#95 with Craig Clemens of Golden Hippo - The 9-Figure Business You've Never Heard Of

So today we have Craig. What's your title actually? Are you CEO or founder? What are you? What's your title?

I just use co-founder because I do too many different things, you know.

Okay, so co-founder Golden Hippo. I don't know how you describe your, your guys, but, uh, I've— Craig, I think I met you originally at, um, a conference and we became friends. And you just tweeted something the other day that got thousands of interactions and it caught my eye. And we've, uh, we chat just as friends, but you tweeted this thing. What did you tweet the other day?

And our own money. So what is your company?

Company's called Golden Hippo.

We build brands direct to consumer and we are self-funded. So that's where the own money comes from.

How, uh, so like what, what's a brand? What's an— can you give an example or can you say what you guys sell?

Yeah, I can give an example. So we partner some of the world's top doctors, people of influence, people of expertise, and we help them bring their ideas out to the world. So So probably the brand we're most well known for is a brand with a doctor named Stephen Gundry, who is a world famous heart surgeon. He's an inventor of a device that is used in 90% of all heart surgeries. And we partnered with him to bring nutritional supplements into the world based around his ideas and philosophies.

Okay. And so what are examples of products that you guys are selling with, uh, Gundry, Dr. Gundry?

So Dr. Gunner's philosophy is that we humans are a condominium for bugs, aka bacteria, and he calls it holobiotics. And what that means is if you take care of the bacteria that lives in us, you know, the 25 trillion bacteria in our gut— you guys are all familiar with microbiome— and on our skin, that they will take care of their home, which is your body. So that's something all the products have in common is that they're designed to nourish the bacteria that call you home.

So Dr. Gundry has like how many SKUs? Like how many, like, is it like just like one or two products that you're selling to his audience? Or do you have like a whole store with like dozens of different things?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, I don't know, 50, something like that. You know, we have everything from specific digestive health supplements, to coconut bars, to coffee creamer, you know, the whole gamut.

And is it all physical stuff or is there any information?

The information is available on Gundry MD when you subscribe to our newsletter.

You know, we send out a high-quality email newsletter. We do a podcast, we do a YouTube channel, but the information's all free. The products are what people pay for.

And how many, roughly how many brands like him do you guys have? Like dozens or hundreds or, or like 6?

Yeah, more like, you know, in the 10 to 20 range.

I actually don't know exactly because we're always launching new brands and shutting down brands that don't work. Got it.

And at the beginning you said self-funded, um, you said, well, the tweetstorm that went viral that caught my attention, many others, is, you know, here's what we learned spending a billion dollars of our own money on paid media. And it was about marketing and it was about, uh, how to spend money. Well, self-funded. Is that because you had a big win before this, or is that because you bootstrapped this kind of slowly but over time accumulated a big cash-flowing business? So give us kind of the brief history.

Yeah, great question. So self-funded because we bootstrapped, though this is not my first company, and I was really fortunate in my younger days to have an amazing mentor who taught me all this shit. You know, I was one of those kids who barely graduated high school, had a 1.7 GPA. I went into the lucrative field of—

1.7, what is it? What even, how do you even get a 1.7? I don't even know that's a thing.

That's what I had. That's what I had, it's a D+.

My boy, okay, so let's see if it was for the same reason. Mine was 'cause I just hated doing homework. Yeah, same. Yeah, so I hated doing homework, never got the projects in on time. You know, had to go to summer school. I wasn't even supposed to walk in the graduation But my mom was a teacher in the same school district, and she kind of schmoozed the principal. And on graduation day, I get up there and they're calling the other C's, so they're like, Clarkson, and then they go to whatever C comes after Clemens, but they skip my name. And so I walked up and got my diploma, but my poor grandma was sitting in the stands and she never saw me. She's waiting. She's like, where's Craig? You know, it's like You're still just trying to live down that disappointment.

Disappointed grandma, it's like, okay, I need to change the world now.

Yeah, like Donald Trump is always trying to impress his dead father, you know, me with my grandma.

And so, so you, you're a crappy student. And Sam, you were also a 1.7 GPA type?

I graduated with a 2.2, which is, uh, slightly above a C average.

Oh man, I'm a Rhodes Scholar compared to you guys with my 3.1. Um, all right, so Craig, were you like business motivated at that time, or you were Just wandering.

I had zero motivation. I went to community college because my parents' dream was for us to go to college and went there.

I was delivering pizzas.

I then really stepped my game up and started waiting tables, which is a lot more in the tip jar than the pizza delivery. And then I got a job as a telemarketer, and that was a real game changer for me because it was the first time I was getting paid actually to use a skill. Now don't get me wrong, I was pretty good at delivering the pizzas, but this time I was actually doing one-on-one calls with people, and the job was selling tools and industrial supplies. So I'd call these farmers out in Iowa and I'd try to sell them drill bits and wrench sets and things like that. It was pretty bizarre.

At this point, were you, were you motivated, like, you know, pursuit of happiness, where you're not going to put down the phone, you're going to try to get, you know, more, 10% more calls than everybody else? Were you, did you transform in that way, or what was it?

You know, I really wasn't—

I always had this thing against working hard. I think it was some sort of rebellion against my mom or something, who was always telling me I need to work hard and go to school or I wouldn't amount to anything.

And I think because of that, I didn't want to do my homework.

I didn't want to put the hours in. So I had an 8-hour shift at the telemarketing company, and then I got a better telemarketing job at a company that did credit card merchant accounts.

And that was like a legit corporate gig.

There were people there that were making six figures, wearing suits, and I showed up there, 21-year-old kid. I would wear my collared shirt that I would wear at the nightclub to the office to at least have some sort of upscale attire. And it was straight commission. And I told the boss, I walked in there so cocky because I was pretty good at the tools and all that. I said, "Hey, how many sales do I gotta get in my first month to get one of these corner offices?" And he says, if you get 20 accounts, you can have a corner office. I don't know what 20 accounts was. So my first day, I sat there pounding the phone, and I got one guy who was kind of interested. Finally, I stayed there till 8 PM and got him this fax in his form to sign up the credit card account. I just bulldozed this dude, and he ended up backing out a few weeks later, of course, you know, because that's usually what happens.

Um, I got like 12 accounts that first month. But I just really liked partying back then.

I was 21, I was going to the bars and, you know, waking up with the crack of 11:30, and that's when I'd roll into the office.

So even though I wanted to be this hotshot salesman and make six figures, I just didn't have it when it came to being straight commission and picking my own hours. My own hours would be like, you know, 11:30 AM to 6 or 7 PM, and then the guy who passes out the leads would see me rolling in there at 11:30 wearing my shit from the night before. And the good lead comes in, there's someone else who's been there since 6 AM trying to feed his family.

Who's going to give the good lead to, you know? So I did make $40-something thousand that year, which was a game changer for me. I was now rich, quote unquote, and I was still in my boring hometown, which is Thousand Oaks, California, if you guys are familiar, and I hated it there.

And all of my friends who did have their shit together that had real grades in college had moved down to San Diego to go to San Diego State or USD.

And so I packed up my bags and I moved down to San Diego and I tried to get other jobs doing merchant accounts. I sold DirecTV.

I did mortgage loans. I just could not find a job that may be anywhere near that $40 grand.

And since it was straight commission, I never had to pay the taxes on it. You know, it's like you hold your own money and you wait. But while I was running through these dead-end jobs, I spent through all my savings. So pretty soon I was like $20 grand in debt to the IRS. And that was a real low point for me because by that time my friends were starting to graduate college and they were getting the salary jobs, driving the company cars. And I was still going to McDonald's with like a dollar-off coupon for the two cheeseburgers and a Coke. And that was pretty depressing. So that's where I was.

And then you said you hooked up with someone, a mentor. And I know, I think I know who this is. Is this Eben Pagan?

Yeah, yeah.

Do you know who this is, Sean?

I just heard about him yesterday when I was doing my research. But no, tell me, tell me.

Let me tell you who he is. Let me take a stab at this, Craig, because this is from an outsider's perspective. And this is, I think I could do a good job of relating this to anyone who doesn't know. So Eben Pagan also went by David DeAngelo. I was a customer of this.

Okay. I assume that you're male. Yeah.

This is the pickup artist guy.

Yeah, but I was on the— I'm 31, so I was probably only 18 or 16 when this stuff happened. So I think I'm on the younger age of when this was at its peak. And so this guy had this thing called Double Your Dating. And it sounds sleazy. I mean, it doesn't sound sleazy. It sounds like it's trying to like hook up with girls. It's not. It was about how to like build a relationship with people. And I was 16, pimple-faced. I was like, fuck, I want a girlfriend. And so somehow I came across this Double Your Dating thing and you enter your email and he was, he would send these super long, like 3,000-word emails, only text about these stories. And he would get you to buy his book. And Evan is still around, but at the time his stage name or whatever you want to call it, brand name was David DeAngelo. And I am pretty sure, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure he was selling $30 or $40 or $50 million a year this book on how to date people. Is that right?

I can, I can get into all the details of that for sure. So I was in your shoes when I was 18. I only kissed one girl. No, I kissed two girls in high school.

The first one was legit. The second one, I was at a party and there was a girl who had thrown up.

She was 20. I knew her kind of from my martial arts studio.

She had finished puking and she was walking back to the party and she grabbed the back of my head and made out with me.

So that was my second kiss.

Great.

How are you only kissing 2 girls? You look like Mark Wahlberg. What's going on? Did you grow into Mark Wahlberg later, or what happened?

So, you know, I left out the part about me not graduating college and stuff. I was a virgin all that whole time. I was a virgin until I was like 22. I was really bad at the leagues. So I was in these forums talking about how to meet girls, and I just wanted to find a girlfriend. That's all I wanted. I was like saving my virginity to have a girlfriend.

So that was my goal. I wasn't trying to be a pickup artist. I just want to one, but I was just not socially able to do so.

I was super shy.

I won, uh, you know, they have the high school hall of fame.

So in junior high school, I won most bashful. I was voted the shyest guy in the whole school. And so in high school, I decided to do something about it and I would buy these books. Like I remember there's one called 92 Tricks for Success in Personal and Business Relationships. And I would read these things and I'd test them out. So I'd go up to like the cool guy at school and I would say, hey man, how was your weekend? And he'd say, it was good, how was yours?

I'd be like, oh, it was good, I rode my bike around and stuff. Well, enjoy the rest of your day.

And he'd say, okay, cool. And I'd be like, yes, I had a normal conversation, I did that, I was able to speak with him and I wasn't an idiot. So I was really bad, but I worked on myself.

And so yeah, I was in all these forums talking about meeting girls and I met a guy who knew a guy, et cetera, et cetera.

And he said, you should meet this guy Eben because he's also based in Los Angeles. And Eben was also a dating nerd.

So I meet him, we hung out a couple of times and lose touch when I moved down to San Diego. And then I'm working at this other telemarketing company. And what you do at the end of a telemarketing shift, because the room has these speaker boxes so everyone can hear the calls, is you start prank calling all your friends. And so, you know, we grew up on the Jerky Boys and we had epic prank calls. So I had this prank call that was pretty epic. I would call people up and, uh, well, Sean, to give you an example, what's the name of, uh, your current or Past, uh, girlfriend, uh, past girlfriend Jessica.

Jessica.

Okay, cool. So let's say Sam and I are buddies and you'd be like, hey, call my friend Sean.

His ex's name—

is it ex or current?

Ex. Happily married now.

Okay, got it.

So call you up, say, hey Sean, this is Steve Johnson with Longitude International, the revolutionary penis enlargement pill guaranteed to add 2 to 3 inches in length or 3 to 4 inches in girth. Within 30 days. We're having a special right now. I can get you 2 bottles for the price of 1, and you don't pay anything out of pocket until you see the results.

How would you like me to send it out to you?

And they'd say, no, no, I'm not interested in that, you know, I'm good. And I'd say, well, you know, Sean, man to man, I mean, I'm good down there too, but I mean, couldn't we all just benefit a little bit from some more length and especially a little more girth? They say, ah, no, no, I'm really good, I don't need that shit. Like, well, Sean, that is free to try. You don't get billed unless you actually use it. If you don't look down and see more girth, it's not going to cost you anything. So let me just send you out a sample, no obligation, and if you like it, great, I'll charge your credit card. If not, you don't pay anything. Nah, nah, nah, I really don't— okay, well, Sean, I wasn't actually supposed to tell you this, but Turns out you were referred to us. Does the name Jessica ring any bells? Then they'd be like, oh, fuck. Okay, here's my address, send me that shit. And you put their friend on the phone and tell them they got punked. So, lot of good times at the office there.

Hey guys, I wanna take a second to answer one of the most common questions I get, which is, hey, I got this great idea, or, hey, my company's doing really well and I just need a developer. I need somebody who knows how to code so that I can either bring this idea to life or I can grow faster. And you know, I've been there before. I've dabbled in the no-code tools trying to make it work. Sometimes that works. Most of the time it's not good enough. Tried to learn programming myself. That was a waste of time. And you know, I've looked at overseas platforms to say, hey, can I find an affordable developer? You know, I can't afford somebody here in the States, in California, paying some Silicon Valley prices, but maybe I can afford a developer in the Philippines or in Eastern Europe. And the big challenge has always been finding somebody who's actually like good, like they're vetted. Like I never know if somebody's gonna just take my money and run, if they're actually a good developer or a bad developer. And how do I know? If I knew how to code, I could judge their stuff, but I don't know how to code. So what, what I really like about this week's sponsor Lemon.io is that they have a vetted marketplace of remote developers from Eastern Europe. So I know the founder pretty well. His name's Alex. And what they do is they filter and they test and they, basically have a reputation system of any developer that they have on their roster. So you know if you go to Lemon.io, you're getting a developer who is actually good, is good quality, is gonna get the job done. And so the way it works is you go, you type what you need, hey, I wanna build this app, or I need to add an extra front-end developer to my team and I don't wanna hire. Within 24 hours, they'll match you with the right developer. If it's not the right developer, you just tell 'em and they'll switch it, you know, basically for free, it's a replacement guarantee. And they're actually cheaper than the other outsourcing platforms. So, you know, you get one big savings when you just go outside the US or outside of Europe and you get somebody in kind of either Eastern Europe or in the Philippines, Southeast Asia. You know you save money there, but Lemon.io is actually half the price of the other platforms that try to do this, and so it's stupidly effective. I would just kind of take advantage of this as long as they can offer these rates.

It's pretty amazing.

And Alex basically told me that for any My First Million listener, they will offer a 15% discount on the first 6 weeks of work that you have done. So if you want that done, if you want a developer who is vetted, who can build your projects, go to lemon.io/mfm. Again, that's lemon.io/mfm, like my first million.

All right, enjoy. Back to this week's episode.

So I decided I wanted to prank call Eben, and I dialed up the phone. I hadn't talked to him in a year or so, and I decided to do it myself because I didn't think he'd recognize my voice because I didn't know him that well.

It'd been like a year.

And so I call him up, I say, hey Evan, it's Steve Johnson with Longitude, the revolutionary penis enlargement pill. And he goes, is this Craig?

I'm like, oh fuck.

And he goes, haha, thanks, but no thanks, because he knew I was just, you know, party animal that didn't have any useful skills besides harassing people on the phone.

So I go to the website, as Sam can probably remember, and it's not even a real website. It says one sentence. It says, you're about to learn secrets most men will never know about meeting women. And then it has 3 or 4 bullet points of what you'll learn, like how to get a girl's phone number, you know, how to kiss a girl without getting rejected.

It says put in your name and email address.

That's it. That's the whole damn site. So I put in my name and email address and I start getting these huge newsletters like Sam was talking about with these dating tips and advice, like you know, first date ideas or, uh, you know, what to do if you're fresh out of a relationship, all this stuff. And I'm reading them like, you know, I can write this shit. And so I sit down one day and I write one. I'll never forget, it was called Two Tips to Kiss a Girl. And I was careful to write it in this exact funny style that he wrote in, which was very conversational, single sentence paragraphs. And it was copywriting, but I didn't know what that was. I wrote it and sent it to him and he wrote me back and he said, okay, now we can talk. And he gave me a job at $3,000 a month, which was life-saving at the time. And I actually didn't get hired as a copywriter. I got hired to do link exchange. Do you remember those days when you trade links with someone? And I started doing customer support, but not like help me download this ebook, but more when people write in, they'd say, Hey, I'm 30 years old. I just got divorced. Will this book help me get back in the game? And so I'd write, yeah, it absolutely will help you get back in the game.

There's something on page 36 that'll tell you what to do to build your confidence.

So I was getting into the minds of customers, doing that customer support, and that made me a much better copywriter later. So the numbers in that business at the time I joined, you know, that's about what I was doing, $70 grand a month.

Soon it was $150,000.

That men's dating brand eventually got up to about $8 million a year. But then we started one for women that was called Catch Him and Keep Him. And the women's market was even more rabid. I don't know why.

That's counterintuitive. I wouldn't have thought that.

Yeah, I think men are more desperate, need more help, right? Here's the thing, the women's ads converted much better, but it wasn't all trackable. And the takeaway that we had— and it's not 100% sure if this is true, but, you know, Sam, did you ever tell any of your friends about that dating book you bought?

Never in a million years.

I didn't either. I wouldn't even tell people I worked at this company. When people would ask me what I do, I'd just say, oh, I do—

this is the first time, and that was 15 years ago, that I'd ever even said that.

I took the COVID off the game when I had the book. I was like, oh yeah, that's a Bible.

Yeah, yeah.

But women, they'll buy this book and they'll tell all their friends and they'll have a book club about it. So I think that's why it was selling more, because women will talk about it. But then the other interesting thing, the back end for each business was CDs and DVDs of live seminars. And the men would buy those like crazy. The men were way more valuable on the back end. The women were not spending $100 to $300 on these expensive courses, maybe because that made them feel desperate, maybe because they weren't as desperate as the men were. Who knows? But it was really interesting getting to be on the ground floor of this.

So how big did it get?

And he sold the dating companies to a couple of the top employees, if I remember correctly.

And so just to give people perspective, can you say how big Golden Hippo is now? I mean, I just, I just want, I want people to be like, okay, this guy is worth or not worth listening to. And oftentimes numbers are the best way to do that.

Sure, sure. So I can tell you that we are almost 900 team members. We're not public on revenues, but we've grown to about 900. A big chunk of that is customer support too. So we've got about 400 agents in Salt Lake City, Utah at a call center. And we do all of our own fulfillment. And of course, email and chat support is critical these days.

So we've got about 70 people doing that.

So if I had to guess, I would say hundreds of millions in sales. That's what I would guess.

Okay. And what makes you guys a little bit different is, and I think I said something negative about you guys and I'm gonna, I didn't mean for it to come negative. But you guys do a lot of long-form copy. And what I said was a lot of people, I think I used the word scammy and I didn't mean to say that. What I meant to say is that a lot of people perceive that as scam stuff because a lot of scammers use that. I didn't mean to say you guys were scam artists or anything like that, cause I don't think you are, but you guys do do a lot of like long-form copy. Is that correct?

Well, we do. And it's the same model. That we did with the dating advice. So if you remember, you signed up and you got these really new, really long newsletters with free tips and things like that. So that's why our stuff is long, is because we lead with education. So I like to say that we have two offerings. We have education and then we have great products. And if people just stick around for the education, don't buy anything, that's fine. You know, we try to leave people better than we found them.

Do you have tens of millions of email subscribers?

Uh, I actually don't know, but I would think that that would not be true. I don't think it's that many because we have a different business model than some people. There's other very successful businesses in the spaces we are in that grab emails and then sell backend. And that is what we did with Double Your Dating and Catch 'Em and Keep 'Em is we would go for that email with those capture pages. And at Golden Hippo, we only email for the most part existing customers. We don't do a lot of email capture, though it does work very well for profitable brands in the space.

So not against it. It's just—

why would you do— why did you go away from that? That seems to be like the standard protocol, like, hey, email, they're willing to give it. And once I have that, I can start to sell them drip by drip. Until they're my customer. Why'd you move away from that?

Yeah, no particular reason. I've seen it work very successfully, as I was saying, you know, and I don't know if it's something that we wouldn't necessarily do in the future. You know, I know we have some quiz funnels and things like that, you know, that ask for it. And so I would say a percentage of our people are, are first-timers, but also if you've ever been at a company that does a lot of emailing, you learn that the more people on your list, the harder it is to get your email in their inbox, you know, especially in their like real inbox. And so if you're emailing millions of people, then you get on all kinds of weird lists and things like that, that Gmail automatically puts you in the promotions tab or automatically in the spam. And it's really hard to figure out why. So we found that just emailing customers cuts down on the bulk of it by a lot. And so that was the, I think, original reason.

And so not to say we wouldn't do it again.

So let's talk about some ideas. So the space that you're in, if I, from an outsider's perspective, it seems like because you're launching new brands, you're constantly looking at opportunity. And maybe before you got into this, you had no idea that Dr. Stephen Gundry, like that people ever even bought anything that he was interested in selling. What, uh, what are you currently surprised about in your space, and where is there opportunity that you think you guys are not capitalizing on, uh, because of it's just not a priority?

Well, I can tell you things that I'm not allowed to do legally that are pretty interesting.

Yeah, let's start there.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, I mean, it's not gonna be anything you haven't heard before, but I can't fuck with CBD which I think is great. I take it myself for sleep, but it's still not federally legal to ship state to state yet.

It's like gray area.

And so I get asked all the time by, you know, celebrities, doctors, whoever, if I want to start a CBD brand with them. And I have to say no because we have too much to lose. But I don't tell them to not start it because I think the laws are heading in that direction where it's going to be be totally fine soon, but right now it's not, so I can't mess with it.

How would you spin that up?

24-year-old Craig Clemens with nothing to lose would be like, you know what, we'll figure this out.

You guys will get there. You don't have anything, yeah, and I encourage people, I've had people come to me that were more entrepreneurial and say, hey, do you want to do this together?

I said, no, but you should do this on your own because it's a big category.

It's something that gives results you can feel, which I think is really important when you're doing something in ingestibles. And it's something that helps a lot of people.

How would you get your first customers for that? I mean, I think that the CBD thing is easier because there's so many people already making it. Let's say you just wanted to sell it. What would you do?

So you'd write a blog post about titled that, and then it would be like a 1,000-word blog post and you would drive traffic to it from like, let's say Outbrain or Taboola or something.

Um, I think Facebook is the best network in the world to do your initial testing on.

And the reason is because you can target so tightly and then go broader and broader. So what I would suggest is, you know, the blog idea is a good one and you can do different types of blogs. You can do it on your own domain. You can do a sponsored post on, say, Well+Good or something like that, you know, or even LA Times or some of these will take sponsored posts. So you can do that type of educational presentation. And then yeah, I suggest they go on Facebook and they look for people who have raised their hand and said, I follow this back pain group, you know, or whatever it is that people are buying CBD for the most. You know, a lot of people buy CBD for anxiety in their pets. That's a big one, you know, so you could target anyone that is in a I love dog videos or cat videos group, and then start off and get your advertising to where you can convert those folks that are really targeted and then uncheck the box on, say, cat lovers and see if it still works for just dog lovers. Then uncheck that box until you can go broad. That, I think, is the key to scaling up, and that's a great thing about Facebook. Yeah, I love that.

That's extremely tactical.

You can do the same thing with Google AdWords in a way with, with type in traffic. You know, you can go in the more targeted terms, you know, like buy CBD for my dog's anxiety during flights. You know, like you can do this long tail stuff or, you know, but you eventually want to get to the place where you can convert on CBD or on raccoon.

So when you're testing a brand, a new idea, I don't think back to the last idea you guys spun up or you were involved with. What's the timeframe you give it? Do you say, okay, we're going to spend 6 weeks on this and we kind of know within the 6 weeks we're going to be able to validate this, or is it not time-based, it's something else?

Totally.

And you can just chase that rabbit for freaking ever, man, and just dump money into it, you know? And so I actually would much prefer putting something up that completely tanks or does really great and not doing that. You know, I've lost a lot of money trying to build brands where I've partnered with someone who I really liked. Maybe I really liked their product ideas or their philosophies, and then the world just didn't respond.

But since I liked it so much, I kept going for it and going for it and going for it.

What's an example of a metric that says this is taking off? I mean, like, do you want like a— do you want to put in $1 and get out $3?

I think that's different depending on the brand, you know. So if you have a subscription model, for example, you can spend a lot less upfront. You know, like if you look at Guthrie Ranker and Proactiv, they're losing money on every sale. And I think they have like an 8-month turnaround or something like that, you know. If you're doing something that is low LTV, like maybe you only have one product, yeah, you gotta make your money back pretty quick, you know. So there's no like real set metric I can give you. It's different for every business. But I would suggest define your metric and try to go for a home run or a strikeout.

Is there a product that you guys created where you're like, where you weren't— I mean, I'm sure that many of your successes you were shocked by, but is there something— what's the one thing that took off and you were like, oh my gosh, I did not think that this was going to work as amazing as it does?

Weird.

What the fuck?

Yeah.

So the reason why is because people who are looking for support with their heart typically have circulation problems that affects their feet. Right. And so we did this, this in the heart health space and it worked really well, so well that we were running a ton of media for it. And then we partnered with another doctor who has, I think, one of the greatest products that we make. It's a foot cream called FootMedics. And this product, when people start taking FootMedics and putting it on their feet, they never stop. The LTV is insane. But we needed to run the foot banners and, Facebook ads and all that to sell FootMedics because it was a more natural product. So we did this deal, we created FootMedics, and actually we didn't create FootMedics, we— that was a kind of like an acquisition slash takeover, whatever, that's a different story. But because we were doing so much media in the hard health space, putting feet all over the internet, some of these, uh Networks got together and they said, you know, these feet on the websites aren't a good look, and they banned advertising that has feet in it. Now you can get away with like a sexy woman's shoe or something like that, but if it's just like a random person's foot, it's, it's, uh, not allowed on the networks. It's a random thing that they don't want on the site. And if you think about it, if you got some nice looking website, there's just a random foot there, you know, it's not the best look for your site. You know, everyone— I would say everyone wants the BMW ad because you get this sleek car, maybe a sexy couple, and then no one clicks on it. No one leaves to go buy a BMW. They stay on your site and watch more ads. So that's everyone's dream ad. Their nightmare ad is an ugly foot that someone clicks on and leaves their site because they're so interested that they buy the foot product and never go back to the Facebook newsfeed or whatever it is, you know. So we ruined the foot banner for everybody, and then we had this great product, Foot Medics, and we had no way to advertise it.

And it's, it's still around, you know, and it does a little bit of business, but not to the scale it would have been had we still been able to use feet.

Um, yeah, there does need to be a good way to measure it because then you got guys like Gary Vee that are like, you need to hustle 12 hours day for, you know, give up your 20s and, you know, work on this same thing that just converts okay, and one day it's gonna blow up.

And that's not true for everything.

I think so many people waste so much time cranking on these business ideas that don't have real proof of concept. You know, they get a couple customers, but they just never break through, and they think it's because they're not working hard enough or long enough or whatever it is. But really, it's just because you're making something that people don't necessarily want.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that you have to— the way I'm like, how do I figure it out? How do I know when I should be the guy from Pinterest who was like, yeah, we just kept going even with growth was flat, and then it started picking up years later?

It's like, how do I know when to be that guy?

For the, you know, when do I be the tortoise and when do I be the hare? And because there's examples on both sides, and then there's a graveyard of people failing because they took either approach, so it's hard to really tell. And my, my, just my answer to myself, and I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I like it, I use it. Is go against human nature. Like, if my human nature is to be really hopeful, so I know that, so what I should actually do is be actively skeptical about things because I know my default is going to be to see the one customer that it's working for and not the 99 that have rejected it, that have, you know, totally don't care about this. And so I just try to work against my own human nature because that keeps me honest, whereas if I feed into that, if it's like my nature is to be optimistic, delusionally optimistic, and then I'm actively like, yeah, I should just keep going even when there's no evidence of keep— to keep going. Uh, I'll end up, you know, at an extreme dead end.

Yeah, I'm the same way as you. Fortunately, my brother, who I run the company with, is a classic pessimist, shooting down every one of my ideas, and then I gotta fight for the ones I really like to get them executed on. You know, but I know if he agrees with me on something, it's probably gonna be a good idea.

So it's good to have that balance. You'd have someone that'll check you.

What's your hit rate with brands? So I know you said, and when it comes to marketing, for example, you never know what's gonna work. You'll get surprised all the time. You'll be wrong more than you're right. But one thing I've seen as a pattern, I'm curious if it applies to you guys, is there's all these people, I bet people who once they become masters at things that are what seem like, you know, hit businesses, like I have friends who do viral videos and I talk to them, I'm like, oh yeah, viral videos, it's lightning in a bottle, who knows?, and I was like, what's your hit rate? And they showed me their, their, you know, set of their catalog and it's like 9 out of 10. And I was like, 9 out of 10 are going viral. He's like, yeah, but like eventually we figured out what emotions we're tapping into. We filter out bad ideas early and then we have a distribution system that kind of ensures success. And I was like, wow. So something I thought would be low hit rate, these guys over time have gotten to be very high hit rate. I'm curious for you, are you guys, what's your hit rate on new brands or new products you roll out? Is it, more like 8 or 9 out of 10, or is it more like 1 or 2 out of 10?

So I'll answer that on both sides—

new products and new brands.

New products, we never fail because we're asking the customers what we want, what they want.

We do a survey, we say, you know, which of these 10 products would you like next?

We forgot the customer at some point.

Yeah, so, and I've been as guilty as that as anyone at my company.

Company.

So I'd say that's on the product side. On the brand side, 60% maybe. You know, I'm always surprised by what fails.

And it's still pretty high though.

I mean, we're still in business, so, you know, it's—

but your failures, I'm sure, are pretty cheap. You know, when you launch with a new brand, I don't think it's gonna— I don't think— I don't think you're putting in $10 million into each one.

It's cheap if it fails quickly. If it takes a year to realize it's a failure, that's when it's really expensive, you know.

How much money do you invest all into a new brand?

Uh, you know, let's see. I— so I'm not a numbers guy at all. I'm the marketing positioning guy. So I'm just gonna guess a million bucks, something like that, you know, maybe 1.5 by the time it's all said and done, including resources and things like that.

So like 5 or 10 people?

Well, it's not mostly people cost though, right? You're talking about the whole, the marketing.

Well, what I mean is you throw 5 or 10 people at something and then you give them a little bit of a budget for marketing.

Uh, that's not the way our company does it. We do it differently than your standard incubator or whatever. So for example, our formulation team, formulates all the products for all the brands. There's not a brand that has a specific formulator, for example. There's not a brand that has a specific, uh, copywriter.

You're vertically integrated. You, you manufacture your own products.

You're not— we don't manufacture our own products, but we formulate in-house.

Okay.

What type of company? If I'm the type of company that's A, B, and C, I should reach out to you?

Yes.

How do they reach out?

Yeah, sweet spot is like $1 to $20 million in revenues, you know, so some proof of concept there that could benefit from working with people who are experienced in scaling.

That's something that is really a strong point for us that we can help with.

How do they reach out?

They can just, you know, hit me. I'm pretty easy to find.

@craig at Instagram. I read my DMs or Twitter or, uh, you know.

Okay, cool. Sweet. All right, so now to the ideas.

Okay, so we do this for consumer product brands. Someone needs to do what we do for personal brands. There's a couple companies that do it, but they have a slightly different model. So there's Mindvalley that partners with authors and speakers, and they put them in the Mindvalley educational program. Where I think it's like a Netflix for personal development, if I understand it right.

And I was looking up Mindvalley last night. So it's like a $70 million— it's owned by this guy in Thai. Where is he? In Indonesia?

Yeah. You should have him on the show actually. He's awesome. He's a friend of mine. I'll introduce you guys.

His name is Vishen.

Yeah. So it's like a $70 million information brand and they sell, to dumb it down, like I think one of their biggest products was like a $300 yoga course.

I think that's what it's, You know what it's like is, do you know Tucker Max's company?

Yeah.

Scribe.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it used to be called Book in a Box, which was a good explanation of what it is, but it wasn't a good name. And he changed it to Scribe. And what Tucker does is authors come to him, people who are consultants or like thought, kind of, kind of thoughty leader people, or people who just want to leave a legacy for their kids. They give him $25 grand or he gives them $25 grand and you sit with a ghostwriter and you tell your story and they turn it into a book. Which sometimes that book is just, I want to give to my kids because I want them to have like a cool story about how I grew up, or I want to get speaking gigs, or I want to get consulting gigs. And what you're describing is almost like a service where you probably wouldn't want to pay up front. What you'd want to do is find people like your wife or people who are high-caliber folks, and you're like, look, we could turn this into a blog and then a course, and we'll get a percentage of the revenue. Exactly. That's interesting. That's interesting. Yeah, it's almost like a mod— like a modern-day, uh, HarperCollins or a modern-day, uh, Penguin or something like that.

I've never had it before.

But yeah, someone please build that thing because I don't know how and I would love to use it.

We've talked about, uh, Superhuman and Hey.com. Have you paid attention to those?

I pay Superhuman $30 a month. I've only used it a couple times.

I've been paying for over a year.

I do like it. It's just a lot to learn with the keystrokes. Yeah, and I haven't been able to figure that out yet. I haven't seen— hey, I have an invitation waiting for me in my inbox also, though I got a little turned off by what appeared to me from outside looking in. I didn't go deep in it, but it seemed like this like whole like whining about Microsoft or App Store taking money. Yeah, clogging up my Twitter feed. I was just like, I don't want to have any part of this because isn't that common knowledge that the App Store is going to take their piece, right? I don't want to go down that tangent, but whatever.

Okay, so the ultimate— I like the message aggregator side because I have the same problem. Twitter DMs, Instagram, email, text messages, whatever it is. And you sort of have to like— it's like, you know, when old people have to take all these pills because they have like all these conditions and they have this pill pack that's like, oh, I gotta— it's Monday, I gotta open these 7 different lids and I gotta take these 7 different pills and then by the end I'm zonked out. That's how I feel when I check my messages. And so if you could either make it fun or at least put it all in one place, in theory I like that. I also— this is something that Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, has talked a lot about. It's like, email is essentially a to-do list. Why is it not designed to work as a to-do list or with a to-do list? Somebody needs to do that, that will make a lot of money. And he wrote this like 7 years ago, 8 years ago. I think some people have tried it. Of course, people try everything, but no one's nailed it.

Are you guys both Bay Area guys?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so I was up at a Google summit a couple years ago and I was talking to a woman. I forget what company she was with, but she was talking about how Larry and Sergey back in the day were big proponents that you should never sell out to the man, meaning the advertisers. And then they acquired Google AdWords, which was called, I think, GoTo at the time.

Or DoubleClick.

Okay, yeah, one of those. At the same time when they were debating, should we charge people $4.99 a month for Google? And that move right there ruined the world because now it's an advertising-driven thing instead of a subscription thing. And she was telling this to me as though I should have known this and this was some type of thing that everyone in tech knew about. So I'm curious, is this something that you guys have heard before and believed in? And is there protests in front of Google or was there back in the day? Like, 'cause that was the first time I'd heard of it.

There's definitely a revolt amongst high-end insiders. And I have heard that story that they were like, we're never gonna do advertising. But Google is, I think, pretty good for advertising. Like, it's like high-intention, or its intent. Like if someone's searching for something, it's effective.

Yeah, for sure, it's effective to advertise on it in the same way that Facebook's really effective to advertise on it. I think, I think you're bringing up a more philosophical first. So first, no, I actually hadn't heard that story that Google was sort of at a fork in the road moment trying to decide whether they— hey, do we charge for our product or do we do this sort of free and then make money off ads, uh, system? And I do know that the sort of the ethos went from like Advertising is a necessary evil, you know, for Facebook and for Google early on. Like, Zuck had no interest in ads, probably still doesn't have that much interest in ads. And it was sort of like, you know, can't be— or don't be evil was, you know, the phrase for Google. That was their marketing message as far as how they're gonna run things. And then now today, like, you know, the suits have taken over. It's a, you know, it's a public company. They have to— the job is to make as much money as they can. And so That's why you see things where, you know, if you look on the Google front page, it's like everything is an ad until you scroll type of thing. And like, oh, how the times have changed. And so yeah, it's different. Same thing with Facebook. Facebook was not, like there's interviews of Mark kind of casually sitting in an interview like this talking about advertising and how it's kind of lame and how he doesn't really want to do it. Evan Spiegel, same thing. He thought advertising was creepy the way it was done. It's like, that's their business model. So what are you gonna do? You're gonna hate your own business model or, you know, That's not gonna work.

Who thinks long-form copy is scammy?

But no, hey, look, I use long-form copy. I, uh, not everyone who uses long-form copy is scammers, but a lot of scammers, uh, use long-form copy. Yeah, but what's your way?

What's your email cold email technique? Did it work to, uh, get a— it worked right away.

With, um, like a, a top 20 celebrity in the world. Oh man.

Yeah, I don't want to say it was, but it was, it was, uh, a pretty, pretty good move.

So I need to charge some money for that. I think it's out there for free. Well, it's all Trends subscribers have that, but yeah, it's awesome, man.

Can I pitch Trends?

I, I, you know, you and I only met for like 5 minutes at a conference.

Yeah, I talk once in a while, but we're not like Homies, you know, right? Pitch it. Trends is fucking awesome, man. It's so high value. I tell people to subscribe to Trends. I actually wrote back once, or maybe I said this to you directly, I thought it was too good. I thought it was too much content to digest.

It was just too long and too much great information.

But I tell people to subscribe, and the paying subscription to Trends all the time.

I think it's the best business newsletter that's out there.

I'm gonna, uh, clip this. We'll probably have this clip right now of me saying this in the ad, and we're gonna run this as an ad. Thank you.

The smile on Sam's face. I, I've never seen this guy smile like this. All right, I love it. You had a third idea as well.

Okay, VR. I'm holding up an Oculus for people who can't see. Yeah, there's a way to fit this on my dog's head. I don't know what it is, but it would fit. And how much fun would a dog have in VR chasing virtual tennis balls? You put like the haptic bite thing, you know, you'd be the device so they can bite on the virtual tennis ball and and the dog just has like the greatest day every day. And the technology is here right now. Maybe it would need to get a little bit lighter, but it's here, man. You know, the weight thing would definitely work with a bigger dog, German Shepherd or something like that. You know, maybe in 3 years you can put it on the Shih Tzu, but this is here and no one's done it yet. And this thing like this, for example, what if there was a dog adapter for this actual Oculus? What if I could put this on my German Shepherd when I'm not using it? Because I don't wear this thing that often. You know, that is a billion-dollar business.

Okay, so what you're saying sounds like a crazy person, but I want to give some perspective on this. Um, dog VR. You just said dog VR, and on the surface that's a laughable idea, but when I, when I, as a dog owner and someone who's involved in a couple dog businesses— I know you're involved in the pet business too, right? Pet owners have the highest engagement I have ever seen. So like the pet companies that I'm associated with, and maybe you can verify this because you're a pet business owner, is that the highest engagement amongst customers that you've ever seen? That was a loaded question, but—

Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm just so far removed from the numbers, I couldn't exactly tell you. It's not as good as we thought though, as far as them buying everything. That's interesting. We thought they would be fanatic, more fanatical of buyers than they are. I will say what we did expect as, you know, I own 4 dogs. Once they start on the dog food, they don't wanna switch because it's a very, it's the healthiest option with the convenience and it's just bad to switch your dog's food a lot. So that is true. But they don't like buy, that's been a hard business for us to get margin on because of the, food costs and shipping and, and all that stuff, you know.

There's this company that was— that just raised $10 million today, and they claim that their dog— it was either a pill or a food— that they're going to add 1 to 4 years to your dog's life. And they've hired all these scientists, they raised $10 million, and in my head I'm like, can I, can I eat that food? And/or can I eat the dogs that are eating that food? Uh, I'm like, what can I do to— what can I do to capture that?

But I mean, that sounds like a company asking for a lawsuit though, because there's been huge lawsuits against companies that have made those claims in the past. So I don't know, did they do a 20-year study with 100 dogs or something? That sounds crazy. I'd love to know the name of the company.

It's called, um, they— I think they raised $10 million today. It's called, um, uh, Clevity. So C-E-L-E, so like the word celebrity, C-E-L-E-V-I-T-Y.

Co. Okay, a consumer fourth business idea. We're just gonna collectively sue them and we'll make $10 million pretty easily.

So that's—

yeah, we get all of our dogs eating it and then we got the class action.

Yeah, I'm, I'm in.

Yeah, I mean, hey, props to them. I'd love to check it out, you know. Um, our, our— I'm gonna pitch our dog food since people are just doing it.

It's, uh, you know, you should always be, uh, pitching, right?

Um, have you guys seen the documentary The Dog Doc?

No, no, no.

You want dogs too, Sean?

I have a dog, and my dog is the pickiest eater, and we've tried all these different dog foods, and I'm trying to get her to eat something healthy. And not like— the only food I know she likes is chips.

Okay, I'm gonna send you some of our dog food, but watch the documentary The Dog Doc. It's produced and directed by the same woman who produced Buck, the documentary on the horse. Yeah, it was like an Oscar-worthy documentary, and the star of it is a veterinarian. His name is Dr. Marty Goldstein. He's famous for saving Oprah's dog when every other vet said her dog was going to die. He saved Martha Stewart's cats. He just has this little practice in Connecticut where people from all over the world would come bring their dogs. He's actually retired now, but this is what he did. He would help all the dogs that no one else said could be saved, and he would do it with nutrition. He'd take them off the medications and put them on his nutritional therapy, and the healings are miraculous. And the documentary highlights it, and it shows that not every I think it's perfect.

You know, there's some cases that he couldn't help.

It's a really great documentary. And that is my partner for our pet food line. It's called Dr. Marty's. I sent you some, Sam. Did you give it to your dog?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sent me that like 3 months ago. Yes, he's eaten it all. Cool, cool. And we're good.

And he's healthy.

Sam's dog literally eats everything. Like I've seen Sam just, when he's done with his plate, he puts it on the ground and his dog eats the whole thing.

Awesome.

Well, you know, it might not be Dr. Marty's anymore if it's—

I don't know if I sent you a 6-month supply, but no, it was not 6 months, but he ate all of it.

Good, good.

Well, you know, hopefully that, that gave him some extra fat.

So we're kind of over time, but, uh, hey, first, you're a fucking great storyteller. I think you, you know, I'm smelling a regular friend of the pod who comes on with some regular cadence.

This is great.

I want to ask a question Uh, so when exactly did you start Golden Hippo? 2010.

And so now—

oh, '05. He said '05, right?

Oh, 2005.

So I got hired at Ebbins Company in like 2003, 2002, 2003, and then we parted ways basically the end of 2008. Oh, uh, when the recession hit, and I had a lead generation company also that also had to be basically shut down with the recession.

And that was a—

I didn't get into that story, but it was a troubling time for me. I went from making really good money to making zero in like 30 days. And then in the midst of the recession is when we started Golden Hippo. And that's another reason why we didn't raise money, aside from the fact that no one was going to give 4 jackasses with no college degrees a cent of VC money, you know, It was a recession and people weren't writing checks like they are today.

So the thing I was gonna ask is now D2C has been hot. Me and Sam always joke, Sam loves to say, if I see another brand that's just millennial pink lowercase, lowercase brand going into some established category, raise $10 million and burns it. We have friends that have been super successful with D2C e-commerce and that sort of thing, but you see a lot of this happening.

What's been your—

hey, what's your reaction as you've been seeing that and you're like, dude, I've been here at this party for a while? And then also, um, how do you differ from the model that you see Silicon Valley chasing, and what do you think of that model?

I don't know what they're doing, you know. It's, it's, it's— I— it impresses me because I don't know anything about it. Like, if someone gave me $10 million, I wouldn't even know what to do with it. Instead, go start a new brand. Like, what do you do with $10 million? I guess if you're that dog company, you go Maybe now you do the clinical studies or something like that. You know, uh, I'm impressed by some of these brands. At the same time, I worry for some of them because I feel like you raise that money and then you're going towards your next money, then you're going towards your next money, and then hopefully some big conglomerate grabs you before the rug's pulled out from under. That's what it feels like the business model of all these brands are to me. I saw a quote from Gary Vee that said most of these DTC brands are out of business, they just don't know it yet. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but it's something I don't understand, you know. Right. So I, I am quite impressed by the companies that do that. And I read— I just got on the Twitter, you know, that was like, you know, my 5th tweet that wasn't about like, you know, here's my pizza I'm eating today. So, uh, I just started reading the direct-to-consumer Twitter, and I got on that Clubhouse too. Yep. And most of the time when I see someone's, uh, theories on what you should do to start a D2C brand, it is not— they're not things I would do. So they talk about you need to build a community, um, you need to be omnichannel, right? You need to do influencer marketing. I don't get that. I mean, it It does work. I mean, Vital Proteins just sold for, you know, several hundred million dollars to Nestlé on the back of influencer marketing. And I have heard that their EBITDA was next—

was very low, right?

You know, and it works. So I, you know, proud of them, but I just— it's not something I understand.

Love it. Yeah, I like having the sort of the other perspective because I think it's really easy to just read the articles and be like, oh, that's the formula. But like, I'm more interested in somebody who's actually got a working formula that didn't— like, a fundamentally working formula. And yeah, I was curious about your take on that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to do it.

Like I said, like, some of my direct competitors will grab the email first, you know. It's just different ways of doing things, and I don't think there's a right or wrong. It's just what you're more comfortable with. You know, if I had come from Silicon Valley and had a college degree and, you know, worked at Sequoia before I started this company, maybe I would have started it with $10 million.

Right. Sam, anything else before we go?

Yeah, I just had to ask you one more question, which is we have a lot of people— this is similar to what Sean asked— who have raised a whole lot of money. And sometimes that's great, sometimes that's not great. But the stories that you're saying, you're saying that you went, you have a home that was confused for Mark Wahlberg's house, so you must have a lovely home. It's not— you said you have 900 team members and 9-figure company. How are you guys financing all this? I mean, has it just been crazy profitable from the beginning, or do you take debt? Like, what do you— how does this all work, and how are you able to cash flow so much?

Well, it wasn't a choice, you know. We didn't have any money in the bank, and I came from a company that didn't have any money in the bank either. You know, Evan bootstrapped The dating advice brands. So we just started, we had, uh, there's 4 of us, 3 of us put in, uh, uh, $20 grand each. Uh, we loaned our 4th partner his share, you know, so ended up being $60 grand total. And then we just, you know, didn't have a choice.

Like it was either it's going to make money or we're going to try something else.

And have you guys been crazy profitable every year or did it just start? Start laying it—

just ask me the EBITDA, Sam, ask me the EBITDA. No, I mean, we, yeah, we've been profitable since day one or else we would have had to go raise money, right? So didn't need to take on outside funding. Now we're talking to some people now, you know, we might take on some funding for some of these other categories we're getting in. Like, you know, for example, like dog food has been a tricky one and that is a brand that I could see us potentially needing some cash for to really scale it up.

Dog food's expensive, shipping is expensive, it's hard to get the capacity in the manufacturing.

So it's not something I'm ruling out, it's just not a world I come from. And had I known that world, maybe I would have after we took that $60 grand and built it up to whatever we did the first year, I think we did, I don't know, half a million in revenue the first year or something like that. Maybe if I knew that world back then, I would have gone and done a VC roadshow and done that. I just don't come from that background. You know, I just like had no idea that that even existed until I started going to like summit series and meeting other people that had similar brands to mine that had raised money. And they also had these things called exits that I didn't know that was a thing either.

You know, so. Well, that's why I'm bringing this up because Sean and I, We're kind of middle of the road in terms of bootstrapping and not bootstrapping. But a lot of our friends raised lots and lots of money and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But, and I love having my frame broken and listening to other people do different things. So it certainly is simple but hard what you did, right? Like you just make a profit. I mean, that's duh. That's like how businesses work. But that's what it's always cool to see. Whereas a lot of people are starting stuff and they're waiting to exit in order to get their big payday. Whereas you were kind of able to get paid along the way. I think that's— I like talking about that and sharing those different stories of— there's a lot of different ways to make something happen.

Yeah, one of the reasons the podcast is called My First Million is because I wanted to show all the different ways that people can make it. Like, there's no formula, there's no— you can't copy any of these actually, but if you hear 100 different stories, you'll start to be like, oh, okay, there's so many ways to win, and I'm gonna be inspired by these people, and I'm gonna take parts of their stuff, their story that is relevant to my context and make it happen. But like Sam said, we want to hear the variety of different paths, not just like the same story over and over and over again. Then you think, oh, there's only one way to win.

Yeah, the podcast name makes me laugh too, because I once met a Russian guy and he said something I'll never forget. And he said, we started talking about business or whatever, and I said, hey, you know, tell me about this and that. He goes, never ask a man how he made his first million.

Dude, that should be the intro of the podcast, a Russian voiceover just saying that.

Yeah, but then you hear about, you know, these people, you know, it's like, uh, like Sam, I think I saw a tweet that you did that you liked, uh, Andrew Carnegie's biography or whatever.

I loved it.

Yeah, I mean, the guy was insider trading. That's why he made all his money.

All those guys were. Joe Kennedy, uh, they all were. It was all illegal shit.

Yeah, I mean, Hamilton blenders started off selling sex toys, you know, and then it like turned into a blender because they had that like vibration technology. How many people made their money in Prohibition, you know, smuggling alcohol? It's just a funny saying. So I like that you guys are digging in and asking that question.

Yeah, most people would be shocked. Like Joe Kennedy, he made his first million by, um, Hertz, which at the time was a cab company. George Hertz was like, hey, you got to make my stock better. And He would buy all the stock and then hurry up and sell it to a pool of investors. It wasn't illegal, but it was probably unethical. Of all the biographies I read, a lot of it starts that way.

Yeah.

I had made my first before I started Golden Hippo. I had also lost it all. It's a different thing keeping it and making it.

Craig, do you have kids?

No, but trying now.

Okay, so let's say you have a son or a daughter, they just turned 22, and they're like, Dad, I want to learn about copywriting. What do you point them to as like kind of ABCs of copywriting? Where would you send somebody for the first kind of 30 or 60 days of going down that, trying to become great at it?

Gotcha.

Okay, cool. And I also tell people to buy that one because it's free.

You can just Google, you can find it as an ebook, and it often is alongside his copywriting book, which is called Scientific Advertising. So you can knock them both out at once.

Do you know that story, Sean, about Claude? Basically, uh, toothpaste didn't like— toothpaste wasn't like that good of tasting, but he made this ad where he says if you rub your tongue above your teeth, you'll, you'll feel film, uh, and we're gonna get rid of that film with toothpaste. And then he also said it like something to the effect of like it hurts in a good way, like the way that you feel that like that like crisp feeling in your mouth with toothpaste, that actually, that way you know it's working, right? He would do things like that so people like, it became a habit. He created, he's the one who like helped make toothpaste a daily habit.

Wow, that's kind of amazing. I always have felt that copywriters and comedians are the truth tellers of society. They understand people the best, and they're able to— because they understand people, you can't be a great comedian if you don't understand people, if you can't tell the truth. And you can't become a great copywriter if you don't understand people and you can't tell the truth. And then there's a whole bunch of jobs that are the opposite.

Yeah, definitely.

We should jam out maybe next time since I know we're out of time, but there's so many stories like that about these daily life things things that were created by marketers.

Like orange juice, for example, most people don't know that was invented by a marketer. Bacon and eggs was invented by a marketer. It's like all these things. I don't even want to get—

it's such a deep rabbit hole. Fascinating stuff.

All right, well, you got to come back on. Uh, this is dope. Thanks for doing this. This was fun. Fun to meet you. And, uh, yeah, I hope everyone enjoys this episode.

Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. This has been a blast.

It's great. I appreciate it.

Thank you.