#13 - He Made Millions From... Blankets, Bean Bags & Candles?

this is the secret everyone focuses other shit it doesn't matter what's your conversion rate or this or like this it's like wait what are you selling and whenever i sit down i always talk the product because that shit is the most exciting that's why we're here that's what we're selling i'm not selling some arbitrage on facebook or like access to an email list or some sale it's like no no it's so fucking simple i make the best bean bag ever that's it that's why we're here thank you for coming i appreciate it yeah no thanks for having me i got a message from my friend zach who's over at founders fund and the good thing is when i started the podcast it was just my friends mh so i was like okay i know i can have like these ten guests on are my friends i know they have good stories and i was like i don't know what i'll do after that but the good thing was that zach and others basically once they heard a few episodes i was like oh you gotta have this person on the podcast and so he sent me one of those emails oh you gotta have john on the podcast so you are the founder of don't know the company's i should called but the product i've seen seen for years called the gravity blanket what's the actual company called yeah so basically there's gravity blankets moon pod and then this new one called birth date candle so i guess i have you know my john hold c thing yeah and i'll spin up these companies and kinda do it product by product and put a team around them and then sort of walk away or grow it or whatever so gravity is its own beast and monster with a partner moon pod i have a team running that one and then this new one birth date candle also a team on that one right and it's all of these little things and you know they're spinning them up running them doubling down on what's working and then continuing to iterate and launch and double down awesome so i'm excited because i'm have a few different business fantasies okay people have sexual fantasies they you know they wanna role play wanna do whatever u i have these business fantasies one of my business fantasies is to do a mega successful kickstarter which you've done so you've did a kickstarter i think raised almost five million bucks is that right five it it was close to five gravity was four point seven and then moon pod was like one point four okay so you've even higher than five total but one of my van is do a super successful kick harder the other is to create this like like a viral product like basically when i saw the snug yeah i was like wow this is genius this guy you know somebody made a comfortable blanket essentially i remember having several brainstorm his friends being be like what's another sn another sn and that's funny kind of not to make a joke of it but you kinda did another snug that was the joke that was the joke with when with the team that we were doing this we would take breaks and i would walk around my partner and we'd would be like how hysterical is this gonna be we actually make the next slug break and you know because one of our manufacturers their big claim to fame was that they made the snug and we were like oh shit like what if wouldn't it be crazy if this thing caught on and like you know and now it's like you know you hear weighted blankets and gravity blankets all over the place and it's like i caught up with my partner in la a couple weeks ago and we kinda were just like yeah like and i'm not we're not gonna say it's on the level of snow you but it i was like yeah we kinda right kinda gotta yeah smells was a little bit like a little bit like might well we joked yeah okay so for those who don't know what is the gravity blanket in sort of a couple sentences yeah so these sentence is that it's basically a weighted heavy blanket we have a twenty five pound blanket we have a twenty pound blanket and a fifteen pound blanket and basically the line is that sleeping with ten percent of your body weight on top of you is an incredible anti anxiety relief tool mh so you have better sleep d stress and it sort of feels like this hugging sensation on your body that has like some pretty real effects on your body of mind amazing and so we're gonna talk about how you guys came up with the idea mh how you guys brought it to market how you did this cake kickstarter and raised all this money and really built the momentum but i wanna know just initially what's the origin story where were you when you had the idea said you guys were walking around or kinda joking i that the starting point of this is like in a very short sentence i started a tech company i was putting tablets in uber and by the way he put air quotes on tech i like that yes yeah i mean i i have to give career yeah and san francisco glad have to be careful so it was this i had this whole idea of advertising in uber which is i guess now like a really big thing i was a little early and it wasn't really the company that i wanted to build so you know raised a bunch of money before i spent it all gave it back to all the investors and went back to zero so yeah it was like kind of like months of sleeping on a couch started this company shut it down back on couches so i was like back on couches kind of freaking out and i really have what was the freak out is like what am i gonna do or yeah i mean you know i gave myself probably like a two year window where i was like alright i'm gonna go from having nothing to try to create something out of thin air and if it doesn't happen then like maybe i'll have to go and get that job at like jpmorgan or something and you know the podcast is called my first million and it's called it because for a long time i was like i wanna be a millionaire yeah i thought people who had a million bucks i was like wow they got all the all the bucks and not what it's correct up to me yeah but like at the time i felt that and i think still for a lot of people in a lot of places definitely not san francisco but a million bucks still is this like amazing milestone yeah same thing like a million downloads when when this podcast gets a million downloads like you know i'll pop la croix right right right when you say i was trying to create something at a thin air was it more like are you wired like me i'm like just wanna make successful businesses i kinda don't care about which field it's in but i just wanted to build a successful business i don't know why i just really wanna do it what was your thought process around i wanna create something out of thing what was something after months of sleeping on coaches i started to get like pretty desperate and was like i don't really care what it is like also bags of ice i'll like have a lemonade stand like i don't give it shit i just need something that it's gonna create this like positive feedback loop where i can go and get off my friend's couch yeah but even that being said there's like five or six ideas that i had where it was like it didn't hit me in the chest as much as something like a weighted blanket like to me like when i had that idea i was going out i was working with sleep scientist i was actually gonna build a pillow okay and one of the sessions with the sleep scientist she very passively was like oh yeah i'm like after the blanket she'd look into sleeping with ten percent of your body weight and i was like what i was like wait what did you just say and she was like yeah if you sleep with ten percent your body weight it's this incredible anti anxiety relief and i was like like tell whoa whoa yeah i was like stop everything basically threw the pillow off the table and was like we i have to learn more about this and when i i went out and i was searching for it it really couldn't find anything out there other than these children's blankets for autistic kids and like some use cases for the medical field but there really wasn't anywhere where you could go and purchase these things for like a normal use case and a normal person that just wanted it to like feel comfortable and so i was like oh wow so i made myself like a ten pound blanket and put it on my chest and i passed out my ten minutes i was mean by you made yourself how do you make yourself a ten pound i'm blanket what is that i basically went on amazon bought these weighted pellets and then sew them into two sheets basically why'd did you do that versus just buy one of these specialty weighted blankets that we're kind of fringe at the time i did buy a bunch of those too but like the websites it sold them were like kind of crazy like it was easier to it was easier to make my own than to go and get it away than to go on internet by it which i was like okay i hope this thing works because this will crush if it if it turns out to be what i hope it is and it was when i put it on and i fell asleep and woke up i was like oh my god this i don't even care i'm comfortable screaming about this to everyone that i know because i know that it works but i loved it so much and like you know if i sat down and looked at it like pillows are probably a bigger market opportunity like that my pillow guy is making like four hundred million a year or whatever i don't know but like i don't know what was more fun for me and what like felt a little bit more unique and a little bit more special to me was something was idea of of a weighted blanket because you know no one's has ever seen that before so for me it's sort of like a balance of this sort of like invention newness thing something that i would actually truly love and then you know is it gonna be capable right actually being a real business you know i almost tweeted this the other day but i'm trying to not tweet ever every day i sleep with the gravity blanket i wake up and i you know meditate and do work on my moon pod and then like at night i like my birth date candle right and like have my little like fun you're living your lifestyle like we literally touch and use every product that i make every day yeah and i've had a bunch of other ideas that i know would be massive businesses but like they just don't really excite me right it's amazing how much better your execution gets when you are using your own product you know what pain points the customer gonna have because you are the customer you're not guessing exactly so it eliminates a whole feedback loop of like wondering what a customer wants doing research talking to them trying to figure out what did what they tell me was that real and what's the truth it's like no i know what i want and i can test it on myself yeah that's amazing the other thing you said which was is good i wanna call out which is like you just did the thing that was most interesting to you and not the thing necessarily that looked like the most beautiful business on paper yeah it passed the interesting this test yeah and i don't know what do you think but something to that there's something so following like your no your gut on what's interesting to you i had a bunch of vcs tell me to do the pillow business and when i said the weighted blanket thing they were like what they were like what are you talking about and i was like no no you don't get it like you gotta use and they were like no look at the tam on pillow assumption i was like shut up like you don't get it so i went my own way and i'm yeah i'm really glad that i did yeah okay so you you build the prototype yourself essentially u use it you're like okay i believe in this i would be willing to chill for this because i believe in it mh what happens between there and let's say the kick kickstarter being successful tell me a little bit about how that came about yeah so it was long it was like a long time so i had that idea and found that product probably like five or six months before i even talked about launching it because i was basically like broke with nothing yeah so it took me a really long time to get any sort of momentum and is that because you kind of you weren't fully convinced yet so you're still dabbling other possibilities all their ideas or you just didn't have the it was literally it was literally the means like i didn't have i really was making deals i was promising my friends that if they me stay on their couch for more than two weeks i was gonna take them on vacation when i was successful and like i was living off of a credit card that i gave myself like it was like no interest or whatever for like a year and a half and it was literally like alright every day was like how do i eat and sleep and then it was like okay do i have an hour or to to explore this idea but then you know you need you need people you need a team you need money you need all these things to come together and it took me a really long time to get that so eventually what were you doing to hustle to make money in the interim are attending and what are you doing no nothing i was doing i was literally i was taking like a massive risk i made this website called the be bermuda dot com and it was an idea and this was the thing like all my days i was testing out like nine or ten ideas yeah i made this website the be bermuda list dot com and i basically said like the landing page was like sign up and this is a curated list of the best people and we all let each other stay each other's couches mh and so i send it to one friend couch surfing but couch serve right house couch surfing with the right host with like your friends of a friend yep and i sent it to one of my best friends and was like hey can you send this to five of your best friends that you would want to sleep on your couch and i actually got like five hundred people signed up to this thing and then i just would hit the list of those people and say hey i'm the guy can i come sleep on your couch for a week and if i like them then i would say i would give them the deal i would say if i can stay here for more than two weeks when i get it together i'll take everyone to bermuda okay and that basically was my hack to survive and sleep on couches but that took up a lot of my time i took up like most of my day of figuring out all that testing the idea finding the right people all that and then i started setting up people to stay with themselves and it turned into this whole ronnie story but that basically got me to a point where again like it took me like five or six months i i talked to a friend that had a media company and i was like hey media is in a really weird place right now this is future something i was like media is in a really weird place right now i have all these product ideas why don't we partner it'll be a great way for you to show that you can you know bring revenue to a product you can go do this to a bunch of other people and it'll be a great way for me to get my stuff off the ground yeah and that's cool because most media companies are trying to do this like ad model affiliate links model but you need huge scale yeah so this was this this kid was just a friend from nyu and you know that's kind of the conversation it was like don't go run and do that fool errand let's try to do something new and he was like alright i'm down with that like let's let's try it out and so you know that was like five or six months of just like finding person chicken and rice and couches to find a friend that wanted to experiment with me and you needed that because that had distribution built in is that it or yeah i thought it was really important to launch to a big audience i'm not sure if that ended up being the case like i don't think i would go and do that again right i wouldn't go like partner with a media company to do this again but something you believed at the time right it was like you know this this whole thesis of like media and product and everything's changing and attention and it ended up basically just being faced yeah like you just need to buy facebook ads right which would have been a lot simpler but yeah that was sort of the bet of like you know i need a team i need resources let's launch this thing together we'll go to your audience and it was clear that their audience was interested in a weighted blanket and so we were like okay this will be worth our time and what do you mean by it was clear did you actually run a test with them or you're just guessing oh future they'll be interested did you do some kind of content or some yeah we did like a quick sample size of just like hey is this something you guys to be interested in so you just asked them right yeah yeah great yeah you still haven't made the product of really got no manufacturing no i'm guessing at this point you don't know how to do manufacturing of a product correct you're like so i kinda did i had a handbag company in college i was making women's handbags i did a few i did like women's wear i did a few seasons of women's wear so i i had manufacturing relationships right and i've made a few things before and just with record he's wearing a blue t shirt at the time he's not the most fashionable you know i'll come on no handbags i don't let don't see anything here but i got pretty into i was we lost a new york fashion week it was like a whole thing i was like fashion boy nice to you're hustling okay good so yeah i mean like you know i had an idea i i knew that i could make a couple thousand blankets if it got down to it i had no idea what was coming right but you didn't go make the blanket first you no start to kick kickstarter if did it on kickstarter going into that did you think oh i got this playbook with this is gonna be a successful kickstarter or was it like i don't know we'll just figure it out and see what happens it was up in the air like it was actually funny we all took that with me and the team that was helping me we all take bets on what it would do and i bet i had the highest bet i thought i was gonna do a million bucks yeah and everyone thought i was insane and everyone thought i was even more insane for the couple months that we worked together that i was trying to convince them to help me launch a weighted blanket so they were like okay kit is ridiculous right i thought it was gonna do well i knew it was gonna do well i didn't think he was gonna do that well that quickly right and so what's the trick okay so you wanna do a successful kickstarter tell me about some of the elements that go into like why you think it worked for you guys may not work now like at that time these were the things you guys did to make a that kick kickstarter successful i'd love to dig into some of the details of the core critical components we played into this whole like our mood board as stupid as it sounds was like tesla for sleep right and so we did gravity blanket and we gave it this whole science feel yep and that was really when like elon musk was like the god of all gods were like you know anything he did was like yep re retweeted ninety times we're drinking the ko aid everyone's strength everyone he no one had hated him yet yeah and you know so we got we got the branding right we got the messaging right we got the audience right we got the timing right this was like right when trump was getting elected and everyone was freaking out and was like oh you know i'm not sleeping and like also the casper thing and the sleep thing just happened right and this was sort of taking a different angle where it was like you know this isn't about necessarily sleep it's about a wellness relaxation right and there's no gender to this product it's everyone uses a blanket already and it's just sort of increasing the efficacy of a product that everyone is familiar with so again like i could go down a list right forever and like dissect it but the problem is again like if i tried to take this formula and overlay it onto something else it wouldn't work right so for like moon pod when i did the second kickstarter i approached it completely different i didn't get a media partner i didn't try to launch to this like with this big grand thing i didn't spend a lot of money right because i didn't think the product was right for that on i didn't spend a lot of money on advertising the value prop was different the the promise was different so it's like you know you have to really you looked at the fundamentals and you're like what do i have what do i mean a hundred percent and i wanna bring up a couple things that you said because they're kinda nuance and we won't go too far into the details but you made some decisions anytime you launch a product there's like this decision tree you go down and by the end for successful products it's like oh of course mh of course that makes sense that you would call it the gravity blanket you would make it you know sort of gray neutral and not like pink or blue or whatever right you would use the science thing rather than you know something else a different angle to market it and so give us a sense of what are some of those other forks that you know you could have taken in an alternate universe was not called gravity blanket it was called blah blah right instead of going after science you were gonna go after a different angle to position it what were some of the alternates that you guys ruled out i mean we joked about it we joked about calling it at the trump blanket we joked about calling it a boyfriend blanket or like a girlfriend blanket because that's everyone was like oh i don't need a significant another to snuggle with buy gravity boyfriend blanket might have worked boy blanket it might have worked it like and again but like just didn't it's a balance between having these ideas that you can test but then at the end of the day like i mean this is why like you know quan hedge funds don't don't really work and like why ab b testing your way to product market fit doesn't really work there still comes a time where you have to have real product insight confidence and a vision right and just take that bet on your gut if you try to do this whole thing of like here's the decision tree and here's this and what's ab b test and this you just get lost and you forget what when you forget that feeling that you had when i first put it on myself and that was the feeling that i that i really leaned into when i was driving and making all these decisions it was like okay yeah like this is a joke let's call it a boyfriend blanket and i was like i don't know this is how you felt with this is too serious i was like this is too real this isn't a joke this is like this is gonna change p how people sleep and so you know it was like okay so like gravity blanket it's it we're gonna we're gonna move towards this idea of science because there was science there so it really is about you know it's good to explore and have on the table all of these different areas that you could go but at the end of the day i really am i'm a believer that it comes from like having a some sort of real gut on on the products side you can't ab test you way to assess but the possibilities do exist to do come to your brain and you use something either data or just conviction around which path to yeah yeah yeah and so you you were making those decisions as you were going so there's that element the other thing you said that was interesting was product promise i've used this term actually heard anyone else say so when you said it i kinda excited because the way i look at businesses every product makes a promise to a customer what am i gonna do for you yep and you gotta make the right promise because if you're promising something i don't care about then i'm just gonna ignore you right right i promise you know if i promise you that i could well well you know turn your hair blue like if you don't care about your hair turning blue you don't who cares don't care about me it so you gotta make the right promise and then you gotta live up to it and so the promise of the gravity blanket is what is it to reducing anxiety is it what is the simple promise that that you try to make with that product yeah so you know we i spent a ton of time on this and we landed on the the tagline that really worked for us was a twenty five pound blanket for sleep stress and anxiety mh and it took a while to get there to find that like simple sentence but like really if you're using it to sleep better you're gonna probably sleep better so we were like okay that yep that works if you're stressed out and you throw it over you it will probably calm you down okay that that's good and if you have this crazy anxiety that's happening and you sort of throw it on top of yourself the same thing is gonna happen so all those promises that we were making we were super super confident that it's gonna be delivered from the majority of the customers right and let's give people a sense of the scale of things so you you do this kickstarter you get five million bucks of essentially pre sales yep to date what does the product done in sales now like how far did it go how far did the gravity blanket really go yeah it's a lot we've been around for like two years i have sort of stepped away and the team there you know is scaling it in a really incredible way online mostly we're starting to get into some retail stuff and whatever yep i don't wanna speak for them i read a number that said fifteen million when i was doing my research for this this done over fifteen million in sales that's printed somewhere yeah that's printed so amazing so yeah so like yeah i it's a little more than that now yeah obviously because that was probably what a year ago couple months ago yeah so it's grown since then but again like it's a super healthy business i mean it was profitable from day one and when that happens you know you have this positive feedback loop of you know gas right that helps it grow and as so you developed that product and you've developed subsequent products since you said moon pod mh what's the other one the candle the candles is fun is a it's a tell us about the promise that those make yeah totally so moon pod was a similar promise it was i basically was like i started freaking out and it was like holy shit like what if i'm just the blanket guy forever like what if i can never one hit one right and it was like you know you you asked why did it work and how do you have a successful thing i was really scared that i just got lucky mh or that like you know it was it was because this or that and you know maybe facebook was cheap or something or that audience that i had access to like maybe i did just trick everyone into buying something and i'll never able to do that again and i was like freaking out so the second that gravity hit i was like oh my god i gotta come up two i'd i have to call number two and i went over to japan alone to sort of have a a a chill out and i started just seeing all of these like bean bags and i was like wow like there isn't a great bean bag in the united states and i was like okay and i sat in a few in japan and like kind of had that same feeling that i had when i put gravity on whereas it like my chest sort of like you know i felt like my soul sort of left my body and i was sort of just like in this like bliss and i was like holy shit this is another product where that happened again and i was like went home and i bought a bunch of bean bags to test them out i wasn't happy with any of them but when i used some of the bean bags with the gravity blanket i was like oh my god this is the perfect platform to use with gravity blanket amazing so i was like okay it's complimentary complimentary i would sit on it when i was stressed when i needed a nap or i had anxiety and what makes it better than a normal bean bag that i've experienced here you know growing up at the state totally so we have pretty cool rounded design that's super unique and then the material that we use there's like a dual membrane where we have an inner layer in an outer layer and the outer layer is this like elastic jersey type of thing that holds its form and then the inner bead is this custom like high friction bead that we you know we found there's only like one guy in the us that makes these things the way that i wanted them to and that would work with me and so you know with this whole combination you basically get this sensation that you're like kind of floating mh and you're like supported and it can turn into a chair and you know it's this weird modular thing and you know you don't see that out there it's like loves sack and a few others that are just like this big giant sack of foam yeah i've seen those and this is sort of this lightweight malleable support system that sort of like you know you feel it in your lower back any which way you lean into it it sort of pushes back against you right and you know that was pretty unique like there aren't a lot of people doing that and no one's really telling the story that we're telling where it's kind of like hey this is an adult bean bag like it's okay it is kind of the best place to sit where you wanna do work or chill out or hang up you know normally on the podcast i don't even i'd remarkably don't talk to the guest so much about their product because it ends up feeling like a sales pitch because usually the person's really into their product totally and i just you know we people are here for more sorry in your case i really wanna talk about it because your product is it naturally interesting i feel like it's interesting to everybody okay so this is the secret it's the viral product but this is the secret everyone focuses so much on other shit that doesn't matter it's like oh you know like what's what's your conversion rate or this or like this it's like wait what are you selling and whenever i sit down i always talk about the product because that shit is the most exciting that's why we're here that's what we're selling i'm not selling some arbitrage on facebook or like some like access to an email list or some sale it's like no no it's so fucking simple i make the best bean bag ever like that's it that's why we're here my weighted blanket feels incredible like there really isn't much else to talk about everything else is blocking and tackling it's like get that moment and find that product that makes you wanna talk about it you know like you say you don't really ask these questions but it's because i've spent time finding these products that are interesting that people wanna talk about yes and that is sort of something that no one really talks about which is crazy to me there's so many people that come to me and have all these questions and i'm like what are you selling and they're like oh it's a snack that this and i'm like great why is it different than this this and this i'm like well it has a different logo and i'm like well i don't care right now about yeah it's like okay i would say you're very simplistic approach to this is inspiring like when you were saying that you're like i got the main thing right and i kept the main thing the main thing yeah and that's kind of the main that's the thing to do and why are we all distracting ourselves yeah and i like that i like that approach very much i heard that five hour energy guy who's like idle stuff he said the same shit he was like one of my bus rides around california and i was just like you know trying to figure it out they were like why haven't coke or pepsi or whoever like common and notch out of the water and he was like they always forget about the most important thing it's the product he's like i made the best formula and no one can copy it and you know like why does coke still exist yes there is there is a very real argument that they own distribution and all this shit but i don't care if you just replaced coca cola with mo i'm not being tempted by mo right i'm not like c in i you know i i'm not like leaving the gym and still being like i don't know i kinda wanna treat myself to a mo just because it's been my face coca cola tastes like magic yeah it is incredible it is consistent i've never tasted anything like it and that wins for a reason and there's a reason why the special coke formula is this massive secret that no one can ever copy is because they under stand that it's the product so you're in san francisco there's a lot of people that would disagree with you not just on coke being great as a drink but just everyone hits talks about the drink supply chain everything else and i like that you have a different take on it you have to have all of you have to have all of it but i mean a lot of people that are just going out and raising two million bucks to like you know put a different logo on toothpaste for something it's like i don't know man i don't know if i'd take that bet i don't know if i'd wanna spend five years of my life just sort of like doing a brand exercise and like you know getting it on the shelves of a few retailers it's like that's not really that exciting and don't tell me that you're changing people's lives because you're not right and again like it's just like find that magic moment and you can do the equation you can raise money you can tap all these distributors and you can throw it in someone's face but at the end of the day it's not gonna really last or work unless someone naturally falls in love with it mh and that comes down to the product your story reminds me a little bit of the founders of calm do you do you know those guys i alex and i don't we worked with the gravity the gravity team worked with them yeah we did like a whole collaboration with them so i'm gonna have them on podcast they're good friends and alex has this crazy life story where he was i think twenty or twenty one years old and he created million dollar homepage dot com because he just wanted was like how do i make a million dollars he's like the reason this podcast should this really he's got the best story so i'm gonna have him on but he made a homepage did you ever see million dollar page you know what this is so he took a website is back you know year two thousand or something like that i don't don't know exactly where it was but internet wasn't super mature yet and he takes a website and he just divides it up into a thousand by thousand picks i knew i saw this he just sold every pixel every square for a dollar sick and so and you could buy like ten of them or whatever and so he in a few weeks essentially sells a million dollars of advertising on this website amazing and was like be a part of internet history and he played the p r machine and whatever so he makes a million bucks he spends it like within a year because he's like twenty one years old he's having fun he blows it and he was you know he enjoyed it but he thought alright that next hits right around the corner and in the next ten years he basically failed to make another hit yeah but he kept trying kept trying kept trying until he makes calm and it actually calm was not an instant hit either comm a meditation app yep probably one of those popular meditation apps in the world it's like valued over a billion dollars now and at the time i remember talking to him when he was starting it and it was like you're doing a meditation app and kind of a crazy story but he was still in the same space urine which is around anti anti anxiety yep des stressing yep getting better sleep i'm having better focus you know these are the kinda core needs that society was feeling given the way that the world has evolved and he came at it from a very different angle you know a meditation app but i feel like you guys were solving some of the same pain points and like you said like there was a lot of there's like a sleep boom there's a lot of sleep products nowadays yep yeah i mean i again it's all a lot like i said you gotta get ninety things right at the same time mh and like the timing of i don't know where this collective agreement in the world is that everyone's more stressed out than ever right now i don't know where that comes from but like it's a problem that people need help with do you say that because you don't believe that or you when you say i don't know where that comes from are you saying oh no i agree i know i don't know if it's environmental don't know the cause yeah like i don't know where this thing is coming from but everyone's just like i am so stressed right i'm like teeter on depression i need help like it for some reason it seems more than ever that this idea around like getting relief for the stress is so important yeah and again yeah like i don't know like you know weighted blankets were around for a while and how did people feel who made weighted blankets and never saw you know an ounce of the you know one hundredth of the success that you guys found very quickly with it what was were they encouraging you because they're like great now this is go to market or are they sort of jealous of you guys for sort of just taking the concept and really running commercial it and making it mainstream yeah i don't know like a few people called me that had companies and they're were like oh my god thank you so much we you like tripled our sales and you grew the category and now everyone knows about it and it's just up to the consumer which one they like better and like thank you thank you thank you other people wrote articles calling us like you know they thought we were like the devil that stole it was like there wasn't this there was no patent there was no invention it was just this thing that is really great for people and everyone loves and definitely seems like it's helping everyone that tries it i like to have an optimistic view of it it was just like we just great we just have this thing that a bunch of people wanted and we told a different story and that opened up a brand new use case for a whole new market segment but you know you hear that in business all the time like there's a product that exists being used for one thing and it's like oh wait that can also be used in this way for this new set of people and it takes off right yeah can i actually you go with the bathroom sure alright well he goes to the restroom this podcast is sponsored by nobody our sponsor pulled out for season two just a few days ago so we gotta find a new sponsor until then enjoy the ad free podcast and if you're a sponsor looking to to get on the show or get your message in in front of a bunch of entrepreneurs email me p dot sean at gmail mail dot com and if you are a sponsor looking to get in front of our audience we're doing over a hundred thousand downloads every month and growing let me know we have a big audience entrepreneurs business people people looking to make money we are open for business alright back from the bathroom break oh yeah here we go okay so i wanted to basically round out by i have two things that i like to to kinda leave people with the first is you mentioned this candle and i really just wanted to know what it is so can you give me the like one minute on what this candle is because i gotta check this out totally so i just had this really funny idea about you know i saw the astrology thing happening and i have actually secretly been a huge fan of astrology for like my whole life my sister had all these books about birthdays and what it mean to be born on your birthday i had this idea about what if you took this whole you know astrology text around what it means to be born on your birthday and we put those on candles so we have three hundred and sixty five candles one for every day of the year you buy the one that's on your birthday and we give you base see this whole reading and then you know we give you strengths weaknesses it's like the day of the charismatic lion or whatever and then there's like three paragraphs on the back that has a pretty awesome accurately describes what it means to be born on your day what do what do you about accurately because i'm a i'm a non believer like okay so just oh see i think you're wrong so i think you're wrong so so two days ago or i know thirty six hours ago my daughter was born my first child was born gotta tell me september eighth craziest day in my life i'll send you a candles yeah again so so the funny thing is i'm at the we're obviously in the hospital and there's these doctors and everything is science like they're their ass they're taking labs or asking questions they're everything is science and then they're like oh vi baby you know what that means i'm a vi and then so and they're not just making conversation i could tell the totally busy and and so i kind of had this i bucket that sort of in the hook poc land and i personally didn't i'd never put any stock into it but it caught my attention yesterday when they were saying this that they really believe and we were also we were naming her so so her name is blush and so we were looking up like the et ideology of a name and then you see this thing where we looked up her middle her middle name is alana and it means like i looked up the definition it was like very you know a brave charismatic girl who blah blah like all these amazing things that obviously i want to be true mh but i'm also a little skeptical like you know is this such just a fortune cookie telling me like a nice positive thing like when you the accuracy i question that like my by my answer is what does it matter right and and like you know this is a way so you're down with like the placebo style thing correct i read a article the other day so one i'm not saying astrology placebo for all the astrology people out there but i read the article earlier day that made it incredible case that it is unethical to not give patients the placebo before they're actually prescribed the real thing because it is the most powerful with the most success rate i no downsides sense and no downside right and so like that makes sense and again when we're talking about product and what works and what that it's like what's the most powerful thing in the world it's a story mh and it it like what do you do when you pick up something you're like okay water why do you choose that water smart water oh this is gonna help me with this in this it's a story that you tell yourself and it's a promise that you make to yourself every time you interact with an object you're picking it up and you're choosing it and you're like okay blue shirt today this is why i want the blue shirt and you're telling yourself this narrative yes that is incredibly powerful and there is something where you have this idea of a among t or a prayer regardless of what you're telling yourself if you're just telling yourself anything about yourself it's gonna probably come true mh so astrology my my question so two things i'll i'll go down like the storyteller like mythic answer of why astrology is really interesting and then the scientific answer where there actually might be something there okay yeah give some me is one again like you the stories that you tell yourself probably will end up happening and it's super powerful when you are presented with an object that tells a certain story about yourself or the thing and the promise and when that comes true you start to believe it and it's a reinforcing positive cycle so when you say oh i'm leo you're charismatic and passionate you know every time i look at my candle i'm like boom i gotta be charismatic and compassionate because that's why i am right and then i'm calling someone and i'm inviting them to dinner and then all of a sudden i'm charismatic and compassionate where did that come from is that some dna inside of me that was that was formed around the astro birth or of me or is that a story that i'm telling myself does it matter mh i don't think it matters because it's happening and it's worth results sticking around right astrology has been around for longer than most religions it is something that people are continually obsessed about for right now it's it's becoming more and more but again like yes you can say it's not rooted in science and whatever but there is something magical about a story that makes people sort of light up and that moment i think is one of the most important moments in someone's day or in a life is that moment of just pure bliss and i think depending on you know there are some things where that's bad or you know it'll lead to something like drugs or whatever but i think for the most part if it's positive and harmless and reinforcing some good aspect about yourself i think it's amazing mh and so when people tell when people hit me up about the astrology thing they're like i like that thing every day i am reminded about the best parts of myself and i am reminded about the parts of myself that i need to focus on and work on and it just makes me feel really great and it smells really good too at the end of the day i think it helps and i think it's good and i don't think it matters why it works i just think it kind of works yeah that resonates with me i have a i have a belief around this which is that everything that i believe to be true is just a story i don't actually know what's true and what's not right and no and the question is if everything is essentially a story right we create these shortcuts in our brain it tells us this is this when in actuality you may not be seeing half of what's there you may not know the root of it very little in our life we we truly we know the truth of but we create these stories and then they they live with us and so the question then is does the story serve me there's some stories that don't serve they actually like d distract you it's a story you tell about yourself that why you can't do this or why you're bad at this or why blah blah blah why this other thing is really bad for you in your life and then there's other stories that serve you and i think that like i'm not a religious guy i think religion is one of the most powerful stories that serve people it helps people behave in a way that makes gonna have a better life and they're happier and the statistics show that the people who have faith in their life do you have higher quality of life and do better and have low risk of whole bunch of really bad things that can happen to a human being and so the question really isn't what is the truth because that might be an impossible task but better question might be if this is a story in my life is this a story serving me and if it is great let me double down if it's not serving me let me try to figure out is there another story that's that's a better frame of that that thing in my life that way that thing that's happening to me yeah so that's been that's how i've lived my life and so i guess my skepticism about the astrology you could actually go back into that same bucket where if lighting this candle made me feel good every day who cares what the reason is that it makes me feel feel it makes you feel good which is big the goal i have anyway yeah and choosing to believe can be all the difference yeah this is really just branding like there's this whole thing happening now like i've been looking a lot at the story of like jesus and the bible which is again just a story that has not gone away mh and what what is that what is a mechanics in that story like why wouldn't they tell you to do this this and this and look up to the heavens and pray like what is praying praying is literally forcing you to tell yourself a narrative of what you want if it's like i i had a i have a super religious friend that has been making us pray when i eat with him mh and i like started giggling at it and then like he just started saying this things and i was like well shit like what would i i actually say what would i ask what would i ask myself for what would i ask the heavens for i didn't even know how to put it into words and then when i started to put it into words all of my things in that day started leading closer to getting the thing that i ask for and so again like is that some magical man in the sky granting me a thing or is that me just basically tricking myself into some sort of positive reinforcing to get the thing closer it doesn't matter yeah doesn't it matter have you ever seen life of pie i haven't but i i know roughly the story it's so good i saw this a while ago and i didn't really understand it but at the end of the movie he tells the whole story about how they're these animals on the thing and he killed them all and had to eat them and whatever and the scientist that is interviewing him is like well you know there's all this evidence that it wasn't animals and then it was people and you killed these people and you ate them which one was it and he was like he was like well which one do you like better and the guy was like i like the animals one and he was like yeah same did you learn anything different would everything anything change if it was people and he was like no not really it's kind of the same message and he was like exactly so like whether or not this is a scientific story or if it's a religious story they're both probably gonna lead you to a similar place mh and i'm like i mean you hear a scientist you hear like neil d g tyson or some shit talk he is preaching yeah that is a narrative preach he has no clue there is some scientific evidence around the experience but he's talking about this and that and then an article will come out next week that they debunk it they debunk and it's like oh shit that was a narrative around science that just completely got dis disprove so what is so scientific about it like string theory i was looking at string theory shit it was like oh the there are these different narratives that make sense but they don't really make sense and other i was like you're just talking about stories right don't call this string theory this is a scientific there is nothing that backs story it's string story it's string story so i don't know i don't know do what makes you feel good yes there's the on the self reinforcement i'm a big tony robbins guy and a lot of people have all different types of opinions about him but the one thing he said that that was actually stood ask he goes you ever noticed if you go car shopping you know which i recently was doing because we you know have a baby we wanted to get go from a sports car to a suv mh and so i get a family car and the ever knows is when you go car shopping and you let's say you're looking for bmw you know for the next week when you're driving around you'll be seeing bmw you'd be like oh man look that that's the model oh there's another one there's another one yeah it's not that bmw started popping up everywhere they've been there the whole time you're just now looking for them and your brain is filtering because there's so much going on our brain has a mechanism minute it to filter out everything it thinks is unnecessary yep and so once you start saying now bmw are necessary for me to learn learn about think about consider mh your brain starts letting those in so similar principle applies where i have this app that basically at the end of the day just ask you know what are you grateful for today yeah this habit of basically writing down on three things that up three moments of the day that i'm grateful for the first day i tried it i was like okay great i wanna be more grateful i wanna have a gratitude practice let's do this and i sat i couldn't remember anything from the i couldn't remember what i had for lunch i didn't remember any great for moments and so i kinda struggled the first day yeah second day date similarly embarrassing by the third day during the day i was like that's gonna be one of my ones tonight i'm gonna have my three tonight so my brain started like logging things i'm grateful for and therefore i started been grateful for more things and it was like reinforcing things for me that's what i've experienced i think that can apply to many more things in my life i wanna use that i mean what you're doing is basically that is prayer basically that is like ending your days with some prayer what is the prayer you say what you're grateful for you ask what you need and you thank god it's like people have been doing that forever for a reason i don't think people are that different and i don't think much changes and so like again like you just rebranded the story of prayer by saying it was an app it's like okay call it whatever you want do it however you want but like those like core mechanics of how people work i don't think changed that much and i think that a lot of people are really skit around accepting that right now for some reason but i think you know as as the more people sort of like you know are honest with themselves and open about certain things and maybe not being certain about other things and being open that there might be a new possibility that they haven't just emotionally cl to i mean maybe that will kind of help as much as the way to blanket to sort of deep stress right do deep you stress the world okay and so there ends the spirituality portion of the podcast we will finish up with the money around which is very short questions yeah that are sort of like rapid fire just whatever it comes to mind if you can't think of one feel free to either throw out some bs or just pass either either way is fine so the first question is what is the sort of best under two hundred dollar purchase of a product that improves your quality of your life like the products you've made but not something you've made disqualify your own product i wanna say every once in a while a coca cola it makes me so happy and i get so pumped and i think about it and i'm like god they did everything right it's perfect it's magic i don't drink them every day i don't drink them every week but every once in a while i can and work cola pumps me up best roi out there i'm i have to have like probably my first coke in like five years i have it today after this conversation me my mouth is like saliva from the conversation alright so next one is when you made your first million bucks what was the sort of what was the feeling like and did you what was that day like when you realized that you're sort of you financially you've made it to an extent like you won't be back on the couch anymore that sort of thing like what was the feeling like when you hit financial freedom it was not that sick at all i did not feel great i used to i used to work for this one guy that told me he kinda had a mental breakdown the first time he made money and i was like i don't believe you you're such an idiot right shut up like be grateful right give me the money if you're gonna the money like okay sick and then it happened and then i was like oh shit he was right this is it's the wrong framework i don't really believe that and again like you know you kinda have to get it to realize that it's wrong i like that jim carey where he's like i wish everyone would be famous and rich so that they realize that's not the answer it's not what they want and the most valuable thing from all of this shit was having absolutely zero money like less than zero money and figuring out how to survive off of that and i have you know zero has never felt better and it's the most freeing thing and now money is just this thing that exists that sort of a scorecard but i literally don't spend money on anything it does not change my lifestyle it doesn't change my thought process it doesn't change how i build the companies it doesn't change how i think about product all of that shit the real real real real real magic is kind of free but then the chanel line of the the second best things cost a lot of them yeah so yeah i didn't feel that great but again like that wasn't really why i was doing it it was never to get a million bucks it just to make something work and okay cool now money came on along with it great but and so what's something you said i don't spend a bunch of money and i think that's pretty common amongst most people that are in this room sitting in that chair you're sitting in right now but i think everybody has something that they almost don't realize that they spend freely on now it's like oh like like i had the founder of native deodorant and on last week and he said i never think about the prices on the menu anymore i i love to eat great food and i just order whatever i want if my mom is there she's like oh no we don't don't get that yeah and he's like no we're gonna get the drink and they appetizer her like not a lot of money right but he just feels he's price insensitive on that now is there anything you're now price insensitive about that you like yeah all of those things that caused me crazy stress of just like oh like late fees change fees like stuff on the menu you know the founder fun guys the reason i'm out here is that i'm going to montana with them tomorrow and i didn't pack anything and i'm gonna buy shoes out there because it's easier and that and like that is in credible that's kind of the only thing i recently got into watches which is the thing that i've always saw myself forever that would be the only thing that i spend a lot of money on and that under underrated has brought me a lot of happiness yeah have you been to the interval down there i've not the interval down in fort mason is like this bar that's all about like time it's the coolest place ever you gotta go but yeah just like you know that that zero to fifty dollar purchase that used to make me throw up i don't care about anymore and that is by far the the best thing possible you don't need that much money to right to live like that okay great and so to wrap up a lot of people like to reach out after the episodes mh like wow that was inspiring love your story can you help me with this blah people will reach out for all different kinds of reasons sometimes compliment sometimes requests they both come hand in hand do you wanna be contacted how should people get follow you or or contact you social media whatever shout it out so that people can kinda get more more john yeah if they want more john totally totally so yeah definitely reach out like to hear people's stories like to be helpful i'm hiring always hiring always looking for partners i have a bunch of ideas that i'm about to launch that are gonna be their own companies so if anyone anyone's out there interested in sort of joining always happy to chat or help them on their own i would probably say instagram is the best slide into those dms i would say my instagram is at john underscore fear dino that's probably the best way to contact me awesome cool brother thank you for doing this i appreciate the flexibility on the timing yeah yeah yeah i told you i was like dude can do have a baby yeah so sick it is i'm jealous man that's next that's the next chapter the greatest product i haven't of all time that's that's the answer that is terrible i speaking i gotta go back i left my wife for one hour and one hour or too many so i gotta get out of here but this is great alright man thanks