3 Niche Business Ideas We Thought Would Fail… But Actually Crushed It
May 25th, 2023. Subject line: He said it was a bad business idea.
Dot, dot, dot.
Emailed out to his whole list, I think. Hey folks, Alex here. Telling you, telling people you run a mouth taping business isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
Is it any?
Is it?
Does, did anyone think that that was sunshine and rainbows?
You know what they say, running a mouth taping business ain't all sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone always asks me like, how awesome is this business?
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like All right, what's up everybody?
Back to the greatest podcast of all time, My First Million, where we talk about business ideas. We talk about businesses that are under the radar crushing it that you haven't heard of. And hopefully when you listen to this podcast, you get a little inspiration, you get a little wind in your sails so that you go out and kick a little more ass today. Sam, I have an ass-kicking story for you. You want to hear it?
I love ass-kicking stories.
In fact, this is two ways. It's stories of other people who are kicking ass and it's a story of me getting my ass kicked as an investor. So here's two investments that I passed on for two totally different reasons. And I'm going to tell you the reason why I missed it and the really cool story of what these companies did. All right, so this first one, 2 or 3 years ago, 2 years ago I think it was, and it's this guy David and he's pitching me a startup called Jenni and it was at peak AI time. So this is 2021, um, you know, GPT-3 was out, everybody was excited about AI and this guy had yet another AI startup idea and I didn't really know what to make of it. It was small. It was only doing $2,000 a month in revenue. So he is like, hey, we've got great traction. I'm at $2K MRR. And I'm like, that's cute, son. $2K MRR. Oh, you know, like the pool guys make a $2K MRR. Come on, we, we gotta do better than that. But really nice guy. We get on a call and, um, I don't remember what I said, but he told me afterwards, he was like, yeah, you were like one of the nicer people in terms of giving us feedback and telling us what to do. At the time, they had a pretty undifferentiated product. So what they were doing was, is a product called Jenni AI. And what Jenni was doing was it was a writing tool. So it was just like Jasper, which was like, you just say, hey, I need a blog post. It writes you a blog post. You need SEO content, you need blog content, you need email content. And it was just like writing blogs for you. And there was a bunch of startups doing this at the same time Jasper was doing, and they were taking off. So it was like a kind of a hot space. But I was like, dude, I think you're late to that party. And he's like, no, no, no, we're going to make it. And I liked the guy. He told me that at age 16, he had basically He just started being an entrepreneur at age 16, trying to build companies, like try to build a t-shirt company, fail. But that's a rite of passage, is start your first terrible idea. He had gotten that out of the way, and now he was on to this, which was cool. And he's like, yeah, it's actually a funny story. He goes, we got on GPT-2 when it was just developer access mode only, and we told it to, I don't know, tell us a joke or say something wise but funny. And GPT-2 goes, What's the darkest place in the world? And they go, what? And he goes, a butthole. And they're like, what?
Oh my God.
This thing is crazy. What is this tech? And so they're like, we got to go all in on this. So they start trying to make ideas for this.
And how old are they when they start working on this?
So they're about 24, I think, at the time doing this. And he's like, I got no money. He's living at his mom's house. He's like, literally, I have to ask my mom, like, hey, can I get the credit card? I want to get Chipotle. And he's like, she didn't make me feel bad, which I respect. I know she probably felt bad because Asian parents, all their kids, all their friends' kids are at Stanford and getting a promotion. He's like, he's still in the bedroom.
He's, I don't know. Oh, so 24 is the threshold where it's cute from concern.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Endearing to concern. He was making that transition and she's like, I don't know. He just keeps saying thanks for hopping on the call, but nothing seems to happen after that. He's pitching people all day in his bedroom and it's not working., but he makes a pivot and he makes a pivot that, that made a lot of sense. He did what I call a niche down, a zoom-in pivot. And so a zoom-in pivot is when you basically say, I have this thing today that's kind of meh for everybody, but maybe for one set of people it's awesome. And this is the same way that actually Twitch started. Twitch was, you had Justin.tv, which was broadcast anything. It was this grand vision, broadcast anything, broadcast your life, broadcast your backyard, broadcast this sports game, broadcast this video game. And only 2% of it was people broadcasting video games. And Twitch was a zoom in. Justin.tv was failing and they said, what if we just did the video games thing? And it, it sounds counterintuitive. It's like, well then we'll be too small. It's only just that little bit. It's only 2% of our current traffic. But it actually had the potential to be quite big once you specialize the product in that. So these guys did the same thing. They did it around college students who need help writing essays specifically, not like Oh dude, it's like 1 minute before the deadline. Just gimme a full essay. I just wanna like hand it in to my teacher and make them trick them that it's AI. It's like, no, no, no, it's actually like a writing assistant. So you basically, you're writing your essay and it, you don't just say, gimme an essay about the Industrial Revolution. You start writing your essay and then it kind of like, like I know autocorrect, it'll kind of like fill in the rest of the sentence. So if you're writing, it'll kind of like, if you stop, it'll like suggest what the next couple sentences could be.
It'll help you cite stuff as well.
So their cite sources. Exactly.
Like you need, their example online is like, is really well, is really great. So it's the effect of the ketogenic diet on human longevity and looks like he's talking about something and it's like, hey, by the way, do you wanna cite this paper that's already mentioned this or that?
And it automatically generates the well-formatted citation at the end. Or it'll run a plagiarism check for you. It'll be like, hey, let's just make sure that this is not copying what's already out there because you know, your teacher's not gonna like that. So has a couple of like specific tools and you could, it's like a, it's not like ChatGPT where you're, it's just a chat interface. Like you kind of click buttons and you select what, how you want this to help you. And then it helps you.
You know how like, uh, Microsoft used to have Clippy who would like catch you making errors. They just need like a little picture of Bill Ackman that says like, ah, that's plagiarism.
Exactly. Exactly. We're going to have Billy. He told me that like basically at the end of the essay, less than 30% has been written by AI. So 70% is written by the student and 30% ends up getting filled in by the AI. Okay. So. He gets this idea, but even still, how do you know if this is gonna be successful? So now he pitched me 2 years ago at $2,000 in MRR. It's currently doing $300,000 in MRR, so $3.6 million a year. Uh, in fact, last year he had an offer to sell the company, I think for $3 million. And he thought about it. He's like, oh my God, I could be a millionaire. I could have $3 million. I'm young, I'm in, you know, my early 20s. And he turned it down. And now this company's probably worth $10 to $15 million today. So in 6 to 12 months, he basically, you know, triple the value of the company. So that's great. So I talked to him and I was like, dude, David, what's the story here? What happened? He's like, well, you know, we talked to you, we did a bunch of things. So here's kind of the story of how they figured it out. So do you want to know the kind of like the startup survival part of it? Or do you want to know the strategy of how they made it big?
Well, the strategy, I mean, the startup survival mode of it, like he was just probably floundering, but he didn't have any expenses. So like he was kind of default dead, just Not even in startup mode, but default dead just as life.
I mean, well, he was, but then, uh, actually Jason Calacanis's, uh, incubator launched, gave him $100K, um, just like over email, like, here's $100K. And so then they moved to Malaysia to be like, cool, this will last forever here. And so he's like, just let's, how do we just make this $100K last as long as we need to survive? Because we don't know if there's ever going to be another investor. They did end up raising more money. They raised like another $800K later. But how did they make this big? So I want to share a couple things. So first, He's like, you know, we do the obvious things, we post about it, whatever. It's not really going anywhere. Then there's 3 interesting inflections for this business. Inflection 1 is he does the stuff that doesn't scale. He goes and he fights for that first 100 customers with hand-to-hand combat. And the way he did it is a strategy that I'll— the overall strategy of what worked here is I'll call influence the influencers. So he starts joining Facebook groups and he wrote a long Twitter post about this. You could check it out. So he joins Facebook groups. He's like, uh, join a group of like, let's say 10,000 people. And he's like, what you can't do is join the group and then immediately post about your shit. And then it just gets taken down or flagged as like promotion sales. Get outta here, dude. So he is like, I basically did a strategy where I was like, I'm going to warm up these groups so that like, if I do ever wanna post, how would it be like well received? He would just work backwards from what situation would make this be well received? He's like, well, it would be well received if the moderators and admins liked me and they were rooting for me. And actually they liked my product. They already used my product and that I was a familiar face in the community. They had seen me around adding value and that even when I posted, I was really posting actually just for feedback and not for like buy my shit. So he's like, let me work backwards from that. So he joins the group and he starts posting just like very helpful content. And in a Facebook group, the bar is pretty low, right? Nobody's like professionally trying in a Facebook group. People are just very casual. Most people don't do anything at all.
It would be for like college students. It'd be for like grad students, anything he had a hypothesis about. So he's like, oh, I think it should work really well for grad students. Got it. So he joins some school's grad student group, which has like 6,000 people or whatever. And then he would get in and what he would do is he'd first start making helpful posts. So he's just very visible and very helpful. People start to see him as like a regular. He's a regular at the bar. Okay. Then he hits up the admin and the admin's like, oh, you're one of the regulars. Yeah, sure. What's up? He's like, hey man, I wanted to get your feedback on something. Would, would you be down to do like a 15-minute call? I know you talked about this in a previous post. I think I actually have something that can help you with that. And then the guy would be like, all right, sure, I'll do it. So he gets on the call with him, he shows him the product, and then he's like, I'm, he's like, I'm not gonna promote this until I see the eyes light up. He's like, basically if they don't like it, then I'm dead on arrival. Not if the, if the core power users don't like it, the casual guys aren't gonna like it. So he is like, I'm gonna keep iterating on my product until those guys are like, yeah, this is actually awesome. And I see that they're using it after the call, like they keep using it. So he does that. He does, he asked them questions. He, he was like, I read the mom test, like you guys said, these guys are fans of the pod. So we learned how to do these customer calls. Then I'm doing the calls and I'm, uh, I'm finding out their pain points and then I try to build a product that solves them. And then I'm seeing, do they use it on their own organically afterwards? Once they did, he's like, I got 'em. He's like, so then I would let them use it for a couple weeks. And then he's like, I would, um, oh, and by the way, he's also like, I'm gonna circle back. So I would do the call and then he's like, a week later he's like, hey, I took all your feedback and I made the product better. Which, that's like a key part of, of like winning users over is making them feel like they're heard and what that you actually acted on what they said., finally he'd be like, hey, do you think I could post it in the group? Like, do you think other people would like this? And like, yeah, for sure. Actually, I'll post it for you. And they would go post it. So now you get the, the kind of like co-sign from the group admin or moderator that everybody knows, the leader saying, hey, this is awesome. I've been using it. The founder's in the group. If you have any questions, uh, check this out. So we start getting a bunch of traction. So we got the first 100 customers through this like very manual process, which was really not as much about getting customers as it was about Getting the product right by winning over the customers. This is very similar to you doing the first 100 calls with Hampton members, right? Like you showed me your calendar and I called it the zebra calendar. It just stripes, just 20-minute calls all day, just like your whole calendar was striped.
And it— well, I did this with Reddit too, by the way. I did that when, when The Hustle first got popular is because I posted on Reddit and I did the same thing. I wasn't as eloquent as he was, but I basically just said 10% self-promotion, 90% add value. So people start, you start getting a reputation. So did you see that there's a movie about the guy, what's his name? Some Roaring Kitty who like did the GameStop. Okay. So Roaring Kitty, the real person is like a really good looking guy who would charismatic, like he looks like he kind of looks like he could be an actor. Like when you see him talk. And I remember watching that movie and I'm like, dude, the real, the real Roaring Kitty is cooler looking than this actor. I'm looking at David Park do this video and I, and I'm seeing how he dresses and I'm seeing like some of the home videos that he's taken of himself. I'm like, this guy looks like an actor playing him. Do you know what I mean? This guy's got the it factor. Like I can't even hear him talk, but I can just tell it by his body language, how he dresses. Like this guy's got charisma.
Got like the Gen Z haircut. Yeah.
This guy's got— yeah, yeah, yeah. This guy looks, he looks like the actor playing him.
Yeah. He's like one of those people where if they wear like clothes that don't fit, it looks good. But if you wear clothes that don't fit, you look like a fucking idiot. He's one of those people who can actually wear clothes that don't fit. Now let me tell you. Okay. So then here comes phase 2, get lucky. And get lucky is, we've done that thing before about the 4 levels of luck. The first one is just dumb luck. Lightning strikes you. The second one, which is fortune favors the bold, he's taken a bunch of action and he puts himself in a position to get lucky. So there's 2 lucky breaks that happen. The first is this guy Zane who runs an AI newsletter. I think it's called Superhuman. I think it is Superpowered, Superhuman, something like that. Does this Twitter thread and it's called 10 websites so useful it feels almost illegal to use them or something like that.
That's so funny. That's so funny.
Classic clickbaity thing. And this thread goes so viral, dude. Guess how many likes this thread has?
I don't know. 10,000?
365,000. Dude, I could post a sex tape and not get 365,000. In fact, I probably wouldn't get any likes. But if you're Brad Ash, you can post a sex tape but not get 365,000 likes.
What was the joke that you had? You're like, I can't believe one of your friends owns a porn site and it isn't popular. That's like the worst job ever. That's like you, you release a sex tape and no one wants it.
I was still talking about that later. Your friend who you said has a porn site that's not that popular. And I was like, wow, the worst case scenario.
How many downloads did he get from, or, uh, how many users did he get from that?
So he's like, dude, every, every minute he's like, I'd get 10 customers. And he's like, it was just insane. And so he goes, he gets like this huge boost, like, you know, whatever. I don't know exactly how much, but like 10x or more. You know, is the revenue. He's at, he's at $2,000 before that. And now he, so that the first thing I described is how he got to the first $2,000 in MRR. Then he gets the viral Twitter thing and now he's in the like tens of thousands of monthly recurring revenue. So what happens after that? Jennifer Lopez does a commercial that's about AI with Virgin Air or something like that. And in the commercial she's like, oh, I'm not Jennifer, this is Gen AI. Uh, and so Gen AI gets a bunch of searches. He's the number one search for Jenny AI. And so he's like, I got a bunch of free traffic from that. That helped again. He's like, so I'm getting lucky. He's like, but I still don't know what to do to like really blow the top off this thing. And then they start posting TikToks. Now this is what I wanna ask you, Sam, you did a great job early on with The Hustle. I'm gonna put you on the spot. This is gonna be hard. You at The Hustle did some really cool ads. Uh, you, you basically were like, instead of just saying, here's my newsletter, please read it. It's, it's very good. I promise. You were like, my boss thinks I'm so smart. But what he doesn't know is I just read The Hustle every day, right? And it was like value-based, right? And it kind of had that, that hook, which is what is the, what is the end happy out, happy ending for this customer? It's not that your newsletter is great. It's that your boss thinks you're smart. Everyone thinks you're so smart.
My boss thinks I'm smart. I'm not. My secret weapon is The Hustle, which I get every morning. That was the ad, right?
And you stole that from somebody and then now 100 people have tried to copy that.
I was, I wouldn't say I stole, but you could say that. You could say that. I don't think I would say that. Uh, I would say I was heavily influenced by a random ad that I saw from The Skimm and I changed it and now everyone else has since stole it.
A jury of our peers would say that.
So, yeah.
So, so this guy now, now I want you to tell me, um, if you had to do an ad, right? You're making a little, a short video, a TikTok, and you need to promote Jenni AI. Just let's brainstorm real quick, right? Let's do this. Let's do it live. As Bill O'Reilly used to say, right? Tell me what, how, what you would think of. I know this is a very hard prompt, but if you come through, just imagine. How smart everyone's gonna think you are at this podcast. What would you do? How would you design this, this TikTok ad?
Well, okay. I actually think that I would steal that same premise, which is like, my teachers think I'm brilliant. I'm not. I'm really just using Gen AI. Um, video's harder. So all of my ads were text and a photo on Facebook. To do this on video, that's like what young people are great at that I'm really bad at. What would you do for the video? I would do that same premise, but I don't know how I would struggle to display that.
Yeah, watch this. Um, by the way, if you're watching this, if you're on audio and you're like, oh my God, I really wanna see this ad. This ad sounds awesome. This is the ad that drove all of their growth. I want growth and I wanna learn how to be better at advertising. Maybe you should go to YouTube. You should watch this ad with us. Maybe you should go to YouTube and subscribe and then watch this ad with us. What do you think, Sam? Is that good advice?
Well, so listen, earlier you were talking about Gen AI and how they were doing okay and how they niched down and found their target market. That's basically this podcast. We took all of business, we took all of comedy, we niched it down to the very few people that actually wanna joke about stupid stuff like us and dissect different businesses and ask how they all work. That's this YouTube channel. So whether you're listening on YouTube already or you're on like Spotify or whatever, go to the comment section cuz there's a lot of people making fun of us, but a lot of people actually adding value and like breaking down cool companies. Click subscribe, help a brother out. So that was our version of this ad. Let's see this one.
This TikTok has 4 million views. So the ad is basically, it takes a, instead of saying, um, my boss thinks I'm so smart, or my teacher thinks I'm so smart, it did a different format, which is what I call the relatable struggle. And it starts, let's just break this ad down. So it says it's a girl. It doesn't look like an ad. That's the first, first thing you need to know.
If you want ads to work nowadays, don't make 'em look like ads. That's the, the biggest thing. As soon as I see an ad, I'm insta-swiping away. So this needs to be relatable. So it looks like a college girl. At a Starbucks and it says, doing an essay last minute. My goal is to submit before 12 AM. It's done two things, relatable problem, and it's established some stakes. Will this person, or will they make it or won't they make it? Right. All right. That's the thing. It's a door closing, Mission Impossible. You gotta slide under the door.
I gotta tell you the second thing. I've, my experience is like $15 million in ad spend. I'm gonna say something right now that's gonna make me sound horrible, but I'm just gonna say the truth. Here's what I found with my numbers. Women that are— so women get higher clicks amongst women. Women gets higher clicks amongst men and men, or rather, so, so women that are like just women do better amongst men and women for getting clicks. So we've always, I've always had a higher click-through rate with women. Now here's the thing about the woman. They have to look like you can approach them. Like I can have a conversation with them. But they're aspirational. If they're too, like, good-looking or too, like, fancy-looking, it doesn't work. It has to be an approachable young woman. And I have found that that gets the most clicks amongst all demographics. And they did that. They did that wonderfully here. Did I say that? Did I say that appropriately?
The level of nervousness in your voice as you're trying to say this without getting canceled. You're like, you're a fine, approachable young woman. You're a strapping lad, young lad. Like, well, so we used to have, uh, it was like, it was like, uh, if you use like 1940s language, you're like, If you're a young lass who's splendid and fine, then you're, it's like, dude, you can't just avoid cancellation by using old language.
I'm gonna call it next door hot. So whether you're a next door guy or next door girl, next door hot always outperformed like beautiful or model or whatever.
Yeah. Runway hot. So that's frame 1, relatable struggle. Okay. Now 2 is, oh, and then by the way, it says current time 10:20. So it's, here's 10:20. You gotta submit this by, by midnight. Last minute research. And then it says, then it, this is the key one. 10:50 mental breakdown. And she's crying basically. Uh, like, and so now you're like, all right, you kind of don't know, is this gonna be funny? Is this gonna be like, it's obviously kind of like it's planned, but it still doesn't look like an ad for any product. We're 10 seconds in, no hint that this is an ad for product. Then it says coffee and TikTok break relatable. Uh, it says back to it. And then it basically is like, shit gets serious and it's her like clipping up her hair again. Another relatable humorist, like, oh, that's so me. I get it. I do that. Uh, I'm guilty of this, right? We're now 30 seconds in and there's been no mention of the product. And so this does two things. Number one, the TikTok algorithm loves that. It's, you're watching full-length videos rather than swiping away because it's like, oh, this is some ad. The second thing is you're kind of invested. You have sunk cost. You need to see the ending even once you realize. And one of the top comments is, it says, for a second when you showed Jenni AI, I was like, I got bamboozled by an ad, all caps, because you didn't realize it was an ad until you're basically, what, 35 seconds in. And then even then it doesn't, it's not some polished demo of the product. It's a phone recording a laptop of someone typing in Jenni AI into like their Google search. And then finally it tells you what the product does for you, which is it'll help you write 2 times faster. And the happy ending is she submits it on time. Okay.
So 4 million. Is this how, is this how like my, my doctor and lawyer and accountant are where they're just like at Starbucks at 11:50 trying to plagiarize a paper that's due at midnight?
Well, that's how they were 8 years ago.
Shit.
Dude, you know that you went to college with people who are now doctors. You're like that guy. I know that guy. I know the real. I know the real version of that guy, right? Like, that guy only drinks Jägermeister. Like, this guy should not be a doctor.
Uh, and so right now these guys— so that ad was great. So David Park, you're amazing. So they're at $350,000 a month.
$300,000 a month. So $3.6 million a year and, uh, doing really well. So congrats to the Jenny guys. Uh, did great. By the way, he gets cancer then, and he says this in the— in that starter story video. He goes, um, he's like, I felt like my dreams and nightmares were both coming true at the same time. What's that?
And he got, that's a footnote to his story. He got cancer.
He got cancer during that, like last year or whatever. And then he had a surgery and he got out and he is good now. And so it's a crazy story, dude. It's a, it's a really crazy story.
So congrats to him. By the way, I don't think, I wouldn't say this is gonna be a smart investment yet.
So, or no, I don't think it's gonna be a good investment, but I think it's gonna be great for them. You make $6 to $8 million bucks. That's fantastic. In below before 30, that's amazing. You're, you're set.
I, I like, so if I was David, this is a company I would love to own. This is not a company that I would love to invest in, but it's gonna make him very, very rich, I think, at a very young age. And it's gonna make him like mildly famous amongst our little startup community.
Dude, this is a business I would love to sell. If I could sell this thing for anything above $18 million, you won't see me the next— bye! See you later! I'm gone! They'll be like, wait, the paperwork's not even signed. I don't care. Bye! It's over. I'm outta here. AI moves too fast, dude. I'm not trying to be in the middle of the hurricane of AI and hope that I'm not made obsolete by, you know, one-click ChatGPT or some big company adding this. I think this is actually fairly protected. Like, I don't think it's so niche. I don't think too many people are going to go for it, but I just wouldn't want to mess with this. I also think that college student essay writing isn't like the biggest TAM either. So, you know, I would want to sell on the way up and get out and go do something else.
Yeah. And also Sam Altman raised the equivalent of America's GDP, like $5 trillion for whatever he's— like, whenever I see these numbers, I'm like, that just means nothing to me. I hope I'm dead by the time this becomes a reality.
Is there any Sam Altman story you wouldn't believe?
No, I believe— I would believe it all.
If I told you the OpenAI headquarters is underwater, would you be like, that's bullshit? Or would you just be like, where?
I would believe anything about it. Yeah. I'd be like, so like, Should we scoop up and like go visit them or like, what do we do? Yeah, I believe it all. Um, I've got, all right, I've got a big one. I've got a short one. I'm going to give you the short one first and then, and then I want to hear this thing about Flo. But do you remember? I want to give an update and I'm going to say with preference with this update, last time I gave an update on this guy, he took that update and he clipped our YouTube video and he turned it into an ad and I got super fucking pissed. So I just want to tell you, don't turn this into an ad. You do not have permission. That's dumb. It looked like I endorsed this. Product. I don't. A few years ago, I think it was 3 years ago, this guy started DMing me telling me he has this idea for hostage tape. Do you remember I told you about this? It's basically tape that you put over your mouth because mouth, mouth breathing at night makes you a bad sleeper, I guess is the premise.
It's just gross.
I don't know what it is, but there's some health benefits and he just like got in right when the Hubermans and the Brian Johnsons of the world and all this stuff. So he, he timed it perfectly. He told me he was launching this and I was like, oh, this is, this is really dumb. This is the stupidest thing I've seen in a long time. And he kept DMing me, kept sending me updates. I think in year 1 he did $2 million in revenue. Now he just told me he ended 2023 with $14 million in revenue. And then he is saying that this year in '24, he's like, I think I can get $40 million in revenue. He's like, we're buying all these ads on Joe Rogan. We're gonna be sponsoring the UFC. He's saying all this crazy stuff. And I'm gonna file this under the, I cannot believe this worked. I still can't believe it's worked and he's totally proven me wrong so far. Has this guy been sending you updates?
Uh, not update. I've talked to him a couple times about one specific deal he was going through. I just tried to help him out. By the way, May 25th, 2023, subject line, he said it was a bad business idea, dot, dot, dot. Email out to his whole list, I think. Hey folks, Alex here. Telling you, telling people you run a mouth taping business isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
Is it any? Is it? Did anyone think that that was sunshine and rainbows?
You know what they say, running a mouth taping business ain't all sunshine and rainbows.
Everyone always asks me like, how awesome is this business? I didn't know anyone ever said that.
I recently got called out on a very popular business podcast called My First Million. Maybe you listen to it. Anyways, I reached out to one of the hosts, Sam, to tell him my idea. He said it was a bad idea, all bold. That was over a year ago. Now, 1,400 reviews, hundreds of success stories later, I couldn't help but message him again. Well, he didn't go. And so he says, um, I don't know what, I don't know what the, what the thing is. Oh, he goes, um, I thought it'd be really funny if the hostage tape army, if you're, if you're a customer of this and you're in the hostage tape army, I mean, None of these words should be going together, by the way.
What's that? The hostage— none of these words should be lumped in the same sentence. The hostage tape army.
You know what I mean? If that's on your bio, like, you're out. But he said, show up in the comments and say, hey, Sam, hashtag shut your mouth. I like that part. That part's pretty good. Hostage tape, shut your mouth. I like—
I think that's good. Yeah, that one's good.
He goes, I don't want to start a war, but these guys appreciate a good prank. We do. We really do. We do. So I don't know if he did do that. I'm going to click this link.
And by the way, he's getting the last laugh. If his tape is untaped, he is getting the last laugh. This guy, this guy's winning. He's making a lot of money. People actually want his product. I'm wrong here. He's right. I still think it's stupid though.
I'm looking at the comments, by the way. I don't see one hashtag shut your mouth, Sam. So I don't think hostage tape army showed up. The cavalry did not appear for this one, but I think it's funny that he's doing this. And I think it's great that he's, he's winning.
So, uh, God bless him. I got so angry when I saw my face on these ads though. I started getting these ads and I'm like, it said like, I love, and I was like, well, what the fuck? I was making fun of you and you just totally jiu-jitsu'd me and now I'm promoting you.
All right. You shared an L you took. I'll tell you about an L I take. It's 20, it's 2020 and I'm getting dinner with a friend and we're only like, I want to say 40 minutes into the dinner and he's like, I got to go. And I'm like, was it me? Was it something I said? Am I chewing too much? What's going on? Why you got to leave? He's like, no, no, no. He's like, I hate to leave, but I got to go meet with this founder from Belarus.
It was just you two at the dinner?
It was us two at the dinner. And he just bounces. And I'm like, Belarus? I don't even know where Belarus is. But I was like, all right, I don't know if this is some elaborate excuse or what, but he leaves. So I finish up dinner, go home. I see an email from my friend. He says, sorry, I had a jet so early. But this company is really interesting. He tells me about this company called Flo, and he's investing in this company called Flo, and he's like, if you want in, I could get you in. And I remember this because today, or yesterday, I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see Flo is one of the biggest success stories in consumer startups today. $192 million in ARR with 60 million active users, and it's been the fastest growing health app, for like, you know, 4 years. And I'm like, $192 million in ARR. I was like, why does this app sound familiar? I go back and look at my email and I see that I could have invested in this thing years ago had I just replied to this email from my friend.
What valuation?
I don't know what it was back then, 'cause I didn't even reply to ask. But, uh, whatever it was, I should have done it. 'Cause you know, the, obviously the thing has been growing so fast that it is, uh, you know, it's clearly, it's become a billion dollar company and it's, it's done really, really well. But this company's really interesting. Last pod you talked about, I forgot what, Amo or whatever it is, like some Eastern European, like app builder factory.
Yeah. They make a variety of apps. Like one's muscle for men and then another one was working out for women while the men, the women are on their period.
Well, I see your Eastern European women's period app and I raise you because that's what Flow is. Started by these guys out in like Belarus, Lithuania, something like that. 2 twin brothers, by the way. So the twin brothers, they're raised by a single mother who's a librarian, and they're like, yo, we got to make money. They're 15 years old. He's like, I was going to school, and then I would work a full-time job after school. So I go to school for 8 hours, then I go work for 8 hours. And that's what I did every day as a teenager. He's like, and I just had this deep, like, we have to figure something out. He's like, so I did 2 things. He's like, I taught myself how to code. He's like, and I was teaching myself using these textbooks. He's like, so then I started actually writing books to make some money. He's like, whatever I learned, I would then package up into a book and I would write it. He's like, I've written a bunch of books. And then I started, I became a book publisher. I started publishing. He's like, I've published 1,000 books now. So I'm like, okay, random. He's like, the other thing that happened is 2008 and the iPhone App Store comes out. And he's like, I think this is going to be big. I think this is going to be like, the internet was big. There was a bunch of winners. I think there's going to be some here. So he is like, forget the book publishing, let's start making apps.. And so they start a health app, kind of fails, start a second app, kind of fails. And people ask them, they're like, you know, what'd you learn? You know, was Flow your first app or how'd you do it? He's like, no, no, I started two things before that similar space, but just didn't fully hit. He goes, but I believe that success is the sum of your attempts. He's like, and those first two attempts that I did for a couple years, that is the success of Flow. I just love that quote. Success is the sum of your attempts. I think that's an amazing quote. And so he goes, we start Flo and they're like, so you're a dude building a women's like period tracking app, the number one period tracking app in the world. Like how does that happen? How does a dude in Belarus do that?
I love, I love this quote. It's not my job to build the product. It's my job to build the company of people that are able to build the product.
Exactly. They're like, how, how do you have the product intuition of building this? He, and that's exactly what he says. He goes, I was like, I, this is one thing I learned in those first two products was As a job, as a CEO, as a founder, my job is not to build the product, it's to build the, the company that will build these products. And that's what they did. And so they actually built two things. They create this holdco and the holdco owns like four apps that are all super successful. So they own Flow, which itself does about $200 million a year in revenue.
It's help. So it's basically, it started off with just simple like period tracking. So it's like a, a monthly kind of like tracker. Uh, but then off that they, they go into other things. So they created what they call a woman's health super app. And this was the pitch that I saw at the time when my friend went and got dinner with them. They were like, look, we built the number one period tracking app and that's great. Uh, and at the time they had like 30 million users using this. And they said that in the US, 10% of adult women were using their tracker. So like, we built the best tracker, but a tracker's not gonna be like the most monetizable thing. But they're like, well, Why do people track? Well, often they track because of health reasons. They track because they're trying to get pregnant. They track because, um, maybe they're entering menopause. Like there's all these other things that maybe they need health coaching, maybe they need these other things. There's a bunch of maybes from there and they turned out to be right. And so they were like, we're gonna make more money than any of these other health apps. So they're bigger than Calm or these other like meditation apps that, that are like in that kind of health and wellness space. Uh, this is a bigger app than all of those., and it's run by these guys in Eastern Europe who have basically dominated the world in this one category. They're the number one in this category. But they also own a couple of other companies. They own another app called Zing, and they know another app called Prisma, which is like a photo editor. And they own— do you remember when Prisma went viral a little while back? It was cool-looking filters.
Yeah.
The Holdco has raised $100 million Series B.
And that's called, uh, that's called Palta.
Palta.
Yeah. And are they in America?
No, they're in Lithuania.
Really?
And they have like hundreds of employees. And this is like in the pitch deck was like, yeah, we, we can hire like 10 super talented European coders for the cost of one, you know, mediocre engineer in San Francisco. They didn't say it like that, but I added the mediocre part. But that's, that's the implication is basically we have this like talent advantage where the, where the big fish in the small pond, but the small pond is Highly talented with really good programmers and, uh, were super, super cost efficient. And so they were able to, to be very, um, very efficient as they've, as they've grown.
You could have invested in this.
Yeah.
So this one, that one sucks.
So, so the, I would say the first one was not really a, a miss in that, like, even now I don't think that would've been a great investment, but great, great business to own, not a great business to invest in. This one would've been a great business to invest in, but it just didn't hit any of my patterns. It's like, like you have Eastern European company versus a Silicon Valley company. You have, it's in the, you know, period tracking. I don't know how big that space could be. Uh, you know, I don't really, I, I underestimated and I'm sure many people underestimated how big that app could be. And in fact, that's why they said they're like, I love that these guys didn't bullshit. Like they didn't do the thing that all Silicon Valley startups do where they make up their origin story where they're like, well, the reason I got into this was that my, my aunt was having trouble. Like, You know, like Jack Dorsey with Square. He's like, um, you know, I was, uh, I was, I was trying to buy this, uh, this vase that was being, you know, this glass, this guy was blowing glass and making this vase for me and I wanted to buy it, but he couldn't take a credit card. And I thought, wow, the small businesses of America are like, you know, underserved. I should really change this. In fact, actually, I think part of that story is true that the co-founder did do that as a, as a hobby. But I think most startups make up their origin story where they're like, I, you know, like Native deodorant. And he's like, my sister was pregnant and I just did not want her to be having aluminum in her armpits. And so I created a pregnancy safe thing.
Yeah, right, dude. You just, the shipping costs of deodorant was just a lot cheaper than mattresses and you just, exactly. Like that's why you did it.
Unit economics is not as good of a story. Or like I went to Etsy and I was hunting for the most, most highly sold product that didn't have competition that was under £1 to ship and had 80% gross margins. It's like, that's not as good of a PR story. So these guys, they didn't do that. They were like, why'd you do this? He's like, well, we just wanted to find the most underserved market. He's like, we just knew that no talented builders were building in this space. And we thought, well, half the world's population has this problem. Uh, they're completely underserved and we could build a, you know, a simple product that might have legs, uh, to, to grow from there. And that's, that's what they did.
This guy's amazing. We gotta get him on the pod. So it's the, one of the founders, I guess it's, you said two brothers. His name is Yuri. Gursky, I guess. Uh, he's from Belarus, but I think they kind of live in Poland, it looks, and, and Cyprus. They're all over the place, but he, he's really successful. So like, you kind of acted like he was like a young kid, just like blogging and packaging his blogs into books.
No, no, these guys are gangsters.
Yeah. Like these guys are ballers and he's had multiple companies that he sold. One he sold to Facebook, one to, uh, I actually don't know how to pronounce this. What's Mail. RU. It's the Russian guy. Um, yes, yes, yes. Uh, he sold one to Google. Like, these guys are hardcore. These guys are awesome.
Yeah, these guys are kicking ass. And so they, uh, and you know, he's, he's basically like, they were like, what do you think contributed to the success of this? He's like, well, the biggest thing is we picked the right market. And I love that he said this because I think this is where he even said this. He's like, most people, he's like, you need 3 things, the right target market, the right timing, and then the right people to execute on it. He's like, most people don't get the first two right, but that's your rising tide. If you can pick the right market and the right timing, he's like, we picked basically this underserved women's health market and we started in 2008, right? When the App Store came out, that's when we started making apps. So we were early and we went to the underserved market that had demand. From there, all we had to do was just hire good people and it would, it would work out. Um, and I think that most people, when you, talk to entrepreneurs or the way their brain works, if you had to make like a pie chart, it would be like, number one is like, you know, the, um, how cool is my idea? So it's like not market, but it's more product. They focus on the product, then they focus on the people. And then last is like, they kind of think about what market they're in and they try, what they try to do, which I think is a bad strategy. One mistake I made many times is like, build the best product in the, in a whatever market, in a meh market., but you'd rather go into an amazing market and build a good enough product. That's like where a lot more success comes.
And the best example of that, I believe it was, uh, Coinbase. They were like, our website early on sucked. Like it went down all of the time, but we were, we picked a market that people were begging for it and that they were willing to put up with a really crappy product. And another, speaking of these apps, Michael, uh, Acton Smith from Calm, he gave me this great like soundbite one time, we were just talking and he was like, I'd launched these other things and I kind of had to push the rock up the hill in order to make it work. But I knew that I picked the right, I knew that I picked the right market being calm and meditation. He was like, it was as if I had just was surfing and I just happened to catch this massive tidal wave. And my job was not to push the rock up the hill. It was just to hang onto the surfboard and hope I don't crash because it's pushing me. And it's doing all of the work. And that's the difference between something really working and something not working. Because he's like, I had all these amazing things and he's like, I'm a really good entrepreneur, but I just, and I kind of brute forced it into reality. But it was really, really, really hard. And I learned that when you pick the right market and you catch the right tidal wave, that makes life 1,000 times easier.
And, and the hard part is what people get wrong is, okay, I wanna pick the right market. So they just go to the biggest, flashiest market, right? So right now, AI, I gotta go into AI and they go into a super competitive market. That's, it is a hot market. There are going to be huge winners there. But the trick, the like, you know, Peter Thiel one time went to a meetup and they were like, what's the key to investing? He drew two circles like a Venn diagram and he's like, seems like a bad idea. And then the other he wrote is a good idea. He's like, the problem is most people just do things that sound like a good idea. The problem is everybody else is also doing things that sound like good ideas. You're just, it's tons of competition and you might be too late by the time it seems like a good idea. He's like, so the secret is, can you find something that today seems like a bad idea but is actually a good idea? Coinbase started back when Bitcoin was not considered like an obvious— crypto wasn't the wave back then. It wasn't the trendy thing to do. It was actually an underserved market, and it turned out to be a great market, but it wasn't considered already a great market where all the smartest people in the world went and were fighting this war over there. That's what AI is today. Everybody agrees it's an incredible market, so they're all going to go fight this battle over there. So you really have to, if you're going to have something, you have to niche down and find some section of that that's underserved or go somewhere that's today not seen as that. Not like, forget AI, find the thing 3 years from now that's AI.
This seems like the hostage tape guy giving his TED Talk. You know, he's got to be standing there like this talking about the Venn diagram of bad ideas and good ideas, and that his idea is just going to be in the circle of the bad ideas. Yeah.
Be the middle.
I'm sorry, hostage tape guy. You're right. I'm wrong. You're the one winning. Um, this is amazing. These guys are amazing. Uh, I, I would love to get this guy on the podcast. Is he speaking? He's, I imagine he's an English speaker, right? Or partially?
Dude, he probably speaks better English than us. Is there anything this guy can't do? Like, would you, if one guy had to save my life and they were like, how about this guy? I'd be like, yeah, sure. I'm sure he could do it.
Yeah. And if you Google this guy, so his name's Yuri Gursky. Sorry, I'm probably pronouncing it a little bit incorrect. He's got the perfect balance. He's got that next door, that next door hot look. You know what I'm saying? It looks like he could, you could chill with him a little bit, but he also looks like he could really mess you up physically. Like he's, he does a good job of having that next door look.
Sounds like you want him to mess you up physically a little bit.
Dude, I get so many messages or comments of people making fun of me and they, They either think I'm gay or they're just like, dude, why are you commenting about people's calves all the time? And I'm totally just like giving into this. Uh, by the way, do you have something to promote today or what? Now it's time.
Right now we're talking about some of the best execution we've seen, some of the best, most talented people we've seen. And are they sitting in America? No, they're overseas.
Actually, everyone has been overseas.
Everybody we've talked about has been overseas. And that's because the world has changed. There's talent everywhere. And for you as an entrepreneur, one of the things you should be doing is leveraging that global talent. The way to do that is to go to Sheppard and just tell 'em what you need. All you do is you go there and you're like, hey, I think we need a developer, I need an engineer, or I need a designer, or I need somebody who could do all of our influencer marketing. Whatever you don't have time for, that's the bottleneck of your business. Go to Sheppard, tell 'em what you need, and they will find you somebody. Couple weeks, you will have talent in place, usually for 5 times less. Than you'd hire for in America. This is a, this is a not so secret secret anymore. You know, for my e-commerce company, I think 40% of our staff is international. Uh, we get tremendous cost savings and we get some of the best talent by just by looking overseas, looking where other people aren't looking. If you're hiring in the same place that everybody else is hiring, you know, you're not going to make it.
They're doing developers now?
They do developers. Yeah, because they do LATAM. So one of the things I've been using is all their like LATAM talents in Latin America where you get a lot more of two things. One is a shit ton of MBAs. So like I needed an operations person. I was like, ah, my COO is just like, I feel like every COO is overworked. Like, I don't know if you've ever had this, but like the entrepreneur always just gives the COO everything they don't want to do, which is like 85% of all the work in any business. It just gets dumped on the COO. It's like, yeah, that's operational. You should figure that out. And so I was like, dude, my COO needs a COO. And so we started hiring operations people from South America because they have basically people who are, you know, MBAs. So they're like trained that way. They've been doing consulting for years and they make like, you know, let's call it $3K a month. And so compare that to in America, you'd probably be paying $12K to $15K a month for that same talent. So, you know, 4 to 5 times more. And so we found some awesome, uh, both developers and operations people in LATAM. That's what I go for there. And then like kind of like customer service, design, um, anything that's like data, Marketing, marketing assistant. That's all Philippines for me.
Wow. All right. Well, and what's the URL?
supportshepard.com. Go to supportshepard.com and then when you're there, tell 'em I sent you, they'll take care of you.
Do we wanna round up, round out with the, the 3 random things you have here?
Yeah, I got some random things. I don't know, uh, which one we wanna do. Did you watch the Super Bowl at all?
Yeah, I, I'm not like a sports guy. I, I, but I watched it just 'cause it was a big deal. And, uh, you have Jason, well, how do you say the guy's last name? Kelsey.
Kelsey.
Jason Kelce over Travis Kelce. That Travis guy seemed pretty likable in his postgame, like, interview. Like, he seems like a big goofy idiot in the best possible way.
Yeah, he kind of is. Although it was really bad for him. I don't know if you saw it during the game. He like, basically got super angry at his coach and like almost like knocked him over and was yelling at him.
The reason it wasn't cool was because his coach is old enough that you're like, oh, that's like you're— you kind of pushed an old guy.
You know what I mean? He like kind of lost his balance. He like almost pushed him down.
And it was like, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Everyone felt bad for like their own dad in that moment.
That's what I mean. Why I was like, ooh, he is a little bit too old. But they like hugged it out and it seemed like they were fine afterwards.
Yeah, I think they're fine. But definitely all of the Taylor Swift fans were like, red flag, we need an emergency meeting. All the Swifties had like an emergency meeting. We're like, I'm worried about Taylor. I don't know what she's gonna do. I don't like what I saw out there.
But did you see the, I did see the brother. So he has another brother in the NFL, Jason. His brother dressed up like Zach Galifianakis from Hangover where he wore from Alan from The Hangover. He looked hilarious.
Yeah, I basically want to do a TED Talk actually. I want to prepare slides and be like, here's why you should be Jason Kelce and not Travis Kelce. Because on paper, you want to be Travis Kelce. He's the receiver. Jason Kelce is a center, like the most unglamorous position that there is. So it's like, you have Travis Kelce, he's a tight end. He's always catching passes. He's better looking. He's more handsome. He's like more stylish. He can dance. The other guy's kind of awkward. You know, Travis Kelce is dating Taylor Swift. Oh, that's amazing, right? But Jason Kelce's wife is a badass. She's like, great looking, former athlete, super fun. She like joins his podcast all the time and she's like, got a great personality and just seems like super down to earth. Like she shows up to the, to the box because they know you're going to show Taylor Swift like 100 times during the game, right? And it's Taylor Swift and she's there with like that actress. What's her name? Blake.
Whatever. Blake Lively.
Blake Lively. Yeah. And it's like, and they know every time something happens, they're like doing YouTube thumbnail face. Like they're so exaggerated with their emotions because they know we're performing here. Whereas like Jason Kelce's wife is there in the background. She's wearing like her college hoodie, like her like alma mater hoodie, no makeup. And she's just super comfortable and she's having a great time. She's like eating food and drinking. She's just like chilling out, not trying to get attention all the time. So it's like, and then Jason shows up.
You've thought about this a lot, huh?
I did. Because last week, they played or 2 weeks ago they played in Buffalo and the game, I don't know if you saw it, it was like crazy snow day. And Jason Kelce was watching the game, watching his brother play. And he went and he was like, dude, I don't want to sit in this like luxury suite. He's like, I want to be out there with them. This is awesome. This is like what you grow up loving about football is like a snow game. This is crazy playoff football. So he takes his shirt off, he jumps into the crowd, he jumps out of the luxury box into the crowd with the Buffalo fans and starts chugging beers and just like having a great time with them. He's like, that's the experience I want. And his wife was like, don't do this, babe. Like Taylor Swift's here. They're gonna, like, people are gonna see you doing this. He's like, I don't care what people see. I want to like, this is what I grew up like, you know, admiring. I want to have a great time. So you could tell this guy's having a great time. He's not in it for the show. He's got the real relationship goals you should have. Not the Taylor Swift, like high school, you know, the cheerleaders dating the quarterback type of shit. And then he shows up to the Super Bowl dressed like Alan from The Hangover. I love Jason Kelce. I'm all about Jason Kelce. Jason Kelce over Travis Kelce. That's my case.
I'm looking at the— I just Googled Jason Kelce shirtless and you do see him in the box wearing gray sweatpants, taking his shirt off. And he's like in the drunk guy mode where he's yelling. What's hilarious about this guy is you see his face and you see some of the things where he sounds just like a goofy dummy. Like he's just joking, like your fat friend, but they show him shirtless. And you see a can of beer in his hand and it is so small. This guy is a giant. This guy will kill you and eat you. Yes. This Bud Light can looks like a 5-Hour Energy in his hand. This guy is a freak. How, like they're, they're both, I guess, huge. This guy does not look huge when you just see him from the neck up on the podcast. This guy, and you know, he's got gray hair, right? So he like, doesn't like look like, an athlete, you see him shirtless. This guy looks like a freak.
That's the amazing—
Yes, exactly.
And I, I just think there's some life lesson, there's some wisdom in this whole thing. In fact, another version of this, by the way, uh, did you see like when the, I don't know what it was, the Grammys were on and the Tracy Chapman, uh, song was going super viral? Did you see this? They did Fast Car, her and—
Yeah, she looked awesome too.
So do you know the back— you know her story or do you know the backstory of like Tracy Chapman and that song?
Yeah, she basically was, uh, just a normal person. She was, uh, just your, an average lady. And she, I think, got discovered by like a friend of a friend. So, uh, the friend being the writer of Billions, Brian Koppelman. Yeah, his dad was, uh, worked in the music industry and Brian went up to Tracy and was like, look, this is awesome.
They went to the same college. So they were in college. She's just playing like on campus and he's like, you're amazing. He calls his dad.
He's like, dad. Well, he goes, What he said was, he goes, look, this is like lame usually. And I never like ask my daddy for a favor. That's kind of douchey. Right. But you've got it. Would you care if I make an introduction to my father? I actually think he might help you. And I'm not just like blowing smoke up your ass. Like you actually, this actually could do something. And I think it, it became something.
It, it did. And so she, she kind of gets a contract, but she's the, she's like the anti-artist, right? She's the anti-pop artist. So she's not, uh, like she's just gonna make the music she wants and she's not gonna like just do what the record label wants. They were like, oh, tell us about your relationship. She's like, nah, I prefer to keep that private.
Yeah.
But just tell us. She's like, on Access Hollywood, they're like, but this song has to be about someone. She's like, well, it is about someone, but I'd prefer not to share it, and I don't want them to feel bad about it or anything like that, so I'm not going to share. And they're like, well, it's hard to promote this album if you're not going to say anything. And she's like, I just want my music to speak for itself. She was just like, to me, I watched a couple. I went down a rabbit hole after this, and I watched her, and I was like, she is the beacon of authenticity. Her and Jason Kelce are like, You actually want to be them. You don't want to be the pop answer. And there's something to just being totally authentic and not performing for everybody. Like, she makes all the little TikTok bitches look like little TikTok bitches of just like, I don't know if you've seen the subreddit I Am the Main Character. Yeah, it's basically full of people who think they're the main character of life. They put their camera somewhere on a flight, they stand up and they're doing a TikTok dance and everyone else is like, dude, can Can I get to my seat? What are you doing? What is this? It's just like these annoying people who are trying to do stuff for attention.
Do you know how old Tracy Chapman is?
She's like in her 50s, probably.
I don't know what she's 60. She looks awesome.
And she's like, she just goes gray. She's got no makeup on or whatever. They were like, how do you promote your music? She's like, I don't know. I don't have social media. Though. You don't have social media? She's like, no. I just hang out with my friends. Why would I need that? And they're like, because. And you sound like an idiot trying to explain why you need social media. She's like, I don't know. I just make my music and I go outside and I hang out with my friends. Where would I need that? And then they're like, okay, but what do you do on your phone? And she's like, I don't have a smartphone either.
Haven't you heard the story of the Mexican fisherman and the banker? It's like that where it's You know, a banker, a rich banker's on vacation and he's in Mexico and he's loving it. And he meets this fisherman who brings him fresh fish every day. And, uh, the fisherman basically brings the fish in the morning to the banker and then he spends the rest of the day chilling. The banker goes to the fisherman, he goes, hey, why don't you just go and like, your fish is the best. Go hire more fishermen and like, I'll help you. Let's build this into a thing and we're going to make so much money. And the Mexican guy's like, all right, but then what? He goes, well, then we're going to like get, grow revenue to like $15 million and then we're going to sell it. And the guy's like, then what? He goes, well, then you're going to be rich and you can do anything you want. And the Mexican guy's like, what would I do? The banker goes, well, then you can just fish all day and just hang out. And the Mexican guy's like, I do that now. And that's like the whole parable of like, you know, I actually don't know what it's trying to say other than like your great life, a lot simpler and all this nonsense, whatever.
Actually, I'm not sure what it's all about. Why doesn't he lie to the boat? He's missing out. What about him?
Be the banker. Let's go on vacation.
What, did you just be a fisherman your whole life? Yeah, I think you missed the ending of that one. I think it's about knowing what you want and also knowing how to have it and have enough, that there is such a thing as enough. Tracy Chapman has enough. Daisy Kelsey has enough. By the way, a couple of other cool things about her story that I really liked. One, be prepared to take the chance when luck presents itself. Do you know how she got her big break? Like, what kind of catapulted her to become a star? Because obviously she's not doing the normal stuff you do to promote yourself as a pop star. She doesn't look like a pop star, doesn't talk like a pop star, doesn't have social media, doesn't have a smartphone. So how does she initiate her break? Have you heard this story? No. So there was like a giant televised music thing that was for Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And she's on the prelims, the undercard of the undercard before the TV stuff even turns on. So she goes and she plays 2 songs or 3 songs early in the day, and then later in the day was supposed to be the headline acts, and Stevie Wonder was supposed to go on and perform, but Stevie Wonder got lost. No, I'm just playing. Stevie Wonder, they messed up his backing tracks, and so he's like, I can't go on. My backing, this is not going to work. I need the audio to work. And so they were like, shit, the audio is messed up. We need somebody to go fill like, you know, 6 minutes of time here before the next act and give us some time to fix this. Who can go on and who can play with no backing tracks and just go on acoustic and kill it? And they were like, Tracy, will you go on there and play a song? And she's like, okay. And they're like, but it's just you and your guitar, nothing else. She's like, okay. And so she goes out there and she plays Fast Car. And you can see this video on YouTube. Her voice is like quaking at the beginning and she has no like autotune, no, no vocals, no backtrack. So it's like you can hear every imperfection in it, but then she gets, you know, she kind of comes into her own. She sings the song and people love it. People go nuts for it. And that's how she kind of got her break into stardom was by being prepared and being willing to go out there and take a risk and having obviously the talent to back it up. Her first album sells 10 million copies, which is insane. And then They're like, amazing, huge hit. Fast Car still is considered one of the top 100 songs ever written or whatever. They're like, what are you going to do for your second album? Hey, the record executives come to her with some ideas. They have a pitch meeting. They're like, presentation. They pull the curtain off the easel and they're like, Tracy Chapman singing these pop songs. And she's like, nah, I don't think I want to do that. And they're like, but Tracy, you did 10 million your first time. You could do 20 this time, right? Like the banker to the fisherman. And she's like, no, I don't really want to do that. They're like, well, what do you want to do? She's like, I'm not sure yet. Experiment and figure it out. They're like, experiment? What do you mean? You have to go to the studio and record. She's like, no, no, I'm not going to record. What I'm going to do is she hired— so normally what a musician does is they go, they write their songs, they go to a studio, they hire like a studio musician to come and play the piano or the trumpet or whatever with them there. They have no chemistry with them. They record. Then later they go on tour and they perform. She did it in reverse. She's like, what if I did the— instead, what if I hired a set of musicians that I really like I took the risk of hiring them. And what if we tour for a year writing songs as we go? And then through the tour, we're going to see what music is resonating with people. And at the end, we'll just record the stuff that they liked, almost like a comedian going to small clubs and working out their material. She did that for music. And so, and that's how she did her second album. And she was like, I'm so proud of how it turned out, blah, blah, blah. I have no idea what the sales were, but like, you know, I like that, that approach. And again, I'm, I'm, I'm on an authenticity kick right now. And to me, I love that.
Last year I said, Sean, I'm gonna be having a baby. Do you, um, could you tell me what are some of the highlights of having a kid? And this was in private and you're like, it's just great. You know, my, my son and my daughter, like I just, I get so much joy out of seeing that they admire all these little things. Like they just love staring at the fan and it made me happier that like, oh, the fan actually is cool. And I like, I, I like am interested in now because they're interested in and, and I love seeing them grow. That's how I feel right now. A few years ago, a few years ago, I asked you about really simple things that I just thought you would understand, like Dolly Parton. And you're like, Dolly who? Now you're teaching me about Tracy Chapman. Next, for all I know, you're gonna tell me who the Beatles are and you're gonna do this wonderful breakdown. And I just think that you have grown so much that you are now like Tracy Chapman. Like, I didn't know everything about her, but I could tell you a lot of her songs. And, and now you've just discovered her. And I love that you are bringing a new perspective of this. And you're actually teaching me about an artist that I love. Next, what we're going to talk about, you know, Paul McCartney or Clapton. Let's talk about all this stuff. Tell me who Mick Jagger is.
I like him. I used to stop believing, but now I realize I should don't stop believing. It's a great song.
Like, I am getting so much joy and I'm learning now that you are new because you, you probably didn't know much about her before this, did you?
No, I mean, I just heard the song. In fact, I didn't even understand what the song was.
You never heard that song?
No, I love the song, but, okay, so there's two types of people. I think there's people who listen to songs for the words and there's people who listen to songs for the meaning. Which one are you? Like, I could hear a song 1,000 times and not tell you. I have no clue what the song is about. I don't know. I've never even actually— I've never even thought about the lyrics. I might know some of the words, but like, I couldn't tell you what the song is about even though I've heard it 1,000 times.
I care about the meaning, like, particularly like rock and roll by like a lot of Black people in the '70s and '80s. It's like civil rights I enjoy, like, learning the story about it. Yeah. I don't actually know what Fast Car is about, though.
You should go listen to it. Go listen and, like, actually listen to the lyrics. It's an amazing story that she's telling in that thing. So I kind of got into it for that reason. I also liked one other thing. I watched an interview with her, and I think both of us appreciate poise as a trait. I think poise is something nobody ever talks about, but we all notice it when we see it. And those are things that I like to pick up on. What are things that Nobody says they are into or practice. Nobody ever says, I'm practicing poise. But when we see it, we all think it's badass and we appreciate it. Well, Tom Brady, he's so poised, or that leader, he just has this way he carries himself well. It's poise under pressure, right? Poise. And so she did this Charlie Rose interview. And Charlie Rose, again, she's kind of the worst interviewer because she doesn't say anything.
She doesn't play the game.
She doesn't play the game. And so he's like, He's like, tell me, when you were a young kid, when did you first start playing music? She's like, oh, I got a guitar and I started playing music when I was like 5. He's like, by 8, I was writing songs. And he's like, and that's when you knew you wanted to be a musician. She goes, I think that's when I knew. She didn't say I think. She goes, that's when I knew I was a musician.
Yeah.
And Charlie was like, just realized he kind of just— she wasn't trying to say it to own him, but what a statement too. And I think there's What a poised way of saying something that she's just saying it as it is. That's how it was. I realized I was a musician and that's me. That's a part of me. That's how I am. It wasn't, I'm going to try to do anything. Trying is like the least poised thing you could do. I am a musician. I think she's a badass.
I really respect her. And I think she lives in Ohio, which is sort of like Dave Chappelle, these guys that are like, they could have it all. They could be in the middle and the thick of it all. But they're in fucking Ohio.
Just Chappelle's another one on the authenticity. Mount Rushmore, right? Like, walked away from $50 million because, you know, they were trying to control the, the show. And, uh, he's like, then they called me crazy and said I was doing crack in Africa. He's like, no, I'm not doing crack in Africa. What the fuck are you talking about?
He's like, he's like, I'm in Ohio.
I'm not, by the way, my image. I'm just gonna go live my life and be happy.
I didn't know that. That I, I actually, up until recently, thought he was in Africa.
He was like, because that was the narrative. It was Dave, Dave Chappelle kind of basically went crazy. He's doing crack. And then he went to Africa. He lost his mind. And he came out years later, was like, no, they were offering me a bullshit contract. I said no. And then I just went home and just did other things with my life. Yeah. He's like, and then they started saying this crazy shit, but whatever. Okay, whatever.
Yeah. He was like, I was in Ohio. That's where my father's from there. I was just hanging out with family.
Right. It's like the poise thing. Like when Mandela got locked up for whatever, he was like locked up for 30 years or something like that. And then he came out and whatever, solved the apartheid.
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know what history is. He did something good for black and white people.
He went to Mexico and he fished. He was fishing with a bunch of Mexicans. Who knows what he did?
But the thing that he said was badass. He was like, they were like, aren't you angry or resentful at the people that put you in jail for 20, 30 years or whatever? And he was like, no, I was preparing. He said, I was preparing for this.
And I was like, that's awesome.
That's a cool way of saying it.
Sean coming through big time. This is the Sean Perry episode. That was a good one from start to finish.
Am I cultured now?
I think I'm cultured. Yeah, I think so. I think the second you give props to Tracy Chapman and Nelson Mandela, I think that you are officially, you've crossed the chasm, my friend.
You know when you leave milk out for a while, it becomes yogurt?
Cultured?
That's what happened to me. I just sat out for a while.
Took you a couple dozen, a few dozen years, but you've officially, you've crossed the threshold. Congratulations. Uh, good job. Good pod. If you're a fan of this, you got to subscribe. If you want more Tracy Chapman stuff, but also the occasional joke about Mexican fishermen that we totally skipped over and don't understand the meaning of the story, you got to subscribe. Uh, that's the pod.
Thanks. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want. I put my all in it like no days off.
On the road, let's travel, never looking back.