coaching, was deciding, like, you know what, I think I might go into car dealerships. And car dealerships

2:22 Have had like an interesting history with athletes. I remember growing up in Colorado, John Eloway. All the car dealerships had John Elway's name on him. And he was our he was our active quarterback at the Broncos. And I didn't really know this because I was just a kid at the time, but I went back and looked. I was like, What happened with John Elway's car dealerships? And it turns out El way. basically had this insane story where he

2:44 He while he was a player, he started these car this car dealership brand. selling Toyotas and like sh uh Chevy's or something like that. And before he retires, he sells his car dealership group to Auto Nation for eighty seven million dollars, mostly stock. And so he gets he gets paid out ninety million dollars, which was more than he was making as a quarterback for uh you know, professional quarterback in the NFL. And he then also licensed them his face and his name so that they could continue using his brand.

3:11 All the way for like another ten years. And he but he had a non-compete during that time. And two crazy things happen. One Because of that because of that deal structure. John L. Way.

3:23 Both made he made a bag and he lost a huge bag at the same time. So he made eighty seven million dollars. But then when he retires. It turns out that the owner of the Broncos offered John Eloway an incredible deal. He basically told him you can buy ten percent of the team for fifteen million dollars today. And actually I ha I owe you this like deferred salary'cause you're gonna retire uh early or something like that. He had he owed him twenty one million dollars of deferred salary. He said

3:47 You know what? I'll let you buy another ten percent. For that twenty one million. And he's John Elway's like, I I don't know, that's a lot of money. And the guy goes, I'll make it a even more of a no brainer for you.

4:00 If you wanna s if you change your mind, you don't like it, you wanna sell the team within the next five years. I will pay you back. Everything you may everything you put in plus five million dollars and eight percent annual interest. So you You literally can't lose money in this deal. Like you can only make money.

4:16 Who owned the Broncos at the time. Bernie Madoff,'cause this sounds like a deal too good to be true. Pat Bolan. And so Pat wanted John Elway to be part of the team. So he wanted also to work as an exec with the team. Got it. And I guess he was like, I'm gonna pay you this money either way. How about instead I trade you s stock for the team?

4:33 Okay. So LOA actually turns the deal down. It turns it down for two reasons. One, he's illiquid because he sold for eighty seven million, but It's auto trader stock. He he and so he didn't have liquidity at the time, maybe you can sell right away. He didn't have the fifteen million cash on hand because he had also just made an investment.

4:52 For fifteen million dollars. It's some guy named Sean Mueller. Who was actually just running a Ponzi scheme that ended up Failing and He lost, you know, half of his money in that. He got half of it back. Lost half of it. So he didn't have the cash. So he's like ah I can't do it. And then he's like, you know, also Dude, he listened to the wrong the wrong Ponzi seed guy. I thought it was the Bronco guy. Turns out it was this other guy. Exactly. And by the way, J that stake, that twenty percent stake, that's about a billion dollar stake today.

5:15 In the team. The team just sold for five billion dollars. So LOI missed out on that. And after the non-compete ended, he then went back into the car dealership business. And he uh he's built it back up and now that car dealership business does like, you know, again over a billion dollars in sales. And he's worth a few hundred million dollars from his second rodeo on the car dealership side. So I d I don't really re I don't know, I didn't put enough respect on the car dealership name. Let me tell you about the

5:39 The Nick Saban one now. What caught my eye is that a story came out saying that they bought Two dealers two dealerships in Miami. Hm. Two car dealerships in Miami, guess the price.

5:50 Twenty million dollars? I don't know. Ten. You're only off by six hundred and eighty million. Wait, wait. In Miami.

6:01 Oh my god. Oh, and they're Mercedes I'm looking at the article now. Mercedes. Mercedes dealerships. I think they have like an exclusive. I think they're in the like the The prime Ultra rich. area of of Miami. But dude I know.

6:15 I actually spent thirty minutes this morning to figure out is this a typo? Because I was like, there's no way that individual dealerships could be worth th three hundred fifty million dollars. In fact, I'm still like twenty five percent convinced that might be a typo and it might be seventy million. But I couldn't f After thirty minutes of digging, I couldn't find it. But it's pretty insane. Their dealership group, they now own like I don't know, ten to fifteen dealers. uh dealerships across like

6:37 Alabama, where he was the coach, to now Miami. And he says that the guy said that they sell twenty two thousand cars a year. Twenty thousand Mercedes a year. Which is and then he says they do about two billion in revenue on that. Is now worth a billion on paper and Saban will probably be worth a billion dollars after these deals. Isn't that wild? It's crazy. I Did I not bring this up a while ago? I thought'cause I I think I I read some I didn't know that he was a billionaire, but I read some stat about car dealerships. It's crazy. And you told me you wanted to cover car dealers interestingly.

7:12 Recently. Forbes, they did an article with another beautiful title. It was called The car dealership billionaire, no one knows. And it's about this guy named Terry Taylor. Who owns I think a hundred and twenty car dealerships. And he's also lives in Florida.

7:28 But they They came across them because they're like Well, this guy doesn't do any interviews. He we've never seen a photo of him. We don't know anything about him. But what we do know is that someone recently bought Tommy Hillfinger.

7:40 They bought his thirty million dollar mansion in New York City. And turns out the same LLC owns two hundred and fifty million dollars worth of real estate. Who's behind this? And they find out that it's this auto dealership. uh owner who owns practically the whole thing. And he owns a bunch of them.

7:58 And he's just Making a lot of money and they eventually get a hold of him and he goes, I heard you've talked to all my associates Fine. I will answer just a few questions for you. And he goes and the whole story is how he purposely is trying to be low-key and under the radar, but they uncover that he owns you know, uh eighty million dollar jet. He owns all this amazing stuff. And so turns out

8:17 Shockingly amazing companies. Shockingly amazing. Yeah. Like I think they get little local monopolies'cause I think you get like a territory, you might become the only dealer for that brand in that area. And then depend and then people tend to buy. from you know a local radius, if they're not buying online. And I think the way that they work is like

8:38 the car manufacturers basically do like floor financing or something like that. They basically like lend you They basically finance you to own the inventory. So you I think you're you're not out of pocket as much as it would sound like. It's very bank friendly. So uh in this article the guy the they were talking about how once you've proven to Mercedes or whoever that you're uh a decent operator, they uh you know, they'll they they're like, Yeah, we would love to expand, you're trustworthy, let's go. And then the banks will be like Yeah, like this is a very like

9:06 uh predictable business, like we've seen this for a hundred years. We will loan you money once you've proven to be successful. So it's a very loanable business. And the way that this happened was Saban was sponsored by Mercedes. So he had just g done some events, show what yeah some pictures, kiss some babies. And so he goes to these Mercedes events and he's like, Oh, okay, like I think Like Mercedes is great. So he talks to them. He's like, Yeah, I'm interested, actually, like I might

9:30 Maybe it should like do in a dealership. And they go, You listen, you're not gonna wanna operate these things. You keep being Nick Saban. God tier football coach, you go obsessed over that. Let's introdu we'll introduce you to four or five of our favorite franchisees that we think do kick ass. We have all the data. We know who kicks ass.

9:47 you might be able to partner with one of them. So he does a four hour meeting with the first guy they introduce him to, this guy, John. And he takes no more meetings. He agrees after the four hours, I'm gonna partner with this guy and he goes It's like interviewing an offensive coordinator. When you know, you know. Which was so romantic. Thought he would use like a love analogy, but he's like offensive coordinator. And this guy, John, is a hustler. So in addition to the car dealerships.

10:11 They had a a new bourbon company that they started, uh Kentucky Bourbon Company, him Saban again. And then during COVID, they created a medical supplies business called Dream Medical Group. So they have Dream Auto Group and they created Dream Medical Group. And sold over a hundred million dollars of PPE during COVID nineteen. This guy's doing shit. Uh that by the way, whenever I hear that story of someone doing PPE during Covid.

10:35 Y well, it can go one of two ways. Uh you're always a hustler. You're in that circle, but it's like you're either full of it or good hustle or bad hustle. Yeah, like there's something about it. How fascinating. I did not realize it was that big. It seems like the key to this is two things. partnering with the right dealer before like Uh you know, I I own a Mercedes and it seems like Mercedes has been booming for the last ten years, like they're cool now. Uh, they were always they're they were always cool, but now they're like they have it's like

11:00 They have some accessible models that many people can buy. So they I imagine they're selling a lot. But also he picked the right cities. So he picked Nashville in like two thousand and sixteen or something like that. You know what I mean? Like picking like the right Geo's that are growing with richer people to be able to support a dealership. And where your name, if you're an athlete or a coach.

11:19 carries weight. Like it's kinda s silly, but like just the jump the what is what is the Elways one called? I think it's called John Elway Chevrolet. It's the number one Chevy dealer. In the country.

11:31 Because guess what? We like We like our hometown kid. We like the local hero, you know, the local quarterback who brought us the Superbowl, right? Like Th that's a heroic guy and John Eloway Chevrolet, it does fifty to a hundred million dollars a year in revenue, just that one. One One dealership.

11:47 Uh and and you know, that that's pretty crazy. And so I think these guys have done a good job. By the way, here's a quote from this this dude. Tell me what you think of this. So it says they're talking about this guy John. They go, he's even more obsessed with the financial details. Uh but he's a former accountant and he compiles his own monthly statement for every single store.

12:04 Quote. If you say to me, How's March going? I can look and say, Cutler Base sold thirteen cars last night, eight new, five pre owned. I can tell you who the salespeople were, I could tell you that Evelyn bought one. I know every name, every car we sold, how much money we made, and I tracked them on parabolic curves to make sure we're not overcharging or undercharging anybody. What a beast, man. The only thing is, what is he talking about parabolic curves for? What could that even mean? I track them on parabolic curves.

12:29 Is isn't a parabolic curve like at the beginning of when exponential growth happens. Yeah, but what does that mean? I I track them on parabolic curves. What does what does that even mean? Patrick Collison tweeted this thing the other day and he used the frayed phrase local maxima. Did you see that? Love that. Love love breaking through a local Maxima. I I had to like go and figure out what all this meant. Uh he said, uh I think I I think worry about local maxima comes from imaging the three D world.

12:56 Where it is in fact easier to get trapped. I I didn't know what that meant. I had to go figure out the word had to be individually looked up. I did not know what that sentence uh what that sentence meant at all. And then he goes Uh but company space has many more dimensions and a so uh And so most critical points are, as you say, just saddles.

13:14 There's almost always a positive gradient you can trundle along. I did not know what any of that Or do not. I did not. And so I had the I I shared, I said, Can somebody explain to me? And they and he and he explained what it said, and it's actually brilliant. And it I totally got into this.

13:32 It means People often worry that they're gonna that they're gonna grow their company a bit and hit a ceiling and get stuck. Like reaching a small success and thinking that's as far as it can go. But the original quote says that business isn't like climbing a simple hill where you can easily get trapped in a small peak. Business has many moving parts, product team, market pricing strategy, et cetera. And that creates lots of directions to explore. So even if growth stalls or slows, it's rarely the true limit. There's almost always another path forward, something you could tweak, improve, change to unlock more. growth. Most stuck points in business are just temporary plateaus, not dead ends. And the saddle thing kinda blew my mind. It's a mathematical it's like a it's like a mathematical thing.

14:12 But if you Google like If you're or if you look you could you could I could show you this, but Oh, I see the picture of a satellite shape, yeah. It's kind of it's kind of mind blowing actually when I like saw this photo. It's hard to explain to the listener. We'll put we'll put the uh the photo up. But it's basically looking at a normal like X and Y axis, but now there's a third and it's three D and it shows that you can go forward or back up or down. And it

14:36 Actually kind of was mind blowing. I I felt like Tom Haverford uh in the show Parks and Rec, where he like sees like a piece of art and he's like, This makes me feel something. That's so strange. And someone had to explain to him that's like, yeah, that's what art does. Like it makes you feel something. And I remember seeing this uh this weekend and I just sat there and I'm like I feel I feel I feel special after reading this. Like I've just learned and and and it was kinda cool. I I think you got you got reality distortion fielded, my friend. I I th he just Rd my ass hard.

15:07 Telling somebody they're at a local maxima is always one of the like Pat you on the head. It's like wait. Are you patting me or are you like telling me I'm a little boy? Right? If you ever use that on somebody, it's a great backhandedness. Just as like

15:20 You're doing great. But you don't realize. You're still at the kids table right now. And there's this other game that's the global maxima. You gotta throw in a bud there. Like local maxima butt. Local maximum. In fact, this article with the car dealership guy says an article on Forbes, and at the end of it, they go

15:36 Joe loves deal making so much. He you know, in the middle of our interview I had to apologize. Sorry, pal. Don't mean to be rude, I just really gotta close this deal. And I was like, Oh damn, he just pals you? And you put that in you put that in the article? A Joe sounds cool, but also like a douche.

15:53 He's got into the whiskey business too. Check, check, check. I don't remember first. I don't remember names. That's hilarious. That was the uh that was the virtual version of slapping someone on the ass and saying, Go get'em. Call them by the wrong name. Alright, what else we got? Uh I have some other stuff. All right, so In AI, there's been these like waves where four or five of the same company will get started and they'll all get like an incredible amount of traction. So

16:31 Few years ago this was Uh when chat maybe GPT three or three point five was out, it was like uh copywriting. Services. So Jasper Copy AI, there was a whole bunch of companies that just exploded past ten million in revenue. Very quickly.

16:45 with a with the same idea, which is like hey, we'll help you write blog post and marketing copy, right? Marketing copy Written for you. That was like one idea. And that and then they got kind of wrecked by uh Just

16:57 Chat GPT just became good enough where you could do all those things. You didn't need a separate tool. So that they they ran into trouble. I shouldn't say they got wrecked, but they ran into to some headwinds where The growth the explosive growth didn't last forever. And then the current batch of AI companies that's doing this is these website builders. So lovable is one of them.

17:17 Uh Replit is another bolt Is another And so there's these website builders, which is very simple. Like Just the way you had Squarespace and Wix, you go drag and drop and make a website without code. Now you don't even have to drag and drop. You just say what you want. You're like, hey, I want a website for a law firm. And then just gives you a beautiful website for a law firm. You're like, uh Make the hero thing a carousel and it makes it a carousel. Like you don't have to

17:39 You don't have to code and you make these sites. And so these businesses have now exploded. They're some of the fastest growing uh companies. I don't know the latest revenue numbers. Is Cursor one of them? No, cursor is a little different. Cursor is a tool for Existing developers. But like

17:56 You know, lovable hit four million and uh uh was doing basically a million dollars of a of ARR every week for the first four weeks, and it's now at twenty million plus. That's insane. Bolt is at twenty million, level is at twenty million. Uh it's crazy, right? So like they're they're growing really, really fast. And so those are there now. But I also kinda predict that that's gonna

18:15 be a very shaky space to build on. I don't know. It's gonna be like uh Groupon. You know, like Could be. Could it might be that they're the next Squarespace. Squarespace, you know, eventually become a public company, but I don't I don't personally think so. I think that that's gonna be just like A feature inside of Chat GPT. It's like make me a website.

18:31 And I think they're gonna be able to do that. Something like replet's a little different because it's got a whole backhand or whatever. Anyways, that's all nuance. What I'm saying, what I'm trying to get to. Is It got me thinking, what would be a more defensible AI business? So what's a simple business? That's about how about AI?

18:47 But is not gonna get just wrecked by the next chat GPT update. And So I started thinking, I was like, okay, well, some of the most defensible businesses are marketplaces. And nobody's really built a good AI marketplace yet. What would that even be? Why why not? We all know that marketplaces are super, super valuable when they get built, right? eBay, Amazon.

19:08 Air B, et cetera. Uber. You all these are all marketplaces. Supply, demand. Where were you when you were thinking about this? Tell me, walk me through like When you're having these these very strange conversations with your where I have this I have this room in my house where I have The best ideas. And it's

19:25 Like we have tile on the floor It's a cool room because if you need to poop or pee, you're already there. If you need a shower, you're already there. It's just the bathroom. Okay. So uh you're just sitting in the bathroom thinking about defensible defensible uh AI companies. As one does. And so I'm thinking I'm like, why isn't there Like a high end like you know, one of the hardest things about AI right now is just keeping up with the tools and being able to do something. And I was thinking somebody should make a upwork.

19:56 Or fiver. That is just for highly skilled AI Doers. So a place where I can go and I could just put up a task that I know probably somebody with AI can either do it.

20:08 build it for me or show me how to do this on a recurring basis. and make a very skilled marketplace where people can go earn a ton of money. for their own AI enthusiasm. Cause I know a bunch of people that are like really enthusiastic about this stuff and they build their own pet projects. They try every new tool that comes out. But they don't really have like businesses where they need to use them. 'Cause they're just like AI enthusiasts. They're just like kind of boring on Twitter all day.

20:29 And I think that you could if you even just had like A hundred and fifty people? On the supply side for this. I think every A lot of businesses know that they could probably benefit from AI.

20:40 And I think if you went there And you were able to just like state your problem and then have people sort of like tell you what they could do with AI to solve your problem. Yeah you just Pay them to do that? I think you could build a marketplace around skilled AI practitioners right now. I think that I think that could be built. It's like the upscale version.

20:58 Yeah, you go you go to like the the Top kind of like one percent. level or quality of of job on Upwork or Fiverr or Ninety Nine Designs. Dude, I always thought that like somewhere your company somewhere or Something like this should uh

21:11 Just make it where I can hire an expert. And they could come and I they could spend three or four weeks looking at my company and saying I can make this better, this better, and this better. Because that's what I want. Because I see online that everyone's like You know, I think Shopify made this announcement. They go, Instead of hiring, you first must say, Can I hire AI? And if you can't, then you can hire a human being.

21:34 And I see these things like this and I'm like Oh man, I feel left out. I don't know how to do any of this. Like I want I want to automate all this. Like when you say AI, to me, I'm still on level one. It's just me talking to chat GPT. But then I hear about all these other things and vectors and all this stuff, and I'm like I know it's important, but I don't know how to do any of it. Do you know what I mean? It's like saying like Sean, do you want the V six or the V eight car? And you're like, I don't know what any of that means, but I know that the V eight is better. Uh, I like that's how I am with AI. And I wish I could pay someone to just come and do this. So I think this is an excellent idea, by the way. So you you can. There's there are consultants that will do this. They'll shadow your work.

22:16 They'll they'll come into your company, they'll do a a discovery phase. And I mean all the way up to Accenture I think is gonna do a billion dollars this year in AI consulting. Like big companies are hiring McKinsey and ac and Accenture to do it. And then small companies can hire these like indie shops to basically say, All right, I'll pay five to ten grand. to come do a like six week program where you kind of

22:34 figure out where you can optimize and then and then optimize. But a a lot of that's so speculative. And like what if what if you don't find anything? That sounds like work on my end. Here's kinda how I want it to work. So What would you call this?

22:48 What would I call it? I'd call it cute name. Up slice, top slice. I call it top slice. Do you remember we d that's not bad. Do you remember that's actually f kinda cool. Do you remember when we talked about A Team? I thought that name was so good. A Team is fantastic. It was a fantastic name. A Team I want that name for everything. Can we just give out some marketing?

23:07 Some absolute marketing gold here. Have you ever heard this phrase? I I'm almost scared to say this because I love like the marketing genius of this phrase is so good. Nobody ever talks about it. And I really want to use the same principle on something. But I'll give it away here.

23:23 Have you ever heard of Of Marry Me Chicken. No. I don't know what that is that a nursery rhyme? No, it's a r chicken recipe. And it's like

23:31 You ever it's like oh if you want to learn How to make my mar like this is this chicken dish is called Marry Me Chicken. Cause if you make it for a man, he will be like Marry Me right away. And it's this thing that women say. It's like a It's a it's a di it's a way to say the recipe. And it's like if you just think about that, there's a thousand ways they could have described like this creamy chicken recipe, right? Creamy chicken, it could have been like Name the ingredient. It could have been the the cooking process. No, Marry Me Chicken. Love that phrase. Love the idea of Marry Me Chicken. I think for any business you should come up with like a Marry Me Chicken level.

24:04 uh description of like what the person really would want. Like how good must it be. That they say marry me at the end of it, right? So I love that. So so I I I would love to come up with something like that for this, but Yeah, I think that there's an opportunity to create. Create something like this. Here's how I would want it to work.

24:19 So I have a buddy who invests in this e commerce company. I was like, why'd you invest in that? And he goes He's doing really interesting stuff with AI and honestly I wanted to invest just so that I could like see What He's try he's trying to build the c the company h the whole company AI first. So he's try not to hire anybody. He's trying to do AI for pretty much every job. It's ecom in the sense of they make a product and they sell it, or it's like Amazon, like it's like a it's like a platform. No, like they make a pro it's like a brand. Like you buy the supplement and then you

24:43 And then they they sell it on Shop Five. And I was like, Oh, fascinating. So like what's he doing? I really want to know. I got an econ brand. And I I think actually that's a that's a kind of a good hook, which is Instead of Saying let me study your business.

24:57 Or you come in and you describe the problem that you know AI can solve because that already presupposes you know quite a bit about what AI could do could or couldn't do for you. But if I just subscribed, I was like, hey, I want you to tell me once a week. What Somebody paid somebody to build. For their econ brand here?

25:13 And show me kind of like How it works. I then as an ecops owner would be like Oh, you can just I don't have to do product photography anymore. I could just use this thing to do all my photography. It actually works.

25:25 Like, wow, that's great. I didn't even realize that. And then oh, the next thing Oh, they set up this agent that uh manages the supply chain. So it it takes every sh uh freight forward invoice. And it puts it into the sheet and then it checks that sheet to make sure that there's no overages. And then it and then it posted in Slack. That's great. I have a person doing that today. That's awesome. Well, you know, I I I'd like to take that task and sell it to AI instead.

25:49 And so I think the problem with Most businesses adopt AI is a problem of imagination, not capability. Like You could sit down and figure it out, or you could hire somebody to do any of these things. It's an imagination problem for most people. They don't even really realize where they could be doing things. So for you with Hampton, for example.

26:05 You buy Maybe it could be as granular as like memberships or paid communities or something like that. Or it might just be like Somebody who's doing sales. It's like you subscribe to the sales feed. It's like, cool. Anytime comes in and pays for an AI, uh AI job that improves their sales process, I want to know what they did. Um like I'll give you an example. In one of my companies, I've and this company's growing really fast.

26:26 It's so fast that we literally can't Get enough proposals out the door. Like Customers want to pay, but the sales guys have too many proposals to create. And so what he did was he created this uh our CTO created this little agent. That will listen to the sales call.

26:42 And it knows what our capabilities are. And it just it's it's listened to sales call and it knows our capability, so it auto-generates a a draft invoice. of what services we should package to this customer. And there probably wasn't like a good plugin and he just customized it for you. Mm. Yeah, that didn't exist. In fact, I think there's a whole startup idea somebody should build. But like he built that internally, and now our sales guys, as soon as they get off the call,

27:05 the draft proposal's ready. They just need to tweak three things. And I was like, wow, this is genius. And I again like I think that should just be a start up idea altogether. It's like a you know a s a uh a tool for salespeople that like by the time they get off the call, the AI agent has already figured out the follow up email, the draft, the proposal, the CRM. Thing that it needs to input, et cetera.

27:24 This is kind of a ten out of ten. Idea. Yeah, I think so. I think this might be a ten out of ten I don't know if it's AI marketplace or the sales thing I just said,'cause they're both kinda Well the I don't know anything about the second one, but yeah, that's cool. But the first one 'Cause I'm like thinking like I I I guess like I would r easily give money.

27:41 'Cause a lot of times AI, it feels like I don't know what I don't know, but I know it's important. Uh and it's like if just give me all the examples. Of how this is helpful for me.

27:52 And Just do it. Right. You know what I mean? Like that. Now the the the hard part about a business like this is, of course, marketplaces are incredibly difficult to spin up, right? It's a chicken and egg problem. How do you get supply when there's no demand? How do you get demand when there's no supply? How do you how do you increase are you how do you figure out are you supply constrained or demand constrained? that initial cranking of the crank is really hard. So this is not something that like I would say

28:16 A B B minus entrepreneur can do. You know, like I think I think you basically have to be an A plus entrepreneur to do marketplaces. Uh as just like a maybe a personal belief'cause I think the initial cranking is so difficult. And takes so much s kind of skill and hustle to do.

28:32 But I think it's a a great opportunity when'cause when you build them, they're very valuable when you when you do build them. And so if anybody wants to work on this, feel free to email me, Seanashotori.com or DM me. I wanna I wanna h hear if anybody tries this or w is interested in trying it. Well, how is Fiver taking advantage of uh the AI stuff? Have you seen anything? Dude, I used to use Fiver so much, I don't use it at all anymore. We'll know from the home page. It's still the same old.

28:57 Junk. And I feel like uh I bet if I had to imagine a lot of their business was graphic design. And now it's basically just taking advantage of people who don't know that Chat GPT exists. And they're like Yeah, and they're like, Hey, can you like oh I could just pay this guy to make an image. He gets back to me so fast. It takes a lot of iteration though. But but you know what one thing I heard people do?

29:16 I think there's a there's people who are rolling up the top fiver accounts. 'Cause they're like cool, you have top Uh Real estate under graphic design on Fiverr. So you're just automatically getting, you know, hundreds of jobs a week.

29:29 Input it to you. So they're buying them. And then they're just replacing the creator with AI and like an AI managed service underneath it. And I thought that was pretty fascinating. It's like buying, you know, beachfront property. on the world. But this is yeah, this sounds like a horrible idea. Because that's like uh you know, what happened to the thrash property property like right where the hurricanes keep hitting in Louisiana. Yeah, I mean this sounds horrible. So you know the the key with any roll up is like

30:00 Yes. Either you're gonna get extreme durability. In which case you pay a higher multiple. Or you get unknown durability, but if you're buying it like one X, for example, or you're buying it like one and a half X or two X or something like that.

30:12 You can make it work, right? Like you can You can end up looking like a genius if you if you buy at a low enough multiple. So In something like this, I bet these people have never been offered anything before. It's like, Oh, you'll pay me like A year of earnings or two years of earnings for for If I just walk away right now.

30:28 And then I know that I can kind of increase the the earnings of the cost potential, you know, the c the cost savings by, you know, thirty percent. And as long as this holds for, you know, two years, as long as fiber doesn't just go under the next two years. Every year after that it's profit, right? So you know, you could make it work. It's not like It's not that's not a horrible idea, is what I'm saying.

30:46 My mother in law has this pillow business and it does many, many hundreds, close to seven figures a year in revenue and it's quite profitable. Like she's paying herself a a a good salary. And You know, now that she's got some a bunch of grandkids, she's like I guess I'm just gonna shut this down. And I was like, You know, Smithy, I I don't know anything about e commerce, but I'm pretty s y you know you could sell a business. And she was like

31:10 What do you mean? I was like, Well, someone will pay you something, like It could be one times, it could be eight times. I'm not sure. Your Your salary, like they'll pay you that or your owners' earnings to buy your business, and it blew her mind.

31:23 And she was like Someone will buy this? And it it it it was like amazing to hear this woman who's like killing it just on Etsy. Realize That someone will pay her money.

31:34 Uh I'd like to own this thing. And I don't I have no idea what it's worth. I don't know if it's one times, uh if it's five times what it's worth, but It was pretty cool to see her go through this exercise. Are you doing Are you actually using AI in a meaningful way in anything uh in your company? Or your employees using y I'm sure you use it as a thought partner. Are you using it Like are your staff using it on a daily basis where your company has gotten significantly more productive. Well, the example I just gave you on the sales side, that's probably that was one great most the most impressive example.

32:07 I would say other than that, it's like More Chat GPT. Plus. You know what I mean? It's kinda like oh review this email. It's like, hey, we need to write this thing, we need to like research this thing, we need to

32:23 uh draft something, stuff like that is like the daily stuff. I don't we haven't like replaced job functions yet with AI. That's that's what I'm waiting for. Is like Basically like Oh, we don't need to hire this person.

32:36 Because A I an AI agent or This person with AI is better than this person with another person. But that's where something like this service is uh this actually plays like an interesting part here because you know it's important. But you

32:51 for a variety of reasons, haven't implemented it. Then there's a lot of people anymore. So I I uh you know, I'm not the CEO of any of these businesses. So you know, they The people who run these businesses are They're their heads on the business. They're not as AI curious as I am. And Yeah, but they have the same mindset, which is either I'm either too busy right now or I don't exactly know how to do this, or this sounds like a project that I I'm I'm a little bit ignorant on, but I know that this is interesting. And then you have all these guys who have like In the past three years been

33:19 Like raised on this stuff and they're like Are you a fool? Why aren't you doing it this way, this way, this way? You know what I mean? And there that connection would be very valuable. I remember saying you we both did the newsletter business. And the workflow for The hustle was probably similar than the of the workflow for the Dude, it was so janky.

33:38 So like Mm. What's the output? The output is we gotta write an email. We gotta write an email that's gonna go to you know hundreds of thousands or millions of people

33:48 Tomorrow morning it's gotta basically say Here's the most important. Stories that you should care about? Here's uh what happened. Here's our kind of quick commentary of what it means.

33:58 And let's make you laugh. Right, and l let's entertain you along the way. And let's put in the sponsorships and all that. And there needs to be the right ads. The right ads that need to be in the email. I had a full time person whose job was to do that. And when you say the right ads, what do you mean by the right ads? Just explain the complexity for somebody who's like, Why do you need a full time person to make f what do you mean the right ad? Just put the ad in. Because if you're sending an email to let's say three million people and you make a hundred thousand dollars every time you hit send,

34:23 Sometimes like let's say Target will say, I want to spend one million dollars with you over the course of the next three months and then Warby Parker will say, Well, I want to spend twenty thousand dollars with you over the next three weeks. You have to figure out how to mix and match. So today's email to three million people. Uh Five hundred thousand is gonna see the Warby Parker ad. One uh two point five million is gonna see the target ad, and then next week it's gonna be swapped and you have to make sure that not the same people are seeing the same ad. And no technology, at least when I started

34:54 did any of that. So I had to one person manually do all of this. And It's not crazy complicated, but when the stakes are high and it's like my whole business Mm. And you have to give ad ops was kind of the name of the job, right? Like you're not the sales person, but you're the ad ops person in between.

35:09 So okay, great. So I met a guy who was doing an And there's multiple ads per email. But even if you take the ads out for a second, if you just take the content itself. Okay, so what do you need to do? That means every day somebody's figuring out what are all the top stories today. So there's like a search And then there's a curation. And then you have to like so you you find all the top stories, you make a judgment call on which ones are worth talking about. Then you have to research those topics and then you have to write about you have to summarize them.

35:34 And then you have to maybe add some commentary, some value add. Okay. So we gotta do that every day. And you know, we did it with one or two writers. I think you did it initially with A few writers and so let's say that the cost of production there was like, you know. Let's just call it

35:48 On the lowest end, two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. If w both of us weren't so scrappy, like another person running that business, in fact when we sold the business, it became like closer to a million dollars a year of cost to like do the editorial. Yeah, we were we were definitely spending seven figures. And so

36:05 I met a guy who's doing this entire workflow with AI. So he just did that thing and he was just like cool, I'm gonna do this with AI. So he's like, uh He He was using AI to scan. Specific sources to figure out what stories are hot. Then he would use AI to summarize those articles.

36:20 Then he would use AI to check which influencers were reposting those articles on Twitter as a signal for like Social signal of what are what's important. What's generating buzz. Then he would take that final

36:35 thing and then he would send it to a human dude who was living in Japan. Who would just like proofread it overnight? And they'll be like, Yep, the sall This is like legitimate fact check, just kind of like make sure the AI didn't hallucinate. He's paying that guy like whatever fifty dollars an hour to spend two hours on it. Like a fifty or a hundred bucks a day on this uh on the editing.

36:54 And then he never wrote he never wrote it and he never had a writer. And it Oh, and then it auto formatted it for him? So it created an HTML email for him? And it inserted the ad? And then it sent it out and then it tracked the results and it sent him a report.

37:09 To take it even a step further. This sounds like I'm gonna one up you one up you. I know a guy who is doing the same thing, but it's for local newsletters. And the thing about local newsletters is it's a fantastic business. minus the fact that the profits are totally destroyed. Because you have to have local ad sales and h local writers for every one.

37:30 But if you could just have like lots of newsletters uh it for Raleigh for Nashville, Louisville, but not have the writers, it would be a very great business, right? And he's doing what you're describing, but for local news, and it very quickly spins up a place, uh a newsletter that says, like, hey It and it makes an ad and it says, Hey, Danville in California Do you want news just for Danville? And it goes to a Danville.com or whatever. And he's built this whole local newsletter empire all automated.

37:59 How's it doing? It does six figures right now a month in revenue and it's just him doing it. And so it's him and it's buying ads on Facebook targeting local people to get subscribers. That's awesome. That's great. Very cool.

38:13 Dude, our business is like Oh my God, thank God, right? Thank God we got out. But but why are you saying that? You're saying thank God because it's It's just way different. It's just more competitive now, or what are you what is the underneath what is the underneath that feeling? I have the same feeling, but I think maybe for a different reason. I think uh okay, so when I started in two thousand sixteen People like laughed at us and I know you hear that story a lot, but like people were literally like You. You were that person. Yeah. You said, Why are you doing this stupid drink?

38:43 Yeah. She said people love You you were like, Why are you doing this silly thing? And I was like No, it's like if you read the math, it could be big Now Like I like I d I know these like hipst like hipsters have newsletters. Like it's like It's everyone has a newsletter and it's way more complicated inside of it someone's inbox to stand out.

39:07 And so it was I think I succeeded because it was A silly business that I took seriously. And there weren't that many serious operators in there. And you could say I wasn't even that serious of an operator, but I still succeeded. Now there's actually really smart people trying to win the game and it makes it much harder for Just like You know, it's just harder.

39:29 Let's say you were motivated. To start the hustle. This year. What do you think would be the outcome? Four years from now.

39:37 So the caveat is You're committed to doing it. You're going to work hard on it. Does it have to be the same genre of Kind of. Could be different.

39:46 I think I could build a significantly larger business. I think it would look a lot Closer. to industry dive. So where it would be lots of different newsletters built for job titles that are kind of forgotten and ignored. And then to monetize it, it would be newsletter, uh, it would be advertisements, but then also it would be community peer groups, sort of like Hampton would be on the back end.

40:10 And I think it wouldn't grow as fast and I could own it forever. I think it would be Very, very hard to grow as fast as I grew it. The hustle. What if you did the hustle idea again? I Don't think it would succeed. I think that it would

40:24 I would not succeed. I got to like three hundred thousand subscribers organically in like two years. Like it it was so easy looking back on it. That would never happen again. It it's there's too much noise. I think that to buy subscribers on Facebook it's for actually shockingly the same price. Uh I don't know if you know anything about the market. I don't.

40:42 But I hear it's still like a dollar fifty. But we grew organically. because we got popular on Reddit, on uh hacker news, places like that, and it was considered outlandish and silly and m remarkable what we were doing. It was noteworthy, rather. It's not noteworthy anymore, so it's too hard to have something spread virally now. If you agree.

41:01 Yeah, I think I think all the things you said are true. I but I do think you could do it again and you Yeah, I think you could do I think you could do it again and win because uh You're good at that type of content and that type of business. So I think you would I think you would figure it out again and I think you'd have other advantages, which is that like You know

41:20 Newsletter advertising is a lot more sophisticated and like available than it was back then. So it's also cheaper now, though. So we used to charge I forget what we charge, but I think it was twenty five to forty dollars per one thousand cents. I'm hearing now it's much cheaper because there's so many options. Interesting. Uh. I I didn't know that. When we were doing Milk Road I think we were charging that or more.

41:43 And that was only two, three years ago. So maybe it's changed or maybe it was crypto, so it was like Financial financial newsletters, I think, definitely command a premium. So I'm not sure. But I would never do it again.

41:55 It's hard. It's a way harder business than people realize. It's fucking hard. Can we wrap up with me telling you something funny? Okay, let's do it. Go to this. Go to um Spermracing dot com.

42:07 Have you seen sperm racing? Well even go to it if it's my home page. Yeah. Yeah. They were trying to figure out who to set the sponsorship deck guy. They're like Sean seems like a sperm guy. Guys. Two words. Blank check. So I'd go there. The world's first sperm race and One of the most epic little videos behind it. Okay, so what

42:38 What is this? So click manifesto and just read the first couple lines. Alright. So sperm racing. When people hear it, they ask me the same thing every time. Wait, is this really happening? And the answer is always Hell yeah, it is. But here's the thing sperm racing is not just a joke.

42:54 It's not just some viral idea for the internet to laugh at. It's something much bigger. All right. That's let's see. Let's see if they can pay off that promise. Male fertility is declining like a lot. It's happening quietly, steadily, and nobody's talking about it. And then there's a diagram Of the average sperm count in a man. From the nineteen seventies to today.

43:14 And it's basic cut in half. So we have half as half as much Sperm per milliliter of s semen. Wow. A metric I didn't even know. I didn't even know you could measure that. Didn't even know that existed. T I L. Uh all right.

43:28 And spermability, which is how fast it moves, which is a massive factor in fertility and getting pregnant. Um is a measurable, trackable thing, just like running a race or lifting weight. It's something you can actually improve. And nobody's cared about it until now. So we're turning health into a sport and we they built a racetrack for sperm. Two competitors.

43:46 Two samples. One microscopic finish line and then they have a M S paint diagram of the uh track. Is this a real thing or is it a joke? It's one hundred percent real. Can I watch this live? Can I pay pay-per-view for this? So listen to what they're doing. So here's this is from an article, uh, the Times dot com.

44:04 So once the samples are taken, which I assume that means they have to go backstage'cause like it's gotta be like ready to roll right away. A uh it's gonna be placed into the middle of the stadium and a live video feed that's magnified forty times to display the sperm will track the sample's progress. And the sperm are gonna swim through a uh they typically spend Swim five millimeters per minute. meaning this race is gonna take forty minutes because they're gonna have him swim through this course. The event will run over three races in front of a crow of four thousand spectators and feature

44:37 Play by play commentary. Instant replays. and leaderboards. And this company, according to this article is run by uh like uh three seventeen year olds and they've raised one point five million dollars This is

44:54 Everyone else out there who is working on a product that isn't working, take notes. I genuinely think we should be sponsoring this and or we should be the uh The presenting sponsor. For us bias, baby. They're gonna sell out this venue, five thousand attendees. To watch this, which is hilarious.

45:25 They're trying to raise awareness. But is this suggested awareness? Is this An offshoot of a bigger brand. Or they want to make this a sport. Uh I I don't know. Uh it's hard to th they haven't like they've done the right thing so far, which is they haven't uh relieved the tension from the joke. Uh like you know, the that's I think the way to go about it. But look at the photo that I posted on here where this guy really took a photo of them.

45:50 Eric and it says the future of technology. How beautiful is this? And so I assume That this is all about like content marketing for some type of male fertility startup. But they've done the best thing ever, which is they've not acknowledged that it's a joke. And you might and apparently the founder is Eric Zo, Z H U. But that's like a pretty common name. So you probably know No, I know this guy. I did a phone call with this kid. He was doing a uh a different startup before this that I didn't think was that. Like, did you advise him? Did you did you advise him? You're like I

46:24 I got an idea, hear me out. I said just I said just dream about the future you want to build, and this is what he came up with. What's the secret, Eric, that you know that no one else knows? We wanted flying cars and we instead got sperm racing. Wow, this is this is crazy. Uh fun project though, you know. I've talked about this before, actually, but I think that silly projects like this And not to be insulting because obviously this is actually

46:53 Greatness. But Things that to others silly. Our um Amazing starter businesses.

47:01 And I think that one mistake a lot of people make when you're early on. as a founder is you Try to do A what you think Will work. So you end up doing some like I don't know, some uh a a boring business that you're not really you don't really understand very well, but it sounds good on paper.

47:18 Or You try to, you know, shoot for the moon where you're not r you know, you shoot for the moon, but you don't have a rocket, right? You don't have the skills, the capability, the network, the the whatever. And of of course those can work. And there's no I'm not saying don't do those, but I think another path that I did, which was like My first business was a sushi restaurant chain. Like most outlandish idea. Yours you were doing like

47:41 I don't know what your first verse was, but like You did a hot dog stand, you worked for the American Pickers guy, right? You did like a bunch of random things. That The business itself Isn't great. You know, opportunities of sort of three out of ten, four out of ten.

47:56 But at the time it you don't know any better. But the important thing is that you're gonna build a bunch of like random skills. And so like for example with our sushi restaurant, I learned because we were trying to make stuff, I learned How to pitch investors. I learned how to do I learned Photoshop. I learned how to use After Effects a little bit. I learned how to use iMovie. We created a YouTube channel. We learned how to do uh you know door to door sales. We learned a bunch of random Random experiences that I wouldn't have got had I just A had a traditional job.

48:22 Or B If I had done a startup that was just like more serious in nature. I guess because the start up was like a little bit fun. I was willing to do things that Uh or it felt normal. Once once the first idea is a little bit fun, you you know, you then your marketing idea can be a little fun and out there. And then your hiring practice can be a little fun and out there. You can just sort of stack on from there.

48:41 when you kind of have like what feels more like a sandbox where you could be creative versus when you feel like you have a uh you're on tight, tight rails of what you're supposed to do. I don't know if that makes a lot of sense, but that makes a lot of sense. And I agree with it. And I also think it reminds me of me. We didn't do something as anywhere near as interesting or cool as this. But like We've talked about Henry and Dylan, those those guys who were doing uh clip, they were making content, they have this like little like animation what's it called? Like a service business. Like a funny newsletter. They'll do like stu they came to our house and they built our podcast studios. They're just

49:14 Doing a bunch of random shit that was like building little skills for them. They weren't experts in any of those things, but they became expert level doing them. And uh they're sort of pivoting from one idea to the next. And to others it might look like they're sort of lost, but I've seen it work out very well for myself and my friends who I was doing it with. And so I don't know if you could advise people to do that, but if you're already doing that, I would say

49:34 Don't sweat it. That can it can actually pay off. And Eric Zoo on uh is listening to this podcast right now, and he's saying I need to clip this and send this to my Chinese immigrant parents who are like they still the you know, they're not on board with sperm. Uh and imagine being seventeen years old and selling out a four thousand person at uh uh stadium. I mean, that's pretty that's pretty baller. Yeah, although they're just saying it's sold out. Is it actually sold sold out? Uh when you go to the ticketmaster ticket, let's say when you when when you go to ticketmaster to buy a ticket, there's a lot of blue.

50:05 You know, there's a lot of open seats, so I I I don't know. Uh the you know, I I'm not exactly sure, but I could see this being a pretty fun thing for a bunch of college kids. Like Are you gonna go watch the sperm event? The sperm race? Even the logo is so good. Everything about the branding is extremely well done. Oh no, event canceled. What? Oh no.

50:29 Alright, update from the sperm guy. He's I go, is the event canceled? I don't see it on Ticketmaster. He goes No, we got F over by the by the Palladium, I guess the the the venue. They weren't happy with the T M Z interview and some other stuff. And then he goes, It's still the same day, but we moved it to LA Center Studios. Tickets will redrop Tuesday. Oh my God.

50:50 What is what is asking what the other stuff is. Sounds like a sticky situation. Alright, that's it, that's the pod. I put my law in it like my day song On the road less travel never looking back

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