#182 - How an Astrology App Makes $10m+, Why a Boxing Announcer is Worth $400m & Creating a Personal Monopoly

I think you could build an easily 100,000+ person list doing this product. And then there is a clear like premium offering on the back end. But the core of it is quiz funnel up top, daily newsletter, and get there and get to 100,000. I would— I'm going to throw down the gauntlet for somebody who's bored and looking for a project that will actually stick, they'll actually get— have some legs because I know this will have legs. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

All right everyone, uh, we're gonna talk about some good stuff in this episode, but before you get to it, can you do me a favor? Uh, go to Spotify and click the follow button. The reason why is lately we've been getting way more listeners on Spotify, and I think it's because we're going up the charts, but I want to be sure of that., and in order to go up the charts, I need you to click follow. So it's gonna be like a big experiment. I'm gonna reveal the results next time, but go to Spotify, go to My First Million, and click that blue button that says follow. Click it for me, please. I'll reveal the results soon. I think that means we're gonna go up in the chart. All right, first segment, we're gonna talk about horoscopes specifically. There's a couple companies that we talk about, horoscopes.com, astrology.com, sanctuaryworld.co, that make literally tens of millions of dollars a year talking about the horoscope business. It's pretty wild because something like 50% of women in America are interested in that topic, which I had no idea. We also talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer. I know that sounds weird. You may not even know that name, Michael Buffer. He's the guy who says, "Let's get ready to rumble." We talk about those two folks and how they make something like $400 million. And we actually break down why they make that money and how you can replicate that. And then finally, we talk about two little side stories about side products that Sean and I have. We actually launched like dozens of products that we've never even told.

These are our embarrassing side projects that we haven't talked about before that we reveal while we're talking about the horoscope thing.

They range from starting a crystal business, which is just weird even saying that, and also to a fan page that I made for pit bulls. It's kind of odd. And then finally, I talk about a story about meeting Tim Ferriss, and it actually happened when I was kind of high on drugs one time. You'll hear about it. Get to it. It's in the episode. Like us on Spotify. See you at the end of the episode. All right, what's going on? We were just talking about losing weight. Sean, yeah, you look good. How long you been doing meat only?

Meat only is only 4 days in, but I had heard about this. Joe Rogan talked about the carnivore diet and then it sounded fucking ridiculous at the time. Then you started sending me nude selfies and you were like, I was like, damn, Sam's pretty stacked. You're like, yeah dude, I'm just only eating meat. I'm like, what? You're like, yeah, I'm only eating meat. I was like, oh, okay, the second person mentioned it. And then my trainer was like, he's like getting shredded for kind of his season or whatever. And he's like, I was like, so what adjustments do you make? He goes, I just go to kind of a pretty much a meat-only diet, protein-only, grass-fed ground beef, grass-fed beef, some fish. That's pretty much it. A little bit of turkey. And so I was like, well, I don't know if this is going to kill me later, but I'll do it for 2 months and let's see if there's any noticeable change. So we'll see.

Well, yeah, I was just saying you look great. You look— you lost how many? I mean, I don't know, like, pounds isn't the best way to measure it, but you probably have lost the equivalent of like 30 pounds of fat, maybe 20 pounds of fat.

I don't know, that'd be a lot. My weight is the same or higher than it was when I started working out. But my— I do the DEXA scan, which we talked about, which is that business where you go, you lay down, and it's like a— it just shows you kind of like where the fat, muscle, and bone is in your body, sort of like an MRI. I don't know, looks like an MRI machine, but it's not an MRI. And, uh, according to that thing, I've lost, you know, like, I forgot, like, I do it every 3 months. And so the last 3 months I went down 3 or 4% body fat. Now I'm going down another 4 or 5% body fat this time. So yeah, hopefully we'll lose like 10% of my body fat.

So the first idea I want to discuss is going to start with a fitness story. That's my segue. But Before we get into that, you are gonna do— so for the listeners, we're gonna do mini episodes. I think you're gonna try the first one, right? I don't remember what it's gonna be, but you wanted to do a rant on something. We don't even need to say what it was, but we're gonna try a mini episode. I wonder if it's gonna work. It's gonna be probably 5 to 10 minutes long, maybe. We'll see. Yeah. Today we're gonna talk about a horoscope idea, which sounds silly, but it's actually gonna be pretty awesome. Then we're gonna talk about Judge Judy and Michael Buffer, which is actually gonna be pretty awesome. And then finally, we're gonna talk about something that I've asked Shawn to prepare, and it's about how he manages this team of interns to get a lot done. I wanna get right into it. So I wanna tell you this story about this guy named Ross Clark. Never heard of him. You've never heard of Ross Clark, probably. That's okay. So he kind of looks like me, just a white-haired, blonde, corn-fed looking dude from, I believe, South Carolina. He was a triathlete and he used to do SoulCycle, and he would go to SoulCycle and he loved seeing these women walk out of SoulCycle with a glow. They had a bunch of, they were very confident when they left. And he thought to himself, how do I make people feel like that? I wanna make people feel confident. I wanna make these women feel great about themselves. I want them to have a better life. And so he thinks, what can I do? What can I do to make that happen? And then it hits him. And it's kind of a weird thing that hit him, but he goes, the best way that I can do this is I wanna create a store or a brand that sells crystals and zodiac necklaces and t-shirts and customized birth charts and geodes and smudge sticks, these things that make women feel great. Kind of weird, right? Yes. And so that's what we're going to talk about. The first idea, Eddie says he's going to launch this, this brand that creates all these— I consider them kind of weird, kind of woo-woo. And he goes, I'm going to create a brand that sells all this stuff. But first, I'm going to start with horoscopes. And that's the story of SanctuaryWorld.co. So I guess I think they just call it Sanctuary. The URL of sanctuaryworld.co. And the reason we're going to talk about it is they just raised a seed round of $5 million. Is that correct?

Yeah, something like that.

So by the way, what is this link to the soul cycle thing? That sounds like— who's this guy? Ross? Ross Parker? Is that his name?

That's the story.

Sounds like bullshit to me. Ross Parker. It sounds like he was like, oh, women believe this shit, people, men believe this shit, I'm gonna sell this shit to them. Not, I was standing outside of SoulCycle, I saw them glowing and happy, and somehow I connected the dots between feeling good after exercise to selling crystals and horoscopes. That doesn't make any sense to me.

It's a bullshit story, but—

You told it well.

What he's doing is he's—

You told it well, I'll give you that.

He's connecting SoulCycle. He also, in the article that I read, he mentions Headspace. He's just name-dropping, right?

This is going to be trying to associate.

Dude, at one point he called it the Uber for zodiac signs.

So yeah, basically he's saying if I say 3 or 4 legitimate company names alongside mine, I too will get the halo effect of being bucketed in with those guys. All right. I'm like meditation. I'm like religion. I'm like fitness. Yeah.

So that's what he did. I mean, Calm— calm.com calls themselves the Nike of spiritual fitness. So, hey, look, where like, I ain't gonna hate the game, or ain't gonna hate the— I'm not gonna hate the player. So let me explain to you why this is interesting. So Josh Wolfe, a guy that I like, you like, he tweeted, "This is bullshit. Whoever funds this idea is a crook." And I actually don't entirely agree with him. I understand where he is coming from though. And now I wanna give you some background about this app, the industry, and where the opportunities are. So the way this app works is you download—

By the way, can I read his tweet? He goes, This is Josh Wolfe on Twitter. He's a well-known VC. He says, seriously, shame on anyone for funding or encouraging this bullshit. No doubt there is demand, but this isn't peddling entertainment. It's encouraging slippery slope snake oil flapdoodle. We ought to desire informed, educated, rational, and not naive, gullible, superstitious society. And then he screenshotted all the investors who who participated in the round. I'm here for that shots fired, although I disagree with what he said.

Go on. Yes, and so the way this app works, I downloaded it, it's actually beautifully designed and it sucked me in hardcore. And you sign up, you see like a spinning wheel.

You are glowing, dude, I see the glow, so I should have known. It got me.

And you sign up, you say what, you know, you click your, I'm a Gemini, I don't know what the other 12 signs are, but you select your birthday and it says, Today's your daily reading for your horoscope. It tells you like a— it's like got these like text messaging vibes. So it feels like it's texting me this one or two sentence description of what I should expect. And then it says, by the way, we want to tell you more in a few hours. Can you please turn notifications on so we can tell you more in a few hours about what's going to happen to you? And they use this language that speaks exactly to me. And then they say, also, we have a little bit more that we can tell you if you sign up here. And then the way the app works is you can have this premium subscription where you get more info about you, or you can stay for free where you get daily updates. Or now this is where it gets interesting. You could pay a little bit more money and you could talk to a live— what do they call themselves? A, a, a mystic. Yeah, a reader. Um, you could talk to a reader and she'll tell you all about you. So, so basically we've talked about Miss Cleo and how she made like a billion dollars. You get to talk to a Miss Cleo on the phone where or via text, and they're gonna tell you all about what you can expect for the coming year, the coming day, yada, yada, yada. Now, that in itself is not entirely interesting. I mean, it is pretty interesting, but what's really interesting is how big this is. So as two 30-something-year-old men, we probably don't know too much about this, but it's way bigger than I ever thought. And the reason why I started diving deep into this is I started reading articles about the horoscope industry in a lot of like typical liberal, high-educated blogs that were written by women. And I would have thought, oh, these women are going to shit on it. They're going to say this is a scam. And you know what? All the articles were very positive. Even in TechCrunch, it was this woman named Sarah Perez wrote about it. And she goes, yeah, horoscopes aren't really harmful. It's just fun, meaningless entertainment. Whereas this guy, Josh, completely shit on it. And the reason why these women perhaps weren't— were okay with it is something like 50% of women check the horoscope on a monthly basis. 37% said they check daily.

I always get into these awkward situations. My sister-in-law is a big believer in the zodiac thing. So a situation will be happening between her kids or we'll be talking and she's like, "Oh, such a Taurus. You're such a Taurus." Or like, "Well, that's because they're Gemini and Gemini are this way." And I'm always like, I don't know how to respond to this because I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, but that's totally fake. But yeah, yeah, that's super fake. And yeah, okay, good. Go on." I don't know what to say in response to that. I can't validate it or agree because I don't agree. And I don't want to shit on it because who cares? I don't care if she believes it puts me in the same category.

I always say to them, I say, look, if I came on 1 second later at 12:01, you're telling me that I'm going to react differently about this or that just because of that 1 nanosecond? Or I always say, well, what if I'm born in Australia where the hemisphere is different and the seasons are different and the moon's different?.

But it's the same. By the way, in India they have this. India is like this times 10. So if you think Miss Cleo is big, and Miss Cleo was big. Miss Cleo, I think, generated over $1 billion in sales. If you watch TV in the '90s, you know who Miss Cleo is. If you don't, you don't. But in India, they have this still on TV all the time. There's these gurus, these mystics. And in every village, even like the poorest villages, in fact, especially in the poorest villages, because I think that's where superstition and religion is stronger. Than anywhere else. You take your— when your kid is born, you take your kid to a kind of like your local stargazer mystic guy. And he's basically— he writes this giant thing on an act, like on a scroll. He gives you a scroll and the scroll basically says, don't let him eat yellow lentils. It's just like all this, like, hyper— like, he shall not be married in the months of May, June, or August. And so people literally, I know, that are like, you know, educated doctors, lawyers, bankers. They'll be like engaged. I'm like, oh, when's the wedding? This summer? They're like, nah, we can't do summer. I was like, why? It's because my parents had this reading done when I was 2 months old, and it told them that I shall not be married in these months of the year. And so this is not just like an American thing, it's a worldwide thing under many, many different names. Um, this is, this is worldwide superstitions.

My opinion is I— By the way, about 15 million visitors a month to their website.

Which is a lot. That's a lot. And I bet you a lot of that is direct or search, which is really good.

Um, yeah. So which way do you want to go with this? So I, I think we can do a couple things. One is, uh, there's the controversy, you know, Vinod Khosla, Josh Wolfe, they came out saying, oh, how, how evil for funding this and for doing this. There's— so there's agree or disagree there.

Well, we could actually address that right away, which is they're— I, I totally disagree and they're bullshit.

Yeah, they're wrong.

Look, like It's like saying, like, why would you ever invest in a nicotine business or an alcohol business? Like, dude, there's a place for all types of bullshit, or a burger chain, or Netflix, or whatever, right?

Like, you can, you can believe that, uh, there are sort of negative consequences for society and humanity for Facebook as well, right? I think in this case, their, their sort of view is very tainted. And here's the, here's the easy example: if somebody was doing a religion app they would never say anything about this. But because the religion is the stars instead of the gods, now it's snake oil, now it's bullshit, now it's peddling fake science. What is religion? What is the difference of religion, right? It is a belief in something that is supernatural, that is invisible, that cannot be proved by science. It is blind faith in something. And that faith gives people comfort, entertainment, community., you know, like many, like positive benefits. And so if you're going to say this about horoscopes, you better also say it about religion. Otherwise, I view you sort of as a hypocrite there.

Yeah, we're on the same page there. And also, like, dude, I like many people, they have a shitty life. They go to work, they get home at 5 p.m. and they just want to fucking veg out. If, if a little horoscope gives them a little bit of hope, who cares? Yeah. You know, we— I need all the help I can get, and I'm sure a lot of people do too. So I don't care. So I will— I will say it's bullshit. Just like I think a lot of religion is. Sorry if you're religious, but I respect that if you like it. But I think it's bullshit too. But it's okay.

Me too. Okay, so then the second piece is that I'll just say on that is fucking annoying. The virtue signaling by VCs. Nobody like this. The grandstanding that people do is so annoying to me. And I recently— we'll talk about this more in a month. Weird teaser, I know, but I'm going to go in depth about a topic in a month about a fight I had on Twitter. A good old Twitter ruckus.. But one of the things that came out of it was the just absolute hypocritical nature of people and virtue signaling. This is almost more annoying to me than cancel culture is virtue signaling culture, where people take any chance they get to say how they're greater than others because they sort of just try to take the moral high ground at any cost. And I find it to be so annoying and such a weak move of people to do that. So if you're an investor, to go and say, I'm a good guy, I would never fund something like this, that is such an annoying move to me personally. What do you think of that?

So I completely agree with you. I mean, I think that we have to remember that there's some mom, like my mother in Missouri, who's having a hard day. She needs to get off somehow. That sounded weird, but you know what I mean? She needs to find her a little bit of happiness somewhere. I don't care if she wants a soap opera or reads about horoscopes. Who cares? Not everything needs to save the world. It just needs to be a little bit of fun and entertainment.

And not everyone needs to agree with you. Okay, you don't want to fund it, no problem, you don't have to fund it. But to like call out and demonize the people that do fund it— let them do what they want. Uh, like, I find it weird that the people who are, uh, trying to be so like righteous, they lose the one like kind of like one of the more fundamental things, which is open-mindedness. Uh, that maybe other people have different beliefs than you and will act in different ways in accordance of their beliefs. And that they should not be judged or demonized for it. So anyways, I think that's kind of annoying, but okay, let's talk.

So for all the people who like this, let's talk about the opportunities and why this works. You want to talk about that?

Yes, I have a couple.

Okay, I'll go first. The first is Myers-Briggs and other personality tests. You can do this exact same thing with that.

So the goal is to find— so the reason why I went to this app, why it was so interesting, I bet— so for most apps, the free-to-paid conversion ratio is probably 1%, maybe. You think that's about right?

You can get higher. You can get to like 3 or 4%.

Okay. With this app, I bet you it's as high as 10%. If you— if they told me 10, I wouldn't be surprised.

I'd be impressed and not surprised.

I would be impressed and not surprised. Exactly. And a 10% free-to-paid conversion rate is stupid. That is so good. The reason why it's good is you could spend a lot of money to advertise. Now the churn might be high, but that's a situation we could address after we're already big and popular. So the reason why they're, let's just assume that that is true. Let's say it's 6%. The reason why it's 6% is that it's so personal. And the reason this business works is that it is personal. So what you need to do is go out and find personal stuff. So that's the reason why Myers, any type of personality test, because I could say, Oh, so you just told me these 10 things about you. That means that you're probably disorganized, right? Let me tell you all about being disorganized and what that means. Personality tests are great. It's actually the same in a way, the same thing as a horoscope. And what you can do is you could do it. You could really just do a daily email if you wanted to start. It's not really simple.

All those people who are like horoscopes, like, yeah, that's for dumb Trump voters to believe in. And then they'll also be putting on their Twitter bio like, I'm an ENTJ. Right. They'll go put their, like, fucking personality quiz results into their bio. And I know there's slightly more science that, you know, that says that that's a real thing. But I don't know. This is all— Yeah, exactly. This is all hand-wavy shit as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah. And, and guess what? I'm in favor of it. All right. I take these tests.

I enjoy them.

I love the way I was talking to There was a company we talked about on here, I think it's called, I feel like it's called Intro. Was it called Intro? It was basically like you can book a call with like Justin Bieber's stylist or like, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was called Intro. I can't recall.

No, it was called something else, but oh, maybe you're right.

Yeah.

And that is a part of it.

Fitness, nutrition, makeup.

Fitness, nutrition, makeup. All these things that, you know, smart people will nod their head and say, that sounds good, that sounds healthy. Then it's like, what do people really want? Where's the, where's the highest demand? It was in the tell me about me through a reading, either a psychic reading, astrology reading, whatever it is. Okay. I want to go back to something you said very quickly. But I think is super legit. And this is— we need a sound effect for whenever me and you have such total conviction. It's like in— if you watch, like, I don't know, America's Got Talent or something like that, or the X Factor, the golden button, the golden buzzer, where they're just like, we don't need to vote. I'm going to push this button right now and you automatically advance. So I'm pushing the golden button right now for anybody who wants to take this idea of creating this funnel. So to do this, you need to know nothing about code, but you do need to be kind of like internet savvy and kind of clever. Here's what you do.

And you should probably go and read like Ryan Hoover's book Hooked.

Near IELTS. Yeah, Ryan Hoover's like the editor.

Whatever. Sorry, Near. Or go and read Influence by Robert Cialdini.

And I don't know how big of legs, but I do, I would say with a high degree of certainty, If you work on this full-time for 3 years, you have a $5 million a year in revenue.

Or even simpler, right? Like a lot of people who, when I surveyed my audience, one of the biggest things was, dude, I'd love to just have a side hustle that I could do a few hours a day that would bring in a few thousand dollars a month. This will do that. So if you want to do this, DM me, email me, email, email us, find a way to contact us because I want somebody legit to actually try this. Let me tell you about some experiments I've done in this area. I don't even know if you know about these things. So I don't know when it was, not too long ago, within the last couple of years, I was quite bored. I had sold my company and I basically said, you know, last episode you asked like, do you want to build something that lasts for like 30, 40 years, like a long-lasting company? I'm like, yeah, sometimes I dream about that. And then sometimes I dream about What's something I could do this weekend that would be fun and I could throw away next weekend if I wanted to? Like a low commitment fling of a business.

Just a fun scheme, right?

A hookup. And so I wanted a business hookup and one night stand. And I created 3 ideas that I thought would work. The first was an IQ test. I always wanted to know my IQ. I don't know my IQ. I'd like to think I'm smart. I think I'm above average smart. Guess what? Everybody thinks they're above average smart. And so I thought, why isn't there like an easier way to do an IQ test? If there was an ad on Facebook that was like a puzzle and it's like, solve this puzzle and this is like the start of an IQ test, I would go through that. I would take the IQ test for 20 minutes and then I would want to get my results. I'd give you my email and I might even pay for like the full results of this thing. So I thought that was kind of interesting, doing IQ tests and kind of like recreating Mensa as a sort of like online funnel. Again, no physical product needed, no shipping, no logistics, no supply chain, but a pure play sort of digital info product. Second one, have you read the book The Five Love Languages or Five Languages of Love?

Obviously.

Okay. Yeah, you're married. So at some point you were given this book and been like, hey, asshole, read this. And So that's one that, that's a pretty successful franchise. So if you go look at my Facebook page right now, my Facebook profile, you'll see, oh, why is Sean the admin of a page called The Love Doctor? Well, let me tell you why. Because I wanted to take the Five Love Languages test, put it online, send people through that flow where they answer a bunch of questions and then say, would you like to know what your love language is? Put your email in and then I'll send you your results. And then I say, well, wait, we need to see who you're compatible with. Do your love languages match and do they know yours? Send this to your partner and, um, boom. And then by the way, like, here, buy the ebook, buy the PDF, uh, that will tell you what to do given your love language, because there's only like 5, so I can just make 5 PDFs and sell them. So these are these little business experiment flings. And I have one last one that I did because, as you could tell, these types of businesses appeal to me. I like simple, lightweight stuff that people, that has a lot of demand that Silicon Valley likes to poo-poo and say that they're, they're better than that. Uh, I find this as an opportunity. So the last one is crystals. Uh, you said something about crystals.

Oh my gosh. Yes, I did. So this guy, what he wants to do is he wants to sell crystals. I don't like, I, I don't, and I don't say, oh my gosh. And like, I think it's wrong to say sell because, um, I think it's like anything that like, you know, Tony Robbins, is he bullshit? Yeah. But. I read it sometimes and it makes you feel a little bit— Helpful bullshit. Yeah. So, so who cares? But I think crystals are nonsense.

No, but it could have been. I mean, you only did it for a few weekends.

Right, which is most things. You have to stay at it for a bit to actually get it to work.

That's brilliant. I like hearing these stories. And as I was thinking, I made fun of crystals, but I actually had something similar. So there's this guy named Ryan Holiday. You know Ryan Holiday?

The author of Trust Me, I'm Lying? Is that it?

Yeah. He's got a few books.

Ego is the Enemy, I think, is one of his, right?

I have some of them up here and he's got many books and his famous thing is stoicism. So he talks a lot about stoicism, which basically just means how to be, how to deal with adversity, how to be a tough guy. Obviously horoscopes, mostly women. This is probably mostly men. And I read one of his books. I thought it was nice. It made me feel better about myself. And I went to dailystoic.com and I bought a $30 coin that says some Greek thing on there. That's, I don't even know what it says, but it translates into like, You live and then you're going to die. So like, live well or something like that. It's just, and I would carry it.

I always, I don't know where it is. You're like that one dude who gets the tattoo of an Asian character on his arm and doesn't know what it means.

Yeah.

I don't, but it doesn't matter what it means. It means something to you.

When I was, yeah, like it's got a like Stoic on there. They're supposed to be tough and I would carry it around with me and I paid $30 for it. I think it costs a dollar for him to make. I think he'd make it a few million dollars. So that shit works. I dig it. And by the way, my one-night stand recently, about a couple years ago as well, our friend Ramon was killing it on dog stuff. I'm like, oh my gosh, that looks so fun. And so he would create all these Facebook pages about dedicated to a specific dog breed. And I go, whoa, that just looks fun. I just wanna tinker. I'm gonna try it. I created this one page called Bully Boo. So the word bully and then space, the word boo, B-O-O. I just made that word up. Bully is like a, bully breeds. They're like pit bulls, whatever, yada yada. And I just went and got viral videos from Reddit and I posted it on Bully Boo. Dude, I got like 10,000 followers on Facebook, like in a matter of like 5 days. Yeah. So that shit works.

So anyway, by the way, I also have a pet one. I heard this guy was making a bunch of money when he— by printing your pet's photo on socks as a gift. And I was like, great weekend hookup. Tried it, spun up the whole thing. Had a guy, my friend Eric, who has this cool sock company called Tribe. He was like, I'll print the socks for you. Here's a link. Here's an easy way to set it up. Tried it. My results weren't great, but same sort of thing where I was like, I really enjoy these mini experiments. And here's the thing. When I share these, I think part of it is interesting of just hearing these little random things. Most people listening to this, I don't think do that. I think we're somewhat unique in that we have done many of these, right? Like, I didn't even know you did this Bullyboo thing. You didn't know I've done these 3 things. There's actually like 10 more that I've done that you've done that we haven't really talked about.

A lot of which are so embarrassing.

And of course that's not really what you're, the most important thing you're learning. What you're learning is the confidence to just go through the motion and get shit done in the same way that it's a lot easier to get skinny when you know how to bench press properly or you feel comfortable squatting and you're like, oh yeah, I just do this, this, this and I eat less and Boom, I'm confident. I can, I just follow the—

I guess, can I tell you a mini story on this real quick and then we'll move on? Yeah. So I invested in that company Maven, which is started by our mutual friend Gagan Bajani. He started Udemy and now he's got it, which is a $3 billion edtech company. And now he's got a new edtech company for teaching online. And I invested in the company and in order to get in, it was such a competitive deal. In order to get in, he's like, look, you guys have a good audience. Like you have a big Twitter following. You got to do a course. If you agree to do a course and be one of the teachers, be a user, then I'll let you in the round. And I was like, done, because I wanted to invest. And so then he's been hitting me up like, dude, where's your course? Come on, man, make your course. And so I was like, all right, shit. And I was overthinking it. And the lesson here is not— it really has nothing to do with my course. Or I guess I'll tell the end of the story and then I'll tell you how I almost fucked up. So the end of the story is Yesterday I took about 20 minutes. I wrote a 3-tweet tweetstorm about how writing has helped me. And I said, you know, in school I was a shitty writer. In school they want you to write long essays, like they have like a minimum word count you have to hit, literally. And, you know, you study Shakespeare and you think that's what good writing is, or you read The Odyssey. But then, you know, in the real world, it's the exact opposite. You know, you're paid to be concise, not have a lot of words, right? You're not trying to write like really epic complex things. You need to be simple and crisp and communicate well. And I said, I've gotten good at that. So I sucked at school writing, but I've gotten pretty good at real world writing through trial and error and studying some of the best people, yourself included, our friend Neville. I bought his course, I took that whole thing. I've got better at copywriting. But I said in general, there's this whole like, like how much value can be unlocked if you're good at writing emails, tweets, blog posts, company memos, investor letters. Like all those things can generate a lot of value. It's made me millions of dollars. I think it can do that for other people too if you get better at writing. So anyways, I tweeted that out and I said, I want to package, you know, I've probably studied this stuff for like 1,000 hours in my life. I want to distill it down into something you can learn in 10 days. If you're interested in that, it'll cost $400. Here's a link, put it into a shitty Google form where you put in your name and email and you tell me why you want to take this course. So I've tweeted it out. Guess how many responses I got?

300.

say 100.

Do you know what you're going to teach or are you going to figure that out?

So you do it. That's a great idea.

Then I tell you how I would do it with 4 examples. Like, here's Here's one way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. Here's another way of doing it. Here's the common principles I'm using in all these. All right, you learned that. Good. Now do it again. And you submit that one and I'll give feedback on all the submissions that people give and be like, hey, this is actually awesome. Or, hey, this is much better than your first attempt. Look, in 30 minutes you just went from like really shitty to pretty good. And here's how you can go from pretty good to like amazing if you made this one tweak additional. So I want people to get daily reps at writing one of those things. So it might be headline, right? Here's the story, write the headline. Okay, cool. That was a bad headline. Here's what goes into a great headline.

Do it again. You better launch fast. Someone, a listener is going to go and do this.

Of course they don't have 150,000 followers, but yeah, if you want to do this, help me do it. I think this should exist. I think this would be a cool way for people to get better by actually doing something and doing it in a controlled sandbox. So not just saying open-ended, I don't know, go write a bunch of shit. It's like, very specific. Write this. Here's examples of what, what, what good looks like. And then boom, boom. Now that you know the— now that you've learned the principle, go apply it. So anyways, that's what I'm going to try to teach.

Do you want to talk about Michael Buffer?

Yes.

What do you— so on our doc, Sean's got Michael Buffer and Judge Judy personal monopoly written down there. I'm very curious what that even means.

So this started with just curiosity. I was watching the Canelo Alvarez boxing match that happened last weekend. Fun match. Guy, he fucking broke this guy's face. He's like, literally broke his face in 3 places, and then the guy quit between rounds. So anyways, boxing is this funny thing where the match itself only lasts for some number of minutes, but they need to charge you all this money for a pay-per-view. So there's all this pomp and circumstance, there's all this parade around it, right? They walk out with music and their kind of entourage and their outfit. And then the next person walks out and then there's the introductions. And in the introductions, there's always this guy, you've probably seen him, is this white guy who basically has got a great voice. And in boxing he says, ladies and gentlemen, let's get ready to rumble.

Right?

That's like the signature thing. You kind of get wired over the years of following the sport that, yes, this is the main event. This is the big one.

And by the way, do you know who that guy's brother is?

Bruce Buffer, right? So Bruce is in the UFC and he says, I'll let you do it.

He goes, it's time. It's time. And by the way, they didn't know that they were brothers until they were like both in their 50s.

Exactly.

There's a crazy story.

So that was a crazy story. So I was just watching this and I was like, how much does Michael Buffer get paid, right? So I do the search, Michael Buffer salary. Do you know how much Michael? You might know. It sounds like you know some things.

No, I don't know.

But based off his—

10 million a year.

Well, first of all, I knew he was wealthy because he looks like he's got a lot of work done on his face. So like, he's got that like Wayne Newton look where like Sigmund Freud, where I'm like, oh, that's that Las Vegas rich look. And second, how on earth does the Boxing Federation or whatever it's called allow him to own it along with Bruce Buffer?

that's right now.

He makes $100,000 for big fights and $50,000-ish. And this is like, we got a caveat. This is like, you know, when you Google someone's net worth, like, I don't know if this is actually his number. This is like the Got it. This is the— it's in a bunch of articles, but maybe they're all referencing the same shitty source. I don't know.

Right. And he does probably 3 a month. Yeah. So you're looking at about $3.5, $4 million a year.

And it says that, you know, his net worth is sort of in the tens of millions, whereas Michael Buffer is in the hundreds of millions. And so this sort of came to this concept of creating a personal monopoly. So how do you build yourself to the point where you are unreplaceable? And this is like Ryan Seacrest with American Idol, right? When American Idol first started, there's two dudes.

And at this point, Ryan Seacrest— actually, go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say Ryan Seacrest is now, you know, sort of synonymous with American Idol. Uh, it's like Chris Harrison with The Bachelor, it's Jeff Probst with Survivor. And, you know, these are, these are hosts that on the surface it's like, oh, he just comes out here, says a few lines, anybody could do that. No, it doesn't take any time. No, the fans grow attached to this person and that becomes part of the brand of the event. And the consistency of seeing those same faces, the same recurring cast members saying those same catchphrases, is part of what makes it popular. So Judge Judy—

and at this point, Ryan Seacrest has Ryan Seacrest Productions, which is a production company, which frankly, I've always been wondering, like, what does a production company actually mean? Like, that's one of those Hollywood terms that I'm sure does confuse me. I don't get it., but it does something like north of $100 million in revenue.

Well, he produced the Kardashians show, Keeping Up with the Kardashians. He was the creator and producer of that show, I think. So it was his idea.

So he parlayed that into something. I don't exactly, like I said, I don't entirely understand how the production company—

So I want to— let's go down this rabbit hole. I don't think we're going to get to the intern thing, but maybe we will. Let's go down this rabbit hole because I know a few people that have these personal brands. Maybe some people think that I have that, but I actually don't have it because I'm not nearly careful enough. But you're— you seem quite careful enough. About your brand that you might, you have this, but who comes to mind? I know Tim Ferriss. I know Tim Ferriss. I know Jack Butcher. Jack Butcher's a great friend of mine. He created this huge following off of Visualize Value. Great name. All he does is he makes one picture that describes 1,000 words. So basically you have this complicated topic. He makes one graphic a day and it explains exactly how it works. You would think that's silly. He's crushed it. He probably makes $2 to $3 million a year selling a course on that topic. The second one, Tim Ferriss. And the reason why I can't do this is because these guys are so protective and particular about their brand. Tim Ferriss, I'm gonna tell a Tim Ferriss story that I don't wanna turn this into clips. I don't want this to get popular. I'm gonna tell a story. So Tim Ferriss years ago came to my office when it was, when he had just, I know Tim Ferriss because he would walk his dog. We were neighbors. We lived down the block from each other. We would walk our dogs together. Like, he would be at the park and I would be at the park, and I wouldn't bring up business. I wouldn't even act like I was a fan other than I'm saying, hey, I just listened to this podcast the other day. It was wonderful. Good job.

Anyway, can you tell the first time y'all met? Did you? Because I think when people meet somebody that they know and admire, they often blow it by totally fangirling over them. What was the story here? Do you even remember? What was the first interaction where it became normal for you to talk?

And you know what? I think it's great. I dig it.

And whenever we work with Tim, um, if I write something and there's a missed comma or something, he's on top of it, right? And at first I was like, you know, you're really being a pain in the butt. And then I realized, you know what, you're not being a pain in the butt.

You are being Tim Ferriss.

You are being exactly how you should be. You are protecting your brand. You want things in a very particular way. You're being demanding, and I respect that and I like that. And that's when I realized I don't think I could ever be a personal brand because you have to guard that shit like crazy. You have to be on top of it every single time. It has to be, it's got to be exactly a very particular way every single time. And that's how you build a really good brand. You have to be on when you're on.

And what you and I do, or at least I know I do it, is I test stuff with people. And so in a way, we have a podcast. I mean, I would say we're actually— what you see is what you get. I mean, we— you and I talk like this regardless if the camera's on or not. But I do know like which jokes hit and I'll test them on people, right? I kind of see like, oh, this story I just told, it caught that guy's attention. I should tell it a little bit differently, though. And with Tim and other people, I've seen them repeat phrases like, I don't pretend to be a doctor and I don't play one on TV. Like, that's just like this phrase that he uses. And I guess it kind of—

It's like, haha, yeah, you're so likable. Yeah.

And these phrases that I've seen these quote famous people. So a guy like Tim, who else do I know that's like fits this category? Jack is definitely one of them. Jack Butcher.

I've told the story before on the pod, but Chris Sacca did this and it blew me away. I met him in person. And for those who don't know, Chris Sockos is one of the best investors ever to a point where he's already retired. Now he only invests in climate change stuff because he's like, I already won the game of money and success.

It's called post-economic.

Yeah, he's post-economic, as Balaji taught us. So I met him in person and he told this story. And as he was telling the story, he had all these little offhand little moments where he's like, I didn't realize that at the time. Or like he'd be like, he'd say something, he'd correct himself and he'd be like, well, I guess that would mean this, but blah, blah, blah.

Oh, but he used that line on everything.

So I'm going to try and bring this back to the brand thing. But before I do, another way that you can see this is when you're pitching stuff. So when you're pitching your company to people, you have to— and I mean, I did this well when I— when both when I was selling the company, if I was ever trying to raise money, if I'm ever trying to convince— I, you know, I do when I am on other podcasts and also when I am hiring someone, I've got the same pitch and I look at the inflection of my— or I look at the person's eyebrows and I look at their body language to see where I'm going to lean in and I get it. I see where I get to fold backwards and you got to find these hooks and you constantly got to throw them out and you got to see what, what, what bait works. And then you just rinse and repeat. And he was like, ooh, that line, right? Or when I said I wanted to be like Ted Turner, fuck, they didn't know who Ted Turner was. Okay, what else do I got?

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Exactly, exactly. So to bring it back to Judge Judy, I don't know how I'm going to—

Yeah, fuck bringing it back to Judge Judy. Let's just move on. Anyways, cool story about Michael Buffer and Judge Judy. If you didn't know, they made a bunch of money and, you know, it pays to have a personal monopoly.

All right, that's the podcast.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Life.