#104 - Why You Should Be Studying MLMs

we're back it's my first million i'm sean and i'm joined by sam on this episode we talk about a bunch of different topics we debrief our ty lopez experience we have a bunch of ideas around trade associations licensing popular brands and using them in funky ways sam got a speeding ticket and has an idea around police radar detectors and then we just have a couple of stories and frameworks around coming up with new ideas such as the little trick i use with ml m's so it's a good episode me and sam and hope you guys enjoy u yeah i feel like i could rule the world to i know i could be what i want to all like a days off on we're live we are live before we get into ideas we gotta a recap right yeah i think we should debrief so on we recorded it on thursday went live on friday i got a ton of messages we had ty lopez on so listen to that last episode what did you think sean i think i i i actually felt like my my my outlook was similar to i think how most what most people messaged me afterwards or at least it felt that way which was i thought it was a semi my interest i that was interesting episode i thought i got interesting later i thought the beginning he was kinda mono and doing this thing he wasn't really saying new stuff necessarily but i thought it got interesting i think he's is a total character and i'm fascinated by him like i sent you this tweet he put out yesterday which is like he he took a selfie in the mirror and he's like he looks like the ceo know he looks like someone from the incredibles he's like super super jacked and which i couldn't tell when we were doing our our recording i i couldn't get i didn't get that feeling feeling at all i did a little bit you could see he looked fit the yeah he looked fit but like do this picture looks crazy but it was just i to the like just how hilarious of a character he is and how over like over the top it a larger than life in many ways so anyways i thought it was interesting i thought he you know was pretty open i i thought yeah he does this thing where he kinda like redirects conversations towards what he wants which is fair like most kinda successful persuasive with people i've seen have this talent he uses that talent a lot but i thought he was fairly open i thought he was down to answer any questions he didn't we've had people come on and like i can't talk about that and know boom blah he didn't have any of that in his in his in his talk and then the other thing was the people who hated him before still hated him people who loved him for still loved him and then the people on the fence i think lean towards hey he's a smart to dude he's interesting i like him i like him more now than i did before that's how i read it i think that you in particular i told you this when i was texted you you did a really good job of pressing him i didn't really press him so hard i i think that someone once wrote this review on the podcast that we congratulate ourselves a lot so i'm always try to be aware what i do it but i would say you did a very good job of pressing him i think that i would've have we probably both would've have been even better if it were in person it was a little bit hard to interrupt him when he was speaking with for sure because there was one a few times where we both wanted to say stuff and we accidentally had mute on or something like that and so i wish we could have done it in person but it was cool i got i got dozens and dozens and dozens of like messages from people who are i was shocked for listeners and i thought i was like oh wow this is cool this was good did you get a lot of messages i did yeah i got text messages that were like oh my god my my bullshit radar is go is beeping off like crazy for you know for little things like he wouldn't share his age and it's like it's one thing that shared certain numbers but like when you don't share your age like just reinforces this belief that way are you kinda shady which i just sound funny i don't even understand why he did he wasn't sharing it but whatever and then other people were like like some people did these really insightful recap where they were like they wrote blog posts or they tweeted it i retweeted a few of them but one thing that that was cool was people were very like reflective of okay i felt this way about it like you know what where do i stand and and what does this mean about me and like what parts can i give him credit for what parts do i feel you know he was kind of over hiking and i just thought people had like a intros some people had like a very intros response to it which i thought was kind of i don't know interest it's not what i expected we never really had that never felt that with any other episode i felt pride because i think that like in the world that we live in right now with the election coming up and everything we live in a very polarizing environment and i'm really proud of the audience that in the brand that we're building in the community and the listeners and ourselves because we are all pretty reasonable about listening to different perspectives and different ideas and not being too harsh and understanding that there's two sides every store and i felt really proud about that where there were some people who i'm really good friends with like andrew was like yeah i'm still i he our friend andrew was very vocal where he was like yeah i disagree with you guys entirely that's cool wonderful it's okay to have friends at disagree but in general even people who disagree were like i disagree i understand their opinion though and i think that made me very pride i felt wonderful yeah i feel good about that and the other thing i i actually don't think we did a great job pressing them the reason why is i didn't do a ton of research like a lot of people who really don't like this guy it's because they've looked into a whole bunch of things they've read all the reddit forums they've watched the youtube tear downs and like they they they know more info that's not i really wasn't interested in tearing the guy down or like doing investigative journalism that really wasn't what was interesting to me i sort just assumed going in these guys are pretty talented marketer he took advantage early on the youtube platform and he did what a lot of people do he sold you know kind of a dream and he probably you know his content was probably good not completely original but who cares he curated good content gave it to people if you actually applied that in your life it would have helped you if you didn't it wouldn't helped you probably was kind of aggressive on certain pricing tactics or like you know certain things i may have crossed the line on of certain areas i'm i don't really know i don't personally that was less interesting to me just like during the con who i was like you know people get all up in arms did you rent the lamb did you least that was bullshit who who cares i i personally just don't care about that and so i think some people who cared about that felt like did you let him off the hook you you guys didn't look into enough but it's just i didn't care about that that's not what was interesting to me i would have somebody on here who's a total internet scammer or somebody who's a hacker somebody who hacked a bitcoin exchange that doesn't mean i think they did a good thing but i'd be fascinated to talk to that person and understand who are you why do you do this what's cool about this are there two sides to this story what what's your point of view you know like i'm just am more of an interested person less i'm not trying to be the cops and i i think some people wanted us to be the you know the cops in sort of water board and i i that's just i wouldn't have done that to anyway anybody it's not really what i'm interested in yeah i didn't really care about the whole leasing the cars thing that that didn't matter to me one i will say though one thing that's fun about that so whenever i i hear if someone interesting i always type in their name into google file by the word house one way that you can figure out if someone's legit is by their real estate holdings and if they're a big deal typically their home purchases come up on google which is fun and i'm you know that grant cargo owned die what's his grant card i don't know how i feel about him but he has his private jet and i noticed that the seats have his name embroidered into the seats and i'm like oh shit that's like a legit i'm like holy moly that that whatever he's doing so he's got some cash somehow so i that's like a funny one get grant on here i he he used to use our product a ton so i've been i've talked to him a bunch of times let's do it i would like to have either have his number i definitely have his email so i i think we can get him on my friend rim or ram seth who we also have to get on he was like dude he his name embroidered on his seats he's like that's a legit he owns that jet and i thought that was funny and then last thing was ty kept silicone valley a huge pet peeve but that's okay whatever that's important but what he was something he kept doing and our friends from silicon valley you kept doing this where they were like as tay would say silicon valley sucks for this reason and then our silicon valley friends were like you internet marketers suck for this reason and i'm like you guys are all like kind of the same we're all this i mean it's it's like the same shit it's like tie definitely was quirky like a little asp a lot of our friends are kinda asp like they all like say the same like the strategy is the same thing to charge a lot of money for quality products into whole companies forever and do this and it's all the same they're all the same per they all agree of a lot of the same stuff yeah i i don't think i don't think they're exactly the same but i think a similar coming than they they think the second thing is they're both hip critical about each other right so like for example when reddit got started the founders said you know we went on we created thirty different accounts and we would be commenting on all the different posts to make it look like there was activity right that was their fake until they make a strategy airbnb sort of famously got got exposed for early on they would scrape craigslist pull the listings automatically without the permission of the homeowner posted on airbnb as an airbnb listing and and then email under the fake name jenny to different people being like hey i would love to rent your place but do you guys use airbnb like i prefer airbnb it's much safer over there and that's how they grew awareness it's sort of a black hat technique there wasn't no jenny they did this without permission and like these are like some of the airbnb has one of the best brands in silicon valley is like kind of a awesome company that people look up to and like you know it's admirable and maybe ty lopez you know maybe he has his own versions of either fake until makes it or you know charging in some kind of like you know du divisible way or whatever i don't know there's the i have tons of examples on both sides where both sides have a ton of dirty laundry internet marketers do and so silicon valley companies so sort of hip critical to be like really virtuous which i think was his point was like there's a lot of vi signaling in good old silicone valley but but yeah whatever i don't know enough about ty lopez i feel like you know you're gonna be feel about it i feel like we did a decent job of it i was interested in it and i don't hate the guy or i think he's like you know yeah worst thing ever invented like some people i would totally hang out with him i would absolutely hang out him did he text me by the way i if heard your number yeah i was like that's kinda cool you're t and ty he's like some guy that like he said seven out of ten young men in america knew who he was and i bet i believe that yeah you know i i think you don't know he's a character but what's what what's her to hate about this guy but if you hate him whatever you have your reasons to hate him if you love them you have your uses love one i don't really carry the weigh on that my personal opinion is i think he's talented i think he's a character i don't and i think he's said over the top character and i find that fascinating i think he has some tells where he over hype and he quotes buff and he quotes uses just a quote machine to kind of give himself credibility like i'm doing this thing well oh here's a quote from socrates that tells you why i'm doing this thing and like there's a talent in that but it also reveals a little bit of like well can your actions and can your logic just stand for itself you know there there's that's that's usually a masking technique that people use to do that but like whatever i don't know i'm cool with i think i think he's an interesting dude well we've we've milk it for all it's worth so it's good on us you wanna talk about ideas yeah let's do it i'll bring one up first okay so ryan bi our mutual friend tells me about this all time and i have been interested in it a little bit what do you know about trade associations anything just that they exist and that they they sort of have this like very beautiful business model or they're charging everybody for kind of like pretty simple amount of value yeah it's like good straightforward value and i didn't know too much about it them but they're kind of interesting trade associations are kind of a business where it's like everyone knows with what they are or as heard of one but you don't actually think about how they like came to be and nor do you think about like creating a new one but i think you can and the reason i'm thinking of one in particular is it's called the society for human resource management and i discovered it because the ceo is like a friends with trump or something so somehow this came up like on the news that the ceo of the society is what trump for this and like just googled that and i was like oh that's interesting so it has three hundred and fifty thousand members of this human resource management company and makes hundred and fifty million dollars here in in subscription revenue and it's beautiful another one is there's ones for all types of different engineers so like i don't know even i know the type of engineers could there be like a bridge building or whatever the civil yeah yeah like all all you know whatever it is there's a bunch like that there are so many trade associations and i actually there's just one trade so there's is one email list that i used to use to post my job ins when i needed on office management manager it was called the org org i you heard of the org this is for office managers right yeah this young woman started it i think she was like really young and it was just like an email list that's all it was but it was like super effective and it when i human when you hear the org i'm oh this is like some silly email list it's not that big of a deal and then i see this business the society for human research management i'm like oh my god this thing could actually probably be huge if you so anyway kind of a cool business model what do you think you said the word beautiful earlier so i call these beautiful businesses a beautiful business when i say it means it's just so elegantly designed to just be a cash cow and a beautiful business is one like this where the product is incredibly simple the lock in is huge because you're gonna join the big trade association you're not gonna join some small up and come so it has this amazing def just in the network effect they charge you know annual recurring subscriptions and people are gonna keep their fees they were they're gonna say stay a member of the association on the average and it's like zero work zero innovations zero everything and i just think it's like beautiful business in the this sort of the effort and difficulty to reward ratio is beautiful so i think you said it absolutely right yeah and for anyone interested in this business model maybe we'll do a deep dive later on but they trends we did one on like peer groups and those are not beautiful those are a lot harder than they look but if they work they're beautiful but a lot of trade groups are non nonprofit so you can research any type of trade group and if you google like for like the name of the trade association then revenue or name of this trade association and then what's the non profit filing number like five one three c yeah if like if you google that word that phrase or if you google the trade association filed by annual report they all reveal all their revenue expenses you can be like oh wow so this group charges three hundred thousand people a thousand dollars a year and they charged the company it's like it like gives you the total playbook on how to do it so pretty cool so i saw this and i thought that was interesting what else could this work for and frankly it could probably work for the same thing you probably just do another hr one alright today's episode is brought to you by tempo tempo dot fit is the website i actually use this i've used this for a few months now and it's this machine that has a touch screen in this three d sensor and what it does is they give you weight it's like a hundred and fifteen pounds of weights and it's for shrink training so what it is is it measures your body and it sees how much weight you're lifting it sees how many reps you're doing and how much effort you're putting in what your part rate is pretty amazing and then you have a coach on screen walking you through what to lift how many to lift what workout to do whether you wanna do a twenty minute ten minute fifty minute workout it's pretty amazing but the best part is the leader board the other stuff all the features that they have that's cool but i'm obsessed with the leader board because it measures how many reps you're doing and how much volume you're doing and you can compete with other people who have taken the same class so it's maybe wanna work harder lift more weight or have more endurance it's just pretty freaking fun and the whole point of working hard is to have money so you can spend it on stuff that will make you live longer and this product tempo it checks that box for me so they're our sponsored today if you use the code tempo hustle you'll get a hundred dollars off so tempo dot fit is the url and tempo hustle one word you'll get a hundred dollars off so check it out i use it if you look me up on twitter you'll see i'm always filming videos where i'm talking to that company say i'm trying to crush their employee on the leader board because i actually love this thing and i and i use it all the time so check it out yeah or you could do this like same remember that sort of two by two matrix i talked about where it's like old problem new problem old solution new solution so what i would do here is let's say this is a beautiful old solution it's an existing solution that's proven that works i would just look for basically new problem basically what's a new market what's a new industry or a trade that didn't exist you know five seven years ago maybe it's uber drivers maybe it's airbnb hosts oh be great idea maybe it's crypto miners maybe it's i don't i like whatever those wouldn't be the the best fits but insta work gig just a gig economy in general right like maybe it's a gig economy trade association and you know okay cool there's hundreds of thousands of people i'm gonna apply this old business model that's beautiful to this new market segment where nobody has taken this the pole position as the trade industry the trade trade associates leader in that group that's a great idea how many uber drivers do you think there are i have no idea over a million i think i've yeah there's a lot i there's over a million a but you try to find that for us but i think there's over a million wow yeah that's a cool idea the gig working thing is a yeah that's neat it's cool historically like aa is like one the greatest trade org it's not a trade org but like membership groups of all time and then it's pretty cool i guess it's kinda like a union and it's pretty interesting and you know you could also do this with other groups that like let's say traditionally don't have this so i would try to find what are the common characteristics of this is it you need to have like let's say a million plus people in into profession right maybe that's the commonality maybe it's that they they all are looking for certain resources i i don't actually know what what value these guys have do you do you know like what's the if i joined the a society of your human resource management or or whatever i know with arp there's like discounts but for for the hr one what is the core benefit i get yeah i month join let me give you like the their their what they say is education certification networking as well as lobbying congress on issues regarding labor management that's what they say now they also really they where they make a lot of money is conferences so a lot of like trade show so like i mean it makes sense if if i would totally send our hr person of i'm like hey there's like this thing it's four grand it's a two day event you wanna go and learn best practices on how to like what's like for right now i'd be like hey like remote works a thing how do you like fire people remotely and get your equipment back like maybe that's just like a maybe that's just like a conference topic i'm yeah sure it sounds good if this if our hr is wanted go i would say no problem and so i it's mostly education and they monetize that education with conferences yeah right i think this i think it's a good to do for us to go say go figure out okay what is the core is there a common core benefit that the trade association provide maybe it's education certification i know is one like personal trainers have to do this with have to keep their certifications up to date and it's this giant like essentially a scam where you have to you just have to keep paying a hundred twenty dollars a year or whatever just to keep your certification like valid and your certification nobody cares if if you had that certification if they're if you're their trainer anyways they you know take one look at your body and then they work with you like that's it and so there's certain things that i think are providing less value than others but like again if you can find some new niche like instagram influencers or like whatever online creators twitch creators whatever right like why wires there not an association if if you could find one core benefit i actually think okay so here's a r off this that i'm gonna sound kinda stupid because i don't really know much about this but i know enough to know that it's interesting let's take a let's take a profession like like vlogger or streamer right so there are you know every every given month there's millions of video game streamers millions of youtube creators that are creating now obviously they're not all successful they're not all full time they're not all all making money there's like a power law right where the top x make it i think for example on shopify that you know there's i think a hundred thousand sellers that do over a million dollars year there's sort of a similar ratio when it comes to streamers or or vloggers on youtube and they don't have health insurance for example and what happens is most of them don't care it they don't use it they're younger so they you know tell twenty five twenty six or whatever they're covered on their parents thing or they just like whatever risk it is winning it right and so there's these things that churches do called health care c have you ever heard about this go on yeah health care share programs i believe and it's basically a you can get health care not through a traditional health care provider but you can create a coop within your community within your church where you basically pool money and insure each other you should ensure the other members of the church this has become quite popular i started looking into this market because i think it's one of those like secretly really big markets huge number of people now are participating in these healthcare care share programs that are done by the church and churches have this loophole where i think you you otherwise need to have insurance this qualify you could do it through the church and you don't have to do it do it through traditional providers and so they they sort of get this workaround so i wonder this is like crazy idea but i wonder can somebody find a problem like that for online creator right instagram youtube twitch whatever and solve one of their core needs such as health care and can you can you solve it in one of these like ways like can you you know create a because you take a existing church and expand the model to where it where it works for them or could you create a new type of insurance carrier that that will that will live ot t on top of existing providers but focus on this this customer segment specifically i think anywhere there's a new job i just wanna apply old services to new professions because they're usually pretty immature what i'd be curious about is how do like nomadic remote workers what do they do for health insurance and that's one of these new things we does every company have this or for in october i don't know it's just us or if it's every company but we're doing we have enrollment for health care soon and now that i'm out of state i don't know i gotta figure out what to do and so this is the a problem i'm facing and i'm curious as to how people who live in bali like one of the a woman who works at our company used to do or how people who travel all the time i mean i don't know what they do for health care i'm very curious about that yeah i i i don't know either again i i said at the beginning i'm gonna look like an idiot because i don't know enough about but i know enough to know this is an interesting problem area to go look at anytime lifestyles change work patterns change new jobs emerge opportunity has simultaneously emerged and so that i think all these are are sort of really really interesting ones to look at i've also seen a bunch of things fail in this space like i'm i had a friend who was trying to provide the back office for uber drivers he's like hey they need to pay taxes and they need health insurance and they needed these things and you know company failed and he was like yeah it was just really hard to convince uber drivers that they needed this like i know they needed it they didn't know they needed it i don't know if that was just his excuse or if that was like legit the the actual core fault of the of the problem because fundamentally i believe in that add that idea and so i reached out to find out why it failed and that's what he told me alright i'll give you one more quick hit okay so you know how so this guy named tony you know who tony fide fidelity is yeah the creator same yeah yeah so what this guy did was he helped steve jobs build the iphone and or maybe the ipod i forget and or both and he looked at i guess what they did was they looked at kinda like things that we kinda used on a regular basis that many people had and had bad user experience and they made it sexy and cool and he did that with the thermostat that is something that most every single american maybe every american can has and they actually are a little wonky or or they're not actually neat any like create this thing it's like oh well that's a no right in future market and so oftentimes i think of products that are like that and i think i found one it's not actually a big enough market but it might be and here's what it is radar detectors for cars i am traveling now i'm driving all over the place and i got a speeding ticket and i was pissed off because i was going seventy or i was going too below the limit and i just crossed i was at midnight in the middle of kansas and i just crossed this thing where it said construction zone and the speed limit reduced and the guy just got me and i was so pissed off was like dude first of all it's midnight and like no one's around except for cows second of all you i was with sixty eight and a seventy and you just like that's kind of a bullshit so i i out of defiance i went got a radar detector they are so hard to use and set up and i started doing research and some of these companies the top one is called uni inn it's publicly traded it does like two hundred million dollars in sales selling this radar detector for five hundred dollars and i had to watch a thirty minute video on youtube on how to set this up it was so challenging and i still don't exactly know what what it all means but do you know roughly how many of these are sold or like do you do you know roughly what the what the market size is for this yeah so the the some of the bigger guys are uni in and i think it's pronounced s escort escort owns a couple brands and exec at gm was form formerly the ceo it does like two or three hundred million in sales uni is a japanese company it's uni like university and a dan d e n uni den does like a hundred and fifty million dollars in sales quite profitable so it's not like huge huge but hundreds of millions in revenue but probably globally billions in revenue and i have shocked at how horrible of a product this is for the five hundred dollars that i bought it yeah that seems awful and i love this i love this niche right because who who the fuck thinks about this on a daily basis but but clearly you know there's a product that's been around for decades and it serves are very clear pain point and i could totally see how these would be outdated i'll give you an example of another one that's like this pools so i have a swimming pool now in my my money place and you know you the guy the guy comes every week and like changes the like chemical balance or whatever to make sure the chlorine is good and he has to measure it using this thing so some guy some founder who listens to the podcast have reached out to i don't know be in my mastermind or something like that and i saw what his product was and it was i know who that's my friend oh nice i see it's like this herding pool chemical detector right it basically it's a little little b that floats around in a pool and we'll constantly just make sure that you're pools and balance and you can look on your app and you can see you know whether it's good or bad and your if your pools in a in a good state or not it's like take this kind of old problem and it's not even like rocket ship you know type of technology that you gotta a build to make a better solution right nest is not that amazing it's like well designed for sure but it's not a thermostat that's okay it's okay yeah and you know it's got a screen and like that's the core innovation you can control it for your phone great there's how many other sort of household products could use little modern modern touch ups yeah and that i think about that all the time because i thought the next thing i'm like oh my god that's one of those things where were like well yeah it seems obvious now right and this with routers right so they they modernized the router and you know had to decently have decent i don't know how well it went for them they raised a lot of money but they got adoption and that that's another example of one of these yeah routers are up there i just i i like thinking about that like what are household products that we all use and we've have forgotten about and i i grew up with the radar detector might we would we would always drive florida for twenty hours and we would have one and i thought it was funny i'm like that's kinda funny to like build a company just to detect just to help you kinda break the law which i think is awesome but man i'm using this freaking radar detector i'm like oh well there's and there's actually like a cult following like there's a lot of people like me who are gadget nerds and who are obsessed over this and it's a pretty cool thing there's another company that's similar to this that is far more famous do you know weather tech no have you heard a weather tech no you've never heard a weather tech okay it's like they've almost i would say they have done it they've built like you know how yeti made cooler sexy mh let's you you're you're you're gonna flip a little a little you know what they made sexy what floor mats for a car okay floor mats for a car we i'm up so weather what they ads in the south they're popular because it's like is it the design or is it just that it's like super high quality or what why do people love these i think it's both it's incredibly high quality it's very expensive so it's like i bought them from my car i paid six hundred dollars and for some reason that made me like it but it is high quality and it feels it's like an they branded it like an outdoors thing four hundred million dollars in sales hundred million dollars year in profit and how old is this company is this like a twenty year old company yes okay yeah this is cool okay i like it this is so like outside of my hobbies my likes my business knowledge i'm like i would be the worst person to ever started a weather tech type company maybe but you have a nice car don't you you care about having a clean car i mean that's like kinda all it is no you've ever been in my car my car looks like shit all the time i bought it an i buy a nice car and then my car looks like a closet it's just awful alright here's another really half baked idea i've been thinking a lot about licensing brands my friend xavier ty lopez no that's tyler lopez my friend xavier got me thinking about this so he was buying a company and i'm gonna have him on because he he's he's really great and he's i'm an investor in that fun yeah exactly where our our our good buddy and save your work together on this and one of the businesses that they're buying or you know taking a stake in has a licensing component to it i don't know how much i can talk about it but it's basically they are there's maybe i can explain it i don't know okay i'll explain it and then if he tells me we can't talk about it we'll cut it out so there's a company that has that sells car architectures so like i can go and for your birthday i can get a picture of you drawn and have it have it sent to you and the what they did was they license certain styles and we're gonna go try to get exclusive licenses across several very distinct visual styles and the business does really great and so that had that had me thinking about licensing the very first episode of the podcast was with you know one of my best friends sully and what he did was his company tiny they made mobile games but they would license big brands so they made the family guy game they made the harry potter game and it was a pretty that was the differentiator they were just like every other mobile gaming company but licensing popular brands was their hacked to get better distribution and buy in from customers and so i started to think where should people be licensing popular brands that they are not currently licensing them today and so i don't know really wild idea but here you're sort of mixing two different worlds together and seeing if there's something in it enterprise education so corporate training and corporate education is like probably the most sort of boring and stiff and it's like the worst content that gets paid for and so i you know that seems kinda weird me like why shouldn't this be better companies are willing to pay for it it could be you know it could be interesting but the the content chops behind it are awful and so the idea here would be to license popular brands and use those characters and use those those those styles to to do corporate educational corporate training one of the two so get can can you hone in on this a little bit further so you would be the one licensing the you would pay money for someone else's ip yes i would like let's go provide you example right yeah in the tech community there's this cartoon that's really popular called rick and morty and yep rick and morty is a great brand for the people who know it but it's not such a big brand that it'd be impossible to strike a deal with them and so i would go to the creators of rick morty the ip holders for rick morty and i say hey i'm wanna do a whole safety training and let's say compliance training series for big companies but i wanna do it using rick and morty characters to explain the concepts and so i would on one hand i would say i'll pay x for you know the royalties or the those licensing fee and then i would take that and then i would go to companies like you know the company i work at now i go to facebook or whoever and i'd say hey you have this compliance training that you need all your leaders to go do but it's so dry that they hate doing it they don't do it or they turn it on and they walk away from their computer while the video plays and we make entertaining training videos using characters that everybody knows and loves and you that's why you should buy from us instead of buying from the guys you currently buy from and that's how i would try to build this business i would totally stand out from the existing you know corporate training and corporate education companies by doing that that's interesting and i actually learn i i didn't know anything about licensing and i do you wanna explain what su did with his company because you guys are the license sees or license yeah we are what would that be i think we would be the license c's i don't know don't know licensing you are a name you are paying the money you are not the recipient of the money no no yeah the ip holder right so in their case they go to they went to the owners of family guy and they said hey family guy huge brand love it you guys crush it with tv you crush it with crush it with merch you're not doing any mobile games and they're like oh yeah yeah we thought about it you know we we think it could be great and like yeah yeah but you don't wanna get into the business of building mobile games you don't know anything about that but hey we look at this let me open this door look those eighty engineers those guys know how to build mobile games we've been doing it for five seven years we have some of the most popular mobile games here's what we'll do if you license us the brand for for a family guy we will create a mobile game that uses family guy characters and i'll pay you a three million dollars a year licensing fee for this plus you know an extra you know dollar for every ten dollars we make on the game and you know that's a know hypothetical deal structure and so i i just read about this which is why i i like talking about this there's a company called i'd read about through a on a subs stack email newsletter that i'm on have you heard of mg a of course you have an mg entertainment mg a is that the guy who makes those dolls okay you have heard of it okay so i love that guy what's his name guys a ebola it's the beginning of the week isaac larry that's the founder name yeah or is yeah isaac larry i believe that's his name so the world's largest privately owned toy company is mj entertainment and isaac larry owns it born to a jewish family in iran he immigrated here and so originally what they did was they the they became a license fee for power rangers meaning right some guy another jewish or israeli or this guy on israeli but another israeli american immigrant created power rangers this guy went to him and goes let me make toys with the power ranger let me make power ranger toys and i'll give you a a large cut of the money and he did that for a long time and then he goes cool but i don't wanna pay these guys the money anymore i wanna be the the ip guy and so he invented brat do you remember bratz yeah bratz dolls for those who don't know is like barbie it's like i think barbie it was like black barbie cool barbie street barbie like it was barbie with like a little bit of an edge and rather than the sort of clean cut image is that a good is that a good sense yeah i guess i i don't know i'm not we're out not in their target demo but and now they're new thing apparently which is quite popular it's lol surprise again we're not gonna know talk about this i know my gcs are obsessed with lol dolls dude to lol dolls are anybody with kids knows that you have to buy lol dolls so this article that i was reading if you have a daughter between the ages of four and ten you probably know exactly what i'm talking about if you don't meet lol surprise and the company does five billion dollars in sales they're privately owned and it's growing like a weed and it started as licensing power rangers and then they made their own thing pretty amazing is it is amazing even just the lol dolls like we could do a whole episode just on the fucking genius of these lol dolls it's like a surprise what you get inside or like a buying a you know a deck of pokemon or a pack of pokemon cards and you don't know which characters you're gonna get inside and so you got you know it has the gotcha mechanics where you wanna keep going back and buying another one and this guy isaac larry is awesome his story is great we should do a whole thing on that gotcha okay so let's talk about these the surprises have you ever heard of this thing i've actually don't know what it's called i bet you've heard it though and you'll be able to tell me it's a candle and you burn the candle and at the bottom of the candle is a surprise and one out of a certain number of the candles have a diamond ring in there worth the hundred thousand dollars no i haven't heard this but i love this idea this is the type of idea that i this these are you know i said weather tech would be like the opposite of the type of company i would start the candle where one out of every hundred thousand has a diamond ring inside that is the exact type of company i would start is it called just there's a diamond candles dot com that might be just what it's called but they like the the i think it's okay so there's a thousand dollar ring at the bottom of a handful of them who knows up there even actually it's the wall get a golden ticket yeah and i just google it there's like tons of surprise there's like a jackpot jackpot candles and they do the same for bath bombs you know what a bath bomb is yep and i guess there's some type of pro it's so i i love that so there's that what's another surprise one like a willy won coat company like a willy won product so mobile games use this a ton that's where like i i have learned about gotcha mechanics it's like if you wanna go look this up look up gotcha g a c h a i think is how you spell it it's like the sort of the game mechanics in a lot of the chinese game a japanese games and so i think it's literally started i think with myself kinda dumb i don't think i know this exactly but i believe it was these like actual sort of like candy machines that you would put a quarter in and you would turn it and then you would get something and it you know it gets you hooked to the sort of variable random rewards where you're constantly hunting and searching it's like in games they do this with loot boxes they create these digital boxes you bought you know you you play the game your earn coins you use the coins to buy the loot box inside the loot box you've got the new thing or you didn't get it and then you wanna open up more loot boxes and it's just fun to open them up and so these are so addictive that some countries outlaw games that use these mechanics i think i don't know where it was i think was in china india so somewhere they banned games that were using loot boxes because it was it's so addictive it's so effective and so some people brought this into the shopping and they're yeah for shopping there's a bunch of other ones there's and a lot of them are scams this business attracts a lot of scammers logan paul or one of the paul brothers like had a link to one of them they they this company would sponsor all the youtubers and it was called mystery box and you purchase it and maybe you get i don't know whatever kids like supreme clothing or something and it would i think they got big but they're definitely full of shit yeah but i i like this idea of the sort of the the dream right like i buy lottery tickets because i think it's fun to play the lottery i love scratch offs i think scratch offs are are amazing they're just like pure entertainment for me and i i think that there's other spaces where where you could potentially apply these mechanics that's traditional the candle is a is a beautiful example of of that so that's so we've discovered two different frameworks which is like household items that are born and boring and forgotten and you could just make up just a little ugly i just ugly like and that you could like maybe like like three mechanics we did trade associations for new new trades yeah we did the the household items the everyday gadgets that are ugly and hard to set up and hard to use and don't connect to your iphone that's like a kind of a core core mechanic and then this one is the gotcha mechanics or or licensing either either one either one could work here yeah oh we did talk about licensing but got the gotcha thing is interesting i like candles another one that's not the same but it doesn't involve candles have you ever heard of a hometown candles or something like that yeah that's that's a funny one you know what the guy who so for those of you who don't know this guy his name is ricky van ricky van n i think his wife is do you remember what's the white girl from get out i don't know yeah you know what i i've seen the movie but i i don't know who i was i was looking at the black guy not the white girl i i don't don't know who she allison williams allison williams you know allison williams she's like in a bunch of sick her dad is brian williams ricky van i think his name vain or n he works at facebook now okay he started okay so i i'm telling this backstory story because it's interesting it's like everyone's connected i mean first of all he was like a door who started a college humor and he started vimeo and he married this allison williams woman so badass ass and cool then he got a job at facebook he where he works at facebook as some executive but as a side project he started this thing called like home state candles where they make candles that smell like your home state so washington is probably at pine trees california is probably ocean florida who knows so he knew this was gonna go viral because he was a contact guy and he knew that state themed things cell best right and so he created like candles that smell like your home state and probably i bet you that's a really big business to be on yeah my friend john started something called birth date candles so he's the creator of gravity blanket he's the creator of the moon pod and then his third kind of like invention that kinda worked is birth date candles so like sam w birthday fifteenth fifteen june fifteenth so there's a candle for june fifteenth it says june fifteenth birthday can't birth date candle and it has a specific smell and aura and story around june fifteenth and so you would buy this for somebody else you'd buy a candle essentially that's like their specific birth date candle and he started and star gravity blankets too yeah i mean that's like one of the biggest things ever like one of the most viral that's like one of those viral things yeah yeah that's like a like the the blanket where you wearing in the front what's that call like snug buggy i mean yeah it's definitely like a notable notable product it did super well on kickstarter or whatever he he came on the podcast as a whole interview him and on that he talks about the birth date candle as like one of his things and it does really well candles in general are huge huge business like i looked at this business because one of my kind of secret tricks and business is to try to go find what ml sell and then sell them without the ml so there's huge ml m's around candles because people love to buy candles and they buy them recurring because literally the product like earns to the ground and so you need to keep replenishing it and so there's there's huge candles ml m's but then there's also a huge non non ml candle companies there's one that looks great i think it's called v or something like that v i don't know we have a bunch of in our house and it's just like a candle that comes in like this amazing looking you know packaging that is essentially like art around the house and yeah so i think these are i think candles in general are good and then if you match popular product with let's say popular tribe like home state i think that's a really interesting way to to think about little niche products dude that is a great idea like i love all these frameworks and ways to get ideas looking at what are the most popular ml yeah that is a all ml m's have to publish their annual reports because of the law because they you know they're they're basically recruiting sellers and so they have to tell sellers how much they sell how much each seller tier sells all that stuff so you can go learn a ton i've looked at probably thirty ml m's you know annual reports in the last year because of because of what's the most interesting one and why are they all in utah they're all in utah because it's sort like silicon valley where the talent pool of people who know how to build these is all there but but yeah there's a humming a whole bunch of interesting ones and they range from like kinda legit to like pretty fucking scam and you know there's like keto product ones there's scandals their skin care you know like health and wellness is the biggest one the absolute biggest one i'm not sure why i think they're sort of a you can't prove the you can't prove that the the thing works it doesn't work when when it comes to those things when like kind of like hippie did wellness products and that's also what an ml mom seller you know tends to like i guess but there's interesting ones there's like a wine club that's n there's lulu roe or whatever that's a clothing one this is shit ton m's do they're they're they're crazy well that's a good framework i like that and i wanna give a shout out apparently sean told me that the founder of only fans is a listener and listens to every episode so what's up to that guy owner owner of it i don't even know his name let remember the founder yeah founder owner or whatever it is the the the man charge so what's up to him if he ever wants to come on come to come on alright sounds good cool alright sam where you headed next where's the next travel destination for you either dc because i wanna be there for the election i think it'd be fun or asheville north carolina which one where should i go i don't know i think asheville is gonna be more interesting i think so i'm just a little nervous as it's too lonely like too small right you should go to you should go to durham i went to college there this very it's a very interesting place is it great great yeah it's kinda great like i think you'll really like that town they totally like invested in it and there's all kinds of cool stuff like there's there's two universities right so there's duke that's durham there's north carol university of north carolina that's not far away in chapel hill and then there's what they call research triangle park which anytime there's like these hubs so that's a hub for biotech companies anytime there's these hubs the town gets built out with restaurants and cool shit everywhere because there's a bunch of like well paid people but also it just has like its own little vibe it's his own little middle mini silicon valley or hollywood but it's like for researchers of biotech and so there's just like a different different vibe just like utah will have it for ml alright i'm going to turn then cool also i was just curious how's is the like we're now in month six of this quarantine are you going crazy or what what's happening yeah a little bit i feel horrible do you i would say i feel horrible i feel pretty good but i tend to feel good in general i don't i'm not really easily i don't know i the i'm something impacted like emotionally and mentally i am like you any good stories i feel like i'm in fight flight mode and when i what i've noticed is like i've said this before but a lot of people who live in a lot of people who are in elite cities or be like oh the south is all redneck and it's like in reality all cities are the same all suburbs of the same in all countries the same and so when i'm in like rural california and i and people are in the gas station not wearing masks i find myself in fighter flight mode and i've definitely gotten into yelling matches with these people and it's stupid because it's not gonna solve any like no one i'm not gonna change my opinion and there they're not gonna change their opinion but i have found myself in fight flight mode and like getting into getting into it with people who aren't wearing masks in the gas stations that's funny i'll mean are you said all countries are the same that can't be right right like have you been like like way different no not countries like usa and in india like rural areas i see okay like like rural northern rural california is fairly similar as rural rural rural alabama like it's not like a north or south thing it's like a rural suburb city thing and so what what are you doing to keep yourself from going crazy exercising is the only thing that i can do i mean i don't have a home anymore i'm just traveling i guess that that's all i'm doing what are you doing i mean i i feel like i just work and exercise i don't do anything else yeah i pretty much do those two things and then play with my daughter and try to help take care of her but i got this trainer who is i he's my personal trainer for fitness he comes the house every day and we work out in the backyard it's awesome but he's also like kind of like a mindset coach life coach and so he's great because he i i i i usually in relationships i'm the one who kind of is bringing different mindset things positivity different frameworks different lenses to to kinda see life through that's what i usually bring to all my relationships and he does that to me he's like even higher level of understanding and and drinks more of that ko aid than i do and so he's given me these little these little tactics these little things that help so i'll give you an example he was telling me the story yesterday he goes he goes yeah i went to the he's like he's like i i normally i wake up great feeling great but i woke up feeling super anxious today i was like shit what why what happened he goes he goes know i know i had to drive over here and he's like i actually have had an expired license for two years and so he was like i'm always anxious that i'm gonna get pulled over and he's like the only thing that makes me more anxious about that is having to go to the dmv like fuck the dmv is like the worst right everyone kind of university agrees the dmv is the worst and so he's like so i avoided it and so he's like so i i woke up today recognize that and i'm feeling anxious about it and he's like i got a playbook for anxiety right like okay feeling anxious therefore i do x y z and he's like i don't have to like i don't get lost in the in the feeling like i i have a recipe for every feeling and so he he was like alright so i'm gonna address this head on and i'm gonna turn my anxiety into joy okay how do i do that and so he's telling me the story he's like i went to the dmv i was like before i was like on my way there he's like i was like i the only one who feels this way about the dmv so he goes to yelp and he saw that the dmv locally had like a two point three star review or whatever right like you know dmv hated by by most and so he he said in his mind he goes okay it's rated two point three stars i'm gonna give it i'm gonna have a five star experience here he goes okay how do have how do i have a five star experience he's goes he goes i'm gonna be a five star customer at the dmv he's like i'm gonna go in i'm gonna be laughing and i'm gonna smiling i'm gonna be patient i'm gonna be you know flirting with the with the staff there and he's like i'm gonna find the most hospitable person here right five star comes from hospitality i'm gonna find hospitality at dmv he's like he he's like i went in i he's like i started talking him met this lady wendy at the front and she's this you know she's a big black lady who is who i could tell she was ready to have a good time and he's like i started flirting with her a little bit so was talking to her and she was like you know what like come this way real quick and she kinda shuffled over to the front of the line he goes through he doesn't he you know he has expired a license they're laughing at for having a two years you know expired license and he was telling how anxious he was about coming to the dmv and they're like look no problem he didn't even have to take his test they just give him a new license six straight away they're like you normally have to sit an appointment but like here sign this sheet boom you're done get out of here and he walked out and he was like holy shit he's like if i can make the dmv a five star experience for me then like you know whatever not what can rock me if i if i can own the dmv like this and so he told me this little story and you know the thing i took for it was like the i have all these things that i let piss me off or make my mad throughout the day like i'm normally very good but then i'll dip on these like stressful situations or like us like in a task that i think it's gonna be a pain in the ass that's actually what gets me the most it's not usually stress it's usually like tasks that are pain in the ass and he took the most pain in the ass task go into the dmv and he turned it into a story and he turned it into a good time and so that became my challenge that's this a little mini game i'm playing in my head that nobody knows i'm playing which is i'm looking out for these pain in the ass burden type of moments and i'm gonna try to dm it like he did so that's that's something that's been keeping me entertained lately that is a great that's a great story thank you i love when he told me that story i like this is a great fucking story i'm just hearing at my backyard alone i gotta tell people about this and so i didn't know how i was gonna tell people but it turns out it came out on the podcast that is a great one and to wrap this up you have a trainer who you see every day four days a week yeah who what and what what does that should i get that that sounds amazing what does this cost he's amazing yeah he's great in fact it cost it he's like a kind of like an alien like most trainers are like most kind of people who are paid by the hour they're very time conscious right like they show up on time and then they you know hour on the dot they leave because they gotta get to their next client they're like zip from place to place and you know they're very time conscious and that always doesn't work for me because you you know you hate this about me i'm late often right and and he's the exact opposite he is like not worried about time ever and i ask him about this i'm like dude you we're hanging out like an hour after the workout we're just chatting we're we'll you know we're just we're just shooting the shit about stuff he'll be asking me about business whatever and i'm like don't you feel like you've never you never seem like you're in a hurry and he goes oh he's like i he's like i i i pride myself on being a hacker of time i said what do you mean he goes he goes everybody is so stressed all the time and the reason one of the roots of all of most people stress is they feel like they don't have enough time like when they feel like they didn't get enough done in a day that just means they didn't feel like they had enough time to get stuff done or if they're stressed about their relationship and they're especially about having kids it's like because they feel like they're running out of time and they're you know their biological clock is ticking or whatever right people have this like a lot of stress is based in time it goes i felt that way in my life and i decided to change that so now i focus on timing anytime find myself worry about time i think to myself the opposite what is this great what is what is the great timing in my life right now what if i just felt like it was perfect timing going for me i was what do you mean he's like so like for example you know whenever i'm in a situation like you know you asked me to drive out here to your house to train you most people don't do that that most people come to my gym but instead of worrying about how much time that was gonna take i thought about what how is this perfect timing for he's like and i drove into your neighborhood he goes i love this neighborhood i decided i'm gonna live in this neighborhood like i fell in love with this neighborhood when i came here that's that's how timing works for me i met you normally i would have never worked with you because you were trying to get me to come to your house but i thought maybe there's some timing that brought this guy into my life what is he gonna teach me what's he gonna show me that i wouldn't otherwise have had what what is this great opportunity and so he's really focused on let's say timing and so he's like this personal trainer who also has like all these life philosophies and he just operates with such good energy and such a good vibe that like by the end of the hour or hour and a half that i work with him like i'm buzzing dude it's like this is it's like a drug it's like being around him it's like a drug because he's always in such a great great state of mind well i i i wanna do this oh can i give you one more example or we we too far yeah okay so here's an example of how he changed my life it's a metaphor that that i've using it out all the time so i don't know about you but like no matter how successful i get whenever i start a new project i get stressed again and i guess stressed ultimately because i'm afraid it's gonna fail right like if i knew it was gonna succeed i wouldn't be fucking stressed i'd be it just be excited oh great i'm gonna win i already know i have the winning lottery ticket but the reality is like with any new project i'm trying to get more ambitious and then that brings in the possibility of failure and and what he taught me was he's we when we were talking about it was sort of the same thing i have many many times tried to get fit and struggled with either the diet or working out consistently or whatever and he's like you know what gets you off track blah and what we found was is it was the same root cause this is the same fear of failure what if i can't stick to the program what if the diet is too hard to maintain and then i'll find evidence of that as i go right when it's like it's really hard i'll be like fuck that's happening again you know i might fail i might fall off track and so he was like look not only are we gonna get the results you want not only are we gonna win but we're gonna get there with enjoyment we're not gonna stress about it and so he's i was like alright well how do you do that he's like let's say today you're at a four in your fitness level he's like and you could be at a four in anything your life personal finances whatever so let's say you're a foreign in fitness and you wanna get to your ten right let's get real clear about the ten cool here's what your ten is and i described it in detail and you may be awkward describe how i want my body to be in my life to be as a ten he's said alright right that's a ten you're at a four now he goes we're not just gonna do what most people do most people when they're at of four they think about the ten they want and then they just feel shitty that they're not at the ten and they try to use that as fuel that's motivation of like fuck i hate where i'm at i wanna get to where i wanna be and they just they just continue hating the four and wishing they had the ten because that's cool you might get there but you'll feel shitty the whole time and that's not a win so here's what we're gonna do we're gonna love the four okay you're at a four right now fantastic and all we're gonna focus on is not the ten we're gonna focus on a five five comes next and we're gonna get really excited every time we sense that we're going from four to five and sure five is still not nowhere near what our tenth gonna be but we're gonna really get excited about every time we see that signs of that five coming and so he just kinda broke it down into much smaller chunks and the last thing he said was if i what if i told you again that the ten was inevitable you were absolutely gonna get there he's like imagine you go outside your house and there's a corner store and at that corner store is you know the ice cream you want right because you you know when you when you're walking into your corner store you're not worried am i gonna get there you don't fear failure you know you're gonna get there you also know you're not there yet right so you know you're far away today but you're cool with that no problem you know you you need to do some work to together there need to walk to get to the corner no problem i don't mind doing the work because you're absolutely certain that you're gonna get to the corner there's no doubt in your mind that you're gonna fail and fail to walk there he goes that's how we're gonna think about success for our body it's just this corner store that we're inevitably gonna get to we just gotta take a bunch of steps and we're gonna go step by step all the way there but there's no for failure because it is it is as we are as certain that we're gonna get to our destination as we're certain that we could just get to that corner store and we're not gonna feel bad that for we're far away right now like duh we just left our house of course we still got a way to go but we're gonna enjoy the walk there and that metaphor i don't know why but that just clicked for me and i just got really really fucking certain that it's gonna happen and now i'm enjoying the process on the way there so i don't know that maybe was too long it a steel maybe we should edit this out but you that has changed my life out we'll we'll i think that this trainer is your soul mate you might be you guys are like you guys are like the same person i think you you yeah you i think you got a married that you're trainer i you know actually when i saw him and i was like wait you used to train my wife and he's a good look at dude and i was like and he's real smooth so i was like this if i knew that you are who you are i would to never let my wife trade with you dude like you're mister steal your girl and i was like but now my wife should be worried that i'm just gonna follow up with you because we are the same brain what's the price per session i think he charges me what is it like eighty five bucks a session or something like that and it's all eighty five ninety bucks session trainer what's that i think i need to get a trainer yeah you should work out with this guy but you gotta be back in kind of the area well this is a good episode appreciate everyone listening leave a review we read all of them and maybe we'll be back next week with some more trainer stories from sean perry alright see it