Steph Smith: “This opportunity is totally overlooked”
All right, Steph Smith's here.
Steph is back.
And your whole thing is finding up-and-coming trends.
I call them gold mines. Some people just come back and show you a little piece of gold. Steph shows you where the mine is.
We all run into these generation-defining stats throughout our lives, and most of us are just like, oh, that's cool. So I compiled 100+ of these.
There's so many here.
I love this one. Breakup cake. Nerd neck. The Dyson mask. A search algorithm that was inspired by ants.
I need to write this down.
If you want to go down the rabbit hole, I think there's a, there's a growing business here.
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.
We use this phrase one chart businesses because you just see this chart and it like you said, well, there, that thing's obvious. Just get into that industry. You have one here. You said in the, uh, in the United States, The US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that nursing will be the fastest growing occupation between 2020 and 2030, growing in number by 275,000, uh, jobs. That's insane. That's insane. Talk to me about this nursing thing.
Yeah, well, I mean, again, it's like a pretty clear trend that comes with a bunch of people getting, getting older. Like, everyone's talking about AI, and that's great, but what about the billions of people around the globe that are, you know, 65 plus that are just gonna need physical human support. So nursing's one area. Also the, the rest of that stat talks about in Japan, the number of nursing homes has risen nearly 50% over the last decade. And Japan is interesting because it's kind of like this early case study where they've hit this silver tsunami a little earlier than, uh, a lot of other countries.
Why Japan?
I think they just hit the, declining birth rate earlier than many other countries. And so, you know, another interesting, you could say, opportunity, maybe just an interesting thing for individuals to explore, but because Japan hit the, like, silver tsunami a little earlier, they have this interesting thing where they're giving away free houses or super cheap houses, sometimes free. They're called Akiyas, A-K-I-Y-A. I was in Japan this summer and we did a walking tour and they took us around and they were showing us these houses and they're like, see this, house and it was like in the middle of Osaka. It was a little rundown for sure, but they were like, this, this house is free. And we were like, what do you, what do you mean? But because there's so many of these people who have grown old, unfortunately passed away. And then there's also some social aspects of the akiyas where in some cases, not all, because Japanese people really care about status. If let's say they grew up in a poor neighborhood. Their parents passed away and then they've moved into, you know, a different social strata. They don't want to claim the house because they're like, I don't want to be associated with that neighborhood. And there's over, there's tons of articles on this, over 8 million akiyas that are being given away by the government. Um, or again, sometimes for very cheap.
Well, have you heard the, uh, the theory about Osaka and how a lot of people are lying about their age?
Oh yeah.
The blue zones and how Yeah, there's a book called The Blue Zones, and basically, like, I read it 10 years ago or something, and I was like, this is my Bible for, like, living a long, healthy life. But the idea is that someone studied Osaka's population, and they found that too many people claim to have the same birth date in Osaka, to the point where the only way that this could be possibly true is if many of them committed fraud in order to say that they are of a certain age so they can start receiving Social Security and other benefits that you get when you hit a certain age. And so it potentially puts a lot of like this idea of we study this particular population for old health or old people and like looking at like, wow, they're so healthy when they're just liars that they're actually a lot younger. They're a lot younger potentially than they've said they are. What are some other stats about those? I love, I love talking to you because you just have like, you actually have the data and the stats instead of just like guessing.
Okay, so we didn't really drill down as much on the— I mean, you talked about nursing homes and assisted living. So let me give you one more from Numlock, which by the way is a great newsletter. Walt Hickey runs it and people, I feel like MFM listeners would love it. It's great because you talk about these one-chart businesses. I've done a thread on something similar and I call them digits, but he calls them just numbers, right? So basically every single day, actually, he sends a newsletter of maybe 5 or so different, just small paragraphs. And each paragraph has just like one statistic. And I like his because some of them are really important, like, you know, the silver tsunami and how that's going to impact things much greater than ourselves. But then sometimes it's like, there's this random gerbil that it has infested homes in South Carolina or something like that.
This is awesome.
Yeah. Um, he sent this paragraph about assisted living. So let me just read this out. This is directly from Numlock. From 2004 to 2021, the median annual price of assisted living increased 31% faster than inflation and has hit $54,000 per year. This is the crazy stat to me. There are 31,000 assisted living facilities in the United States. 4 out of every 5 are run as for-profits, and half of all the operators in the industry are clearing annual returns of 20% or more than it costs to operate. With 850,000 older Americans living within assisted living, The rents are getting jacked up.
So I don't actually know how assisted living businesses are valued. Like, is it considered like a real estate valuation where it's just like a, a way to finance or pay for real estate? Or is it considered like a proper operating business? Like, I guess, you know how like hotels are classified as real estate. I would assume that's the, that's the case of which 20% is, is fantastic. 20% were operating profit on a, on a proper, like, uh, like internet business, that's not that great. But if it's on real estate, that's really great. However, when I read this, I think, yeah, that's lucrative. I don't want to operate this. This sounds like the worst thing ever. You'd have a funeral a day. I would love to invest in a nursing home fund, but I would not want to operate a nursing home.
Well, what I'll say is, I mean, my, I have parents that are getting older and there's also tons of assisted living for not just elderly, right? People with mental illness or who need other support. And I think what I've seen from like exploring this space anecdotally is that most of the options really suck, as in like you, you don't really feel great about sending your parent or loved one to these places. And so I, I haven't explored this deeply enough. This might exist. So if, if folks are listening and they know of this, I would love to hear about it. But like, imagine the, the premium version of assisted living where you feel really, really good about sending your grandparent, your mom, your sister, whatever it is. To one of these places, and obviously the, you know, the price would have to go way up. Um, but people are already, like, this stat is saying they're spending $54,000 per year as the average. And so, you know, for the wealthy, like, wouldn't you pay 5 times that to send your loved one to something a lot better?
Yeah, and I think people do. Like, I, I know people who have people in nursing homes and they spend $20,000 or $30,000 a month. It's insane. It's absolutely insane.
Okay, so you're 8 minutes into this episode and you already can tell that Steph's superpower is spotting generational defining trends. She has spent hours pulling the most surprising under-the-radar stats and data, all for the purpose of basically uncovering interesting business ideas. She's put it all together in a thing called the Digits Database. And for you guys, the MFM audience, she has decided to give it away for free. And so if you want it, just click the link below. In the description and grab it. All right, back to the show.
What do you guys want to do next?
Uh, let's do the sports one. What's the sports data thing?
Okay, so there's this website that aggregates a bunch of reports on sports, which obviously people love. Americans love sports. So they have like a state of pickleball report, uh, state of the industry report. I want you guys to guess what the fastest growing sports are, the 25 fastest growing sports according to this SFIA research, which is the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. What do you guys think were the top fastest growing sports in America?
I already opened it and I could tell you I wouldn't have guessed one of them.
I already opened it as well. So the game is over. Uh, but I would've said pickleball and, and I would've said that game Padel. Isn't there like another game that's just like pickleball? Uh, that's what I would've guessed. It does seem like pickleball is number one. But number 2, I would've never guessed Alpine touring. I don't even know what that really is.
I think it's just like off, off country skiing. Um, and then I have never heard of— what is winter fat biking?
It's awesome is what it is.
It's like, so sounds like something I need to research. What is this?
These fat tire bikes are, are really popular right now. So it's basically a bike with a, just a really fat tire. Is what it is. And they, they are, they're sick looking.
Is this a sport?
Yeah, it's just mountain bike riding, but the tire is particularly fat. It, it, it's all it is. Uh, you know, we, what do we say? We like big and small things. Imagine a bicycle that could drive on a beach.
Got it. Number 4, off-course golf.
Interesting.
And then number 7 is trail running. I could definitely see that. That is the, I, I've, I get so many videos on my Instagram of trail running.
Yeah. Dude, I was at a dinner and somebody said something as a joke and I put up my finger to my lips and I said, shh, I need to write this down because it was an incredible idea. The guy goes, you put his, you put your finger on his lips and then my own lips back and forth. And I was like, say no more. I need to, don't, I don't wanna lose this idea. Lemme write this down. He said something, he goes, yeah, I do the, the suburban triathlon. And I go, what? And he goes, yeah, Suburban Triathlon. You walk a half mile, you into this bar, you drink 2 beers and then you go play 9 holes of golf. And I was like, what? He's like, yeah, it's the Suburban. I forgot he said Suburban Ironman or the Suburban Triathlon. And I was like, this has legs. And I really think that if somebody created some kind of thing for, you know, out of shape middle-aged guys to do, they'll do it. And I think if you make it, if you brand it almost like as the non-fit person triathlon, and it's gotta have like some version of eating and drinking being one of the legs, dude, that's the next Tough Mudder. I think that could be a massive, a massive trend that people start doing. This is, this is definitely something that I think would appeal to people. What do you guys think?
Yeah, yeah. And that's beautiful branding.
We're working backwards from the brand. We really don't even know actually what goes underneath. It's just the idea of the Suburban Triathlon. It's like you bike to the grocery store, you chug a beer, and then you like, I don't know, run an errand. And that's the Suburban Triathlon. And you gotta do it on Saturday mornings.
Next goldmine. So I love this one, Our World in Data. So people have maybe heard of this website. It's a website that tries to aggregate data that is a reflection of, of what's really happening in the world. So it includes things like data on poverty. It includes really niche things. Like I found, I went through the website and there was a graph that related to the day of the year with peak cherry tree blossoms. In Kyoto, right? Like so random, but they're collecting data on this. And I checked this website a few years ago and I want to say there was maybe 200 graphs on here. And if you go to their ourworldindata.org/charts page, I want to say there's thousands of different data points now.
I just clicked on one. It's adjusted net savings per capita from 1970 to 2020. And you could see like how much per capita a variety of countries are saving. So like, it's just like literally thousands of like different charts. You know, Sean talks about these like one-chart businesses.
One of them is this, uh, population of the world distribution. So basically this is a chart that is looking at how many of all the people in the world, how many are young right now, meaning under 15, how many are working age, 15 to 65, and how many are elderly. 65 plus. And the shocking thing about this chart, this is a one chart, this is a one chart business right here, which is the elderly curve goes from today, right? Like kind of like the 2020, early 2020s where it's under 1 billion. It's by far the smallest line to, it's going to cross over the young population and be at, you know, by the end of the, where this has it projected 2.5 billion. And so that's the biggest grower, the working, the working age one kind of flattens out, the young one kind of goes down and the elderly one has this huge spike. And so if you're building anything that's in the elder care that you're going to own for, let's say, 10, 20 years, you have this immense tailwind behind you, which is just that the population of people who fit, you know, the customer base is going to grow dramatically. We're going to go from under 1 billion people to over 2.5 billion people that are in that market. And so that's a, it's, you know, a case to say, you know, if you go there, let's say, let's say it's like real estate, like if you owned Senior living facilities or something like that, you would be able to just benefit from the fact that, oh, occupancy is going to go up over time in this, in this way. Now, of course, technology may, may, may completely upend things and AI and all that, but you could see these like huge trends that are going to be very hard to reverse. So it's hard to imagine a scenario that we, we changed the direction of these lines. It would take like a whole societal shift, population level shift to change where these lines are going.
There's so many here. Which ones stick out to you, Steph?
So I just linked another one that I think, again, is this like one chart business. This one's hard to get involved with, but I think it's, it's the lithium production. If you pull that up, I just linked it in the document and you can see that lithium production, which obviously is the core ingredient in many of our batteries, is concentrated in just a few countries. A lot of it's in China, a lot of it's in a few countries in South America. That's another example of just as you're browsing through a bunch of these, these charts, I think that one jumps out. But the one I wanted to dive into in depth is air pollution. So if you click the, the, the stat, uh, in here in our document that says air pollution is one of the world's leading risk factors for death, which maybe is obvious to some people, but to me, when I think about It's like, what are, what are the key causes of death? What am I afraid of? Air pollution is not at the top of that list. However, um, I also stumbled upon Patrick Collison's pollution page. He's got a bunch of cool pages on his website. He's got a page with just a bunch of questions. Uh, one of them's on pollution and he says that the World Bank indicates that 3.7 billion people, so about half the world's population, are exposed to this metric of PM2.5 that, that has to do with like the size of particles in the air. They're exposed to around 5 times the, the unit of measure that he correlates with a bunch of things, which include lower GDP, it includes stock market returns being lower, people making worse decisions, like chess players making mistakes, politicians using less, less complex speech. So those are just, you know, some fun facts. But I think what's, what's really important is obviously the, the health side of things. And there's another stat that I'll just quickly share, which is from a newsletter called Charter, which says that India's capital— this was recently— breached the 450 mark on the air quality index, over 4 times the healthy level. And basically they're in this hazardous zone, which is akin to smoking 25 to 30 cigarettes a day. And obviously that is an outlier, but I wanted to call this out because I think air quality is something that is a problem in a lot of places, clearly, um, some more than others, but it's something that I think people are going to be caring about a lot more. And maybe one, one product that came out in the last year or so that's indicative of that, that a lot of people made fun of was the Dyson mask headphones. So I'll, I'll stop there.
What, what, what were those?
Yeah, I never saw those.
They are headphones that have a, uh, basically a mask, an air purifier attached to them.
Wow. And they're expensive. They're $1,000, I think, right?
They are $700 from what I can see.
And what, this came out and people just made fun of them? Well, if you, if you Google images, it's like a white guy in like the New York subway wearing it.
You know what I mean?
Like it's a little off on. Because you're talking about India and a few other countries, not maybe the New York subway. So it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a misleading ad they have, but that's pretty fascinating. Is this, are these taking off?
No, I think they're in that zone of a lot of people making fun of them. However, the reason I'm calling this out is because I think there is this understanding that, you know, it's just in New Delhi. It's not, you know, anywhere close to home. But I think, have you guys ever used like a, an air quality index, um, measure in your home or like a CO2 monitor?
Yeah, I have multiple times and I bought like these air purifier things that also measure the air quality in my house and I have them and it's like shocking whenever it'll like, it basically turns red and it's like, oh God, there's something going on. You know what, we need to air this place out or, or whatever.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, air quality changes over time and I don't know, I've been noticing more even in San Francisco a few days where people are like, oh, I'm, I'm wearing a mask to work, not cuz of COVID but because like, oh gosh, like I, have you checked the air quality? And a lot of people aren't doing this still today, but I think that'll change. And I think if you use some of these, like the CO2 monitor, for example, you literally, like, if you go to bed with your door closed and you wake up and you check that thing, it is wild, um, how high it is. And, you know, all you need to do is open a window or, you know, circulate the air in your home. But I think as the stuff, um, I guess is people are more educated on it, I think some of these devices like the air quality monitors are going to take off. And you can see some of this data in Jungle Scout as well of just like the kinds of products that people are buying.
Do you see, uh, what did you see? I think in Jungle Scout that stood out any product that's okay.
So there's one product which is, uh, has to do with, uh, an AC furnace and an air filter. Um, but guess how much this thing sold for? Sells every single month.
What is it?
It's an AC furnace air filter and an air quality monitor. So I'm seeing 4 entries in Jungle Scout and, um, they are 17 million, 12 million, 8 million, and 8 million. So what is that all total? That's like over $40 million per month. This is what Jungle Scout is saying. So, you know, take it with a grain of salt. I'm not sure how they measure, but they tend to be pretty accurate. And so that's an example of, I think, as people again, like try to understand the air quality around them, I think there's a, there's a growing business here. I feel like one missing gap with air quality readings and devices and all that is it's not obvious. As in, I feel like most people would be surprised to be like, oh my gosh, I inhale all this stuff and it has these adverse effects and it's, you know, it ranks here on, you know, the, the likelihood of death, but it's not obvious. It's not in your face. Like, let's say, like, the GLP-1s, people see themselves every day and they're constantly trying to improve their image and how other people interpret them. So I think maybe one thing that if someone was going to go figure this out, you guys have talked about, um, the air, the water filters. People go into your home and they say, like, did you know, like, you're drinking, like, this much, uh, of, of, like, basically, like, rocks and other sediment and lead in your, your water. Can you believe it? And they show you. And so I feel like there's an element of that where as it's going to take a while for people to really care about the air quality stuff, but there may be some middle ground where some company is able to effectively give people that aha.
Yeah, I would put it differently. I don't think it's going to take a while. I think it's going to take a marketer for people to care. It's just going to take a marketer and a product design that puts it in your face and that educates you about this and kind of scares you about it. But then says, don't worry, there's a solution. Yeah. And that's how a lot of things get done is, uh, you know, a great marketer or product designer figures out the way to put it in your face. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out 4/5 of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call blogs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit hubspot.com.
I spend way too much time online. Um, I think a lot of people do too. So I've got a bad case, hopefully improving case of nerd neck. Some people call it forward, uh, head posture. Um, but basically it's just cuz we're, we're hunched over at a computer all day long. And I haven't done a ton here at like, I'm kind of on the like very early part of this curve, but I have played around with, I'm not using it right now. Hold up. There's this thing. I don't know if I'd vouch for it or not yet, but this thing called BetterBack.
I'm looking at it. I think any, any time that you have to use one of these devices, I tend to get nervous that it's legit, but go ahead.
What is it? Well, that's why I don't know. So it has helped me sit up more. It basically like it. Runs around your knees and your back. And I like it better than something— there's things you can put on your back that like zap you and stuff, and I feel like that's really unnatural. But this actually, just because it's like fixated around your knees, you just sit up straighter.
So for those listening, it's basically like a strap that when you're sitting down, it wraps around your back and then attaches to your knees. And in doing that, it kind of forces you to sit up.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
Understood.
There's other, um, for the women, the, for your 4 female listeners, there is a sports bra that I haven't tried yet called Form, which apparently like folks like Taylor Swift have used. If you look at her posture a decade ago, it was way, way worse. So there, like, there's a small part of me that believes that something like that works.
There's, can I use this? You like, I can, like, you're telling me just like this, like shirt that, I mean, for me it would be a shirt that's gonna make me have better posture.
What is this thing? I don't, I haven't tried it, but, um, it's, it's a sports bra that people vouch helps your posture. But I think generally, as I've explored this a little bit, it is a function of your muscle, right? Like if you have strength in your abdomen and your back, like you're gonna sit up straighter. But there's a video I shared, we can include all this in the show notes. This is actually just an email I sent, or I'm going to send to the Internet Pipes crew this month, but it's a video from Bryan Johnson around his posture. He worked with a posture coach for several months, and then Tim Ferriss has recommended something called the Ego Skew Method, which I have not tried.
And what's this Bryan Johnson video? How do I just make my posture better?
There's 3 different exercises that he does every single day, and he shares them in this video that improved his posture.
And what's this ego, ego-esque?
It's a method that I think you need to like work with a practitioner for, which is why, again, I'm not, I don't, I don't think I'm vouching for this in any way, but it's just something that came up.
Dude, there's this great TED Talk that you should watch it. Why sitting down destroys you. I think it's by Roger Frampton, I believe that's the one. But it's a TED Talk that has millions of views. And he basically goes through this idea of how he worked. I think he worked in the Amazon. He worked with some like indigenous tribe where they didn't have a, they didn't use like a lot of chairs or something like that. And what he found was that basically the people who in today's age, we don't really do this, but we used to where if you stand a lot, you squeeze your ass. Like, imagine you got a, you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you're trying to keep from falling down on the ground. That's basically what you do. You like squeeze your butt together when you're standing. And there's a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our largest muscle. It's because we were supposed to use them a lot and how we don't really use them too much anymore. And so instead, when we stand, we kind of lean forward. And he was like, no, you should actually, when you stand, he was like, a lot of babies actually if you watch like a kid, you'll notice they, they, they do a good job of this, but you squeeze your butt together and, and, and, and you flex your abs as opposed to just falling forward. And if you work on it, you can actually hold that for like a fairly long time when you're standing. And that's the proper way to stand. And so it's not just sitting that will destroy you, but standing incorrectly.
Yeah, totally. Well, even in the video I did watch with Brian Johnson, he was talking about how most people, when they think they want good posture, they like tilt their head back, and that's bad as well. Like, they're kind of like, oh, I have good posture like this, and you really want to be more like head— your— the back of your neck should be absolutely straight.
So, uh, what's this, um, Ask Nature thing?
So if people want to go down the rabbit hole of exploring kind of not just like, let me go look at pictures of animals, but understanding like, how do animals produce color? What are the examples of technology being inspired by natural design? For example, like a search algorithm that was inspired by ants.
This is so fascinating. So AskNature has this, um, they have this like, there's all stuff you can click on. So there's one about the African darter. Apparently that's a type of bird and it has a very special feather that is incredibly water resistant. And then it tells you like different applications that this potential feather or like inspiration of this feather could have. And it talks about like the strategy of how it works and like the potential for copying this feather.
This is amazing.
How did you find this website? This is really cool.
So someone shared it within Internet Pipes. We have this survey whenever people join, which just asks like, what's your favorite tool? A lot of it ends up being what you expect, ChatGPT, Ahrefs, et cetera. But there are a bunch of gems that come through like this.
And so by the way, is Internet Pipes, it's literally just tons of different resources for finding these things.
So what the product started as, it was, I hate the term course, but it was a course that existed to say, okay, it was a book. It was a book. It was a book. It exists in Notion and there's videos and there's text and now there's a community and now there's things, databases like the Digits database. But the origin was, okay, the most common question I get asked is you find all this cool stuff online, how do you find it? And so Internet Pipes was showing people how to find this information through a series of tools. And that's why it's called Pipes. Right? It's like, use this tool to make sense of all of, all of the purchases that are happening on Amazon, all of the pages that exist on Wikipedia, all of the searches that are happening on Google. And, you know, you go down the line, this data exists. And by the way, we're at a unique period where like, it didn't quite exist 15 years ago. And 15 years from now, probably everyone will know it exists. And so it's like, this Internet Pipes is course, a book, whatever you want to call it, to learn how to do that.
And you've made a lot of money off of it so far, haven't you?
Yes. That's pretty dope. When you answer just yes, that means I'm not going to ask how much.
It's 6 figures. There's a pretty wide range of, you know.
Does the 6 figure include the .00? So it could really be like $1,000.00.
It's 8 figures now.
Got it. This is a really, really cool website. I could spend hours just looking at this. Like, there's an article about like camel's fur, uh, and how, uh, it keeps people cool or it keeps camels cool in the desert, but also warm at night and why that particular type of fur is special for this. The reason it's kind of interesting is like the, the two that I've named are clothing related, but like if you had a clothing related brand, like some type of like, it's stealing the story for you. Like, it's like, or not stealing, it's giving you the hook.
Exactly, exactly. And by the way, like, people in our world in business tech are always talking about the, like, Lindy-ness of something. How long has something existed for? And it's like, you are learning from millions of years of evolution, right? Um, of these, these animals that have become purely optimized for this purpose. And to your point, I think, like, the marketer in both of us is like, What could, you know, what products could you make off of this?
Like, there's one of like otters where it's like, it keeps, it keeps heat in and cold water out. So otters, and I'm sure every single wetsuit company has like stolen this marketing for their branding or whatever, but like, so it's like really fascinating.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, did you ever see, you know, Mischief, right? Mischief the bird.
Mischief is, uh, the company that does like weird projects. Like they did like, uh, a blood shoe for— with Lil Nas X or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. So they've, they've done a ton of shoe collabs. They did one, I think it was— I don't remember if it was with Jimmy Kimmel or they just announced it, but it was called the Gob Stomper. Did you ever see this?
No.
Is Jimmy Kimmel still a celebrity that one wants to collab with?
I didn't realize he was like—
I don't know, maybe it was. Maybe they just announced it there. Um, but These Gobstopper sneakers that MSCHF created, I thought they were kind of cool. They basically, the bottom foundation of the sneaker comes gray at first. And then as you wear it more, basically like as your shoe wears away, it looks like a Gobstopper. And it was just like—
Which is the candy that you suck on and each shell, layer of shell, it turns colors. Okay, cool.
Yeah, exactly. And so my, like, you might think this is the silliest idea ever, but when I went to the Galápagos and I saw these red-footed and these blue-footed boobies, and by the way, fun fact for the listeners, the reason that these, um, that these birds have different colored feet is because of what they eat, which I just thought was like so strange and interesting. But imagine a sneaker brand that was again, stick with me here, this might be a really awful idea, that's related to health in some way. So like, let's say you're wearing a CGM and on your shoes, your shoes change color in some way based on how, like, if you're in range or some other metric that you care about. But basically you're able to signal something in a way that changes through your feet. Like that's awful idea.
Oh, it could be like if, you know, we could, we could, we could show you're fertile or something.
It's like those parties, right? Where you wear like, what are they called? The stoplight parties where you wear red, yellow, red, or green. That's pretty funny. Stoplight shoes. Maybe that's a better version of the idea.
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OK, let's do a quick one, which is— I actually saw this in the Trends newsletter a while ago. I didn't write this, but it was this stat, which is the average person spends $1,500 after a breakup. I have no idea where the stat came from, but definitely got the wheels spinning. And they came up with a bunch of different ideas, which I think actually are getting some traction. Divorce party ideas is something that gets search volume. Breakup cake., people throwing their own breakup parties. And I was just like, huh. I don't know if there's, you know, specific brands that are taking this on, but I was like, huh, that stat. $1,500, don't know where it came from. Right. But there's something there.
That's like if I'm Fjeri, you know, that like Instagram account, and they have these like, they built a kind of like a little media empire. They have a bunch of other accounts, but they also have products they make. Like they made that card game, I think. They make some products now. If I was, if I was one of those accounts, I would be jumping on this. I would basically say, all right, it's already viral. It's meme-worthy. It's, it's remarkable. People are going to talk about this. So how do I make, you know, like the best breakup cake delivery service or like, you know, like the revenge body kit? And it's like, you know, we send you this like 7-day detox where we send you like a healing crystal. We send you like a juice cleanse and whatever. Else to like, you know, get that person out of your, out of your life. So you're going to get the bad juju, you know, away. And I'd be like, you know, this is called Bad Juju or whatever. And I would just try to create like a viral product through that because I think it's on brand and I think it has like enough demand where there's— you could see this doing, you know, $2 to $10 million a year all organic.
Yeah.
Just because the product is so viral, you know, it's probably not going to be enormous, but there's, there's enough of a niche there, especially if you're one of these accounts because you already got distribution. Or you're somebody who goes to those accounts and partners with them and says, hey, I got the right product for you guys. Let's do, you know, some kind of profit share and I'll run this business and you guys just help me promote this, like, you know, whatever, like the breakup vodka. And it's like, you know, this is the breakup vodka kit or whatever, you know, whatever the thing is. Yeah.
I mean, I'm imagining, you know, all the tropes of someone gets broken up with and they become super fit and like they get a PhD and they just become like the best version of themselves after the breakup. Doesn't always happen, but you could imagine something like that. Or something that's even less weird.
Work. It's like, what's those— what are those like voodoo dolls where you like poke it and you're like, you know, you're sending like ill will towards them? You could just like upload a photo of your person, we print you a doll that looks, you know, like close enough like them, and like you can do that.
That reminds me of— did you see that startup Empty? It was fake. Did you hear about this? It's— I think it was, you know, it had the silly spelling too. It was like E-M-P-T-I or something, and it was a fake startup that people thought was real. And basically they sent people these Empty Boxes. And the whole idea was like, look, we send you these empty boxes and there's some like motivational quote from Buddha in it. And it's like, you know, rid yourself of all the things you don't need in your life. And the idea is that people are supposed to take all their junk, put it in these boxes and send it to this company for free. But they pay this company to send them these boxes. But it was a fake startup and all these people are writing about it and they're like, oh, this is so smart. Like what a cool company.
Minimalism. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
It was a joke, but yeah, actually you could do that with this too. You could send them the breakup box. It's like, put all their crap in this, all their crap they've left in your house that reminds you of them. Put it in this, send it to us, and we will send you a video of us like burning this box in this like epic way. And like you get to have that at the end. That's, you know, those are the types of, of ideas you could do with this. Nice. So you were, right before we started recording, you were starting to tell me, you go, here's my theory of why people like this podcast. So what is your theory?
Okay, so there are many reasons to love My First Million. I think there's something that you guys have done, especially recently when you and Sam just go back and forth and you tell a really funny joke and then Sam just starts laughing hysterically, like in a contagious way that most people would hold back maybe on a podcast, but it's literally, as people say, like you're in the room with him. And it reminded me of this subreddit I found recently called r/contagiouslaughter. 4.5 million people subscribe to this and it's one of, I think, the top 100 subreddits out there. And it's literally just a feed of people laughing. And there's, there's dozens of posts every day. And I was just, as I went down it, I was like, there's gotta be a post of Sam and Sean posted here.
Well, okay. Let me tell you a couple of interesting things about this. First, I think this must, I think this subreddit must be kind of like almost like new or growing faster recently. Right. Because I hadn't heard of this. Subreddit before, and I kind of keep an eye on the top ones. Maybe I just missed it, but I've also seen this trend on TikTok. I don't know if you've seen it. Somebody will be like, I'm a clinical psychologist and I can make you happier in the next 10 seconds. Repeat after me. Ha. And there's like a duet. So that guy's like, ha. She's like, haha, haha, hahaha. And you're just like, okay, I see where this is going. And then she just gets to like, hahaha. And like by the end, both people are just cracking up. Like, cuz it's like 10 deep. And you can't help yourself. Like, the body will just start, like, genuinely laughing just from making the sound. Like, it goes both ways. It's not like something funny happens, therefore I break out laughing.
Totally. One of the funniest moments on My First Million was your Orlando Bloom story, which I think if I just heard you telling it by yourself, I'd be like, yeah, that's pretty funny. But Sam's laughter layered onto that where he was— you could just tell he was dying as you were telling that story. Just made it honestly top 5 moments on My First Million history for me. But that's why I think this subreddit is so great. Even in their rules or their like community guidelines, you know how someone posts something and there's typically a bot that says, hey, report this if X, Y, and Z. On that subreddit, it's like, report this if you're laughing at a joke or some sort of incident and not the laughter specifically. They're like, we only want you to be on here to hear other people laughing. So I don't know. I just thought that was like a fun a fun thing and reminded me of why I think some people love My First Million. It's just so authentic.
That's just Sam being Sam. And you're like, whoa, okay. And I just get to be that? That's awesome.
That is awesome.
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.
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