AI transcript
0:00:00 – And by the way, you know how I know
0:00:02 this is a great episode?
0:00:04 ‘Cause I feel like I need to get off this
0:00:05 and go do these ideas right now.
0:00:06 Like I don’t even want to finish this episode.
0:00:08 I want to go do one of these things right now.
0:00:10 That’s how I know this is a banger.
0:00:12 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:15 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:17 ♪ I put my all in it like the days of ♪
0:00:19 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:00:21 – Have you guys ever heard this idea
0:00:26 that the Australian accent is just drunk English accent?
0:00:29 Because like Australia was populated
0:00:32 by all like the criminals or the drunkards from England
0:00:35 and that the accent in Australia
0:00:37 is just a drunk London guy.
0:00:39 – Still far off.
0:00:41 There’s a great Paul Graham blog post
0:00:43 that I don’t know if you guys have read called Cities.
0:00:45 I think it’s called Cities and Ambition.
0:00:46 And he has this concept in it.
0:00:49 He says that every city whispers something to you.
0:00:51 Every city is whispering something.
0:00:55 So he’s like, you know, maybe it’s in LA, right?
0:00:57 The whisper that’s there for you
0:00:59 is, you know, become somebody, right?
0:01:00 Become like sort of known,
0:01:03 become a power player, a famous person basically.
0:01:04 You’re not famous enough.
0:01:06 And in Silicon Valley, he says,
0:01:08 the whisper is you’re not ambitious enough
0:01:10 because the status symbol here
0:01:13 is not who’s the most beautiful or the most famous
0:01:15 or even the most rich, to be honest.
0:01:15 The status symbol is like,
0:01:18 who’s doing the big mission here, right?
0:01:21 Who’s like the AI guys now, they’re the highest status.
0:01:24 Even if you have a really amazing,
0:01:25 if you’re the CEO of Workday
0:01:28 and you’re like, dude, I got a $80 billion company over here,
0:01:30 you’re low status compared to the, you know,
0:01:32 the guy who’s trying to make, you know,
0:01:34 the next version of an LLM.
0:01:36 And so he says, New York whisper something.
0:01:38 He basically is like, you should think about
0:01:39 which cities you want to live in
0:01:40 because that’s what’s going to get whispered
0:01:42 to you all the time.
0:01:44 I don’t know what it would be for Austin, I’m curious.
0:01:45 You guys, Sam, you’ve lived there.
0:01:47 What’s the Austin whisper?
0:01:48 – The Austin whisper is,
0:01:53 how do you live a fit life on your own terms,
0:01:55 which means like being very balanced.
0:01:58 So Austin is very much a balance.
0:02:01 So how do you work six hours a week, go for walks,
0:02:04 be with your family, wake up early, be healthy.
0:02:06 Austin is a place of balance, I think.
0:02:08 – George, what’s the Dubai whisper right now?
0:02:11 – Is it like a, like, you’re poor?
0:02:13 (laughing)
0:02:17 – There’s definitely a little bit of that.
0:02:20 Like I never thought I would have ended up being in Dubai
0:02:22 for a little bit of time,
0:02:25 but it was during COVID and the second lockdown came along.
0:02:27 And I wanted to go to the mountains by myself
0:02:30 and Chris, my friend from Modern Wisdom, said come to Dubai.
0:02:33 And I was like, I grew up reading like Richard Dawkins,
0:02:34 Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens.
0:02:36 I’m scared of going to like an Islamic country.
0:02:40 And Chris gave me the ultimate reply of don’t be a virgin, come.
0:02:43 And I went for two weeks, stayed for three years,
0:02:48 but it’s a very unique, weird, bizarre, fascinating place.
0:02:49 – That’s great.
0:02:50 All right, let’s jump in.
0:02:53 So you have, you knew that we love business ideas
0:02:54 and I’ll give you two things.
0:02:56 You wrote an intro for yourself, I’m gonna read it,
0:02:57 but I think you didn’t do yourself justice.
0:03:00 So you said, you know, I’m excited to come on.
0:03:02 You said, I don’t have crazy high stakes,
0:03:04 huge exits of my business.
0:03:06 I’m more of a mum’s basement writing ideas online,
0:03:09 coming up with weird ideas and essays kind of guy.
0:03:12 So, you know, I have some ideas, some business ideas
0:03:14 and opportunities, but I have a lot of philosophies
0:03:16 and frameworks.
0:03:17 I think that’s great.
0:03:18 You also didn’t do yourself full justice.
0:03:20 You have a great marketing agency.
0:03:22 So you have a successful business there.
0:03:25 Also, you’re not just a kid in the basement writing essays.
0:03:26 You’re a kid in the basement writing essays.
0:03:29 They get read by everybody from, you know,
0:03:31 Joe Schmoe to Elon Musk.
0:03:33 Elon’s been retweeting you a lot lately.
0:03:35 And I think that’s a good sign, bro.
0:03:36 You’ve made it.
0:03:37 – I appreciate that.
0:03:39 You’re killing the British syndrome out of me.
0:03:40 So I do appreciate that.
0:03:42 – What happens when Elon retweets you, by the way?
0:03:44 Do you get like a lot of traffic?
0:03:46 – Yeah, I get quite a lot of traffic.
0:03:47 I mean, the one thing I did notice of,
0:03:50 I’ve reached like hundreds of millions of people on Twitter
0:03:52 and I’ve never had one DM from a girl.
0:03:55 And then Chris Williamson started sharing my videos
0:03:57 on Instagram and it changed a little bit.
0:04:00 Like it’s all men tech, things on Twitter, like that.
0:04:02 But yeah, you do get quite a lot of traffic.
0:04:05 The notifications bell does start to break a little bit.
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0:04:44 All right, so let’s start with business ideas.
0:04:46 What have you got for us?
0:04:47 What are the opportunities, ideas,
0:04:49 little half baked startups
0:04:51 that you’re in your mind right now?
0:04:53 – Yeah, so as Sean kind of mentioned,
0:04:55 I run the ad professor account.
0:04:57 So people won’t know that on Twitter as well.
0:04:59 We make some of the best ads online.
0:05:02 I’m obsessed with, from an advertising angle.
0:05:05 And all my business ideas, think of the advert first.
0:05:07 And then I kind of work from that.
0:05:10 So the first business idea that I think would be pretty cool
0:05:13 that I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never got round to
0:05:15 is essentially, I know you guys love person
0:05:18 outing tests, like the personality test business model
0:05:22 that exists, it’s quite an easy find out about yourself.
0:05:24 Everybody’s fascinated by it,
0:05:26 even if a lot of it is pseudoscience.
0:05:30 And I’ll never forget the day I’m in the car with my mom.
0:05:31 Hope she don’t mind me telling the story.
0:05:33 I’m in the car with my mom, my dad’s there,
0:05:35 my brothers are there, my mom’s heavily dyslexic.
0:05:37 So she doesn’t want to do the personality tests,
0:05:38 but she wants me to read it for her.
0:05:40 And then she’s answering.
0:05:42 So I’m reading out the question of,
0:05:45 I don’t like to get into arguments and she’ll be like,
0:05:47 oh, I heavily disagree.
0:05:49 And then me and my dad are like, no, heavily agree.
0:05:52 So quickly realized that personality tests are often
0:05:55 answers that you want to be true about yourself
0:05:57 versus the actual reality.
0:06:00 And this kind of idea of a self-awareness test
0:06:02 where the personality test, you potentially fill out,
0:06:05 but everybody in your close circle, so in your wife,
0:06:09 your parents, your business partner fills out
0:06:10 and you have a note there.
0:06:12 Reason why I like this idea is it’s a little bit
0:06:13 of a lot of collusion.
0:06:15 You’ve got one stacking on personality tests
0:06:18 that have always worked, but two, the social graph effect,
0:06:20 and then three, the advert angle of being able
0:06:23 to run adverts directly on,
0:06:24 find out what your wife thinks about you.
0:06:26 The question I would have is,
0:06:29 is it a bit of a business, do you like it?
0:06:30 – It is a great idea.
0:06:32 I’ve been talking about tests like this.
0:06:37 I have like a notebook of like, what’s the new IQ test?
0:06:39 The five languages test.
0:06:40 And I’ve been really fascinated,
0:06:44 could you run a Facebook ad funnel to one of these businesses?
0:06:45 ‘Cause I think most of the people who do this,
0:06:46 they do it like a book funnel,
0:06:49 which is like the slowest old way of doing things.
0:06:53 They write a great book about the love languages thing
0:06:54 and then in it, like Strengths Finders,
0:06:56 they write a book and then in it,
0:06:59 they give you like a code or whatever to go take the test
0:07:01 and you go pay for the test.
0:07:03 But I love this for the reason you just described
0:07:05 the viral factor.
0:07:07 Can I tell you a story of why I think this might work?
0:07:10 So when I first moved to Silicon Valley,
0:07:11 I worked for this guy, Michael Birch,
0:07:14 and he had built a social network called Bebo,
0:07:16 that he sold for $850 million.
0:07:17 But before he built Bebo,
0:07:20 he built a social network called Ringo,
0:07:21 that was the same exact thing as Bebo,
0:07:24 but just like 12 months earlier,
0:07:27 that he sold for like $2 or $3 million.
0:07:30 And what he did was he built Ringo, it started to grow.
0:07:32 He didn’t know, he couldn’t keep up with the server costs.
0:07:34 He didn’t know how, like at the time, there was no Facebook.
0:07:36 Like he didn’t know how social networks
0:07:37 were ever gonna make money.
0:07:39 So he was at a meetup and a guy offered him
0:07:43 like four million bucks for it and he’s like, done.
0:07:44 Then he worked for that guy
0:07:46 and they had a quiz company called Tickle.
0:07:48 And Tickle was basically like,
0:07:52 it started out more on the Myers-Briggs like intellectual tests.
0:07:53 – Then it just became everything.
0:07:55 – Then it became what breed of dog are you?
0:07:57 And turns out what breed of dog are you?
0:07:58 Was way more viral than like,
0:08:01 what is your life passion supposed to be, right?
0:08:03 There’s like harder, more introspective tests.
0:08:05 People wanted the, what dog are you?
0:08:06 And so what dog are you went really viral?
0:08:08 They sold Tickle for $100 million to Monster.
0:08:13 So he was like, holy shit, quizzes are this amazing viral thing.
0:08:17 ‘Cause people want, like you said,
0:08:19 their favorite subject is themselves.
0:08:22 Then they’re curious to know the answer, where do I land?
0:08:25 And then when they’re done, they post or they share
0:08:27 where they landed and other people say, ooh,
0:08:28 that’s what you are, I wonder what I am.
0:08:29 And they go take it as well.
0:08:32 So the only difference he made between Ringo,
0:08:34 the thing that was growing kind of fast
0:08:38 and sold for four million and Bebo, which grew really fast,
0:08:41 a million users in nine days, the first nine days,
0:08:44 the only change he made was that when he launched Bebo,
0:08:47 it was a copy paste of Ringo, but with one difference.
0:08:48 Instead of filling out a profile,
0:08:50 you just started off with a personality quiz,
0:08:53 which was the best, I think it was called the best friend test.
0:08:55 It was how well do you know me?
0:08:56 So you would answer questions about yourself
0:08:58 and then other people would try to,
0:08:59 and you would say, you would send it to your friends
0:09:01 and be like, see how well you know me.
0:09:03 And then it would show you who knows you the best
0:09:04 and you would kind of compete.
0:09:06 And when after they would fill yours out,
0:09:07 like I’m guessing how well I know you,
0:09:10 then I would fill my own out and I would send it back to you.
0:09:13 And so it went super viral off this one mechanism.
0:09:15 And so the thing you described,
0:09:16 I think would work really well
0:09:18 because it is a how well do you know me,
0:09:20 but your version was how well do I know myself?
0:09:22 But I think the real question there actually is,
0:09:24 what do other people think about me?
0:09:27 Which is probably the biggest question that I have
0:09:29 is what do other people think about me?
0:09:32 And can I kind of anonymously find that information out?
0:09:37 – So Sean, do you remember like six episodes ago,
0:09:39 that you were talking about going to Victoria
0:09:43 and how someone said they did this like-
0:09:43 – Jack scheme.
0:09:47 – Yeah, they did this like executive coaching thing
0:09:49 where you do a quiz and it tells you about yourself.
0:09:51 So I loved that.
0:09:52 And turns out with Hampton,
0:09:55 we have access to thousands of executives.
0:09:58 And so we were thinking about, should we integrate this?
0:10:01 And so we’re currently testing it actually with like-
0:10:02 – That’s a smart idea.
0:10:05 – Three or four customers where what we’ve done
0:10:07 is we’ve created a quiz like you’ve described, George,
0:10:11 where it talks about like whatever you’re asking your mother,
0:10:14 like these questions of like what’s your opinion of yourself
0:10:15 for these questions.
0:10:20 And then you actually send it to 20 different co-workers,
0:10:22 wife, husband, whatever.
0:10:24 And then you get the results and we have put together
0:10:25 this presentation to help you improve.
0:10:27 And maybe it’s a product that would charge thousands
0:10:28 of dollars for.
0:10:30 – George, do you know about this?
0:10:31 Like the thing we’re talking about,
0:10:32 have you ever heard about this?
0:10:33 – No.
0:10:35 So this guy basically does this for executives
0:10:39 and it’s like a 360, like basically brutal honesty,
0:10:40 punch in the face.
0:10:42 So that’s the idea is like,
0:10:45 he charges, I think like 30 grand for this.
0:10:47 You pay $30,000 to take this test.
0:10:48 And what they do is they go interview.
0:10:49 It’s not just a quiz.
0:10:52 They go and actually like sit down, talk, interview your wife,
0:10:55 your business partner, your people who manage you,
0:10:57 people who you manage, all this stuff.
0:11:00 And they then come back to you with like,
0:11:01 here’s like the truth.
0:11:02 Here’s where you’re amazing.
0:11:05 Here’s maybe where you rub people the wrong way.
0:11:07 And here’s, you know, something that’s, yeah,
0:11:09 whatever they give you that, that feedback.
0:11:10 I don’t know how great it is,
0:11:13 but the two people I know who have done it were both like,
0:11:15 yeah, this was massive for me.
0:11:16 Now they were both also in that phase
0:11:18 where they sold their company for hundreds of millions
0:11:20 of dollars and needed a little bit of direction
0:11:22 and purpose and wanting to indulge.
0:11:23 It’s a luxury item.
0:11:26 – They are a thirsty person asking for water.
0:11:27 – Yeah, exactly.
0:11:29 But hey, Hampton is a group of thirsty people
0:11:30 asking for water.
0:11:32 So Sam, my prediction is,
0:11:33 I think you will either double
0:11:36 or triple the lifetime value of your customers
0:11:37 if you integrate this thing.
0:11:39 I think that is a genius idea, Sam.
0:11:41 – So George, you got any more tips for me?
0:11:44 (laughing)
0:11:45 – So people, what I like about this
0:11:48 is it rides a few societal means as well.
0:11:50 You’ve seen the gurus on Instagram chat
0:11:52 about self-awareness.
0:11:54 But what does that actually mean?
0:11:56 And show me where that grows calling.
0:11:58 And what does self-awareness actually mean?
0:12:01 Whereas this, it’s a quite a bit of a practical way
0:12:03 of seizing self-awareness.
0:12:07 And I remember there’s a line from Daniel Kahneman
0:12:08 who wrote “Thinking Fast and Slow.”
0:12:12 So he’s the ultimate cognitive behavioral researcher,
0:12:13 a Nobel Prize winner.
0:12:15 Every cognitive bias you can think of
0:12:17 came largely downstream of Daniel Kahneman.
0:12:19 He’s the Godfabra.
0:12:21 And his overwhelming lesson was that
0:12:23 essentially all that research taught him nothing.
0:12:25 And the only thing it taught him was
0:12:27 it’s much easier to see mistakes in other people
0:12:28 than to see it in yourself.
0:12:30 And this is that kind of idea, right?
0:12:33 That other people, we don’t notice we have bad breath,
0:12:36 but other people can realize within seconds.
0:12:38 We don’t realize we’re dating the wrong partner
0:12:40 till 20 years in horrific divorce,
0:12:42 but your best friend sees it in two minutes.
0:12:45 So there is something about when your ego’s removed from it
0:12:47 and other people see things a lot clearer than you can.
0:12:50 – Wasn’t his other takeaway was that
0:12:51 he was like, at the end of his life, he was like,
0:12:54 “Oh, I think I was wrong.”
0:12:57 I think a bunch of this research,
0:12:58 he like did this book and it was amazing.
0:13:02 He goes, “I think we got a lot wrong about that.”
0:13:03 – Is that true?
0:13:04 Is that what happened?
0:13:05 – Is that what happened, George?
0:13:07 It was something like that where he like,
0:13:09 it’s like, you know, we said these like five theories
0:13:12 and like these three, I think actually are wrong.
0:13:14 – There’s a few, he definitely got wrong,
0:13:16 but there’s a few funny ones of where
0:13:18 he talks about planning fallacy.
0:13:20 And even knowing planning fallacy
0:13:22 doesn’t prevent planning fallacy.
0:13:23 So even the guys that came up with the idea
0:13:26 of planning fallacy, when they were putting in research
0:13:30 of how do we teach planning fallacy to kids at schools
0:13:33 or to any curriculum, they even, they underestimated
0:13:35 how long it would take for the curriculum
0:13:36 of planning fallacy itself.
0:13:39 So just because you know the cognitive biases
0:13:40 doesn’t mean you can escape them.
0:13:41 – What is that?
0:13:42 What’s the planning fallacy?
0:13:44 – The planning fallacy is this idea
0:13:48 that if you say, I’m gonna achieve X within a month,
0:13:50 it will probably take two months.
0:13:52 And no matter how long, and even being aware
0:13:54 of the planning fallacy doesn’t prevent it
0:13:55 from not happening.
0:13:57 So you constantly, it takes three times as long
0:13:59 as you think it will and costs twice as much.
0:14:02 Which is interesting when you read Elon’s biography,
0:14:03 I wonder if that’s one of the reasons
0:14:06 why he just always sets absolutely absurd deadlines.
0:14:08 Because he knows that even with that fact
0:14:09 and then it’s still going to be later than you think.
0:14:11 – Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you.
0:14:13 So is the way to fix that, that you make
0:14:15 stupidly ambitious goals, and then like if it’s
0:14:17 where you shoot for the stars, and if you miss,
0:14:19 you land on the moon type of vibe?
0:14:20 – That’s what he does.
0:14:22 I think there’s definitely something to that,
0:14:24 but I wonder if you can actually bullshit yourself
0:14:26 to that level, I don’t know.
0:14:28 – Yeah, the other, I think the other way to do it
0:14:29 is you burn the boat, so you make it where
0:14:30 it has to get done.
0:14:32 There is no way for it to spill over.
0:14:34 Like it’s not physically possible,
0:14:36 because that’s when the sort of the remarkable
0:14:37 things happen, right?
0:14:40 Like, you know, it’s when he runs out of money
0:14:42 and the last rocket has to take off.
0:14:44 It can’t explode like the previous three.
0:14:46 That’s the rocket that actually went
0:14:47 because he’s actually out of money at that point.
0:14:50 There is no other way.
0:14:52 And I think there’s a lot of remarkable stories
0:14:54 of people when they’re actually backed
0:14:55 into a corner and there’s no out.
0:14:58 That’s when they’re able to perform the miraculous.
0:14:59 They’re able to do what seemingly
0:15:01 couldn’t have been done before.
0:15:02 You said something interesting
0:15:03 I want to go back to real quick.
0:15:05 You said, when I think about businesses,
0:15:08 I start with the advert, which is the ad,
0:15:10 and you work backwards to the business.
0:15:13 So, explain that more, ’cause I think it’s really smart.
0:15:14 What do you mean by that?
0:15:17 Or maybe what’s an example of that?
0:15:21 – I’ve helped so many founders with their advertising.
0:15:25 And the amount of them will spend years on their idea
0:15:28 and then realize there’s no distribution for this thing.
0:15:30 It just isn’t distributed native.
0:15:34 So, I always think from the compression algorithm.
0:15:36 I know we spoke about this, Sean,
0:15:41 of like a sticky idea, which is essentially all adverts,
0:15:43 like good adverts themselves are a sticky idea,
0:15:46 which is essentially the following algorithm
0:15:50 of total amounts of emotion times number of people
0:15:52 that can understand it.
0:15:55 And that is what makes ultimately a good advert.
0:15:57 And if I can’t compress it down,
0:15:59 ’cause people talk about an elevator pitch,
0:16:00 it’s almost like the ad pitch, right?
0:16:02 Can you compress this thing down
0:16:05 to a person who doesn’t give a fuck about you,
0:16:06 scrolling in their feed?
0:16:09 And then immediately going,
0:16:11 “I’m gonna give money towards this.”
0:16:12 That two-second snapshot.
0:16:14 And I think if you can’t compress that down,
0:16:17 it needs more work.
0:16:22 – You have an idea on here.
0:16:24 And the sentence that you’re gonna reply with
0:16:25 when I ask what your second idea is,
0:16:27 it’s just the most ridiculous sentence
0:16:28 that will ever be said on this podcast.
0:16:30 So, what’s that one?
0:16:31 – Yeah. – Number two.
0:16:33 – Number two.
0:16:34 Sean already knows me quite well,
0:16:36 so he knows I’m an absolute weirdo, Sam,
0:16:40 but obviously first impressions down ruining it for you.
0:16:41 – I love weirdos.
0:16:42 This is great. – Cool.
0:16:43 – This is exactly what I’m about.
0:16:47 – So, sex is going to potentially die
0:16:49 as a reproductive mechanism.
0:16:52 So, if we just go through the history of sex,
0:16:56 so if you could imagine a chart of sex to baby ratio
0:16:58 from like the 1500s.
0:16:59 So, you have the first official condom
0:17:01 that came in in 1855.
0:17:03 There’s talk that it was actually in the 1500s,
0:17:04 people using animal parts,
0:17:06 but I’ve never heard that. – Condom as we know it.
0:17:07 The condom as we know it now.
0:17:08 – Like a sheep intestine.
0:17:09 – Yeah.
0:17:11 – Now, that’s the dropship in store right there, right?
0:17:13 (laughing)
0:17:16 And then the morning after pill came in the 1920s,
0:17:18 and then full effecting like the 1970s.
0:17:21 So, if you can imagine number of times having sex to baby,
0:17:24 it’s going like this with time, it’s completely plummeting.
0:17:27 What I think is looking more and more likely with,
0:17:30 and another, we talk about advert first approach,
0:17:31 I think you spoke about this before, Sean,
0:17:34 when you look at different technologies coming in,
0:17:36 so you’ve obviously got IVF,
0:17:39 you’ve got biobanks with lots of genetic data,
0:17:42 you’ve got phenotype tests, genotype tests.
0:17:44 I think you’re already seeing this
0:17:46 with my friend, Jonathan,
0:17:48 has a company that they’re going to be watching
0:17:49 probably about next year,
0:17:51 that essentially, particularly for wealthy people,
0:17:53 then I think it will trickle down society
0:17:55 where you have 10 embryos,
0:17:58 and they can basically map now, okay?
0:18:00 If you want to avoid diabetes,
0:18:03 Crohn’s disease, cancer, et cetera,
0:18:06 we recommend this embryo selection,
0:18:08 and then obviously it’s going to probably get weirder
0:18:11 with time, whether that’s height, eye color, IQ,
0:18:12 things like that.
0:18:15 So we’re really on the precipice of this,
0:18:17 and all you’re going to need is a few people
0:18:20 with being able to crunch the data,
0:18:23 and it’s going to be a wild couple of years.
0:18:24 – So that’s actually pretty convincing,
0:18:26 because Sam’s right, when I read this,
0:18:28 he said we’re one of the last generations
0:18:29 to be created via sex.
0:18:31 I was like, I don’t know what the hell
0:18:33 he’s talking about, test two babies,
0:18:35 and then, but when you just made that case,
0:18:39 I got to admit, it went from George’s nuts to,
0:18:41 oh, he’s right, which is basically that like,
0:18:45 we already have the tech now to basically have a baby,
0:18:48 to create a baby without having sex.
0:18:49 Cool, IVF does that all the time.
0:18:51 And then when you say, well, what’s the benefit?
0:18:53 The benefit is selection, right?
0:18:57 So first it’s de-selection of horrible diseases.
0:18:59 Who can argue against that?
0:19:01 Then you have pro-selection, which is,
0:19:04 do you want the blue-eyed, smarter, taller?
0:19:05 Like, what do you want, right?
0:19:06 The higher likelihood chance, right?
0:19:08 And let’s say that science is making
0:19:10 that more and more possible over time.
0:19:12 Seems like that’s where the puck is going.
0:19:14 At that point, are you going to be the parent
0:19:16 who’s like, nah, I’m crap shooting it.
0:19:18 I’m just rolling the dice.
0:19:20 I’m just going to go do the animal way.
0:19:22 We’re going to in and out this burger animal style.
0:19:23 We’re just going to go do it,
0:19:24 and then whatever happens happens.
0:19:28 Whereas all your friends and neighbors are the ones,
0:19:30 you know, hand-picking best babies out of test tubes
0:19:33 to say, we want the embryo that’s going to be
0:19:36 the healthiest, the most sort of setup to thrive.
0:19:39 It seems like you’re at a disadvantage
0:19:41 if you’re going to go choose the old-school way, right?
0:19:45 It’s driving stick when the world moves to automatic.
0:19:47 – When I read the sentence, George, I was like,
0:19:50 when George is going to love the Earth,
0:19:51 when it comes back down to reality,
0:19:53 like once he leaves the Mars,
0:19:55 because you’re going to love Earth, it’s great.
0:19:56 – We have water in here.
0:20:00 – Yeah, but then I realized, hey, guess what?
0:20:03 I had my child via IVF, so–
0:20:06 – I wasn’t going to say it, but Sam, did this.
0:20:08 – Exactly what you are describing.
0:20:10 – I did it, my friend.
0:20:14 Yeah, and listen, we did it because there’s a gene
0:20:18 that runs in our blood that we didn’t want to pass on,
0:20:20 and we did it.
0:20:22 Mission accomplished, we eliminated that gene.
0:20:23 We got rid of the target.
0:20:24 – The two sexy gene, dude?
0:20:25 – Yeah.
0:20:26 – You got rid of that?
0:20:27 Damn.
0:20:28 (laughing)
0:20:31 Being beautiful is causing too many problems for you.
0:20:35 – Yeah, we wanted our kids to be 5’8″, and it worked.
0:20:39 And so, yeah, I did the exact thing you’re talking about.
0:20:41 – I’m going to get rid of the British self-doubt.
0:20:43 I think, I guess there’s two types of people that hear this.
0:20:47 There’s one type that goes, this is really weird.
0:20:48 Why would anybody ever do this?
0:20:51 And the second type goes, oh my God,
0:20:53 I’ve been so worried about this family hereditary condition
0:20:55 for so, so long, of course.
0:20:56 So the first people, if you actually hear that,
0:20:58 I think that you’re probably quite lucky
0:20:59 that you don’t have it.
0:21:01 But anybody who has, I’ve got a few different
0:21:03 family chronic conditions.
0:21:04 And as soon as I heard this, I was like,
0:21:07 oh, if I could not see my child go through pain
0:21:09 that I’ve seen other family members go through,
0:21:12 whatever money this takes, goes back to Sean’s point,
0:21:14 work backwards from the Facebook ad.
0:21:17 Like, are you concerned about ABC, diabetes,
0:21:21 Crohn’s disease, insert, condition, funnel right there?
0:21:23 And immediately, you can see how you can have very wealthy
0:21:25 people paying a lot of money for that.
0:21:26 And with time, the unit of economics
0:21:28 will go down further and further.
0:21:30 – And it also makes sense because people are waiting.
0:21:33 Like, I’ve got so many friends who are in their 30s,
0:21:36 late 30s, and they’re wanting to have their first kid
0:21:38 because they’re yuppies and they focused on career
0:21:39 for a long time.
0:21:40 And then you get in your late 30s and you’re like,
0:21:42 shit, my parts aren’t working as they’re supposed to.
0:21:46 Like, I could use a little help to make this happen.
0:21:49 It’s so, so much more common than I ever thought.
0:21:50 – So, funny story.
0:21:52 So we were doing the podcast with somebody
0:21:56 who’s super, super wealthy, like a billionaire.
0:21:58 And before we did the pod, I wanted to meet the person.
0:22:00 So I went to their house, hung out with them,
0:22:01 got to know them a little bit.
0:22:02 Ben was with me.
0:22:04 And we, so we hung out, it was great.
0:22:06 We had a long conversation about a bunch of different
0:22:09 subjects, business, tech, life, blah, blah, blah.
0:22:11 And somewhere along the way, this person was like,
0:22:12 they mentioned, oh yeah, we, you know,
0:22:14 I have this many kids and I’m expecting it.
0:22:15 We’re expecting our next one.
0:22:17 We’re like, oh, congratulations.
0:22:18 Anyways, we leave.
0:22:19 And so when we’re leaving the house, we, you know,
0:22:22 say bye to everybody, you know, meet the family, say bye.
0:22:24 Afterwards, I’m like, Ben, so what’s the,
0:22:25 what were your big like notes?
0:22:26 What were your takeaways?
0:22:27 So what did we learn?
0:22:29 Wow, we just got this amazing access to this person.
0:22:32 None of this was recorded, but like we can learn from this.
0:22:34 What, what did we learn?
0:22:36 And I had like all these like business nuggets.
0:22:38 Like, oh, he mentioned this growth tactic.
0:22:41 Oh, he said, this was the reason why that thing succeeded.
0:22:42 And Ben goes, and look at his notes.
0:22:45 He goes, oh, I found the ultimate luxury item.
0:22:47 I was like, wait, like his car or what are you talking about?
0:22:50 And cause he had showed us his garage of cool cars.
0:22:54 And he’s like, no, surrogate.
0:22:56 I was like, what, because when we were walking out,
0:22:58 we saw his wife and he said like,
0:23:00 we’re expecting a baby next month,
0:23:02 but his wife is not nine months pregnant.
0:23:03 Fucking clubbo.
0:23:05 He’s like, that’s amazing.
0:23:07 He’s like, that is gotta be, he’s like, right?
0:23:09 That’s gotta be the ultimate luxury item.
0:23:11 It’s like, you don’t have to go through
0:23:15 like this like incredible body, you know, experience
0:23:17 to carry and then birth this baby.
0:23:18 That’s the ultimate luxury.
0:23:20 And so I started laughing at that.
0:23:22 And I thought, he’s kind of right.
0:23:23 I think there is.
0:23:25 I so disagree with you on that.
0:23:25 You disagree that what?
0:23:27 That it’s a luxury item?
0:23:29 Or that everybody wants it?
0:23:31 No, I think, I don’t want, I mean, look,
0:23:33 it’s a bunch of dudes talking about shit
0:23:34 that we ain’t gonna experience.
0:23:35 But like-
0:23:36 Dude, I could barely form a sentence.
0:23:37 I called it a body transformation.
0:23:38 Yeah.
0:23:40 (laughing)
0:23:42 I have three kids and I still don’t really understand
0:23:42 what’s going on.
0:23:45 Yeah, but no, I think that’s like a necessary thing
0:23:48 to go through in order to bond with your kid.
0:23:49 So I don’t-
0:23:50 That’s like saying, if you’re adopted,
0:23:51 you’re not gonna have a bond.
0:23:54 I think there’s a lot of new ones to that.
0:23:55 But George, what do you think?
0:23:59 I mean, I like these things because I don’t-
0:24:01 Tell me your opinion on what we should do
0:24:02 with women’s bodies.
0:24:04 (laughing)
0:24:05 Yeah, put me on the spot there.
0:24:07 Okay, I’ll give you like a different angle to this.
0:24:11 When I, so my wife wanted to deliver naturally,
0:24:13 so no medication, no nothing.
0:24:14 And I was like, are you nuts?
0:24:15 Why are you trying to do this the hard way?
0:24:16 She’s like, no, that’s what I want to do.
0:24:18 So we went to this birthing class,
0:24:21 giving birth the natural way.
0:24:24 By far the most like scarred into my brain,
0:24:27 you know, three hours I’ve ever been in.
0:24:30 And one of the things that I raised my hand at one point
0:24:31 ’cause it’s like 90 minutes in
0:24:32 and they’re just describing
0:24:34 what seems like voluntary torture.
0:24:37 And I’m like, hey, I just gotta ask like,
0:24:39 is this what most people do or?
0:24:42 And she’s like, no, I think she said 80 something percent,
0:24:45 85% of people choose an epidural.
0:24:47 And I was like, makes sense to me.
0:24:50 And epidural is also kind of a newer technology, right?
0:24:52 Like so for, you know, hundreds of years,
0:24:53 there was no such thing as an epidural,
0:24:56 but once you have the option to have a baby
0:24:59 that without, you know, being able to feel all of the pain
0:25:01 and the delivery and the labor,
0:25:03 obviously a lot of people opted into that.
0:25:05 And so there’s a whole bunch of like birth businesses
0:25:08 that are like, you know, the epidural is a birth business.
0:25:09 Like after we had our baby, they’re like,
0:25:10 do you want to freeze the cord blood
0:25:11 and like eat the placenta?
0:25:12 And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about,
0:25:15 but like no to the eating, freezing, what’s that for?
0:25:17 They’re like, well, if your kid ever has a thing
0:25:20 and they need a, you know, stem cells,
0:25:22 this is like super rich thing of stem cells on a cool.
0:25:23 So how does this work?
0:25:25 And they go, well, we’re going to take the cord
0:25:26 right when the baby’s born
0:25:29 and this might save your baby’s life someday,
0:25:30 but we’re just going to freeze it
0:25:32 and you’re going to pay us, you know, a couple of thousand
0:25:35 dollars now and then like $500 a year for now
0:25:37 until the end of the time.
0:25:38 And I was like, okay, yes,
0:25:40 but also how do I go buy one of these businesses?
0:25:41 Because this is the most incredible business
0:25:42 I’ve ever heard of.
0:25:45 You’re playing on parents fear at a time
0:25:47 when all of their loving dolphins are kicking up
0:25:48 and they’re like, okay, my purpose in life
0:25:50 is to protect this baby.
0:25:52 And then it’s a set it and forget it.
0:25:56 You know, the tens of thousand dollar subscription
0:25:57 for a thing that you’re just going to,
0:26:00 the ultimate insurance policy for your kid.
0:26:02 That has to be the best business I’ve ever heard of.
0:26:04 – That’s good.
0:26:05 – So if anyone has one of those out there,
0:26:07 I’m still actually looking to buy them.
0:26:08 I’ve never seen one for sale,
0:26:09 which I think is another signal
0:26:11 that it’s a very good business.
0:26:13 – 100%
0:26:16 – What’s the selling eyes is art thing?
0:26:18 – Yeah, so this is one thing I know
0:26:19 is whilst I was traveling around Europe.
0:26:22 Have you guys seen this store?
0:26:24 Let me pull it up.
0:26:25 So again-
0:26:26 – How old are you, George?
0:26:29 – I’m 30, just turned 30.
0:26:30 – Yeah, good energy.
0:26:31 I like energy.
0:26:33 – This is called an indicator of interest from Sam.
0:26:34 Sam starts to ask like-
0:26:35 – What’s up?
0:26:36 – Yeah, what’s up?
0:26:38 (laughing)
0:26:40 – Before we do that, let’s talk.
0:26:41 (laughing)
0:26:43 And then you pass the first 20 minutes of the pod
0:26:45 where it’s like, does this person have anything interesting
0:26:46 to say to now like, wait,
0:26:47 I need more of this guy in my life?
0:26:51 – The second, the second a British guy says whilst.
0:26:54 I’m like, you have my attention.
0:26:57 (laughing)
0:26:58 That’s my favorite word.
0:27:00 – Oh, okay.
0:27:01 So can you guys see this?
0:27:05 So for the people who are listening, your eye for art.
0:27:09 So in Amsterdam right now, I walk past this store.
0:27:13 I walk past the store and in the outside of the store,
0:27:15 there’s this thing where you kind of lean into a telescope
0:27:18 and reflecting back from the telescope is your eye.
0:27:19 And what’s fascinating,
0:27:21 I’ve got relatively nice eyes
0:27:23 that don’t get many compliments on them blue eyes.
0:27:24 – You can say that again, George.
0:27:25 – There you go.
0:27:26 (laughing)
0:27:28 You’re gonna get me blushing too much, Sam.
0:27:31 So you then have certain friends of yours
0:27:33 that are probably beautiful eyes
0:27:34 that get compliments all the time.
0:27:37 What’s actually fascinating, similar to the personality test,
0:27:39 when you zoom in to someone’s eye,
0:27:41 even if they’ve got the ugliest eyes in the world,
0:27:42 they’re beautiful.
0:27:44 So like my eye, I was like, wow, this is incredible.
0:27:48 You can even do it where couples partner their eyes.
0:27:49 And this is one of the fastest growing companies
0:27:50 out of Europe right now.
0:27:51 Like it’s growing really, really fast.
0:27:52 – Did you do this?
0:27:54 – I did do it, yeah.
0:27:57 Me and my girlfriend got the eyes scanned.
0:27:58 – Is it like on the wall behind you?
0:27:59 Where is it at?
0:28:01 – No, no, no, it’s not on the wall behind me.
0:28:02 I’m getting in my mom as a gift.
0:28:03 – Is it a print or digital?
0:28:04 What do they do?
0:28:05 What do they give you?
0:28:06 – You can print it,
0:28:08 and then you can do big blow-ups on the wall.
0:28:10 And they charge quite a lot for these things.
0:28:12 It’s like 200 to 300 quid.
0:28:13 – And the reason why you like this
0:28:15 is because you’re all about distribution
0:28:17 and you were walking down the street,
0:28:18 you saw the storefront,
0:28:19 you can look into this thing
0:28:21 and they show you a picture of it
0:28:22 and then you pay money to buy it.
0:28:26 – And the sticky idea is emotion times market, right?
0:28:28 So this is everybody’s the market
0:28:30 and the emotion I think is pretty strong in this.
0:28:32 – Yeah, it’s so personalized to them
0:28:34 and it looks beautiful.
0:28:35 – Dude, and you can buy like,
0:28:37 you can buy like a necklace or a ring
0:28:40 or something of your wife’s like eye print.
0:28:41 – Correct.
0:28:42 – This is awesome.
0:28:44 There’s probably no repeat purchase here,
0:28:46 but this is awesome as a one-time thing.
0:28:48 – And it’s so much more beautiful.
0:28:49 Even if you think you’ve got boring eyes,
0:28:50 when they zoom into that level,
0:28:51 it’s like seeing the universe.
0:28:52 You go, oh my God,
0:28:55 this is its own mini universe inside of me.
0:28:56 – I notice on their landing page,
0:28:58 they don’t have very many, you know,
0:28:59 boring black guys like mine.
0:29:02 So it’s all like beautiful greens
0:29:04 and blues and hazels.
0:29:05 – I think you’d be surprised.
0:29:07 I think you’d be surprised to quit Brennan Sharbley.
0:29:10 I think when you get under that, it’s crazy.
0:29:11 – Well, I’m definitely curious.
0:29:12 Like I definitely would want to do this.
0:29:13 If this was around me,
0:29:14 I would definitely want to do it.
0:29:18 I would certainly do it with my wife or my kids
0:29:20 ’cause it’s just like a thoughtful,
0:29:22 it’s a thoughtful, cool thing rather than like,
0:29:24 you know, same old, same old.
0:29:26 – So one of the innovations I’d like to see
0:29:30 is could you distribute this online?
0:29:33 So with smartphone cameras getting better and better,
0:29:36 is there a bit of ability and like AI scanning images?
0:29:37 Is there something there?
0:29:39 Or is it that you send a little device
0:29:40 that sits on the camera
0:29:41 that gives even more definition
0:29:43 so they could do it at home?
0:29:43 On all of a sudden,
0:29:45 you can imagine the advert first.
0:29:47 – Oh dude, if you could do this with an iPhone.
0:29:49 – How beautiful your eyes are.
0:29:50 Bull global market amigurum.
0:29:51 – All right, I’m gonna send this
0:29:52 to somebody to try to make this.
0:29:53 – Dude, this is awesome.
0:29:55 I just texted this to my wife.
0:29:56 I said, “Hey, let’s go.”
0:29:57 – To Europe.
0:29:58 – This is awesome.
0:30:00 No, they have a New York location.
0:30:02 If you click find gallery,
0:30:04 they have galleries all over the world.
0:30:05 – So George, you said this business is doing well.
0:30:06 What do you know about them?
0:30:08 – Doing really well.
0:30:10 From when I went into the store,
0:30:11 I was like, this ticks all my,
0:30:13 like the lot of pillows are effect right here,
0:30:14 it’s taking all my boxes.
0:30:17 And they said it’s like one of the fastest growing startups
0:30:18 in America.
0:30:20 They opened 150 locations in last year
0:30:21 or something like that.
0:30:23 So it’s growing like bananas.
0:30:23 – You guys wanna hear something?
0:30:26 So the other day, have you guys seen this?
0:30:28 It’s mostly women.
0:30:29 And it’s this thing on TikTok
0:30:30 where you go to this place
0:30:32 and they hold up colors to your face
0:30:35 and they tell you your color palette.
0:30:36 What’s that called?
0:30:40 Color scale or color grade or like,
0:30:43 so it’s like a noun where it’s like, hey, what’s your blank?
0:30:44 I forget what it’s called.
0:30:45 But anyway, my wife wanted to,
0:30:47 she saw an ad on TikTok for it
0:30:48 and she was like, this looks cool.
0:30:50 And I was like, I’ll go and you pay $100.
0:30:52 And they rented this tiny,
0:30:56 like it’s like a huge closet basically.
0:30:57 And you just sit there
0:30:58 and they just hold up a shade to you.
0:30:59 And they go, no, not that one.
0:31:02 – Is it for clothes or for makeup orage for everything?
0:31:03 – It’s for, and at the end,
0:31:05 you get this thing and it says,
0:31:07 you are this one, whatever,
0:31:09 like there’s like 18 categories,
0:31:13 which means this makeup, this clothing color,
0:31:16 this, all these colors, these are your colors.
0:31:19 And it basically, like for me, it was like,
0:31:21 it’s all women, it’s like Margot Robbie.
0:31:24 Like it just said, like some other white lady who that’s like,
0:31:26 she is also an example of this person.
0:31:29 And so you should wear clothing in the wintertime
0:31:31 that are these colors in the summertime, these colors,
0:31:33 whatever, but it’s a brick and mortar thing
0:31:35 that has been franchised out.
0:31:37 Similarly, I mentioned to this business
0:31:38 and I was like, how many of these a day do you have?
0:31:41 She’s like, I’m packed, I’ve got 14 a day
0:31:43 and each one has paid $100.
0:31:45 And I give HQ, like the headquarter company,
0:31:47 half of it or something like that.
0:31:48 – What was it called?
0:31:49 What’s the name of it?
0:31:50 – Yeah, and I think I went,
0:31:51 I think the place that I was called,
0:31:54 the place that I went, it was called the color lab
0:31:56 or something like that where it’s like,
0:31:58 sign me up and I taught,
0:32:00 and it had the same type of stick as this one, George,
0:32:02 where it was like a brick and mortar.
0:32:03 It was franchised.
0:32:04 – It’s like Dexa.
0:32:05 – Yeah, there was like a thing outside
0:32:07 and you’re like, yeah, of course,
0:32:09 I have to know like what color I am,
0:32:11 otherwise I’m gonna be ugly.
0:32:12 It totally got me.
0:32:15 Have you seen this guys on like TikTok or Instagram?
0:32:16 It’s mostly like a women thing.
0:32:17 – I’ve heard of the trend,
0:32:20 the color analysis type of thing.
0:32:22 And I don’t know, George,
0:32:23 you probably know the fancy word for these things,
0:32:27 but there’s like, so there’s the concept of consumerism, right?
0:32:28 Which is like, you know,
0:32:30 how Americans basically feel like
0:32:32 we need to buy certain things.
0:32:34 We need to like, I’ll give you the example.
0:32:38 A friend who lives in India came over to visit
0:32:40 and they go, yeah, India’s really changed.
0:32:40 One of the things is like,
0:32:41 India feels like America.
0:32:42 We’ve become consumerized.
0:32:44 He’s like, you know, before,
0:32:48 he’s like, Indians used to have one max, two pairs of shoes.
0:32:51 He’s like, but now it’s normal to feel like you need
0:32:52 like 10 pairs of shoes.
0:32:53 You need like all the different colors and all that.
0:32:55 It’s like, that’s not a real need,
0:32:57 but it starts to embed itself in culture.
0:32:59 It’s like, you almost convince yourself
0:33:02 that you need this much stuff.
0:33:04 You need to buy more things.
0:33:06 And I think that there’s like this personal consumerism,
0:33:08 which is around, you need to know X about yourself.
0:33:10 You need to know your quantified health.
0:33:11 You need to know your color grade.
0:33:13 You need to know your personality test.
0:33:15 And I think you can just keep selling into that.
0:33:17 There just seems to be an increasing amount
0:33:19 of consumerism around the self too,
0:33:22 not just around material things in your house.
0:33:25 – Yeah, I don’t know the specific thing for it,
0:33:27 but it’s this idea of the infinite consumer abyss.
0:33:30 You stare into it and it stares back into you.
0:33:31 – Dude, look at this guy.
0:33:32 The infinite consumer abyss.
0:33:34 Just off the dome.
0:33:36 That is why this guy is the guy.
0:33:39 – If we’re gonna have an infinite consumer abyss,
0:33:43 I’m getting red ’cause according to Lily’s color lab,
0:33:46 that’s, those are my colors.
0:33:47 – Wait, so you did this?
0:33:49 Or you made it sound like your wife did this?
0:33:50 – Well, she was like, let’s do this.
0:33:51 And I was like, I’m in.
0:33:52 Here’s $200.
0:33:54 – Let’s just plural.
0:33:56 (laughing)
0:33:57 – Like, let’s find out our colors.
0:33:59 – So what’s your color?
0:34:00 – I don’t know, dude.
0:34:01 I didn’t use any of it.
0:34:03 (laughing)
0:34:04 I don’t know.
0:34:07 I just went to experience what it was all about.
0:34:08 I don’t know.
0:34:10 – Sam Lilac Par, let’s go.
0:34:11 – I just wear blue and black anyway.
0:34:14 It was, that was, that’s my color.
0:34:15 – All right, let’s do the,
0:34:17 let’s do these other two ideas ’cause I’m curious now.
0:34:19 By the way, you know how I know this is a great episode?
0:34:21 ‘Cause I feel like I need to get off this
0:34:23 and go do these ideas right now.
0:34:24 Like, I don’t even wanna finish this episode.
0:34:26 I wanna go do one of these things right now.
0:34:27 That’s how I know this is a banger.
0:34:29 All right, so let’s do number four.
0:34:30 Mold cleanup as a service.
0:34:31 What do you mean by this?
0:34:36 – Yes, so one big meme slash wave
0:34:38 that I was noticing in America
0:34:40 is people becoming more and more concerned
0:34:41 about mold in their house.
0:34:43 – Yeah, people freak out about that in Austin,
0:34:44 particularly.
0:34:46 – Yeah, 70% of houses in America
0:34:47 apparently have mold in them.
0:34:49 Obviously it varies in terms of the amount,
0:34:52 but downstream effects of autoimmune conditions,
0:34:56 severe health issues, asthma, et cetera, et cetera.
0:34:59 Working backwards from the ad first,
0:35:01 find out if you have mold in your house.
0:35:03 Like, a horrific image of the mold
0:35:08 and horrific insights into the damage that mold can do.
0:35:10 You could sell the visits for free
0:35:12 and people are ripping up their houses,
0:35:14 spending tens of thousands of dollars,
0:35:15 hundreds of thousands of dollars,
0:35:18 because if it’s your home and you have poison in it,
0:35:21 the friends that I have that are renting
0:35:23 are literally moving out of the house.
0:35:25 They’re not sticking around now.
0:35:28 So if you actually own the home, it’s even stickier.
0:35:31 I like it from an ad perspective, a health perspective.
0:35:33 If you could partner with a big like health influencer
0:35:35 that’s your chief influencer officer
0:35:37 that could just chat about mold all day
0:35:40 and just run the funnel of find out for free
0:35:43 and then sell them all the services on the back end.
0:35:44 Similar to what Maric Health has done
0:35:46 for blood optimization, but doing it in the house.
0:35:48 I think there’s a lot of money to be made
0:35:49 riding that wave.
0:35:52 I know Sean you chart about one chart businesses.
0:35:53 If you put mold in Google Trends,
0:35:56 it’s just every year like steadily getting bigger
0:35:57 and bigger and bigger and bigger.
0:35:59 – I love that for a bunch of reasons.
0:36:01 So what was that you said?
0:36:02 30% of houses have mold?
0:36:03 – 70%.
0:36:04 – 70%.
0:36:07 Okay, so that is also killer hook for the ad, right?
0:36:10 75% of the houses have mold.
0:36:12 Find out for free if yours does.
0:36:16 Type in your address and we’ll send out a person for free
0:36:17 to go diagnose.
0:36:19 And if you know that 70% have something
0:36:22 then your conversion, even if 10% or 5% of those people
0:36:25 are gonna spend a few thousand dollars
0:36:27 getting rid of the mold, that’s pretty good.
0:36:29 You could target high value areas.
0:36:31 You could also just run this as lead gen only.
0:36:34 So people who do mold servicing
0:36:36 probably are not great at Facebook ads.
0:36:38 And so you could just be the great at Facebook ad part
0:36:40 and then farm out all the leads
0:36:42 to the mold companies all around the country.
0:36:45 So that seems like a really good part of this business.
0:36:46 And then the last thing is like,
0:36:50 there are so many people that have undiagnosed health issues.
0:36:52 So maybe it’s like fatigue,
0:36:54 maybe it’s a bad allergies, whatever’s going on.
0:36:56 And you can’t find the root cause of these.
0:36:58 And I think this is why something like gut health
0:36:59 has taken off in such a big way.
0:37:00 ‘Cause it seems like one of these like,
0:37:01 yeah, if your gut’s screwed up
0:37:03 then everything downstream is gonna be screwed up.
0:37:06 And it could explain 15 different health conditions.
0:37:10 And so same thing, like if your environment is toxic
0:37:12 then that could explain 15 different conditions
0:37:13 that you might have.
0:37:16 And who’s gonna argue that, no, I wanna keep it toxic
0:37:18 once you find out that they are.
0:37:19 We had a pest control guy come to our house
0:37:22 and he’s like, yeah, see that little nook under the house?
0:37:25 That means you have mice and rats that are under the house.
0:37:27 And even if you’re not seeing them in the house
0:37:28 they’re here, they’re at your house.
0:37:31 Would you like me to seal this and like play some traps
0:37:33 and I can come by every month and spray?
0:37:35 I was like, cool, here’s $300 a month, go for it.
0:37:39 And that’s a $300 month subscription that I’m on now
0:37:43 for the vague possibility that there’s like a mice,
0:37:45 like, you know, my eroded problem at our house.
0:37:49 – So here’s the deal.
0:37:53 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:37:54 It was called The Hustle.
0:37:55 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:37:57 to millions of subscribers.
0:37:59 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:38:03 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:38:06 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:38:08 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:38:09 building out the tech for the platform
0:38:10 and selling ads.
0:38:13 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:38:16 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:38:20 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:38:21 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:38:22 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:38:24 they do all of the stuff that I had
0:38:26 to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:38:28 So check it out, beehive.com.
0:38:32 That’s B-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:38:36 – What you’re going to learn, George, moving Austin,
0:38:39 is that like it’s like the most health-conscious city
0:38:40 I’ve ever been to.
0:38:41 And some people are pretty extreme,
0:38:44 but it’s kind of exciting to be around those extreme people.
0:38:49 And I know people who have a Berkeley water filter
0:38:51 for their entire home.
0:38:53 And I started researching it.
0:38:56 Have you guys ever seen the inside of a water heater,
0:38:58 like a water tank?
0:38:59 They’re horrible.
0:39:00 – Disgusting.
0:39:01 – It’s horrible.
0:39:02 You see that?
0:39:04 – There’s a picture of somebody literally just holding
0:39:08 two fistfuls of what just looks like either mold,
0:39:11 or fungus, or just like mulch of some kind.
0:39:14 – And so I saw one of these videos
0:39:16 where they just cut open a water tank,
0:39:18 like a water tank for the water heater.
0:39:20 – It’s called a water heater tank autopsy.
0:39:23 – It looks like what you would see
0:39:25 with like an old coffin that you woke up open up
0:39:27 with just like a bunch of like rotted skeleton bones.
0:39:29 Like it’s just like, what the hell is this?
0:39:30 I don’t even know what this is.
0:39:32 And it makes you like crawl.
0:39:35 And so I remember seeing this and I’m thinking,
0:39:37 is my water heater like this?
0:39:38 Are my pipes like this?
0:39:40 I have to get one of these Berkeley water filters.
0:39:43 I need one of these things.
0:39:44 And this is very similar.
0:39:47 And the differences is I think getting mold out of your home
0:39:50 is either, it’s actually quite hard,
0:39:51 or in some cases it’s impossible.
0:39:54 I think like, I don’t know if the problem,
0:39:56 I’m not sure if that problem in many cases
0:39:57 can actually be solved.
0:39:59 Getting a new water heater,
0:40:03 getting a water filter at your house, much more solvable.
0:40:06 Particularly like my in-laws live in New York City
0:40:08 where these buildings are built in the ’50s.
0:40:10 It’s a lot of times the similar pipes
0:40:12 or the water that goes through New York City.
0:40:14 It’s like pipes have been around for a long time.
0:40:18 And I remember seeing these videos of these like water heater,
0:40:21 like where they cut them open and do autopsy.
0:40:23 And I’m like, yeah, I’m never drinking water
0:40:25 for many of this shit ever again.
0:40:30 Like, and I was like, I need to find some places to replace this.
0:40:34 That is in line with what you’re talking about.
0:40:39 There may be even more of a pungent ad.
0:40:41 – Yeah, that’s a good one.
0:40:42 Should we move on to the next one?
0:40:43 – Yeah.
0:40:44 – All right, let’s do this last one.
0:40:47 So your final idea, I think is a really fun one
0:40:49 ’cause it’s not even a business,
0:40:50 it’s like a country-level idea.
0:40:54 Like, you should be the CMO of the UK.
0:40:56 Explain this idea.
0:40:59 – Yeah, I like how when Bellagy went from like crypto currencies
0:41:00 and now trying to build his own country.
0:41:01 And you have, I mean,
0:41:02 think about companies this entire time.
0:41:05 People out here think of countries and…
0:41:07 – I don’t, the city’s whisper, right?
0:41:08 He’s in Silicon Valley for too long.
0:41:09 It’s like, you need to be more ambitious.
0:41:10 You’re starting companies.
0:41:12 Oh, that’s cute.
0:41:12 I start countries.
0:41:19 – So one of my reflections as they coming from the UK
0:41:22 and we spoke about it to begin with on experiencing America
0:41:25 and despite all the political shenanigans
0:41:30 that America has attending 4th of July in Nashville.
0:41:32 And I’m going, this is wild.
0:41:34 Like, there’s flanks everywhere.
0:41:36 There’s people chanting, you were safe.
0:41:37 You were safe, you were safe.
0:41:39 Everyone’s on the streets.
0:41:41 So I was at the end of the day chanting USA
0:41:43 and then people were going, you can’t do that.
0:41:45 That’s why we’re chanting ’cause we got rid of you guys.
0:41:47 And anyway, I then reflected on it
0:41:51 and I realized that I’ve never met an American
0:41:54 that doesn’t celebrate their national day in some regard.
0:41:57 And then I realized I’ve never met a Brit
0:41:59 that does celebrate their national day.
0:42:03 And then I realized I’ve never met a Brit
0:42:06 who even knows the day of their national day.
0:42:08 – Well, because you guys have been like the bosses,
0:42:10 like there is no independence day.
0:42:13 You were like the colonizer, right?
0:42:14 – Exactly.
0:42:15 So that’s one of the issues with it.
0:42:17 So the irony is, by the way,
0:42:19 the national day is St. George’s Day.
0:42:22 I’m English called George and I had to Google it.
0:42:24 It’s April the 23rd.
0:42:26 In England, there’s no flags anywhere.
0:42:28 You can’t have national pride.
0:42:31 And I do think part of it is the colonization side.
0:42:33 Also St. George is like, who was this guy?
0:42:36 Whereas of independence day, you had a clear enemy.
0:42:38 So thinking from an advert perspective,
0:42:39 who is St. George?
0:42:42 It’s the Slater Dragon, nobody cares.
0:42:45 And essentially cancelling St. George’s Day
0:42:47 and creating Dunkirk Day.
0:42:50 So the Britain’s finest hour,
0:42:51 we’ve made a lot of mistakes,
0:42:54 but Britain’s finest hour was where we escaped,
0:42:57 Hitler’s Germany, 400,000 men were Churchill,
0:42:59 all of Britain came up together,
0:43:00 sending the boats across.
0:43:03 And literally the only reason the country exists
0:43:04 and we’re not speaking German.
0:43:06 And I, arguably, Adolf Hitler doesn’t conquer
0:43:08 the whole of Europe, it’s because of this day.
0:43:09 So there’s an enemy.
0:43:10 No matter where you stand politically,
0:43:12 Adolf Hitler, number one enemy
0:43:14 when it comes to that ad strategy.
0:43:15 And make it the most British day imaginable.
0:43:18 So from midnight to 12 p.m.,
0:43:21 you can complain, moan, drink tea,
0:43:24 talk about what’s wrong in the past, present and future.
0:43:28 But come 12 p.m., get the RAF in the sky,
0:43:29 get kids dressed as,
0:43:31 like if you look at the number of British icons,
0:43:35 Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, John Lennon,
0:43:37 like there’s so many icons of history
0:43:38 that the world should be grateful for.
0:43:39 And I think you could add billions
0:43:41 to the tourist economy of the UK
0:43:44 and unite a difficult nation for at least an afternoon.
0:43:47 – Sign me up, my friend, this is awesome.
0:43:47 – Dude, this is amazing.
0:43:49 – There we go.
0:43:51 – Like we get an oasis, by the way,
0:43:53 just announced they’re going on tour.
0:43:54 – They’re going to that.
0:43:55 – Yeah.
0:43:59 – He’s like Darwin, Shakespeare, Sam’s like, oh, oasis.
0:44:01 – Liam Gallagher, honestly, playing Wonderwall
0:44:03 would not be a bad idea.
0:44:06 That might be the official song of Dunkirk Day.
0:44:08 – There we go.
0:44:11 – So you posted this, did anybody like hit you up?
0:44:13 Did you get some like, you know, a p.m. in the DMS?
0:44:14 What happened?
0:44:17 – Who, the, I mean, who’s the, like–
0:44:20 – I don’t know, Harry Reachout, who’s supposed to reach out?
0:44:23 – Not yet, not yet.
0:44:24 I’m not gonna, I’m gonna keep on getting the drum
0:44:26 for a while, but it’s one of those things.
0:44:31 – You should run ads to your essay, to your blog post,
0:44:34 targeting specifically, as hyper specific as you can.
0:44:36 – The zip code of a royal family.
0:44:38 – 10 grand of ad spend, and I’m pretty sure
0:44:40 you’re gonna get a meeting at the palace.
0:44:43 We’re here to discuss.
0:44:43 – Let’s do it.
0:44:45 Let’s do it, Dunkirk Day.
0:44:46 (laughing)
0:44:50 – That’s fantastic, that is like a funny conundrum
0:44:52 that England is in when it’s like,
0:44:54 well, you guys have been the man for so long,
0:44:55 but there’s not really like a,
0:44:57 like started from the bottom,
0:44:59 now we’re here type of story.
0:45:01 It’s more like, you’ve been the man for so long,
0:45:03 and now you’re like in Forrest.
0:45:05 So like, that’s like pretty good longevity.
0:45:07 – Well, the thing is, you need the brand, right?
0:45:10 So like, I bet if I walked outside right now,
0:45:14 and I went to like, you know, just like a nearby,
0:45:17 I don’t know, if I went to Home Depot,
0:45:19 and if it was a busy day at a Home Depot,
0:45:22 I feel like if me, if I could get two other people with me
0:45:24 to start chanting USA,
0:45:27 I’m pretty sure the whole store would just start arbitrarily,
0:45:29 not on a July 4, just start chanting USA,
0:45:31 ’cause there’s such a pride,
0:45:34 and USA has like, the brand is really, really strong, right?
0:45:36 It’s like freedom number one, right?
0:45:38 There’s the American dream.
0:45:41 There’s like sort of the pride of America,
0:45:45 whereas like, I think, what would the country stand for?
0:45:47 So you were like, drink tea and wine,
0:45:50 which is like, okay, that’s like, you know, humorous in a way,
0:45:52 but like, what would be the thing?
0:45:54 Would it be like, would it be creativity?
0:45:55 Would it be art?
0:45:56 What would be the thing that’s like,
0:45:57 we can hang our hat on of like,
0:45:59 we’re the best at this, the British pride.
0:46:02 What is the British pride about?
0:46:04 – I think from first principles,
0:46:06 the reason why Independence Day works
0:46:08 is because there’s an enemy that you escaped.
0:46:11 And just using creating an enemy,
0:46:13 again, talk about advertising tactics earlier,
0:46:15 a great out of that angle.
0:46:19 But the enemy of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany
0:46:20 can unite is the only thing
0:46:22 that can unite this country, I think.
0:46:25 So, and then just go through the like,
0:46:27 whatever you wanna pick, you wanna pick literature,
0:46:29 you wanna pick the Industrial Revolution.
0:46:32 Like, we’ve got some classic hits in the library.
0:46:33 We’ve got a lot.
0:46:35 – I think I have an answer to my question,
0:46:37 to my own question that adds on what you just said,
0:46:42 which is the UK is sort of like the Harvard of countries.
0:46:44 It is Ivy League.
0:46:45 It is prestige.
0:46:46 It is old money.
0:46:48 It is old history.
0:46:49 It is we’ve been here forever.
0:46:52 And the great minds have come from us.
0:46:55 I think that’s the branding, which is like,
0:46:58 the US is more like, I don’t know, a big state school.
0:47:00 It’s a bit of a party school, right?
0:47:04 And whereas, you know, we’re more USC,
0:47:08 whereas the UK is more Harvard Yale Princeton
0:47:10 in its vibe and its brand.
0:47:13 And so it’s got that old luxury, old money,
0:47:17 old prestige brand, which is like, it’s elevated.
0:47:19 And I think that’s part of,
0:47:20 well, that’s what I would lean into more.
0:47:23 It’s not like modern and super high tech.
0:47:25 I would lean into the other side on the branding.
0:47:28 – One of my favorite ad campaigns, George of all time,
0:47:30 it was in the ’70s.
0:47:33 It was a Rolex campaign.
0:47:37 And it would show a picture of Dwight Eisenhower,
0:47:38 the general during World War II,
0:47:41 and then the president of America giving a speech
0:47:43 to troops and he had a Rolex on.
0:47:48 And then it showed an admiral of a great shit,
0:47:50 like giving directions to his folks.
0:47:51 And he looks like he’s going to war
0:47:52 and he’s wearing a Rolex.
0:47:55 And then I think it’s so JFK wearing a Rolex
0:47:57 while he was like talking to cash show
0:47:59 or something like amazing, whatever.
0:48:03 And the headline was the men who control the destinies,
0:48:07 the men who control the destiny of the world wear Rolex.
0:48:10 And it’s one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time
0:48:13 because it makes me associate Rolex with prestige
0:48:16 and doing something, not just being elite,
0:48:19 but actually flexing that muscle.
0:48:22 And I’ve never seen a good idea on how to reuse
0:48:25 this ad campaign that I love so much.
0:48:28 But this might be the one where it’s like,
0:48:30 the people who have given the world art
0:48:32 or the people who have kind of helped shape
0:48:34 the destiny of the world or British, whatever.
0:48:37 But that’s one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time.
0:48:41 – Yeah, I think the copy is if you were here tomorrow,
0:48:42 you’d be wearing a Rolex.
0:48:44 And he does different variations of that.
0:48:45 I’ve broke that one down a few times.
0:48:47 It’s so hypnotic.
0:48:49 But even that lineback, if you were here tomorrow,
0:48:53 you would wear a Rolex with like an image of the White House.
0:48:58 Therefore, aspiration association of the White House,
0:49:01 it puts you, so it puts you in it.
0:49:02 That is hypnosis.
0:49:05 If you spoke to a hypnotist about a sentence,
0:49:07 that sentence is all literal hypnosis.
0:49:10 Like for example, there’s a Porsche one that I love, Sean.
0:49:14 And it says too small to get laid in,
0:49:16 but you’ll get laid the second you get out of it.
0:49:18 It is a picture of a Porsche.
0:49:19 – Or the New Balance one, right?
0:49:23 The only shoe worn by high fashion models in London
0:49:25 and dads in Ohio.
0:49:26 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that one.
0:49:28 – That’s like such a good one.
0:49:29 – Like I said, we’ve broken down a lot of these
0:49:30 on the ad professor.
0:49:32 So like one of the Porsche ones is,
0:49:34 honestly now, did you spend your youth dreaming
0:49:37 about someday owning a Nissan or a Mitsubishi?
0:49:38 – Yeah.
0:49:39 – That’s good.
0:49:41 (laughing)
0:49:45 You may get lost, but not in the crowd.
0:49:46 – That’s another good Porsche one.
0:49:48 – If this car doesn’t excite you,
0:49:50 check your pulse, you may be dead.
0:49:52 So yeah, there’s so many,
0:49:53 like if you go to the ad professor on Twitter,
0:49:55 we’ve got so many of them.
0:49:57 – So we should talk about the ad professor real quick.
0:50:01 So you have this marketing agency and to grow it,
0:50:02 I thought you did a brilliant thing,
0:50:05 which is you created this anonymous account on Twitter,
0:50:05 the ad professor.
0:50:07 And I think you didn’t tell people at the beginning
0:50:08 that that was you, right?
0:50:10 – Nobody knows to this day, really.
0:50:11 – Well, we just–
0:50:12 – There you go.
0:50:15 – Breaking news, Scoop came out the closet.
0:50:17 Yo, YouTube thumbnail, George Mac comes out,
0:50:20 reveals his truth, we got it.
0:50:23 – Yeah, people won’t click on that, they already know.
0:50:26 – So he creates the thing, the ad professor,
0:50:27 and all he does is just give.
0:50:31 It’s like, I love ads, which you do and you collect them.
0:50:32 And so you just started threading.
0:50:34 Here’s just badass ads.
0:50:36 And then in that, people start DMing you.
0:50:39 And from what I understand, it’s a better salesman
0:50:41 than any sales guy you could have hired
0:50:42 to go out and pitch for business.
0:50:43 Is that true?
0:50:45 Can you talk a little bit about that?
0:50:49 – Yeah, we also then create ads for brands.
0:50:53 So we did one that tried to reach like 30 million people.
0:50:54 It’s like 23 different ads of ads
0:50:56 that we’ve created from Ryanair.
0:50:58 So we did a Tesla one of–
0:51:01 – But you’re saying is you created ads on spec,
0:51:02 meaning you pretended Tesla was your client.
0:51:04 And here’s the ad we would make for you, Tesla.
0:51:06 Here’s the ad we would make for you, Ryanair.
0:51:08 And you just did those, those also went viral
0:51:11 ’cause you really did a good job of that, right?
0:51:12 – Exactly.
0:51:13 So like the Tesla one was,
0:51:17 it takes I think like 3.4 seconds to read this ad.
0:51:20 The same time it takes a Tesla to go to another 60.
0:51:20 – This is great.
0:51:22 And it’s a picture of a Tesla driving off.
0:51:23 This is a really cool website.
0:51:26 – So you do that and then people just start sliding
0:51:27 into your DMs wanting to work with you guys?
0:51:29 Or how do they even know?
0:51:30 ‘Cause you don’t even say I have an agency, by the way.
0:51:32 You don’t do heavy calls to action on this.
0:51:34 Or am I wrong?
0:51:35 – A little bit like plug at the end,
0:51:36 but it’s always value thirst.
0:51:41 And I think that model of who you went to school with
0:51:42 and knowing people that way
0:51:44 versus just making dope things online
0:51:45 and people seeing the ads
0:51:48 and realizing that those poor shouts from the 70s
0:51:50 still have relevance today
0:51:53 and trying to create ads that are just super sexy.
0:51:54 There’s this weird, like I discovered it
0:51:56 via looking at ad horn on Reddit.
0:51:59 And there’s like hundreds of thousands of communities
0:52:02 dedicated to people chatting about ad porn
0:52:04 and then creating the ad professor off the back of that.
0:52:08 But yeah, nobody knew it was me until today, I guess.
0:52:09 – Does this make good revenue?
0:52:11 – We do, okay.
0:52:12 – And how many people who work with you?
0:52:13 – Dude, they’re great.
0:52:14 Say the name of your agency, by the way,
0:52:15 so that people can go find you guys.
0:52:18 – Yeah, that’s just, I just go to adprofessor.com.
0:52:20 Sam was mentioning the website then.
0:52:22 We have about 40 people give or take.
0:52:24 – Wow. – Yeah, this is awesome.
0:52:27 And this is a really cool, I would like to use you guys.
0:52:28 – Thank you.
0:52:30 – I’m sold, like when I go to this website,
0:52:31 I’m like, “This is cool.”
0:52:34 And I’ve followed that Twitter handle.
0:52:35 I thought it was really cool.
0:52:37 – All right, we are gonna split this.
0:52:39 So that was part one of an episode with George Mack.
0:52:41 That was ideas, ideas, ideas.
0:52:43 I thought he had some bangers in there.
0:52:45 The next part we’re gonna do is his frameworks,
0:52:46 which is actually what he’s more known for.
0:52:49 This guy has published essays and tweets that are,
0:52:51 he gets retweeted by Elon Musk like once every week.
0:52:54 So he has some really awesome ideas and frameworks
0:52:57 that he has curated or uniquely come up with.
0:52:58 We’re gonna talk about those.
0:53:01 That’s all part two with George Mack, The Big Ideas.
0:53:03 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:53:06 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:53:09 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:53:12 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:53:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]
0:00:02 this is a great episode?
0:00:04 ‘Cause I feel like I need to get off this
0:00:05 and go do these ideas right now.
0:00:06 Like I don’t even want to finish this episode.
0:00:08 I want to go do one of these things right now.
0:00:10 That’s how I know this is a banger.
0:00:12 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:15 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:17 ♪ I put my all in it like the days of ♪
0:00:19 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:00:21 – Have you guys ever heard this idea
0:00:26 that the Australian accent is just drunk English accent?
0:00:29 Because like Australia was populated
0:00:32 by all like the criminals or the drunkards from England
0:00:35 and that the accent in Australia
0:00:37 is just a drunk London guy.
0:00:39 – Still far off.
0:00:41 There’s a great Paul Graham blog post
0:00:43 that I don’t know if you guys have read called Cities.
0:00:45 I think it’s called Cities and Ambition.
0:00:46 And he has this concept in it.
0:00:49 He says that every city whispers something to you.
0:00:51 Every city is whispering something.
0:00:55 So he’s like, you know, maybe it’s in LA, right?
0:00:57 The whisper that’s there for you
0:00:59 is, you know, become somebody, right?
0:01:00 Become like sort of known,
0:01:03 become a power player, a famous person basically.
0:01:04 You’re not famous enough.
0:01:06 And in Silicon Valley, he says,
0:01:08 the whisper is you’re not ambitious enough
0:01:10 because the status symbol here
0:01:13 is not who’s the most beautiful or the most famous
0:01:15 or even the most rich, to be honest.
0:01:15 The status symbol is like,
0:01:18 who’s doing the big mission here, right?
0:01:21 Who’s like the AI guys now, they’re the highest status.
0:01:24 Even if you have a really amazing,
0:01:25 if you’re the CEO of Workday
0:01:28 and you’re like, dude, I got a $80 billion company over here,
0:01:30 you’re low status compared to the, you know,
0:01:32 the guy who’s trying to make, you know,
0:01:34 the next version of an LLM.
0:01:36 And so he says, New York whisper something.
0:01:38 He basically is like, you should think about
0:01:39 which cities you want to live in
0:01:40 because that’s what’s going to get whispered
0:01:42 to you all the time.
0:01:44 I don’t know what it would be for Austin, I’m curious.
0:01:45 You guys, Sam, you’ve lived there.
0:01:47 What’s the Austin whisper?
0:01:48 – The Austin whisper is,
0:01:53 how do you live a fit life on your own terms,
0:01:55 which means like being very balanced.
0:01:58 So Austin is very much a balance.
0:02:01 So how do you work six hours a week, go for walks,
0:02:04 be with your family, wake up early, be healthy.
0:02:06 Austin is a place of balance, I think.
0:02:08 – George, what’s the Dubai whisper right now?
0:02:11 – Is it like a, like, you’re poor?
0:02:13 (laughing)
0:02:17 – There’s definitely a little bit of that.
0:02:20 Like I never thought I would have ended up being in Dubai
0:02:22 for a little bit of time,
0:02:25 but it was during COVID and the second lockdown came along.
0:02:27 And I wanted to go to the mountains by myself
0:02:30 and Chris, my friend from Modern Wisdom, said come to Dubai.
0:02:33 And I was like, I grew up reading like Richard Dawkins,
0:02:34 Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens.
0:02:36 I’m scared of going to like an Islamic country.
0:02:40 And Chris gave me the ultimate reply of don’t be a virgin, come.
0:02:43 And I went for two weeks, stayed for three years,
0:02:48 but it’s a very unique, weird, bizarre, fascinating place.
0:02:49 – That’s great.
0:02:50 All right, let’s jump in.
0:02:53 So you have, you knew that we love business ideas
0:02:54 and I’ll give you two things.
0:02:56 You wrote an intro for yourself, I’m gonna read it,
0:02:57 but I think you didn’t do yourself justice.
0:03:00 So you said, you know, I’m excited to come on.
0:03:02 You said, I don’t have crazy high stakes,
0:03:04 huge exits of my business.
0:03:06 I’m more of a mum’s basement writing ideas online,
0:03:09 coming up with weird ideas and essays kind of guy.
0:03:12 So, you know, I have some ideas, some business ideas
0:03:14 and opportunities, but I have a lot of philosophies
0:03:16 and frameworks.
0:03:17 I think that’s great.
0:03:18 You also didn’t do yourself full justice.
0:03:20 You have a great marketing agency.
0:03:22 So you have a successful business there.
0:03:25 Also, you’re not just a kid in the basement writing essays.
0:03:26 You’re a kid in the basement writing essays.
0:03:29 They get read by everybody from, you know,
0:03:31 Joe Schmoe to Elon Musk.
0:03:33 Elon’s been retweeting you a lot lately.
0:03:35 And I think that’s a good sign, bro.
0:03:36 You’ve made it.
0:03:37 – I appreciate that.
0:03:39 You’re killing the British syndrome out of me.
0:03:40 So I do appreciate that.
0:03:42 – What happens when Elon retweets you, by the way?
0:03:44 Do you get like a lot of traffic?
0:03:46 – Yeah, I get quite a lot of traffic.
0:03:47 I mean, the one thing I did notice of,
0:03:50 I’ve reached like hundreds of millions of people on Twitter
0:03:52 and I’ve never had one DM from a girl.
0:03:55 And then Chris Williamson started sharing my videos
0:03:57 on Instagram and it changed a little bit.
0:04:00 Like it’s all men tech, things on Twitter, like that.
0:04:02 But yeah, you do get quite a lot of traffic.
0:04:05 The notifications bell does start to break a little bit.
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0:04:44 All right, so let’s start with business ideas.
0:04:46 What have you got for us?
0:04:47 What are the opportunities, ideas,
0:04:49 little half baked startups
0:04:51 that you’re in your mind right now?
0:04:53 – Yeah, so as Sean kind of mentioned,
0:04:55 I run the ad professor account.
0:04:57 So people won’t know that on Twitter as well.
0:04:59 We make some of the best ads online.
0:05:02 I’m obsessed with, from an advertising angle.
0:05:05 And all my business ideas, think of the advert first.
0:05:07 And then I kind of work from that.
0:05:10 So the first business idea that I think would be pretty cool
0:05:13 that I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never got round to
0:05:15 is essentially, I know you guys love person
0:05:18 outing tests, like the personality test business model
0:05:22 that exists, it’s quite an easy find out about yourself.
0:05:24 Everybody’s fascinated by it,
0:05:26 even if a lot of it is pseudoscience.
0:05:30 And I’ll never forget the day I’m in the car with my mom.
0:05:31 Hope she don’t mind me telling the story.
0:05:33 I’m in the car with my mom, my dad’s there,
0:05:35 my brothers are there, my mom’s heavily dyslexic.
0:05:37 So she doesn’t want to do the personality tests,
0:05:38 but she wants me to read it for her.
0:05:40 And then she’s answering.
0:05:42 So I’m reading out the question of,
0:05:45 I don’t like to get into arguments and she’ll be like,
0:05:47 oh, I heavily disagree.
0:05:49 And then me and my dad are like, no, heavily agree.
0:05:52 So quickly realized that personality tests are often
0:05:55 answers that you want to be true about yourself
0:05:57 versus the actual reality.
0:06:00 And this kind of idea of a self-awareness test
0:06:02 where the personality test, you potentially fill out,
0:06:05 but everybody in your close circle, so in your wife,
0:06:09 your parents, your business partner fills out
0:06:10 and you have a note there.
0:06:12 Reason why I like this idea is it’s a little bit
0:06:13 of a lot of collusion.
0:06:15 You’ve got one stacking on personality tests
0:06:18 that have always worked, but two, the social graph effect,
0:06:20 and then three, the advert angle of being able
0:06:23 to run adverts directly on,
0:06:24 find out what your wife thinks about you.
0:06:26 The question I would have is,
0:06:29 is it a bit of a business, do you like it?
0:06:30 – It is a great idea.
0:06:32 I’ve been talking about tests like this.
0:06:37 I have like a notebook of like, what’s the new IQ test?
0:06:39 The five languages test.
0:06:40 And I’ve been really fascinated,
0:06:44 could you run a Facebook ad funnel to one of these businesses?
0:06:45 ‘Cause I think most of the people who do this,
0:06:46 they do it like a book funnel,
0:06:49 which is like the slowest old way of doing things.
0:06:53 They write a great book about the love languages thing
0:06:54 and then in it, like Strengths Finders,
0:06:56 they write a book and then in it,
0:06:59 they give you like a code or whatever to go take the test
0:07:01 and you go pay for the test.
0:07:03 But I love this for the reason you just described
0:07:05 the viral factor.
0:07:07 Can I tell you a story of why I think this might work?
0:07:10 So when I first moved to Silicon Valley,
0:07:11 I worked for this guy, Michael Birch,
0:07:14 and he had built a social network called Bebo,
0:07:16 that he sold for $850 million.
0:07:17 But before he built Bebo,
0:07:20 he built a social network called Ringo,
0:07:21 that was the same exact thing as Bebo,
0:07:24 but just like 12 months earlier,
0:07:27 that he sold for like $2 or $3 million.
0:07:30 And what he did was he built Ringo, it started to grow.
0:07:32 He didn’t know, he couldn’t keep up with the server costs.
0:07:34 He didn’t know how, like at the time, there was no Facebook.
0:07:36 Like he didn’t know how social networks
0:07:37 were ever gonna make money.
0:07:39 So he was at a meetup and a guy offered him
0:07:43 like four million bucks for it and he’s like, done.
0:07:44 Then he worked for that guy
0:07:46 and they had a quiz company called Tickle.
0:07:48 And Tickle was basically like,
0:07:52 it started out more on the Myers-Briggs like intellectual tests.
0:07:53 – Then it just became everything.
0:07:55 – Then it became what breed of dog are you?
0:07:57 And turns out what breed of dog are you?
0:07:58 Was way more viral than like,
0:08:01 what is your life passion supposed to be, right?
0:08:03 There’s like harder, more introspective tests.
0:08:05 People wanted the, what dog are you?
0:08:06 And so what dog are you went really viral?
0:08:08 They sold Tickle for $100 million to Monster.
0:08:13 So he was like, holy shit, quizzes are this amazing viral thing.
0:08:17 ‘Cause people want, like you said,
0:08:19 their favorite subject is themselves.
0:08:22 Then they’re curious to know the answer, where do I land?
0:08:25 And then when they’re done, they post or they share
0:08:27 where they landed and other people say, ooh,
0:08:28 that’s what you are, I wonder what I am.
0:08:29 And they go take it as well.
0:08:32 So the only difference he made between Ringo,
0:08:34 the thing that was growing kind of fast
0:08:38 and sold for four million and Bebo, which grew really fast,
0:08:41 a million users in nine days, the first nine days,
0:08:44 the only change he made was that when he launched Bebo,
0:08:47 it was a copy paste of Ringo, but with one difference.
0:08:48 Instead of filling out a profile,
0:08:50 you just started off with a personality quiz,
0:08:53 which was the best, I think it was called the best friend test.
0:08:55 It was how well do you know me?
0:08:56 So you would answer questions about yourself
0:08:58 and then other people would try to,
0:08:59 and you would say, you would send it to your friends
0:09:01 and be like, see how well you know me.
0:09:03 And then it would show you who knows you the best
0:09:04 and you would kind of compete.
0:09:06 And when after they would fill yours out,
0:09:07 like I’m guessing how well I know you,
0:09:10 then I would fill my own out and I would send it back to you.
0:09:13 And so it went super viral off this one mechanism.
0:09:15 And so the thing you described,
0:09:16 I think would work really well
0:09:18 because it is a how well do you know me,
0:09:20 but your version was how well do I know myself?
0:09:22 But I think the real question there actually is,
0:09:24 what do other people think about me?
0:09:27 Which is probably the biggest question that I have
0:09:29 is what do other people think about me?
0:09:32 And can I kind of anonymously find that information out?
0:09:37 – So Sean, do you remember like six episodes ago,
0:09:39 that you were talking about going to Victoria
0:09:43 and how someone said they did this like-
0:09:43 – Jack scheme.
0:09:47 – Yeah, they did this like executive coaching thing
0:09:49 where you do a quiz and it tells you about yourself.
0:09:51 So I loved that.
0:09:52 And turns out with Hampton,
0:09:55 we have access to thousands of executives.
0:09:58 And so we were thinking about, should we integrate this?
0:10:01 And so we’re currently testing it actually with like-
0:10:02 – That’s a smart idea.
0:10:05 – Three or four customers where what we’ve done
0:10:07 is we’ve created a quiz like you’ve described, George,
0:10:11 where it talks about like whatever you’re asking your mother,
0:10:14 like these questions of like what’s your opinion of yourself
0:10:15 for these questions.
0:10:20 And then you actually send it to 20 different co-workers,
0:10:22 wife, husband, whatever.
0:10:24 And then you get the results and we have put together
0:10:25 this presentation to help you improve.
0:10:27 And maybe it’s a product that would charge thousands
0:10:28 of dollars for.
0:10:30 – George, do you know about this?
0:10:31 Like the thing we’re talking about,
0:10:32 have you ever heard about this?
0:10:33 – No.
0:10:35 So this guy basically does this for executives
0:10:39 and it’s like a 360, like basically brutal honesty,
0:10:40 punch in the face.
0:10:42 So that’s the idea is like,
0:10:45 he charges, I think like 30 grand for this.
0:10:47 You pay $30,000 to take this test.
0:10:48 And what they do is they go interview.
0:10:49 It’s not just a quiz.
0:10:52 They go and actually like sit down, talk, interview your wife,
0:10:55 your business partner, your people who manage you,
0:10:57 people who you manage, all this stuff.
0:11:00 And they then come back to you with like,
0:11:01 here’s like the truth.
0:11:02 Here’s where you’re amazing.
0:11:05 Here’s maybe where you rub people the wrong way.
0:11:07 And here’s, you know, something that’s, yeah,
0:11:09 whatever they give you that, that feedback.
0:11:10 I don’t know how great it is,
0:11:13 but the two people I know who have done it were both like,
0:11:15 yeah, this was massive for me.
0:11:16 Now they were both also in that phase
0:11:18 where they sold their company for hundreds of millions
0:11:20 of dollars and needed a little bit of direction
0:11:22 and purpose and wanting to indulge.
0:11:23 It’s a luxury item.
0:11:26 – They are a thirsty person asking for water.
0:11:27 – Yeah, exactly.
0:11:29 But hey, Hampton is a group of thirsty people
0:11:30 asking for water.
0:11:32 So Sam, my prediction is,
0:11:33 I think you will either double
0:11:36 or triple the lifetime value of your customers
0:11:37 if you integrate this thing.
0:11:39 I think that is a genius idea, Sam.
0:11:41 – So George, you got any more tips for me?
0:11:44 (laughing)
0:11:45 – So people, what I like about this
0:11:48 is it rides a few societal means as well.
0:11:50 You’ve seen the gurus on Instagram chat
0:11:52 about self-awareness.
0:11:54 But what does that actually mean?
0:11:56 And show me where that grows calling.
0:11:58 And what does self-awareness actually mean?
0:12:01 Whereas this, it’s a quite a bit of a practical way
0:12:03 of seizing self-awareness.
0:12:07 And I remember there’s a line from Daniel Kahneman
0:12:08 who wrote “Thinking Fast and Slow.”
0:12:12 So he’s the ultimate cognitive behavioral researcher,
0:12:13 a Nobel Prize winner.
0:12:15 Every cognitive bias you can think of
0:12:17 came largely downstream of Daniel Kahneman.
0:12:19 He’s the Godfabra.
0:12:21 And his overwhelming lesson was that
0:12:23 essentially all that research taught him nothing.
0:12:25 And the only thing it taught him was
0:12:27 it’s much easier to see mistakes in other people
0:12:28 than to see it in yourself.
0:12:30 And this is that kind of idea, right?
0:12:33 That other people, we don’t notice we have bad breath,
0:12:36 but other people can realize within seconds.
0:12:38 We don’t realize we’re dating the wrong partner
0:12:40 till 20 years in horrific divorce,
0:12:42 but your best friend sees it in two minutes.
0:12:45 So there is something about when your ego’s removed from it
0:12:47 and other people see things a lot clearer than you can.
0:12:50 – Wasn’t his other takeaway was that
0:12:51 he was like, at the end of his life, he was like,
0:12:54 “Oh, I think I was wrong.”
0:12:57 I think a bunch of this research,
0:12:58 he like did this book and it was amazing.
0:13:02 He goes, “I think we got a lot wrong about that.”
0:13:03 – Is that true?
0:13:04 Is that what happened?
0:13:05 – Is that what happened, George?
0:13:07 It was something like that where he like,
0:13:09 it’s like, you know, we said these like five theories
0:13:12 and like these three, I think actually are wrong.
0:13:14 – There’s a few, he definitely got wrong,
0:13:16 but there’s a few funny ones of where
0:13:18 he talks about planning fallacy.
0:13:20 And even knowing planning fallacy
0:13:22 doesn’t prevent planning fallacy.
0:13:23 So even the guys that came up with the idea
0:13:26 of planning fallacy, when they were putting in research
0:13:30 of how do we teach planning fallacy to kids at schools
0:13:33 or to any curriculum, they even, they underestimated
0:13:35 how long it would take for the curriculum
0:13:36 of planning fallacy itself.
0:13:39 So just because you know the cognitive biases
0:13:40 doesn’t mean you can escape them.
0:13:41 – What is that?
0:13:42 What’s the planning fallacy?
0:13:44 – The planning fallacy is this idea
0:13:48 that if you say, I’m gonna achieve X within a month,
0:13:50 it will probably take two months.
0:13:52 And no matter how long, and even being aware
0:13:54 of the planning fallacy doesn’t prevent it
0:13:55 from not happening.
0:13:57 So you constantly, it takes three times as long
0:13:59 as you think it will and costs twice as much.
0:14:02 Which is interesting when you read Elon’s biography,
0:14:03 I wonder if that’s one of the reasons
0:14:06 why he just always sets absolutely absurd deadlines.
0:14:08 Because he knows that even with that fact
0:14:09 and then it’s still going to be later than you think.
0:14:11 – Well, that’s what I was gonna ask you.
0:14:13 So is the way to fix that, that you make
0:14:15 stupidly ambitious goals, and then like if it’s
0:14:17 where you shoot for the stars, and if you miss,
0:14:19 you land on the moon type of vibe?
0:14:20 – That’s what he does.
0:14:22 I think there’s definitely something to that,
0:14:24 but I wonder if you can actually bullshit yourself
0:14:26 to that level, I don’t know.
0:14:28 – Yeah, the other, I think the other way to do it
0:14:29 is you burn the boat, so you make it where
0:14:30 it has to get done.
0:14:32 There is no way for it to spill over.
0:14:34 Like it’s not physically possible,
0:14:36 because that’s when the sort of the remarkable
0:14:37 things happen, right?
0:14:40 Like, you know, it’s when he runs out of money
0:14:42 and the last rocket has to take off.
0:14:44 It can’t explode like the previous three.
0:14:46 That’s the rocket that actually went
0:14:47 because he’s actually out of money at that point.
0:14:50 There is no other way.
0:14:52 And I think there’s a lot of remarkable stories
0:14:54 of people when they’re actually backed
0:14:55 into a corner and there’s no out.
0:14:58 That’s when they’re able to perform the miraculous.
0:14:59 They’re able to do what seemingly
0:15:01 couldn’t have been done before.
0:15:02 You said something interesting
0:15:03 I want to go back to real quick.
0:15:05 You said, when I think about businesses,
0:15:08 I start with the advert, which is the ad,
0:15:10 and you work backwards to the business.
0:15:13 So, explain that more, ’cause I think it’s really smart.
0:15:14 What do you mean by that?
0:15:17 Or maybe what’s an example of that?
0:15:21 – I’ve helped so many founders with their advertising.
0:15:25 And the amount of them will spend years on their idea
0:15:28 and then realize there’s no distribution for this thing.
0:15:30 It just isn’t distributed native.
0:15:34 So, I always think from the compression algorithm.
0:15:36 I know we spoke about this, Sean,
0:15:41 of like a sticky idea, which is essentially all adverts,
0:15:43 like good adverts themselves are a sticky idea,
0:15:46 which is essentially the following algorithm
0:15:50 of total amounts of emotion times number of people
0:15:52 that can understand it.
0:15:55 And that is what makes ultimately a good advert.
0:15:57 And if I can’t compress it down,
0:15:59 ’cause people talk about an elevator pitch,
0:16:00 it’s almost like the ad pitch, right?
0:16:02 Can you compress this thing down
0:16:05 to a person who doesn’t give a fuck about you,
0:16:06 scrolling in their feed?
0:16:09 And then immediately going,
0:16:11 “I’m gonna give money towards this.”
0:16:12 That two-second snapshot.
0:16:14 And I think if you can’t compress that down,
0:16:17 it needs more work.
0:16:22 – You have an idea on here.
0:16:24 And the sentence that you’re gonna reply with
0:16:25 when I ask what your second idea is,
0:16:27 it’s just the most ridiculous sentence
0:16:28 that will ever be said on this podcast.
0:16:30 So, what’s that one?
0:16:31 – Yeah. – Number two.
0:16:33 – Number two.
0:16:34 Sean already knows me quite well,
0:16:36 so he knows I’m an absolute weirdo, Sam,
0:16:40 but obviously first impressions down ruining it for you.
0:16:41 – I love weirdos.
0:16:42 This is great. – Cool.
0:16:43 – This is exactly what I’m about.
0:16:47 – So, sex is going to potentially die
0:16:49 as a reproductive mechanism.
0:16:52 So, if we just go through the history of sex,
0:16:56 so if you could imagine a chart of sex to baby ratio
0:16:58 from like the 1500s.
0:16:59 So, you have the first official condom
0:17:01 that came in in 1855.
0:17:03 There’s talk that it was actually in the 1500s,
0:17:04 people using animal parts,
0:17:06 but I’ve never heard that. – Condom as we know it.
0:17:07 The condom as we know it now.
0:17:08 – Like a sheep intestine.
0:17:09 – Yeah.
0:17:11 – Now, that’s the dropship in store right there, right?
0:17:13 (laughing)
0:17:16 And then the morning after pill came in the 1920s,
0:17:18 and then full effecting like the 1970s.
0:17:21 So, if you can imagine number of times having sex to baby,
0:17:24 it’s going like this with time, it’s completely plummeting.
0:17:27 What I think is looking more and more likely with,
0:17:30 and another, we talk about advert first approach,
0:17:31 I think you spoke about this before, Sean,
0:17:34 when you look at different technologies coming in,
0:17:36 so you’ve obviously got IVF,
0:17:39 you’ve got biobanks with lots of genetic data,
0:17:42 you’ve got phenotype tests, genotype tests.
0:17:44 I think you’re already seeing this
0:17:46 with my friend, Jonathan,
0:17:48 has a company that they’re going to be watching
0:17:49 probably about next year,
0:17:51 that essentially, particularly for wealthy people,
0:17:53 then I think it will trickle down society
0:17:55 where you have 10 embryos,
0:17:58 and they can basically map now, okay?
0:18:00 If you want to avoid diabetes,
0:18:03 Crohn’s disease, cancer, et cetera,
0:18:06 we recommend this embryo selection,
0:18:08 and then obviously it’s going to probably get weirder
0:18:11 with time, whether that’s height, eye color, IQ,
0:18:12 things like that.
0:18:15 So we’re really on the precipice of this,
0:18:17 and all you’re going to need is a few people
0:18:20 with being able to crunch the data,
0:18:23 and it’s going to be a wild couple of years.
0:18:24 – So that’s actually pretty convincing,
0:18:26 because Sam’s right, when I read this,
0:18:28 he said we’re one of the last generations
0:18:29 to be created via sex.
0:18:31 I was like, I don’t know what the hell
0:18:33 he’s talking about, test two babies,
0:18:35 and then, but when you just made that case,
0:18:39 I got to admit, it went from George’s nuts to,
0:18:41 oh, he’s right, which is basically that like,
0:18:45 we already have the tech now to basically have a baby,
0:18:48 to create a baby without having sex.
0:18:49 Cool, IVF does that all the time.
0:18:51 And then when you say, well, what’s the benefit?
0:18:53 The benefit is selection, right?
0:18:57 So first it’s de-selection of horrible diseases.
0:18:59 Who can argue against that?
0:19:01 Then you have pro-selection, which is,
0:19:04 do you want the blue-eyed, smarter, taller?
0:19:05 Like, what do you want, right?
0:19:06 The higher likelihood chance, right?
0:19:08 And let’s say that science is making
0:19:10 that more and more possible over time.
0:19:12 Seems like that’s where the puck is going.
0:19:14 At that point, are you going to be the parent
0:19:16 who’s like, nah, I’m crap shooting it.
0:19:18 I’m just rolling the dice.
0:19:20 I’m just going to go do the animal way.
0:19:22 We’re going to in and out this burger animal style.
0:19:23 We’re just going to go do it,
0:19:24 and then whatever happens happens.
0:19:28 Whereas all your friends and neighbors are the ones,
0:19:30 you know, hand-picking best babies out of test tubes
0:19:33 to say, we want the embryo that’s going to be
0:19:36 the healthiest, the most sort of setup to thrive.
0:19:39 It seems like you’re at a disadvantage
0:19:41 if you’re going to go choose the old-school way, right?
0:19:45 It’s driving stick when the world moves to automatic.
0:19:47 – When I read the sentence, George, I was like,
0:19:50 when George is going to love the Earth,
0:19:51 when it comes back down to reality,
0:19:53 like once he leaves the Mars,
0:19:55 because you’re going to love Earth, it’s great.
0:19:56 – We have water in here.
0:20:00 – Yeah, but then I realized, hey, guess what?
0:20:03 I had my child via IVF, so–
0:20:06 – I wasn’t going to say it, but Sam, did this.
0:20:08 – Exactly what you are describing.
0:20:10 – I did it, my friend.
0:20:14 Yeah, and listen, we did it because there’s a gene
0:20:18 that runs in our blood that we didn’t want to pass on,
0:20:20 and we did it.
0:20:22 Mission accomplished, we eliminated that gene.
0:20:23 We got rid of the target.
0:20:24 – The two sexy gene, dude?
0:20:25 – Yeah.
0:20:26 – You got rid of that?
0:20:27 Damn.
0:20:28 (laughing)
0:20:31 Being beautiful is causing too many problems for you.
0:20:35 – Yeah, we wanted our kids to be 5’8″, and it worked.
0:20:39 And so, yeah, I did the exact thing you’re talking about.
0:20:41 – I’m going to get rid of the British self-doubt.
0:20:43 I think, I guess there’s two types of people that hear this.
0:20:47 There’s one type that goes, this is really weird.
0:20:48 Why would anybody ever do this?
0:20:51 And the second type goes, oh my God,
0:20:53 I’ve been so worried about this family hereditary condition
0:20:55 for so, so long, of course.
0:20:56 So the first people, if you actually hear that,
0:20:58 I think that you’re probably quite lucky
0:20:59 that you don’t have it.
0:21:01 But anybody who has, I’ve got a few different
0:21:03 family chronic conditions.
0:21:04 And as soon as I heard this, I was like,
0:21:07 oh, if I could not see my child go through pain
0:21:09 that I’ve seen other family members go through,
0:21:12 whatever money this takes, goes back to Sean’s point,
0:21:14 work backwards from the Facebook ad.
0:21:17 Like, are you concerned about ABC, diabetes,
0:21:21 Crohn’s disease, insert, condition, funnel right there?
0:21:23 And immediately, you can see how you can have very wealthy
0:21:25 people paying a lot of money for that.
0:21:26 And with time, the unit of economics
0:21:28 will go down further and further.
0:21:30 – And it also makes sense because people are waiting.
0:21:33 Like, I’ve got so many friends who are in their 30s,
0:21:36 late 30s, and they’re wanting to have their first kid
0:21:38 because they’re yuppies and they focused on career
0:21:39 for a long time.
0:21:40 And then you get in your late 30s and you’re like,
0:21:42 shit, my parts aren’t working as they’re supposed to.
0:21:46 Like, I could use a little help to make this happen.
0:21:49 It’s so, so much more common than I ever thought.
0:21:50 – So, funny story.
0:21:52 So we were doing the podcast with somebody
0:21:56 who’s super, super wealthy, like a billionaire.
0:21:58 And before we did the pod, I wanted to meet the person.
0:22:00 So I went to their house, hung out with them,
0:22:01 got to know them a little bit.
0:22:02 Ben was with me.
0:22:04 And we, so we hung out, it was great.
0:22:06 We had a long conversation about a bunch of different
0:22:09 subjects, business, tech, life, blah, blah, blah.
0:22:11 And somewhere along the way, this person was like,
0:22:12 they mentioned, oh yeah, we, you know,
0:22:14 I have this many kids and I’m expecting it.
0:22:15 We’re expecting our next one.
0:22:17 We’re like, oh, congratulations.
0:22:18 Anyways, we leave.
0:22:19 And so when we’re leaving the house, we, you know,
0:22:22 say bye to everybody, you know, meet the family, say bye.
0:22:24 Afterwards, I’m like, Ben, so what’s the,
0:22:25 what were your big like notes?
0:22:26 What were your takeaways?
0:22:27 So what did we learn?
0:22:29 Wow, we just got this amazing access to this person.
0:22:32 None of this was recorded, but like we can learn from this.
0:22:34 What, what did we learn?
0:22:36 And I had like all these like business nuggets.
0:22:38 Like, oh, he mentioned this growth tactic.
0:22:41 Oh, he said, this was the reason why that thing succeeded.
0:22:42 And Ben goes, and look at his notes.
0:22:45 He goes, oh, I found the ultimate luxury item.
0:22:47 I was like, wait, like his car or what are you talking about?
0:22:50 And cause he had showed us his garage of cool cars.
0:22:54 And he’s like, no, surrogate.
0:22:56 I was like, what, because when we were walking out,
0:22:58 we saw his wife and he said like,
0:23:00 we’re expecting a baby next month,
0:23:02 but his wife is not nine months pregnant.
0:23:03 Fucking clubbo.
0:23:05 He’s like, that’s amazing.
0:23:07 He’s like, that is gotta be, he’s like, right?
0:23:09 That’s gotta be the ultimate luxury item.
0:23:11 It’s like, you don’t have to go through
0:23:15 like this like incredible body, you know, experience
0:23:17 to carry and then birth this baby.
0:23:18 That’s the ultimate luxury.
0:23:20 And so I started laughing at that.
0:23:22 And I thought, he’s kind of right.
0:23:23 I think there is.
0:23:25 I so disagree with you on that.
0:23:25 You disagree that what?
0:23:27 That it’s a luxury item?
0:23:29 Or that everybody wants it?
0:23:31 No, I think, I don’t want, I mean, look,
0:23:33 it’s a bunch of dudes talking about shit
0:23:34 that we ain’t gonna experience.
0:23:35 But like-
0:23:36 Dude, I could barely form a sentence.
0:23:37 I called it a body transformation.
0:23:38 Yeah.
0:23:40 (laughing)
0:23:42 I have three kids and I still don’t really understand
0:23:42 what’s going on.
0:23:45 Yeah, but no, I think that’s like a necessary thing
0:23:48 to go through in order to bond with your kid.
0:23:49 So I don’t-
0:23:50 That’s like saying, if you’re adopted,
0:23:51 you’re not gonna have a bond.
0:23:54 I think there’s a lot of new ones to that.
0:23:55 But George, what do you think?
0:23:59 I mean, I like these things because I don’t-
0:24:01 Tell me your opinion on what we should do
0:24:02 with women’s bodies.
0:24:04 (laughing)
0:24:05 Yeah, put me on the spot there.
0:24:07 Okay, I’ll give you like a different angle to this.
0:24:11 When I, so my wife wanted to deliver naturally,
0:24:13 so no medication, no nothing.
0:24:14 And I was like, are you nuts?
0:24:15 Why are you trying to do this the hard way?
0:24:16 She’s like, no, that’s what I want to do.
0:24:18 So we went to this birthing class,
0:24:21 giving birth the natural way.
0:24:24 By far the most like scarred into my brain,
0:24:27 you know, three hours I’ve ever been in.
0:24:30 And one of the things that I raised my hand at one point
0:24:31 ’cause it’s like 90 minutes in
0:24:32 and they’re just describing
0:24:34 what seems like voluntary torture.
0:24:37 And I’m like, hey, I just gotta ask like,
0:24:39 is this what most people do or?
0:24:42 And she’s like, no, I think she said 80 something percent,
0:24:45 85% of people choose an epidural.
0:24:47 And I was like, makes sense to me.
0:24:50 And epidural is also kind of a newer technology, right?
0:24:52 Like so for, you know, hundreds of years,
0:24:53 there was no such thing as an epidural,
0:24:56 but once you have the option to have a baby
0:24:59 that without, you know, being able to feel all of the pain
0:25:01 and the delivery and the labor,
0:25:03 obviously a lot of people opted into that.
0:25:05 And so there’s a whole bunch of like birth businesses
0:25:08 that are like, you know, the epidural is a birth business.
0:25:09 Like after we had our baby, they’re like,
0:25:10 do you want to freeze the cord blood
0:25:11 and like eat the placenta?
0:25:12 And I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about,
0:25:15 but like no to the eating, freezing, what’s that for?
0:25:17 They’re like, well, if your kid ever has a thing
0:25:20 and they need a, you know, stem cells,
0:25:22 this is like super rich thing of stem cells on a cool.
0:25:23 So how does this work?
0:25:25 And they go, well, we’re going to take the cord
0:25:26 right when the baby’s born
0:25:29 and this might save your baby’s life someday,
0:25:30 but we’re just going to freeze it
0:25:32 and you’re going to pay us, you know, a couple of thousand
0:25:35 dollars now and then like $500 a year for now
0:25:37 until the end of the time.
0:25:38 And I was like, okay, yes,
0:25:40 but also how do I go buy one of these businesses?
0:25:41 Because this is the most incredible business
0:25:42 I’ve ever heard of.
0:25:45 You’re playing on parents fear at a time
0:25:47 when all of their loving dolphins are kicking up
0:25:48 and they’re like, okay, my purpose in life
0:25:50 is to protect this baby.
0:25:52 And then it’s a set it and forget it.
0:25:56 You know, the tens of thousand dollar subscription
0:25:57 for a thing that you’re just going to,
0:26:00 the ultimate insurance policy for your kid.
0:26:02 That has to be the best business I’ve ever heard of.
0:26:04 – That’s good.
0:26:05 – So if anyone has one of those out there,
0:26:07 I’m still actually looking to buy them.
0:26:08 I’ve never seen one for sale,
0:26:09 which I think is another signal
0:26:11 that it’s a very good business.
0:26:13 – 100%
0:26:16 – What’s the selling eyes is art thing?
0:26:18 – Yeah, so this is one thing I know
0:26:19 is whilst I was traveling around Europe.
0:26:22 Have you guys seen this store?
0:26:24 Let me pull it up.
0:26:25 So again-
0:26:26 – How old are you, George?
0:26:29 – I’m 30, just turned 30.
0:26:30 – Yeah, good energy.
0:26:31 I like energy.
0:26:33 – This is called an indicator of interest from Sam.
0:26:34 Sam starts to ask like-
0:26:35 – What’s up?
0:26:36 – Yeah, what’s up?
0:26:38 (laughing)
0:26:40 – Before we do that, let’s talk.
0:26:41 (laughing)
0:26:43 And then you pass the first 20 minutes of the pod
0:26:45 where it’s like, does this person have anything interesting
0:26:46 to say to now like, wait,
0:26:47 I need more of this guy in my life?
0:26:51 – The second, the second a British guy says whilst.
0:26:54 I’m like, you have my attention.
0:26:57 (laughing)
0:26:58 That’s my favorite word.
0:27:00 – Oh, okay.
0:27:01 So can you guys see this?
0:27:05 So for the people who are listening, your eye for art.
0:27:09 So in Amsterdam right now, I walk past this store.
0:27:13 I walk past the store and in the outside of the store,
0:27:15 there’s this thing where you kind of lean into a telescope
0:27:18 and reflecting back from the telescope is your eye.
0:27:19 And what’s fascinating,
0:27:21 I’ve got relatively nice eyes
0:27:23 that don’t get many compliments on them blue eyes.
0:27:24 – You can say that again, George.
0:27:25 – There you go.
0:27:26 (laughing)
0:27:28 You’re gonna get me blushing too much, Sam.
0:27:31 So you then have certain friends of yours
0:27:33 that are probably beautiful eyes
0:27:34 that get compliments all the time.
0:27:37 What’s actually fascinating, similar to the personality test,
0:27:39 when you zoom in to someone’s eye,
0:27:41 even if they’ve got the ugliest eyes in the world,
0:27:42 they’re beautiful.
0:27:44 So like my eye, I was like, wow, this is incredible.
0:27:48 You can even do it where couples partner their eyes.
0:27:49 And this is one of the fastest growing companies
0:27:50 out of Europe right now.
0:27:51 Like it’s growing really, really fast.
0:27:52 – Did you do this?
0:27:54 – I did do it, yeah.
0:27:57 Me and my girlfriend got the eyes scanned.
0:27:58 – Is it like on the wall behind you?
0:27:59 Where is it at?
0:28:01 – No, no, no, it’s not on the wall behind me.
0:28:02 I’m getting in my mom as a gift.
0:28:03 – Is it a print or digital?
0:28:04 What do they do?
0:28:05 What do they give you?
0:28:06 – You can print it,
0:28:08 and then you can do big blow-ups on the wall.
0:28:10 And they charge quite a lot for these things.
0:28:12 It’s like 200 to 300 quid.
0:28:13 – And the reason why you like this
0:28:15 is because you’re all about distribution
0:28:17 and you were walking down the street,
0:28:18 you saw the storefront,
0:28:19 you can look into this thing
0:28:21 and they show you a picture of it
0:28:22 and then you pay money to buy it.
0:28:26 – And the sticky idea is emotion times market, right?
0:28:28 So this is everybody’s the market
0:28:30 and the emotion I think is pretty strong in this.
0:28:32 – Yeah, it’s so personalized to them
0:28:34 and it looks beautiful.
0:28:35 – Dude, and you can buy like,
0:28:37 you can buy like a necklace or a ring
0:28:40 or something of your wife’s like eye print.
0:28:41 – Correct.
0:28:42 – This is awesome.
0:28:44 There’s probably no repeat purchase here,
0:28:46 but this is awesome as a one-time thing.
0:28:48 – And it’s so much more beautiful.
0:28:49 Even if you think you’ve got boring eyes,
0:28:50 when they zoom into that level,
0:28:51 it’s like seeing the universe.
0:28:52 You go, oh my God,
0:28:55 this is its own mini universe inside of me.
0:28:56 – I notice on their landing page,
0:28:58 they don’t have very many, you know,
0:28:59 boring black guys like mine.
0:29:02 So it’s all like beautiful greens
0:29:04 and blues and hazels.
0:29:05 – I think you’d be surprised.
0:29:07 I think you’d be surprised to quit Brennan Sharbley.
0:29:10 I think when you get under that, it’s crazy.
0:29:11 – Well, I’m definitely curious.
0:29:12 Like I definitely would want to do this.
0:29:13 If this was around me,
0:29:14 I would definitely want to do it.
0:29:18 I would certainly do it with my wife or my kids
0:29:20 ’cause it’s just like a thoughtful,
0:29:22 it’s a thoughtful, cool thing rather than like,
0:29:24 you know, same old, same old.
0:29:26 – So one of the innovations I’d like to see
0:29:30 is could you distribute this online?
0:29:33 So with smartphone cameras getting better and better,
0:29:36 is there a bit of ability and like AI scanning images?
0:29:37 Is there something there?
0:29:39 Or is it that you send a little device
0:29:40 that sits on the camera
0:29:41 that gives even more definition
0:29:43 so they could do it at home?
0:29:43 On all of a sudden,
0:29:45 you can imagine the advert first.
0:29:47 – Oh dude, if you could do this with an iPhone.
0:29:49 – How beautiful your eyes are.
0:29:50 Bull global market amigurum.
0:29:51 – All right, I’m gonna send this
0:29:52 to somebody to try to make this.
0:29:53 – Dude, this is awesome.
0:29:55 I just texted this to my wife.
0:29:56 I said, “Hey, let’s go.”
0:29:57 – To Europe.
0:29:58 – This is awesome.
0:30:00 No, they have a New York location.
0:30:02 If you click find gallery,
0:30:04 they have galleries all over the world.
0:30:05 – So George, you said this business is doing well.
0:30:06 What do you know about them?
0:30:08 – Doing really well.
0:30:10 From when I went into the store,
0:30:11 I was like, this ticks all my,
0:30:13 like the lot of pillows are effect right here,
0:30:14 it’s taking all my boxes.
0:30:17 And they said it’s like one of the fastest growing startups
0:30:18 in America.
0:30:20 They opened 150 locations in last year
0:30:21 or something like that.
0:30:23 So it’s growing like bananas.
0:30:23 – You guys wanna hear something?
0:30:26 So the other day, have you guys seen this?
0:30:28 It’s mostly women.
0:30:29 And it’s this thing on TikTok
0:30:30 where you go to this place
0:30:32 and they hold up colors to your face
0:30:35 and they tell you your color palette.
0:30:36 What’s that called?
0:30:40 Color scale or color grade or like,
0:30:43 so it’s like a noun where it’s like, hey, what’s your blank?
0:30:44 I forget what it’s called.
0:30:45 But anyway, my wife wanted to,
0:30:47 she saw an ad on TikTok for it
0:30:48 and she was like, this looks cool.
0:30:50 And I was like, I’ll go and you pay $100.
0:30:52 And they rented this tiny,
0:30:56 like it’s like a huge closet basically.
0:30:57 And you just sit there
0:30:58 and they just hold up a shade to you.
0:30:59 And they go, no, not that one.
0:31:02 – Is it for clothes or for makeup orage for everything?
0:31:03 – It’s for, and at the end,
0:31:05 you get this thing and it says,
0:31:07 you are this one, whatever,
0:31:09 like there’s like 18 categories,
0:31:13 which means this makeup, this clothing color,
0:31:16 this, all these colors, these are your colors.
0:31:19 And it basically, like for me, it was like,
0:31:21 it’s all women, it’s like Margot Robbie.
0:31:24 Like it just said, like some other white lady who that’s like,
0:31:26 she is also an example of this person.
0:31:29 And so you should wear clothing in the wintertime
0:31:31 that are these colors in the summertime, these colors,
0:31:33 whatever, but it’s a brick and mortar thing
0:31:35 that has been franchised out.
0:31:37 Similarly, I mentioned to this business
0:31:38 and I was like, how many of these a day do you have?
0:31:41 She’s like, I’m packed, I’ve got 14 a day
0:31:43 and each one has paid $100.
0:31:45 And I give HQ, like the headquarter company,
0:31:47 half of it or something like that.
0:31:48 – What was it called?
0:31:49 What’s the name of it?
0:31:50 – Yeah, and I think I went,
0:31:51 I think the place that I was called,
0:31:54 the place that I went, it was called the color lab
0:31:56 or something like that where it’s like,
0:31:58 sign me up and I taught,
0:32:00 and it had the same type of stick as this one, George,
0:32:02 where it was like a brick and mortar.
0:32:03 It was franchised.
0:32:04 – It’s like Dexa.
0:32:05 – Yeah, there was like a thing outside
0:32:07 and you’re like, yeah, of course,
0:32:09 I have to know like what color I am,
0:32:11 otherwise I’m gonna be ugly.
0:32:12 It totally got me.
0:32:15 Have you seen this guys on like TikTok or Instagram?
0:32:16 It’s mostly like a women thing.
0:32:17 – I’ve heard of the trend,
0:32:20 the color analysis type of thing.
0:32:22 And I don’t know, George,
0:32:23 you probably know the fancy word for these things,
0:32:27 but there’s like, so there’s the concept of consumerism, right?
0:32:28 Which is like, you know,
0:32:30 how Americans basically feel like
0:32:32 we need to buy certain things.
0:32:34 We need to like, I’ll give you the example.
0:32:38 A friend who lives in India came over to visit
0:32:40 and they go, yeah, India’s really changed.
0:32:40 One of the things is like,
0:32:41 India feels like America.
0:32:42 We’ve become consumerized.
0:32:44 He’s like, you know, before,
0:32:48 he’s like, Indians used to have one max, two pairs of shoes.
0:32:51 He’s like, but now it’s normal to feel like you need
0:32:52 like 10 pairs of shoes.
0:32:53 You need like all the different colors and all that.
0:32:55 It’s like, that’s not a real need,
0:32:57 but it starts to embed itself in culture.
0:32:59 It’s like, you almost convince yourself
0:33:02 that you need this much stuff.
0:33:04 You need to buy more things.
0:33:06 And I think that there’s like this personal consumerism,
0:33:08 which is around, you need to know X about yourself.
0:33:10 You need to know your quantified health.
0:33:11 You need to know your color grade.
0:33:13 You need to know your personality test.
0:33:15 And I think you can just keep selling into that.
0:33:17 There just seems to be an increasing amount
0:33:19 of consumerism around the self too,
0:33:22 not just around material things in your house.
0:33:25 – Yeah, I don’t know the specific thing for it,
0:33:27 but it’s this idea of the infinite consumer abyss.
0:33:30 You stare into it and it stares back into you.
0:33:31 – Dude, look at this guy.
0:33:32 The infinite consumer abyss.
0:33:34 Just off the dome.
0:33:36 That is why this guy is the guy.
0:33:39 – If we’re gonna have an infinite consumer abyss,
0:33:43 I’m getting red ’cause according to Lily’s color lab,
0:33:46 that’s, those are my colors.
0:33:47 – Wait, so you did this?
0:33:49 Or you made it sound like your wife did this?
0:33:50 – Well, she was like, let’s do this.
0:33:51 And I was like, I’m in.
0:33:52 Here’s $200.
0:33:54 – Let’s just plural.
0:33:56 (laughing)
0:33:57 – Like, let’s find out our colors.
0:33:59 – So what’s your color?
0:34:00 – I don’t know, dude.
0:34:01 I didn’t use any of it.
0:34:03 (laughing)
0:34:04 I don’t know.
0:34:07 I just went to experience what it was all about.
0:34:08 I don’t know.
0:34:10 – Sam Lilac Par, let’s go.
0:34:11 – I just wear blue and black anyway.
0:34:14 It was, that was, that’s my color.
0:34:15 – All right, let’s do the,
0:34:17 let’s do these other two ideas ’cause I’m curious now.
0:34:19 By the way, you know how I know this is a great episode?
0:34:21 ‘Cause I feel like I need to get off this
0:34:23 and go do these ideas right now.
0:34:24 Like, I don’t even wanna finish this episode.
0:34:26 I wanna go do one of these things right now.
0:34:27 That’s how I know this is a banger.
0:34:29 All right, so let’s do number four.
0:34:30 Mold cleanup as a service.
0:34:31 What do you mean by this?
0:34:36 – Yes, so one big meme slash wave
0:34:38 that I was noticing in America
0:34:40 is people becoming more and more concerned
0:34:41 about mold in their house.
0:34:43 – Yeah, people freak out about that in Austin,
0:34:44 particularly.
0:34:46 – Yeah, 70% of houses in America
0:34:47 apparently have mold in them.
0:34:49 Obviously it varies in terms of the amount,
0:34:52 but downstream effects of autoimmune conditions,
0:34:56 severe health issues, asthma, et cetera, et cetera.
0:34:59 Working backwards from the ad first,
0:35:01 find out if you have mold in your house.
0:35:03 Like, a horrific image of the mold
0:35:08 and horrific insights into the damage that mold can do.
0:35:10 You could sell the visits for free
0:35:12 and people are ripping up their houses,
0:35:14 spending tens of thousands of dollars,
0:35:15 hundreds of thousands of dollars,
0:35:18 because if it’s your home and you have poison in it,
0:35:21 the friends that I have that are renting
0:35:23 are literally moving out of the house.
0:35:25 They’re not sticking around now.
0:35:28 So if you actually own the home, it’s even stickier.
0:35:31 I like it from an ad perspective, a health perspective.
0:35:33 If you could partner with a big like health influencer
0:35:35 that’s your chief influencer officer
0:35:37 that could just chat about mold all day
0:35:40 and just run the funnel of find out for free
0:35:43 and then sell them all the services on the back end.
0:35:44 Similar to what Maric Health has done
0:35:46 for blood optimization, but doing it in the house.
0:35:48 I think there’s a lot of money to be made
0:35:49 riding that wave.
0:35:52 I know Sean you chart about one chart businesses.
0:35:53 If you put mold in Google Trends,
0:35:56 it’s just every year like steadily getting bigger
0:35:57 and bigger and bigger and bigger.
0:35:59 – I love that for a bunch of reasons.
0:36:01 So what was that you said?
0:36:02 30% of houses have mold?
0:36:03 – 70%.
0:36:04 – 70%.
0:36:07 Okay, so that is also killer hook for the ad, right?
0:36:10 75% of the houses have mold.
0:36:12 Find out for free if yours does.
0:36:16 Type in your address and we’ll send out a person for free
0:36:17 to go diagnose.
0:36:19 And if you know that 70% have something
0:36:22 then your conversion, even if 10% or 5% of those people
0:36:25 are gonna spend a few thousand dollars
0:36:27 getting rid of the mold, that’s pretty good.
0:36:29 You could target high value areas.
0:36:31 You could also just run this as lead gen only.
0:36:34 So people who do mold servicing
0:36:36 probably are not great at Facebook ads.
0:36:38 And so you could just be the great at Facebook ad part
0:36:40 and then farm out all the leads
0:36:42 to the mold companies all around the country.
0:36:45 So that seems like a really good part of this business.
0:36:46 And then the last thing is like,
0:36:50 there are so many people that have undiagnosed health issues.
0:36:52 So maybe it’s like fatigue,
0:36:54 maybe it’s a bad allergies, whatever’s going on.
0:36:56 And you can’t find the root cause of these.
0:36:58 And I think this is why something like gut health
0:36:59 has taken off in such a big way.
0:37:00 ‘Cause it seems like one of these like,
0:37:01 yeah, if your gut’s screwed up
0:37:03 then everything downstream is gonna be screwed up.
0:37:06 And it could explain 15 different health conditions.
0:37:10 And so same thing, like if your environment is toxic
0:37:12 then that could explain 15 different conditions
0:37:13 that you might have.
0:37:16 And who’s gonna argue that, no, I wanna keep it toxic
0:37:18 once you find out that they are.
0:37:19 We had a pest control guy come to our house
0:37:22 and he’s like, yeah, see that little nook under the house?
0:37:25 That means you have mice and rats that are under the house.
0:37:27 And even if you’re not seeing them in the house
0:37:28 they’re here, they’re at your house.
0:37:31 Would you like me to seal this and like play some traps
0:37:33 and I can come by every month and spray?
0:37:35 I was like, cool, here’s $300 a month, go for it.
0:37:39 And that’s a $300 month subscription that I’m on now
0:37:43 for the vague possibility that there’s like a mice,
0:37:45 like, you know, my eroded problem at our house.
0:37:49 – So here’s the deal.
0:37:53 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:37:54 It was called The Hustle.
0:37:55 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:37:57 to millions of subscribers.
0:37:59 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:38:03 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:38:06 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:38:08 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:38:09 building out the tech for the platform
0:38:10 and selling ads.
0:38:13 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:38:16 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:38:20 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:38:21 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:38:22 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:38:24 they do all of the stuff that I had
0:38:26 to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:38:28 So check it out, beehive.com.
0:38:32 That’s B-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:38:36 – What you’re going to learn, George, moving Austin,
0:38:39 is that like it’s like the most health-conscious city
0:38:40 I’ve ever been to.
0:38:41 And some people are pretty extreme,
0:38:44 but it’s kind of exciting to be around those extreme people.
0:38:49 And I know people who have a Berkeley water filter
0:38:51 for their entire home.
0:38:53 And I started researching it.
0:38:56 Have you guys ever seen the inside of a water heater,
0:38:58 like a water tank?
0:38:59 They’re horrible.
0:39:00 – Disgusting.
0:39:01 – It’s horrible.
0:39:02 You see that?
0:39:04 – There’s a picture of somebody literally just holding
0:39:08 two fistfuls of what just looks like either mold,
0:39:11 or fungus, or just like mulch of some kind.
0:39:14 – And so I saw one of these videos
0:39:16 where they just cut open a water tank,
0:39:18 like a water tank for the water heater.
0:39:20 – It’s called a water heater tank autopsy.
0:39:23 – It looks like what you would see
0:39:25 with like an old coffin that you woke up open up
0:39:27 with just like a bunch of like rotted skeleton bones.
0:39:29 Like it’s just like, what the hell is this?
0:39:30 I don’t even know what this is.
0:39:32 And it makes you like crawl.
0:39:35 And so I remember seeing this and I’m thinking,
0:39:37 is my water heater like this?
0:39:38 Are my pipes like this?
0:39:40 I have to get one of these Berkeley water filters.
0:39:43 I need one of these things.
0:39:44 And this is very similar.
0:39:47 And the differences is I think getting mold out of your home
0:39:50 is either, it’s actually quite hard,
0:39:51 or in some cases it’s impossible.
0:39:54 I think like, I don’t know if the problem,
0:39:56 I’m not sure if that problem in many cases
0:39:57 can actually be solved.
0:39:59 Getting a new water heater,
0:40:03 getting a water filter at your house, much more solvable.
0:40:06 Particularly like my in-laws live in New York City
0:40:08 where these buildings are built in the ’50s.
0:40:10 It’s a lot of times the similar pipes
0:40:12 or the water that goes through New York City.
0:40:14 It’s like pipes have been around for a long time.
0:40:18 And I remember seeing these videos of these like water heater,
0:40:21 like where they cut them open and do autopsy.
0:40:23 And I’m like, yeah, I’m never drinking water
0:40:25 for many of this shit ever again.
0:40:30 Like, and I was like, I need to find some places to replace this.
0:40:34 That is in line with what you’re talking about.
0:40:39 There may be even more of a pungent ad.
0:40:41 – Yeah, that’s a good one.
0:40:42 Should we move on to the next one?
0:40:43 – Yeah.
0:40:44 – All right, let’s do this last one.
0:40:47 So your final idea, I think is a really fun one
0:40:49 ’cause it’s not even a business,
0:40:50 it’s like a country-level idea.
0:40:54 Like, you should be the CMO of the UK.
0:40:56 Explain this idea.
0:40:59 – Yeah, I like how when Bellagy went from like crypto currencies
0:41:00 and now trying to build his own country.
0:41:01 And you have, I mean,
0:41:02 think about companies this entire time.
0:41:05 People out here think of countries and…
0:41:07 – I don’t, the city’s whisper, right?
0:41:08 He’s in Silicon Valley for too long.
0:41:09 It’s like, you need to be more ambitious.
0:41:10 You’re starting companies.
0:41:12 Oh, that’s cute.
0:41:12 I start countries.
0:41:19 – So one of my reflections as they coming from the UK
0:41:22 and we spoke about it to begin with on experiencing America
0:41:25 and despite all the political shenanigans
0:41:30 that America has attending 4th of July in Nashville.
0:41:32 And I’m going, this is wild.
0:41:34 Like, there’s flanks everywhere.
0:41:36 There’s people chanting, you were safe.
0:41:37 You were safe, you were safe.
0:41:39 Everyone’s on the streets.
0:41:41 So I was at the end of the day chanting USA
0:41:43 and then people were going, you can’t do that.
0:41:45 That’s why we’re chanting ’cause we got rid of you guys.
0:41:47 And anyway, I then reflected on it
0:41:51 and I realized that I’ve never met an American
0:41:54 that doesn’t celebrate their national day in some regard.
0:41:57 And then I realized I’ve never met a Brit
0:41:59 that does celebrate their national day.
0:42:03 And then I realized I’ve never met a Brit
0:42:06 who even knows the day of their national day.
0:42:08 – Well, because you guys have been like the bosses,
0:42:10 like there is no independence day.
0:42:13 You were like the colonizer, right?
0:42:14 – Exactly.
0:42:15 So that’s one of the issues with it.
0:42:17 So the irony is, by the way,
0:42:19 the national day is St. George’s Day.
0:42:22 I’m English called George and I had to Google it.
0:42:24 It’s April the 23rd.
0:42:26 In England, there’s no flags anywhere.
0:42:28 You can’t have national pride.
0:42:31 And I do think part of it is the colonization side.
0:42:33 Also St. George is like, who was this guy?
0:42:36 Whereas of independence day, you had a clear enemy.
0:42:38 So thinking from an advert perspective,
0:42:39 who is St. George?
0:42:42 It’s the Slater Dragon, nobody cares.
0:42:45 And essentially cancelling St. George’s Day
0:42:47 and creating Dunkirk Day.
0:42:50 So the Britain’s finest hour,
0:42:51 we’ve made a lot of mistakes,
0:42:54 but Britain’s finest hour was where we escaped,
0:42:57 Hitler’s Germany, 400,000 men were Churchill,
0:42:59 all of Britain came up together,
0:43:00 sending the boats across.
0:43:03 And literally the only reason the country exists
0:43:04 and we’re not speaking German.
0:43:06 And I, arguably, Adolf Hitler doesn’t conquer
0:43:08 the whole of Europe, it’s because of this day.
0:43:09 So there’s an enemy.
0:43:10 No matter where you stand politically,
0:43:12 Adolf Hitler, number one enemy
0:43:14 when it comes to that ad strategy.
0:43:15 And make it the most British day imaginable.
0:43:18 So from midnight to 12 p.m.,
0:43:21 you can complain, moan, drink tea,
0:43:24 talk about what’s wrong in the past, present and future.
0:43:28 But come 12 p.m., get the RAF in the sky,
0:43:29 get kids dressed as,
0:43:31 like if you look at the number of British icons,
0:43:35 Charles Darwin, William Shakespeare, John Lennon,
0:43:37 like there’s so many icons of history
0:43:38 that the world should be grateful for.
0:43:39 And I think you could add billions
0:43:41 to the tourist economy of the UK
0:43:44 and unite a difficult nation for at least an afternoon.
0:43:47 – Sign me up, my friend, this is awesome.
0:43:47 – Dude, this is amazing.
0:43:49 – There we go.
0:43:51 – Like we get an oasis, by the way,
0:43:53 just announced they’re going on tour.
0:43:54 – They’re going to that.
0:43:55 – Yeah.
0:43:59 – He’s like Darwin, Shakespeare, Sam’s like, oh, oasis.
0:44:01 – Liam Gallagher, honestly, playing Wonderwall
0:44:03 would not be a bad idea.
0:44:06 That might be the official song of Dunkirk Day.
0:44:08 – There we go.
0:44:11 – So you posted this, did anybody like hit you up?
0:44:13 Did you get some like, you know, a p.m. in the DMS?
0:44:14 What happened?
0:44:17 – Who, the, I mean, who’s the, like–
0:44:20 – I don’t know, Harry Reachout, who’s supposed to reach out?
0:44:23 – Not yet, not yet.
0:44:24 I’m not gonna, I’m gonna keep on getting the drum
0:44:26 for a while, but it’s one of those things.
0:44:31 – You should run ads to your essay, to your blog post,
0:44:34 targeting specifically, as hyper specific as you can.
0:44:36 – The zip code of a royal family.
0:44:38 – 10 grand of ad spend, and I’m pretty sure
0:44:40 you’re gonna get a meeting at the palace.
0:44:43 We’re here to discuss.
0:44:43 – Let’s do it.
0:44:45 Let’s do it, Dunkirk Day.
0:44:46 (laughing)
0:44:50 – That’s fantastic, that is like a funny conundrum
0:44:52 that England is in when it’s like,
0:44:54 well, you guys have been the man for so long,
0:44:55 but there’s not really like a,
0:44:57 like started from the bottom,
0:44:59 now we’re here type of story.
0:45:01 It’s more like, you’ve been the man for so long,
0:45:03 and now you’re like in Forrest.
0:45:05 So like, that’s like pretty good longevity.
0:45:07 – Well, the thing is, you need the brand, right?
0:45:10 So like, I bet if I walked outside right now,
0:45:14 and I went to like, you know, just like a nearby,
0:45:17 I don’t know, if I went to Home Depot,
0:45:19 and if it was a busy day at a Home Depot,
0:45:22 I feel like if me, if I could get two other people with me
0:45:24 to start chanting USA,
0:45:27 I’m pretty sure the whole store would just start arbitrarily,
0:45:29 not on a July 4, just start chanting USA,
0:45:31 ’cause there’s such a pride,
0:45:34 and USA has like, the brand is really, really strong, right?
0:45:36 It’s like freedom number one, right?
0:45:38 There’s the American dream.
0:45:41 There’s like sort of the pride of America,
0:45:45 whereas like, I think, what would the country stand for?
0:45:47 So you were like, drink tea and wine,
0:45:50 which is like, okay, that’s like, you know, humorous in a way,
0:45:52 but like, what would be the thing?
0:45:54 Would it be like, would it be creativity?
0:45:55 Would it be art?
0:45:56 What would be the thing that’s like,
0:45:57 we can hang our hat on of like,
0:45:59 we’re the best at this, the British pride.
0:46:02 What is the British pride about?
0:46:04 – I think from first principles,
0:46:06 the reason why Independence Day works
0:46:08 is because there’s an enemy that you escaped.
0:46:11 And just using creating an enemy,
0:46:13 again, talk about advertising tactics earlier,
0:46:15 a great out of that angle.
0:46:19 But the enemy of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany
0:46:20 can unite is the only thing
0:46:22 that can unite this country, I think.
0:46:25 So, and then just go through the like,
0:46:27 whatever you wanna pick, you wanna pick literature,
0:46:29 you wanna pick the Industrial Revolution.
0:46:32 Like, we’ve got some classic hits in the library.
0:46:33 We’ve got a lot.
0:46:35 – I think I have an answer to my question,
0:46:37 to my own question that adds on what you just said,
0:46:42 which is the UK is sort of like the Harvard of countries.
0:46:44 It is Ivy League.
0:46:45 It is prestige.
0:46:46 It is old money.
0:46:48 It is old history.
0:46:49 It is we’ve been here forever.
0:46:52 And the great minds have come from us.
0:46:55 I think that’s the branding, which is like,
0:46:58 the US is more like, I don’t know, a big state school.
0:47:00 It’s a bit of a party school, right?
0:47:04 And whereas, you know, we’re more USC,
0:47:08 whereas the UK is more Harvard Yale Princeton
0:47:10 in its vibe and its brand.
0:47:13 And so it’s got that old luxury, old money,
0:47:17 old prestige brand, which is like, it’s elevated.
0:47:19 And I think that’s part of,
0:47:20 well, that’s what I would lean into more.
0:47:23 It’s not like modern and super high tech.
0:47:25 I would lean into the other side on the branding.
0:47:28 – One of my favorite ad campaigns, George of all time,
0:47:30 it was in the ’70s.
0:47:33 It was a Rolex campaign.
0:47:37 And it would show a picture of Dwight Eisenhower,
0:47:38 the general during World War II,
0:47:41 and then the president of America giving a speech
0:47:43 to troops and he had a Rolex on.
0:47:48 And then it showed an admiral of a great shit,
0:47:50 like giving directions to his folks.
0:47:51 And he looks like he’s going to war
0:47:52 and he’s wearing a Rolex.
0:47:55 And then I think it’s so JFK wearing a Rolex
0:47:57 while he was like talking to cash show
0:47:59 or something like amazing, whatever.
0:48:03 And the headline was the men who control the destinies,
0:48:07 the men who control the destiny of the world wear Rolex.
0:48:10 And it’s one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time
0:48:13 because it makes me associate Rolex with prestige
0:48:16 and doing something, not just being elite,
0:48:19 but actually flexing that muscle.
0:48:22 And I’ve never seen a good idea on how to reuse
0:48:25 this ad campaign that I love so much.
0:48:28 But this might be the one where it’s like,
0:48:30 the people who have given the world art
0:48:32 or the people who have kind of helped shape
0:48:34 the destiny of the world or British, whatever.
0:48:37 But that’s one of my favorite ad campaigns of all time.
0:48:41 – Yeah, I think the copy is if you were here tomorrow,
0:48:42 you’d be wearing a Rolex.
0:48:44 And he does different variations of that.
0:48:45 I’ve broke that one down a few times.
0:48:47 It’s so hypnotic.
0:48:49 But even that lineback, if you were here tomorrow,
0:48:53 you would wear a Rolex with like an image of the White House.
0:48:58 Therefore, aspiration association of the White House,
0:49:01 it puts you, so it puts you in it.
0:49:02 That is hypnosis.
0:49:05 If you spoke to a hypnotist about a sentence,
0:49:07 that sentence is all literal hypnosis.
0:49:10 Like for example, there’s a Porsche one that I love, Sean.
0:49:14 And it says too small to get laid in,
0:49:16 but you’ll get laid the second you get out of it.
0:49:18 It is a picture of a Porsche.
0:49:19 – Or the New Balance one, right?
0:49:23 The only shoe worn by high fashion models in London
0:49:25 and dads in Ohio.
0:49:26 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that one.
0:49:28 – That’s like such a good one.
0:49:29 – Like I said, we’ve broken down a lot of these
0:49:30 on the ad professor.
0:49:32 So like one of the Porsche ones is,
0:49:34 honestly now, did you spend your youth dreaming
0:49:37 about someday owning a Nissan or a Mitsubishi?
0:49:38 – Yeah.
0:49:39 – That’s good.
0:49:41 (laughing)
0:49:45 You may get lost, but not in the crowd.
0:49:46 – That’s another good Porsche one.
0:49:48 – If this car doesn’t excite you,
0:49:50 check your pulse, you may be dead.
0:49:52 So yeah, there’s so many,
0:49:53 like if you go to the ad professor on Twitter,
0:49:55 we’ve got so many of them.
0:49:57 – So we should talk about the ad professor real quick.
0:50:01 So you have this marketing agency and to grow it,
0:50:02 I thought you did a brilliant thing,
0:50:05 which is you created this anonymous account on Twitter,
0:50:05 the ad professor.
0:50:07 And I think you didn’t tell people at the beginning
0:50:08 that that was you, right?
0:50:10 – Nobody knows to this day, really.
0:50:11 – Well, we just–
0:50:12 – There you go.
0:50:15 – Breaking news, Scoop came out the closet.
0:50:17 Yo, YouTube thumbnail, George Mac comes out,
0:50:20 reveals his truth, we got it.
0:50:23 – Yeah, people won’t click on that, they already know.
0:50:26 – So he creates the thing, the ad professor,
0:50:27 and all he does is just give.
0:50:31 It’s like, I love ads, which you do and you collect them.
0:50:32 And so you just started threading.
0:50:34 Here’s just badass ads.
0:50:36 And then in that, people start DMing you.
0:50:39 And from what I understand, it’s a better salesman
0:50:41 than any sales guy you could have hired
0:50:42 to go out and pitch for business.
0:50:43 Is that true?
0:50:45 Can you talk a little bit about that?
0:50:49 – Yeah, we also then create ads for brands.
0:50:53 So we did one that tried to reach like 30 million people.
0:50:54 It’s like 23 different ads of ads
0:50:56 that we’ve created from Ryanair.
0:50:58 So we did a Tesla one of–
0:51:01 – But you’re saying is you created ads on spec,
0:51:02 meaning you pretended Tesla was your client.
0:51:04 And here’s the ad we would make for you, Tesla.
0:51:06 Here’s the ad we would make for you, Ryanair.
0:51:08 And you just did those, those also went viral
0:51:11 ’cause you really did a good job of that, right?
0:51:12 – Exactly.
0:51:13 So like the Tesla one was,
0:51:17 it takes I think like 3.4 seconds to read this ad.
0:51:20 The same time it takes a Tesla to go to another 60.
0:51:20 – This is great.
0:51:22 And it’s a picture of a Tesla driving off.
0:51:23 This is a really cool website.
0:51:26 – So you do that and then people just start sliding
0:51:27 into your DMs wanting to work with you guys?
0:51:29 Or how do they even know?
0:51:30 ‘Cause you don’t even say I have an agency, by the way.
0:51:32 You don’t do heavy calls to action on this.
0:51:34 Or am I wrong?
0:51:35 – A little bit like plug at the end,
0:51:36 but it’s always value thirst.
0:51:41 And I think that model of who you went to school with
0:51:42 and knowing people that way
0:51:44 versus just making dope things online
0:51:45 and people seeing the ads
0:51:48 and realizing that those poor shouts from the 70s
0:51:50 still have relevance today
0:51:53 and trying to create ads that are just super sexy.
0:51:54 There’s this weird, like I discovered it
0:51:56 via looking at ad horn on Reddit.
0:51:59 And there’s like hundreds of thousands of communities
0:52:02 dedicated to people chatting about ad porn
0:52:04 and then creating the ad professor off the back of that.
0:52:08 But yeah, nobody knew it was me until today, I guess.
0:52:09 – Does this make good revenue?
0:52:11 – We do, okay.
0:52:12 – And how many people who work with you?
0:52:13 – Dude, they’re great.
0:52:14 Say the name of your agency, by the way,
0:52:15 so that people can go find you guys.
0:52:18 – Yeah, that’s just, I just go to adprofessor.com.
0:52:20 Sam was mentioning the website then.
0:52:22 We have about 40 people give or take.
0:52:24 – Wow. – Yeah, this is awesome.
0:52:27 And this is a really cool, I would like to use you guys.
0:52:28 – Thank you.
0:52:30 – I’m sold, like when I go to this website,
0:52:31 I’m like, “This is cool.”
0:52:34 And I’ve followed that Twitter handle.
0:52:35 I thought it was really cool.
0:52:37 – All right, we are gonna split this.
0:52:39 So that was part one of an episode with George Mack.
0:52:41 That was ideas, ideas, ideas.
0:52:43 I thought he had some bangers in there.
0:52:45 The next part we’re gonna do is his frameworks,
0:52:46 which is actually what he’s more known for.
0:52:49 This guy has published essays and tweets that are,
0:52:51 he gets retweeted by Elon Musk like once every week.
0:52:54 So he has some really awesome ideas and frameworks
0:52:57 that he has curated or uniquely come up with.
0:52:58 We’re gonna talk about those.
0:53:01 That’s all part two with George Mack, The Big Ideas.
0:53:03 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:53:06 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:53:09 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:53:12 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
0:53:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Episode 624: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) brainstorm cash-printing business ideas with George Mack ( https://x.com/george__mack).
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Intro
(2:49) Idea: Self Awareness Test
(16:35) Idea: Designer babies
(26:30) Idea: Selling eyes as art
(30:40) Idea: Personal color analysis
(34:45) Idea: Mold removal as a service
(40:11) Idea: CMO of the UK
(46:43) George’s favorite ad campaigns
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Links:
• Get our business idea database here https://clickhubspot.com/mfm
• Cities and Ambition – https://paulgraham.com/cities.html
• Jack Skeen – https://jackskeen.com/
• Thinking Fast and Slow – https://tinyurl.com/345d9fsb
• Iris Galerie – https://en.irisgalerie.com/
• Ad Professor on Twitter – https://x.com/The_AdProfessor
• r/adporn – https://www.reddit.com/r/AdPorn/
• Ad Professor – https://www.adprofessor.com/
—
Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd
—
Check Out Sam’s Stuff:
• Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That – https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano