#219 - How to Make Billions with a Niche DTC Clothing Line

i never lie but i think a lot more people should lie you could look cool yeah i don't think more people should lie because as somebody who used to lie it's it's really exhausting what did you lie about yeah i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never looking back alright i i wanna talk about this open see thing i'm laughing about it but before we get into that people like story stuff let me quote not not a story but do you know who layered hamilton is surfer yeah so he he like is he's like even when you think of the word like surfer hon he's like the guy you like think of right like brian he's like kind of the most famous one i think and he's a little bit older now right yeah he's in his fifties he could be as old as sixty but he's fifty seven and there's two amazing things about him the first he has this thing called layered super food have you heard of that no okay it's interesting for a bunch of reasons the first reason why it's interesting is layered as interesting to me he's basically so lair hamilton was a surfer in hawaii he had a troubled childhood but he dedicated life the surfing he says that he might be a little autistic and that he like focuses on a goal incredibly like he he'll he'll achieve it no matter what he obsessed so for a long time he was obsessed with finding the biggest wave he invented toe in surfing and then eventually he got into health and he got obsessed with eliminating sugar eliminating flour and just being very very very healthy and so eventually he launched a company called layered super food and he's obsessed with coffee he drinks tons of caffeine loves coffee and he didn't wanna use like almond milk or oat or anything like that and so we invent this thing called layered super food it starts with a creamer now they sell a bunch of different stuff the bunch of different creamer a bunch of different health foods it seems legitimate i'm gonna buy some of them some of it because it just look i like him and i like the idea of what it promises although i know the science behind it but the second second reason why why it's interesting it went public it's publicly traded it went public with like eighteen million dollars in revenue currently has a market cap hundred and sixty three million dollars revenue of like fifty i think but kinda cool right and layered interest me because he's kinda like there's no such thing as a perfect human but he checks all the boxes in terms of he's doing you get in a bunch of stuff so physically fit great he seems emotionally incredibly healthy very stable like when he talks to him he sees very wise and like he understands how to treat people got a great family it seems and out financially very successful adventures this sky's my hero but i didn't know if you had ever i thought it was interesting that they they took the company public yeah that sounds also just did it take it public in the us or somewhere else here it's where it's on it's on the new york stock stock exchange it's called layered super food it doesn't seem too small it's like a penny stock like what is the market cap of it if it has eighteen million in revenue it doesn't have eighteen million in revenue now maybe what's it have now you can look it up like forty or fifty it has it's market cap right now is a hundred and sixty three its highest ever was two times up interesting okay and yeah i'm kinda like you where there's some you know some like if you're just like a normal instagram influencer you're like hawking some product or whoever you're whoever you're me you're you you're just like normal person and you're you're hawking some product it's like okay you know you probably tried to do a good job with this but like this is a business for you and you're doing this for the business and then when you see something like lair hamilton who's like walked the walk for like i don't know how many years you guys like fifty something years old ac just like ripped absolutely ripped at that age you kinda know that he's lived a certain lifestyle and i have a higher level of trust when this guy selling me a tea or a you know a breakfast waffles cute keto breakfast waffles or a creamer or whatever the the stuff is that he has i do feel like i trust a lot more than you know whatever ryan go gin or something you know right like where it's like clearly just celebrity put face plus generic product equals like branded product now the second thing i wanted to ask you okay so when i look at this sky i've been reading a lot about them i've been ob obsessed a little bit about them and i've been watching all this stuff he's always working out and for the past maybe four months i've been working out really hard i'll do like maybe ten workouts a week so sometimes two days and i'm always sweating yeah i'm moving a lot and i started thinking about this because there's this thing that trump said and it's always stuck with me and and for some reason the way that he said it i just it never went away and someone was like this is right after his physical and they go trump why don't you exercise he's like a waste of time i don't wanna waste my energy and they're like what he goes yeah look like i only have a limited about energy in my lifetime my my my body is like a battery i'm not gonna use my battery on exercise when i can be using your building businesses or doing whatever and i have no idea what the truth is of this but it got me thinking you guys say that's i para phrase it but yeah so if you google like trump health battery that tolerate recall it like it's like trump's battery theory or something like that and i have no idea of the validity of this this could be the stupidest thing ever i've i don't know i i'm it just i just thought it was hilarious when he said it but it caught me thinking like i read david's go biography and like the dude sweating all the time and like can like let me read this out let read this out trump gave up athletics after college because he believed the human body was like a battery with a finite amount of energy which exercise only depleted he said what did he say he i don't know here here's a scientist a better analogy would be it's like a fire that you continue to fuel with more coal or wood you need to continue to add fuel or your flame will die this is true whether you exercise it or not simply by exist they were burning energy okay i know what this gets talking about so well i i was thinking about it i'm if our if our life only if our hardest all hold this trump battery thing is too ridiculous i can't get over it and also right the two was like kind a possible valve this like i walked in on my sister once she's supposed to be studying and she was i walked in her room and she was just laying down sleeping and i was like oh my wake up like you're was supposed to be my mom like i was little kid my mom said me to be like is she studying for the test i was like mom saying you're just supposed to be studying for the test was like no i'm reviewing in my head and i was like oh sorry sorry and i went back to my mom and i was like she's reviewing she just closed her eyes to review like she was definitely just sleeping that's what trump's battery thing is to me it's like a bullshit excuse for not wanting to exercise yeah well i i was thinking i'm like well again i'm an idiot i know nothing but like if your heart can only be some number of beats throughout your lifetime am i wasting it by just like being sweaty all the time and working out all the time and i i was thinking about this layered tabletop guy and i'm like dude maybe should just go for walks instead of like like how much exercise like do we actually need know like when i say david gaga is like running hundreds of miles and he's like on his instagram he's always working out it's like i i just i i wanna start reading about like where where's is the threshold of where it actually doesn't matter because yeah well okay i i think you know here's my my very basic theory which is it's not like a okay it's like a battery but batteries can be recharged and whatnot it's basically right you get your heart and other parts of your body are muscles and the muscles can grow stronger with you know exercise and then they develop or then grow weaker without use and so not using them doesn't just preserve your precious energy marble and you're gonna go live till your two hundred it's it's a if you build your muscles up including your heart your brain by you know studying or cardiovascular exercise you're gonna get more out of it you're gonna be able to do more now plus it'll be able to like last longer through atrophy in your life i hear you but but when i see layered hamilton at fifty seven and i'm like working my butt off right now i'm like he he all of his stuff is about recovery he talks about recovery he talks about how this helps and i'm like well just like do less and don't need you don't need to recover because like do less stuff you know like okay look at lair hamilton and then look at trump they just look at their results and say which body do you ultimately want do you want that guy's body and energy or do you want this guy's body and energy and i think it'll guide you down the right path like i'm just saying i'm thinking out loud here this is something that i'm questioning myself like how hard am i gonna go like why do i wanna recover all the time like i just i i there's just should be no need to recover all the time do you wanna do you wanna before we get into topics do you wanna do you wanna talk about this n thing or no so i just finished up my crypto week which was i i talked about a last pod basically i took a week of time canceled all my other meetings i said i'm gonna go into i'm gonna go next deep and crypto what does that mean all these ideas i knew about but i the basically i wanted to go play with i wanted to go do right so if you think about like how you can participate in things you can sit on the sidelines and watch you can kind of you you can kind of jump in and be a player but not the not the driver you could participate or you can create and that's when you're really hands on you're actually making shit happen so i wanted to create as much as possible week i had already been on the sidelines watching i'd already been a participant there's a whole bunch of protocols and tools and ideas that i never done so anyways i had this idea and tell me what you think so i think we should create an and i you know side note i created it it's ready to go if i just push this button push it okay push it okay great so i created this n called five minutes of fame and what it is it's a one of one token that anybody can own that gives you the right to five minutes of airtime on our show now or anytime in the future you can hold this thing for five years if you think we're gonna be massive bit much bigger than five years just hold it it'll it'll appreciate it but once you use it and the way to use it is you burn it right so you own this token and it's only one of one and when you wanna use it you send it to our wallet and that when you send it to our wallet we've received it that tells us this token has been burned the five minutes of fame now you can come on the show and you can hang with us talk with us and you can do whatever you want if you wanna just repeat the name of your company for five straight minutes annoying but doable you could do it to promote your shit that way if you wanna come brainstorm with us or you wanna come ask questions you could do whatever you want as long as it's obviously not like in a vulgar or hateful or whatever not some like un cool shit know like can can they sell it they can sell yeah so so somebody so i've started the floor price at point five eth right so less than one ether i wanna see how high this ends up going so i'm gonna start the bidding there it's gonna run for one week you after this episode airs and when it's gonna run for one week and so anybody can go on open see right now and i gotta figure out how you find it it's called five minutes of fame my first million and i'll clean it out to you gotta spell my first million it's just m now yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna change the title of it i'm also gonna put it in the show notes of this description so you go to open if you don't know how to do n d's and open see is a hard way to start but if you kinda know what this stuff's all about you know what we're doing here what we're doing is we're basically saying look money has always been like a a frozen block of time right i go do a bunch of work i i put in time i get money i go give that money to a restaurant i say hey t this frozen block of time out and you go work for a bit you you go you go spend some time for me make some food for me and then you know like that's how money trades hands it's just frozen blocks of time so what i did was i just took five minutes of time and i froze it and i said anybody can buy this you could hold it you can use it or you could sell it you could flip it and i wanna see what happens with this thing over time and i wanna see if who buys it i wanna see what they do with it i wanna see if they use it or if they wait because our show growing like twenty percent month over month twenty five percent month over month so you know you wait a year and all of a sudden you're gonna have it's a bigger show it's a big it's a it's more valuable airtime for you to go on and by the way we don't take sponsors anymore right we sold the show to hubspot they're the only sponsors are if you wanted to come sponsor a show and buy some airtime you literally couldn't right now couldn't the this is the only way and so i this is an experiment i don't know what's gonna happen but i'm excited about it was one of my things is make and mint an n of my own that was part of my crypto week alright great i'm i'll share yeah i'll i'm gonna wait for you to tweet it and then i'll i'll take lead on how you write it and then i'll okay sounds cool alright let's see what happens that's awesome yeah okay so what do what do wanna do let's do this let's do this in order so let's let's first do another story let's do this guy who took our stripe for vice idea which was a long time ago so he's i know story i don't know if i buy it i okay we'll we'll preface with this might be total bullshit right it sounds a little made up sounds a little bit fan fiction but i wanna give them the benefit of the doubt so okay so so we said this idea i don't even know how long ago maybe a year ago which was my friend our our our mutual friend su had this idea and i i i brought it to the podcast which was stripe for vice vice ventures right so what does that mean so stripe is a payment processing platform so if you wanna take payments on your website you use stripe but the problem is stripe has like many payment processors like paypal like others terms and conditions which basically say you can't use this if you're cannabis if you're crypto if you're you know porn if you're all these different use cases and so the idea is to build a product you know calm the product quality and and developer friendliness of stripe but have your terms and conditions open and this is like kind of a a strategic move because one of the best ways to compete against the big mono monopoly is not to do what they're not doing now right a lot of people do this they pitch us an idea that says oh you know you know twitch isn't focused on this right now music so we're gonna do twitch for music it's like yeah but you know they could if they wanted to yeah especially if you proved it out they could do that or of facebook doesn't have you know it doesn't let you see this so i'm gonna add this feature okay but they could easily add that whereas the whereas these are they can't do it because it would go against it would threaten their core business so stripe can't stripe might even the the ceo might say hey i think cannabis is great but he can't do it because it's gonna threaten his relationships with his banking partners and so it'll put the core big valuable business at risk which is why you're actually safe going to pursuing this because they're just not gonna do it in the same way that like only fans is safe because it's something instagram will never do instagram could have all those same models on there but they will never release this feature which lets you pay for kind of those locked locked not safe for content because it threatens their advertising business with their clean with coca cola whoever else and so terms of conditions is actually an amazing way to compete against big successful incumbents go do what they explicitly say they won't do and they can't do so okay anyways there's this guy on twitter name is skyler mister skyler his his head and he says public service announcement for all the my first million pod fans from stealing ideas from the pod don't play short term games just take it from me i took their stripe for vice idea i grew it to a business doing over four hundred thousand dollars a month and sixty day in less than sixty days and then i got pushed out by literal gangster i wish i was joking here's the story anyway so he tells the story he basically says he looked at stripes in terms of service and it said you can't do get rich quick schemes you can't do cannabis you can't do a mug shop publication or pay to remove websites so he's like great that's my prospecting list i will just make a list of these companies do exactly those things and i'll start cold emailing like crazy he's like i then in parallel i went i went to galileo and synapse and i try to find payment providers infrastructure companies then won't let me do this they both said no so that i called some like new fintech companies they also said no he's like but then i went and i found this small like canadian bank that i have used in the past like a local bank and it turns out for a monthly fee they'll work with it we'll work with me great and so then he sets it up and he starts getting like online dis cannabis companies start using him and this is where it gets a little bit weird at like that business is working but one of the dis companies i guess like that he knew that was super profitable like they needed help and he's like oh they asked me to come on board and blah i didn't really understand this part did you get this he like basically joins their company yeah he joins their company or something like that and anyways it starts making four hundred thousand dollars a month he's like you know i moved into a dope condo and vancouver down having vancouver i fly first class of turks and c i spent thirteen thousand dollars a night at this hotel and you know it goes that the girl i'm seeing is now running around with a fake at a new set of fake did somewhere i wish i had saved this money but instead i was spending it right and then he's like so this is where this part of the story you've sound a little unbelievable because i don't think you'd even be falling out that much on this small this this little amount of money but i guess i just don't don't save up so maybe anyways he he says you know the company that they were buying product from which is like a publicly listed company is run by crooked gangster they started harassing me and my family blah blah blah i ended up paying them i don't know back i i i've met up with them with a bag of cash and i told them to leave my family alone and i i left the business forever and you know that's my story of you know i i i've traded peace of mind i traded my money for a piece of not peace mind and here's what i know i charge my newsletter i so i'm i'm good i googled this guy a bunch he i think he's full of it this is just maybe i i think that maybe there's like some truth here like maybe he tried to start this maybe like someone sketchy emailed him and that's about it yeah it definitely seems like the bag of cash i met them in a park and they told me you're lying bro are you lying is this is this you lying i think you're lying so i don't know i don't if he's lying or not he needs to show some receipts if he wants us to to fully vouch for it but i thought it's an entertaining nonetheless less i think that actually like more people should lie to be honest i don't know why more people don't whenever i'm on the internet and i'm like talking about stuff anonymously i always tell the truth like like what what a great zack everybody else is all about honesty you know what lying i never lie a lot like i'll comment like in different posts and they'll say like like a just ridiculous stuff and i'm like no no like i've done this before like here like just like on a random fox news thread or or on reddit it i'm like no that's not true for this reason that reason and i'll explain my personal experience i never lie but i think a lot more people should lie you could look cool yeah i don't think more people should lie because as somebody who used to lie it's it's really exhausting what did you lie about dude i used to like i used to exaggerate so you know i i used to do everything that wouldn't call a lie but if you look back it's a lie right like i would exaggerate or somebody thinks something and i like let it run i'm like oh yeah i'm not gonna correct that wanna let you run with this mistake and assumption i didn't lie you got it wrong and i didn't fit i didn't correct you that's not my fault and so there's was all these little things like that or i don't know like it was just be where it was always like insecurity so it's was like you know i wanted to see cooler smarter richer more successful than i was i was willing to kinda like embellished or lead somebody on in the wrong way or or whatever and and maybe i still do it sometimes i don't really know i i don't wanna say like i've completely got rid of it i can't remember the last time i did that but i definitely remember a point in time about five years ago where i was like i'm just not gonna lie anymore i'm just gonna actually say what the situation is and then i'm gonna let chips where they may and it was so freeing and relief it was like just relief because somebody who said this once there they go like like in programming there's this thing where like anytime an application slows down one of the one of the reasons that people will say if you talk to programmers they're like oh you know it's like a threading problem or like there's a multi thread problem and what it means is basically there's like multiple processes running at once and they start to like use up all the memory of the computer and basically that's what happens in your head when you lie is your brain has to keep two threads open there's the thread that basically is like what i said and then there's the truth and you constantly have to keep track of what you said versus the truth in order to like maintain the lie and so that becomes like a we're having two processes running in your head just range of energy is what i found so i don't lie anymore but i think you're right that in the short term there's a big benefit to lying which is like you know like most people can't figure it out most people don't don't check you even the people who do check you just like their voice is like small compared to the most people that are that'll just take in a fake value right like fake news i think is popular for a reason like i've done stuff like i bought i bought my car so i bought my car i was it was over it was six figures and i bought it i saw a picture of it online and it was like three hours away and i called the guy and i go hey what's up you got this car i go great i'll send you the money right now we you drive it over in a few days and i just why it was all done on myself on the car i just wired the money and he brought it to me a days later and i've done that so many times motorcycles vehicles i bite shit all the time and i'll just say yeah i'll give the money now don't sell it and so many people are honest and i'm in in my head i'm like everything would be so much more profitable but way worse if like you can get away with line you can you could totally get away with it and most people would never do it and it does shock me alright we'll at that segment there alright let's go let's do another one you wanna do an idea i got some yeah okay so this idea this comes from ben so ben gave me this idea today and i i'm not i'm gonna i'm gonna burn you hard on this one so keep going okay good good figs for construction okay so for those who don't know what figs is figs is a a a brand that came out that basically was making like cooler looking scrubs medical scrubs so the stuff that doctors and nurses wear those little blue outfits that were like kinda traditionally like well it's all blue the same color of blue they're all kinda baggy and they're all kinda looks shitty and here you have these people that are like working really hard they wear this stuff all day it's kinda like their identity it's like they're uniform and and they made good money there doctors make good money and you know why are they wearing this stuff and so figs came out i think started with nurses and they just started making like better fitting so it didn't look as baggy and loose a little more flattering and they had some different colors and patterns that you could have for your scrubs and we we we talked about them right i think right when they got going yeah like pretty early on we talked about them and fast forward now cup just we're two years into the pod thinks as a public company now wow seven billion dollars seven billion dollar market cap if you go read any of the articles it's like why figs is the next lulu why it's the next nike why figs is is a starbucks for scrubs it's probably they just put companies sexy brand figs is several years old i think things like probably eight years old or something figs founded let's see and the woman who started it does not look like the woman who would start i mean looks like a like a like a fashion like a supermodel oh really okay that's like i wanna thought like i guess a nurse in my head like she's wearing like fancy ass shit in her picture so so figs is yeah i think i got it right eight years old i went public at four billion it's now seven billion and and i think what what is it so so there's this guy thomas tall who i didn't know but he's a founder of legendary pictures he had sold at to chinese company for three and to a half billion dollars and and he was the majority shareholder and so i think he owned fifty eight percent of figs at the time of ipo which is kind of a ludicrous amount of a public company to own and then you know is this the person you talking about heather heather has yeah you see like in a lot of her photos she looks like she's like i was like she just looks like a like a she's in what's the equivalent of g for women i don't i'm an idiot but you know what i mean v like she's wearing v i don't know she's wearing she's look does i would just imagine someone wearing a nurse's outfit he put fifty million in in two thousand eighteen and became a majority owner so two thousand eighteen is when he he puts fifty million and become by know fifty eight percent three years later goes public at a four point four billion dollar valuation so he's fifty million turned into two point two million of of of equity value so so good on him okay so anyways so basically the okay so the idea here to figs is seven billion dollar market cap i think it does just over a quarter billion dollars so over two hundred fifty million dollars of revenue a year i couldn't find the exact number quickly during my last minute research here but here's the idea figs for construction so how many other industries have a large workforce that kinda needs specialty clothing for doing what they do and today they have like a generic default and and maybe you could build sex here d brand like figs for construction so this is the idea this is the idea thanks for construction you know construction workers have a lot of different fleets that they wear listen i know that you don't know who dolly partners is and you're just so disconnected to like normal americans it's called car heart u dummy this is a thing i've been wearing this for years and it's awesome google car heart you don't know car heart you and you've never heard that word car heart never even heard never heard car heart dude car heart you don't know basically see obviously there's brands that do durable hole you know rugged wear about car heart is like i remember as a kid like when you go to the hardware that sounds like i'm real redneck but i'm not that redneck neck but when you go to the hardware store and you get a coat and you get a car heart car heart is like it's like the thing it's so like and it's even like cute now like they have like it so now if you're in college and you're in like a country area the hot girls who were like car heart overalls and that's like they're like cute now they have like car heart louis vuitton collab okay so winning car heart start car started in eighteen eighty nine is this the company you're talking about yes this couple eighteen bro i'm talking about building and modern day thing you're talking about this eighteen hundred modern at this point they've they've revolutionized it like go to car heart fall collection they've got like a whole like cute kid like it looks like a fucking like the kids are wearing car hard vans and and doing like to see good for modernizing they changed it it's like yeah car is like it's like it's like cool now i mean it all it it was like the workers man things the you're making here's the mistake you're making first of all you're yelling in the mic that's a mistake for the podcast second second of all the mistake of making is thinking of that because something exists but that's not how e commerce works bro commerce agree on clone crime it's just oh this works great i'll do it too thank you take my piece to the pie and and so this working tells me nothing more than that this is a even better idea for somebody to go start look because i agree white agree to say oh does does this exist like that's a dumb we always get those dms all the time what why doesn't this i'm like i don't know and it doesn't matter it probably it does yeah it probably does it it has just do it or don't do it but whether something does it doesn't like it doesn't matter but i just kinda check you for a minute actually i'm like you're like coming up with this cool which is just do fig for construction where dude think there is an opportunity for somebody to do this and by way i'm at their stuff and they definitely have a lot of the like like there's like this i don't even know what you call this thing this like you know there's like super yellow me on jacket that's like you know you you're not a fire but you wear this for some reason so so they definitely have a lot of the pieces but when i was going on the rabbit hole of looking at what what what are all the things that basically outdoor workers wear whether you're on and you know you're in in a shale fracking you know field or you're doing construction of homes or you know it doesn't really matter which which version of these but it's like there's a premium to be placed on super rugged durable shoes but also mud shoes but also heavy jackets there's a towel that goes on neck that's a cooling towel there's like this whole line of stuff and the reason i think this might be bigger and better than figs is if you look at car heart or duluth which are a couple of the companies that do this i think they're both like six hundred million plus in annual sales i duluth i looked up before this there are six hundred thirty eight million in annual sales it's only got a five hundred million dollar market cap so double the revenue of figs so and you know what's duluth one tenth of the market cap duluth trading company is another it's like call their d business was growing seventy percent year over year so it's a it's obviously like where where the action is versus all their retail retail shops and so i think you could come in i think you could build a new brand in this space and get acquired by duluth get acquired by car heart these multi billion dollar companies as just another another brand and you know there's an existing d playbook that's like some combination of facebook and instagram ads influencers blah blah like cute colors nice packaging all that good stuff and i think you would wanna not do so cute here for for the rugged wear but i think there's an opportunity to create a pretty iconic brand here i wouldn't be surprised for somebody to do to do yeti coolers for this car hard brand right like i think there's a yeti coolers type of brand to be built in this space do you remember lands end did you have a shop there as a kid like your parents gonna be like you don't remember lance in san francisco well yeah but yeah it is but it's also like it's a store like member east bay as a kid like east three by it it lands ends so the it's american made clothing basically you probably know what they're boots are so if you google lands in and then the word duck they'll probably with it's called the duck boot you definitely know what that looks like it's like the traditional like snow boot whereas as a kid and it's way popular now again lands in i was just is another thing it's just like duluth but yeah these companies are trading for crazy low one point five billion dollars in sales eight hundred million dollar market cap yeah i don't know why their multiple sucks of ed and that just kinda shows me that figs is fakes a story the thing i talked about at the beginning like we are you know starbucks for scrubs what has that even fucking wink that it means nothing that's just words you know we're nike we're lulu le or where the next one you know that's just word yeah that's true it is just words that's just words that's a that's a good disc anybody at any time by the way those are just words immediate shutdown yeah so i think they're you know i don't if they're over value to what but they're definitely like trading outside of their category but you need to do if you're gonna do this so construction is interesting if lands end is interesting because it was like midwestern people but you have to do like a brand and a niche where you feels like us against the world so nurses feel it's predominantly women so they already have that little like segment of like you know we're we're the underdog nurses they probably think that they're overworked underpaid you got that vibe going and it's like look we're over overworked we're under paid this thing is gonna make us look good and actually feel good that's we that's the least we deserve you know what i mean so so you it's it's been far better you gotta go this angle of this group who feel down brand that we talked about that's the like america grunt grunt style grunt work what is it called i don't know what we come out what do you what do you mean grail grunt no it's called grunt style so go to grunt style dot com i think we talked about them no what's that it's it's a us against the world you know proud for the we are proud of the police we are proud know you guys like kill proud of our country we we don't you know vaccine you know you could stick your vaccine here that's the vibe you get when you go to g style and you know it's very much a us against them flags flying everywhere using american ip basically to build the brand right like here's a whiskey glass with two cross rifles you know you know here here's a here's a here's a hat that looks like it's been used for for you know ten years that's the type of stuff out this company crushed i think they do over a hundred million in sales this company you know alone so so i definitely think that us versus them is a it's a turbo charge when it comes to marketing especially for especially for d alright can i can we can i tell you about an idea so so this one has this is weird how i got to this but basically i am interested like my dream there's this guy named george barber george barber in the early nineteen hundreds his father started a dairy farm and eventually george barber took it over now george is either dead or in his like nineties i can't remember if he's dead or not and he sold his dairy farm went based out of arkansas or alabama barbara i forget and he sold it for like five or six hundred million dollars and he crushed it and with a lot of that money he opened this thing called barber barb the barber museum and he created a f one race track in alabama and now if you are motors they do it for motorcycle race races they do it for one races for nascar all types of stuff you can they people from all over the world go to watch races there and now he has got the largest collection of motorcycles in the world and the way that he set it up and is how the way that a lot of these places set up so have ever been in like a small town or or somewhere outside of san francisco and you see like a car museum and it's seriously just like one person that owns it this it's just like a rich guy you like sets it up but they they just pretend i have yeah too american for you but anyway they set up a they set it up as non profits and so you can actually go and like see their assets and and so that interesting me anyway i just got really interested because i wanna own a fuck load of cars i wanna own like historical memorabilia and the way that you do it at a tax advantageous way is you create a museum and so i went down this little rabbit hole have you heard of this company of like basically i've i went down this rabbit hole places that you can go to just a seat interesting shit and like that's all you're doing just a sightseeing and you and you pay a little money and that just got me interested have you heard of meow wolf meow wolf sounds familiar let me let me look at up what is it okay i put their deck in here so i came across their deck it's it's an old deck it's from two thousand seventeen and what mia wolf is it started two thousand eight in santa fe and it started as a place to explore immersive art what the hell does that mean like that like that does a very who the hell knows that could be anything and so basically what it is is they would rent out these massive old warehouses in santa fe and i believe also in las vegas and they would hire these artists who typically don't make any money and they would say hey come and make stuff here at our place and we're gonna create like not quite a museum but almost like a haunted house meets a museum meets cirque sole and right and you pay like fifty dollars and you just walk through and it's like an immersive feeling it's it's very challenging to explain but do you see the pictures yeah i'm looking at it you i think you described it pretty well it's like like the haunted house meets kind of like a rave you know like i've got a rave meets like a museum and it this this thing got me interested because i was like i i wanna i own like a warehouse and finance it with this stuff and just collect cool shit but i guess how much revenue these guys well guess how big this business is let's just say fifty million a year so they've raised like i believe two hundred and fifty million dollars and they projected that just one of their locations will make close to forty million a year in sales and they're having like over a dozen locations throughout the country is that freaking nuts would you ever have thought that how how old is this is this like was it like a like this eight the ten eight loa wait okay and so they opened one in las vegas in two thousand twenty one and they already sold five hundred thousand tickets for it then they're opening one in denver they're going to austin they're going to los angeles it's crazy is this it's just a crazy crazy crazy business and they said that their projections for the the their santa fe location sorry they're awesome pro projections were sixty million in revenue thirty million in profit off one location right what would you like how do they get people to come to these what what is it like what's the what's the marketing to get to sell five hundred thousand of these tickets like obviously there's some word and stuff like that because it's a pretty remarkable looking thing but do do these guys advertise crazy do like you have their deck do you see much about like their growth like i put the deck in the i put the grow i put the deck in the zen sensor thing by the way you have it but oh it's locked i think i don't have access and so yeah sorry about that and so what they do is they they team up so they teamed up with santa fe the government of santa fe so the government santa fe was like funneling people to them if you google wolf santa fe they even put together a they even put together a like study an economic study to show how much meow wolf is helping the the local area and so they team up with with local governments and that helps them like so like they funnel people in there but i actually don't know i don't think they do a significant amount of paid advertising i'm not seeing it anywhere right yeah i think that i'm i'm really into this idea and by way i see they have a bunch of facebook ads on so i don't know how much they're spending but they definitely are running a bunch of facebook ads and they look pretty cool because the exhibits are cool so i'm pretty into this idea and i feel like there's a whole bunch of different niches you can go with this that are like hyper have like hyper engagement and so i think there's you know if you just go citi by citi and you say alright what what could i do that's a pop up here that would be able to consistently draw people so i think i told you about this once but there was this what's called two bit circus but you feel over were two bit circus no what's that so so look it up it's there's like the number two you know like t two bit circus i think this is the name of it so there's the guy who okay so the guy who invented chuck cheese his name nolan whatever his name is his son or or grandson i don't know which one bush a bush bush or whatever their names are his son or grandson created this thing called two bit circus right so so grandpa maybe or dad creates check cheese this person created tube circus on what tube circus was was basically like a traveling pop up museum like this but it was all for like interactive like kinda like technology so i imagine like like this is like kind of like a haunted house vibe this is like you know you're in the year twenty fifty watch this like move your hand this laser will move and follow you oh okay kids come into this room look at this like with one small mirror you can reflect light and create this like crazy thing or put on this vr thing and play dance dance revolution you'll feel like you're in space dancing or whatever right like just a whole bunch of high tech kind of like attractions that existed and they would take this from city to city and the video made it look like dude i wanna take my kids here this looks like so much fun and unlike those other ones that have like a fixed location this would pop up a tent and they would run this thing and in one weekend they would have like sixty thousand people in the bay area come through you know like in a four day period or whatever and then they would like pack up the tent and they would go hit the road and i thought this is like a genius idea and the guy who i knew who was working with them he was kinda like an exec there he was like dude this is a it's an amazing product he's like but know the founders have kinda like shiny objects syndrome they they wanna do this and then like you know like whoever like you know facebook will say hey we wanna do a a private exhibit they'll be like we're gonna create the most epic thing ever or obama wants to have us for a party so like hey everybody like forget the like system process that we could just grow repeatedly like let's blow everyone's mind with the thing at burning man and like just let's let's create something nobody's ever seen and they would go do that he's like to dude this like so annoying like we just can't stay focused but whatever ever since i saw this idea like i know i when this was seven eight years ago i i first heard this idea this two bit circus thing i just thought it was such a cool smart idea and i was i was shocked i don't see more of this where this traveling circus where it's a pop up tent that maybe leverages science or technology because i think parents care to take their kids there and i think science technology naturally make for great exhibits and demos and like learning learning plus like visual stimulation like if you just think back to like science fair or a science class with a volcano exploding or whatever like basically that on steroids and i feel like that's a pretty big thing but you know these are hard businesses to do i would never go try to do one of these because that yeah they're hard but they seem i don't like events either but this is a little bit different than an event but it does seem cool speaking of events let me tell you about something so i got dinner the other day with jason my friend who runs this thing called black works and he had just hosted an event you and he and i asked him for i go can you tell me numbers so i could talk about in the pocket i it's interesting so scroll down to the bottom and you'll see we're we're scroll down past where it says a digital asset summit you see it yep i see it okay so this is jason he's got this company called black works black works dot c it's like the hustle but for crypto yep so two day conference that he just hosted recently it did two million in revenue he he told me it did about fifty percent in profit eight hundred attendees ticket cost one to two thousand dollars and and then they're doing another event he has another event coming out in may of so in about what's that six months yes eight months and their goal is eight million in revenue with five thousand attendees and then most recently he did a in digital this is not even a physical conference right the eight million dollar one is and the digital asset one yeah it's it's it's like you told there you see people yeah yeah it's live okay okay and then he most recently did one called i think it's called brent woods and that's for where basically he had two hundred people come and or maybe like a hundred people come and they were basically large asset managers and all they did was talked about crypto and he it did close to a million in revenue and they only had four sponsors and it seemed like a pretty sick event and i was just talking to them and we were at dinner and i was just i just like just tell me everything that everyone said like what are the takeaways and i thought a few things one i think jason's only twenty six so kudos to this fucking guy for building this business and second what a great hack i mean just to like get the it gets get the intel from the best minds in the world and like he's smart but he's just the he's not smart enough to we'll predict the future like you know you could if you're sit around with two hundred people who are asset managers for you know the oregon state pension fund things like that right pretty amazing that he pulled us off yeah this jeff shout to him this is like what this is what i have would call crushing it right you have this new wave of technology and you say alright i'm gonna go be the hustle or be whoever i'm gonna be the hustle for for crypto and then on the event side it's basically a win win right you do one of these events you make money you get to rub shoulders with all the most interesting people that's gonna open up a whole bunch of other doors that you only even need to think about ahead of time and then all of them are gonna like think highly of block work subscribe to it pay for your premium stuff like tell their you know tell their employees about it that sort of thing as they go and in doing so you're promoting the you're evan analyzing crypto amongst these like really wealthy people who will start betting on it and it'll it'll grow crypto which will just make your business more popular plus your individual holdings more popular so it's like when win on top of win for a twenty six year old i think that's very very impressive and i think by the way this is a thing anybody can replicate not just in crypto okay this is like let's say i'll call this a home run and it's crypto but i think there's a lot of people listening to this would be happy with you know half or or a third or a fourth of the type of success of this and i think you could achieve that with in any profession so like take any niche whether it's like gaming or like in venture capital right like we have rolling funds like why isn't somebody just doing this with all the vcs constantly like i chu mock tweeted this out the other day he goes hey yeah i thought solo solo gps that are out if i organize like a event or retreat for all of us to get to know each other hey we're all solo v gps right but if you just said new vcs right you could be at the bottom you could be some associate somewhere or not even have a job in venture capital and you could arrange the kinda like next gen in the next wave vc thing we you invite all the new people to vc to this badass retreat you know in wine country or wherever where it's like we're all off the grid we're gonna do some cool stuff there's gonna be some speakers you're gl whatever it is you would be able to make a couple million dollars network with every single person you want to and you'd kinda have that a little mini industry in the palm of your hands i've seen to do this with additional marketing and every every niche there's this guy or our friend nick went to went to this thing the other day and it's got a great name it's called capital camp and and i believe it's in columbia missouri where i'm from and i forget the guy oh brett brett started it i think brett be sure yeah yeah i don't know if he runs it or what's the deal is anymore i think they started yeah they started it and it was like it's hard to explain what the niche niches but i totally know what it is or who would go but it's basically at this point we talked up last week about this circle of people on twitter who tweet about finance and tech and real estate it's kind of this group of people who talk about real estate and sweaty and blue collar businesses on twitter and they all go to capital camp and it's like ten thousand dollars i think private equity is like the the bucket but then like mix not really private equity like self storage but like you know he'll go to capital camp so it's you're right it's basically private equity is the big umbrella and then like any kind of sweaty business or like cash flowing things or or restate real estate business kinda non you know non fancy fancy fancy tech basically and it costs ten grand ago and nick went and he said it was totally worth it and and the people who i know who go they states it's worth it and they're gonna go back every year and it probably made a good i bet you made it probably made a little bit of profit but in a fair amount of revenue yeah i gonna spin up like a mini one of these i've won that i'm gonna do for club lt tv which is my like e commerce like all store owners who do between one and a hundred million in revenue basically i'm gonna do a a retreat for them which is just my own use to do something fun i'm not really gonna try to like make a profit off of it but as long as they cover all the costs of of hosting radio that'd be great and so i'm gonna do this in the e commerce niche but i just feel like you could do this across like it just on the two two of the camps that we in right start up investing and and i'm in e commerce i think you could do this in either one of those and have you know have fun profits big build your network all that stuff it just takes it just takes hustle which unfortunately i don't have that much hustle anymore all my house goes to my kids now it's no no hustle you will soon i think and let me tell you something really quick i so you're you're you've been asia investing longer than i have i would not claim that i'm like nearly as good as you or some of our friends but i two things i did i did these two things in two thousand and nineteen one of them just fifty x nice and one of them just twelve x amazing i'll paper or blow exited it already page actually i know one of them the the the fifty x i know it's on paper don't paper yeah they're both on paper so they're not real but i i i i feel good i because because this whole angel investing thing you just you spend you spend spend you spend and i'm like is this ever going to work i'm just spending all of this money it's just leaving my bank account i don't even know if it's there and when you count it as part of your network worth like i i pretty much don't i'm like the sucks what's gonna happen and we'll see like if it starts actually hatch those eggs are hatch okay well let me tell you that i i have something related to this so i texted a friend who i won't say their name but they're an they're an investor they've been doing this much longer than me angel investing seed investing that sort of thing vc personally all they've done at all do i know them i don't think so and and so they they've done very very well bunch of bunch of winners that are like public companies that we know about which is like you know the that's the that's like it was hi as how is it goes basically and so multiple winners like that so i texted him i said i said hey i gotta ask you a question i said feel free to just brush this off if you don't wanna tell me but i'm not asking to be nosy i'm asking because i'm trying to weigh out my options here and i said you know in terms of investing you've basically done as good as anyone as good as i could hope to do right like i would say you have done extremely well it's kinda like best scenario type of outcome and what does that mean personally in terms of what you end up making i said here's what my guess here's what my guess is tell me if i'm if i'm on point or if i'm off and i basically said i thought can you can can you give all the numbers because the person's anonymous yeah but i say the number so i said i think that you probably will make fifteen to thirty million dollars over it's kinda ten to fifteen year period of investing so it takes probably probably you you don't see any of it till ten plus years but between ten and twenty years you're gonna make i don't know twenty to thirty million dollars and that's a that pay day at the end of the day and i think along the way you're making half million bucks c kinda like off the management fees or salary i said is that about wait so this person has a fund they have done many things so they've invested personally as an angel they've been a vc and a big fund they now i think kind of like our solo gp maybe have their own fund maybe it's personal i can't out way now i don't know all the details but they've done both i said either way along the way yeah they're not it's not i'm not saying from their personal money they've had other people's money right opm they've always been using opm are they've definitely using opm for a lot of it right maybe some of it was angel money but now it's a lot of opm so i said alright am i right so first like let me let me ask you to guess do you think they said that's right that's low or that's high okay so ten years they've been doing it let's call it fifteen years they've been doing it for fifty fifteen years and they've been using other people's money for most of it yeah how much money did they invest can't tell you over under a hundred let's say they they're they're they're a seed investor they're early they're early stages understand i would have check that might be like as low as a hundred k and maybe high as five hundred k or and it was their full thing a full time job for ten years yeah this is what they do my guess is way above fifteen that i'm low i i my guess was low i would guess like forty or fifty yeah so you're you're right that my guess was low so what they said was is they go yes it should be much more than that but it's hard to say because a lot of it's still ill liquid they go they go it should look more like a hundred fifty to two hundred no when that done yeah and and and this person's motto they're not a booster but they are one of the best of the best meaning their portfolio you could stack up against pretty much anybody like obviously if you hit one like you know i was you know the lead investor in google okay yeah you you're gonna have like the outsiders but i'm saying this person has multiple like you know almost i don't know more than five somewhere somewhere around ten like known big winners and so i'm like okay cool but you know don't you don't know what round how much they invested like in each of those right so so so look at the message is that the person no that's not the person so so so basically i was like whoa that okay that's a lot more but and have they made money along the way other than their management fee or their salary we'll just like you know the exits as they as they come through as do trickle in yeah so like you first five years not much next five years some next five years a whole bunch but you're recycling and you're reinvest so you know you always have kind of a new batch of companies that you're waiting you know you want these things to age ten years for you to go get a big win out of them you always have a new vintage right what i did twenty twenty i want to i wanna go un encore that bottle in twenty thirty and see how it tastes oh my god sorry did you ring to is you ring to a duck yeah it's fucked up country shit dude that's one that with the hunting duck call he used to attract animals i don't know i just liked it just wanted to be a duck i just like the quack quack i just like that noise okay so so wait so this person but are they investing their money stuff so so what i told him i go i go wow so that's basically like you started you're like a founder of a billion dollar company if you're gonna net a hundred million to two hundred million dollars at the end of this that kinda like this journey this career i said you know it sounds like it happened to do with slower it's you way money a way easier way less way easier it's way like way easier not even close yeah exactly and when they were like i mean they were like they're so humble that they're were kinda like trying to deflect they were like you know tell me how you're thinking about it so i could help you here right because i they're like you know what do you asking me all this shit for and like you know i don't enough about me i've done well but like let me help you if you're trying to get some help out of this and all i really wanted to do was like what's the size of the price if you knock this out of the park and like what's the real what's the real nuts like what really comes through at the end of the day like for somebody who's because you know anything anytime you go into something there's like you know you could i can go read about real estate i'm not gonna a big real estate investor i can go read about real estate i could talk oh yeah you gonna make this much gross this much net you're gonna cap rate oh well it's like then you talk to somebody's been doing it for twenty five years like yeah but like you're you know all these hidden costs you're not accounting for all this extra heartache you're not accounting for all this extra stress and then you know one of the four buildings you know burns up in a fire you have to account for that loss so there's always the reality for what's your takeaway though like what did you do what did he what did you what i wasn't looking i i wasn't like trying to make a decision on anything i was thinking what's your head at though my head is basically like surprised frankly that that that it can be that big and again this person's not a bolster i'm pulling this information out i think they were just doing me a favor of being honest about what they think this nets in the end i was like wow the reality though is do i believe i can have the same hit rate as them no like they i think they have had like an have extreme skill and extreme luck and so it's like okay and they do this full time right so it's like i'm not planning for that but i like knowing what what winning looks like today what is the top top range of winning look like so i was pretty impressed by that so that was kinda of my my takeaway or something you know something i learned kind of from i don't i don't remember know what you were talking about before this you talking about your your your multiples and so yeah it's pretty pretty impressive but i would say you know that that's on a large amount of invested capital i should also say that you know it's it's much more capital than i'm investing because they've done it for longer and they write bigger checks yeah it's way more boring but it's definitely way easier and that's the show right yeah alright we're out of here i feel like i could rule where i know could be what i want to like never looking back